Painting, Argentina style

Hey family!!

Just some random pics...

This week was super awesome!  We reached, and exceeded nearly all of the goals we had set. A very successful week!

Sorry for not writing yesterday, it was feriado, which means no one works; well, except the missionaries ;)  Haha.  So president naturally wanted us to take advantage of the no-work day to find some people at home.

Unfortunately, I’m sick again :P I don’t know why. I hate being sick, and I will do everything possible to not stay in. I hate staying in.

Obviously, this week was pretty busy. But we still found some time to give a little bit of service. We ended up painting two houses in the branch (um, ...luckily for us the people here don’t have the same "standards" for perfection when it comes to painting, so we were just able to slap it in without too much care. So that was nice.)

On Saturday we taught 6 lessons, which is really pretty good for one day; we usually only get 2 or 3.  And, totally awesome, all 6 of them were with members, now that is just epic! :D

We also had pretty good success in church last week. Last week was district conference; so a lot of people attended ...including 3 investigatores :D and 3 menos activos! :D  To plan for this success, we went on splits Saturday morning to invite them to church. I went with the Pres de Rama to visit the menos activos, and Elder Conway went with the Young Men's Pres to visit the investigators. It worked out great ...every single person we visited ended up coming to church. :) Shows the power of members I'd say. I just hope they realize that. We visit these people constantly, but they never come.  But as soon as they get a visit from a member, they're at church:D Hopefully, this will motivate the ward to start doing more of this. ;)

Also, Elder Conway taught me a very valuable lesson about faith on Sunday. We have an investigator named Julian who we taught nearly 2 weeks ago. He is super intelligent and polite and wants to learn.  Saturday night I was thinking about calling him to invite him to church (something we'd done the week before as well), but I just didn't have faith that he would come since he didn't last week. So I didn't call him and just went to bed.

Well the next morning Elder Conway got up, called him, and Julian said he would come. And he did.

Wow, I was pleasantly shocked to see him show up, and a bit humbled as well. I learned a lot in that moment. I need to have more faith in the work, and more hope in the people. I am so grateful that my comp had the faith to make the call because if he hadn't Julian would obviously not have been at church; and that would have been my fault :(

I really do love my mission. I'm actually kinda' sad to think that I only have 9 months left.

The greatest happiness is found in service to others, and what greater service (and privilege) is there then bringing them the joy of the gospel?! I love being a missionary.

I know without a doubt, that this work is true. I know that Joseph Smith was a humble man called of God to restore His church. Although initially weak, he became strong through the many teachings, trials, diligence, and his faith in the Lord. I know the Book of Mormon is true, and points us to Christ.

Christ did come, did save us, and will return. He reigns over this church and nothing will stop His work from progressing.

I AM SO EXCITED FOR CONFERENCE!!! GAHHH :D :D

Love you all!

Elder Clemons

P.S. Please write...

A week of adventures

First off, Andres Micheli came to church!!! Woot!! And he stayed for all 3 hours! All of them!! Half of the members don’t even do that! And what is super incredible is that he participated in all of them. He made a comment in Principios del Evangelio, where he said that we (meaning my comp and I) had been a blessing for him and his family because we have brought them peace and truth ...and that he too, was beginning to accept it!! Gah! :

Ya ...he has a date for the 18th! :)

We also a great blessing this week.  An area seventy, Presidente Gonzalez, came to speak to our mission. That's the first Seventy I've had on my mission so far! He was a great speaker, and he and his wife said a lot of things that really encouraged me. One of the things he said was that with true faith in the Book of Mormon, we can baptize 10 people a month.....10 people!! Gosh! That just tells me that I really need to fortify my faith in the BoM. His wife, Hermana Gonzalez, told us we need to teach in the same manner Christ taught. He understood each person's needs, and addressed those needs in His teachings. As examples, consider the symbolism of the living water, the bread of life, and the light of the world. She suggested that we too could teach in this manner.

Besides the awesome instruction, it was also super nice to see all of my friends again! I saw Elders Atwood, Sufia, Pickle, Thomas, Toldedo, Murphy, and lots of others. Super nice!

I also got to chat will the elder that is in Fontana right now, Elder Allen. He told me that nearly all the people I had worked with are still active and "miss you tons!" :D Elder Allen is training right now, and his greenie came up to me, looked at my name tag and was like, “You're Elder Clemons?” Haha.  Looks like I'm luckily well remembered in Fontana :-) 

So a long time ago, I bought these cool leather cases for my scriptures.  But it's been months now that I've been waiting for them.  Finally got them this week ...super nice! Buenos Aires temple and my name on the front, and Christ "knocking on the door" on the back. Love it!

I also just bought 2 Boca Soccer jerseys today. Can you see me wearing these back in the States?! The white one is the new official uniform, and the blue/yellow one is the training model.

And hey, the hair cut's getting better :)

So yesterday we decided to sleep on the roof! ...well why not. It was super fun.

But what's funny is Elder Ware thought it could just throw his mattress up on the roof ...no problem.  So he threw it, but missed just under, and the mattress bounced back off the wall and flew over the end of our building, then fell down 2 stories into our neighbor's back yard. Bahahahahah.  Oh we were dying! And even better, when he went over to the neighbor's to get it back, the neighbor laughed even harder!  Oh it was hilarious. Good times, and a good night :)

Welp, got to go!

Chau!!!

Love you Mom! :D

Whoops...

We can't play a real game, but playing PIG is still fun :-)

Howdy Familia!

So we actually had a surprise right after P-day last week. Literally 10 minutes before P-day ended Elder Ware y Elder Diaz received a phone call from the Zone Leaders saying that Diaz was going to be emergency transferred to a new area in Corrientes and that Elder Ware would receive a new companion the following day. 

So Diaz left, and a new Elder named Elder Morillo came. Elder Morillo is way cool. He's from Ecuador, but appears gringo like us. He understands English perfectly, he's super fun to be around, and he's a hard worker. So he is a great addition to the Reconquista!

P-day today was really fun. After cleaning the entire apartment again (yes, Elders do clean their apartments sometimes)  went to go play some basketball. Lots of fun!

Whoops...

Elder Ware clearly doesn't know how to cut hair !!!!!

Oh haha funny story. We borrowed some hair clippers from another Elder, and I asked Elder Ware to just take a little off the sides because they were looking pretty long (long for missionaries anyway). I told him a 3 would be about right. "Easy enough" he says.

After his first cut, he just stared at my hair in complete silence for like a minute ...then started apologizing profusely.

Uh oh ...somehow he'd set it to a 1!!! :P He had literally made one bald strip :P It looked hilarious, but clearly also not very missionary like.  So we took some time to kinda' fix it

...and now a week later, it's starting to look allright. So oh well, it’s in the past.  Haha, I have always had the worst luck with haircuts.

A bit of fix up, and a week later, things are starting to look a bit better :D

Yesterday as probably the most spiritually draining day of my mission. Such a huge let down when we realized we had no one come to church yesterday. No investigators and no members! It rained yesterday and no one came to church. And only 8 members showed up!! Kinda' funny and sad, but there were more missionaries in Sacrament meeting than members.  So we ended up doing just about everything: the prayers, the sacrament, directing, hymns, classes. Oh it was so bad. :P   Come on, people, it's just a little bit of rain!! It doesn't mean the end of the world; yes ...you can leave your house.

I went on exchanges this week with my district leader. I learned a lot from him. He taught me a lot about how to ask inspired questions, and how to use them in lessons. So I have been working on that a bit this week.

So just so you know everything is going well down here. We do have a couple people that I feel can progress. I'll let you know more about them next week.  But do please pray for them.

I love what I do and I wouldn't want to be doing anything else. Love you all so much!!

Elder Clemons

...oh, and make everyone write me. :)

We have started a tradition in the apartment to buy a Grido's ice cream cake every Saturday night. Oh it is so good!! Yummy!

Super Yum!!

Progressing in the Gospel...

Hola Familia!!

This week wasn't super eventful, but we saw a lot of progression with our recent converts. :)

First off, Leonardo passed the sacrament in church!!! Oh I was so happy! It was like seeing his bautismo again. He was dressed up in his white shirt and tie, and did everything perfectly. He was so happy that he did it. And I was super happy for him.

And Luis, my old man Luis paid his tithing yesterday!! He doesn't really have a job, but almost as a hobby - sells tires.  So with the money he made from that, he paid his tithing! Ya! :D

That is why I am here. It's small moments like these that really help you realize why you're on a mission ...to help bring people to Christ. It's one thing to watch baptisms, but to view genuine progression post conversion is another. Activity in the church blesses lives.  I love seeing what the Gospel does in the lives of others. I love my mission! 

Also this week we had family night with the Micheli and Agonils at the Micheli's home. And the father was there also! :D  It was perfect!  We opened up with a hymn and prayer, and then after shared the message of the restoration. The father had some questions for us such as, "what motivates you to go out and work?" and "how did you come to know that this was true?" We both shared stories and experiences we had had, and the room filled with the spirit.  Everyone felt the power of the message and testimonies. We then invited him to church.........but he said no. :P

...wait for it

...because he had a cold. :P  But he said that he would go to church next week! So we will see if he keeps rule number 2 of President Juchau's Rules of Manhood: keep all commitments. So pray that he does. :)

Well this week I got sick, remember how last week I got a cold?  It just got super worse throughout the week. On Tues it was bad, but I ignored it and went out and worked, which was a super bad idea because made everything worse. On Wed I ended up having to stay in.  We didn't leave the apartment, and I didn't even leave my bed. I felt SO sick ...didn't eat anything that day. On Thursday, I felt like I did back on Tues, so I went out and tried to work.  It was pretty hard, but by the time Friday came around, I felt decent once again. Hey, and I lost a good 6 pounds this week. Sweet!!

Oh hahahah this is a funny story. Every Friday night we have activities in the church hosted by the missionaries. And this week we had planned to play volleyball with water balloons and towels. But our branch mission leader didn't really want to run it. We told him we'd take care of it. Anyways, we set everything up and he announced that instead of playing volleyball with water balloons, we would watch The Testaments, which is like over 1 hr long.  Errrr what?

So all the missionaries got together like a little huddle during the movie and discussed our options. We all had investigatores and inactives at the activity, and we didn't want to bore them with the movie. So we had to figure out a way to turn the movie off so we could go outside and play. So long story short, turns out that if you turn on a lot of the appliances in the Church all at the same time, the power cuts. And that's what we did. A few of us went out of the room and turned everything on so the power would cut. Hahaha... after that everyone went outside, and we played water balloon volleyball.  Everybody loved it ...including the branch Mission Leader. So our plan worked out great, and everyone went home happy. ;)

Today for P-day we got to go play some basketball. We still can't play an actual game, but we can play Pig and shoot hoops for a while. So all the missionaries in the apartment got together to play some b-ball. Pretty fun.

Well that is about all this week! I love you all so much and I hope everything is cool up there!

Love Elder Clemons!

My famous pizza!!

Hey, family!

Congratulations to Lori and Brent on the new baby Joseph!  ...can't wait to meet my new nephew!!

I know it's a shocker, but we made these Zone t-shirts, and the zone voted me
as Superman. I'm not complaining, mind you, I just need some muscles :P

So nothing super exciting happened this week. ...And we weren't able to have the noche de hogar with the Micheli familia last week because they wanted to do something a bit more special to celebrate their baptisms! So they waited a week so they could have a bit more money! But we do have a Family Night scheduled with them for this Saturday! So we'll then try to get to the dad to accept a baptismal date and go to church!

We sadly lost our our investigadores Alsidis y Rita who have moved into the Zone Leaders' area. So that kinda' sucks that we lose them.  Of course, the real goal is to help the people come unto Christ ...and it obviously doesn't matter who does the helping :)  So I'm sure the ZL's will do a fine job.

I kinda' got sick today. I woke up with a sore throat, and it has gotten progressively worse throughout the day. No!!!! ...I don't wont to get sick. It is sooo annoying to have to walk around in the heat when you are sick. But I suspect (hope) this is just something little. 

 

Can you say "coronary bypass"?

We played some Clue for P-day last Monday. Yup, your boy Clemons won both times. ...Um, I think those are the only times I have ever won Clue in my life. It was a nice p-day.  And I made my famous pizza; it was divine!!

Elder Ware had his birthday this week, so me and Elder Conway got him a nice ice cream cake!! It was nice to celebrate a birthday.

 

 

 

 

Oh, and nothing happened to us for transfers. I'm still in Reconquista training Elder Conway. And nothing happened with the other Elders either. Elder Ware and Elder Diez are still here as well!

Love you!!! 

Elder Clemons