Letter Dated April 25, 2011

Dear Mom & Dad;

Glad things are going on well at home. Sounds like you guys are enjoyed Easter.  So I never actually heard about Tyler Ayers Mission call? Did he get it?

Ok, so I guess I'll answer all Dad's questions.

Elder Brown in their first appartment

Do you teach just by the spirit or do you have lessons that your rely on.  Do you teach by the chapters that are in Preach My Gospel? Ok, so we don't memorize anything.  We are suppose to teach the lessons from PMG (Preach My Gospel) in the order they have them in the book, and follow the sequence that they have set up.  BUT they tell us that 1st we should try to figure out the needs of the investigator and focus the lesson in a way that the investigator can see how the gospel will bless their life. And we are suppose to adapt or change it if we feel like we should. So we teach by the spirit because we use our own words but we generally follow the pattern given. We don't teach every principle in the Lessons though. For example if you look in the Lessons in preach my gospel, they have the sub categories, we usually talk for only a few minutes on each one, and ask a question or two during each small section. Our lessons are not suppose to go over 45 minutes, which is difficult.

How much teaching do you do? We usually teach maybe 20 lessons a week, that's including lesson with less active members. We get maybe into a house a day if we are lucky.

Does your companion do most of the teaching? I usually teach one or two of the sections of the lesson, then bear testimony, say a prayer, that's usually about it, Elder Brown does most of the teaching, because he knows the language, haha.

How many discussion do you teach in a week?  20 a week if its a good week.

Do you start with a particular topic?  Yes, most of the time we start with lesson 1 (which is in chapter 3 of Preach my Gospel) We teach the Restoration. All of it. We teach, give them a Book of Mormon, and challenge them to prepare for baptism in the 1st lesson.

How many hours in a week to you knock on door and about how many lessons do you teach? We knock doors randomly as we are walking usually, and contact people in the street, I would say a good 2 hours of knocking on a busy day (lots of set lessons), but usually once or twice a week we spend most of a day knocking doors. Well, lessons given to people when we knock are usually 1 a day, well maybe one a day. Its hard to say, there have been a few days we get into 3 or four, and some days zero, actually the  first two weeks I was here we didn't get into a single house by knocking.

What kind of food do you eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Breakfast we usually eat cereal, fried eggs and bread, or pancakes, or Fracturas(which are more like eating cinnamon rolls for breakfast, or scones with sugary stuff), Lunch is usually with a member of the ward. We eat Milanesa(not sure how to spell) which is breaded chicken, lots of noodles with sauces, chicken, tomatoes stuff, potatoes, Honestly its pretty good and normalish food, a bit bland compared to the States cause they don't put in many spices. Dinner we don't usually eat dinner until 9 when we get home, and its a bowl of cereal or just something we bought, sometimes we eat dinner with members.

Do you wash your own clothes? No, we don't have washing machines, so we pay someone to do it, Otherwise we would have to do it by hand.

In general, is the areas that you are working in poor people or is this city more wealthy than others? Good Question. Its weird, Most the people in comparison to the states are poor. But we work in a normal wealth area. They live in cement houses with cement floors in general. But we do have a decent wealthy area in my area, which is where we just started working recently, cause NO missionaries work in the wealthy areas haha. But I would say this city is pretty wealthy.
How many stakes are there in Mar Del Plata? 2 stakes. Each ward has about 100 active members and at least 200 inactive members. A lot join the church, but get offended for seriously the most ridiculous things, its really frustrating to see cause the things they leave for don't matter.

Are the people there generally Catholic?  Hmm, Yea lots of Catholics, not many go. As in very few go. If they say they are Catholic then they probably don't have much religion. Catholics are probably the best people to run into. The other big ones are Evangelicals, which are pretty big, we actually went to an appointment the other day and the person invited their Evangelical friend over, who was pretty smart, that was an interesting conversation. She said God had sent her to convert us. Haha, joke. They use the exact same scriptures against us and the same words, haha, so if you run into one, you run into them all, but we aren't suppose to argue with them. Anyway they have some interesting beliefs. And she told us that for reading the Book of Mormon we were cursed and had offended God, which made Elder Brown a bit angry, so there was a bit of an argument, haha. Anyway, the other is the Testigos, who are pretty much Jehovah witnesses, they love talking to Mormons. We get stopped by them all the time. They have some weird beliefs about what happens after death, haha.

Is the family structure good or are the families kind of mixed up? The family here is in general a joke. Well, marriage is a joke, and 15 year olds have kids. So its pretty beat up. Lets just say in our ward there are lots of single ladies with kids, and no fathers. Which is the normal here. But the people in the church are all awesome.

Mike with Elder Brown and new companion Elder Sullivan

Do you know what the name of the street is where you live? Mipou(not sure how to spell it though haha) Maipou, something like that its said My Poo. So you might be able to find it

Okay, so this is Elder Browns last week right now haha. He is almost done its really weird for him. So next time I write I should have a new companion. If I have a native companion I will probably die, it would be good for my spanish, but still, haha, its super difficult.

So this week we were waiting to get into an appointment, and there was a little kids probably like 10, he was a gordito(little fatty, just so you know people here are not politically correct, they are very blunt, haha) and he was kicking a soccer ball against his house, right. He would kick it then I don't know pretend like he got fouled and fall down roll over make some grunts, anyway that was funny enough to watch, but then he kicked it and yelled GOOOOOOOAAAAAALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and yelled it while he raaaaaan away.  He ran to the end of the block turned the corner and disappeared. Never seen again, haha, just kidding.  After he rounded the corner he came back, but still I laughed, funny kid.

So this week Me and Elder Brown discovered that the map of our area was missing a part. So we went to this area for a few hours that had never been worked, ever, which was cool.  We are going back again this week, but its a super far walk, it takes like 40 minutes to get there. Anyway this week went pretty good, We worked lots, this next week probably wont be quite as good a week since Elder Brown is leaving and he has a decent amount to do to prep to leave, but o well.

Anyway, this email took forever to type, haha.  Hopefully I answered the questions well. If not you can ask again, Since I'm not sure how clear what I said was, haha, it might be kinda jumbled.


Love Elder Obray

Letter Dated April 18, 2011

Dear Mom & Dad;

Well I am glad to hear things are going well back at home. Doesn't sound like there are to many problems going on. So I on Mother's day I will be calling home sometime. I think that's in like two weeks or so, haha. I think that's the same time as I will be switching Companions because Elder Brown is going home.

Elder Brown

So this week was a bit different. We went on exchanges Tuesday through Wednesday. So I was with the zone leader Elder Bills from Utah somewhere. Its always cool to see how different Elders do things. Elder Bills is way nice, we taught a few lessons, it rained on us a bit that's always fun.

Then on Thursday, we had a ¨leaders meeting¨ with the Mission President, and a new senior couple missionary and since Elder Brown is a district leader we went to that. A bit difficult to understand since they all speak castillano, but o well.

My Castillano is getting better slowly. But at least its getting somewhere.  Ive almost been out in Argentina for a month which is pretty cool.

So my story for this week, Me and Elder Brown were out knocking some doors, and we saw a dog that exceeded exceedingly large dogs. So we decided not to knock that house, but we did go to the house next to it.  As we are walking up to knock, this dog stands up starts barking and runs at us. So Me and Brown just take off running, we got lucky that dog had to go around a car to get to us, or else we might have been breakfast, haha, I am surprised that dog wasn´t tied down or anything. Actually thinking about dogs, we also saw several dog fights, saw a dog destroy another dog, saw a dog get run over by a car(gross it literally cut the dog in half) and got attacked by a few small dogs. So it was dog week I guess. Oh and there is a scripture in the bible somewhere that says to beware of dogs. Probably not referring to these dogs, but still.

And I met an Argentine millionaire. He is a member of a ward out where Elder Brown did a Baptismal interview. He owns a huge kiwi farm, and probably does some other stuff. Cool guy. His sons all live in the states now, though. It seems that lots of the rich people move to the states eventually.

We also have a 70 coming to our mission in July? or June. Not sure which, but that should be cool.

It's starting to get cold for most of the day now. No bueno. On Sunday, we had a huge rainstorm, probably 6 hours of nonstop downpour. If it had happened in Idaho, we would of had serious flooding, haha. But here, the ground takes it all up super fast.

And I don't know if I have already told you, but supposedly  there is a chance that the mission will switch from phone calls to doing Skype from the computer, cause its cheaper or might be free not sure, haha. Anyway probably not for mothers day, but for Christmas. So keep that in mind. You have to have a web camera for it to work.

I think I told you last week that I sent you a letter, well actually it was today haha, we were going to last week but we ran out of time. But now it's already in the box. Hope it gets there. They lost one of the incomiendas like two weeks ago (which is a box the zone leaders get with all the mail and stuff in it). Who knows if and or when it will appear haha.

This next week we are going to be working in our rich area, so we will see how well that goes. Should be interesting.

Anyway that's about all I got this week, I couldn't think of much else. Have a good week. Hopefully I'll get the pictures tomorrow.

Love Elder Obray

Written Letter to go with Letter on April 11, 2011

Dear Mom & Dad;

So I actually wrote a bit of a letter this week.  Which is April 11th - you'll have to tell me how long it takes to get back to the States.  I'm still going to send an email though.  

This week we still struggled to get into houses.  But we did find a few potential people, which was pretty cool.

Elder Brown at their apartment

So this week one of the little girls we baptized last week bore her testimony in Sacrament meeting.  Definitely one of the best testimonies I've ever heard.  Their family had been searching, going to different churches for a long time.  They finally found the Mormon church.  They said it felt so much better.  Her testimony was also good for her parents, who are suppose to be baptized in a few weeks.

We also found a less active lady, who loved church, but wouldn't go alone.  so we just started to teach her husband.  He doesn't care, but we think we can baptize him.

We went on divisions, I went to a different area of our zone with Elder Talercio, from Arizona.  He was pretty cool.  He goes home in 3 weeks and was "trunky" as in couldn't wait to leave so he was a bit lazy.  Cool guy though.

So we got back to our apartment one night, and I opened the door and turned the light on.  Elder Brown yells, "Oh my gosh!" and jumps back.  there was a hugh spider right in the middle of the sidewalk!  Seriously, like as big as your cell phone, haha.  We killed it, then like an hour later my companion opens the door and a bigger one was on the door step!  Ugh - gross spiders.

Anyway the rest I'll write in the email.  Elder Brown sends his love.

Love,

Elder Obray

Letter Dated April 11, 2011

Dear Mom & Dad

So, I wrote a hand written letter. Although I haven't sent it yet, it will be sent in the next day or so. So you'll get it eventually, haha. So I will try to say different things then what is in the letter. Since I have an hour of INTERNET time I might as well use it. I think the way to check and see about how much the package you sent will cost me is something like this. Take how much it cost you to send it. Divide it by two. That's how many American dollars I will pay, then times 4 for the amount in Argentina. I get a decent amount of money to live off though so I should be alright.

Elder Cory Brown

The priesthood session of conference, they have late at night and early Saturday morning. The only reason they do the Saturday one is for the missionaries.


This last Wednesday we had a whole bunch of appointments with people. As in from 6-9 we had 3 appointments. It was a super cold night. Its weird here, its really hot during the day, but because of the humidity, as soon as the sun goes down the temperature drops and it gets really cold.  But we went to the first, and they weren't home, so we went early to the 2nd one and they told us to come a different day, and the 3rd called and canceled. So we were kinda wondering what to do, cause nobody here answers doors after dark, and if they do, they wont talk to you much. So we decided to go to our church building and go to the bathroom, when we got to the church, there were a ton(100) people standing outside and we were think what is going on? We walked over to them and found out they were a bunch of people going to the temple and they were waiting for the bus to come pick them up but it was going to be a while before the bus got there, so we opened up the church and let them in since it was freezing outside. We then had to stay at the church to lock it up and everything. Moral of the story. Even though all our appointments fell through, it was a good thing, cause those people defiantly didn't need to be out in the cold. So we figured our appointments fell through so we could help the other people out.

Great picture of Mike's companion

I don't know if you will find this next story funny. But I thought it was. Me and Elder Brown were walking down the street, and there are always dogs barking at us. Well there was one dog who always barks at us from on a ledge, well more like a balcony of a house without railing, like 20ft in the air. We walked under the ledge and the dog was barking and Elder Brown says to me ¨I hope that dog falls¨ and right when he says that, the dog slips off the edge and hits the ground. Wham! There were probably 20 people, one of them was the owner and she grabbed the dog and dragged it back inside the house. It was pretty funny. The dog was fine. Well actually maybe, we walked past him again yesterday, and his bark sounded a bit different, haha, but the dog was back to barking up a storm at us. haha.


Anyway I wrote some other stuff in the letter. That will eventually come. haha.


Love Elder Obray

Letter Dated April 4th

Dear Mom & Dad;

I am glad to hear you all are doing well. Things seem to be going pretty well. I was pretty stoked to hear Bracken was going to the Dominican Republic. That will be way sweet! 3 of us are going to be able to speak spanish at this point. By the time Bracken leaves for the MTC I will have been out for more then 6 months. Weird huh? Well anyway that's pretty cool.
 

Elder Cory Brown ( Mike's 1st companion)

We got to listen to conference in English for all the sessions but Priesthood and Saturday afternoon. So pretty much I missed those two. But the rest of conference was good. Listening to conference takes on a bit more meaning now that I'm on a mission, haha. They talked about the welfare program a ton, haha. And President Monson pretty much told Nate to get married, haha.


I had my first two baptisms on Saturday. Two little girls Florencia and Jasmine. The parents are getting baptised at the end of this month, they had to wait for Argentina to Legalize their marriage. Then we have baptism dates for 5 more people (it doesn't mean they will get baptized since we ask them during the 1st discussion and these are people who said yes, so we put a ¨goal date¨) so that's pretty cool.


Pretty much we knocked doors a ton this week again, its a struggle to find new investigators out here. My spanish is slowly improving. Just takes time.

This looks like Mike's first appartment with Elder Brown

We went on exchanges this week, so I went with another elder to his area, which is right next to mine. Elder Escobar from Northern Chile. It was fun, he couldn't speak English at all, and I could sorta speak spanish. But things worked out. We knocked on a door, a lady let us in, we taught her the first lesson and set a baptismal date with her. It was pretty cool. Although I only taught a small portion of the lesson in broken spanish. It was still cool.


We went to the downtown part of Mar Del Plata for our P-day today so my Companion can buy some stuff for when he goes home at the end of the month. So I didn't write a letter again this week, but hopefully next week, haha. The downtown was full of shopping and stuff, probably more like the pictures that you saw. It was cool.

First Baptism

They have some candy here called Alphajores, they are super good. Honestly I would describe them to you, but I don't how. But its good. I had my first Argentina cook out. Which was way good.


Yea I think I am good on sheets for now. So don't worry about it. Thanks for sending the pictures, I hope I get them soon, haha.


Anyway. The computer I'm on is super annoying and keeps kicking me off the Internet every minute so this is all you will get this week.


Love Elder Obray