Monday, September 30, 2013 12:15 PM
Querido familia
Well mom it looks like you already stole the thunder of my email. You’ll find out why later. Whenever it is my ¨turn¨ for family home evening if you could read the quotes in preach my gospel in page 12 I believe that would be great. I especially like the one by Joseph F Smith. I will start with Dad’s birthday.... All of our citas fell through we were trying and trying and having no success, it was really hard. We picked up Pablo Bulacio to come with us to lessons that didn’t happen. (He is part of a part member less active family). Then to end the day we went to his house and had a lesson with him and his mom who are both less active members. The hermana confessed to us that she felt something was missing from her life that it wasn’t the same as before. We then talked about the importance of the sacrament and bore testimony of this sacred time to think about the Savior, His atonement, and how you will improve in the next week. As we spoke tears filled her eyes and I think now she knows what she was missing. We brought them to the Blanco baptism, I sent two pictures. It was a baptism that we did with the whole zone and 8 people were baptized! How exciting! Even though our "numbers" for Tuesday weren’t good I felt satisfied because we were there to say to Hermana Bulacio what she needed to hear and were able to witness the Savior and the gospel helping a person. I wish I could tell you that they came to church on Sunday but I can’t. It rained a lot in the morning and no one came. It was like God was testing the faith of the Ward because after church it didn’t rain any more, and most of the Ward failed the test. Where usually we have around 100 or more in sacrament meeting we had 24 or something. I was pretty disappointed to call Hermana Bulacio and hear her say they couldn’t come because of the rain. Oh well, patience in adversity. The meat of my message is about the Ward. I recently found out that the Ward doesn’t home teach the inactive families and that the Ward has basically no contact with them apart from what the missionaries tell them. Let me tell you right now that this is wrong. Missionaries are not here to do everything the Ward feels too uncomfortable to do; we really can’t do much good at all without the Ward. Recent converts are like babies; ultimately a person should have the faith that no matter the circumstance they will be true to the church. But recent converts don’t have that capacity yet. Missionaries have another job to do than babysit and aren’t always going to be there and the Ward needs to fellowship them. You don’t just except a baby to walk on its own without help from a parent, they need someone with more experience to lead and guide them until they can do it for themselves. There is one convert lady who has almost no friends in the church and talks to almost no one but is at church every single Sunday, and comes and cleans the church, and comes to every church activity. The other elders who baptized her said "we don’t even show her the support we should". There is a special place in the celestial kingdom for people like that, but the reality is that those types of people are few and far between and that often for a person to be like that they must first be helped by their fellow Ward members. I am not going to ask you to give a reference to the missionaries, if you do that is wonderful. I am going to ask you, that as I try to do my duty as a member of the church to reach out to others that you will do the same. Matthew 10: 37 and 38 says "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross and followeth after me, is not worthy of me." When I read that this week it was like, “Whoa, Am I really doing my part, I have taken His name upon me and am I reaching out to my neighbors and trying to help and love those outside my comfort zone? I’m not going to tell you want to do but I invite you to prayerfully consider what the Lord expects of you personally as a member of his church to do to reach out to your fellow brothers and sisters. Dad, you have a leadership position over this as president of the Elders Quorum in your role in home teaching. Thank you for making sure that those less actives are getting home taught. That might be one of the best things you can do. Jesus said that we don’t send doctors to those who are well we send them to those who are sick. The focus of a Ward should be on those that are "sick" and without the fullness of the blessings of the gospel in their lives. Something like a block party is exactly the kind of thing you should be doing and like you said all the people now know that you are members and feel a bit more comfortable in your home. So when they have an aunt die, someone loses their job, they have a kid going through a really rough time doing things they shouldn’t, they know that you have something special and could very likely come to you with questions. Keep up the good work my beloved family. Also, Dad I don’t really remember any of the stories of converts that you had on your mission, if you could send me an experience or two that would be awesome! Also for you returned missionaries I was reading a scripture that reminded me of you, It is Ammon after their work with the Lamanites glorying in the greatness of God. Alma 26:12 "Many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever." so remember your missions and the many miracles that you witnessed and may you praise his name forever. This work is great and it is hard, harder than anything else I imagined but I don’t believe that I could really call myself a member of the church or a follower of Jesucristo if I wasn’t out doing it.
Love,
Elder Andrew
Monday, September 30, 2013 12:23 PM
I forgot to say I do get to watch general conference and Elder Dodge told me they have a Little room for the Yankees. Thank goodness, my castillano is improving, but not that much haha. In the church at like 1 to 3 and 5 to 7 we don’t watch priesthood because it is so late, the people here just all like to party.
Querido familia
Well mom it looks like you already stole the thunder of my email. You’ll find out why later. Whenever it is my ¨turn¨ for family home evening if you could read the quotes in preach my gospel in page 12 I believe that would be great. I especially like the one by Joseph F Smith. I will start with Dad’s birthday.... All of our citas fell through we were trying and trying and having no success, it was really hard. We picked up Pablo Bulacio to come with us to lessons that didn’t happen. (He is part of a part member less active family). Then to end the day we went to his house and had a lesson with him and his mom who are both less active members. The hermana confessed to us that she felt something was missing from her life that it wasn’t the same as before. We then talked about the importance of the sacrament and bore testimony of this sacred time to think about the Savior, His atonement, and how you will improve in the next week. As we spoke tears filled her eyes and I think now she knows what she was missing. We brought them to the Blanco baptism, I sent two pictures. It was a baptism that we did with the whole zone and 8 people were baptized! How exciting! Even though our "numbers" for Tuesday weren’t good I felt satisfied because we were there to say to Hermana Bulacio what she needed to hear and were able to witness the Savior and the gospel helping a person. I wish I could tell you that they came to church on Sunday but I can’t. It rained a lot in the morning and no one came. It was like God was testing the faith of the Ward because after church it didn’t rain any more, and most of the Ward failed the test. Where usually we have around 100 or more in sacrament meeting we had 24 or something. I was pretty disappointed to call Hermana Bulacio and hear her say they couldn’t come because of the rain. Oh well, patience in adversity. The meat of my message is about the Ward. I recently found out that the Ward doesn’t home teach the inactive families and that the Ward has basically no contact with them apart from what the missionaries tell them. Let me tell you right now that this is wrong. Missionaries are not here to do everything the Ward feels too uncomfortable to do; we really can’t do much good at all without the Ward. Recent converts are like babies; ultimately a person should have the faith that no matter the circumstance they will be true to the church. But recent converts don’t have that capacity yet. Missionaries have another job to do than babysit and aren’t always going to be there and the Ward needs to fellowship them. You don’t just except a baby to walk on its own without help from a parent, they need someone with more experience to lead and guide them until they can do it for themselves. There is one convert lady who has almost no friends in the church and talks to almost no one but is at church every single Sunday, and comes and cleans the church, and comes to every church activity. The other elders who baptized her said "we don’t even show her the support we should". There is a special place in the celestial kingdom for people like that, but the reality is that those types of people are few and far between and that often for a person to be like that they must first be helped by their fellow Ward members. I am not going to ask you to give a reference to the missionaries, if you do that is wonderful. I am going to ask you, that as I try to do my duty as a member of the church to reach out to others that you will do the same. Matthew 10: 37 and 38 says "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross and followeth after me, is not worthy of me." When I read that this week it was like, “Whoa, Am I really doing my part, I have taken His name upon me and am I reaching out to my neighbors and trying to help and love those outside my comfort zone? I’m not going to tell you want to do but I invite you to prayerfully consider what the Lord expects of you personally as a member of his church to do to reach out to your fellow brothers and sisters. Dad, you have a leadership position over this as president of the Elders Quorum in your role in home teaching. Thank you for making sure that those less actives are getting home taught. That might be one of the best things you can do. Jesus said that we don’t send doctors to those who are well we send them to those who are sick. The focus of a Ward should be on those that are "sick" and without the fullness of the blessings of the gospel in their lives. Something like a block party is exactly the kind of thing you should be doing and like you said all the people now know that you are members and feel a bit more comfortable in your home. So when they have an aunt die, someone loses their job, they have a kid going through a really rough time doing things they shouldn’t, they know that you have something special and could very likely come to you with questions. Keep up the good work my beloved family. Also, Dad I don’t really remember any of the stories of converts that you had on your mission, if you could send me an experience or two that would be awesome! Also for you returned missionaries I was reading a scripture that reminded me of you, It is Ammon after their work with the Lamanites glorying in the greatness of God. Alma 26:12 "Many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever." so remember your missions and the many miracles that you witnessed and may you praise his name forever. This work is great and it is hard, harder than anything else I imagined but I don’t believe that I could really call myself a member of the church or a follower of Jesucristo if I wasn’t out doing it.
Love,
Elder Andrew
Monday, September 30, 2013 12:23 PM
I forgot to say I do get to watch general conference and Elder Dodge told me they have a Little room for the Yankees. Thank goodness, my castillano is improving, but not that much haha. In the church at like 1 to 3 and 5 to 7 we don’t watch priesthood because it is so late, the people here just all like to party.
Monday, September 23, 2013 12:28 PM
Dear Family!
Well dad I wish that knocking doors was a thing of the past, but if you aren´t getting references from members and you don´t have lessons.... there isn´t much else to do, but we have gotten a few appointments from it and are excited for a family who we are going back for this week because they were busy with a birthday when we found them but were very nice and gave us water and whatnot. Speaking of birthdays FELIZ CUMPLEAÑO viajito (HAPPY BIRTHDAY old man) congrats on one year closer to the spirit world! We have a lot of appointments tomorrow so it already looks like a promising day, and even though I try to work hard every day I´ll really do it on your birthday. I'll just convert a whole church of evangelistas or something haha. It is funny mom that you say dad said everything you wanted to say but still found a way to write a page and a half haha. Thank you for the story that is awesome and I will remember that the next time a dog gives me problems. Autos are cars the whole bleeping thing was supposed to be a joke about how much the cars honk at each other. This week was Elder Aldanas birthday and we had cake with a member and he seemed to have a good day, I gave him a pencil a watch and a candy bar and today I gave him some socks because he has like three nasty pairs and I have like 30 almost new ones. Today we all cleaned the pension together so maybe my example helped out haha, but it looks and smells a lot better. Also for birthdays here people will get huge banners that have Mickey Mouse, Bart Simpson, Betty Boop, or other figures on them and hang them across the street with the person their age and such, maybe you could do that for dad. Elder Aldana said he wanted to write you so if you get an email all in castillano unfortunately it isn’t me haha. We had stake conference this week and I sat in the very back and couldn´t really hear or understand much, but we did get the information of all the priests in the ward to accompany us and we are definitely going to use that. We had another week with out much success and we have been thinking a lot about self improvement and made a bunch of goals as a pension (part of the reason we actually cleaned today). Elder Aldana and I have been trying to pray more because of how important it is. I really love my personal study time in the morning, sometimes I feel like a balloon, throughout the day I get deflated and then with my study in the morning I´m pumped up for the day. If you are having a tough time don´t forget your study time. I had Elder Juarez design a baptismal calendar in the ciber for me, I got the idea from a teacher in the MTC. It should help our investigators remember what they need to do and take their responsibility more seriously. At least that is what I hope. I have been trying to read some of the new testament everyday and I really love it. I realized that a lot of sayings like the golden rule can be found in Matthew when Jesus is giving his sermon on the mount! pretty cool! We did an exchange on Saturday with the zone leaders that live with us, I went with Elder Dodge and we taught a few lessons. It was only an exchange from 3 to 9 but it was really good. We were going into the church to teach a lesson in the chapel when some people walking by asked if they could use the bathroom. Oh course we let them in, and then we had them trapped! haha, We talked about the Book of Mormon because of a question and a bit about the church and because they live in our area Elder Aldana and I have an appointment with them tomorrow in the chapel. The thing I probably learned the most from the exchange was that we need to make better plans. Sometimes if we get home a little late then Elder Aldana says we will just plan the next day. That didn´t really sit right with me, and now I´m going to make sure that we always plan before going to bed. With good plans all is possible and it all starts with the plans. I am also trying to take more courage and more initiative in the work rather than letting Elder Aldana do the hard spanish stuff. For example, I am carrying the phone today and already made a phone call. It was hard and Elder Aldana had to help me a bit but I can do it, and I need to do it. Why am I not hearing the missionary stories from home? I am going to use a missionary skill right now. will you give a reference to the missionaries in our ward by this Sunday? I know that if you join in the missionary effort in our ward your lives will be blessed and your son will be happy. I love you and hope your week totally rocks!
Love,
Elder Andrew
Dear Family!
Well dad I wish that knocking doors was a thing of the past, but if you aren´t getting references from members and you don´t have lessons.... there isn´t much else to do, but we have gotten a few appointments from it and are excited for a family who we are going back for this week because they were busy with a birthday when we found them but were very nice and gave us water and whatnot. Speaking of birthdays FELIZ CUMPLEAÑO viajito (HAPPY BIRTHDAY old man) congrats on one year closer to the spirit world! We have a lot of appointments tomorrow so it already looks like a promising day, and even though I try to work hard every day I´ll really do it on your birthday. I'll just convert a whole church of evangelistas or something haha. It is funny mom that you say dad said everything you wanted to say but still found a way to write a page and a half haha. Thank you for the story that is awesome and I will remember that the next time a dog gives me problems. Autos are cars the whole bleeping thing was supposed to be a joke about how much the cars honk at each other. This week was Elder Aldanas birthday and we had cake with a member and he seemed to have a good day, I gave him a pencil a watch and a candy bar and today I gave him some socks because he has like three nasty pairs and I have like 30 almost new ones. Today we all cleaned the pension together so maybe my example helped out haha, but it looks and smells a lot better. Also for birthdays here people will get huge banners that have Mickey Mouse, Bart Simpson, Betty Boop, or other figures on them and hang them across the street with the person their age and such, maybe you could do that for dad. Elder Aldana said he wanted to write you so if you get an email all in castillano unfortunately it isn’t me haha. We had stake conference this week and I sat in the very back and couldn´t really hear or understand much, but we did get the information of all the priests in the ward to accompany us and we are definitely going to use that. We had another week with out much success and we have been thinking a lot about self improvement and made a bunch of goals as a pension (part of the reason we actually cleaned today). Elder Aldana and I have been trying to pray more because of how important it is. I really love my personal study time in the morning, sometimes I feel like a balloon, throughout the day I get deflated and then with my study in the morning I´m pumped up for the day. If you are having a tough time don´t forget your study time. I had Elder Juarez design a baptismal calendar in the ciber for me, I got the idea from a teacher in the MTC. It should help our investigators remember what they need to do and take their responsibility more seriously. At least that is what I hope. I have been trying to read some of the new testament everyday and I really love it. I realized that a lot of sayings like the golden rule can be found in Matthew when Jesus is giving his sermon on the mount! pretty cool! We did an exchange on Saturday with the zone leaders that live with us, I went with Elder Dodge and we taught a few lessons. It was only an exchange from 3 to 9 but it was really good. We were going into the church to teach a lesson in the chapel when some people walking by asked if they could use the bathroom. Oh course we let them in, and then we had them trapped! haha, We talked about the Book of Mormon because of a question and a bit about the church and because they live in our area Elder Aldana and I have an appointment with them tomorrow in the chapel. The thing I probably learned the most from the exchange was that we need to make better plans. Sometimes if we get home a little late then Elder Aldana says we will just plan the next day. That didn´t really sit right with me, and now I´m going to make sure that we always plan before going to bed. With good plans all is possible and it all starts with the plans. I am also trying to take more courage and more initiative in the work rather than letting Elder Aldana do the hard spanish stuff. For example, I am carrying the phone today and already made a phone call. It was hard and Elder Aldana had to help me a bit but I can do it, and I need to do it. Why am I not hearing the missionary stories from home? I am going to use a missionary skill right now. will you give a reference to the missionaries in our ward by this Sunday? I know that if you join in the missionary effort in our ward your lives will be blessed and your son will be happy. I love you and hope your week totally rocks!
Love,
Elder Andrew
Monday, September 16, 2013
Primero yo contestaré las preguntas de mama. (First I will answer mom’s questions)Your Spanish makes sense! But then again if it is wrong I probably wouldn’t be able to tell because that is how I would say it! A lady in the Ward washes our clothes for free! So that is nice. For food, I always eat cereal in the morning, a member always feeds us for lunch and then we either go without dinner or just have a snack. Don’t worry about me and food the people here are worse food pushers than Grandpa so I’m more worried about me engordando (gaining weight) than anything else. I actually did weigh myself and I am 109 kilos, not bad huh. We get mail every three weeks and I didn’t get your package, there is probably about a 70 percent chance that mail sent arrives I would figure, but no worries. The only thing I really would need would be some flash drives to back up my camera with in case it gets stolen, but maybe I can just buy those here with my debit card. (I asked if it was ok for people to e-mail him or if they should write letters and send to the mission home. Here is his response.) They can email me, but I won’t have much time to respond personally, write the mission home. Like I said they bring us the mail from there every three weeks I think. This morning we did insanity (which is a kind of work out), and it was insane, I got pretty tired from it, but then again I am just a fat old missionary. It reminded me of Matthew and how he would do insanity con (with) Johnny. Tell Matthew to find out how Johnny, Prescott, and Mike are doing. Tell them that I love em and to keep up the good work. Cultural notes: The weather has been wacko. I got here and it was pretty much perfect, maybe a bit cold. Then it rained all day one day and was freezing. Then it was super hot the next day and really humid. Then it started up with the raining and freezing again, it has been raining the past couple of days, and I don’t think I’ve seen the sun for a few days, due to the cloud cover. But my cold and water stuff work really well so no worries. Oh and about the keyboard; the computers are Spanish so when I write in English everything has a red line under it like it is spelled wrong, so if my spelling is bad in English blame it on that haha. In the train, which we take once a week at least for meetings, there are always people selling stuff. They will walk into your car, Yell out their little spiel and then put whatever they are selling in front of every passenger and then move on to the next car. The stuff they sell is sometimes weird, too. Like a man was selling sewing kits the other day, que raro (how strange). They will also sometimes do it on the colectivos (buses) from the main station in Lanus. They give their spiel, sell a few and then hop off and go back to the station. It can be Handy if you are hungry and they are selling snacks. The autos acá (cars here? I didn’t understand this) really like to talk but their language is really fowl so it is always bleeped out. Todos las casas tienen reyas,(All the houses have bars or gates or fences) and then have bars on their windows. So if we ever knock doors we do a lot of talking through windows. Elder Aldana and I came up with the joke for the people that don’t even open their windows; they just part their blinds and then shake their fingers at us. When those people are knocking on the gates of heaven Jesus will just part the curtain and shake his finger at them. We had a good laugh but maybe that is a bit sacreligious and I hope those people will find their way to this gospel whether in this life or the next. People for heat will just turn their ovens on. All the ovens are gas so there is just a flame or two on the stove. I kind of wondered “shouldn’t there be a pot or something on that" the first time I saw it but then I figured out what it was for. The people here think that English people speak English much better than Americans psssh what do they know haha. Also if someone here ever needed to just quickly build a house or something they wouldn’t even have to drive to a local home depot, there are plenty of supplies for building houses just in the sidewalk! Just piles of bricks and junks who knows why haha. The ghetto of Argentina it’s where I’m at. Today was fun, we went bowling with some of the elders in my zone and I bowled a 92! I still don’t have it! We had a lot of fun doing that though. No cleaning today, I told the other elders it was their turn but we just didn’t, it is pretty clean anyway. It has been a week of ups and downs. The rain and grayness make it hard to stay motivated if you are just walking around in it all day, which seems to happen to us often. All our baptismal dates fell through because people didn’t come to church. It’s tiempo para bajar la caña (It's time to drop the cane. This means to chasten or rebuke) We had what I thought was a really good day. It was rough in the rain, but we found an old lady named León who is a less active member, for some reason I felt like she was who we needed to find that day, and I had been praying to find just one person who needed us, as I often do when we are just knocking and knocking and knocking doors. We have a cita (appointment) with her tomorrow and we will see how it goes. That same night we had an impromptu lección con Odulio one of our investigadores and he told us how he feels good and the gospel was changing his life, the spirit was real strong and little did I know that what I had studied that morning in personal study I used in the lesson! The Lord definitely has me in his mind, I know that much. We were very excited for him, but then he didn’t come to church and he wasn’t there when we went by later that day for a cita we had with him. It was odd and we are going to have to see what’s up, and maybe chew him out in a loving Christ like sort of way. With the member missionary thing if you all could read preach my gospel pages 160 161 for family home evening tonight and discuss it that would be awesome. Also a quote from President Thomas S Monson "The challenge is to be more profitable servants in the Lords vineyard. This applies to all of us, whatever our age and not alone to those who are preparing to serve as full-time missionaries, for to each of us comes the mandate to share the gospel of Christ ” We had an awesome meeting with President Thurgood and the assistants with our zone. It was motivating and led me to study more about repentance, and I made a list of the steps of repentance and am going to start using that with our investigators. The gospel of Jesus Christ is really just faith and repentance. The rest of the things like baptism and enduring to the end are just results of continued faith and repentance. So we have a new focus and hopefully a better week ahead. This is hard, but we did have success with some of an inactive family coming to church. I love you all. Also here they say the days that are hard and we work all day our wife gets more beautiful, and if we don’t wash our dishes our wife gains a kilo. Entonces (Therefore) Levi must have been a really hard working missionary, but forgot to wash his dishes a few times haha. I love you all and I was just kidding about the dishes Brenda
Elder Andrew
Primero yo contestaré las preguntas de mama. (First I will answer mom’s questions)Your Spanish makes sense! But then again if it is wrong I probably wouldn’t be able to tell because that is how I would say it! A lady in the Ward washes our clothes for free! So that is nice. For food, I always eat cereal in the morning, a member always feeds us for lunch and then we either go without dinner or just have a snack. Don’t worry about me and food the people here are worse food pushers than Grandpa so I’m more worried about me engordando (gaining weight) than anything else. I actually did weigh myself and I am 109 kilos, not bad huh. We get mail every three weeks and I didn’t get your package, there is probably about a 70 percent chance that mail sent arrives I would figure, but no worries. The only thing I really would need would be some flash drives to back up my camera with in case it gets stolen, but maybe I can just buy those here with my debit card. (I asked if it was ok for people to e-mail him or if they should write letters and send to the mission home. Here is his response.) They can email me, but I won’t have much time to respond personally, write the mission home. Like I said they bring us the mail from there every three weeks I think. This morning we did insanity (which is a kind of work out), and it was insane, I got pretty tired from it, but then again I am just a fat old missionary. It reminded me of Matthew and how he would do insanity con (with) Johnny. Tell Matthew to find out how Johnny, Prescott, and Mike are doing. Tell them that I love em and to keep up the good work. Cultural notes: The weather has been wacko. I got here and it was pretty much perfect, maybe a bit cold. Then it rained all day one day and was freezing. Then it was super hot the next day and really humid. Then it started up with the raining and freezing again, it has been raining the past couple of days, and I don’t think I’ve seen the sun for a few days, due to the cloud cover. But my cold and water stuff work really well so no worries. Oh and about the keyboard; the computers are Spanish so when I write in English everything has a red line under it like it is spelled wrong, so if my spelling is bad in English blame it on that haha. In the train, which we take once a week at least for meetings, there are always people selling stuff. They will walk into your car, Yell out their little spiel and then put whatever they are selling in front of every passenger and then move on to the next car. The stuff they sell is sometimes weird, too. Like a man was selling sewing kits the other day, que raro (how strange). They will also sometimes do it on the colectivos (buses) from the main station in Lanus. They give their spiel, sell a few and then hop off and go back to the station. It can be Handy if you are hungry and they are selling snacks. The autos acá (cars here? I didn’t understand this) really like to talk but their language is really fowl so it is always bleeped out. Todos las casas tienen reyas,(All the houses have bars or gates or fences) and then have bars on their windows. So if we ever knock doors we do a lot of talking through windows. Elder Aldana and I came up with the joke for the people that don’t even open their windows; they just part their blinds and then shake their fingers at us. When those people are knocking on the gates of heaven Jesus will just part the curtain and shake his finger at them. We had a good laugh but maybe that is a bit sacreligious and I hope those people will find their way to this gospel whether in this life or the next. People for heat will just turn their ovens on. All the ovens are gas so there is just a flame or two on the stove. I kind of wondered “shouldn’t there be a pot or something on that" the first time I saw it but then I figured out what it was for. The people here think that English people speak English much better than Americans psssh what do they know haha. Also if someone here ever needed to just quickly build a house or something they wouldn’t even have to drive to a local home depot, there are plenty of supplies for building houses just in the sidewalk! Just piles of bricks and junks who knows why haha. The ghetto of Argentina it’s where I’m at. Today was fun, we went bowling with some of the elders in my zone and I bowled a 92! I still don’t have it! We had a lot of fun doing that though. No cleaning today, I told the other elders it was their turn but we just didn’t, it is pretty clean anyway. It has been a week of ups and downs. The rain and grayness make it hard to stay motivated if you are just walking around in it all day, which seems to happen to us often. All our baptismal dates fell through because people didn’t come to church. It’s tiempo para bajar la caña (It's time to drop the cane. This means to chasten or rebuke) We had what I thought was a really good day. It was rough in the rain, but we found an old lady named León who is a less active member, for some reason I felt like she was who we needed to find that day, and I had been praying to find just one person who needed us, as I often do when we are just knocking and knocking and knocking doors. We have a cita (appointment) with her tomorrow and we will see how it goes. That same night we had an impromptu lección con Odulio one of our investigadores and he told us how he feels good and the gospel was changing his life, the spirit was real strong and little did I know that what I had studied that morning in personal study I used in the lesson! The Lord definitely has me in his mind, I know that much. We were very excited for him, but then he didn’t come to church and he wasn’t there when we went by later that day for a cita we had with him. It was odd and we are going to have to see what’s up, and maybe chew him out in a loving Christ like sort of way. With the member missionary thing if you all could read preach my gospel pages 160 161 for family home evening tonight and discuss it that would be awesome. Also a quote from President Thomas S Monson "The challenge is to be more profitable servants in the Lords vineyard. This applies to all of us, whatever our age and not alone to those who are preparing to serve as full-time missionaries, for to each of us comes the mandate to share the gospel of Christ ” We had an awesome meeting with President Thurgood and the assistants with our zone. It was motivating and led me to study more about repentance, and I made a list of the steps of repentance and am going to start using that with our investigators. The gospel of Jesus Christ is really just faith and repentance. The rest of the things like baptism and enduring to the end are just results of continued faith and repentance. So we have a new focus and hopefully a better week ahead. This is hard, but we did have success with some of an inactive family coming to church. I love you all. Also here they say the days that are hard and we work all day our wife gets more beautiful, and if we don’t wash our dishes our wife gains a kilo. Entonces (Therefore) Levi must have been a really hard working missionary, but forgot to wash his dishes a few times haha. I love you all and I was just kidding about the dishes Brenda
Elder Andrew
I was able to track down the e-mail for this week! Joleen
Word from Lanús 1 b
I am learning to deal with dogs, but more excitingly and more pertinant to my living situation, how to deal with rats! we found out that we had a rat my second or third day and found a few holes and covered them up. then we didn´t hear anything from the Little guy for a while. we live in a pension with two other elders (the zone leaders) Elder juarez and Elder Dodge. Elder juarez is from mexico city, mexico and Elder Dodge is from orem, Utah. They are really awesome and is a blessing to be living with them, they also have very funny senses of humor. anyway back to the rata. we saw him again this morning and Elder Dodge, juarez and i spent some time trying to smash him, but he got away. Then later i was scrubbing the floor of the bathroom with some disinfectant i bought. (the other elders don´t clean on p day but i feel like a should so i cleaned the bathroom and some of the other spaces, it is easier to feel the spirit in a clean pensión, although Elder Aldana did clean some of the outside área today!) anyway as i was cleaning the rat came out and was just sitting there on the floor, it was a Little strange, but Elder Aldana trapped him in a container and then we put him in a spring loaded cage that our neighbor gave us when he first Heard we had a rat (he owns the pesion). So now we have something to eat for dinner! cuando estoy limpiando El Señor me envíe bendiciones. Even though a veces es difícil a entender mi compañero we have a good time, we are always laughing and sometimes probably having too much fun and too many jokes haha. He will be 26 this week. In the misión your entrenador is your padre, but i joke that Elder Aldana es mi abuelo jaja. We had a bit more success this week but still have a lot of work to do. the people really like to talk and if we are not careful we waste a lot of time in appointments. I guess ill finish cultural stuff before i get into the spiritual aspect. We use colectivos here, they are like buses, but much more effecient, the driving here might be loco but people get where they need to go faster, colectivos drive by stop for about 5 seconds if someone is on the curb with their hand out, and then take off again as soon as the people are inside. I don´t know how they don´t get in accidents and can squeeze through the spaces that they do. they kind of remind me of that bus that is in the Harry potter movie. the dogs are everywhere and will bark, but don´t give you any real trouble, although i am forever jumping for fright, but don´t worry levi i don´t swear when dogs scare me. and when we were in someones house a dog peed on my shoe, so my love for dogs is definately not growing. I am in Lanús which i think is about as city as this misión gets. It is just kind of like a really big capri circle with a bunch of argentines and paraguanes living in it. Aperantly they asked this misión if we wanted i pads and all that stuff, but they said no because they would probably be stolen, so that is one thing i don´t have to worry about! I glad that my two siblings are learning to drive, it is good they aren´t taking lessons down here. the freakiest thing i saw is there was a bunch of burning garbage in the Street one day blocking an intersection and there were some somewhat quaotic people around. I was really freaked out and didn´t know what was going on. Elder Dodge later told me that when people are mad at the government they will do stuff like that. I try to excercise every morning so that i won´t get too fat, and Elder juarez even has p90x so we will do that some mornings. where ever i go the people will try to talk english to me and it is funny. there is this one member that will always say Ï love you baby! another member is in school to become an english teacher and we eat with them on saturday and i always enjoy that time. They keep telling me that usa is at war with seria right now or something? anyway.... this week started off better and we were doing better tan the week before. but one of the families that we visit who were partialy active decided that they don´t want to come to church anymore. You know what it is over? Facebook and texting. one of the laurel age girls in the family aparently got in a fight over a chico over Facebook and on the cell pone and now the whole family doesn´t want to come to church. they said that they know it is true but don´t want to come back until the problema is worked out but don´t really seem like they are going to do that anytime soon. I know that might seem silly and obviosly the familia de los santos is too blame as well and need to go to church, but just be careful with how you interact with others, especially over things like Facebook and texting where it is more of a temptation to not act like yourself. It is very sad to me to see this family struggling this way because of one laurels thoughtless actions. Next, work with the missionaries in the glenview Ward! You can trust Elder muschetti he is a good missionary. prayerfully consider who you can refer to the missionaries and then give them the referals! I know that now you have more room on the bench, so invite the investigators to come and sit by you, let the missionaries know that if they need anything, they can call the Andrew family. We are trying harder to work with our Ward and its hard because Elder Aldana only has two more weeks tan me here, so neither of us know the Ward very well. it would be a lot easier if members gave us references and gordan b hinckley said that is the better way to do missionary work, so do it! I regret not do that now that i´m out here and see how much it was needed. The spanish is coming well and the lord is definately blessing me with the gift of tounges. Sometimes i can understand pretty much everything that someone is saying and other times not really at all. usually it is a mixture of both, but in a góspel conversation i can usually pick out most of lo que paso, and i haven´t even been here two weeks! the gift of tougnes is real. the speaking is coming slower but i get better every day, i need to open my mouth more though, that is what i am lacking. My heart was broken on sunday because our investigators that i love so much, didn´t come to church i was very sad, this is their salvation and they are feeling the spirit and making progress, oh well time to bring the spiritual smack down! we did have sister tevés an inactive woman come with her daughter aixia that we hope to be able to baptize if the family reactivates and that made me happy. We have a lot of work to do and this is the week to do it, we did a lot of planning thursday and it is time to put those into action. the lord is my light so why should i fear? he is your light too don´t be afraid to share it. mosiah 20:11 it is time to fight like dragons for the góspel we know is true.
love,
Elder Andrew
ps. i really liked the poster, the pictures didn´t come through. I´m sure Daniel is a shoe in for the victory, Andrews are ganadores. there is a kid in the Ward that reminds me of a Daniel a lot. also there is a 7 year old girl that bore us simple but powerful testimony of the book of mormon, even though her mom is inactive. 7! so if she can do it, so can you Daniel!
Word from Lanús 1 b
I am learning to deal with dogs, but more excitingly and more pertinant to my living situation, how to deal with rats! we found out that we had a rat my second or third day and found a few holes and covered them up. then we didn´t hear anything from the Little guy for a while. we live in a pension with two other elders (the zone leaders) Elder juarez and Elder Dodge. Elder juarez is from mexico city, mexico and Elder Dodge is from orem, Utah. They are really awesome and is a blessing to be living with them, they also have very funny senses of humor. anyway back to the rata. we saw him again this morning and Elder Dodge, juarez and i spent some time trying to smash him, but he got away. Then later i was scrubbing the floor of the bathroom with some disinfectant i bought. (the other elders don´t clean on p day but i feel like a should so i cleaned the bathroom and some of the other spaces, it is easier to feel the spirit in a clean pensión, although Elder Aldana did clean some of the outside área today!) anyway as i was cleaning the rat came out and was just sitting there on the floor, it was a Little strange, but Elder Aldana trapped him in a container and then we put him in a spring loaded cage that our neighbor gave us when he first Heard we had a rat (he owns the pesion). So now we have something to eat for dinner! cuando estoy limpiando El Señor me envíe bendiciones. Even though a veces es difícil a entender mi compañero we have a good time, we are always laughing and sometimes probably having too much fun and too many jokes haha. He will be 26 this week. In the misión your entrenador is your padre, but i joke that Elder Aldana es mi abuelo jaja. We had a bit more success this week but still have a lot of work to do. the people really like to talk and if we are not careful we waste a lot of time in appointments. I guess ill finish cultural stuff before i get into the spiritual aspect. We use colectivos here, they are like buses, but much more effecient, the driving here might be loco but people get where they need to go faster, colectivos drive by stop for about 5 seconds if someone is on the curb with their hand out, and then take off again as soon as the people are inside. I don´t know how they don´t get in accidents and can squeeze through the spaces that they do. they kind of remind me of that bus that is in the Harry potter movie. the dogs are everywhere and will bark, but don´t give you any real trouble, although i am forever jumping for fright, but don´t worry levi i don´t swear when dogs scare me. and when we were in someones house a dog peed on my shoe, so my love for dogs is definately not growing. I am in Lanús which i think is about as city as this misión gets. It is just kind of like a really big capri circle with a bunch of argentines and paraguanes living in it. Aperantly they asked this misión if we wanted i pads and all that stuff, but they said no because they would probably be stolen, so that is one thing i don´t have to worry about! I glad that my two siblings are learning to drive, it is good they aren´t taking lessons down here. the freakiest thing i saw is there was a bunch of burning garbage in the Street one day blocking an intersection and there were some somewhat quaotic people around. I was really freaked out and didn´t know what was going on. Elder Dodge later told me that when people are mad at the government they will do stuff like that. I try to excercise every morning so that i won´t get too fat, and Elder juarez even has p90x so we will do that some mornings. where ever i go the people will try to talk english to me and it is funny. there is this one member that will always say Ï love you baby! another member is in school to become an english teacher and we eat with them on saturday and i always enjoy that time. They keep telling me that usa is at war with seria right now or something? anyway.... this week started off better and we were doing better tan the week before. but one of the families that we visit who were partialy active decided that they don´t want to come to church anymore. You know what it is over? Facebook and texting. one of the laurel age girls in the family aparently got in a fight over a chico over Facebook and on the cell pone and now the whole family doesn´t want to come to church. they said that they know it is true but don´t want to come back until the problema is worked out but don´t really seem like they are going to do that anytime soon. I know that might seem silly and obviosly the familia de los santos is too blame as well and need to go to church, but just be careful with how you interact with others, especially over things like Facebook and texting where it is more of a temptation to not act like yourself. It is very sad to me to see this family struggling this way because of one laurels thoughtless actions. Next, work with the missionaries in the glenview Ward! You can trust Elder muschetti he is a good missionary. prayerfully consider who you can refer to the missionaries and then give them the referals! I know that now you have more room on the bench, so invite the investigators to come and sit by you, let the missionaries know that if they need anything, they can call the Andrew family. We are trying harder to work with our Ward and its hard because Elder Aldana only has two more weeks tan me here, so neither of us know the Ward very well. it would be a lot easier if members gave us references and gordan b hinckley said that is the better way to do missionary work, so do it! I regret not do that now that i´m out here and see how much it was needed. The spanish is coming well and the lord is definately blessing me with the gift of tounges. Sometimes i can understand pretty much everything that someone is saying and other times not really at all. usually it is a mixture of both, but in a góspel conversation i can usually pick out most of lo que paso, and i haven´t even been here two weeks! the gift of tougnes is real. the speaking is coming slower but i get better every day, i need to open my mouth more though, that is what i am lacking. My heart was broken on sunday because our investigators that i love so much, didn´t come to church i was very sad, this is their salvation and they are feeling the spirit and making progress, oh well time to bring the spiritual smack down! we did have sister tevés an inactive woman come with her daughter aixia that we hope to be able to baptize if the family reactivates and that made me happy. We have a lot of work to do and this is the week to do it, we did a lot of planning thursday and it is time to put those into action. the lord is my light so why should i fear? he is your light too don´t be afraid to share it. mosiah 20:11 it is time to fight like dragons for the góspel we know is true.
love,
Elder Andrew
ps. i really liked the poster, the pictures didn´t come through. I´m sure Daniel is a shoe in for the victory, Andrews are ganadores. there is a kid in the Ward that reminds me of a Daniel a lot. also there is a 7 year old girl that bore us simple but powerful testimony of the book of mormon, even though her mom is inactive. 7! so if she can do it, so can you Daniel!
I don't know what happened but the family didn't get an e-mail this week. Brenda and Levi(Ben's sister and her husband) did and here it is. It does show that he wrote us one. Who knows how come we didn't get ours.
I used all my time on the family email. it rained all day other thursday here and it is serious about rain, but the good news is my rain stuff Works! I love you and sorry i doont´ have more time. We are going to start doing english clases as well as a means of finding people, (my idea haha soy capo y tengo ideas de diez)
Love,
Elder andrew
I used all my time on the family email. it rained all day other thursday here and it is serious about rain, but the good news is my rain stuff Works! I love you and sorry i doont´ have more time. We are going to start doing english clases as well as a means of finding people, (my idea haha soy capo y tengo ideas de diez)
Love,
Elder andrew
Monday, September 2, 2013 1:00 PM
Hola de Argentina familia!
Alright business first. I will not be using my debit card really down here unless I am buying something personal, which won’t be probably until the last área de mi misión, entonces I need you mom to put 100 or 200 hundred more in my checking account and get a card for my account as well. Buy three cheap things a month with it, so that I won’t get charged the thirty five dollars a month when I don’t use it. (Hopefully you understand what I’m talking about. I’m glad you put the blog up, and hope you posted about it on my Facebook también. I did not bring a bag to carry stuff around in, but I bought one in the mtc. It is working very well, so no worries about that! Also it is already starting to warm up so I won’t need the gloves and such yet but I’m sure I will appreciate them in a year or so! Daniel, I got the shirt in Nauvoo, so if you friends want one too they just might be out of luck sorry buddy. You flooded my inbox! There were so many emails, thank you the first two from you mom and dad were what I needed I think. I was sad I couldn’t talk with you in the airport, close to tears but then I chinned up and figured my misión isn’t for calling my family anyway. I will let Brenda tell you about Sam and that awesome experience because I don’t feel like writing it again jaja. I’m out of time dang it. My companion is native and the language it coming if not some what difficultly. Elder Aldana doesn’t speak English either. Four elders in my pension one speaks English. Pictures are my companion and my bathroom. We haven’t had much success but that changes this week! Sorry, I thought I had more time, I will write you first next time.
Con Amor,
Elder Andrew
Note from Joleen: I couldn't get the picture of the bathroom to download.
Hola de Argentina familia!
Alright business first. I will not be using my debit card really down here unless I am buying something personal, which won’t be probably until the last área de mi misión, entonces I need you mom to put 100 or 200 hundred more in my checking account and get a card for my account as well. Buy three cheap things a month with it, so that I won’t get charged the thirty five dollars a month when I don’t use it. (Hopefully you understand what I’m talking about. I’m glad you put the blog up, and hope you posted about it on my Facebook también. I did not bring a bag to carry stuff around in, but I bought one in the mtc. It is working very well, so no worries about that! Also it is already starting to warm up so I won’t need the gloves and such yet but I’m sure I will appreciate them in a year or so! Daniel, I got the shirt in Nauvoo, so if you friends want one too they just might be out of luck sorry buddy. You flooded my inbox! There were so many emails, thank you the first two from you mom and dad were what I needed I think. I was sad I couldn’t talk with you in the airport, close to tears but then I chinned up and figured my misión isn’t for calling my family anyway. I will let Brenda tell you about Sam and that awesome experience because I don’t feel like writing it again jaja. I’m out of time dang it. My companion is native and the language it coming if not some what difficultly. Elder Aldana doesn’t speak English either. Four elders in my pension one speaks English. Pictures are my companion and my bathroom. We haven’t had much success but that changes this week! Sorry, I thought I had more time, I will write you first next time.
Con Amor,
Elder Andrew
Note from Joleen: I couldn't get the picture of the bathroom to download.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)