July 12, 2010

Hey Family,

Good to hear from you guys!! For those of you who don’t know my e-mail, ask Mom, and I’m allowed to write any family, so if you aren’t family I can’t reply to you by email. Sorry :( However, you can send me letters (and packages :D wink wink) to this address:

Elder Jonathan Spencer
Argentina Salta Mission
Los Eucaliptus 75
4400 Salta
Salta, Argentina

Anyway, this week was super great! The biggest news was that we had transfers and my old companion Elder Vidal was sent to the other side of Tucumán in the other zone about 40 minutes away and I got a new companion! His name is Elder Staker and he is from Eagle Mtn., Utah. He is super big into dirtbiking and worked fixing dirtbikes for a while so I told him I’d have to introduce him to my brother sometime. He just barely got in this morning, so I will let you know more about him next week.

As far as the missionary work, this week went great. We had a ton of lessons and we had 7 investigators in the church this week which is the best I’ve ever had. Right now we are working a lot with the kids of Veronica, our baptism from last week, who are super awesome. We had a FHE with them this week and I was super excited because they are just awesome kids. They learn super fast, read everything we give them, and even stick up for the church in school when the other kids make fun of them because their mom got baptized. Their mom told us that the first Sunday they were getting ready to go to church was super hard dragging heels to get them ready because they felt embarrassed about other kids seeing them dressed up, but this last Sunday they had laid out all their clothes Saturday night so they could be ready and on time for church. They totally rock and remind me a lot of my little nephews and nieces: valiant, strong, and super fun. We will baptize two of them in the coming week and we are still working with her older daughters who are a little rebellious, but they are starting to listen as they see the changes the gospel brings in their family.

We’re also working with 2 other mothers who will get baptized this Saturday, and we are working with their families to get baptized in the coming weeks. I’ll let you know how the baptism goes. In other news, the world cup finally passed with very little fanfare and the whole city is now back to normal, thank goodness. Also, I had rabbit the other day for lunch with a member. It tastes a lot like chicken, but yummier. Neat, huh.

Anyway, fam, thanks for all the love, keep it comin’. This week I got to give a talk in church (with 5 minutes notice) and the bishop had me talk about repentance. I talked about the example of the father of King Lamoni (Alma 22:15-19ish) who after hearing Aaron’s teaching told Aaron that he would give up his whole kingdom to obtain this eternal life, this happiness he had spoken of. Aaron told him that the way is much simpler than that: repent. The whole world is looking for lasting happiness but they can’t find it because the answer is too simple: repent. I love the king’s response, that he will give up all his sins to know God. I like to think that I’m doing pretty good in most things, but we all have our favorite sin that we need to give up before we can be truly happy. Give up the sin, be happy, it’s the only way.

Love you guys,
Elder Spencer