Monday, April 18, 2011

It's beginning to look a lot like winter...

Hola, Can you believe that I have already been in Argentina for 1 month! Time is flying by WAY to fast. It got pretty cold this past week in Argentina. I absolutely was frozen all of yesterday. But today has been a really nice day outside. The cold here is so different. I shouldn´t be cold... just the humidity cold goes right to my bones. But winter is definitely setting in. Apparently most missionaries get really fat during winter because the members and the people always give us malta con leche (kinda like hot chocolate) and bread and cake like they do now.... but times 10. I need to start exercizing because I already feel a little chub on me :) The work has been picking up. Right now we have six investigators with a baptisimal date and probably have about 15-20 investigators... which is both doubled from last week. This past week I was on divisions with Elder Thomson... he lives with us so i didn´t have to travel and we worked in his area. He is a really cool elder and has a great area but I definitely liked working in my area much better. Oh this is for Mitch... Elder Thomson is from Canada and his grandpa was a stake president or something in your mission and he just wrote Elder Thomson and said he remembers you. I have divisions again this tuesday and wednesday but I get to stay in Maldonado! A miracle happened this past week. Elder Milne y I were walking down a street and were walking around a corner and a guy passed and I said Hola and he just kept walking. We started knocking on doors and contacting people when the same guy walked by us again while we were waiting for somebody to answer and I turned around and just said hola again. He stopped and asked us if we could walk with him. It was incredible. He basically told us he wants to be baptised. So that happened thursday. We met with him again on Friday and met his family (its huge so hopefully we can teach them too) and invited him to go see a baptism on saturday... but he wasn´t there so we were a little bummed. But we finally got somebody to come to church with us! He loved it and we had a mini sunday school class with him after Sacarament meeting... and he basically told us that he knows the Book of Mormon to be the word of God and that the spirit told him to come talk to us and all... truly a miracle. The only thing is that he smokes... but we are going to teach him the word of wisdom and he said he will do whatever to be baptised. Saturday was quite an interesting day. We were going to do some suprise service for an investigator who is a fisherman but didn´t get called this month so he´s been doing a ton of work in his house. We were almost there when we got a call from the President´s wife that we needed to take an elder in our district to get a surgery to get his wisdom tooth out. It was pretty sweet.... the dentist let us come in and watch and he was using these huge pliers and a screwdriver and was just yanking and pulling on the poor elder´s jaw. It was awesome... make sure eric ballou hears this story... thought about him this whole time ha. It was pretty legit. Today we went to a restaraunt that was a buffet called New For You. and it was all these different Argentine foods. I had finally for my first time real asado! I have missed eating delicious steak and the flavor on it was just super great. I also ate some intestine ( i forgot what the foods are called) but that was kinda nasty because the things being digested were still in it so it had a super weird texture.... but the flavor was alright. They also have this thing where when they kill the cow they put a bucket under it to capture all the blood... they coagulate the blood and insert it into some fat (almost loooks like a chorizo but its black) and they cook it... that was pretty nasty because of the texture. But all the other stuff was absolutely delicious!!! My castellano still needs improvement but I still understand so much more than when I first got here and I am starting to be able to put sentences together much more easily. So i will keep you updated on that. The work is moving along... hopefully we will have more success. But we have done very well at getting the members excited about us as missionaries and missionary work. the members love us and we know that because we are getting chubbier and we are getting tons of sweet references! We are planning an activity for our ward this Friday for Easter. Last Thursday we made some sweet invitations and we are planning on doing a lot of games from the US and also Easter traditions from Argentina... we still haven´t planned it that much so hopefully it all turns out! I will have pictures of it next time hopefully! With Easter coming up I just want to say how greatful I am for the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I know that Jesucristo es my Savior and Redeemer. I know that through Jesucristo all of us can return to live with Heavenly Father once again with our families for eternity. Thats been one of the biggest blessings of my mission so far is learning about the Atonement and about how it can change people´s live and how it can make us stronger and progress to who God wants us to become. I want to share two scriptures that I love that I read this week that goes with the Atonement and with Easter message. Primero, en Ether12: 26-27 talks about how the Lord gives us weaknesses so we can be humble and be strengthened. I think the way that we can overcome our weaknesses is by the atonement of JesucristoaFools bmock, but they shall mourn; and my grace is sufficient for the meek, that they shall take no advantage of your weakness; 27And if men come unto me I will show unto them their aweakness. I bgive unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my cgrace is sufficient for all men that dhumble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make eweak things become strong unto them. Segundo, I found this scripture when Elder Milne and I were looking for scriptures for Easter to share with members and investigators.Doctrine and Covenants76:22And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the atestimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he blives!I know that my Savior lives and that Jesus is the Christ. Have a great Easter!!! Con Amor, Elder Vaterlaus

1 comment:

  1. Hope your having a great time in Argentina

    ReplyDelete