Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy : Week 32

What a week! We were super busy this week but it was really fun! On P Day we had a Family Home Evening with a recent converts family. We made Empanadas and they were SOO Good. Then later that week we had another FHE with another family and we taught them how to make chocolate chip cookies! It was super fun and they tasted way good. We had interviews, the fireside with president, and our zone conference this week! Zone conferences are always super fun because you get to see all the other elders in the zone. Rumor was going around that president is gonna have an invite only basketball game with him sometime soon and after my interview he said that he was going to be calling me soon to play some ball with him. So i hope that happens haha. We had some amazing lessons this week. The best one was with a man named Leo Chavez. We taught the restoration, and he understood it better than anyone I've every taught. He like answered all our questions before we even asked them. It was awesome! He has a baptism date for May :) We went on divisions this week and I went with Elder Alexander. He doesn't know Spanish yet because he is new so it was fun being the one that had to talk to everyone. We had an awesome lesson with this family. I'm bummed they are in his area because they were golden. Funny Stories: Sunday was very eventful. On our way to church there was a pregnant lady in the street who was literally giving birth. She was screaming in pain.  And asked us if we could call her a taxi. So we call her a taxi and she started bawling and thanking us for saving her. I feel bad for the kid because she was crazy. But it was cool we were able to help her get to the hospital. So time passes and later that night we have a lesson in the church with a lady and her kids. We were waiting for a member to come and we couldn't go inside because there wasn't another guy in the church. So we were waiting outside and the kids wanted to play soccer. Well we had time to kill and we completely forgot it was Sunday (if you were a missionary you understand because we do the same thing every day). The member showed up and was appalled that we were playing soccer on Sunday with these little kids haha. But we repented so it's all good. KEEP THE SABBATH DAY HOLY KIDS! - Elder Tanner

That was NO papa Johns : Week 31

Hi Family and Friends,

Transfers…….. I left Tandil and headed to Bahia Blanca. There were about 40 to 50 missionaries in the bus stop terminal of Bahia, and none of us knew where we were going or anything. I got to see some Elders like Elder Lumsden and Caballero that I haven't seen for a while so it was good!

Then this guy named Elder Robinson comes up to me in the terminal and tells me we are comps and that we are in the Bahia Blanca Zone!!! Our area is called Maldonado!

Apparently it's one of the most dangerous areas in the mission and white elders are usually never put there. Now we have 2 of them there haha. We have to be home by 8:30 pm and everyone else has to be home by 9. This area is awesome though! It baptizes a lot, and we got 19 new investigators this last week!! (for this mission that's insanely good haha) I'm super excited to be here! Elder Robinson has a few more transfers than me.

The members here are awesome!! We've gotten like 4 references since we've been here haha. This is amazing compared to the 5 previous references I had got my whole mission (usually Argentines suck at doing missionary work)  

Other than that not much happened this week! We just worked hard! Im super excited to work here in Bahia!

Funny story:

The ward made me conduct music because my comp plays the piano and so I said yes because I thought it would be easy….. I was wrong. Everyone was looking at me and I had to sing and wave my hand at the same time. It was bad. I just started waving it randomly cuz I got off track. This lady in the congregation was trying to coach me mid song and was waving her hand to show me how it is done haha.

Funny Story 2:

A member made us pizza but she loaded it with soft mushy Tuna. It was so gross! Me and my comp could barely get it down. She loved it though and she ate like 10 pieces herself and was saying how delicious it was. I miss Papa Johns!!

Have a great week,

Love Elder Tanner

Pics from the week: Burger and fries for lunch. and Me with my new comp. Elder Tanner Robinson from Washington

Flat Earth :Week 30

This week was pretty rough not going to lie. We had a lot of lessons fall through (partially because it was raining and Argentines HATE the rain) Even though we said we can still come by they didn't want us to haha) But we had a lot of time to go contacting and found some pretty good investigators! We had a really good lesson with a lady named Martha who is really interested. She is super excited to start reading the Book of Mormon. We put a baptism date for her in a month and a half!

Elder Gonzalez and Rasmussen stayed with us because we had to drop Elder Gonzalez off at the bus terminal at 2am. He's going to Bahia for 2 days. So Rasmussen stayed with us on Friday. He's super new and knows no Spanish. But he is hilarious haha. But we had a lesson and played soccer at night. It was super fun.

Other than that not much happened this week. We have transfers today but we won't know the details of where we go or who our comps are until later :( so let you know next week!!

Funny Story: We ate lunch with a guy that speaks English (so we just speak 100% English in his house) and he seemed pretty cool. Then he said that there are a lot of people that believe the world is flat and that he believes them. And he was trying to show us scriptures and stuff that “proved the theory” but really had nothing to do with it haha. So he turns on his smart TV and he put on youtube videos explaining it and stuff. It was super funny so we just played along and told him it was interesting.

Church is true! CTR!!!! Love you guys!!!

• Elder Tanner

P.S.  Just got word I will be transferred today but I don't know where yet.  I was hoping to stay in Tandil longer since I have only been here 6 weeks but I will go where I am needed.  

I'm Basically Argentine - Week 29

This week flew by! We had lots of success this week! We put 2 more baptism dates. On Tuesday we had our district meeting in our building. In our district meeting we learned how we need to be more bold sometimes when we make invitations. Like don't say stuff like “if you want to go to church you can come on Sunday” Say it more like “We have church on Sunday can we come walk with you?” stuff like that. You guys can be more bold too when inviting friends and stuff to activities ;) It's always super fun to be able to see everyone from the zone. Then we had tacos after, made by the Mexican missionaries.

Elder Blackburn and I have been trying to talk with EVERYONE lately so we made the goal to pass out at least 50 cards a day when walking past people on the street and stuff. We found some cool new investigators! Turns out people want to talk to us half the time just to ask what we are doing and where we are from and stuff.

I've been really studying Preach my Gospel a lot lately and I've been learning so much! Everyone should read that book. Its helped give me so many more ideas on how to explain our Heavenly Father's plan for us and teach better!

Investigator Report:

Ezequiel: We had the most spiritual lesson with Ezequiel on Saturday. He wants to get baptized so bad but his parents aren't supportive so he wants to take things slowly. We challenged him to pray and ask for an answer of when he should get baptized. He's 21 and his GF and her family are strong members. We think he might get baptized this month but we will see. He's so awesome tho. He comes to church and all the activities and institute every week.

Brian: We also had an awesome lesson with Brian about the Gospel of Christ. He wants to get baptized but he works 2 jobs and goes to school. So his Sundays are booked.. And if you can't go to church you can't get baptized. So we have been praying and fasting that he can get a schedule change in work.

Isabel: She is kinda new but she's seriously the best haha! She's about 60 years old. We challenged her to read the pamphlets we gave her and she not only reads them but as she reads them she writes down all the questions that she has on a piece of paper and then we answer the questions with her. We invited her to church and went to pick her up on Sunday but her husband is super sick so she stayed to take care of him. She was all ready to go with nice clothes on and everything :(

Samanta and Gustavo: They are SUPER evangelico (christian). They said they went to our church once and thought we worshiped Joseph smith. (because they went during testimony meeting and everyone says they know he is a true prophet). So we had to explain to them that we don't, we only worship God and Jesus. But they were super nice and said we can come back and teach them more. Gustavo told us that i don't really have an accent in Spanish and that my comps accent was terrible. So that made my day haha I'm basically Argentine.

I love this Gospel and I LOVE serving the Lord. I'm so thankful to be here in Tandil Argentina right now. Hope everyone is doing great! Love you!

Elder Tanner

P.S. Shout out to Aunt Kera and Uncle Steve for the awesome package - and this T-shirt is sweet! Thanks so much

 protest going on