Hey Fam,
Crazy to think that summer is ending for you guys when here it’s just starting! Two days into spring and I’m ready to pack my bags and head somewhere cooler. It’s hot, humid and long (a nice 8 months of heat.) This was a pretty crazy week. It started off being a little jittery because it’s when we find out transfers and I had already been here for 3 transfers (quite a bit). Turns out I’m staying, which is super nice, and I’m still with Elder Staker, which means this next transfer will go by pretty quick because we get along great and have a good time working together.
Funny story, on Wednesday we were walking to an appointment when we heard this lady call out "Elders! Elders! Ím so glad I found you! I need your help!" Needless to say we were pretty excited to hear that, so we ran over to help her. She then started explaining to us that her brother was sick and needed our help getting him to the hospital. We started walking to her house and on the way she mentioned that her brother wasn’t normal sick, but mentally sick. A little loco. We looked at each other, shrugged, and kept on going to her house. Got to the house and went to the back yard to see this 70-year old man hunched over a guitar. We were thinking he looked pretty normal and I was hoping he’d turn out to be a master at the Spanish guitar. We convinced him to play us a song and he put on this nice toothy (rather toothless) smile with a really deep creepy chuckle and started plucking on the high string and moving his hand up and down making this really wierd song. We suggested to him the idea of going to the hospital and he got super mad, and scurried off to lock himself in his room (full of trashbags and empty jelly bottles) muttering insults under his breath. We spent the next half hour coaxing him out before his schizophrenic great-niece and sister started shouting at us and he ran back in. The sister who brought us (the most sane of the house, but still got a few loose screws) finally gave up and sent us home. As soon as we got out of the house we just kinda stared at eachother in amazement after seeing a whole house full of the craziest people I’ve ever met. So yeah, that definitely spiced up the week a bit.
The other good story of the week was Saturday morning when I was doing my exercises and I decided to do handstand pushups in the middle of the room. I normally do them on the wall for extra security, but I was feeling extra testosterony, so I started doing them in the middle of the room. I kicked up into the handstand the first time and did a couple before I dropped down again, then kicked up again to finish the set, but kicked up way too hard and flew into the coat rack that was in front of me and gashed up my toe on one of the hooks. Lesson learned: My manliness levels have decreased since I got here. Must eat more meat.
Other than that, all is well down here in Argentina. One of our investigators (Carlos’ brother) just had his first kid today, so we’re going with their whole family to the hospital tonight to see it. One of the daughters of my convert from a month ago, Veronica, who was super rebellious and against the church, started opening up and told us the other day that she wants to quit smoking and start going to church, so hopefully by the end of this transfer we’ll be able to have the entire family baptized (except for the dad, who’s separated). This week I’ve been continuing in my quest to actually learn something from the war chapters of Alma. We can actually learn a lot about dealing with our own problems and temptations from studying what captain Moroni did to defeat cities the Lamanites had taken. Like Moroni, we need to plan ahead, make the decision of how we are going to react in a certain situation of temptation now; that way when the problem comes, it’ll be a whole lot easier to choose the right when we’ve made our plan. As well, Moroni never attacked the strong spots of the enemy directly, so if there are places or situations that are strong spots against us, we need to avoid them as much as possible and fight the battle on our own terms, where we are prepared and ready to overcome temptation. It’s a whole lot easier to not drink if you aren’t in a bar, whole lot easier to not gamble if you aren’t in a casino.
Anyway, Hope you enjoyed the letter. Keep-em-coming. Love you guys,
Church is true!
-Elder Spencer
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
August 16
Hello Family,
Wow, what another fast week. We’re on to the last week of the transfer and I’ve already got 6 months in the mission. I can hardly believe it’s gone by this fast, it’s seriously like a dream. The days blend into weeks, weeks into months, and before you know it you’re moving on. This week had its ups and downs. Downs: we’ve had to start dropping a lot of the investigators I really liked because they weren’t progressing. My comp got suuuper sick so I got to spend a whole day cleaning the apartment and making him tea while he baked in bed with a fever. Ups: We’ve been finding lots of awesome new investigators. I got to have a sweet interview with the mission president where he taught me lots of cool doctrine. My comp got better super quick and now we’re runnin’ full steam.
Time is super short, as always, but something really cool I learned this week was from the war chapters of Alma (43). I was a little bummed when I got there thinking, what can I learn from all these chapters about war, and what does that have to do with preaching the gospel, but I learned something really cool, which was about how Moroni motivates his troops. Instead of getting mad at them when they didn’t perform, or when they got scared, he filled their minds with inspiration, the things worth fighting for. He gave them a distinct purpose of why they were fighting and helped them focus on that. For missionary work, the same thing applies. Many investigators and recent converts have difficulty keeping commitments. Rather than just telling them the same things over and over, we as missionaries can inspire them with the reasons why they’re doing what they’re doing. For you all as normal people, life has its good times and its bad times, but as you focus on what your goal is and the people you love and who depend on you doing what you’re doing, you will find the inspiration to give you the strength you need.
I’m doing great, but still hoping for some letters, packages, or even emails from my fam. Love your guts!
-Elder Spencer
Wow, what another fast week. We’re on to the last week of the transfer and I’ve already got 6 months in the mission. I can hardly believe it’s gone by this fast, it’s seriously like a dream. The days blend into weeks, weeks into months, and before you know it you’re moving on. This week had its ups and downs. Downs: we’ve had to start dropping a lot of the investigators I really liked because they weren’t progressing. My comp got suuuper sick so I got to spend a whole day cleaning the apartment and making him tea while he baked in bed with a fever. Ups: We’ve been finding lots of awesome new investigators. I got to have a sweet interview with the mission president where he taught me lots of cool doctrine. My comp got better super quick and now we’re runnin’ full steam.
Time is super short, as always, but something really cool I learned this week was from the war chapters of Alma (43). I was a little bummed when I got there thinking, what can I learn from all these chapters about war, and what does that have to do with preaching the gospel, but I learned something really cool, which was about how Moroni motivates his troops. Instead of getting mad at them when they didn’t perform, or when they got scared, he filled their minds with inspiration, the things worth fighting for. He gave them a distinct purpose of why they were fighting and helped them focus on that. For missionary work, the same thing applies. Many investigators and recent converts have difficulty keeping commitments. Rather than just telling them the same things over and over, we as missionaries can inspire them with the reasons why they’re doing what they’re doing. For you all as normal people, life has its good times and its bad times, but as you focus on what your goal is and the people you love and who depend on you doing what you’re doing, you will find the inspiration to give you the strength you need.
I’m doing great, but still hoping for some letters, packages, or even emails from my fam. Love your guts!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, August 9, 2010
August 9
Family,
Another busy week. We didn’t have a baptism this week so we decided to have an activity on Saturday night. My comp made a peach cobbler thing. Basically, you buy some peaches, cut them up into chunks and then take a vanilla cake mix and dump the powder covering the peaches, and then top it off dumping Sprite over that. It was pretty yummy, but we didn’t have any butter to grease the pan with, so my comp just decided to line it with paper. Seeing the goeyness of the peaches gave me second thoughts as we were putting it in, and it turns out I was right. Luckily/unluckily, only one person came to our activity, so while we had to scrape all the paper off and only ended up being able to eat about half of what was there, we had enough for everybody at the activity... oh well. Our church attendance this week was also pretty low because this Sunday was a holiday, dia del niño (childreńs day). What stinks is that Argentina has a *ton* of holidays (worker’s day, friend’s day, animal’s day, seriously), and if it ever falls during the week they move it to the weekend and make it a long weekend. It also stinks for us because instead of being able to teach lots of people we have to put up with the hordes of drunks in the streets. Yay. We did however get to help out serving food at a big block party one of the members was having, so we got to get to know lots of families from that neighborhood, which was awesome. We also got the best lunch ever, a huge barbeque with the yummiest steaks I’ve ever had, so I was pretty pleased.
Our investigators are doing pretty well. It’s so amazing to see them progress and keep commitments, and super sad to see when they don’t. The worst was, last week we had this super awesome investigator, Rosaura, come to church and a baptism and we gave her the commitment to get baptized and she got super excited and told her whole family. This week she didn’t come because she had work so we had to bump the date foreward, but it really stinks having to break her the news that she has to wait to get baptized because she didn’t do her part. Oh well, I guess that’s how it works, do your part - get blessings, don’t do your part - don’t get blessings. As long as we as missionaries do our best, we’ll be happy. As a result, Elder Staker and I are staying super busy and having a super good time.
This week I found a super cool scripture in Moroni 9:6 where Mormon is telling Moroni how incredibly wicked the people are and how they are past feeling and they are a lost and fallen people. Sounds like a pretty tough crowd to convert; I’d probably call it quits and just dust off my feet, but Mormon tells Moroni that: "notwithstanding their hardness, let us labor diligently; for if we should cease to labor, we should be brought under condemnation; for we have a labor to perform whilst in this tabernacle of clay, that we may conquer the enemy of all righteousness, and rest our souls in the kingdom of God." So, no matter how hard the problem, there is one solution: labor diligently because in doing your labor you are becoming a better person, even if you never reach the solution.
Love you all
-Elder Spencer
Another busy week. We didn’t have a baptism this week so we decided to have an activity on Saturday night. My comp made a peach cobbler thing. Basically, you buy some peaches, cut them up into chunks and then take a vanilla cake mix and dump the powder covering the peaches, and then top it off dumping Sprite over that. It was pretty yummy, but we didn’t have any butter to grease the pan with, so my comp just decided to line it with paper. Seeing the goeyness of the peaches gave me second thoughts as we were putting it in, and it turns out I was right. Luckily/unluckily, only one person came to our activity, so while we had to scrape all the paper off and only ended up being able to eat about half of what was there, we had enough for everybody at the activity... oh well. Our church attendance this week was also pretty low because this Sunday was a holiday, dia del niño (childreńs day). What stinks is that Argentina has a *ton* of holidays (worker’s day, friend’s day, animal’s day, seriously), and if it ever falls during the week they move it to the weekend and make it a long weekend. It also stinks for us because instead of being able to teach lots of people we have to put up with the hordes of drunks in the streets. Yay. We did however get to help out serving food at a big block party one of the members was having, so we got to get to know lots of families from that neighborhood, which was awesome. We also got the best lunch ever, a huge barbeque with the yummiest steaks I’ve ever had, so I was pretty pleased.
Our investigators are doing pretty well. It’s so amazing to see them progress and keep commitments, and super sad to see when they don’t. The worst was, last week we had this super awesome investigator, Rosaura, come to church and a baptism and we gave her the commitment to get baptized and she got super excited and told her whole family. This week she didn’t come because she had work so we had to bump the date foreward, but it really stinks having to break her the news that she has to wait to get baptized because she didn’t do her part. Oh well, I guess that’s how it works, do your part - get blessings, don’t do your part - don’t get blessings. As long as we as missionaries do our best, we’ll be happy. As a result, Elder Staker and I are staying super busy and having a super good time.
This week I found a super cool scripture in Moroni 9:6 where Mormon is telling Moroni how incredibly wicked the people are and how they are past feeling and they are a lost and fallen people. Sounds like a pretty tough crowd to convert; I’d probably call it quits and just dust off my feet, but Mormon tells Moroni that: "notwithstanding their hardness, let us labor diligently; for if we should cease to labor, we should be brought under condemnation; for we have a labor to perform whilst in this tabernacle of clay, that we may conquer the enemy of all righteousness, and rest our souls in the kingdom of God." So, no matter how hard the problem, there is one solution: labor diligently because in doing your labor you are becoming a better person, even if you never reach the solution.
Love you all
-Elder Spencer
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Hey fam!
Hey fam!
Super good week. We were incredibly busy with appointments every night and we had 2 baptisms, so by the end of the week we were pretty ready for p-day to take a rest from everything. We have a ton of awesome investigators right now. They are all progressing super well and we are working our tails off. Looks like we’ll probably have 3 more baptisms this transfer and some more for the beginning of the next one.
Some fun stories... So this week we learned how Argentine electric companies and such work. Apparently the office elders had screwed up and not paid our electric bill so one day all of a sudden we just didn’t have any electricity. It was a pretty cold night and we wanted to be able to use the electric heaters so we did a little investigating... This is how Argentine electricity works, there is only one breaker for the entire apartment and it is not located inside the building, rather, on the outside on a busy street corner with no cover over the panel. When the electric company shut us down they just turned off the breaker and unscrewed the (now) cold lead. We snuck down right before bed and turned it back on until 6 am so we could stay warm during the night and then shut it off. Luckily we only had to steal power one night, because other elders told me they’ve had to spend several days without power. Sweeeeeet. Oh well, part of the big ol’ experience, eh?
Oh, other funny thing. We were in an appointment with an investigator and she commented how her son was almost about to turn one year old. She then told us that she needed to get the son baptized before he turned one so the little elves didn’t carry it away. Hahaha, seriously. Around here (mainly in the poorer, less educated parts) they believe in these things called duendes (elves) that come out at night and move things in your house (unless you leave an open Bible out) and steal unbaptized babies. I thought she was joking with us, but apparently that’s what people think. Good thing we were there to teach her the truth and set her fears at rest.
Anyway, that’s about all for the week. I hope all goes well with ya’ll. A good scripture I read this week: D&C 29:36 where God tells us the source of his power: his honor. Think about that and remember that if you want more spiritual power, you need to work on becoming a more honorable person.
"but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister" (Matt 20:26-28)
Love all your guts! Family, e-mail me! (Ask Mom if you don't know it.)
-Elder Spencer
Super good week. We were incredibly busy with appointments every night and we had 2 baptisms, so by the end of the week we were pretty ready for p-day to take a rest from everything. We have a ton of awesome investigators right now. They are all progressing super well and we are working our tails off. Looks like we’ll probably have 3 more baptisms this transfer and some more for the beginning of the next one.
Some fun stories... So this week we learned how Argentine electric companies and such work. Apparently the office elders had screwed up and not paid our electric bill so one day all of a sudden we just didn’t have any electricity. It was a pretty cold night and we wanted to be able to use the electric heaters so we did a little investigating... This is how Argentine electricity works, there is only one breaker for the entire apartment and it is not located inside the building, rather, on the outside on a busy street corner with no cover over the panel. When the electric company shut us down they just turned off the breaker and unscrewed the (now) cold lead. We snuck down right before bed and turned it back on until 6 am so we could stay warm during the night and then shut it off. Luckily we only had to steal power one night, because other elders told me they’ve had to spend several days without power. Sweeeeeet. Oh well, part of the big ol’ experience, eh?
Oh, other funny thing. We were in an appointment with an investigator and she commented how her son was almost about to turn one year old. She then told us that she needed to get the son baptized before he turned one so the little elves didn’t carry it away. Hahaha, seriously. Around here (mainly in the poorer, less educated parts) they believe in these things called duendes (elves) that come out at night and move things in your house (unless you leave an open Bible out) and steal unbaptized babies. I thought she was joking with us, but apparently that’s what people think. Good thing we were there to teach her the truth and set her fears at rest.
Anyway, that’s about all for the week. I hope all goes well with ya’ll. A good scripture I read this week: D&C 29:36 where God tells us the source of his power: his honor. Think about that and remember that if you want more spiritual power, you need to work on becoming a more honorable person.
"but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister" (Matt 20:26-28)
Love all your guts! Family, e-mail me! (Ask Mom if you don't know it.)
-Elder Spencer
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