Live from Argentina

It's ya boi coming to you live from Argentina,

So yesterday we were sitting in the bat cave (the district room), and Elder Bowyer mentioned that it was our hump day! It blew my mind. I can't believe that I've already been here for half the time. I think it's crazy that pretty soon I'm going to be preaching in the mean streets of Paraguay doin mah thing.  As usual, there is oh so much to tell, and oh so little time. That's what I think the most frustrating thing about it all is. So let's get down to business. 

 

So this week more than anything has been a lot of praying!  Not only for me to be a really great missionary, but how I can go about doing that. I realized that if you ask for general things, the blessings aren't always as obvious or helpful. If we want something we need to study it out in our minds and then go to the Father looking for specific help. So, this week has been awesome because as always, Heavenly Father delivers. I've just learned that the goals I set up and things have to be very specific and knowing what I'm doing every day.  And even down to the hour and what exactly I'm going to do within that hour. No more just freestyling it and just going with the flow in the Lord's work. When I've been able to follow a detailed plan, I've seen the blessings and my learning grow. So that's been great. 

 

My prayers were even so specific for Heavenly Father, He sent a linguistics professor from BYU who works for the MTC (Missionary Training Center) departments to help me out. (kidding) No, but really this guy came down to review the MTC. He came in and is the coolest guy ever and helped me out a lot on the things I need to do to be better and learn faster and more efficiently. He spoke on the PMG (Preach My Gospel) workbook. This guy wrote chapter 7 on how to learn a language. He talked about how many hours were put into the PMG and how many hours apostles and church leaders put into it so that it would be perfect for mission work. My book list now goes: 1) Scriptures 2) PMG 3) Hunger Games.... yea, remember how into those books I was Mom? PMG is literal GOLD!  All missionaries coming into the field would benefit so much from reading and knowing the first chapter and how to best use the PMG manual. Awesome stuff.

 

 

Teaching and Spanish are going well. The investigators are just our teachers pretending to be people they taught on their own missions, but they're going super well. Wells and I work really well together and the spirit is always really strong which is the most important thing. We have the first two lessons down pat and love referring to them at any time. Our teacher got mad yesterday because we turned our 15 minute lesson into a 30 minute one just because we love going over the whole thing. 

 

 

NOW THE BIG ONE

PROSELITISMO 

So Saturday they loaded up a bus of gringos and drove us to the middle of Buenos Aires and kicked us off the bus and said, "Be back in 5 hours.  Go preach the gospel or something in the mean time." I'm not one to get nervous necessarily, but wow, I was stressing that day. I was super unconfident in my Spanish, and Wells and I had set some pretty daring goals for a first time out. It was funny because eveyone was freaking out. Each district got their own like 5x4 block in the city, and we just went to work. Hey, guess what, it wasnt all sunshine and rainbows.  For the majority of the time, it was really frustrating. We did get to talk to a lot of really cool people though, and work on our Spanish with people.

At one point though, I just remember walking and being really frustrated with myself and the situation, and then looking up at the buildings and just seeing Spanish and looking around at the craziness around me and I couldn't help but smile. IM IN ARGENTINA, LEARNING SPANISH AND TEACHING PEOPLE ABOUT SOMETHING I LOVE. THIS IS SO COOL! SUCH AN ADVENTURE. I'm in my element, as they say.

The church is true, the book is blue. READ IT PEOPLE.

Elder Yocum


In his letter to the family, he shared some more details about his experience out in the city of Buenos Aires:

Alright, so lets just get down to the real nitty-gritty of Proselitismo. That was a rough day that at the end, only through retrospect, was super cool and worth it. Literally, just 5 hours of walking the streets and past people trying to gut it up and talk to them in a language I barely understand. When teaching in the CCM, our goal is to find the need and fill it. Which I learned after a few hours, is very different from street contacting. People don't have 20 minutes for you to try and understand them and their needs through broken Spanish. So, about halfway through I realized I had to just go up to people and be like, "Hey, I have a short message for you.  It's about families, happiness, peace, and faith. Heavenly Father loves you, and has sent me here to help make your life better. Want to hear more?"  If they wanted to hear more we could talk, if not then there was not time wasted and we were able to move on with our lives.

 

Buenos Aires is a little rough. I saw some hard things and things that made my heart heavy. There's a lot of pain out there in the world and the source of it all comes from the prince of darkness. Part of me doesn't know if they see it or not, or if it is just how they live. We stumbled upon this homeless man named Jorge. He was in bad shape--ragged clothes, smelled like urine, ratty hair, and I walked up to him with tears in my eyes because I felt the love God had for this child of His. I reached into my bag and gave him all the food I had, just a sleeve of cookies, half a sandwich and half an orange juice bottle and wished so badly there could have been more to give him. I looked him in the eyes that were clouded over and covered in muck in what had to be the worst case of pink eye I've seen in my life.  He seemed hesitant to look into my eyes, as I'm sure he was so used to being treated so horribly and he was shaking as I touched his arm. We were able to talk to him about God and his plan for him. I testified of the love God had for him and gave him a copy of the LdM with one of the DeSchepper's quotes in it.  I pulled out the 50 pesos I was allowed to carry on me and gave it to him. We tried to get an address or somewhere we could send other missionaries, but I doubt they will be able to find him. Just a hard situation that hurts my heart. But, there were also moments out there of great strength as I knew that what I was out here doing was the right thing.