November 9, 2009

dear famsterso this week wasnt to cool. we had to drop susanna as an investigator. she loves having us over to her house because she feels better whenever we go by. but she just wont complete her committments. she likes listening, but she is just bad at the doing part. so it made us pretty mad. she wants to get baptized she just wants people to do everything for her. so we had to drop her. thats good to here that alta football is in the semi finals. and yeah i think it will be a good idea giving my clothes away to members. but i dont think they will accept a lot of stuff haha. a lot of my white shirts are now yellow shirts so its pretty gross. and i will agree about this being one of the hardest parts of your mission, only cuz when you have a hard frustrating day you think, oh its ok i will just be home in a bit. but i quickly get rid of those feelings because i still got a lot of time to help the argentines. i love my area so that helps me a ton. transfers are coming up, in 2 weeks. on friday we had interviews with president and we were talking a lot about a missionary who ends his mission in 2 weeks. how he has lost all desires to work. president told me there is nothing more pathetic then a missionary that loses his desires to work. because it means that they came on the mission in vane and not for the right reasons. so president decided to drop that missionary from district leader down to junior comp. and his companion that only has 4 months in the mission is now the district leader haha. so its pretty funny. but his companion loves doing the mission work. so its all good. that is way cool that L. tom perry is doing to the ward tomorrow that would be so fun. and yes we get the ensign, but here its called the liahona haha. but i love everyone and thanks for all the e mails. chau!!Nikkino i cant believe i will be 21 and i cant believe hailee will be 1. holy cow. i dont even know her and she will have one. haha, thats way funny. oh well. its not like she can talk, so i am not missing much haha. just kidding. tell Lance that he is a nerd for playing in a band again. one of the missionaries that i live with is in a band and they got invited to play with paramore he plays the guitar way good, he has some way good songs, tell lance to look up seasons extreme on i tunes. but anyway got to go. and i think kelsey is better then you at spanish haha just kiddingKelseynext time a boy tries to hold your hand you give him the advice that Dad has always given us and smack him in the adams apple. p.s. when you explain your stories i have no idea who these people are. the only one i know is kenzie and thats cuz you talk about her so much. i have never even met her haha. but i like the stories so its all good. you sound like you are pretty busy at suu. i love that place. but i think i changed my mind and i am going to have to go to college at home. i just miss home so much. so i think that uvu would be a little better for me. cuzi dont have to travel so much....... haha just kidding i would never betray good ol suu, i love that place too much. of course i am going back, but i think you love it more then me now haha. but i love ya and have a good day chau.

November 2, 2009

dear family, i am sorry but this is going to have to be another short email to everyone. we just baptized friday, so we only have one cool investigator. she told us she wants to get baptized the 21st of november and that will probably be my last saturday here in cruz del eje. so pray that susanna can get baptized. she is about 60 years old, she has already been to church and loves the book of mormon. she is a teacher and owns a shoe store so she doesnt have a lot of time. so pray for her so she can get baptized. she has had a hard life and needs to trust in God. so last week was pretty good. i am still with my same companion. his name is elder teemsma and hes from california. hes pretty cool. on the mission i have learned to have so much patience with people so its a lot easier for me to get along with people. sometimes we get so mad because people arent perfect and we think they need to be more like us. but they are probably thinking the same thing haha. so its us that need to change, we need to be the ones to have patience and get over it. thats great that your ipod didnt get broken, i didnt know you had one. we have to take another 3 hour colectivo to cosquin. so that will be fun. we are doing splits with some missionaries. i love everyone so much and have a good day. cuidensen thanks for all the support and prayers. chau!! besos y abrazos!!!

October 26, 2009

hey family i am sorry i dont have that much time again. i feel so bad, but thats the way it is. we just have to send a lot of stuff. i will try to answer all your questions and i think thats all the time that i have. but this week was a good week. we will have a baptism on friday so that will be fun. mom you dont have to send a package for christmas i was thinking that it would be better to just put money in my account so i can by everyone souvineers. we have to go on 3 hour bus rides at least once a week. and a lot of times twice a week. it would be like going to cedar city every week. this is the area that we ride bikes and its so fun. i wish i would have had bikes my whole mission. we get so much done. there is only one branch in the whole city. Sunday we had 50 members go. its the most that i have seen while i have been in the area. yes we still have a cell phone. the food is all the same in argentina. there is not too much of a difference anywhere you go haha. i would probably need like 150 for souvineers. unless you think thats too much. i will just take them in my suitcase. i think i will throw a lot of old shirts away. and i have enough sd cards. so i think i will be good. and i love everyone so much have a good day chau.

October 20, 2009

dear familysorry i didnt write yesterday, we had zone conference yesterday and they announced that on thursday so i had no idea that i wasnt going to be able to write ya on monday. but last week was so crazy. we barely had time to do anything. last thursday we had to travel to cordoba (3 hours) then we had councel with the zone leaders and it was way good. President and the Hermana Olsen do such a good job and we always learn a ton. its always fun because 7 missionaries in my group are zone leaders so we get a chance to talk and see whats going on. then we had to travel back and got home at 9 in the night. then friday we actually got the whole day to work so that was a relief. saturday we had zone meeting (where we teach our zone) then at 12 45 p.m. our bus leaved to cosquin to do an interview. so we arrived at 3 p.m. and did the interview and at 4 our bus left. and we were supposed to go to Dean Funes for another baptism interview, but there wasnt a direct bus from cosquin to dean funes. so we got to cruz del eje at 6 45 p.m. and our bus left at 7 30 p.m. and we got there at 8 30 and did the interview and the guy that i interviewed didnt pass cuz he was still smoking but his wife passed the interview. it made me so mad that the Elders that were teaching him didnt even ask him if he had stopped smoking. it made me want to drop the cane cuz we had to travel all the way out there. but dont worry there was no cane dropped. and by the time we got done with the interviews (which were done in this way way poor house) it was 10 p.m. so we slept there woke up at 6 am and took the but back to cruz del eje. got back at 7 30, so we got showered and went to church. then monday we had to wake up at 4 in the morning and travel back to cordoba to go to zone conference and it lasted till 6 p.m. and we got back to cruz del eje at 10 45 p.m. so we went to bed. and now its p day haha. what a week of traveling. jeffery should be happy that they have a car and they dont have to travel by bus and having to deal with that. and i swear traveling takes more out of me then working all day under the hot sun. i dont think i ever want to travel in my life again. so it was crazy. oh and i did get those garments. thank you so much. i got like cool underarmor ones too. there so comfy on the bikes. and i will make sure i wont open up the packages until my birthday. the investigators are doing good we will get a baptism on the 31st. last transfer we got 8 groups of people to go to church and ony 1 of those groups will be getting baptized. so it was pretty frustrating. but they just didnt progress after going to church. but we found a way sweet family thats married (not common in argentina) and they are going to church this week. so i am way excited. we lent them the movie joseph smith the profet of the restoration. and she just loved it. so we are going to commit them to get baptized tonight, so we will see what happens. and i am sorry for all the money i have used. the mission owes me a lot of money though, for all the travels that we have done. so i will probably have to take out some money today again. thank you for everything. and the candy was amazing!! and i gave the pictures of Jesus to all the moms in our branch for mothers day and i gave them a milky way and every mom just loved it and wanted another milky way haha. one even came up to me and said she didnt get one. then i said oh really, and she said, well, i already ate it but it was so good i wanted another. so it was pretty funny. but i love everyone so much and have a great day

October 13, 2009

Dear familywe had transfers but i didnt get transfered and neither did my companion. so this will be 6 months in this area. which is just fine for my. i love it. on sunday we had a huge change in the branch. president olsen put his 1st counseler as our president of the branch and now we have counselers and a mission leader. before we just had a branch president so it was kind of hard for him to do all the work by himself. president was saying that we got to change this branch and make it into a ward. so thats pretty exciting. we have quite a few investigators right now so hopefully they can make it to baptism. dad the city i live in is cruz del eje and we live on a corner and the 2 streets are eva peron and san luis. we are one street in front of the church. and no i have never had to go to a doctor or the dentist. and thank goodness i would be too scared haha. i have only gotten sick like 3 times on my mission. and thanks for the package i got it last week and it had way cool doctor pepper football shaped things in it. they were so amazingly delicious haha. so thanks a mountain!! ... a phrase in spanish hahah.... it means thank you a ton!! oh and i would prefer that you didnt send me anything for christmas so that i can buy souvineers for everyone. i think that would be a better christmas present then anything. theres a lot of cool things that you guys would love. its weird talking about that but oh well, i just dont want you to prepare any packages haha. i cant believe today i have 20 months. its just scary for me. but oh well. thanks for everything i love you all and thank you for being so supportive and praying for me and my investigators, i know that your prayers are working. the family that i baptized in my last area are doing great, they are the ward missionaries and they help so much giving references to the missionaries and helping them out. they are great. in about 6 months they are going to be able to be sealed in the temple. so that is way exciting. but i love everyone so much. and i am already out of money. we never have lunch with members so we have to buy everything and its really hard on us. hopefully it will change soon but we will see. on thursday we travel to a zone leader councel and president was telling me its going to be amazing and we are going to double the baptisms in the mission. love you have a good day

October 5, 2009

Dear Family i am sorry this will probably be the shortest letter of my mission. but it is the 5th p day of the transfer so me and my companion had to send a progress report on every 20 missionaries in the zone. so it took up a lot of time. this week went a lot better then last week. we found some pretty cool people that went to the conference. they said they didnt understand a lot of it but they loved seeing the prophet. and i dont know if i am wrong but i am pretty sure i say scott linda and jason in the last session of conference. did they go? cuz i told the ward i saw them and so it was pretty cool. hopefully it was them though haha, i am not sure. but anyway we had a good week, and it will be even better this week. my companions doing good, we get along but he is pretty weird. haha. but yeah its all good. i am sorry my letter was so short but i really didnt have time. my favorite talk was the talk by elder holland. its not as good in spanish hearing a translators voice but its still always good. i also loved president monsons talk about anger. sometimes we get mad at such stupid little things and make a big deal out of it. but i love everyone and have a good daychau!!

September 28, 2009

dear family i dont have much time like usual haha but to clear up something, i am not training but i living with a missionary who is getting trained. i am still zone leadering it up haha. but i know you like experience and so i dont want to give you a bad one. but it was definately a bad week. we just figured out how to get people to pray to God and ask him if it is true and them to get their answer right then. but last week was a huge test for me and my companion. we were just working our tails off but we couldnt find anyone. we were working our butts off but nothing went right. it was the wierdest and worst week of my mission. we had to drop about 6 people that were committed to getting baptized. because they werent progressing. so it was a sad week. but we just figured its because we found out a way to give the people testimonies way easy, so satan worked his hardest to hide the people waiting for us. so it was pretty frustrating and not to mention that an investigator that we were teaching that was committed to baptism talked to a member because they were friends. and the member scared her off way bad. the investigator had only heard the first 2 lessons but already knew the church was true but a member went up to our investigator and asked her if she was going to quit smoking, drinking, and dump her boyfriend. and our investigator got scared and said no. so the member told her to give back the book of mormon and said she wasnt ready to be baptized. so it was pretty frustrating and we told the member that we never taught her those lessons yet and the member got all defensive and said that she knew who was ready to get baptized and who wasnt. so it was pretty frustrating because usually the opposition comes from outside of the church, but this time it came from the inside. so it was a pretty tough week. but it doesnt matter this is a whole new week. but i got to go and thanks for writing everyone. i am proud of you megan for teaching the lesson. thats way cool. lessons always mean more if you take time to prepare it. you can always tell a difference. thats way cool that you are having the missionaries over to dinner. just make sure they dont stay too long. some missionaries like chilling with members cuz they dont have to be working. and nikki i did recieve your video, i even got the sound. so keep doing it. make sure lance isnt getting too fat. haha kelsey espero que saques buenas notas en la escuela y no salgas con chicos que se han vuelto de la mision. divertíte pero no salgas con changos como ellos. jaja cuidáte. chau. remember the spanish from here is a little different. instead of using tu. they use vos. chau