New Companion and Study Time

Dear dad,

 

Elder Sirrine and a big potato

I don´t have a cd player yet but I think that the misión is going to give us one. Thanks for the updates on the Ward and you guys. Also thanks for the thought. You guys are awesome. This week the only two things that really happened are that we put a baptismal date for Maria Elena our investigator and she accepted it! I am super excited and I think I´ll have a baptism in February. That´ll be way fun. And the other cool thing is what happened with some drunks. One group was outside a bar and when we stopped by to talk to them they offered us any drink that we wanted I could have had any sort of alcohol that exists. But we just had water and some Sprite. We also taught them a Little about what we do as missionaries and who we are. They were some funny people. When we tried to leave one of them took a picture with me. I think I was the first north american that a lot of them have ever seen. That was a lot of fun. M y companion is Elder Sarmiento, he´s from Chile, he´s 20 years old and he is a convert to the church. The thing that I love the most about him is that he has an extreme love and knowledge of the scriptures. He is teaching me to love the Bible and now that I am studying that I am falling in love with it as well. I didn´t realize that the scriptures were as awesome as they are. This is an amazing thing for me. We had our Ward misión leader tell us that my gift from God is that I am humble and have an extreme desire to learn. He told me that I have grown a lot spiritually since I got here and he thinks that I´ll start to grow even more rapidly now. He also said that i will be a big help for the church and have a successful misión. He told my companion that he has the ability to memorize the scriptures and know where the references are and to explain them. That was a very spiritual and awesome moment for me. This week has been really cool and I look forward to this transfer. I think that things will go really well for me here and that this área will start to grow. Love you guys tons,

Elder Sirrine Cooking

Study Time!

 

Love, Michael

Talk With and Evangelist

Dear Dad,

Christmas Dinner at a Members House

One of the pastors that we found is named Mario Coronel. He was a taxi driver for a while and has been a pastor too. He also said that he´s spent some years doing missionary work in all of South America. He told us that a couple times in Chile he´s been beaten, robbed and had all sorts of scary things happen because he wanted to preach the gospel to the people. He was also way understanding of us as missionaries trying to teach to people that a lot of the time don´t want to listen. I think that the coolest thing he told us was that the reason he did and does missionary work is to give back to Christ. He has memorized and marked all of the references in the Bible that talk about the crucifixtion of our Savior and whenever he brings someone to the gospel and helps someone else find Christ he thinks of it as giving back for one drop of blood that Jesus shed or one of the times he got hit with the whip. That was one of the coolest things that I have heard about why someone does missionary work. It´s all to give as much as we can to God. Because God has everything and gives us everything so the only thing that we can give to Him is us. We can give our time and our talents to help the people come to Him and we can give our hearts to his service. That´s my new goal as a missionary, to give to God because of all that he has given to me. To try and be the best that I can so that he can be proud of me and so that I can be proud of myself. That´s my new focus and because of that I have been doing a better job as a missionary. When we do things because of love we always have the desire to do them. The greatest motivator is true love. Love for God and love for our fellow man. That is why the people that have Charity will be better off in the ressurection. Because the most important thing to have is Charity.



Christmas dinner close-up

Love, Michael







Elder Sirrine's District in a Van Elders Only

New Year's Dinner with Zone

 



Elder Sirrine and his District

 

Dear Mom

 

 

Thanks for the updates from home. I will definitely take better care of my camera when I get it. The updates from this week are that my companion is going to leave at  o´clock today and that I don´t know when my new companion will get here. This week we´ve had a lot of good lessons and I actually found two new families that sounded like they´d be interested in learning more about the gospel. The problem was that when we passed by to actually teach them they weren´t at home. I also found two Evangelical pastors this week and both of them were way cool. They are happy to sit down and talk to the missionaries because they believe a lot of the same things that we do. They were also awesome because they know how hard it can be to preach the gospel to the people here so they were supportive of us and are willing to share soda or food when we pass by. They were some really cool people. My new companion that is coming is going to be a Chileno and his name is Elder Sarmiento. I think that this next transfer is going to be rather interesting and I know that I´m going to miss Elder Salas a ton. He´s going to Tierra del Fuego to be a district leader now. That was pretty cool to learn. It´s sad to see how empty our pension is now with only my things out. I look forward to learning a lot in this next transfer and I hope that everything goes well for you guys at home. I haven´t had time to buy a pillow yet. I will hopefully be able to do that sometime this week or next week. Thanks for the advice and I will be sure to do the best I can. It´s alright, I think there will be a couple of Gringo missionaries coming. We´re also getting a new companionship because we´re opening a new area this transfer so I´ll still have people to speak English with. Lots of love.

 

Love, Michael

 

 

 

New Years Eve With The Zone

 Dear Mom,

Thanks for the awesome update. I loved it. I had a really cool New years this year. We got together with most of our zone in the stake center and played ping pong, soccer and Uno, we also had a lot of really good chicken and had a lot of fun. It was a good day and I really enjoyed it. Happy new year and I love you guys a ton. Two other thoughts 1: Feed my sheep is apaciente mis ovejas or give peace to my sheep and 2: mercy is misericordia which is like the misery of the lamb is mercy for us.

Love, Michael

 

Elder Sirrine's Trelew North Zone

Dear Dad,

Thanks for the update and the cool thoughts. Those news stories in your other email were awesome and hilarious. This new years was way cool because we got together with all of the missionaries in our zone to play around and we all ate a really good chicken dinner. We also shared one of the coolest spiritual experiences in our lives. My companion gave a blessing to a woman who had never had a child that she would get pregnant and she did! But she lost the baby afterwards because she smoked and drank and stuff which was way sad. My cool experience was that in the MTC one night we were talking with my district and one of the Elders told us about his friend who had committed suicide. He said that in the MTC he had felt him close and in one of the letters from his family his mom told him that the mom of his friend said that that Elder had another angel watching over him. That was one of the most spiritual conversations that I´ve had with people. It was intense. At midnight there were fireworks everywhere here. It was kind of crazy to stand out in the street and see all the fireworks go off. I don´t have any pictures of that to send you guys because my camera got stolen this week. And I did everything I could to track it down but it hasn´t come back yet. I´m leaving that up to Heavenly Father now that I´ve done all that I can do. So, if you want pictures I can look for a camera here and if you send me money I can buy one or you guys could send me one and it would just take 6 ish weeks to get to me. However you want to do that just tell me in an email. I´ll keep my eye open for any good cameras that I can see here and I asked my companion to send me the pictures he has from new years and from Christmas so we´ll see if I can get those to you guys today. If not know that the reason I can´t send you pictures for a while is because I don´t have a camera. The transfer ends on Sunday and I am not entirely sure how I feel about that. I know that I´m going to miss my companion a ton and that it´ll be weird to have a new companion and possibly a new area as well. I´m sort of looking forward to what will come this week. As far as the work and other things go for us we´ve got a group of people that we have started teaching a bit but they aren´t progressing a ton and people are starting to come home from vacations now. So, things are starting to get a bit better for us and I hope that they continue to improve. I´ve got hope that this area will start to progress this year, the ward is making a renewed effort to do their home teaching and to be actively helping the missionaries. We now have someone that is in charge of the lunch calendar and we are not going to lack for lunches if the relief society can do anything about it. It´s cool to see how the new year brings a new energy into people. I hope that you all have success with your new years resolutions and I am looking forward to the things that this year will bring for me as well. I love you guys tons and miss you all a lot.

Love, Michael