Baptism! - General La Madrid

wowza what a great week!

The biggest highlight of the week is we had a baptism! This girl is the first one of hopefully her whole family to get baptized. She's eleven years old and knows a ton, she always remembers the names of the missionaries, even when she's only met them once. She even asks and remembers their first names! Even though I convinced her that my first name is actually Elder

Her baptism was really special, a whole ton of relatives came, none of which are members. It was a great opportunity to get to know them. A member took the photos so I'll send those as soon as I get them! It was a really great time though.

Not too much other news, played volleyball with the zone today, also went to an all you can eat restaurant. 

For a great spiritual scripture, read Alma 36. Its a great story about repentance, and shows the effect that Christ can have in our lives if we choose to call upon Him and seek His help! Read the Book of Mormon!

Elder Jenkins

nice lunch with some of the zone at an all you can eat place

goofy pic of the week featuring weird glasses that I found in a box in our apartment

Time to invade the Fire Nation - General La Madrid

Crazy and awesome week. first and foremost, this week a solar eclipse passed through Argentina and from my area we saw it at 98% totality and it was awesome. Different that a total solar eclipse, but still really interesting. I'm super lucky I got to see it. I thought about the scripture where Alma says that "all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator." its true, I cant imagine that everything that happens happens just because.

Other highlight from this week is that we finally had our Noche de Cine activity (ward movie night) in support of missionary work. We've been planning this activity with our mission leader for a while, hoping that we would get a lot of new people to come, and we ended up with about 85 people, 20 of which aren't members. It was such a huge success and everyone had such a great time. Plus I got to catch some of How To Train Your Dragon 3 so that's cool. Bendiciones. 

I hope you all have a great week, God loves you, and will give you more blessings that you can believe for your obedience to the commandments and if you ask him for help! Pray, Read, and Go to Church!

Elder Jenkins

It's impossible to show the eclipse through my camera, but you can see the reflection of it underneath the horizon from the camera glare or idk how it works but this pic was taken at 5:30 in the afternoon and it was super dark and cold and awesome.

The eclipse made our shadows look weird where parts are crisp and parts are blurry

I fell down the other day playing cops and robbers with some kids and got absolutely wrecked by la tierra. I'll spare you guys the picture of my hand that got shredded (you can kinda see my left hand) but just appreciate the amount of dirt. 

We passed by the temple when we visited the mission office one day this week

My lego collection. thanks mom.

some pics from ward movie night

Me with two of the kids from the villa, that place is the coolest

Jugo de Naranja - General La Madrid

Another great week here in Barrio General Lamadrid! I'll keep this short not because I don't have time but just cuz I don't feel like writing very much. Honesty is the best policy.

Highlights from this week:

Making homemade orange juice from the oranges growing in front of our house

Camila was confirmed a member of the church wooooooo!

We had an activity in the church and a ton of people came to play futbol and board games

Quick spiritual thought: at the end of Alma 31, it talks about how Alma received lots of blessings because he "prayed with faith". but its not until the start of Alma 32 that you understand what that means. The first thing he does is he goes out and starts preaching. He gets right to work. Faith isn't waiting around for the blessings to come to you, its using the resources you have, trusting in God that he'll help you accomplish what needs to be done. 

All is swell, All is swell, Hallelujah America happy 4th of july

Elder Jenkins

Orange Juice done

The zone

Frolf - General La Madrid

Phenomenal week. For reals. I've loved getting to know Capital a bit better, and the area is fantastic, so much great work to do, the church is a lot more established, so its a lot easier to have help from the ward. I really am loving it.

There are a boatload of things I could talk about from this week, like how I'm loving spending time with my new comp Elder Oyarzabal, how our new apartment is huge with two orange trees with super tasty oranges that we can eat for free, and more, but I want to focus on the best part of this week, a BAPTISM!!!

I met this girl on my second day here, and her situation was this: The area where she lives is super duper poor, but there's a TON of kids, and a lot of them are interested in the church, which is great. We go with members to go pick them up every Sunday. One girl is 10 years old, her older brother was baptized earlier this month, and she's been taking the lessons for 3 months now. The problem was that she was very afraid of messing up on the baptismal interview, so she refused to take it when the zone leaders had come earlier to do it, which is a real bummer. 

Anyways, Oyarzabal and I went to the villa, and started getting to know everyone, including this girl. I could tell that she was ready for baptism, and we set an appointment the next day to come with a zone leader to do the interview. When we came the next day, she kept walking away and refused to have the interview, which was a real bummer, so we tried a more subtle approach, just talking normal with her and her friends. We bonded more and more, talking about whatever, and me showing my magic tricks (they're pretty good) and eventually, after 2 hours of talking, she agreed to do the interview, and passed with flying colors! EYYYYYYYY honestly a miracle from what Oyarzabal tells me of the situation before. We set everything up for the baptism on Sunday, and a member baptized her after the regular meetings! So so so awesome. I've only been here a little bit, but I already feel like I've grown really close to her and the other kids in the villa. They remind me a lot of the kids I met in India. They have almost nothing, even their family situation is kinda sucky, but they're so full of love and willing to be your friend without even getting to know you. So sweet.

All in all, I'm absolutely loving it here in General La Madrid. Seriously, I'm so blessed to be able to work here with Elder Oyarzabal. 

You guys are the best, have a great week! Read the scriptures, say your prayers, go to church, because God loves you and wants to give you blessings!

Elder Jenkins