Pictures!

Oh Maa!

That was supposed to say oh man!!!!

But anyway Hey Family!

This week was way crazy. Like really just miracle after miracle happened. First of all, we were able to do a service project for this lady in our neighboring branch (tupungato) and it was awesome. She has Bipolar disorder and stopped taking her pills for a while a couple of years ago, and ended up setting fire to her house. It was really sad because she is an awesome woman. like the kind that if the missionaries had to cancel on a dinner appointment, she would walk the 5 miles both ways to bring the food to them. True story.... But anyway she had been saving up to go to the temple in Buenos Aires and was finally able to take off for a few days and finally take part in the wonderful ordinances there. While she was gone, the missionaries, and quite a few members of the Tupungato branch kind of snuck in and repainted the inside and outside of the house, cleaned, and re-furnished her whole house. It was AWESOME! anyway, that is the story about the service project. I heard she was just beyond ecstatic when she came home.i wanted to be there when they yelled 创move that bus!创 but it was nice to hear that she was just really appreciative and moved by the service. It was way fun to take part in.
Secondly, we had a baptism this week. Remember Brian? he has a really hard time learning and understanding and reading? Well that was him. So here it is... On Friday night, we walked to his house to talk to his dad one last time to try and get permission. We threw the zone, and district leaders at him the past week, and even an assistant who is just a stud. Well Jose (Brian磗 Dad) just wouldn磘 budge. So we got to his house way out in the fincas and we talked to Jose for a couple minutes, trying really hard to just get him to understand how important this was. Well Elder Fackrell gave him the registro to sign, and Jose looked at it for a couple of minutes. Or hours, at least thats what it seemed like... and then he said, well, i want to give all my kids the chance to get baptized. He signed it, and Elder Fackrell and I had a hard time trying to pick our jaws up off the floor. It was an awesome night. So the next day was hectic to say the least. We spent the majority of the day setting up the font and getting everyone animated about the baptism. We asked to girls in the ward to give short talks and then just went around and made calls to many members inviting them. It got to be 6 and NO one was there (thats when it was supposed to start). One of the girls with a talk showed up, and we patiently waited for the other members (and Brian) to show up. At about 630, I walked out side, looked both ways and didn磘 see Brian. I went back inside into the Branch President磗 office, knelt and said a quick, sincere prayer, walked outside, and Brian was right there on his bike. He was good to go! but didn磘 want to do it without his Dad being there. We waited until 7 and his dad still wasn磘 here. Same thing, I said a quick sincere prayer and then Elder Fackrell made an executive decision to start. About halfway through Soy un Hijo de Dios, I looked out the window and saw not only Jose, but his step-mom, his older (member) brother, his two younger sisters and his two baby (legit babies) brothers. They also brought a ton of snacks. WhAT??!?!?!?!?!?!? Oh man. I couldn磘 believe it. I mean I could, but it was just so AWESOME! God truly is a God of Miracles. This has been a good week and now i have one transfer under my belt. One more with elder Fackrell and then I will be trained and supposedly I will be capable of training. Thats the goal of this new training program that we kicked off in the MTC...

But anyway, this week was just way good. I will have to tell you all about some other time though because there just isn磘 time haha... Anyway, only got a few minutes to email yesterday becuase it was the national holiday of the worker.... which is SO stupid because they already take off 3 hours everyday for siesta, plus the hundred other holidays and pretty much whenever they don磘 want to work haha..... Weird. anyway, This has been a good month and a half. I am trying to set some long term mission goals as well as short term and i find that therein lies success. This letter is super random and all over the place, but just want you all to know that God lives, and loves you and knows you better than you could imagine. There are many outside influences that want us to think that we can磘 do it, or the reward isn磘 worth the struggle like the 10 spies with evil reports in the book of Numbers. But there are many resources and giant helps we have that, like Caleb and Joshua, know its worth it and can encourage us to keep going and doing our best. I love you guys and I am really enjoying the work here. Hope all is well with you!

Elder Daybell OUT! haha

Hey Family!

This week was pretty crazy. and by crazy, I mean not much happened. My comp was sick a lot and so I just had a lot more time to read... I finished the missionary library, got through Leviticus (wow...) and am just about done with the NT. I am currently reading the LdM in spanish because I have already read it in English. As well as Our Legacy... Spanish is so much prettier! Also I have found that reading the Gospel Principles book and other church published articles helps a lot. I am also fasting more and that has really worked miracles for the language. I love fasting. Especially before the Sacrament meeting because it adds a more physical necessity to taking the Sacrament. It helps me to realize that we not only depend on Christ for our spiritual and emotional well beings, but also our physical. He truly is the Bread of Life and is the Fountain of Living Waters.

I had to give a talk this week about the Temple sealing, and families, which was hard because maybe one family and another young couple (who are inactive) are sealed as a family in our branch. So that was like... really difficult. And I had to lengthen it quite a bit because our third speaker forgot his talk. He really is a stud and so I can´t say anything about that. Plus I have forgotten to write like three talks back in the Fair Oaks haha... anyway... We have these really strong, and dusty windstorms called zondas and they pretty much get everything dirty and some people say they have heart problems because of them... but I don´t know about that. It just gives me way fun allergies haha.... but it pretty much covers our entire pensión with a thick layer of dust.... because our doors are kinda similar to swiss cheese haha... Speaking of doors, we got a call last night from our neighbor at like 11 and they said our front door was just...open (we go to Tupungato for p-days) and i guess Elder Fackrell forgot to shut it/lock it? haha.... its okay. I would only be mad if someone stole my scriptures. luckily nobody took anything soo... Tender mercy!

The work is going well. we have three really solid investigators right now who want to get baptized, but one (Brian) can´t read and that makes it hard for him to learn a lot of stuff... so we teach him how to read from the pamphlets and he is slowly absorbing the material. Another is lock stock and barrel into the gospel, but he won´t accept a baptismal date and that is so hard because we can´t figure out his concern... he just needs to exercise his faith. He has already accepted all the commandments and has heard all the lessons. He actually asks us for reading assignments in the Book of Mormon now haha.... He will come around. The other is a young girl who´s biggest impediment is her mother who isn´t a fan of the church. But she let her other daughter get baptized so I don´t really know what the deal is. We are working on it though. We have lots of new investigators who seem really good and prepared for this message though. I am stoked for them.

Anyway, I love the scriptures. My new favorite is Romans 8:18... It says something along the lines of ´´I reckon that all our trials aren´t worthy to be compared to the reward.´´ I really love that. Paul was a STUD. I have also been thinking that those people that we read about in the scriptures aren´t supposed to intimidate us, or make us feel small or inadequate. They are just testimonies of righteous living. We may not all have experiences like Saul on the road to Damascus, or Alma, and we may not see visions of grandeur or experience a physical meeting with the Lord, but we can live up to the Gospel and to what is expected of us. Those people are awesome, but I feel as if it could be said that if all men were like unto Randy Daybell, or Isa Abutaa or Jeffrey R. Holland, the gates of Hell would be shaken forever. I feel strongly that any number of my new extremely humble friends could be described as the salt of the earth and they have plenty of savor. I personally want to be known as Joseph of Egypt was known; ´´whatever they did there, he was the doer of it.´´

I love that. I love all of you and I hope that your week was good. The church is true! Stay sweet :)

Elder Daybell

Sept 12

The rabbit is from the Familia Diaz and i can´t wait to eat it! she said she is going to make it this super delicious way....

the coins were just random. i had a lot of time during siesta yesterday....

that is elder Hancock who was playing with all the features on my camera that i didn´t know i had.... he is way goofy.Super cool. also Elder Frost in the background there. he is a total capo...

The last one....elder hancock took a bunch of random pictures and this is one. like the floss thing? we totally planned this shot...

hey family!

this week was better. Our numbers were higher, and it went by way fast. I think Elder Fackrell is a little burned out from this area just because its a more difficult place....but we are working hard and making progress. We had two baptisms scheduled for the 17th and one of them just kinda flaked out and the other kid can´t read, so in addition to reteaching the lessons, we are teaching how to read from the BoM. Our English class is pretty successful. we teach it every Sunday at 4, in our chapple/barn and a lot of the kids come, especially around testing time. Its awesome because i can´t speak the language perfectly yet, but i can teach english to them. its way cool. I LOVE the alphabet and the sounds it makes in spanish. it just makes so much more sense! English has so many stupid rules that only work sometimes. like i before e except after c and sometimes before y and certain holidays and pretty much whenever you feel like it... but in Spanish there are very few irregulars and the rules really are rules. In English, they´re actually more like guidelines. Ah...

anyway. Yesterday was the 10 year mark. that is crazy. some people here are evil. they say the most messed up stuff like, ´´i´m glad that all those Americans died´´ and ´´ i hope the terrorists win´´ etc... its way stupid. i just dont say anything about being a soldier, but its hard... and they give us a lot of crap for being in Iraq and Afghanistan and its like... Hey.... remember the Malvinas Islands? why are you there? besides the british totally rocked you in that war... idk... its stupid. anyways.... The spirit of contention is of the devil...

We had some funny stuff happen this week. We went to an appointment way out there and we were talking to Brian, this 11 year old kid and his dad came up to us holding little baby bunny. He was like ´´can you guys give it a blessing?´´ and Elder Fackrell and I kinda looked at each other and I guess we both consented haha.... So he just held it in his hands and said a short prayer (don´t worry, no sacrilege was done....) and after, the dad took it back, and went outside and i´m pretty sure he killed it because the kids came back bawling and screaming haha....(he had run over the mom with his tractor and the baby was still... nursing and so it was probably the right thing to do...) but they are a really poor family so i think they might have made some soup that night.... but that was kinda interesting and funny i thought.

also had a pretty big miracle happen this week. At the same house, we were teaching Brian and around 12:30 we decided to go because we had to catch the 1:00 bus to Tupungato for some silly internet thing that the whole mission had to do. And neither of us ate that morning and our lunch canceled on us so... we wouldn't have eaten until late at night like 9-ish. But anyway we go back into the kitchen to say goodbye to the Hermana and shes like, you aren´t staying for lunch? (they are way poor, remember) and we said we didn´t want to be a bother, but she just said no, i am offering it to you! and so we stayed and ate, and the bus was late so we made that too!

Scripture fulfilled. i don´t know the words exactly but its something like don´t worry about food, or clothing or transportation, just go and preach. everything will be taken care of. Super awesome. The tender mercies of the Lord are definitely observed and much appreciated every day in Cordón.

well i hope everything is well! i love you guys like crazy!

Elder Daybell

Hey family! How is everybody doing? I am great. I had my first bautismo this week. His name is Raúl Umiri and he is a pretty solid convert. He had been coming to church for like a year, and the previous missionaries here like hadn´t done anything and so when Elder Fackrell and Benitez washed the area they found him and he like didn´t even know he could get baptized or anything. So he had been prepared a long time. It was awesome to baptize someone for the first time ever. I have been able to help out with vicarious baptisms, but this is really cool because I got to see someone take that step of faith in THIS life. Anyways, our font was awesome. it reminds me of the transportable tabernacle in the OT just because it took us about 10 minutes to put up and to take down. Now filling it up took like 4 hours. We started the night before and then finished on Saturday during the Siesta. I HATE the Siesta. just by the way... um.... lets see. What else happened. Not much this week. we actually had low numbers everyday and it is somewhat frustrating because I know the people are here that want to hear what we have to say, or more importantly what the Spirit has to say, but so many people CAN NOT get baptized because they are unwilling or unable to change their circumstances. Believe it or not, the most common problem is the law of chastity. Lots of people get married here because the government just GIVES them a house and so they say why not.... and then when they realize that was stupid, they just move out and move in with someone else. so there is a TON of married people here, they just dont live with their spouses. So we mostly teach kids and teenagers that aren´t married yet haha... We have one really solid family in our ward, the Diaz´s. They have 4 little girls and Hermana Diaz cooks lunch for us on sundays after church, which is the big meal here. mostly people just drink Mate and snack on stuff for the rest of the day. But it was funny because she cooked this thing yesterday that she claimed was arabic food haha. it reminded me of the weird grainy kind of think that mom and dad eat sometimes. its like quipu or something like that... i dont remember haha. anyway i thought it was funny to see another culture´s food in another culture than my own....

Um... lets see. I sent pictures of this week and i will send a few more. Last p'day, after email, we went to this thing called Cristo Redentor, which is like Argentina´s pathetic excuse for the Big Jesus statue in Rio de Janiero.... but anyways that was pretty cool. I don´t know why people like to focus on a super sad Jesus. I think He is probably more happy than sad.... but anyways. also there is a great store at the top that sells beer and cigarillos haha which is just what you need after a 30 minute hike to worship Jesus right??? man. they know business down here. Um I dont really have a lot more to say, other than I am really enjoying the people here. And i think that i´m pretty much satisfied for the rest of my life with rice, noodles of any kind, potatoes and bread.... which is all that the argentines eat basically haha. I am way excited to be in a 4 man pensión because then the odds are better that one of the elders will want to go running.

But anyway I have been having a great time and I learned from other elders that we pretty much get packages in 2-3 or 4 weeks, and letters are pretty quick. Dear elders are instantly... to the office in mendoza, so i will get those any time someone from our zone goes in. but thats like once a month or less. anyway.... I love you all and I will send a few pictures in a second email. Love ya!

Elder Daybell