August 23

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