The 4 Moustacheers!

Que bien, I have the opportunity to write all of you again. This week I have more photos- in district meeting, all of us donned mustaches and the results where quite hilarious.

But the week was quite good. We were able to re-establish contact with some investigators we had lost track of for a while, find some new investigators via referrals from the ward. We also had a visit from a seventy, El. Viñas. He went over some things and gave us some instruction on several points, including giving us a new emphasis about working with recent converts who have not been ordained to the priesthood.

This week it was very hot but on Sunday it rained. the streets were abandoned Sunday morning! it was very light rain too. But, it rains so infrequently here, that it was quite the shock to the system for everyone.

I had a lovely week of personal study. I worked specifically on reading through the entire book of Isaiah, and have gotten to chapter 33 so far. I'll also pass some of the references of verses I highlighted:

5:1-4,7

5:26-27
5:18-24
14:29
25:7-9
28:9-10
29:15-16
29:18-19
30:20-21
31:2

It's quite the little reading list, eh? and I highlighted a ton more. But you might as well just read the whole book at that point!

Note from the Blog publisher(aka.mom): There is a reason why missionaries do not grow facial hair and if you watch the slide show and listen carefully to the words of the song you too will understand why!

A Day in the Life of El. Backstrom

I am writing this really late since it was a holiday today, and the cyber was closed this morning.

This will also be a short update, since I spent quite a while sending photos & whatnot.

This week has been, slightly stressful to be honest. More than anything it has not been particularly fun, since I have had a headache almost all week. However, it is almost entirely gone now, which is good.

We have a new investigator (kind of) and I'm not sure if I mentioned him last week? his name is Ulices. He is 13, and friends with some of the other jovenes in the ward. We still have not been able to have a lesson with him, but he has come to church two weeks in a row and came to a baptismal service in a neighboring branch, which was very good. he seems to love the church, socially, but also has been enjoying reading in the Book of Mormon, which is good.

Spiritually this week, I was studying a little bit all over the place, but something that stuck out to me was the first section in the Doctrine and Covenants. It is addressed to everyone in general and is kind of about mission work. I found it quite uplifting to read, and you can find it here.

Anyways, thank you all for your support. I hope you enjoy the goofy photos I took this week! have a good one,

El. Backstrom

In which you get to meet "brown William Shatner"

So, everyone, here I am again! This week I have some pictures to send.

As the summer vacations in Canada draw to a close, the temperatures are starting to rise on my side of the globe.

Well, transfers came and went, but no one in the apartment will be moving this time around. that leaves it pretty wide open, as to who will leave and who will stay next time.

We have a new investigator we are working with- his name is Ulices, and he's the friend of one of our young men. He attended two young men's activities last week and church this Sunday, and seems very interested in the church. He has already started reading the Book of Mormon his friend gave to him.

I suppose that I have not yet written about our new mission president and his wife yet, have I? I don't think so. Well, now I have had an interview with both of them and know them a little bit better- President and Sister Goates arrived in the very early weeks of this transfer and are still getting settled in. Sister Goates is very alegre and percepicas. She is coming to inspect all the pensions so we need to buy a new shower curtain to replace the very broken very moldy one we have now. President Goates is quite tall,  rather funny and very interesting to talk to.

Also I will upload some pictures with this email. Also a fun animated picture of my companion, right at the very bottom!

Ah yes. This. Look at how I'm an adult, not a child. Ha. This made me feel very attractive. I then compared it with the first photo I took with this camera and wow, I have changed a lot.

group pictures. what am I even doing?

The legendary three liter pepsi
and more guaymallen alfajores than four people need

Argentian keys! They are all like this. All of them.
Except for the chapel.
The chapel has different but equally weird keys.

El. Backstrom and El. An You?

El. Backstrom and El. Ortez

Brown William Shatner. Also known as elder Diaz.

El. Backstrom and El. Gonzalez

Dallin's New Favourite Food: Potatoes

Another weekly epistle proceeds forth from the fingertips of Elder Backstrom here in Argentina!

So, things are good. My primary news from this week is that I have learned how to make a new potato product- fresh potato pastas. They are delicious, cheap, and simple... What more could I possibly ask for? Fresh pasta is so good that we decided to start making it ourselves because we can't be paying fifteen pesos to vea every time we want 500 grams of noodles! so we asked one of the sisters in the ward to assist us in our predicament, and she gave us the advice we needed:

Put as many eggs as you want in a bowl and then ad some salt and some oil. mix it up. then add flour until it stops sticking to your fingers. then make them into little pasta shapes and put them in boiling water. (To make the potato pasta you simply first make mashed potatoes then add 4 eggs per kilo of potatoes, or more or less on egg to each large potato, and continue exactly the same from there.)

And so pasta is super cheap and super easy and a great way to supplement my other cheap food I can make, so that there are even less days when we need to buy expensive food!

This week we also went to  Mendoza for interviews, and Elder Ortez did his English test, and we built a big long list of fun and varied ways to proselyte. All in all, a very good week that we had.

On the spiritual side of things, this week I was reading in the book of Mormon inside The Book of Mormon (hahaha) and will share a couple verses I found that I liked:

From chapter 8:

 22 For the eternal purposes of the Lord shall roll on, until all his promises shall be fulfilled.

 23 Search the prophecies of Isaiah. Behold, I cannot write them. Yea, behold I say unto you, that those saints who have gone before me, who have possessed this land, shall cry, yea, even from the dust will they cry unto the Lord; and as the Lord liveth he will remember the covenant which he hath made with them.

From chapter 9:

 13 And because of the redemption of man, which came by Jesus Christ, they are brought back into the presence of the Lord; yea, this is wherein all men are redeemed, because the death of Christ bringeth to pass the resurrection, which bringeth to pass a redemption from an endless sleep, from which sleep all men shall be awakened by the power of God when the trump shall sound; and they shall come forth, both small and great, and all shall stand before his bar, being redeemed and loosed from this eternal band of death, which death is a temporal death.

 14 And then cometh the judgment of the Holy One upon them; and then cometh the time that he that is filthy shall be filthy still; and he that is righteous shall be righteous still; he that is happy shall be happy still; and he that is unhappy shall be unhappy still.

Those where some of the verses that stuck out to me, but the final chapters of Mormon are very good, and not too long, so if you have some moments this week, I would encourage you too have a look at them.

Anyhow, have a good week!

El. Backstrom

Happy Birthday to Me!

Well here we are almost reaching the end of July. I almost inserted an obnoxious animated image to catch your attention but then I decided against it.

This week I will be changing to have 19 years. Whoops, that's bad English, uhm, birthday, yes, that's how it is called. That should be cool. Time is passing remarkably fast.

Recently we have been struggling to find new investigators, and many of our appointments have been falling through. We are going to make a plan to really work very hard and do some new finding activities and just try some different things to keep us animated and positive.

Hm, there isn't too much to report in terms of our activities this week. Our ward mission leader, who is a very diligent worker and helps us a ton, was out of town and could not drive us out to the far-away places in the area that we have no other access to. However we called our investigators and gave them chapters to read in the scriptures to try to help them keep learning even though we couldn't visit them.

On the study side, I had a very productive week in terms of my own study of the scriptures, and found what I think is a new favorite passage:

Helaman 3:27-30

 27 Thus we may see that the Lord is merciful unto all who will, in the sincerity of their hearts, call upon his holy name.

 28 Yea, thus we see that the gate of heaven is open unto all, even to those who will believe on the name of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God.

 29 Yea, we see that whosoever will may lay hold upon the word of God, which is quick and powerful, which shall divide asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the devil, and lead the man of Christ in a strait and narrow course across that everlasting gulf of misery which is prepared to engulf the wicked—

 30 And land their souls, yea, their immortal souls, at the right hand of God in the kingdom of heaven, to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and with Jacob, and with all our holy fathers, to go no more out.

Verse 29 stuck out to me particularly, but the whole passage is very powerful.

I ended up reading a large portion of the story of the prophet Nephi who is preaching among the people in these chapters of Helaman and enjoyed it a lot. There were also lots of other things that I studied this week but in order to not make this email large and extremely doctrinally dense I'll leave that for some other Monday.

Very good, I'll leave that off there and bid you all a good week,

El. Backstrom