Serving Together Argentina

  Grandbaby #1 Lyla Brynn Francis It's been a while since our last update and much has happened but by far the most important and exciting is the birth of our first grandchild, Lyla Brynn Francis.  Welcome Lyla!  Eric and Ashley welcomed Lyla into the world on October 16th.  She is the cutest granddaughter.  We are very excited for Eric and Ashley and even more excited to be able to return home for 10 days to visit and get to know her.  We can't wait!  Ashley has been great keeping us up to date with lots of pictures and videos but nothing replaces the in-person experience.  Hard to believe we are grandparents.  We love you Lyla!! Not much to say after that. Everything else pales in comparison but we will try and give an update on our happenings for the past few weeks.   October 5th-6th was the General Conference of our church.  It takes place every 6 months, in April and October.  We loved listening to the prophets and ap...

  Getting our visa paperwork completed with Victor We finally got all of our paperwork completed and turned it in for our visas, that means we are now officially in the country legally.  We actually have until November 4th before we would become known as “irregulars”.  That basically means someone over stayed their tourist visa which is only good for 90 days. Getting our visas was a priority so that we can travel back to Utah to see our first grandchild!  Eric and Ashley will have their baby, a girl, sometime near the end of October or early November.  Needless to say we are very excited to be able to return in December to get to know her and participate in the baby blessing.  Then we will return back to Argentina.   It is spring here but some days have been quite hot. The hottest day so far has been 107. People around here say that’s nothing.  Come summer time in December thru February they say it will be 100+ degrees every day for weeks with no ...

  Baptism of our friend Mahia It’s been another two weeks as missionaries and we are moving along and getting accustomed to Argentina (for me its getting reacquainted with Argentina).  We’ve learned to cook new food, how to spend the siesta, and most fun and important we are getting to know the members.   Last Tuesday was the baptism of Mahia, a young woman in the Ibarreta branch.  We enjoy spending our time with the youth. They have energy, hope, and faith.  We were able to participate in a few lessons teaching her about the gospel in her preparation to be baptized.  Her dad and younger brother are members of the church but not her mom.  There are three other children in the family, a young brother about 7, and two cousins that are sisters.  These two cousins came to this family under very sad circumstances and one of the girls is almost entirely blind.  Her name is Sophia.  Sophia is a very special spirit.  She is always so positi...

This little guy joined our church service on Sunday Hola familia y amigos!  Two more weeks have passed by here in Argentina and we've completed over 1/12th of our mission (we are not counting, it's just fun to say 1/12th, haha).  I have to explain the cover picture on this post.  We were attending church in Ensanche Norte with the group of "originales" in their small chapel and this pig from the neighbor's house came into the building.  They call him the church pig because he's always hanging around the church.  All of the animals (dogs, pigs, goats, sheep, cows, horses, etc...) in the "colonias" wander around free and they don't bother anyone.  It reminded me of the scripture in the Book of Mormon in 2 Nephi 26:26 .  Start with verse 23 and read until the end of that chapter. It's one of my favorites!   We made lots of visits these past two weeks and it's almost impossible to recount all of them but we do want to share that with certaint...