June 20, 2011

**I have to talk to Jordan about generalizing.  I'm sure there are many Latinos who are conscientious of their hygiene.  :)**
 

Well... He´s not E. Slaugh, that´s for sure. He´s Latino, 25 yrs. old, short, has terrible hygiene... We honestly aren´t getting along very well. Don´t worry too much about it, I´ll take care of it. First of all... HAPPY FATHER´S DAY, DAD!!!!!! Thank you SO much for everything you do for me. For making it possible for me to be out here.

E. Slaugh left for Confluencia, Neuquen on Monday afternoon. It was seriously the saddest thing I´ve seen so far in my mission. I love that kid like a brother. He was seriously my big brother out here, something I´ve never had. Our likes and interests, humors and stories were the same. We were perfect companions. Too perfect it seems like, because now he´s gone, replaced by E. Rojas. I met him on Tuesday night. I took him out right after he put down his suitcases to show him how I work. Many missionaries are under the impression that a missionary with only one transfer under his belt still needs help. WRONG. I worked that kid all night. He brought the cellphone so we would know what time it was to head back to the pench. He told me we had 15 min left before 9pm. I had us work for another 13 min and then we ran back to the pench. When we got inside, I looked at my alarm clock next to my bed and guess what time it said? 8:45. I pointed that out to him saying, What time is it? And he said... Let´s plan now. I said, No, we are going to work till the Lord says we´re done, which is 9pm. And I walked out the door. 

I found out that night that Latinos have terrible hygiene. He opened up his suitcases, and for the next three days, we had the most terrible stench in the pench. Rhyme. ;) He showers maybe every other day. Maybe. On Sunday morning, I had to say: You need to shower before church. He doesn´t wear deoderant, only a spray kind of like Axe to mask the smell. But it just mingles, and becomes even worse. Oh jeez. He´s never seen mountains in his life, Lived in Buenos Aires before the mish. He loves to chat with people. For as long as he wants. I have to forcefully say, Tenemos que irnos. We have to leave. He teaches too fast for people to really understand or feel the Spirit. I have to fight for my chance to bring back and save the lesson. He walks behind me as we walk around, doesn´t like knocking on doors... AGH! WHY, PRESIDENT PETERSON???!!! Give me a worker!! 

We visited Manuel, the man has changed. He remembered his baptismal date, which I didn´t think was possible, and wants to be baptized. I told him, Ok, but you need to come to church at least twice. Right after this, E. Rojas said: But, Manuel, if you feel up to it, we can baptize you tomorrow. I said no, Pres. Leal (The branch pres.) says he wants MEMBERS, not  inactives. He wants people who will come. He argued about that for a long time after the lesson, so I decided to take it to the man himself. Took him to Pres. Leal and watched for 45 min as my companion argued with the BRANCH PRESIDENT OF ESQUEL. I couldn´t believe my eyes or ears. One thing that is incredible, I can understand everything now. :) Ha! Castellano is such a fun language, but back to business. I was obviously on Pres. Leal´s side. 

One rule we have here is we can´t receive kisses. The custom for people here is to give the kiss on the cheek, same meaning as a handshake. Missionaries, not aloud whatsoever. Guess what happened the second night? E. rojas let this lady kiss him, and then tried to... What´s the english word for this... justify it! I was furious. We hardly talk right now. We have interviews with the Mish Pres. this Saturday. I can´t wait for this day, I HAVE to talk to him about this situation. 

But, despite all I´ve said, I know I´m in the wrong. I am not a righteous, disciple of Christ. I am not loving like I should. My patience is thin, my charity is almost nothing, and my humility is cheap. I am trying to figure out why Pres. Peterson put me with this companion, Why... I´ve been doing a LOT of praying over the past few days, to try and figure out the will of my Savior, what he wants me to learn from this, but it is so difficult. Please have Kolt write me on DearElder, I need his advice. Whenever it gets rough, I read his letter he gave me to open the first night of the MTC. His words help.

I gave my first blessing in Castellano to a less active member the other day. It went alright, little difficult, but I know it helped. Tulio is reading the Book of Mormon. The best news of the week... AH, it makes me so happy to think about the fact that he´s reading. I invited the family of an inactive father, his non member wife and non member kids to the Father´s Day activity at the church on Sunday. They all came and had a blast. I showed them the picture of our family that I keep in my Book of Mormon. Every one of the was in awe of how tall Dad is... A fact I´m still proud of. :) I´m going to begin teaching the kids piano lessons. I need piano music to listen to. CD´s and a CD player would probably be best, but I don´t know if it will be cheaper to buy the player here or have it sent. Either way, I can wait another transfer or two. 

Pray for me, please. E. Cuthbert needs the prayers of his family and friends. Help me be more than I am. Because right now, I´m lower than the dust of the earth. I love you all. I am so appreciative for the things you all do for me. I feel your love constantly, and know I have your support. Be assured that E. Cuthbert won´t stop for anyone or anything. I´m here to work and do the work of my Father in Heaven. I cannot be tempted by Satan, for I was meant to be a King. 

I love you all. 

E. Cuthbert 

June 13, 2011

I completely forgot my agenda that I write all the things that happen during the week to tell you guys about.. So I´m going to do my best to remember them all... 

We´re thinking of dropping Manuel for good. We met him the other day and he was trying to avoid us. I saw a half hidden bag that had a 2 L bottle of beer in it. He´s so old, and I don´t think he´s all there in the head, either. Oh well... We´ll try one more time. It´s been raining non stop for the last 4 days. The first day we weren´t prepared for it. We were in the coats that we got from Mr. Mac and the Missionary Mall. We were soaked that night. We were freezing, from head to toe. But we continued working. It was non stop rain and non stop trying to find people from about 3pm to 9pm. That night the rain was so bad that most of the roads were flooded. Don´t have a picture, but believe me... It was incredibly difficult. But at the same time, you grow more as a person during the difficult times. E. Slaugh and I grew closer as brothers that night, working hard, dripping from head to toe, hair drenched, a line of water flowing down our back. HOPEFULLY, Those Eccos you bought me, mom.... They´re incredible. The most waterproof shoes I´ve ever worn in the entire world. The only thing that made it back to the pension dry was my feet. :) Thank you SO much for those incredible shoes. 

Fma. Vilte... I love that family. We have talked an extremely lot about the importance of the BoM and receiving an answer to see if it´s true. Miguel, the dad, he accepted a baptismal fecha for the 2nd of July. Helga, the wife is a little bit more cautious. But we will work with them, and once they read and pray with real intent, that answer will come, and they will get baptized. :) 

Tulio and family. The situation isn´t getting better, but not getting worse. The prayers are helping Denis, the 13yr old son to come to church and the activities. They had a movie night at the chapel, and he went to it. They watched Harry Potter 7... JEALOUS. They will be baptized. It´s hard because Tulio works for the police, and so having time to come to church is difficult. 

My sleeping bag is like heaven. That is all I have to say about it being warm enough. ;) I can´t believe Maggie has a kidney stone!!! My pup! She´d better be flippin´ alive when I get home! Ha. That´s so cool that Dad got to see Dr. Pendanski! Hahaha!! Incredible! Haven´t met any famous people down here... Met a few people from Europe and the States. The ash hasn´t hit us. Ash from the volcano is toxic. If you breathe that stuff in it´s bad news, and so we´re very thankful that it hasn´t hit. But a little disappointed because it would have been cool to see ash... The ash has hit basically every other place East and North of Esquel because of the wind. 

On Friday we went to Villa Ayelen. It´s a little town about 2km outside of Esquel that´s in our area. It´s GORGEOUS there. Start preparing and saving for a vacation to Argentina in March of 2013!! Seriously, Villa Ayelen has cabins you can rent out, and the place is absolutely incredible. I would love to show all my investigators and members my family. I really hope you guys are planning on coming and picking me up... It would be an incredible experience. The members here are... They´re special. 

Now for the bad news... I just finished my first transfer... And E. Slaugh is being transfered to Neuquen. :/ I can´t believe it. That kid has been my brother out here. He´s taught me how to be a missionary, and now, after just 6 short weeks, he´s leaving. He won´t get to see any of the hard work we did turn into baptisms. I love that kid more than anything. My new companion is coming to Esquel tomorrow. Name? Elder Rojas. A latino. Oh baby... Language test of my life! From what I´ve heard, he´s only been out for about 4 to 5 months. This is going to be the biggest challenge yet. I cannot fail in this. Two newer missionaries can either destroy an area, or do incredible miracles. I have prayed intensley to have the strength to have it be the latter. I´m going to be having to put all my faith in the Lord more than ever. But I know I can do it. It is still extremely difficult to see E. Slaugh leave. He leaves at 4pm today...

I love you all. The weeks are starting to fly by. I had my first Asado on Saturday. It was heavenly. :) I have pictures of it. I have to go though, we´ve got a lot of things to do before E. Slaugh has to leave. I love missionary work. 

Jared, still missin´ a letter. All of you can write me at DearElder, please, I love hearing from you!!! Love you Dad, Melyn, Mom, Jared, Family, Friends!

E. Cuthbert 

June 6, 2011

Hey everyone!! 

So good to see the pictures! The house looks great! Spanish is coming along fine, it is much easier to understand now, and I´m beginning to take more of a lead in the lessons now. Thanks to E. Slaugh, I´ve really gotten off on the right track. Thank you so much for the recipes... They´re going to make our mornings so happy! And thank you so much for the package! It´ll probably be here in like a month.. Haha! Also, I want to find a way to listen to music. Can´t listen to much stuff other than Motab of course, but my piano music and stuff like that, I´m trying to think of how I can do this.. I´ll think about it and let you guys know. Don´t know if an MP3 player would be better than a CD player. CD player would be less expensive, which is definitely the more important thing. We can talk about this later. For the moment, I am completely content. :)

Every Pday now we go to a gym for two hours. Lifting with E. Slaugh is so fun because we both love to work out. It costs twenty pesos, which is 5 dollars for 2 hours which is an incredible deal... Hello Argentina! Haha. We also found a place that sells flats of 30 eggs for 15 pesos. About 3.50! We buy 30 eggs per person every week, and use every one. 

We had divisions this last week. There are two Elders in Trevelin, a town about 45 minutes away that are in our district. We traded companions for two days. E. Slaugh went to Trevelin, and I stayed in Esquel with E. Barton. A kid who refers to himself as a nerd, and one who likes nothing I like. He loved to complain about things, but although I´m new, I´m in no way Trucho, a word that here means a lazy person. I laughed that day that we got done working. I worked him till he was dead. We walked the entire length of the city, our feet were killing, and he thought he was going to die. Some things he said were You and E. Slaugh are like machines! How do you do the numbers you do?? It´s all good though, you learn a lot from every companion, I learned more what NOT to do from E. Barton. 

My left foot is beginning to hurt, kind of like a stress fracture, I´m ignoring it for now, but we´ll see where it goes. It´s probably nothing. We gave English lessons to this girl named Evelyn. She´s 18 yrs old and has a brother named Esteban who is 23. We´re trying to teach them about the church, but she´s more interested in the English lessons, and Esteban is never around. We gave them a BoM and hope they read it. That is something I woke up one morning knowing we need to focus more on, is the BoM. If people just open it up and read a page... They can know and understand and GAIN a testimony that it´s true. After that, the work is easy, because they´ll be willing to do the things that follow. 

I´ve had a couple people that talk to us in English. In the lessons with Evelyn, she asked me to say the closing prayer in English for her to hear. I haven´t prayed in English for... 3 months! It was very difficult. Even saying In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen was difficult! We contacted a lady in her house who was speaking to us in broken English, we began our contact in English and it was almost impossible for us to say what we wanted in English. It´s so funny! I´m hoping I won´t have too hard a time when I come home picking English back up, we´ll see what happens. 

We had one of the most incredible lessons with this one family this last week. Familia Vilte let us in about 3 weeks ago, just because we were going to play the piano for them. We played some songs on their very needed-to-be-tuned piano, and talked about music for the remainder of the time. Visiting them a few more times, we finally got them interested in hearing our message. We taught the first discussion with Joseph Smith, BoM, Holy Ghost and how they can know. It was such a good lesson. I really hope they read and try these things out.

Saw a pitbull two nights ago. Pretty inspiring sight, honestly. I´m glad it was caged up, hahaha! Also saw a dog get is leg ran over by a car, that was NOT an inspiring sight. Never heard such a scream of pain from anything that badly. Sad, sad sight. The volcano in Chile? Did you guys hear about it? A volcano, really close to the border, I think 100km away exploded. We´re scheduled to get ash here today, but we´ll see what happens. If we do, we´re stuck inside the pension... Boring. The lady who calls herself my mamacita, she came up to me after Sacrament meeting yesterday and said: Usted es un capo! Usted es Ken! This was the most hilarious thing ever to hear. Capo means stud, and guess who this Ken guy she was talking about? The flippin barbie... :/ Haha. She´s very nice, but in all reality... Nope, don´t look a thing like any of that. Another member has said I look like a Richard Gere, don´t know who that is.. Oh well. 

Today I´m going to buy some weights, we´re going to the gym, we found a place that sells WAFFLES!! LIke the U.S.!!!! HOLY COW! We said, Yeah, we´re going there no matter what! P-Days are really fun, but I would like to get back to working. No baptisms yet, we´re working extremely hard. We´re pulling out numbers a lot of people are surprised about. The zone leaders called us yesterday and asked what we were doing. All we can say is that we´re following the Spirit and doing the things that missionaries should do. This is the key to missionary work... Following the Spirit. It really is forgetting yourself, and going to work. I never understood the true significance of that statement until I got out here. Never do you think about yourself. I came here thinking that I´d be thinking of home all the time and wondering what´s up with everyone, but honestly.. I don´t ever think about anything but the mission. I hope this is what the father of Gordon B. Hinckley meant by forgetting yourself and getting to work. I know I´m still only a month out, which makes me excited for the things that will come in a year or so. 

I love you all, you are all in my prayers. I love the house, it´s looking great. Jared, WRITE ME. I need to talk to you, bud! :) Thank you for the letters, just so all you know, I still receive DearElders if you want to reach me that way, I´m not completely isolated! Haha! Have a great week everyone, I will talk to you in a week.

E. Cuthbert 

May 30, 2011

Hey everyone!!



Wow, what a week. Some really good things have happened, some really bad things have happened.

Alright, so things that happened this week... Diego, the 24yr old we had a baptismal fecha with... Well we went to his house and he pretty much just asked us never to come back again. He said he was going back to his old church, lie, and didn´t want anything more to do with our message. How sad it was to see him... He couldn´t give up smoking, drinking, and well in a way, he was a little bit like Iban Farfal. Just scared to make any commitments. So we lost his baptism. Such a sad thing, but all E. Slaugh and I could do was tell him that we know these things are true, and when he´s ready to make these commitments, we´ll be in the chapel waiting for him. We have to focus on those people who are willing to change and commit to make their lives better.

I saw and spoke with my first drunk... And it wasn´t who I wanted it to be with.... Manuel, our man with the cats. This guy is so old, he comes up to about my chest, he´s so small. His baptism was scheduled for this upcoming Saturday. He had come to church, he loved it and everything, he was making commitments and was having his interview for baptism tommorrow. But apparently, Friday night, a group of kids saw him and decided it would be funny to beat him up. Apparently, they hurt him pretty badly. Brutally hurt, he crawled to the police station asking them to help him and do something about the kids. To his incredible embarassment, the cops did NOTHING. As a final result, he went to a kiosk and bought himself some beer. We found him Saturday morning, demasiado borrocho. REALLY DRUNK. It was incredibly pathetic, sad, and AH!! Drowning his sorrows in a bottle was... It changed things for me. He´s not getting baptized this week, but we´re going to try our hardest with him. I don´t know what´s going to happen. Something I´ve come to find out is that missionary work is about 15% the work of the missionary, and 85% that of the investigator. So much depends on them and their choices when we´re not there. It´s so tough and sad to see them choose wrong. Something also kind of sad about Manuel, a few days before the drunk scene we were cutting wood for him. I had a piece of wood that had a pretty big knot in it, and I swung and CRACK, I broke his hatchet!! Wooops! But don´t worry, I bought him another one.

You meet some interesting people when doing contacts, just one experience that wasn´t very fun was yesterday. We were knocking doors and this lady answered. She said we could sing her a song, so we did. After that she asked what we were doing out here. We said we had dropped everything for two years to preach what we know is true. All of a sudden, she goes in to kiss E. Slaugh. He had to pretty much wrestle out of her grip. After that, she was pretty much under the impression that we are abstainers from everything in the world for pretty much... ever. So instead, she starts yelling that we need to find work, get a girl and start doing stuff. As you can probably guess, we left pretty quickly.

We found a family this week. Actually, it´s the father of Fernando. We began talking with Tulio, the father, and halfway through, he started talking about his family and how he doesn´t believe in God. At this point in time, he has an ex wife that lives in El Bolson, which is about 2.5 hours away. He has part custody over some of the kids, she has custody over the other half. The things they do to Tulio's kids is insane. She keeps the kids, just to get the money from the gov. every month. She HATES those kids, and the boyfriend doesn´t like them either. They beat them with belts, and then pour hot water on the bruises and cuts. Pretty much hell for those children. All Tulio can think about is his children and how much he wants them to be safe. He´s working on getting full custody, and we are praying our hardest for him. It is because of this situation that he doesn´t believe too much in God. We are going to mend this family. This is going to be a miracle story for E. Slaugh and myself. If all of you at home can please pray for this family, and on fast sunday, keep them in your prayers and fast for them, I know some good will come. They need all the help they can get right now.

Other stuff... We´re working as hard as we can out here. We´re hungrier than ever, which is difficult... Haha. It´s getting colder and colder down here. I´ll probably need to get another pair of gloves and some little stuff like that, but not too much. I´m trying to stay away from spending when I don´t have too. Thank you so much for the prayers and support. We´re working our hardest out here, and although we haven´t gotten any baptisms since I´ve been here, I know they´ll come soon. They can´t not come with the work we´ve been doing. I have to go now, Have a great week, it would be great to see the pictures from the house! My poor Maggie-doll! Hopefully she doesn´t die before I get home, :( Jared, you need to write me, kid. Haha. love you all, Miss you all, The work is incredibly fun. I love Esquel, Argentina, E. Slaugh, and my investigators.

Amor,

E. Cuthbert