Ouch!

The power goes out here in Goya about 3 times a day!

Hey, so here's the latest that's gone down this week.

My companion and I were pretty busy. We did 2 exchanges durante this semana with other Elders. We only worked in our area for 3 days, haha.

We went on exchanges with the elders in BellaVista; I stayed in my area with Elder Vasco. He is from Ecuador. He has a super cool conversion story. Basically, he was a bad kid that did not do great stuff, but the missionaries found him, and he describes that he felt such joy when they were there that he was willing to do anything to keep that feeling with him, even to the point of leaving his girlfriend so that he could get baptized. His story is so touching ...essentially, everyone was against him. But he followed what he knew to be right, and now look where he is at!

I also went on exchanges with Elder Reynolds who is new to the zone this transfer. He is from Pima, Arizona.  I can't easily explain him. He's just a really big crazy guy that had crazy friends that did fun crazy stuff, but he still stayed a faithful member of the church. He has so much energy, and it is hard to control him haha.  But I have never laughed so hard during my mission. It was just awesome to be with him.

So the work here has kinda slowed down for us, but we still have some potentials for baptisms. We are working with a mom and her 2 twins. The mom's name is Lucia; she's been a member for about 2 years, but is now less-active. We have been reactivating her recently, and she's already gone back to church 3 times! :D Her twins, Valentina y Lucas, are 9 years old. Lucas wants to be baptized, and Valentina is scared of lots of people and water, so she doesn't quite yet. But Lucas is going to be baptized on the 14th, and hopefully Valentina along with her! :D They are both super happy and really intelligent kids. So they are our main focus for the moment. Please pray for this family so that they can continue faithfully to their baptisms and afterwards as well!

But we do need to look for some more people to teach.



Hey, so I got scorched this week!  Like, serious sun burn!!  We did service for some recent converts this week. The sad thing is every time it rains here, the water floods into their house because they basically live in a bowl.  So we decided to literally raise the house a couple of feet so that the water couldn't come in any more; we also cut their lawn.  So, needless to say, it took quite a while (4 hours), and, well, um, I forgot that I'm a white guy who's legs and neck haven't seen sun for months. Oh, they got soooo burned; and it kills super bad. And believe me, wearing this white shirt and tie does NOT help :p

But everything here is good.  And the mission is always great.

Please pray for my investigators :)


Thank you so much for all that you do, for helping get things ready for when I come home, for the genealogy information, for the letters (please write more), and for all the support. I truly love you.

Ciao!

Elder Clemóns

Telma

Bella Vista has this huge cross.  Awesome!!

Hey family! So this has been a really good week! Sorry for not writing yesterday, the power in all of Goya cut, so we couldn't write.

Telma gets baptised

Telma, David's cousin, was super happy on her baptism!

To start off, we had a baptism this week! Random right? Kinda' came out of no where. haha. Her name is Telma. She is the granddaughter of Walter Gomez, the ward mission leader, and the cousin of David, my first covert here in Goya. We've been teaching her since I arrived here in Goya. She was unsure about baptism for a long time, and out of the blue decided to get baptized. :) It was an incredible feeling to be present durante her baptism. It clearly felt like more of a family baptism, a ward baptism, rather than a missionary baptism. Her whole family was with her every step of the way, from beginning to end. We only provided the teaching. As you can see in the photos, her whole family came to support her, and there was just a happy family spirit during the whole thing.

This is how baptisms should be, the work of the members, with the support of the missionaries. The Spirit was just so strong, and Telma was so happy.  She even arrived 2 hours early to make sure everything was perfect haha. I loved it.  Was definitely a memorable baptisms. 

Also our interviews with Pres. Franco went well, and the sleepover with the assistants was fun. We all ordered pizza and stuffed ourselves ...because Goya has the best pizza in the mission. Wow, we ate so much. haha.

First sign I've found in town that actually says Goya!

Then we talked through the night, and of course woke up early in the morning dead tired. We started out with interviews with Pres. Franco, and then we shared with him our training plans. Afterwards, President drove us up to BellaVista in his truck!!! That was so dope! First time I've driven with President anywhere haha. Then we did our training and had some more interviews in BellaVista. I asked Presidente if I could finish my mission training, I loved training Elder Conway and would love to train again. I'm pretty sure I have one more transfer as a ZL, and then I'll get to train again hopefully! :D But we'll see what happens. 

Goya's not always the prettiest place
...but the people are great!

I hope you know that I love my mission. There really is no greater happiness than serving our fellow brothers and sisters. I love bringing them the gospel and being a small instrument in the hands of my God. I love seeing the affect the gospel can have in the lives of people individually, and as families.

I loved seeing the joy the Gomez family had when Telma got baptized.  I loved seeing the happiness grow in the Micheli's home as we taught them.

I have so many evidences of how the gospel brings true happiness to people.  It certainly has brought me a great deal of happiness in my years growing up at home, and now here on the mission.

I know it is all true, and I promise I will always work my hardest to bring people to Christ. 

I love you!

Elder Clemóns

...but sometimes Goya IS the prettiest place!!

 P.S.  I have already told the office that you are coming to pick me up ...so ya. :)  I love you all!

I got my papers today...

I'm in about a foot of water. Fun to be in a flood ...but it's slowing down the work :-(

Well, this semana was difficult.

We are having some family/legal problems with Viviana and Antonio. Viviana's sister doesn't want them to get baptized.

Telma was going to get baptized this Saturday, but didn't make it to church because it rained.  Although she's ready, I think we're going to wait one more week.

Did I mention the rain?  Wow, it's rained sooo much here! Of the last 5 Sundays, it's rained 4 of them! And not just rain, it's completely flooded the area! It's crazy!

Church just started ...yup, it's only us 4 missionaries. Where is everybody?

And as you can see, church was jam packed when it started at 9:00 haha ...we were the only 4 at this point, even 2 of the Elders didn't make it in time haha  We eventually had 9 people in church, but still 6 of them were missioneros! What the goodness! The rain is literally destroying the work here in Goya.

But tomorrow we have interviews with he Pres. Franco. They come tonight to sleep over (gotta start cleaning now!) and we have them bright and early at 7:30 tomorrow morning. Elder Leon and I will travel with them to Bella Vista to finish the interviews up there. So tomorrow should be a bonding day with Pres. Franco, haha.

So we could be having some baptisms soon, but we don't know when all this will happen.

I love you all!! Pray for Viviana, Antonio, Mirta, and Telma!

Yep, I got my papers today, June 16th is when I come home.

Bye!

Elder Travis Clemons

P.S.  Oh!!! Do you think you could make me a little booklet of My Family? Just something electronic. I need to do it before Feb 3rd. But all I need is to go back 3 generations including birth dates, death dates, cities, marriages, todo. Ask Lori! or Grandma!!

So we had the zone meeting last week, we asked an hermana
to make us some home made donuts, oh it was just divine.

New Years...

So once again I don't have time to write. :(

New years was pretty fun. We invited some other Elderes to come over to the apartment to spend the night and play some games. Elder de la Peña y Elder Coates come over. Some members had brought over some asado (ooo, so yummy!!), and we bought some ice-cream, and we essentially spent the night playing a version of Risk.  Pretty fun.  I won! :D  Woot!




So sad news, Viviana and her son Antonio were supposed to be baptized last week.  But Viviana decided she wasn't ready yet to get baptized. So we'll give it a week, spend some time with her to resolve her concerns, and try to reschedule the baptism for next Saturday.  She's been super solid the whole time, even calling us asking for more scriptures to read from the BoM. We had a lesson with her just yesterday, and had a total of 5 member friends come with us (yup, we brought a little Mormon battalion with us) to help us help her. We went in with no plan, just hope and faith that the Spirit would work through the members.

And boy, was it strong!!  The Spirit worked fervently through the members to provide the needed comfort and direction. My companion and I did nothing, we hardly talked, but the members were able to comfort her, and motivate her to continue on in her studies and faith. It was a really touching lesson, and testified to me the power of the Spirit and the importance of member missionaries ...when both are present, success is guaranteed.



Tomorrow we have a big meeting with all the leaders, which means once again I'm getting up at around 2:00am!  Ouch :P

Oh, I forgot to tell you we had transfers this last week. Nothing happened to me, but once again the entire zone got changed up. :P  So, I guess I'll get to know lots of new faces again! :D

I'm going to miss my zone...   :-(

I love and miss you all.

Elder Clemóns

Men in black ;-)