Read the Book of Mormon!

 


It’s been a beautiful summer down here in Argentina.  Fortunately for us it has so far been mild with only a handful of days reaching 105 (with the “feel-like” temp close to 110).  Although this week the forecast is for a few days of 106 temps, ouch!  Luckily, we are traveling to Resistencia Monday-Wednesday so we will miss the super hot days.  

Hot, hot, hot!!

Our trip to Resistencia is for a senior couple summit. There are currently five senior couples serving in our mission. That is quite unusual.  Most missions of the church only have two or three couples.  The summit is something new our mission leaders are trying to help coordinate the efforts of all the couples and to provide a forum to share ideas and experiences to help all of us be more effective and successful in our work to strengthen the members and leaders of the church and how to better serve everyone.  We are looking forward to it.  This will be the first time for us to meet three of the couples.  

The past few weeks have been busy but we did not take many pictures because the busyness was working with people and not visiting exotic places like we did a few weeks ago in Salta.  

Last week we had a family home evening lesson with the Huells family in Estansilao del Campo.  Bro Huells is serving as the branch president and they recently got married (we mentioned them in previous posts). She has two sons that moved with her from Resistencia when she got married.  They are a great family.  In our lesson we taught them about the importance of reading the Book of Mormon together each day as a family.  We shared our experience of trying to read everyday with our young family and the blessings we received, and continue to receive.  

The Huells family wanted to have those same blessings of greater peace, love and understanding in their home.  They accepted the invitation to read daily from the Book of Mormon.  After about the first week they were so excited to share with us that they had been reading every day. Yesterday we took President and sister Huells to visit an outlying group of members that he oversees.  It is a city called Ingeniero Juárez and is about 250 km away.  During the trip they recounted to us how they are still reading everyday and that they have seen blessings.  It has brought them closer together and is helping their sons to learn more about Jesus Christ.  An additional blessing has come to their oldest son Leo.  He is a very shy and quite young man (about 13 years old).  He struggles to read and interact with others.  As they have been reading daily he has improved his ability to read and is now much more talkative, they he now talks non stop.  What a great blessing for this family.   

The Book of Mormon is truly another testament of Jesus Christ and is powerful in so many ways.  Our own son Ethan learned to read at the age of 3 from our family’s daily reading of the Book of Mormon.  And know Ethan is serving as a great missionary in Peru!

Another great experience we want to share is related to the training and support we have been giving the the church leaders here in Ibarreta.  We are trying to help them plan for Sunday lessons in Elders Quorum and Relief Society.  Most Sundays they don’t have anything planned or a teacher assigned.  It is frustrating because many members and visitors are waiting to be spiritually nourished but nothing is prepared for them so often they leave right after sacrament meeting and do not stay for classes.  

After training and talking with one of the leaders they left for a vacation and didn’t plan the Sunday lesson.  Martha had worked during the week to put together a great lesson outline/plan for the teacher but no teacher was assigned.  After a series of communications with the leader we suggested another member who might teach.  Finally, this member was given the invitation to teach the lesson.  They were very nervous and unsure of how to teach.  Martha shared all that she had planned and we encouraged 
them to read the lesson and pray for help.  Well, last Sunday they taught the lesson and it was great.  Today in church they shared their testimony about how this experience was amazing and how they felt to teach.  With so many frustrations in trying to help others this was a small miracle to see this growth in one individual.  It reminded us that the gospel of Jesus Christ is taught one by one just as He did.  We are so grateful for these small moments.

“Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.

And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls.”  Alma 37:6-7

We did take a few pictures this week and for some reason all but one are of food.  We didn’t have a lot of excitement, but we did eat well!


We made milanesa this week.  This is milanesa a la napolitana.  It has sauce and cheese on top, basically a chicken parmesan.  


Rasta mon!  This is the best alfajor I have ever had.  It’s a new brand. We weren’t sure about it at first because of the “rasta”theme.  You never know what might be inside.  But it is all good!  


The calabaza (pumpkin) that the Huells family gave us.  It’s not big and orange like we are used to.  It’s green/blue in color.


The inside of the calabaza looks just like a pumpkin (we already removed the seeds).


After some work in the kitchen Martha made this delicious pie.  Looks just like pumpkin.


With a little whipped cream this piece of calabaza pie is perfect 


Ok.  Finally the non-food picture.  These are three young women on their way to a For the Strength of Youth (FSY) conference.  We were only taking them about 5 km down the road to the chapel to catch the bus to Misiones province for the FSY conference.  They insisted on taking a picture with us.  They are from the Ensanche Norte group of indigenous people (mostly Pilagá).  



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