Family and Friends,
Hello all! Hope all is well out there in good ole Utah. Things are going well for me down here in Arg. We had a really busy week this week trying to get my new companion used to the city and the ward here. We had a lot of teaching appointments and had some pretty exciting stuff happen. We did have some trouble this week getting our investigators to come to church but we had some other successes that about evened it out. Oh yeah and by the way in two weeks we got 49 more missionaries here. Our number is now 278 missionaries in this mission. 100 days ago it was 180... Yeah we are about to burst at the seems out here!!
This past week had some pretty cool stuff happen. We spent most of the week meeting everyone again and inviting all our investigators and less actives to the stake conference that we had this weekend. It was really good and they talked about missionary work the entire time. In the end we sang Called to Serve as all the missionaries in the stake (two zones) walked up through the rows and stood in the front of the congregation facing them. The spanish version of the song has four verses and on the last verse everyone in the congregation stood up and sang with us and everyone was crying. The spirit was so strong in there and afterwards we had tons of members coming up to us giving references and thanking all the missionaries for everything. Hopefully that will help our members get more involved in everything!!
Also this past week we had a pretty cool thing happen. When my old companion was getting transfered we got a call from the mission president saying that he was moving him to the office. He then spoke with me for a minute and said that he would like to talk some more sometime because we really did not get much time the day I arrived here. He said to call him on Thursday and that he would set up a time to meet. So Thursday rolled around and I nervously called him at which point he said we could meet the next morning. About two minutes after we ended our call though he called back and asked what our schedule was like that day... I told him we had 5 appointments that night and he said "Bueno, I´ll drive down and go to your teaching appointments with you and your companion tonight instead of you making the trip to me tomorrow, how does that sound?" I about died. Of course I said yes though haha. Sure enough about 2 hours later we got a call saying he was outside of our apartment. We were in an appointment so we walked back and met him halfway. He then went with us to our appointments that night and taught with us and everything. It was so cool! Then afterwards we went to this restaraunt and he bought us some dinner at 9pm. It was a really good experience and we got to really get to know the President more. He is an awesome guy and a great leader. My companion said he has been here 1 1/2 years and never had the president come teach with him. It was really fun though and last night he even called and asked for our opinion if he would be ok eating the leftover food he had from the restaurant haha!
Other than that we had some pretty crazy/weird stuff happen this week. One was we say three homeless people on the side of the street walking back to our apartment at about 9pm and one of them lit the other one on fire while he was sleeping... haha I think he was fine he just lit the blanket on fire and the guy jumped up yelling "fuego! fuego!!" which means "fire! fire!" hahaha we were dying as we walked by. Another one is we say a like 12 year old girl tied up in the middle of the street with like two 8 year old boys pretending to karate chop each other and another like 5 year old laughing. No parents were in sight. We had no idea what was going on but as we walked by someone finally came out who knew the kids and told them to get off the street before a car came. Haha oh this place is weird...
Well today was a pretty good day too! We went out to this place called Once which is like a giant street vending place in the middle of the city but also within the boundries of our district. We bought some really fake soccer jerseys of a team here called River. Haha they were like 5 bucks. Then we went down to the Pink House and took some pictures there. We ended up running into a group of missionaries from the Buenos Aires South mission here doing some paperwork for their visas. We talked to them for a while and they had a senior missionary there with them and they got permission from their president to take some pictures of the sights before they re-exiled themselves to the south again haha. Anyway it was a good Pday and we had a good time taking in some of the city. This city is gigantic and has tons of stuff to do. We already started planning our next Pday haha.
This next week has some really big promises ahead of us. We have 3 baptisms planned for this next weekend but we are not entirely sure that it will go down. It is all one family, the one we got married. They didn't want to give up smoking or drinking but I dropped some scriptures hard on them and told them that as a representative of Jesus Christ I could promise them that if they gave up their habits and got baptized, they could receive more blessing than they could even imagine. Then their 8 year old son gave a beautiful prayer where he asked the Lord to help his parents listen to the "Hermanitos" (which means little brothers) and stop drinking so that the family could be baptized and be together forever. Sometimes I think the little kids understand so much more than the grown adults.
This Saturday we have a special conference at the mission offices. We are going to have none other than Elder Jeffery R. Holland and Elder D. Todd Christofferson visiting the mission and giving a big talk to us. Afterwards we are going to be able to meet them and shake their hands. I am way excited for it and seriously can't wait! Meeting an Apostle as a missionary is about the most exciting thing we could ever do here haha. I will let you know how it goes!!
As for everything else, I am doing well. The language is coming slowly but surely still. I can understand more and more every day and my grammar and vocabulary are getting better. I still can't understand all of what people say but I can almost always get the gist of what they want from me and respond accordingly. I am happy and healthy and just continuing to push on through the work! By the way I did get your emails mom and dad thank you! It is always good to see how everything is going back home and what else is going on in the regular world. I sure hope that they get in contact with all the missionaries in the Philippines soon. We will be praying for them this week for sure.
Anyway I hope everyone else is doing well. I sure love hearing from whoever writes and seeing how the fam and friends are getting along. The work out here is pushing along and never stops. We have things to do every day for sure. Thank you for all your love and prayers. Keep them up! I love you all and I will talk to you next week!
Love,
