Last week on P-day we had the great privilege of going with the stake patriarch to the local university to look at a meteorite. It was a lot of fun. Jaqui, a girl from the ward around our same age came with us and Amutio took us in his car. The meteorite was taken from a place called Campo Del Cielo here in Chaco where many thousands of years ago a HUGE meteorite storm hit. It was just sitting there in an entryway in the university—no casing or ropes or alarms. I probably could have just climbed atop it if I wanted.
We also just walked around the university campus and took pictures with various murals and statues. Afterwards Amutio bought us all ice cream. It was a nice day.
This week has also been good. We had one of our investigators show up drunk to church! We have been meeting with this man for over a month now and he has been progressing pretty well in the sense that he has been coming to church and showing up to all our appointments and reading the Book of Mormon and he even says he wants to be baptized. However, he has big problems with smoking and drinking and even though he committed to living the word of wisdom weeks ago he doesn´t seem to be making any progress despite all our best efforts. I wasn´t sure before whether or not I would call him a legit alcoholic but now I believe his problem is big enough to call it that. He showed up to church looking pretty disheveled and reeking of alcohol. He would put his head down in his hands one moment and the next he would perk up and sort of smile and laugh to himself. He tried putting his arm around Sister Hobbs a few times during the meeting which was uncomfortable and he had a very hard time following when we sang hymns even though our friend Luis was guiding him along with his finger, pointing to every word. Then, Sunday School was a DISASTER. He turned very argumentative and everyone in the room seemed irritated with him and it turned into this huge debate about the nature of God and the Trinity. He must have repeated a thousand times “Wait so is there just One God or are you saying there are THREE Gods?!” and we would explain that the Godhead consists of three distinct beings but that they are one in purpose. But then we would just go in circles and keep arguing and it was very hard to feel the spirit. Anyways, it was a little discouraging because his baptismal date was coming up, but he is not showing very strong desires to quit drinking anymore and he was so disruptive this Sunday we are not sure how wise it is to continue teaching him. And he was, pathetically, probably our most promising investigator of late.
Oh, well. Upwards and onwards. It is still VERY hot here. I will probably tell you that every week until it stops being very hot. I was trying to think about how I could even more vividly convey to you the heat when Sister Hobbs thought to take a picture of a daily ritual and I have to say, it captures it perfectly. I hesitated to reveal it, and I hope you will not judge us, but will find it as funny and outrageous as we do and appreciate what it means about the weather here. So, during the summer our schedule changes so that we come home and study midday when the sun is hottest and everyone is sleeping anyways. And just about every day after we come home from a morning of work the FIRST thing we do upon entering our apartment is… take off our clothes and hang them up to dry. That is how sweaty gross we are. We have talked about it and Sister Hobbs and I both agree that before our missions we really weren´t these sweaty gross kinds of people, which makes it even that much more amazing and ridiculous to us that we have stooped to this level . But there you go. Now you know more about our daily routine!
Also a little shout out to Lauren Laws again: the green skirt in this photo is the very green skirt she sent me from Italy! That skirt has been all over Italy and now it is going all over Argentina! And then I think I will send it to someone serving a mission on a different continent so it can continue to globetrot. I will make sure it is thoroughly washed before that happens.
This last photo is from today. We went to Centro to mail letters (finally! Hello friends! I am finally sending some of you letters!) and this is a very grumpy statue in a park nearby. I tried to make his same face.
Lastly, this week I decided I wanted to learn more about prayer and how to say betters prayers and in the Bible Dictionary it says that the psalms breathe the very spirit of prayer so I decided to start there. I have been reading the psalms and I am finding them very beautiful and a little tragic all at once. David is a tragic character and I am not sure how to feel about him.
That´s all for this week.
All my love from Argentina,
Sister Brooke
pictures?!
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