August 13, 2012

Well let me just tell you about another awesome week in the coolest mission on erff!!

The other day we were at the Suarez family`s house and their super cute little 6 year old daughter got a new "gringa" doll. She asked me KELLIS!! COMO SE LLAMA TU HERMANA? I told her caity was my sisters name and she was like...OK! ASI LE VOY A PONER SU NOMBRE! =D haha 

We saw a couple minutes of the USA-Argentina basketball game this week...dang I forgot how fun it was to watch Basketball

We had a couple baptismal interviews this week. All 3 passed! Nicolas was baptized on Saturday. It was a really nice baptism and I gotta admit, it was really nice having a solid ward mission leader and ward missionaries. They had EVERYTHING all ready. The water was nice and warm, Nicolas had washed and ironed baptismal clothes, the talks and musical number and prelude was all assigned. There was a movie to watch before the service and while nico was changing. The only thing we did was show up and enjoy. We did set up a little table for investigators to take pamphlets and stuff. He called me Saturday night and said that he was sorry for being to embarrassed to get up and give his testimony after the ordinance, but that he really did feel something very strong during his baptism. On Sunday he came to church with real nice suit and tie. I was so impressed! He always came in jeans, and we hadnt talked about that to him yet...oops..but he is just the MAN and figured it out. He will be ordained a teacher pretty soon. 

Mirtha and Jenny will be baptized this Saturday. I wish I had time to tell you everything about them, they are so awesome! 

This Sunday the Montevideo Temple President and his wife came to our wards meetings. It was cool talking to some Americans...They have the coolest story of how they met at BYU! He also gave a really inspiring talk about how to better take advantage of our temple visit. He has served as a mission president in Ecuador and a MTC president in Columbia. I learned a lot! 

One new thing my comp and I decided to start doing is sing on the buses. People sing on the buses all the time to make a little cash, and so we decided that why couldnt we do it to spread the gospel!? ITS THE COOLEST THING EVER!! you just stand up, say a lil somethin somethin about the church, sing one of your favorite hymns and everyone loves it and then they all clap for you and we give the whole bus a pass-along card and then they try to offer you money and you´re just like no its cool!! haha could life get any better!? I SUBMIT THAT IT CANNOT! haha brian regan.

alright..well..this week is gonna be super legit. We have zone conference and 2 baptisms so hasta luego mi quierida familia!

-- 
Elder Daniel Kellis
La Mision Uruguay Montevideo Oeste
Enrique Martinez 1167
Montevideo Uruguay CP 11.800

July 23

Hola mi familia buenasa!

Whats crackin in Arizona! It looks like you are in for a couple monsoons this week! The office Elder is from Arizona and has the weather on the desktop. This week was actually really nice here. 

Elder Pace is a CAPO! We are turning Cerro around. Everyone (the APs and the other ZLs) is looking real close at cerro because it went down so much last transfer, and they are all expecting it to explode now that Elder Pace and I are together. I know it will. It feels so good to be doing things right now! I dont have too much news for you. We are having a blast as comps and working real hard. We are kinda starting from not having much going on in our area and the zone...so we did a lot of finding, doing refferal activities, vising the ex-bishops to dig out a bunch of good info. Elder Pace has been ZL for about 4 changes so got some good stuff up his sleeves.

We found out that the President of Uruguay lives in our area, I guess he didnt want to live in the "white house", but preferred living in his farmland just outside of Cerro. They also told us that you can just go knock on the door. There is always a police officer there. We decided we had to go baptise him. Turns out the person that told us didnt know what he was talking about because we got tazed...haha just kidding. No, turns out he lives in our zone but in a different ward. oh well. It was a fun idea.

Mom, you asked, we talk in English all the time. We talk a lot about the zone, what things we can do, change, what things need to happen and what needs to stop happening, we talk a lot about BYU and a little tiny tiny bit about getting home. hahaha

We have a couple really awesome families we are teaching. The last couple missionaries here baptized a bunch of kids that are all inactive now, and the ward mission leader kinda has a new direction going. Families and future Priesthood holders. It´s great being a missionary, its gratifying to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ every day, I feel so excited about being a mormon all the time. Its fun.

Love you all a bunch!

-- 
Elder Daniel Kellis
La Mision Uruguay Montevideo Oeste
Enrique Martinez 1167
Montevideo Uruguay CP 11.800

July 17

Hey family! Guess what! I´m getting a new companion! Elder PACE!!!!! Elder Pace is from New York and we started the mission together in the same MTC group. He will probably walk on to BYU for either Basketball or Football. He is about 6´7" and I´m excited to get some good work outs in the mornings in with him before getting home. He is also a great leader and basically just the man. 

This week was pretty simple. We delivered the house the other Elders were renting to the real estate agency, we had to go with them to look at it. turns out they came and robbed the metal gate door on the front of the house. Im glad we were able to get that out of our hair. Now, we are just waiting for the church attorney to get the contract finished so we can move into the new house, I would guess we will move in in 2 or 3 weeks. 

We had a meeting with the Stake President on Friday. I gotta say Dad, I think you guys were a way cooler stake presidency inviting them over for breakfast and everything! We did have a good meeting though. He is a great President. On the bus on the way back home we saw a blind man that was getting off. We got off with him and asked him if needed help getting somewhere. We told him we were missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ and he grabbed my comps arm and we helped him run a couple errands, then get him back to his bus stop. Before getting on he gave us a huge hug. I have never met such a humble happy guy! He is 24 and we are gonna get him a copy of the Book of Mormon in braille! unfortunately he doesnt live in our area, but the other Elders are already teaching him. They said he just smiled so big the entire lesson, they are going back today.

We had interviews with president yesterday and for our last full day together, we treated ourselves to burger king! ahh man it was so good! Its been so long since I had a good burger. It was only 15 dollars for the california whopper combo! haha but way worth it.

STEVE NASH ON THE LAKERS! no way! I dont think purple and yellow will look good on him..

Well, I think there might be another international strike, which just started yesterday. Good thing you just send me the package! haha im not too worried though. They just don´t want to work in the cold haha but then they are going to starve and want to work. (not true, just a joke) Mom, you asked about chap stick, Its so humid here, ive never had to use chapstick. I still have 3 just in case. Just save the money from all the packages and put it towards a new iPhone =)

shout out to Uncle Mike and Uncle Jeff for always writing me, you guys are awesome and thanks for all your love and support!

 

Elder Daniel Kellis

July 9, 2012

Hey Family! 

Thank you for your prayers, I have really felt them this week. =)

We did a little more traveling to district meetings, baptismal interviews, ect. I really love going out to Ciudad del Plata, there is a pizza restaurant that we always go to after district meeting. We ordered 2 metros of pizza. thats basically a pizza as tall as me! Its really good too. I was looking forward to that trip for the last two weeks!

Wednesday we started the morning with helping an investigator´s Mom dig a 15´ trench. We dug a trench for the sewage pipe to go from the house to the bigger trenches that go along both sides of the street. It felt good to get some hard work in. Its been too long since I did some heavy yard work! It took us about 4 hours and then the investigator, the investigator´s mom, and a member all gave us lunch. We couldnt turn down any of them because if someone cooks for you and you dont accept it, you look like a huge jerk and they wont like you anymore. So we stuffed ourselves. Ana cooked us some Panama food (she lived there for a while) it was sweet fried bananas, not too bad! later, we preached the gospel. It was awesome. haha. I love all our investigators so much! You asked about the Nuñez family, Mom. They are doing alright. They didnt come to church on Sunday, He hasnt left his front door for 3 months, and she is sick, so we are trying to figure something out there. They have quite the history. 

Thursday we were at Ana and Adrian´s and we got a call from Elder de Hoyos and Elder Ramos from the other side of our ward. Their house had been robbed, they only took 2 cameras, an mp3 player, portable DVD player and speakers. Whatever they can find to get them drugs. Its sad becasue they trade the camera for only like 20 bucks worth of drugs. They are so addicted that the drug lord can get away with jippin em like that. So we headed over there that night and didnt get home til like 12am. The next day the two of them stayed home while we did all the errands to buy a new door, cement, hire a welder, ect. It cost us a whole day and 100 bucks. Sunday we were taking calls of all the zone reporting their weekly numbers when we got another call from Elder de Hoyos. They broke through the window this time and took their gas tank. (each house here has like a 20 gallon gas tank hooked up to the stove and oven) Its got about a 160 dollar value. You can´t call the police becasue they dont care anymore, they wont do anything about it. Elder Ramos only got an hour of sleep Saturday night becasue he felt so nervous that something would happen while he was sleeping, so you can imagine how anxious he was to get out of there last night. We had them pack all their bags and got a brother from the ward to bring them and all their stuff to another house in the zone. Today we gotta go find them a new house. 

Its kinda sad becasue the bad people here in Cerro are into drugs and the good people are discouraged because of all the evilness going around. Some parents can´t leave their house because their children will steal their stuff to buy drugs. The big drug here is PASTA BASE which is a mix of glass, rat poison, and some other crazy stuff. The government legalized marijuana this last week to try to calm down the pasta base. Its just a huge joke. The other day we were walking down the street and this dude yells "MIRA!!! MARIJUANA LEGAL!!!" The gospel shines so much brighter in dark places which is awesome for missionary work!

I love you guys so much!

July 2, 2012

Hey Family! 

Thank you for your prayers, I have really felt them this week. =)

We did a little more traveling to district meetings, baptismal interviews, ect. I really love going out to Ciudad del Plata, there is a pizza restaurant that we always go to after district meeting. We ordered 2 metros of pizza. thats basically a pizza as tall as me! Its really good too. I was looking forward to that trip for the last two weeks!

Wednesday we started the morning with helping an investigator´s Mom dig a 15´ trench. We dug a trench for the sewage pipe to go from the house to the bigger trenches that go along both sides of the street. It felt good to get some hard work in. Its been too long since I did some heavy yard work! It took us about 4 hours and then the investigator, the investigator´s mom, and a member all gave us lunch. We couldnt turn down any of them because if someone cooks for you and you dont accept it, you look like a huge jerk and they wont like you anymore. So we stuffed ourselves. Ana cooked us some Panama food (she lived there for a while) it was sweet fried bananas, not too bad! later, we preached the gospel. It was awesome. haha. I love all our investigators so much! You asked about the Nuñez family, Mom. They are doing alright. They didnt come to church on Sunday, He hasnt left his front door for 3 months, and she is sick, so we are trying to figure something out there. They have quite the history. 

Thursday we were at Ana and Adrian´s and we got a call from Elder de Hoyos and Elder Ramos from the other side of our ward. Their house had been robbed, they only took 2 cameras, an mp3 player, portable DVD player and speakers. Whatever they can find to get them drugs. Its sad becasue they trade the camera for only like 20 bucks worth of drugs. They are so addicted that the drug lord can get away with jippin em like that. So we headed over there that night and didnt get home til like 12am. The next day the two of them stayed home while we did all the errands to buy a new door, cement, hire a welder, ect. It cost us a whole day and 100 bucks. Sunday we were taking calls of all the zone reporting their weekly numbers when we got another call from Elder de Hoyos. They broke through the window this time and took their gas tank. (each house here has like a 20 gallon gas tank hooked up to the stove and oven) Its got about a 160 dollar value. You can´t call the police becasue they dont care anymore, they wont do anything about it. Elder Ramos only got an hour of sleep Saturday night becasue he felt so nervous that something would happen while he was sleeping, so you can imagine how anxious he was to get out of there last night. We had them pack all their bags and got a brother from the ward to bring them and all their stuff to another house in the zone. Today we gotta go find them a new house. 

Its kinda sad becasue the bad people here in Cerro are into drugs and the good people are discouraged because of all the evilness going around. Some parents can´t leave their house because their children will steal their stuff to buy drugs. The big drug here is PASTA BASE which is a mix of glass, rat poison, and some other crazy stuff. The government legalized marijuana this last week to try to calm down the pasta base. Its just a huge joke. The other day we were walking down the street and this dude yells "MIRA!!! MARIJUANA LEGAL!!!" The gospel shines so much brighter in dark places which is awesome for missionary work!

I love you guys so much!

June 26, 2012

Well its good to know that you are all doing so well. I am enjoying life as a missionary here in cerro. I finally got some pictures to send. hope you enjoy. Mom, thanks for sharing your story about the temple, that was really sweet. I want to go to the temple so bad! I havent been since we first got to the mission. We might be allowed to go the p-day of transfers around 17 of july. Its hard because pdays are always mondays and mondays the temple is closed. But transfer week pday is on tuesday. 

This week we had a lot more time to work in our area which was nice. We found a really awesome couple with 8 kids! They are slowly learning more about the gospel, but im excited to see how things go. We`ve only had two lessons with them, but they really enjoy our visits and guess what!!! somehow they found some hot peppers and they gave us an entire grocery bag full of em! FINALLY some spicy food! haha this week I ate some wierd stuff. cow intestines and pig skin. I dont recommend it. haha

I was looking at the history of Cerro. The last Sunday that our ward didnt have a single investigator at church was in August of 2011. We have had goose-eggs for the last two weeks. It bothers me a lot because I feel like we dont use our time wisely and Im tired of being awake alone until 11am. But hey, Im learning a lot about the scriptures and watching LOTS of conference talks! =D My comp has a hard time sleeping at night. I talked to him about our obedience and a couple things we could do better and he got teary eyed and explained that he wants to be better so bad but just doesnt get sleep at night. So we dont study together, or pray together very much, which weakens our companionship spiritually. Thats the most important tool we need when we leave the front door, and when we dont have it, things get rough, your concience gets heavy, guilt sneaks in, and discouragement defeats faith. Im praying so hard to do my best.

Montevideo....hmm...You asked whats better about montevideo. I love being close to the offices and the temple. I love seeing the beach all the time. I love being at the top of cerro and seeing the city at night. There are some awesome members here. I feel like Im back at El Mirage. Its super ghetto here and the people have that funny gangsta-atitude. It makes me laugh a lot. There are a lot of really nasty houses and poor people with 2 nasty yellow and black front teeth and like 5 bleeding sick pets but they have direct tv and a brand new computer and a smart phone. Its pretty sad.

Hey can you send me pictures of the baptism!? I was praying for caity this week that she would have an awesome time at EFY.

Well, love you all! I havent been getting any of those forward emails of all my missionary friends...keep sending em! =)

Abrazo grandote

June 18, 2012

Hey family!

It was great to hear about your adventurous week of traveling and what not. I guess you could say that we had a similar week. We were on the city bus for probably a total of 15 hours this week. The most fun part is that they stuff people in there so bad that you couldnt scratch your nose if you wanted to. There are about 5 buses and 5 taxis to every car here. We traveled a lot this week. Monday we have meeting with the district leaders. Tuesday we go pick up all the mail and bring it to the district meetings. Wednesday (first wednesday of each month) we had concilio at President Heatons house with all the ZLs in the mission. Friday our zone had interviews and we did a zone training meeting with the APs. Then we had to back to the offices to print off a map for a missionary in our zone who is opening the area with a young man from Salto who is gonna come do a mini-mission. 

Tuesday we went out to Delta del Tigre and the district out there. The district leader taught some wierd things like "missionaries can recieve personal revelation on how to correct the bishop in his calling" and made all the missionaries put up all thier weekly numbers and basically said they all sucked. Im glad we were there this week because we only go twice a transfer. We took care of that real fast. I heard one mission president say from a Buenos Aires mission that the 2 most incredible things about being a mission president is to see how stupid 20 year old missionaries can be but also its amazing how great and noble and heroic 20-year old missionaries can be. After the meeing we went and ate some real good pizza with the sister missionaries in our zone. They needed a little comforting after the meeting. One of the sisters in our zone is from artigas, her Mom passed away 2 weeks ago and is training a sister from Utah. She is a great example to me of pulling through trials and faith. 

Concilio was awesome mostly because we had american food haha but I also really enjoyed seeing a bunch of friends from the mission and being with President and his wife, being close to the temple is such a special feeling. Everytime we come down that street and see the angel moroni I feel so at home. I learned A LOT from the meeing and decided I need to be a lot more confident and excited about my zone. 

We had kinda anticipated it but one of the Elders from our zone decided to go home. I cant tell you how sad it made me to know that one of the missionaries in my zone was going to loose so many blessings. The APs told us on our way back to the offices after concilio and It was raining super hard. I didnt realize how much the mission meant to me until I got that news. Man that hit me hard. The president is awesome. He did everything he could to keep him here. He took a day out of his CRAZY ridiculously busy life as Mission president and took him to the temple, brought him to the mission home and talked it out but I guess he didnt understand the convenants he was making inside the temple. The area is going to suffer a lot because his companion came here to Cerro with me from Rivera and is going to have that young man from Salto as a companion. He´ll be opening the area.

Interviews with President were awesome! I learned so much and he helped me out a lot. That night we had a ward dinner and a devotional with the temple president which was really fun. We had 3 temple sealings this saturday just from our ward! So the ward was in a awesome temple mood. I got to know a bunch of members which was good. The members are always so awesome. Its awesome how no matter where you go or what country, you can count on meeting some awesome people. 

Its been raining all week. Our area is 90% dirt roads which has made it fun walking in the mud all day. Its nasty because there is no organized waste system so all the bags of trash get thrown around and eaten up by the dogs who starve in the streets. Its awesome seeing wet nasty muddy dogs eating poopy diapers in the middle of the streets. I feel like glendale dump is cleaner than my proselyting area haha. But let me show you this awesome scripture.

 1 And it came to pass that they did go forth, and began to preach the word of God unto the people, entering into their synagogues, and into their houses; yea, and even they did preach the word in their streets.

 2 And it came to pass that after much labor among them, they began to have success among the ^apoor class of people; for behold, they were cast out of the synagogues because of the coarseness of their apparel—

 3 Therefore they were not permitted to enter into their synagogues to worship God, being esteemed as filthiness; therefore they were poor; yea, they were esteemed by their brethren as ^adross; therefore they were ^bpoor as to things of the world; and also they were poor in heart.

 4 Now, as Alma was teaching and speaking unto the people upon the hill ^aOnidah, there came a great ^bmultitude unto him, who were those of whom we have been speaking, of whom were ^cpoor in heart, because of their poverty as to the things of the world.

 5 And they came unto Alma; and the one who was the foremost among them said unto him: Behold, ^awhat shall these my brethren do, for they are ^bdespised of all men because of their poverty, yea, and more especially by our priests; for they have ^ccast us out of our synagogues which we have labored abundantly to build with our own hands; and they have cast us out because of our exceeding poverty; and we have ^dno place to worship our God; and behold, ^ewhat shall we do?

 6 And now when Alma heard this, he turned him about, his face immediately towards him, and he beheld with great joy; for he beheld that their ^aafflictions had truly ^bhumbled them, and that they were in a ^cpreparation to hear the word.

Dad, our area is basically the Cerro Cemeterio and our streets where we live is Cont. Russia and Liberia. 

I havent taken any pictures because I dont really take my camera around. Im not even supposed to take my backpack around, just my scriptures in my hand because of all the robberies. So sorry I dont have any awesome pictures to send you. 

My companion is Elder Miranda from Panama. He is such a stud! He is 23. He has such a good heart and loves everyone he meets. 

Congrats on your coupon Dad! HAPPY FATHERS DAY!!!!!!!

Con mucho amor,