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