November 7th

Okay what up homies! so its transfer week and its been a wild one! This week was just pretty chill at first we re started teaching this one family and Elder Christensen was able to say goodbye because we were pretty sure he was gonna leave because he has been in this area for 4 changes (like 6 months) and he just got training me so we had been saying goodbye to homies and stuff and everytime they were like hey just come say goodbye like one last time one monday or tuesday or sunday night and we'll do an asado (Uruguayo BBQ) and we were like sick dude for sure! and so we were getting super excited and then Saturday night were doing some comp study and President calls us and i talk to him for a little bit and he's like hey can i talk to elder christensen and i was like sure dude and Elder Christensen gets called to be the new secratery of the mission and he has to be packed and ready to leave at 3 pm sunday (the next day) so he had to pack like a mad man that night. Then after we got done eating lunch with the lawyer of the mission whos in the stake presidencia of this stake that i kick it in. The APs came and took him away and then i was in a trio with the 2 Peruvians that i live with for the day. The next day they took me to the house of my zone leaders and they're major homies! And we had to go to Tres Cruces (its a place) where i had to go sign some papers for my recidency here. then we came back went to a District Conference then went and worked for a bit then we went to go get the changes from their Email and we found out Elder Paulson (one of the ZL's that got to this zone the same day i did) is leaving and going to be ZL some where else and we were super sad. We also found out who my new comp is! He's name is Elder Souza from Brasil!! i meet him tomorrow at this like Multi mission conference its my mission and the other mission together. It's President Davies hes in the perciding Bishopbric that should be really fun! thats about it for me heres a pic of me and my new pet cat. Her name is Kitty Kush 

Quick Funny story! I was with the Peruvians and we were talking with this like mom and her two kids and her sister and stuff like what ever and theres some dogs just like chillin and then out of absolutely no where theres this huge dog fight happening like in the circle that we were talking in and i have like no idea how the dogs got between us and this fight is intense like Hopeanuoli statues (if you dont know what hopeanuoli is stop reading this blog and got watch that and come back [not a sponser]) it was crazy and i was like dump this and jumped back the two peruvians just started curb stomping the dogs and then this like random guy who had like no front teeth that was tripping out on some hardcore kush just like ran out of a house in like .3 seconds and just picked up one of the dogs and just started punching this dog in the face like crazy and then like all dogs just dissapered and then the guy was gone and we were just back to talking again like nothing even happened  and this whole thing lasted like 20 seconds. it was weird. 

oh and heres some pics of me and my zone leaders at a service project! Elder Lockhart who trained my trainer is the one with the shovel. 

October 30th

what up groms! so i totally forgot to mention this last week i had a baptism last week!! we baptized this little homie named Hernán Urretaviscaya whos dad died a week before we met and his mom had died a couple years back his grandpa is Julio who we're also trying to baptize his an awesome little guy!! yeah not much else happened. Oh we have some more baptisms coming up in a couple weeks. Oh and we totally saved a puppy on our way to email today!! someone had thrown a puppy away in the garbage bumpster, and some little girl was like hey can you help us so we saved that puppy it was really weird. i guess they didnt want the puppy anymore so just threw it away. 

October 23rd

alright so im gonna talk about some funny things that happened this week. First things first we have this super awesome member whos son were working with i've talked about him before his name is pable but the moms name is mercedes and shes awesome one day while we were having dinner at their house we were walking to the door and coco the crazy pitbull got lose and like charged at us and mercedes just like puts her mate on the ground and just like grabs coco and like picks him up and like throws him on the ground and drags him back to the chain and rechains him up. shes like 65. and then the other cool thing that happened this week was i started a war with the spiders of Uruguay we had a service project the other day and when we got home i took a shower and while i was walking a cross the bathroom to get my towel i walked past sink and i watched this silver dollar sized spider crawl out of the drain in the sink and i was like fight of flight mode engage! like hey dude this is y dojo so i i punched at him not hitting him thinking it would run away, but he charged at me and i was like okay mr spider lets dance! mano y mano so i throwing punches left and right (im unarmed and unclothed flipping old school style) and this spider is literally made out of lighting or something just dodging everything im thorwing at him but then i see an opening and i knick him in the leg and he starts to retreat but i threw down the gauntlet and he excepted this fight and this was a fight to the death and i wasnt going to let him come in to my dojo and walk away! so i charge up one final punch and i predict it and i sent my fist flying at the drain and my fist connected with its target like i was luke flipping skywalker dude no targeting system dude just fallowing the force (spirit) and i sent that spider on its way to the millenium the spider exploded and there were spider legs all over the sink. that was my week in a shell nut. 

October 16th

okay guys this is whats up last week i typed up this huge blog post and i clicked the wrong button and instead of copying it i deleted it and didnt have the time or will power to re type it all :( it was a story of how we visited a family one sunday night to invite them to share the book of mormon with them and this 17 year old who thinks he's all that and a bag of chips was laughing and making fun of my comp when my comp was inviting him to read the book of mormon and i got really bugged by how he was not taking it seriously so then it was my turn and i invited his older bro to read the book and it was super powerful and my comp was like whoa thats new! and the whole family was like huh hes not useless after all it was super awesome. BUT something even more awesome happened this week. we were visting this one family were trying to reactivate (same family with the moonshine up nose story) and they had some less active family members and they're non member sister there as well and they were talking all normal and we were sharing some scripture and then some how everything got super heated amongst them and i wasnt sure what was going one because they were all talking super hast and one of them was crying because he found out my comp is leaving in a month. My comp just turns to me and tells me bare your testimony on how god loves all of his children and i was like you know what why not lets try this whole open your mouth and trust in the lord thing i keep hearing about. so i sit up a little taller and clear my throat and Fabian the one crying is like guys shut up the little one is gonna try and speak. So i say brothers and sisters i dont speak spanish very well and i dont really understand what you guys are talking about but i do know this God our heavenly father loves all of his children i know this because he gave us his only son that was perfect jesus christ and he suffered for US he never committed any sins but he's the one that had to pay the price for us. The things our saviour had to endure for us is inimaginable and it must have been so hard for our heavenly father to have to watch his only perfect son suffer because of us. The attonment of jesus christ is how i know heavenly father loves all of his kids. this truly is a gospel of love and perfection. 

this is a pic of me and one of my favorite elders here named Elder Brasil from Brasil 

This blog was from October 2, 2017

Oh super cool thing happened this week. We were just walking at night super far away from our house and we had just picked up our churros (we get churros every Monday and Thursday from this one churro truck). We were walking home to do some language study. I was like "Hey let's go see Pablo (this one drug addict who's basically given up on life) We were pretty close to his house (his mom is a convert and he lives in the house behind hers) and they have a gate and pit bull and I knew the mom wasn't home but I just felt like I should go talk to Pablo, so I just opened their gate and walked around Coco the dog and walked back there. My comp was like "Elder Helske! You're trespassing! We can get in trouble!" But I just yelled back "Nah, we're fine! They love us!" I walked back there and found him. I gave him a churro and asked if we could come inside and share a scripture with him. He said "Yes" with a mouth full of churro and then I shared with them 1st Nephi 3:7 (yeah I went old school one them) and promised them (he has a roommate) that they can get over any problem doesn't matter what it is, with these 3 steps they can overcome any problem! Step 1 pray for strength when tempted Step 2 read daily for strength Step 3 go to church on Sunday for tons of strength because its a commandment of God, and the more commandments we keep, the more blessings we get. Commandments aren't rules, they're blessings!!  

Mark's letter of September 26th, 2017

     This week has been pretty chill. There's a bakery pretty nearby where I live. Well, actually there's one right up the road from where I live where I go sometimes in the morning for breakfast, but there's another one I like to hit up if I'm out and about. They're super tasty! Also it has a super cool vibe to it! My favorite thing about it is the cat that chills in there! Also, no one wears gloves while they prepare food. I think its awesome!! My trainer doesn't like it as much as I do. I also went on splits with the zone leader this week. His name is Elder Paulson and he's super cool. He taught me a ton. He's super cool! Elder Vera from Peru who lives in my house is being made district leader now but not of my district, but the other district in my zone. He lives in the same house as us though and my "grandpa" the trainer of my trainer is going to be our new zone leader! While I was with the ZL we went and visited this one "menos activo" and invited him to come play soccer and he totally did which was super awesome!  He apparently hasn't gone to a church activity in over a year! We also got 2 new invenstigators with baptisimal dates. One alcholic named Ruben for 19th oF October (his birthday) and then this super solid kid for the 20th of October and we're probably gonna baptize his grandpa as well. We're gonna invite him to pick a date to get baptized this week as well. Our other investigators are doing well as well! That's about it for my week! Thanks for all the prayers!! 

-Élder Helske

This is Mark's post from September 18th, 2017  (Sorry I got really behind!)

     Well, this week was pretty chill and super short. We had P-day on Tuesday and we didn't really get to go out and proselyte at all because we didn't head home till like 6. It was like a 2-hour bus ride. We lost our phone but someone found it and gave it to our zone leaders. Then our zone leaders dropped our phone and it broke. We got a new one on Friday and went to the "Oro Congerence" which is like a greenie conference. That was super fun!  Friday we also didn't really get to go out either because we were gone all day, and then we left around 5 to go on a 2 hour bus ride back home again. Then Saturday we had a service project that took up a big part of the day as well! We painted our district leaders house which was really fun and the hermanas cooked us some super bomb food!! Bless up they make such good food! We always have them come and cook for us when we have zone activities. (this was a zone service project) Oh, my trainer also hit his 1-year mark this week so we threw him a fat old party. I don't have any pics of that because my camera was dead and the Peruvians didn't send me the pics yet, so hopefully next week I can send you all some pics but we'll see. A lot of our investigators are just kind of treading water rn and that's frustrating but we have this one new investigator Julio. His son died in car accident and it's soo sad. We've visited him a couple times. He also had surgery this week. He's such a humble, nice person. I'm so glad that I know that the gospel will be able to help him and his family so much!! Well, that's everything from me this week. next week P-day is on a Tuesday due to changes so don't worry!!