This week we were supposed to have a series of meetings throughout the mission with a visiting General Authority Seventy (my mission President’s boss). However, both the high-profile visit and our weeks of careful planning went out the window when several non-American missionaries tested positive for Tuberculosis. There were a couple of frantic days as we scrambled to cancel travel plans and reservations while simultaneously isolating and testing the missionaries who had potentially been exposed. So far we are looking good as most everyone has very fortunately been testing negative. It has been very stressful and frankly a little bit scary this past week, but the Lord’s counsel to the prophet Joseph Smith has been […]
Not Really Sleeping
This week has left me exhausted. We’ve had a lot going on this week early in the morning and late at night, which unfortunately means that we just lose sleep because we have to work in the office during the day. On Tuesday, we waited at the bus terminal until after midnight for a couple of missionaries because the bus they were traveling on was 2+ hours delayed. Then we got up at 4:30am to take them to the airport🫠 We also have a missionary who is in the hospital right now. We have all been taking turns accompanying him so that he doesn’t have to be alone. For a variety of reasons, we were […]
Visiting Jujuy & Being in a Trio
We traveled with President and Sister Janzen to go visit the missionaries in Jujuy this week. While they were interviewing missionaries for 3 days, we got to go out and do visits with the zone leaders there. That meant that I got to go back to Ciudad de Nieva and visit a bunch of the people that I knew and helped to join the church. It was so fun but also really cold🥶 Elder Speirs is going home next month so we are in a trio right now with the guy who will be my companion once he leaves. His name is Elder Shirley and he’s from south Dallas, Texas. He’s an awesome missionary and […]
Super Busy
I’ve been running a lot of errands and eating a lot of fast food. Also, we got to go to the temple which was awesome! Here are some pictures.
The Airport and Other Things
This past week a group of 14 missionaries finished their missions andwent home. Starting at around 6pm on Sunday evening, we were picking them all up from the travel bus station and taking them and all of their stuff to the mission office. Some of the buses were super delayed, so we didn’t get home until 3am… Tuesday morning we woke up at 5am to help take all of their stuff to the airport in our truck. Needless to say, it was a little bit of a struggle to stay awake working on Excel spreadsheets in the office the next day. On Sunday the new temple in Salta was dedicated by Elder Christofferson, one of […]
An Office Job
This week I started working in the mission office in the capital of Salta. The missionaries who are assigned to the office work from 9am until 5pm managing the housing, finances, medical, travel, and technology stuff in the mission, then go do normal missionary work in their teaching areas until 9pm. My companion and I are the assistants to the mission president. That means that we deal with everything that isn’t a normal occurrence, such as planning for and presenting at meetings with other missionaries, helping missionaries arrive to and leave from the mission, and planning which missionaries will get moved to new teaching areas. This past week, we received 19 new missionaries. My companion […]
Dog Bites & Going to Church
I got bit by a dog this week. Normally it’s really easy to tell which dogs want to bite you because they bark a ton but the second you bend down to pick up a rock they run away. The dog that bit me was walking down the road, minding its own business. Then it bit me in the thigh and just continued on its way. Fortunately, it didn’t break the skin, he just punched a hole in my pants and bruised my leg. So fun. Yesterday we had three of the people we are teaching come to church and they all loved it! It’s always so interesting that despite all of our worrying about […]
Focus on Loving the Lord
The 25 of May is a patriotic holiday in Argentina. Everyone eats a soup called Locro to commemorate what the Army that liberated them from Spain ate. Locro is a soup comprised of 5 parts pumpkin, 3 parts beans, and 1 part meat scrapes. Everyone gets together with their extended family and makes a giant cauldron of it to piece at during the weekend. As a side note, Locro does eactly what you’d expect to your stomach from a soup overwhelmingly comprised of fibrous vegetables😬 All week our weather app has been describing the weather as “freezing drizzle”. We’ve spent the week drinking hot mate while bundled up in jackets. I also bought an artisenal […]
Purmamarca
Today we went on an adventure to the north of Jujuy. It’s a super touristy spot that looks a lot like Southern Utah. We went on a little hike to admire the famed “Seven-color Hill”. I thought it was pretty underwhelming, but fortunately there was an awesome old church from 1642 nearby that was way cooler. It was about 40 degrees this week, which isn’t terribly cold, but when you’re outside walking around in it for 6 hours, your face gets pretty numb. Despite the cold, the Lord has been blessing us for our efforts. We have been able to find so many awesome people to teach about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and help […]
I Love to See the Temple
This week we got to go to the open-house of the new temple in Salta. We got on a van early in the morning, and then spent the morning on the temple grounds, greeting visitors and enjoying the atmosphere. Here’s a link to a church article with pictures of the inside of the temple. Elder Eyre explains temples to the people who we are teaching with a simple story: A king has an especially fancy pearl. He made a really nice box to hold the pearl and to help show it off. However, no matter how nice the box is, its purpose is still to bring attention to the pearl. The temple’s purpose, despite being […]