The district having tacos a few weeks ago.

Monday, March 31, 2014 10:03 AM

Argentina is just so awesome i could faint...

I was sad not to see an email from dad but I understand, you should get a gmail account because it automatically saves your email as you type. You seem to have had a few times that this has happened so maybe that is a possible solution. We Elder Crowther and I are rocking it right now. We get along well and we have fun. He seems to have had a few tough companions and his last one Really tough and so I try to help him enjoy himself. We have taken up playing chess again! Anyway, back to the subject of this email... yesterday I fainted! How weird right. I felt sick and weird in sacrament meeting but then I went to the bathroom and felt better. No one (including "active" members came to church because it rained so we just all had the same class so I got to learn about José (Joseph) of old as well. Then, after the final class, the sick, pained, weird feeling came back and I was talking with the Hermana about the lunches we were going to have for the week and then I started feeling really bad and she asked if I was okay because I looked pale and I sat down in a chair and the next thing I knew I opened my eyes and there were these people all above me rushing around and two hermanos holding my hands. From the chair to the floor without realizing! It was pretty weird. Elder C told me that I sat down and then kind of just slumped forward and then they tried to lean me back to see if I was alright and then I fell out of the chair. It was a bit embarrassing and kind of strange but a little cool as well haha. After lunch we went back to the pension to rest a bit and I call President and then the nurse of the mission. She told me some weird name and says that it sometimes happens when the immune system isn’t at its fullest and your blood pressure just sometimes drops and that it is normal and nothing to worry about. I am pretty sure it is thanks to the fact that it was hot in the night and then cold the next day. Anyway, I drank a lot of water and we left to finish working in the night. Right now I feel perfectly fine and it is nothing to worry about (even though I know you are going to worry mom haha). I thought about not telling you but since it is no big deal it is more of just a funny story for me. As for the work we worked a lot this week getting to know all the members for my companion and also try to build their confidence.  To me, if the members are working then the area is successful so even though we didn’t have a million lessons with investigators this week I feel like we really made some ground with our members and we will now take them all out to do visits with us and some of them have already started giving us references. You are so lucky to have the missionaries coming around. I wish we had that when I was younger but I hardly even remember them coming to our ward. I am sure that they love you and will love you even more if you try and help them out with visits and with getting to know their investigators in church and maybe even a reference here and there. Maybe offer our house to bring an investigator over for a family home evening. Get creative and do your own missionary work! Us missionaries aren’t the only ones that can come up with creative new ideas to get more people to know the gospel. Well, everything is good here.  We have a couple people with baptismal dates that have promise but we are still really early on in the teaching process and will have to see! I love you all very much and hope you are all doing very well!

Love.

Elder Andrew

Avellaneda at night

Avellaneda 2

Elder Corry, Elder Andrew, the Caseres', and Malvina

Camila's baptism with her family, Elder Andrew and Elder Corry

I was finally able to post these pictures. The top picture of the city is Ben's new area. The other pictures are from his first area, Lanus.

Magdalena's baptism with her family and friends.

Elder Dahl, Magdalena, and Elder Andrew at the baptism.

Monday, March 24, 2014 1:33 PM
mas cambios
Well we both knew it was coming..... Elder Dahl left! He had been here for 6 months and he did a really good job. The members really did love him. He is such a good example to me, we worked hard even on his last day here even finding 3 new investigators. Now that is a good missionary! Now I am with Elder Crowther (another yankee from Utah!). They are just sending them all to me! But he is really cool and we are already getting along well. He was waiting in Georgia for two transfers so technically has more time than me in the mission. I also heard that my trainer Elder Aldana got sick and got sent home. How weird, I hope he can get better. Today in the transfer meeting all the missionaries that are going home give their testimonies and today was a little different because there were two old missionary couples that finished their missions and were going home. They gave such sweet and pure testimonies and you could tell the love they have for the gospel. It really was neat to hear them and I hope that you mom and dad will serve a mission once you can. With the music, Mom, yes, please do put conference talks and if you put this conference too that would be awesome! Glad to hear that Dad and Daniel are keeping active with their cycling. Well I know this is going to be a hard few weeks because I know the area, but not super, super well so there are going to be some times of getting lost for sure haha, but it is alright. I am sure we will learn fast. We taught the grandson of Magdalena and he is super awesome, he seems really prepared and is smart and did his reading assignment... and more! The only thing is that he is living with his girlfriend.... we will get to that with him a little later. Then the lord is protecting us and helping us out every step of the way. Sometimes the mission can seem really hard or a day really lame but if we look back at the end of each day we can see many little miracles and many tender mercies of the Lord that really do shape our lives. We are working with one family of less actives that are now coming back to church. He was a bishop’s counselor and some say he was destined to be the bishop of the Ward but then the family went inactive for some little reason I think. Also, they were very active in the church but the hermano has told us that they kind of took for granted the things of the gospel and now after this time of inactivity they have realized really how important it is and that they lives were missing it. They have been inactive for several years and 70´s have passed by their house and lots of members but with the Lord’s time now they are starting to come back. They will help the Ward a lot and I think could be the key to reactivating a lot of other members. We are also trying to work with the friends of the young man son and seeing some promise there. The Familia Villalba se llama (their name is the Villalba family) and they are pretty awesome. I want to have them teach me Guaraní because they are from Paraguay so we will see how that goes! I sent you two fotos of the baptism and those same fotos we had printed up and gave them to Magdalena as a gift and she was really happy. I can see a difference in her life and she answers the door with a smile more deep. I don’t really know how to explain it, but after her confirmation she has changed. It is like a doubt that one of our inactives has, that he thinks that making covenants isn’t necessary if you are just a good person, but I can see the difference that sacred covenants have made in her life and have definitely made a difference in mine! I love you all so much and hope the best for you!
Mucho amor y besitos.,
Elder Andrew

Monday, March 17, 2014 10:06 AM
I love you Argentina

I hope you all enjoy St. Patrick’s Day and watch that one movie with the creepy grim reaper and the leprechauns. i will have to change my tie when I get back to the pench (apartment). This week went well, I seem to still struggle giving good district meetings but this time we did some practices that I think helped the district, I know they helped me to learn from them some new ways of teaching. And the hermanas told me that justo(?) they used something we talked about in district meeting that day afterwards, so maybe I am not the worst district leader haha. It was funny last Monday because we did the activity where we ate tacos and then at night we had a noche de hogar (family home evening) and the hermana gave us..... Tacos! They were nothing like Mexican tacos but she said they were. It makes me wonder about all the "Italian" and "Chinese" food that we supposedly eat in the states and how different it probably actually is. Then we found a new family that knew a bit about the church already and was very nice. We found them because we were walking by and Elder Dahl said hi to a guy and we kept on walking. Then, down the street he said no, we should go talk to them. So we went back knocked on the guy’s door and set up a cita (an appointment) to teach them later on. Oddly enough they were there, and they listened! Elder Dahl has a lot of courage like that to go back and talk to people or just to talk to people if he feels like he should. I feel like I need to do a better job on that so I will try to this week. Then on Friday it rained and all of our citas fell through and we just walked around wet most of the day. At least we can hold to the promised that every time we are out in the rain our wife is reading her scriptures and getting more beautiful. Then on Saturday we had the baptism! We thought we had planned everything, but that doesn’t stop things from going wrong! We went in the morning to start filling up the font and it took us a while to figure out the pump because we wanted to pump out some dirty water that we found in the font. Once we got that figured out we filled it up most of the way and then left for lunch to come back and finish later. We were going to use the sacrament meeting room for the service but when we got back to fill up the font the other ward that shares our building was having a huge birthday party thing in the cultural hall. They had music, food and even a blow up slide thing (I am pretty sure whatever it was it wasn’t exactly an activity that was appropriate to be held in the church) and then all the leaders from the ward were going to have a meeting and then go to the baptism later but the meeting started late because of some other meeting that the stake had for the young women. I thought "how many things can you schedule for one Saturday!" so we had Magdalena who got there early just waiting for a while. We moved the service to where the baptismal font is so that we wouldn’t be affected by the party and had to mix up a few things because the hermano (brother) that we asked to prepare a talk on baptism prepared it for the Holy Ghost. All in all it was a huge relief when we were finally seated and could start the program. The program itself went really well and I felt very happy, relaxed and could feel the spirit. (Maybe because I didn’t have to worry about doing the baptism) the hermano that did the baptism is a recent convert of about 6 months and did it super well. Afterwards we talked with the family of Magdalena and the boyfriend of her granddaughter said he was interested in knowing more, so we will start teaching him soon. All in all it was a very good experience and I will send a few pictures next week because I gave my memory card to a kid in our ward so he could print off some pictures of the baptism at his work. Keep going strong! This work and life may be tough but it is so worth it. Good luck with your Book of Mormon marathon. I want to read more and an hour just doesn’t seem like enough so sometimes I will read at night before bed too.

Love you all very much,

Elder Andrew

Monday, March 10, 2014 1:56 PM
Chugging onward

Okay Dad, I will answer your question and then ask a few. “The Croods” was in castillano (Castillian Spanish) and had castillano subtitles as well and the subtitles didn’t always match what they were saying which seemed weird to me. Anyway, I wanted to ask what you did in your district meetings. We always learn from preach my gospel and things like that but you had memorized discussions, so what was the deal with district meetings. Also what did you do when you were a leader in your mission? The package got here!! The pants work very well and the sweets are very welcome! We used some taco seasoning already today because we made and ate tacos as a district, I’ll try to send some photos next week. On Thursday we had zone conference and it was really good, and we learned a lot. The president is really, really pushing working with members, it really is the only way of "hastening the work" so remember that and work with the good missionaries that you have over there in Glenview! I also got to see Elder Juarez who is now the assistant and lived in the pension with me for my first transfer in Lanus. He leaves in a week and it is just so weird. The time is flying. We have two weeks left in the transfer and I think Elder Dahl will probably leave, but you never know in the obra (work) what will happen. Magdalena had her two interviews and passed both of them and so will be baptized on Saturday. It was a bit different with her because she was basically a convert a long time ago but couldn’t get baptized because she was living with a man without being married. He left, I don’t know how long ago, and the missionaries barely started teaching her thanks to a reference right before I got here. So, she already had a testimony we just had to remind her of a few things! An hermano that is a recent convert that is on fire is going to do the baptism and Elder Dahl is going to do the confirmation. We are having certain success with reactivating families. One family where they are members menos the dad came back for the first time when I got here and haven’t stopped coming, even going to the church activities. The 14 year old boy told us that he has started reading the Book of Mormon and seemed proud to say he is already in 1 Nephi 7. The dad has come a few times but the wife told us not to teach him yet but we will see in time. The Sunday before this one, two members brought investigators that we had never seen before to church and they are both super good. All the people that have baptismal dates don’t come to church though..... Oh well, back to the grind. What else can you do? I love this work and this area is really awesome, I am such a different person now and will only continue to change. It is now a treat to me if I get some extra time to read in the scriptures. Hopefully I can keep it going like this! I know that this church is true and that if we can try to share the gospel even if it is just posting something on facebook that we can feel more of the spirit and make a real difference!

Love,

Elder Andrew

p.s. Dad could you tell me the story on the family that you baptized. The one with the guy with one arm, I was wondering about it this week.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014 6:59 AM

A little bit tarde

I’m fine there was just a holiday on Monday and the cibers where going to be closed so they told us to write on Wednesday!

Well Monday and Tuesday was carnival or something so everything was closed and we are now doing ciber! Luckily the holiday was not celebrated because I don’t think this country needs any more excuses to be more wicked! I am glad to hear you are all doing well. Well dad to answer some of your questions about the mission. President Thurgood is super awesome he is serious but not to serious and always has some kind of joke. But if the time comes to drop the cane he doesn’t shy away from it he is a very nice and loving man. And for some reason seems to think that I am a good missionary. Hermana Thurgood is also very nice and caring but still speaks almost no Spanish so always needs someone to translate for her, I feel a little bit bad because she has to be in all the meetings but doesn’t understand. So they are super cool. On this last p day we had a zone activity which we have once a month, this time we bought some cheep hamburgers from a party place cooked and ate them and then watched a movie. (We are permitted to watch movies "of the world" that the president has approved, but only in these monthly zone activities) so we watched "The Croods" it was okay and probably better considering I haven’t seen a movie in over 6 months (this was the first time we actually watched a movie). Then every other p-day if we want to do something it now falls on me to organize it as the district leader, so I will see if we can put something together. There are some soccer arenas close and one of them is Independiente which is my chosen team so it would be cool to maybe visit one of those. If you wanted to know more or that wasn’t quite what you wanted to know just let me know! Okay on Thursday Elder Evans who is a seventy that is over all of missionary work in the church or something like that gave us a surprise visit and only 2 zones from every Buenos Aires mission could go, so in total 6 zones! There weren’t that many people there so it was a whole lot more personal. Oh my zone was one of the two from my mission! He talked to us but then would have missionaries stand up and ask questions and just discuss something with them it was super awesome and we learned a whole lot. He focused on that we need to do a better job of teaching repentance that as missionaries we do a pretty good job of teaching faith and baptism but sometimes downplay the importance of repentance, when really it is the most important part! So now I am going to be like Abinidi and DECLARE REPENTANCE! Then, he talks to us about focusing on what our wards and branches need in new converts. He told us in the early days of the church they needed stone mason so they sent missionaries to England with the mission to find, teach and convert stone masons. It was a blow your mind kind of concept, obviously we want to teach everyone but that we need to focus on the kinds of people that are going to help fill the needs of our ward. for example we talk about this with our ward council and they said that we need more young men in the ward, so now we are focused on reactivating families with young men, finding young men that we can teach and baptize as well as working with the active young men to keep them strong and help them prepare for their missions. It is helping change our focus and change our work. Magdalena (71 year old woman) is getting ready to be baptized. I know she belongs to the extreme opposite group than of young men but oh well. She has a fecha for the 15th of March and is already coming to church and has friends there. She has the desire and has changed her life; she also gives us lots of references of her friends and family. It will be a very happy day when she gets baptized. I want to let you all know that even though this work is very hard and there is just so very much to do it is worth it. Focus yourselves on what is most important, on what you really need and what the people around you really need as well. I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior. I know that almost 200 years ago God answer the prayer of a young boy with a question and faith that he could receive an answer. This message has changed and continues to change millions of people around the world. Make sure you let it change yours.

Con mucho amor y algunos besitos,

Elder Andrew