A Man’s Man???🤔🧐🫣
Crazy week to say the least! We got transfers today and so my first dad, Elder Bigelow, is leaving me for some milk in this pueblita called Yuto, and I’ll get my stepdad, Elder Baker.
Pday last week. We had really nothing to do this p-day so my comp and I went shopping for groceries and other stuff. My comp got some sick Nikes for $20 and some goucho pants too. We went to probably 10 different stores asking about this type of shoe that everyone wears here. They are called algarpatas and they’re basically slippers but cool. But anyways of course they dont have my size (US: 13, Argentina: 46). The biggest size they all had was 45, but there was one store that was closed that I vowed I’d find them in my size there. The groceries we got were to make breakfast tacos every morning and dinner almost every night. This week we made some good food, but I definitely need to practice cooking some more.
We got hit on by a cracked out trans guy prostitute the other day. We have to go on this sketchy sky bridge sometimes to cross the train tracks in our town and we were going up the stairs and he was under them and said “Que hermosos los dos”. My comp and I got scared because he’s probably 6’1 200lbs at least so we just ran. Completely thought he was gonna grab my ankle through the stairs. Top 5 scariest moments on the mission so far.
We keep visiting this one member. He is this 76 year old guy, Hermano Vasquez, and he’s the Elders Quorum President. He’s actually super great and nice and we’ve been helping him with some tech issues recently, like we helped set up his phone and a security light that he can control from his phone. Before I got here he didn’t go to like any of the meetings or 2nd hour, and the members kinda hated on him for it, but Bigelow was telling me that him and his last comp asked Vasquez why he doesn’t like going to second hour or anything to which he replied “Its because I don’t have any friends”, which broke my heart a bit, because his wife passed away pretty suddenly a few years ago so now he just lives alone. His house is super cool though. Its basically just a bedroom and kitchen and then a big shop with everything a man would need to have an old shop to work on cars. Also, he hasn’t gone to any of the meetings because the members just don’t tell him about them so we’ve been going by and visiting every 2 or so days to let him know what’s going on and to just visit.
We’ve been teaching Mauricio and his family more and they are great to visit. His “wife” Rocío is a catholic but she doesn’t do anything so we’ve been trying to kinda break her shell and try to have her participate more in the lessons and it seems to be working. We currently have a baptismal date with their daughter, Dulce, and we’ll see how that goes. One of her friends is the Branch President’s daughter so she has been super animated to read, pray, and go to church and she always offers to say the opening prayer during our lessons. One thing we are trying to focus on with them is the importance of going to church. Dulce will but Mauricio doesn’t see the need to.
We had this lesson with this family where the daughter is a convert. The mom likes going to church but doesn’t do much else. She works at the hospital though so she’s never home for us to teach her. The dad is a bum that literally only watches TV and cooks all day, like genuinely we’re pretty sure his brain is fried from it. But they agree that it’s good for their daughter to go to church, read, and stuff like that, but they won’t do it themselves. So we had a lesson where we basically just told them that they are horrible examples for their kids and that they need to have their home centered on Christ. We kinda helped them realize that their daughter is gonna fall away from the church, they have a 3 year old who they just let watch literal brain go up on a phone all day, and their oldest son ,who’s about my age, has no respect for either of the parents. They all minus the oldest came to church, which the dad has never gone before so that’s a huge jump. If this keeps all we’ll have to do is keep teaching them and get them married and dunked. 💦💦🌊🌊
We found this guy named Rodolpho Plos. He’s this super funny older guy with a wacky arm. The perfect way to describe it would be how if you’ve ever seen Toy Story or at least a Woody doll. His arm is like Woody’s elbow stitching. He tried telling us how it broke but we couldn’t understand super well. It was something along the lines of he worked at a lumber mill or smith and fell onto a saw and it snapped the bone in his arm completely in half, but never treated it so he’s just got this part of his arm with no bone and he cant use that arm anymore. He also made us feel that part of the arm so it was kinda weird.
One thing I haven’t talked about yet is these trucks that drive around. They are super annoying because they have 2 huge speakers and either 1: they drive around blasting this message saying they’ll exchange old batteries for fruit, or 2: they are advertising some event. We’ll randomly be walking and hear a phone notification that is so loud we think the rapture is happening, and then we’ll just hear “HELLO MOTO” and then just some advertisement.
I talked about how I hated Mate, but I do like a different version of it called Tereré. Instead of the basically leaf clippings with hot water, you do cold water or juice. Every few days I’ll make some Pineapple flavored water with these flavor packets that are everywhere with coconut flavored yerba and add some coconut shavings. It’s sooo good and perfect because it’s getting hot here in Argentina.
For some reason there are a ton of playing cards randomly in the street here, so Bigelow and I have a bet to see who can get an entire deck of cards first. Even though he is leaving the bet is still on and this update is mostly for him but I’ll put it each week. As of right now I have 20/52 plus a Joker.
That store I vowed I’d find algarpatas in my size!!🙏🙏🙏 All I needed was size 46 and we asked the worker if they had some in that size and she was offended that that was even a question we’d have. They were only like $11 so completely a steal.
All the time we get sandwiches from this guy named Daniel. He’s in his mid-late 30s I think, but he’s goated and delivers them to us after 9pm when we have to be home so we don’t even worry about anything. He’s the owner of the restaurant and he has kinda a cool story. He grew up Catholic but was never really that strong in the faith. Got into some bad stuff but then later on locked in and even went on a mission for the Catholic church. He’s actually married and has a kid. We gave him a BoM and when we gave it to him he told us that when we were like 16 he got some lessons from missionaries and when they gave him a BoM, he used the pages to roll blunts with his friends, but promised he wouldn’t do it this time haha. He said he hasn’t smoked weed in years and he’s actually been reading the BoM. He just finished the Testimony of Joseph Smith.
President Oaks is the new President of the church! I was honestly surprised at Christofferson being called as a member of the First Presidency but I actually like that choice a ton. Christofferson always gives good talks and he actually served in my mission! Also its crazy that this is Eyring’s 4th prophet that he’s been a councilor for.
We had a crazy blackout this week. Just like Arizona, this mission gets a rainy season at the start of summer. We had a crazy thunderstorm and the power in our entire town cut out, then it was on and off the entire night. I kept waking up in the night because I was either sweating a ton or freezing because I took my blanket off to stop sweating. The next day we had like 0 water pressure in the shower and I couldn’t wash the dishes.
Yesterday was Argentina’s Mother’s Day, so all of the stores and stuff had a bunch of gifts out front to buy for people’s moms. The members were confused at the fact that Mother’s Day in the US is in May haha. We went to the Bracamonte’s again for Sunday lunch and for Mother’s Day/ my comps last day in the area. They had a big asado(BBQ) and had some cake, which was all soo good.
That’s all the highlights for this week, so now here’s my Spiritual Thought.
I was inspired by my bbg Gonzo in Ghana to start listening to BYU devotionals. I had no idea we even had access to them until his email last week talking about Dallas Jenkins’s devotional (crazy good btw). I decided to read/listen to Bradley R. Wilcox’s 2011 “His Grace is Sufficient”. I’m pretty sure it is one of the most popular ones in the library of talks. In his talk he speaks a lot about grace, repentance, and change. Its a really amazing talk but the part that caught my attention was in his closing remarks:
“I’m pulling for you. And I’m not the only one. Parents are pulling for you, leaders are pulling for you, and prophets are pulling for you. And Jesus is pulling with you.”
For some reason this part reminded me of the sled in football. Now if you dont know, the sled is just that: a big metal sled with some pads for the linemen to practice hitting and driving people. It was extremely difficult at times, exponentially more if it was just you pushing it. To make it worse, usually 1 or 2 of the coaches would stand on it to make it weigh more. If it was just you on the line, most of the time, the sled would hardly move or just spin depending on what pad you were on. But with 4 other people pushing, it was way easier to push it obviously, and no matter how tired the other guys were, they were always celebrating on whoever was on the sled.
I’m kind of rambling and I hope my analogy makes sense but my point is that there is little that we can do on our own in every aspect of life. There are always people believing in you or “pulling for you” to have love, success, and blessings in life, to help you “push the sled” in a sense.
I’m very blessed in the fact that I’ve had so many people in my life and have pushed, talked, yelled, comforted, and so on to help me become better, whether that was their goal or not. I’m blessed to have had so many friends in the past, a football team and coaches that I love so much (still undefeated, ALA Ironwood is still Little Brother), such a big and yet close knit family that have been so many examples and helps for me in my life. Especially my immediate family of 4 nieces/nephews, my brothers, sister, and their spouses, and especially my parents. And above all else I have a loving Father in Heaven and His Son, Jesus Christ, who no matter what love and hope that I stay strong, give me strength, and help me become better each day. Especially in the mission, I could not learn Spanish, wouldn’t try any of the food, know what I am doing, without the past efforts of these people, especially Jesus Christ. Without Him and my testimony of Him, there would be no reason for me to be in Argentina trying to convert people or have the strength or confidence to do so.
I got a ton of pictures and videos to share this week so hopefully it will make up for my negligent efforts recently. Please keep sending me emails! I hope and want to know about what’s all going on back home! Love and miss you all! ❤️
– Élder Curtis
