Dear Family,
It was great to hear from some of you on Christmas! I hope you all had a very merry Christmas and were able to remember the true purpose of Christmas. We celebrated Christmas by caroling to all of our investigators and all the members. They sure loved that and even though we finished the day completely dead it was one of the best ones I’ve had. The night before we had a ward Family Home Evening where we talked about the true meaning of Christmas. There was a super neat spirit and we had several investigators attend.
I also love the time of New Year’s. Last year’s resolution was to live more fully the song: "Have I done any good in the world today?" I like that line, "If not I have failed indeed." When we get to the final judgment, we will not be asked about how high of a salary we achieved, how big of a house we had, how many video games we beat, or how many sports events we attended. True success in this life depends on how many people we can make happy, how much we can give and sacrifice for the wellbeing of others. Jesus Christ lived a very successful life. Let us make 2012 a very successful year! :)
I love you all so much! The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
December 19, 2011
Dear Family,
This week was a little hectic, but it turned out great. This week we were planning on baptizing the son of the Ramos family. (Their marriage date in the civil register is in February, so we wanted to baptize him first and them later), but the mom started looking up about the church on internet and came across a ton of anti-stuff, so... we need to strengthen their faith a lot. The good news is we had a baptism anyway. It was the baptism of a member who had never been registered, and nobody remembered their baptism, so they had to do it again. We had several investigators attend which pumped them up a ton for their baptisms and we had six investigators come to church this Sunday, which was an awesome Sunday to pick! We had the Primary program, and the spirit was sooo strong! All the investigators loved it and we are definitely going to see good results out of the ones who attended after having such a good experience.
We have tons of work to do, so I don’t have much time today to write, but I hope you all know I love you tons and wish you a very merry Christmas. The church is true!!
This week was a little hectic, but it turned out great. This week we were planning on baptizing the son of the Ramos family. (Their marriage date in the civil register is in February, so we wanted to baptize him first and them later), but the mom started looking up about the church on internet and came across a ton of anti-stuff, so... we need to strengthen their faith a lot. The good news is we had a baptism anyway. It was the baptism of a member who had never been registered, and nobody remembered their baptism, so they had to do it again. We had several investigators attend which pumped them up a ton for their baptisms and we had six investigators come to church this Sunday, which was an awesome Sunday to pick! We had the Primary program, and the spirit was sooo strong! All the investigators loved it and we are definitely going to see good results out of the ones who attended after having such a good experience.
We have tons of work to do, so I don’t have much time today to write, but I hope you all know I love you tons and wish you a very merry Christmas. The church is true!!
Monday, December 12, 2011
December 12, 2011
Dear Family,
This week we had some super neat experiences!
The best was with the Ávila family. They really are progressing great. On Sunday afternoon we decided to teach them a little about temples. Mario has taken a special interest in temples after one day at church they showed the video "Only a stonecutter" in priesthood. We showed them lots of pictures of temples and told them that our goal for them isn’t just baptism; our goal for them is to reach the temple and be sealed as a family for time and eternity. We talked a little about how through baptisms for the dead our loved ones who didn’t have a chance to hear the gospel will be able to accept a baptism even after death. At that point María started crying and told us that she had two brothers who had died and that for years and years she had asked herself what would become of them and in all the churches she had attended she had never found the answer. There was a really sweet spirit in the room. We committed them to prepare not just for baptism, but for their sealing one year from now and they accepted. :) Those are the types of lessons that make your day, week, month, year, etc... :)
In pondering the passing away of Grandad, a quote from the April conference repeatedly came to mind: "We live to die, and we die to live again. From an eternal perspective, the only death that is truly premature is the death of one who is not prepared to meet God." (Russell M. Nelson, "Face the Future with Faith") I feel very at peace about the passing away of both of my grandparents in my absence, knowing of their good hearts and good works. In pondering death, my conclusion is the same as Mormon’s: "And thus we see the great call of diligence of men to labor in the vineyards of the Lord; and thus we see the great reason of sorrow, and also of rejoicing—sorrow because of death and destruction among men, and joy because of the light of Christ unto life." (Alma 28:14[10-14]) Our duty as members of the church, having a testimony of the reality of the resurrection of Christ and the full import of that in the eternal plan obligates us to respond to the great call of diligence to share that plan with those who do not have it. Mourning with those that mourn and comforting those in need of comfort means providing lasting consolation by sharing the great plan of the Eternal God (Alma 34:9). The best Christmas gift we can give is the good news of the gospel, the gift of "joy because of the light of Christ unto life". That brings everlasting happiness.
I love you all so much. I have the best family ever! Thank you for your prayers. The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
Me and my comp Elder Barcenas. He's such a stud! This is our little Christmas tree.
My birthday pancake
My birthday watermelon. mmm mmm
My birthday "cake" :) Lighting 21 candles wasn't the best of ideas ...
This week we had some super neat experiences!
The best was with the Ávila family. They really are progressing great. On Sunday afternoon we decided to teach them a little about temples. Mario has taken a special interest in temples after one day at church they showed the video "Only a stonecutter" in priesthood. We showed them lots of pictures of temples and told them that our goal for them isn’t just baptism; our goal for them is to reach the temple and be sealed as a family for time and eternity. We talked a little about how through baptisms for the dead our loved ones who didn’t have a chance to hear the gospel will be able to accept a baptism even after death. At that point María started crying and told us that she had two brothers who had died and that for years and years she had asked herself what would become of them and in all the churches she had attended she had never found the answer. There was a really sweet spirit in the room. We committed them to prepare not just for baptism, but for their sealing one year from now and they accepted. :) Those are the types of lessons that make your day, week, month, year, etc... :)
In pondering the passing away of Grandad, a quote from the April conference repeatedly came to mind: "We live to die, and we die to live again. From an eternal perspective, the only death that is truly premature is the death of one who is not prepared to meet God." (Russell M. Nelson, "Face the Future with Faith") I feel very at peace about the passing away of both of my grandparents in my absence, knowing of their good hearts and good works. In pondering death, my conclusion is the same as Mormon’s: "And thus we see the great call of diligence of men to labor in the vineyards of the Lord; and thus we see the great reason of sorrow, and also of rejoicing—sorrow because of death and destruction among men, and joy because of the light of Christ unto life." (Alma 28:14[10-14]) Our duty as members of the church, having a testimony of the reality of the resurrection of Christ and the full import of that in the eternal plan obligates us to respond to the great call of diligence to share that plan with those who do not have it. Mourning with those that mourn and comforting those in need of comfort means providing lasting consolation by sharing the great plan of the Eternal God (Alma 34:9). The best Christmas gift we can give is the good news of the gospel, the gift of "joy because of the light of Christ unto life". That brings everlasting happiness.
I love you all so much. I have the best family ever! Thank you for your prayers. The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
Me and my comp Elder Barcenas. He's such a stud! This is our little Christmas tree.
My birthday pancake
My birthday watermelon. mmm mmm
My birthday "cake" :) Lighting 21 candles wasn't the best of ideas ...
Monday, December 5, 2011
December 5, 2011
Dear Family,
This was a hard working week, but we had some excellent fruits! So the main problem that we're facing right now is that we have 4 great families that we're teaching, but none of them are married (it's suuuper common out here), even though all of them have kids. When we asked them why they hadn't gotten married the most common response was that they weren't sure they were ready to make that kind of commitment. Apparently having kids together these days isn't much of a commitment. Anyway, apart from that, they're all super great families and we've been focusing a lot on the Law of Chastity and the Proclamation for the Family. The good news was that we had 6 investigators come to church, which was a huge blessing since we've been struggling to get people to come to church recently. Fast Sunday is usually a pretty risky day for investigators to come to church for the first time because you never really know what some member will say... ...especially in Argentina where the church isn't quite as mature as the USA, but this Sunday was super good and all the investigators liked it. Next step, marriage :)
The Ávila family is progressing wonderfully. We taught the law of chastity and Mario really understood how the family is key to the Plan and how God set up commandments to protect the family. The biggest problem is that all of the couples have disagreements here and there, so we have to do a little bit of marriage counseling as 20-year old kids who have never had any experience in the subject. Haha! Luckily, the prophets and apostles do have experience, so we mainly stick to things they've said.
The Ramos family is also doing great. Their son Rafael is such a stud. He's only 9, but he reads everything we give him to read and understands it so well. In Primary, he came as an investigator, and volunteered to give a prayer. This week they even assigned him a part in the Primary program! He reminds me of my awesome nieces and nephews!
Today we spent the day running around downtown and the municipality to print off a huge map of our area. It's pretty sweet, about a meter squared. Later I'll send you pictures of our apartment when we finish decorating for Christmas :)
I love you all! I love this time of year to be able to remember one of the most important events in the existence of humanity. Christ's birth was so anticipated that heavenly choirs could not be withheld from bursting through the veil in songs of praise. Take advantage of this special time to share your testimony of Christ with someone not of our faith. The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
My comp and I with Agustin and Alejandro Arenas. We couldn't get a picture the day of their baptism, so we took this the day after.
This was a hard working week, but we had some excellent fruits! So the main problem that we're facing right now is that we have 4 great families that we're teaching, but none of them are married (it's suuuper common out here), even though all of them have kids. When we asked them why they hadn't gotten married the most common response was that they weren't sure they were ready to make that kind of commitment. Apparently having kids together these days isn't much of a commitment. Anyway, apart from that, they're all super great families and we've been focusing a lot on the Law of Chastity and the Proclamation for the Family. The good news was that we had 6 investigators come to church, which was a huge blessing since we've been struggling to get people to come to church recently. Fast Sunday is usually a pretty risky day for investigators to come to church for the first time because you never really know what some member will say... ...especially in Argentina where the church isn't quite as mature as the USA, but this Sunday was super good and all the investigators liked it. Next step, marriage :)
The Ávila family is progressing wonderfully. We taught the law of chastity and Mario really understood how the family is key to the Plan and how God set up commandments to protect the family. The biggest problem is that all of the couples have disagreements here and there, so we have to do a little bit of marriage counseling as 20-year old kids who have never had any experience in the subject. Haha! Luckily, the prophets and apostles do have experience, so we mainly stick to things they've said.
The Ramos family is also doing great. Their son Rafael is such a stud. He's only 9, but he reads everything we give him to read and understands it so well. In Primary, he came as an investigator, and volunteered to give a prayer. This week they even assigned him a part in the Primary program! He reminds me of my awesome nieces and nephews!
Today we spent the day running around downtown and the municipality to print off a huge map of our area. It's pretty sweet, about a meter squared. Later I'll send you pictures of our apartment when we finish decorating for Christmas :)
I love you all! I love this time of year to be able to remember one of the most important events in the existence of humanity. Christ's birth was so anticipated that heavenly choirs could not be withheld from bursting through the veil in songs of praise. Take advantage of this special time to share your testimony of Christ with someone not of our faith. The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
My comp and I with Agustin and Alejandro Arenas. We couldn't get a picture the day of their baptism, so we took this the day after.
Monday, November 28, 2011
November 28, 2011
Dear Family,
What a week! First I want to make a brief commentary about the weather here. It’s crazy. This morning we woke up and it was cloudy and cold. A few hours later when we went shopping it was roasting hot right when we got to walk 8 blocks home with grocery bags, haha, then while we were eating lunch it started raining. After we finished cleaning up it was sunny again, and right now it is POURING. The bad part was, today is a national holiday, so we went running all over the area looking for an internet café and got soaked before we found one. I’m telling you, the weather here is crazier than Colorado!
Well this week was pretty awesome. We have started working with a new family that is progressing really well. They are called the Avila family. Maria, Mario and 4 cute little daughters ages 7, 5, 2 and 1. They used to go to an Evangelist church, but got really tired of it because the only thing they ever preached was the importance of tithing, haha, so they stopped going. On Tuesday we taught them about baptism and invited them to follow the example of Christ by being baptized by one with the proper authority. They accepted, and then they asked us how soon they could do it! Talk about people hearing the voice of the Lord and not hardening their hearts! (D&C 29:7) Maria and her daughters went to a Primary activity Saturday morning with a member mom that came with us to one of the lessons, and the whole family came to church on Sunday and liked it a lot! The only problem is that, like every single other family here, they aren’t legally married, so this week we’re going to teach about the law of chastity and the family and commit them to get married so they can get baptized.
Well, I don’t have really any time left to write today because we spent so much time running around looking for an internet café, but I hope you all had an excellent Thanksgiving, and I love you all. The church is true!! Miracles happen when we obey!!
-Elder Spencer
What a week! First I want to make a brief commentary about the weather here. It’s crazy. This morning we woke up and it was cloudy and cold. A few hours later when we went shopping it was roasting hot right when we got to walk 8 blocks home with grocery bags, haha, then while we were eating lunch it started raining. After we finished cleaning up it was sunny again, and right now it is POURING. The bad part was, today is a national holiday, so we went running all over the area looking for an internet café and got soaked before we found one. I’m telling you, the weather here is crazier than Colorado!
Well this week was pretty awesome. We have started working with a new family that is progressing really well. They are called the Avila family. Maria, Mario and 4 cute little daughters ages 7, 5, 2 and 1. They used to go to an Evangelist church, but got really tired of it because the only thing they ever preached was the importance of tithing, haha, so they stopped going. On Tuesday we taught them about baptism and invited them to follow the example of Christ by being baptized by one with the proper authority. They accepted, and then they asked us how soon they could do it! Talk about people hearing the voice of the Lord and not hardening their hearts! (D&C 29:7) Maria and her daughters went to a Primary activity Saturday morning with a member mom that came with us to one of the lessons, and the whole family came to church on Sunday and liked it a lot! The only problem is that, like every single other family here, they aren’t legally married, so this week we’re going to teach about the law of chastity and the family and commit them to get married so they can get baptized.
Well, I don’t have really any time left to write today because we spent so much time running around looking for an internet café, but I hope you all had an excellent Thanksgiving, and I love you all. The church is true!! Miracles happen when we obey!!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, November 21, 2011
November 21, 2011
Dear Family,
This week was hectic and excellent. We had a baptism! He’s the 9 year old son of a less active family we have been working with to reactivate. His name is Agustín and he’s a super stud! They took notes in all of our lessons and know the stuff better than some of the old members, haha! He reminded me of my awesome nieces and nephews!
My birthday went awesome. We worked really hard and had a great successful day, the best way I could really ask to celebrate my birthday. The best part was that I was able to celebrate it doing something I’d never be able to do up there: Eating a delicious watermelon. We were thinking about buying a cake, but then I saw the fruit salesman and I couldn’t resist, so I got myself a watermelon for a whopping 4 US dollars (15 pesos). I forgot to bring my camera, so next week I’ll drop ya’ll the pictures. Thanks for your well wishes!!!
I had a great birthday! If you want to give me a present, go give your local missionaries the names of 2 friends who are going through a hard time or abrupt change in their life (birth, death, problems with teens, just moved, etc...).
The Ramos family is progressing great and we’ve found several other families we’re working with right now who are also super receptive. It’s all been happening because we’ve been accepting the challenge of our mission president to talk to everyone we see and to ask references from everyone we talk to. I know that miracles come from obedience. If you need miracles in your life look for ways in which you can more completely obey the Lord’s command and I promise you that the windows of heaven will be opened unto you. I love you all so much! The church is true!!
-Elder Spencer
This week was hectic and excellent. We had a baptism! He’s the 9 year old son of a less active family we have been working with to reactivate. His name is Agustín and he’s a super stud! They took notes in all of our lessons and know the stuff better than some of the old members, haha! He reminded me of my awesome nieces and nephews!
My birthday went awesome. We worked really hard and had a great successful day, the best way I could really ask to celebrate my birthday. The best part was that I was able to celebrate it doing something I’d never be able to do up there: Eating a delicious watermelon. We were thinking about buying a cake, but then I saw the fruit salesman and I couldn’t resist, so I got myself a watermelon for a whopping 4 US dollars (15 pesos). I forgot to bring my camera, so next week I’ll drop ya’ll the pictures. Thanks for your well wishes!!!
I had a great birthday! If you want to give me a present, go give your local missionaries the names of 2 friends who are going through a hard time or abrupt change in their life (birth, death, problems with teens, just moved, etc...).
The Ramos family is progressing great and we’ve found several other families we’re working with right now who are also super receptive. It’s all been happening because we’ve been accepting the challenge of our mission president to talk to everyone we see and to ask references from everyone we talk to. I know that miracles come from obedience. If you need miracles in your life look for ways in which you can more completely obey the Lord’s command and I promise you that the windows of heaven will be opened unto you. I love you all so much! The church is true!!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, November 14, 2011
November 14, 2011
Dear Family,
This week was fantastic!! The Ramos family is doing great and accepted the challenge to be baptized. The best part of the week, though, was being blessed with a personal visit from Elder D. Todd Christofferson!
So here’s kinda how it went. On Saturday we had a mission conference, where the whole entire mission traveled to Salta for the conference (a pretty big deal to have everyone together since some live more than 8 hours away from Salta). In the conference we had Elder Spitale (Area Seventy), Elder Arnold (Area President), Elder Jensen (Presidency of the Seventy), and Elder Christofferson (Apostle) and their wives. A pretty epic lineup. It was a really neat meeting. For the first hour there was a musical number and a few talks by Elder Jensen, his wife, and Elder Christofferson’s wife. President Levrieno and his wife bore their testimonies to the mission and that was really neat. Then, Elder Christofferson spoke. He is just a genuine wonderful guy. He even cracked a joke about how Spanish is better than Portuguese, haha. He talked for a few minutes and then left about a whole hour to answering questions. They were some great questions and some great answers. It was honestly probably the strongest I’ve ever felt the spirit in a meeting. Simply beautiful. We got to shake his hand at the end and when I did I told him my dad, Richard Spencer, said hi. He said I look a bit like him and told me to tell you hi, so there you go, Dad, consider yourself greeted. :)
Then on Sunday we had the extra special treat to be here in Jujuy because he came up here for a special stake conference. In it, he talked a lot about putting the family in order (D&C 93:50). He started out reminding the young single adults to get their act together and get married or they’d turn out ministering angels (D&C 132) and then talked about the utmost importance of the family traditions of daily family scripture study and daily family prayer. He finished up talking about how we need to be a light to the world (3 Nephi 18:24) and how the people around us need to recognize us as followers of Christ simply by the way we act.
I think what made the conferences so special was the special attachment that he had to this part of the world. He told us that he considered this mission sacred ground, and that whenever he assigns a missionary to come here he asks himself: "Really? Are they really worthy?" He said that we could probably all have the same if not more success in other parts of the world, in other missions, but the Lord wanted us here, now, for a very specific purpose.
It was pretty incredible. The spirit this last weekend has been a feast. After feeling that spirit there is no room for doubt that that man really is a Special Witness of Jesus Christ and has his Apostolic authority. Really, it’s the best birthday present I could ever ask for. I hope you all have an excellent week. I love you all tons! The church is true!!
-Elder Spencer
This week was fantastic!! The Ramos family is doing great and accepted the challenge to be baptized. The best part of the week, though, was being blessed with a personal visit from Elder D. Todd Christofferson!
So here’s kinda how it went. On Saturday we had a mission conference, where the whole entire mission traveled to Salta for the conference (a pretty big deal to have everyone together since some live more than 8 hours away from Salta). In the conference we had Elder Spitale (Area Seventy), Elder Arnold (Area President), Elder Jensen (Presidency of the Seventy), and Elder Christofferson (Apostle) and their wives. A pretty epic lineup. It was a really neat meeting. For the first hour there was a musical number and a few talks by Elder Jensen, his wife, and Elder Christofferson’s wife. President Levrieno and his wife bore their testimonies to the mission and that was really neat. Then, Elder Christofferson spoke. He is just a genuine wonderful guy. He even cracked a joke about how Spanish is better than Portuguese, haha. He talked for a few minutes and then left about a whole hour to answering questions. They were some great questions and some great answers. It was honestly probably the strongest I’ve ever felt the spirit in a meeting. Simply beautiful. We got to shake his hand at the end and when I did I told him my dad, Richard Spencer, said hi. He said I look a bit like him and told me to tell you hi, so there you go, Dad, consider yourself greeted. :)
Then on Sunday we had the extra special treat to be here in Jujuy because he came up here for a special stake conference. In it, he talked a lot about putting the family in order (D&C 93:50). He started out reminding the young single adults to get their act together and get married or they’d turn out ministering angels (D&C 132) and then talked about the utmost importance of the family traditions of daily family scripture study and daily family prayer. He finished up talking about how we need to be a light to the world (3 Nephi 18:24) and how the people around us need to recognize us as followers of Christ simply by the way we act.
I think what made the conferences so special was the special attachment that he had to this part of the world. He told us that he considered this mission sacred ground, and that whenever he assigns a missionary to come here he asks himself: "Really? Are they really worthy?" He said that we could probably all have the same if not more success in other parts of the world, in other missions, but the Lord wanted us here, now, for a very specific purpose.
It was pretty incredible. The spirit this last weekend has been a feast. After feeling that spirit there is no room for doubt that that man really is a Special Witness of Jesus Christ and has his Apostolic authority. Really, it’s the best birthday present I could ever ask for. I hope you all have an excellent week. I love you all tons! The church is true!!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, November 7, 2011
November 7, 2011
Dear Family,
Well this week, just like each and every week on the mission has been so great. Elder Bárcenas and I get along so well. I really like him a lot, he's really humble, happy and ready to work. It's really nice to be with a new missionary because they come onto the field with guns blazing ready to baptize the whole world, and that's exactly what we plan to do. :)
This week the best thing that happened was finding the Ramos family. Let me give you a little back story. President Northcutt used to have a required amount of street contacts and doors knocked per week. That went for a while, but for one reason or another he had the missionaries stop reporting the number of those that they did. As a result, all the missionaries completely stopped doing street contacts. A few months later, I got to Argentina. So basically, I went a good year and a half without ever doing more than a handful of street contacts because I didn't know it was something you were supposed to do. Then, President Levrino a few weeks ago challenged us to talk to everyone and promised us much more spiritual power as we "open[ed] [our] mouth[s]" (D&C 33:7-10) and shared with us a promise from Elder Ballard that if a missionary opened his mouth talking with everyone the Lord put in his pathway, he would have twice as many baptisms than if he had not. I took the challenge. It wasn't easy, nor still is, but miracles have followed as we have followed this promise from a man of God. (See 2 Kings 5:1-14.) The miracle that occurred this week was the Ramos family. Victoria Ramos was a street contact. We didn't think much of her, but one night after our plans had fallen through and we had a little time before we headed home, we dropped by her house.
They are from Bolivia and very humble. Two families live in the house: her family and the family of her brother-in-law. (Her husband and husband's brother are identical twins named Eduardo Carlos and Carlos Eduardo ... what a sense of humor that mother had. Haha!) Anyway, they are pretty much golden investigators. They have a 9-year old son who read the pamphlet we left with them and the chapter of the Book of Mormon and totally understood it all and had great questions. Carlos had read everything and even though we only left him 2 Nephi 31 to read, he read it and also started from the beginning of the Book of Mormon and read all of the introduction really thoroughly. They are probably the most sincere, humble seekers after truth that I have met in the mission. When Carlos gave the closing prayer in the last lesson he asked God forgiveness for having so many questions. What humility! They are great! I'll keep you posted on them. Pray for their progress.
On a side note, Ariel and Gisela are doing great! Ariel got the Aaronic Priesthood this week and they are so excited to be doing what God wants for them.
Anyway, that's been my miraculous week. I love you all so much! Miracles happen when we obey with exactness what the Lord asks of us.
The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
Well this week, just like each and every week on the mission has been so great. Elder Bárcenas and I get along so well. I really like him a lot, he's really humble, happy and ready to work. It's really nice to be with a new missionary because they come onto the field with guns blazing ready to baptize the whole world, and that's exactly what we plan to do. :)
This week the best thing that happened was finding the Ramos family. Let me give you a little back story. President Northcutt used to have a required amount of street contacts and doors knocked per week. That went for a while, but for one reason or another he had the missionaries stop reporting the number of those that they did. As a result, all the missionaries completely stopped doing street contacts. A few months later, I got to Argentina. So basically, I went a good year and a half without ever doing more than a handful of street contacts because I didn't know it was something you were supposed to do. Then, President Levrino a few weeks ago challenged us to talk to everyone and promised us much more spiritual power as we "open[ed] [our] mouth[s]" (D&C 33:7-10) and shared with us a promise from Elder Ballard that if a missionary opened his mouth talking with everyone the Lord put in his pathway, he would have twice as many baptisms than if he had not. I took the challenge. It wasn't easy, nor still is, but miracles have followed as we have followed this promise from a man of God. (See 2 Kings 5:1-14.) The miracle that occurred this week was the Ramos family. Victoria Ramos was a street contact. We didn't think much of her, but one night after our plans had fallen through and we had a little time before we headed home, we dropped by her house.
They are from Bolivia and very humble. Two families live in the house: her family and the family of her brother-in-law. (Her husband and husband's brother are identical twins named Eduardo Carlos and Carlos Eduardo ... what a sense of humor that mother had. Haha!) Anyway, they are pretty much golden investigators. They have a 9-year old son who read the pamphlet we left with them and the chapter of the Book of Mormon and totally understood it all and had great questions. Carlos had read everything and even though we only left him 2 Nephi 31 to read, he read it and also started from the beginning of the Book of Mormon and read all of the introduction really thoroughly. They are probably the most sincere, humble seekers after truth that I have met in the mission. When Carlos gave the closing prayer in the last lesson he asked God forgiveness for having so many questions. What humility! They are great! I'll keep you posted on them. Pray for their progress.
On a side note, Ariel and Gisela are doing great! Ariel got the Aaronic Priesthood this week and they are so excited to be doing what God wants for them.
Anyway, that's been my miraculous week. I love you all so much! Miracles happen when we obey with exactness what the Lord asks of us.
The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, October 31, 2011
October 31, 2011
Dear Family,
Wow, this week was super crazy. I’m so glad to be in this mission! I wish I could stay an extra two years!!
Ok first. My new companion came in!! His name is Elder Bárcenas and he’s awesome!!! He’s from Toluca Mexico and he’s pretty much a stud. So I went to Salta Tuesday at midday to pick him up because he was supposed to get in Tuesday night. To pass the time I went out to work in the afternoon with the elders who spend the morning doing office work. That was super fun and we had lots of great lessons. Then, about 6 o’clock we get a call that apparently he’s supposed to get in on Wednesday. I’m a little disappointed with that prospect because I didn’t bring any change of clothes with me from Jujuy, but still happy for a little change of scenery. We kept on working and went to their apartment at the end of the night. At about 10:30 we were all ready to crawl into bed when we get a phone call. Apparently the church offices in Buenos Aires had screwed up with the itinerary of my comp and he had actually flown in that night as we had originally thought. Here’s what happened. He waited at the airport for 2 hours. Then some friendly people who just happened to live a couple blocks from the church offices offered to take him there. Weighing his options, he accepted and got there about 10 at night and of course there was nobody there. They took him to a pay phone around the corner where he called the mission president from Mexico who called the church offices who called President Levrino (who was in Tucumán at the time). My comp headed back to the mission offices and Sister Levrino swung around to pick him up a few minutes later. Really, a pretty smooth turnout considering what could have happened. The next morning we went first thing to the mission home and picked up my companion. Yay! The only other bad news was that we had to stay another day in Salta to do his visa paperwork, and I still didn’t have any change of clothes, but that’s lo de menos. So that’s the big story. Now we’re all safe and sound and working our tails off here in Jujuy.
President Levrino is awesome. This month as a mission we had 177 baptisms. That’s more than the mission’s had since 1995. We’re just seeing so many miracles out here. We’re also all very excited for the visit of Elder Christofferson to Jujuy in two weeks (the 12 and 13 of November). I love the gospel so much and it’s so true! God is still a God of miracles! Look for them, obey, and you will find them.
Much love,
Elder Spencer
Wow, this week was super crazy. I’m so glad to be in this mission! I wish I could stay an extra two years!!
Ok first. My new companion came in!! His name is Elder Bárcenas and he’s awesome!!! He’s from Toluca Mexico and he’s pretty much a stud. So I went to Salta Tuesday at midday to pick him up because he was supposed to get in Tuesday night. To pass the time I went out to work in the afternoon with the elders who spend the morning doing office work. That was super fun and we had lots of great lessons. Then, about 6 o’clock we get a call that apparently he’s supposed to get in on Wednesday. I’m a little disappointed with that prospect because I didn’t bring any change of clothes with me from Jujuy, but still happy for a little change of scenery. We kept on working and went to their apartment at the end of the night. At about 10:30 we were all ready to crawl into bed when we get a phone call. Apparently the church offices in Buenos Aires had screwed up with the itinerary of my comp and he had actually flown in that night as we had originally thought. Here’s what happened. He waited at the airport for 2 hours. Then some friendly people who just happened to live a couple blocks from the church offices offered to take him there. Weighing his options, he accepted and got there about 10 at night and of course there was nobody there. They took him to a pay phone around the corner where he called the mission president from Mexico who called the church offices who called President Levrino (who was in Tucumán at the time). My comp headed back to the mission offices and Sister Levrino swung around to pick him up a few minutes later. Really, a pretty smooth turnout considering what could have happened. The next morning we went first thing to the mission home and picked up my companion. Yay! The only other bad news was that we had to stay another day in Salta to do his visa paperwork, and I still didn’t have any change of clothes, but that’s lo de menos. So that’s the big story. Now we’re all safe and sound and working our tails off here in Jujuy.
President Levrino is awesome. This month as a mission we had 177 baptisms. That’s more than the mission’s had since 1995. We’re just seeing so many miracles out here. We’re also all very excited for the visit of Elder Christofferson to Jujuy in two weeks (the 12 and 13 of November). I love the gospel so much and it’s so true! God is still a God of miracles! Look for them, obey, and you will find them.
Much love,
Elder Spencer
Monday, October 24, 2011
October 24, 2011
Dear Family,
An excellent week!! Biggest news is that Ariel got baptized! It was really neat, but quite stressful for me. Here's why. The baptism was scheduled to begin at 5. We got there at 5 and were the only people there. That was kinda stressful. Ariel got there at 5:20 and there was still nobody there. That was also pretty stressful. The nice part was that the ward came through and at 5:30 pretty much everyone showed up and it turned out really nice. He even invited his mom and brother, who aren't members and we're going to find out if they want to start receiving the missionaries in their neighborhood. The confirmation also went really neat and Ariel said he felt really good during the confirmation. He doesn't have a burning testimony like his wife. He was at the point of not getting baptized this week because he felt like he hadn't received a huge shouting YES from the Holy Ghost. He then decided to do it because he felt like it was the right thing to do and because he wanted to change his life. He's going to be good, but he'll need to have some good strengthening from the ward to stay strong. The good thing is that now he's getting into a good habit of scripture study so with time he'll get stronger and stronger. Pray for him.
This week was actually pretty weird having a mini missionary. I felt really alone, even though there was somebody by my side constantly, because it was basically like going on divisions with the members for a whole week. It sure is a blessing to have an experienced companion to be with to make decisions together. After this experience I'm starting to dread the time when I get released and don't have a companion at all. Guess I gotta get married quick... ;)
We also had a pretty miraculous day in church. We planned super hard to get a ton of people to come to church. We stopped by a ton of people and all of them fodged us. We got to church, and the members we had assigned to help us hadn't had any success either. However, the Lord was extremely merciful with us and we had 3 people show up without us doing any work. 2 were old investigators that we hadn't been visiting, and one was the friend of a recent convert who he had invited to get to know the church. How about that! God is still a God of miracles!!
Well, that's about it for this week. Cool story, last Monday night while I was with him Elder Gomez got his mission call! He's going to Brazil in a month and a half! On Tuesday I'll be traveling down to Salta to pick up my new companion and Elder Gomez goes home to get ready for his mission. The best part is that I get to train! Me new comp is a Mexican. :) I'll tell you all about him when I meet him.
I love you all! The church is true!!
-Elder Spencer
An excellent week!! Biggest news is that Ariel got baptized! It was really neat, but quite stressful for me. Here's why. The baptism was scheduled to begin at 5. We got there at 5 and were the only people there. That was kinda stressful. Ariel got there at 5:20 and there was still nobody there. That was also pretty stressful. The nice part was that the ward came through and at 5:30 pretty much everyone showed up and it turned out really nice. He even invited his mom and brother, who aren't members and we're going to find out if they want to start receiving the missionaries in their neighborhood. The confirmation also went really neat and Ariel said he felt really good during the confirmation. He doesn't have a burning testimony like his wife. He was at the point of not getting baptized this week because he felt like he hadn't received a huge shouting YES from the Holy Ghost. He then decided to do it because he felt like it was the right thing to do and because he wanted to change his life. He's going to be good, but he'll need to have some good strengthening from the ward to stay strong. The good thing is that now he's getting into a good habit of scripture study so with time he'll get stronger and stronger. Pray for him.
This week was actually pretty weird having a mini missionary. I felt really alone, even though there was somebody by my side constantly, because it was basically like going on divisions with the members for a whole week. It sure is a blessing to have an experienced companion to be with to make decisions together. After this experience I'm starting to dread the time when I get released and don't have a companion at all. Guess I gotta get married quick... ;)
We also had a pretty miraculous day in church. We planned super hard to get a ton of people to come to church. We stopped by a ton of people and all of them fodged us. We got to church, and the members we had assigned to help us hadn't had any success either. However, the Lord was extremely merciful with us and we had 3 people show up without us doing any work. 2 were old investigators that we hadn't been visiting, and one was the friend of a recent convert who he had invited to get to know the church. How about that! God is still a God of miracles!!
Well, that's about it for this week. Cool story, last Monday night while I was with him Elder Gomez got his mission call! He's going to Brazil in a month and a half! On Tuesday I'll be traveling down to Salta to pick up my new companion and Elder Gomez goes home to get ready for his mission. The best part is that I get to train! Me new comp is a Mexican. :) I'll tell you all about him when I meet him.
I love you all! The church is true!!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, October 17, 2011
October 17, 2011
Dear Family,
This week was super intense. First, bad news. Elder Petersen got transferred. We were both pretty sad. We were hoping for at least one more transfer, but he is needed somewhere else. Gisela was pretty sad to see him go. The good news is that right now I have a mini missionary! No, that isn’t a derogative way to call a really short person, but a program that our mission does with young men who are preparing for the mission. When there is a shortage of missionaries for one reason or another (visas usually), they call some local pre-missionary waiting for their call to serve for a couple of weeks. Mine is really nice, his name is Elder Gomez and he lives on the other side of Jujuy. He’s great and excited to get to work.
Our Friday was quite interesting. So the Area presidency has been working really closely with our new mission president (probably with all the mission presidents I’d imagine, but it just we’ve had an abnormally lot of contact with them). Anyway, they did a special training with all the Zone Leaders, who then taught all us, on the importance of specific planning. Normally we do a 3 hour planning session every Friday morning for the coming week. In Preach My Gospel it outlines how you’re supposed to do it, but we usually run out of time and need to teach before we can completely and thoroughly do it. Well, now they want us to do it completely, no matter how long it takes. We did it on Friday and it ended up taking 7 whopping hours. We were pretty tired by the end, but we did it. They told us that the first time it would take a long time, but as we continued to do it correctly it would take less and less time as we improved. Lesson learned: It is much better to do something the right way, even if it takes more time, than to do it some efficient incorrect way.
The Highlight of the week was finishing it off with a Zone Conference with Elder Aidukaitis of the Presidency of the Area (1st Quorum of Seventy). Incredible. Simply Incredible. He talked some more about goal setting and planning, saying that they are godly principles (See Abraham 4) and that if we don’t learn how to set goals and plan, we will reach a small part of our potential. Then he talked about how to become more powerful missionaries (members, priesthood holders, etc...). I’d tell you how, but that’s one of the secrets, you can’t tell anybody. Haha, just joking. For more read Alma 26:22.
Well, that’s it for today, folks. I love you all so much. The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
This week was super intense. First, bad news. Elder Petersen got transferred. We were both pretty sad. We were hoping for at least one more transfer, but he is needed somewhere else. Gisela was pretty sad to see him go. The good news is that right now I have a mini missionary! No, that isn’t a derogative way to call a really short person, but a program that our mission does with young men who are preparing for the mission. When there is a shortage of missionaries for one reason or another (visas usually), they call some local pre-missionary waiting for their call to serve for a couple of weeks. Mine is really nice, his name is Elder Gomez and he lives on the other side of Jujuy. He’s great and excited to get to work.
Our Friday was quite interesting. So the Area presidency has been working really closely with our new mission president (probably with all the mission presidents I’d imagine, but it just we’ve had an abnormally lot of contact with them). Anyway, they did a special training with all the Zone Leaders, who then taught all us, on the importance of specific planning. Normally we do a 3 hour planning session every Friday morning for the coming week. In Preach My Gospel it outlines how you’re supposed to do it, but we usually run out of time and need to teach before we can completely and thoroughly do it. Well, now they want us to do it completely, no matter how long it takes. We did it on Friday and it ended up taking 7 whopping hours. We were pretty tired by the end, but we did it. They told us that the first time it would take a long time, but as we continued to do it correctly it would take less and less time as we improved. Lesson learned: It is much better to do something the right way, even if it takes more time, than to do it some efficient incorrect way.
The Highlight of the week was finishing it off with a Zone Conference with Elder Aidukaitis of the Presidency of the Area (1st Quorum of Seventy). Incredible. Simply Incredible. He talked some more about goal setting and planning, saying that they are godly principles (See Abraham 4) and that if we don’t learn how to set goals and plan, we will reach a small part of our potential. Then he talked about how to become more powerful missionaries (members, priesthood holders, etc...). I’d tell you how, but that’s one of the secrets, you can’t tell anybody. Haha, just joking. For more read Alma 26:22.
Well, that’s it for today, folks. I love you all so much. The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, October 10, 2011
October 10, 2011
Dear Family,
Well another awesome/crazy week. We had 6 people in church this week, the best we’ve had in quite a while. It was also nice because it just so happened to be the day when the stake president decided to do a surprise visit. More on that later.
Funny story. On Thursday night I woke up at 1:58 sleep walking and woke up my companion to come into the kitchen to pray. He woke up and washed his face, looked at the time and told me to go back to bed. I obediently went back to bed. When he told me in the morning I didn’t believe him at all, but he gave me some evidence and apparently it was true. I’m diligent, even in my dreams :)
Well Ariel is progressing great. We were going to baptize him this week, but the stake president was unable to interview him, and Ariel didn’t feel prepared. We prayed a lot that he would feel ready, but in the end, I think it was all for the better that he waited. He’s now got his baptismal date for two weeks from now and preparing a lot more, reading, praying, doing stuff with his family and changing his life.
Anyway, our stake president is pretty awesome. He showed an awesome example by leaving the 99 and coming for the one. The express reason for his visit to our ward was for Ariel because he hadn’t been able to interview him. What a solid guy! What a wonderful example. Ariel isn’t even a member yet, but the Stake president left his home ward on a fast Sunday to make sure that everything was all right. It inspired me. I hope we can all take the same care in our callings and seek out the one.
I love you all! The church is true! Thank you for your prayers!
-Elder Spencer
Well another awesome/crazy week. We had 6 people in church this week, the best we’ve had in quite a while. It was also nice because it just so happened to be the day when the stake president decided to do a surprise visit. More on that later.
Funny story. On Thursday night I woke up at 1:58 sleep walking and woke up my companion to come into the kitchen to pray. He woke up and washed his face, looked at the time and told me to go back to bed. I obediently went back to bed. When he told me in the morning I didn’t believe him at all, but he gave me some evidence and apparently it was true. I’m diligent, even in my dreams :)
Well Ariel is progressing great. We were going to baptize him this week, but the stake president was unable to interview him, and Ariel didn’t feel prepared. We prayed a lot that he would feel ready, but in the end, I think it was all for the better that he waited. He’s now got his baptismal date for two weeks from now and preparing a lot more, reading, praying, doing stuff with his family and changing his life.
Anyway, our stake president is pretty awesome. He showed an awesome example by leaving the 99 and coming for the one. The express reason for his visit to our ward was for Ariel because he hadn’t been able to interview him. What a solid guy! What a wonderful example. Ariel isn’t even a member yet, but the Stake president left his home ward on a fast Sunday to make sure that everything was all right. It inspired me. I hope we can all take the same care in our callings and seek out the one.
I love you all! The church is true! Thank you for your prayers!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, October 3, 2011
October 3, 2011
Dear Family,
What an excellent general conference!! Let's all put down specific goals to apply what we learned.
Conference was especially great because of some more Miracles we witnessed. Remember Gisela who got baptized a few weeks ago? She's suuuuper solid. Anyway, we've been working a lot on her husband Ariel. When the missionaries first started teaching her 2 weeks before I got here, he was icy cold. He told Gisela that he didn't want to know anything about God. Anyway, this week was miraculous and we witnessed his heart starting to change. He rejected an invitation to go fishing with "the boys" and came to General Conference instead. He came to three sessions including Priesthood session! He's progressing great and starting to really pray about the church and the Book of Mormon. Conference really inspired him.
God really can change the hardest of hearts. The Gospel's true! Study up those General Conference talks and apply them!
I love you all!
-Elder Spencer
PS. Congrats Joseph on your eagle!
What an excellent general conference!! Let's all put down specific goals to apply what we learned.
Conference was especially great because of some more Miracles we witnessed. Remember Gisela who got baptized a few weeks ago? She's suuuuper solid. Anyway, we've been working a lot on her husband Ariel. When the missionaries first started teaching her 2 weeks before I got here, he was icy cold. He told Gisela that he didn't want to know anything about God. Anyway, this week was miraculous and we witnessed his heart starting to change. He rejected an invitation to go fishing with "the boys" and came to General Conference instead. He came to three sessions including Priesthood session! He's progressing great and starting to really pray about the church and the Book of Mormon. Conference really inspired him.
God really can change the hardest of hearts. The Gospel's true! Study up those General Conference talks and apply them!
I love you all!
-Elder Spencer
PS. Congrats Joseph on your eagle!
Monday, September 26, 2011
September 26, 2011
Dear Family,
What a week... again.
Week 3 Miracle: Ok, so Gisela was doing pretty solid this week. We taught her everything she was missing and prepared her for her baptismal interview. However, as it turned out, she had had some somewhat serious things in her past and needed to be interviewed by the stake president. No problem. We scheduled the appointment for Friday night. Then came the opposition. Friday night comes and she was suddenly super nervous and didn’t feel ready at all. The night before she had had a small argument with her husband and wasn’t feeling good. She went into the interview and we prayed a lot while she was in there and she came out great, feeling awesome and ready for her baptism. We tell her everything she needs for the next day and then leave. Saturday, baptism day. She shows up alone 10 minutes before her baptism. We ask her what happened. Background: Sunday is their 3-year old son’s birthday. Here, birthdays are a huge deal where they invite the whole fam and go all out. Anyway, apparently the whole birthday preparation had been a big source of stress and they had another argument that night. She had asked her mom and husband to come, but they said they weren’t going to. We told her to go change and then ran to a telephone booth to call her mom and husband and tell them to come, praying for a miraculous change of heart. Well, it happened. Husband and her mom came. I have to really compliment the ward here, because it was probably one of the best attended baptisms I’ve seen in my mission. The entire ward council and their families showed up. It was super awesome and the spirit was amazing. Her mom was crying pretty much the whole time and afterward she thanked us for what we were doing to help her daughter. We told her that she was next ;) The next day was ward conference and it was excellent. The confirmation went great. I think one of the best parts of it all were Gisela’s descriptions of how she felt. When she was baptized she said that she felt like she was bursting with happiness, and when she was confirmed she said she felt like she was being filled with something wonderful. Sounds a bit like the fruit Lehi tasted in 1 Nephi 8.
The gospel is completely true. This week we get to listen to a prophet of God. Pay close attention. I love you all!
-Elder Spencer
What a week... again.
Week 3 Miracle: Ok, so Gisela was doing pretty solid this week. We taught her everything she was missing and prepared her for her baptismal interview. However, as it turned out, she had had some somewhat serious things in her past and needed to be interviewed by the stake president. No problem. We scheduled the appointment for Friday night. Then came the opposition. Friday night comes and she was suddenly super nervous and didn’t feel ready at all. The night before she had had a small argument with her husband and wasn’t feeling good. She went into the interview and we prayed a lot while she was in there and she came out great, feeling awesome and ready for her baptism. We tell her everything she needs for the next day and then leave. Saturday, baptism day. She shows up alone 10 minutes before her baptism. We ask her what happened. Background: Sunday is their 3-year old son’s birthday. Here, birthdays are a huge deal where they invite the whole fam and go all out. Anyway, apparently the whole birthday preparation had been a big source of stress and they had another argument that night. She had asked her mom and husband to come, but they said they weren’t going to. We told her to go change and then ran to a telephone booth to call her mom and husband and tell them to come, praying for a miraculous change of heart. Well, it happened. Husband and her mom came. I have to really compliment the ward here, because it was probably one of the best attended baptisms I’ve seen in my mission. The entire ward council and their families showed up. It was super awesome and the spirit was amazing. Her mom was crying pretty much the whole time and afterward she thanked us for what we were doing to help her daughter. We told her that she was next ;) The next day was ward conference and it was excellent. The confirmation went great. I think one of the best parts of it all were Gisela’s descriptions of how she felt. When she was baptized she said that she felt like she was bursting with happiness, and when she was confirmed she said she felt like she was being filled with something wonderful. Sounds a bit like the fruit Lehi tasted in 1 Nephi 8.
The gospel is completely true. This week we get to listen to a prophet of God. Pay close attention. I love you all!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, September 19, 2011
September 19, 2011
Dear Family,
Well, another crazy week, but down I’ve got a little more time to write. So the motto for this transfer with Elder Petersen has been and will be *Miracles*. Did I tell you about the awesome training meeting by Elder Aidukaitis? I think so. In it, he talked about miracles (see Mormon 9:11-25, James 2:14-19, Ether 12:12-18) and was super inspiring. Then, he made a promise. He said that there is not one area in this mission that cannot have a baptism every single week. Wow. I was pretty shocked. I consider myself a person who has a decent amount of faith, and I work really hard, but up to that point I considered an option like that beyond the realm of possibility. Something that happens in other places, but not here. However, just as Naaman trusted in Elisha (2 Kings 5), the Israelites trusted in Moses (Alma 33:19-22), and Nephi trusted in the Lord (1 Nephi 3:7), Elder Petersen and I decided to trust in the promise given us by a servant of the Lord.
Wk 1 - Our baptism with Monica was a huge miracle. She told us on Tuesday that she didn’t think she would be able to get baptized because she had lawyers coming that week to work out problems with a house she had in another province. We told her to pray for a miracle and trust that on Saturday she would be baptized. Things went well. Friday night, she told us, again, she wouldn’t be able to this week because her husband’s work schedule wouldn’t let him be there and she wanted him to be there. Another miracle: the work schedules got worked out and she got baptized.
Wk 2 (last week) - I think this week we would have had the miracle sooner if we had exercised our faith sooner. Gisela, a super awesome investigator, was progressing well for her baptism for the 24th. Sunday night, we challenged her to get baptized a week earlier (17th) and she got a little shaken up with the idea (didn’t feel ready) and wanted it instead for early October. We kinda lost faith and lived with the fact that we wouldn’t have a baptism this week. Then on Thursday we had zone conference, where President Levrino (super stud) gave us the same promise. With our faith pumped up again, we challenged Gisela to pray to know if she should get baptized on Saturday. Then we started praying with lots and lots and lots of faith that the Lord would respond. Friday, however, Gisela told us that she didn’t think she had prayed with very much faith, but just felt like should do it in October. Saturday. Miracle, out of the blue, an inactive family baptized their 8 year old. I know it doesn’t count for us as a baptism, but here’s why it’s a miracle. Gisela came to the baptism. She loved it again (she had gone to Mónica’s too). After the baptism we sat down and had a talk with her. She told us (Miracle) that Friday night after her appointment she started praying and she woke up three times that night and prayed and all three times she felt like she saw bright white words saying "Yes! Yes! Yes!" Wow! what a miraculous answer to prayer. If we had continued exercising our faith and passed by Saturday morning, she probably would have been baptized that day. Oh well. After telling us that, though, we challenged her to follow that response and get baptized this Saturday. She accepted with a great big smile. Her husband came to church with her on Sunday and liked it a lot. He’s progressing great and on October 8th he’s getting baptized.
We need a miracle for October 1st. Gabriela needs her paperwork to come together so she can get married in time for her baptism. Please pray hard for that to work out.
I love you all so much. The church is true and God is still a God of miracles. Look for them in your lives and you will find them!
-Elder Spencer
Well, another crazy week, but down I’ve got a little more time to write. So the motto for this transfer with Elder Petersen has been and will be *Miracles*. Did I tell you about the awesome training meeting by Elder Aidukaitis? I think so. In it, he talked about miracles (see Mormon 9:11-25, James 2:14-19, Ether 12:12-18) and was super inspiring. Then, he made a promise. He said that there is not one area in this mission that cannot have a baptism every single week. Wow. I was pretty shocked. I consider myself a person who has a decent amount of faith, and I work really hard, but up to that point I considered an option like that beyond the realm of possibility. Something that happens in other places, but not here. However, just as Naaman trusted in Elisha (2 Kings 5), the Israelites trusted in Moses (Alma 33:19-22), and Nephi trusted in the Lord (1 Nephi 3:7), Elder Petersen and I decided to trust in the promise given us by a servant of the Lord.
Wk 1 - Our baptism with Monica was a huge miracle. She told us on Tuesday that she didn’t think she would be able to get baptized because she had lawyers coming that week to work out problems with a house she had in another province. We told her to pray for a miracle and trust that on Saturday she would be baptized. Things went well. Friday night, she told us, again, she wouldn’t be able to this week because her husband’s work schedule wouldn’t let him be there and she wanted him to be there. Another miracle: the work schedules got worked out and she got baptized.
Wk 2 (last week) - I think this week we would have had the miracle sooner if we had exercised our faith sooner. Gisela, a super awesome investigator, was progressing well for her baptism for the 24th. Sunday night, we challenged her to get baptized a week earlier (17th) and she got a little shaken up with the idea (didn’t feel ready) and wanted it instead for early October. We kinda lost faith and lived with the fact that we wouldn’t have a baptism this week. Then on Thursday we had zone conference, where President Levrino (super stud) gave us the same promise. With our faith pumped up again, we challenged Gisela to pray to know if she should get baptized on Saturday. Then we started praying with lots and lots and lots of faith that the Lord would respond. Friday, however, Gisela told us that she didn’t think she had prayed with very much faith, but just felt like should do it in October. Saturday. Miracle, out of the blue, an inactive family baptized their 8 year old. I know it doesn’t count for us as a baptism, but here’s why it’s a miracle. Gisela came to the baptism. She loved it again (she had gone to Mónica’s too). After the baptism we sat down and had a talk with her. She told us (Miracle) that Friday night after her appointment she started praying and she woke up three times that night and prayed and all three times she felt like she saw bright white words saying "Yes! Yes! Yes!" Wow! what a miraculous answer to prayer. If we had continued exercising our faith and passed by Saturday morning, she probably would have been baptized that day. Oh well. After telling us that, though, we challenged her to follow that response and get baptized this Saturday. She accepted with a great big smile. Her husband came to church with her on Sunday and liked it a lot. He’s progressing great and on October 8th he’s getting baptized.
We need a miracle for October 1st. Gabriela needs her paperwork to come together so she can get married in time for her baptism. Please pray hard for that to work out.
I love you all so much. The church is true and God is still a God of miracles. Look for them in your lives and you will find them!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, September 12, 2011
September 12, 2011
Dear Family,
Well, This week has been super crazy for two reasons. Monica got baptized. That required lots of miracles because she was going to have to postpone it for problems with work and her husband’s work and such, but after lots of fervent prayers, she got baptized! Also, we moved this week, which entailed having to buy new stuff (fridge, washing machine (don’t get any illusions, it’s a stick with paddles basically), and ... everything) which pretty much killed P-day and lots of the week. Still though, we were blessed with lots of miracles.
Pray for us. Gisela is preparing to get baptized.
Anyway, thanks for everything. I have noooo time to write. I love you all. The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
Well, This week has been super crazy for two reasons. Monica got baptized. That required lots of miracles because she was going to have to postpone it for problems with work and her husband’s work and such, but after lots of fervent prayers, she got baptized! Also, we moved this week, which entailed having to buy new stuff (fridge, washing machine (don’t get any illusions, it’s a stick with paddles basically), and ... everything) which pretty much killed P-day and lots of the week. Still though, we were blessed with lots of miracles.
Pray for us. Gisela is preparing to get baptized.
Anyway, thanks for everything. I have noooo time to write. I love you all. The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, September 5, 2011
September 5, 2011
Dear Family,
So I have very little time to write today, but I have some crazy news. So this week was transfers, which was sad, because I didn’t want to leave Villa Alem. I totally love that ward. Well anyway, you will *never* guess what happened. We got the phone call for transfers and the district leader said: Well I think there’s been a mistake because it says here that you are going to Jujuy (who-whoey) to be with Elder Petersen!!! I was pretty excited, but since it wasn’t for sure, I kept my cool. That night in the apartment, we called up the mission president to see if he had everything worked out and our district leader asked the mission president if he was aware of what had happened with my transfers. The mission president said yes, and told him to ask me if I believed in revelation. I told him of course, and the president replied with a chuckle, well then, no problem. Everything will stay the same. I went pretty much nuts at that point and now I’m up in Jujuy with Elder Petersen and we’re just kinda in euphoria.
Anyway, not much time to write because of the 6-hour trip that took up most of the P-day, but we have baptisms planned for every week this month. It’ll be difficult, and we will need miracles, so please pray for us to see miracles here and help these people to come unto the waters of baptism.
Elder Petersen wrote up a brief about each one. Please pray for them.
Monica - Sept 10 - Wife of a member, they have one daughter who was baptized a year ago. She is totally ready to be baptized except there are some legal problems the family has in selling a property in Buenos Aires. She as the legal owner might not be able to be baptized this week if the final meetings/legal papers/signatures get scheduled for this week.
Gabriela - Sept 17 - "Spouse" of an inactive member. She was 7th day Adventist and was baptized there with much faith and desire. She is reading the Book of Mormon and believes it is true, and that Joseph Smith was a prophet - but she hasn’t recognized her answer from the Spirit. She will also have to get legally married before this date. She wants to be certain before she makes a drastic change, but she likes the church meetings and prays amazingly.
Gisela - Sept 24 - She is ready for baptism. She has already received and recognized her answer from God. The only thing that stands in her way is she needs to be legally married to her spouse and understand the rest of the doctrine/commandments.
Graciela - Oct 1 - She has also received and recognized her answer from God that Joseph Smith was a prophet who restored the priesthood and that the church is true. The problem we have is that she is very hard to find. She is a single mom who works and has a very sick daughter (and thus is always going to doctors’ appointments.) We only need to set fixed times to teach and help her understand the rest of the doctrines/commandments.
I’ll fill y’all in more next week. I love you all so much. The church is true!!!
-Elder Spencer
So I have very little time to write today, but I have some crazy news. So this week was transfers, which was sad, because I didn’t want to leave Villa Alem. I totally love that ward. Well anyway, you will *never* guess what happened. We got the phone call for transfers and the district leader said: Well I think there’s been a mistake because it says here that you are going to Jujuy (who-whoey) to be with Elder Petersen!!! I was pretty excited, but since it wasn’t for sure, I kept my cool. That night in the apartment, we called up the mission president to see if he had everything worked out and our district leader asked the mission president if he was aware of what had happened with my transfers. The mission president said yes, and told him to ask me if I believed in revelation. I told him of course, and the president replied with a chuckle, well then, no problem. Everything will stay the same. I went pretty much nuts at that point and now I’m up in Jujuy with Elder Petersen and we’re just kinda in euphoria.
Anyway, not much time to write because of the 6-hour trip that took up most of the P-day, but we have baptisms planned for every week this month. It’ll be difficult, and we will need miracles, so please pray for us to see miracles here and help these people to come unto the waters of baptism.
Elder Petersen wrote up a brief about each one. Please pray for them.
Monica - Sept 10 - Wife of a member, they have one daughter who was baptized a year ago. She is totally ready to be baptized except there are some legal problems the family has in selling a property in Buenos Aires. She as the legal owner might not be able to be baptized this week if the final meetings/legal papers/signatures get scheduled for this week.
Gabriela - Sept 17 - "Spouse" of an inactive member. She was 7th day Adventist and was baptized there with much faith and desire. She is reading the Book of Mormon and believes it is true, and that Joseph Smith was a prophet - but she hasn’t recognized her answer from the Spirit. She will also have to get legally married before this date. She wants to be certain before she makes a drastic change, but she likes the church meetings and prays amazingly.
Gisela - Sept 24 - She is ready for baptism. She has already received and recognized her answer from God. The only thing that stands in her way is she needs to be legally married to her spouse and understand the rest of the doctrine/commandments.
Graciela - Oct 1 - She has also received and recognized her answer from God that Joseph Smith was a prophet who restored the priesthood and that the church is true. The problem we have is that she is very hard to find. She is a single mom who works and has a very sick daughter (and thus is always going to doctors’ appointments.) We only need to set fixed times to teach and help her understand the rest of the doctrines/commandments.
I’ll fill y’all in more next week. I love you all so much. The church is true!!!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, August 29, 2011
August 29, 2011
Dear Family,
This week was pretty excellent. It started off with a service project helping the 1st counselor in our stake presidency with the chicken coop in his backyard. It was pretty small and the chickens were always escaping, so we helped him take out some super heavy concrete posts and put them in new holes to enlarge it. He is a super cool guy named Miguel Conde. Alan’s dad probably knows him from when he served here in Tucumán because his family is the oldest family here (they’ve been here since it was one branch to the two stakes it is now). His dad (also Miguel Conde) is the stake patriarch and lives in our ward too. They remember giving lunch to Elder Christofferson when he was a missionary here. The service was really fun and it made me think about all the chicks back home (pun intended... don’t go on thinking I’m trunky).
Well, after the baptisms we had the last few weeks, we didn’t have really anyone in our teaching pool, but this week we found a couple cool families we’re going to start working with. I’ll let you know more about them as they progress.
The best part of the week was an awesome leadership meeting we had on Friday. So apparently the North of Argentina (basically all the area of our mission) is the weakest part of the Area (South America South), so one of the Area presidency come to give a special leadership meeting to all the priesthood leadership in the two stakes here in the city and the missionaries. We got to hear from Elder Aidukaitis (counselor in the presidency) and an Area Seventy. Elder Aidukaitis is such a stud. He has so much charisma and spirit, it was amazing. They talked about the area goals, especially that of how we need to work more together, unified in our plan and purpose. They kinda came down pretty hard (in a loving way, of course) on how the city is not doing the things that the Prophet asked them to do (there is a project of teaching 15 inactive/part-member families the missionary lessons again) and how they have so much potential and that if they follow the prophet’s counsel they can double or triple church attendance.
Then he said, there are probably some of you who are thinking "Elder Aidukaitis doesn’t know how things are here. It isn’t really possible to have that kind of results". He responded to that thought by finishing his talk talking about Miracles. He read from Ether 12, Mormon 9, and James 2 and talked about how we can achieve miracles by having complete faith in Christ, and how we demonstrate complete faith in Christ by works: obeying the prophet’s and church leaders’ direction. Not just praying and fasting, works.
Anyway, it was pretty stinkin’ awesome and now our bishop is all pumped up to get to work, which is great. It’s totally the key, working together. Everybody with the same goal and same focus. I know lots of you have callings, and like all of us, need miracles. Read those chapters. We need miracles in our callings. Seek them.
Well, that’s about it for this week. General conference is coming up! If you start reading (or watching or listening to) a talk a day from the last one you’ll be finishing up right around the time of the next one. I love you all so much! The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
PS - cool treat, I got to see the bishop and a few members from my first ward, Villa Muñecas, at the training. Here’s a picture I took with them. The bishop is the guy on the right.
PPS - Word on the street is that Elder Christofferson is coming to visit us in October. :D
Members and bishop from Villa Muñecas
This week was pretty excellent. It started off with a service project helping the 1st counselor in our stake presidency with the chicken coop in his backyard. It was pretty small and the chickens were always escaping, so we helped him take out some super heavy concrete posts and put them in new holes to enlarge it. He is a super cool guy named Miguel Conde. Alan’s dad probably knows him from when he served here in Tucumán because his family is the oldest family here (they’ve been here since it was one branch to the two stakes it is now). His dad (also Miguel Conde) is the stake patriarch and lives in our ward too. They remember giving lunch to Elder Christofferson when he was a missionary here. The service was really fun and it made me think about all the chicks back home (pun intended... don’t go on thinking I’m trunky).
Well, after the baptisms we had the last few weeks, we didn’t have really anyone in our teaching pool, but this week we found a couple cool families we’re going to start working with. I’ll let you know more about them as they progress.
The best part of the week was an awesome leadership meeting we had on Friday. So apparently the North of Argentina (basically all the area of our mission) is the weakest part of the Area (South America South), so one of the Area presidency come to give a special leadership meeting to all the priesthood leadership in the two stakes here in the city and the missionaries. We got to hear from Elder Aidukaitis (counselor in the presidency) and an Area Seventy. Elder Aidukaitis is such a stud. He has so much charisma and spirit, it was amazing. They talked about the area goals, especially that of how we need to work more together, unified in our plan and purpose. They kinda came down pretty hard (in a loving way, of course) on how the city is not doing the things that the Prophet asked them to do (there is a project of teaching 15 inactive/part-member families the missionary lessons again) and how they have so much potential and that if they follow the prophet’s counsel they can double or triple church attendance.
Then he said, there are probably some of you who are thinking "Elder Aidukaitis doesn’t know how things are here. It isn’t really possible to have that kind of results". He responded to that thought by finishing his talk talking about Miracles. He read from Ether 12, Mormon 9, and James 2 and talked about how we can achieve miracles by having complete faith in Christ, and how we demonstrate complete faith in Christ by works: obeying the prophet’s and church leaders’ direction. Not just praying and fasting, works.
Anyway, it was pretty stinkin’ awesome and now our bishop is all pumped up to get to work, which is great. It’s totally the key, working together. Everybody with the same goal and same focus. I know lots of you have callings, and like all of us, need miracles. Read those chapters. We need miracles in our callings. Seek them.
Well, that’s about it for this week. General conference is coming up! If you start reading (or watching or listening to) a talk a day from the last one you’ll be finishing up right around the time of the next one. I love you all so much! The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
PS - cool treat, I got to see the bishop and a few members from my first ward, Villa Muñecas, at the training. Here’s a picture I took with them. The bishop is the guy on the right.
PPS - Word on the street is that Elder Christofferson is coming to visit us in October. :D
Members and bishop from Villa Muñecas
Monday, August 22, 2011
August 22, 2011
Dear Family,
Well this week pretty much rocked. We had two baptisms, and three confirmations. Our first baptism is a little boy whose name is Luis (9 yrs old). Luis is pretty awesome. His uncle, brother, and grandma are members. We’ve been teaching him off and on for a while, but we were a little concerned about baptizing him because he’s so young and we didn’t want to baptize him if he didn’t have a testimony. We had been constantly challenging him to pray and ask God if the things we were teaching him were true. A few weeks before his baptism he told us that he had prayed and had a wonderful feeling as he prayed and told us that he really wanted to be baptized.
Our other baptism, Ana (20 yrs old) was a similar experience. Her boyfriend is a member and we were a little worried that she was getting baptized for him because they were planning on getting married pretty soon too. We started teaching her and from the start we challenged her to ask God if the things we were teaching her were true. After several weeks she was kind of frustrated because we kept on describing to her what she might be feeling, but she hadn’t felt a response yet. About a week before her baptism we asked her how she was doing with her prayers and she said "great!!!" She described about how that week she had prayed on her knees about if the things we were teaching her were true and she said she felt a wonderful indescribable feeling that just made her feel really really good. After that she was so excited for her baptism. After she got baptized and after she got confirmed she was crying with tears of happiness.
Anyway, that’s all the time for today, but...
The church is true!! I love you all!!
-Elder Spencer
Ramon and his mom Dolores and his dad Fermin
Luis was baptized by his uncle who is a member. He's a stud!
His uncle looks kinda weird in this one, but Luis had a great smile (right after I told a joke)
Ana, a golden investigator we taught, was baptized by her boyfriend Jorge. They are planning on getting married in a few months and sealed in a year :)
Today we made wild and wackys mmmmmmm
Well this week pretty much rocked. We had two baptisms, and three confirmations. Our first baptism is a little boy whose name is Luis (9 yrs old). Luis is pretty awesome. His uncle, brother, and grandma are members. We’ve been teaching him off and on for a while, but we were a little concerned about baptizing him because he’s so young and we didn’t want to baptize him if he didn’t have a testimony. We had been constantly challenging him to pray and ask God if the things we were teaching him were true. A few weeks before his baptism he told us that he had prayed and had a wonderful feeling as he prayed and told us that he really wanted to be baptized.
Our other baptism, Ana (20 yrs old) was a similar experience. Her boyfriend is a member and we were a little worried that she was getting baptized for him because they were planning on getting married pretty soon too. We started teaching her and from the start we challenged her to ask God if the things we were teaching her were true. After several weeks she was kind of frustrated because we kept on describing to her what she might be feeling, but she hadn’t felt a response yet. About a week before her baptism we asked her how she was doing with her prayers and she said "great!!!" She described about how that week she had prayed on her knees about if the things we were teaching her were true and she said she felt a wonderful indescribable feeling that just made her feel really really good. After that she was so excited for her baptism. After she got baptized and after she got confirmed she was crying with tears of happiness.
Anyway, that’s all the time for today, but...
The church is true!! I love you all!!
-Elder Spencer
Ramon and his mom Dolores and his dad Fermin
Luis was baptized by his uncle who is a member. He's a stud!
His uncle looks kinda weird in this one, but Luis had a great smile (right after I told a joke)
Ana, a golden investigator we taught, was baptized by her boyfriend Jorge. They are planning on getting married in a few months and sealed in a year :)
Today we made wild and wackys mmmmmmm
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
August 15, 2011
Dear family,
A good crazy week. The big push of this week were the two baptisms we had scheduled for Saturday. They were both doing great until we got to Thursday morning for the baptismal interview, and out of the blue, one of them was extremely sick (he’s better now). One down. The other one, Ramon (55 years old) was doing great though. Early he had had a hard time praying, but this last week he’s been reading and praying every day. Friday we passed by to make sure he had everything in order and as it turns out he even had his own pair of white pants. (Oh yeah, here they don’t have those nice baptism clothes that they do in the states, it’s pretty much fend for yourself.) We were happy because then we didn’t have to go asking around for a pair his size so we told him to bring them the next day. We also had a member lined up to baptize him, so we were pretty excited to just show up and see him get baptized. The baptism was for 7, and we got to church at 6:50 and there was.... nobody there. Just the ward mission leader (20 years old) outside playing soccer with a couple of kids from the church. Then we started to worry a bit. Ramon and his parents (his mom is a recent convert of 2 months ago, dad has Alzheimers) showed up and Ramon only had the white pants (his mom, bless her heart, thought that he was going to wear a white robe like when she got baptized, so she told him not to bring a change). On top of that, we called up the member who was supposed to baptize him, and he was sick in bed. So, we grabbed a taxi with Ramon, went to our house to get clothes for my companion, went to his house to get clothes for him, and went back to church. The good news is, he got baptized. He said he just felt wonderful.
The story doesn’t end there! As it turns out, Sunday was the voting day in Argentina, and all the politicians hired the taxis to take people to and from the voting booths. Therefore, it was pretty hard to get a taxi on Sunday to get anywhere else. Therefore, Ramon got to church right as we were singing the sacrament hymn :/ so he couldn’t get confirmed. He didn’t mind though, and we’ll confirm him next week.
Also, José gave his first talk! It was on honesty and it was great. An inactive sister that we are working with to reactivate also gave a talk and it was also great. Seeing those two talk really made my day.
Oh, and good news about Elder Angel, they found out that what he has isn’t a tumor (I don’t remember what it really is), so it won’t kill him. He’ll have to go home to get operated, but he won’t die.
Well, that’s about it for this week. We also had interviews with our mission president and it was great. He’s soooo awesome.
I hope you all have a wonderful week. A quick quote from President Hinckley to the members of the church:
“We are here to assist our Father in His work and His glory, ‘to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man’ (Moses 1:39). Your obligation is as serious in your sphere of responsibility as is my obligation in my sphere.” (Preach My Gospel 13)
The church is true! Magnify your callings and assist our Father in His work and His glory. I love you all!
-Elder Spencer
A good crazy week. The big push of this week were the two baptisms we had scheduled for Saturday. They were both doing great until we got to Thursday morning for the baptismal interview, and out of the blue, one of them was extremely sick (he’s better now). One down. The other one, Ramon (55 years old) was doing great though. Early he had had a hard time praying, but this last week he’s been reading and praying every day. Friday we passed by to make sure he had everything in order and as it turns out he even had his own pair of white pants. (Oh yeah, here they don’t have those nice baptism clothes that they do in the states, it’s pretty much fend for yourself.) We were happy because then we didn’t have to go asking around for a pair his size so we told him to bring them the next day. We also had a member lined up to baptize him, so we were pretty excited to just show up and see him get baptized. The baptism was for 7, and we got to church at 6:50 and there was.... nobody there. Just the ward mission leader (20 years old) outside playing soccer with a couple of kids from the church. Then we started to worry a bit. Ramon and his parents (his mom is a recent convert of 2 months ago, dad has Alzheimers) showed up and Ramon only had the white pants (his mom, bless her heart, thought that he was going to wear a white robe like when she got baptized, so she told him not to bring a change). On top of that, we called up the member who was supposed to baptize him, and he was sick in bed. So, we grabbed a taxi with Ramon, went to our house to get clothes for my companion, went to his house to get clothes for him, and went back to church. The good news is, he got baptized. He said he just felt wonderful.
The story doesn’t end there! As it turns out, Sunday was the voting day in Argentina, and all the politicians hired the taxis to take people to and from the voting booths. Therefore, it was pretty hard to get a taxi on Sunday to get anywhere else. Therefore, Ramon got to church right as we were singing the sacrament hymn :/ so he couldn’t get confirmed. He didn’t mind though, and we’ll confirm him next week.
Also, José gave his first talk! It was on honesty and it was great. An inactive sister that we are working with to reactivate also gave a talk and it was also great. Seeing those two talk really made my day.
Oh, and good news about Elder Angel, they found out that what he has isn’t a tumor (I don’t remember what it really is), so it won’t kill him. He’ll have to go home to get operated, but he won’t die.
Well, that’s about it for this week. We also had interviews with our mission president and it was great. He’s soooo awesome.
I hope you all have a wonderful week. A quick quote from President Hinckley to the members of the church:
“We are here to assist our Father in His work and His glory, ‘to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man’ (Moses 1:39). Your obligation is as serious in your sphere of responsibility as is my obligation in my sphere.” (Preach My Gospel 13)
The church is true! Magnify your callings and assist our Father in His work and His glory. I love you all!
-Elder Spencer
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
August 8, 2011
Dear Family,
Probably the most exciting email of my mission so far, so hold on to your chairs so you don’t fall off. First, sad story. There is an elder in our district who two weeks ago had a seizure for the first time in his life. They’ve been told to stay in the apartment all day every day in case it happens again, and in the meantime he’s been in and out of the doctor’s office every few days for analysis and scans and whatnot. He’s a really awesome guy from central America. They were just completely getting cabin fever, so on Tuesday and Wednesday we went on divisions with them so his comp could get a little fresh air and they could teach some of the families they had been working with. My companion and I split the time staying with the sick elder half and half. I brought over my rubik’s cube so they would have something to do and wrote out a basic explanation of how to solve it. Well funny story, the day my comp was there he was pretty excited to have all the extra study time, but as it turns out he ended up spending 4 and a half hours working on the cube and couldn’t get it. Haha, he even called me halfway through the night because he was stuck at one part. Later on both he and the sick elder ended up getting it. The sad part is that they found out this week that he has a tumor so he needs to get operated and probably needs to go home :( Pray for him, his name is Elder Angel.
Awesome story: Last week new elders came in, so this week they had about a week and a half in the field. There is a set of elders in our district who live about 15 minutes away, in a pretty dangerous part. En fin, a new elder (Latino), about a week in his area so he doesn’t know it at all, and on top of it all, it’s dangerous. On Monday night they were walking down the street when two men in coats approached them. One missionary started running away and one robber followed him (really bad idea) leaving the new missionary with the other robber. The robber asked him for money and the like and the missionary truthfully said he had nothing. The robber got mad, pulled out a knife and threatened him and asked him again. The missionary again, had nothing, so the robber tried stabbing him. This is where it gets interesting. The robber *tried* stabbing (strongly) him 5 times, but *nothing* happened. The missionary said he felt like he was being prodded with something dull, but he has no marks. On top of all that, the tip of the knife bent over a cm or so, leaving a J-shaped knife. No joke. The missionary, at this point completely surprised and awestruck, told the robber, "I have the power of God! You can’t touch me." The robber is now pretty scared at this point and makes a slash at the face of the missionary leaving a so-so cut (not deep because the knife tip was bent) and the missionary pushes over the robber. The other missionary outruns other robber, circles around and missionaries go home pretty wowed.
Yeah, crazy. The Lord sure protects his missionaries. Obedience to our covenants brings real power.
This last week we also had a pretty busy week preparing 2 people for baptism. They both came to church on Sunday which means that if all goes well this week we’ll have 2 and next week one. Yay! We’ve also been working a lot with inactives and recent converts and several came to church on Sunday! Double Yay!
Well, out of time, but I love you guys a whole ton! The church is true!!!
-Elder Spencer
Probably the most exciting email of my mission so far, so hold on to your chairs so you don’t fall off. First, sad story. There is an elder in our district who two weeks ago had a seizure for the first time in his life. They’ve been told to stay in the apartment all day every day in case it happens again, and in the meantime he’s been in and out of the doctor’s office every few days for analysis and scans and whatnot. He’s a really awesome guy from central America. They were just completely getting cabin fever, so on Tuesday and Wednesday we went on divisions with them so his comp could get a little fresh air and they could teach some of the families they had been working with. My companion and I split the time staying with the sick elder half and half. I brought over my rubik’s cube so they would have something to do and wrote out a basic explanation of how to solve it. Well funny story, the day my comp was there he was pretty excited to have all the extra study time, but as it turns out he ended up spending 4 and a half hours working on the cube and couldn’t get it. Haha, he even called me halfway through the night because he was stuck at one part. Later on both he and the sick elder ended up getting it. The sad part is that they found out this week that he has a tumor so he needs to get operated and probably needs to go home :( Pray for him, his name is Elder Angel.
Awesome story: Last week new elders came in, so this week they had about a week and a half in the field. There is a set of elders in our district who live about 15 minutes away, in a pretty dangerous part. En fin, a new elder (Latino), about a week in his area so he doesn’t know it at all, and on top of it all, it’s dangerous. On Monday night they were walking down the street when two men in coats approached them. One missionary started running away and one robber followed him (really bad idea) leaving the new missionary with the other robber. The robber asked him for money and the like and the missionary truthfully said he had nothing. The robber got mad, pulled out a knife and threatened him and asked him again. The missionary again, had nothing, so the robber tried stabbing him. This is where it gets interesting. The robber *tried* stabbing (strongly) him 5 times, but *nothing* happened. The missionary said he felt like he was being prodded with something dull, but he has no marks. On top of all that, the tip of the knife bent over a cm or so, leaving a J-shaped knife. No joke. The missionary, at this point completely surprised and awestruck, told the robber, "I have the power of God! You can’t touch me." The robber is now pretty scared at this point and makes a slash at the face of the missionary leaving a so-so cut (not deep because the knife tip was bent) and the missionary pushes over the robber. The other missionary outruns other robber, circles around and missionaries go home pretty wowed.
Yeah, crazy. The Lord sure protects his missionaries. Obedience to our covenants brings real power.
This last week we also had a pretty busy week preparing 2 people for baptism. They both came to church on Sunday which means that if all goes well this week we’ll have 2 and next week one. Yay! We’ve also been working a lot with inactives and recent converts and several came to church on Sunday! Double Yay!
Well, out of time, but I love you guys a whole ton! The church is true!!!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, August 1, 2011
August 1, 2011
Dear Family,
It’s been a great week to be a Lakewood Tiger! Raaarrrrrrr!!! On Monday we found this awesome family. On Friday we went back to their house and they had done everything we left for them as homework (aka, read pamphlet). Yay! Rare! and they understood everything and they read it again the night before we came just to have it fresh. On Friday we introduced them to the Book of Mormon and invited them to be baptized if they received a testimony. They accepted. I’m pretty sure they’ll get baptized. The mom told us that she had searched for lots of answers through prayer to know what to do in big decisions and had received responses. Sounds like she’s pretty prepared to receive us. :)
This week was also a little bit of a bummer in church because it was super cold and it rained really hard, which means that the two investigators that were going to get baptized this week didn’t come to church, which means they won’t be getting baptized this week. A little frustrating, because one of them was having a hard time getting up on time for church so we decided to pass by his house every day at 8:30 to wake him up to get him in the habit so he wouldn’t have a hard time on Sunday. He woke up every single day on time... except for Sunday :/ oh well, diligence wins the prize.
Church itself was really good. We had ward conference and all the talks were super awesome. This one guy gave a great talk on member missionary work. He started off talking about "the new commandment" to love one another as *he* loves them. He talked about that that love is demonstrated most fully by missionary work and one of the points he highlighted is the need to recognize our duty that we really are all missionaries and we will be held accountable for the member missionary work we do or don’t do. He also talked about the need for befriending new converts and inactives, and that the reason that there are empty seats is because of lack of befriending before they reach full conversion. It is way easier for us to make friends with them than for them to make friends with us. Reach out!!
Anyway, other than that, all’s well in Zion. Elder Singer (the other elder who lives with us and a great friend of mine) is training and because of problems with the volcano ashes in Southern Argentina, his new comp took 3 days longer to get here. His comp’s really cool. His name is Elder Carlson (from Orem), but he doesn’t speak a lick of Spanish. Poor guy.
Love you all tons, family!
-Elder Spencer
It’s been a great week to be a Lakewood Tiger! Raaarrrrrrr!!! On Monday we found this awesome family. On Friday we went back to their house and they had done everything we left for them as homework (aka, read pamphlet). Yay! Rare! and they understood everything and they read it again the night before we came just to have it fresh. On Friday we introduced them to the Book of Mormon and invited them to be baptized if they received a testimony. They accepted. I’m pretty sure they’ll get baptized. The mom told us that she had searched for lots of answers through prayer to know what to do in big decisions and had received responses. Sounds like she’s pretty prepared to receive us. :)
This week was also a little bit of a bummer in church because it was super cold and it rained really hard, which means that the two investigators that were going to get baptized this week didn’t come to church, which means they won’t be getting baptized this week. A little frustrating, because one of them was having a hard time getting up on time for church so we decided to pass by his house every day at 8:30 to wake him up to get him in the habit so he wouldn’t have a hard time on Sunday. He woke up every single day on time... except for Sunday :/ oh well, diligence wins the prize.
Church itself was really good. We had ward conference and all the talks were super awesome. This one guy gave a great talk on member missionary work. He started off talking about "the new commandment" to love one another as *he* loves them. He talked about that that love is demonstrated most fully by missionary work and one of the points he highlighted is the need to recognize our duty that we really are all missionaries and we will be held accountable for the member missionary work we do or don’t do. He also talked about the need for befriending new converts and inactives, and that the reason that there are empty seats is because of lack of befriending before they reach full conversion. It is way easier for us to make friends with them than for them to make friends with us. Reach out!!
Anyway, other than that, all’s well in Zion. Elder Singer (the other elder who lives with us and a great friend of mine) is training and because of problems with the volcano ashes in Southern Argentina, his new comp took 3 days longer to get here. His comp’s really cool. His name is Elder Carlson (from Orem), but he doesn’t speak a lick of Spanish. Poor guy.
Love you all tons, family!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, July 25, 2011
July 25, 2011
Dear Family,
Kinda a crazy week, but a good one! Crazy because it was the last week of the transfer, so we didn’t know if my comp or I would be staying in the area or going. Great news, we’re staying together! I feel really blessed because I feel like I’ve worked hard, but I could still work even harder, so I feel like I’ve been given a second chance to work in this part of the viñard. The great part of the mission, and the church, is knowing that our calls to serve come straight from God. In the mission, not only is my calling straight from God, but the very place I am in is called from God, which means that I have a special purpose here right now. Pretty neat. Oh yeah, this week I also had to make a nice 8-hour round trip to Salta to get my visa finally worked out. Good news is that I’m completely legal for the next year.
So sad news, Fernando, our old investigator told us flat out he decided he didn’t fit in in our church. He told us that after 80 years of eating oranges, he didn’t want any apples. It’s always hard when people decide not to get baptized, especially when you know that they’ve felt the spirit teach them how true the message is. The good news is, this week we had 3 investigators in church, and in the coming weeks we’ll be having some baptisms.
Last night we were knocking doors and we ran into a couple who had just walked outside to start arguing. We started talking with them and I realized how much it’s true that the Gospel blesses families. Without the Gospel, families become one of the sources of greatest pain and suffering, but with the Gospel in our families, men might really have joy. Thanks for being a great family! I love you guys a lot! The church is true!!
-Elder Spencer
Kinda a crazy week, but a good one! Crazy because it was the last week of the transfer, so we didn’t know if my comp or I would be staying in the area or going. Great news, we’re staying together! I feel really blessed because I feel like I’ve worked hard, but I could still work even harder, so I feel like I’ve been given a second chance to work in this part of the viñard. The great part of the mission, and the church, is knowing that our calls to serve come straight from God. In the mission, not only is my calling straight from God, but the very place I am in is called from God, which means that I have a special purpose here right now. Pretty neat. Oh yeah, this week I also had to make a nice 8-hour round trip to Salta to get my visa finally worked out. Good news is that I’m completely legal for the next year.
So sad news, Fernando, our old investigator told us flat out he decided he didn’t fit in in our church. He told us that after 80 years of eating oranges, he didn’t want any apples. It’s always hard when people decide not to get baptized, especially when you know that they’ve felt the spirit teach them how true the message is. The good news is, this week we had 3 investigators in church, and in the coming weeks we’ll be having some baptisms.
Last night we were knocking doors and we ran into a couple who had just walked outside to start arguing. We started talking with them and I realized how much it’s true that the Gospel blesses families. Without the Gospel, families become one of the sources of greatest pain and suffering, but with the Gospel in our families, men might really have joy. Thanks for being a great family! I love you guys a lot! The church is true!!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, July 18, 2011
July 18, 2011
Dear Family,
An excellent week!!
So update on Fernando (our 78-year old stud). We went there on Tuesday and he gave us some bad news. He had gone on Sunday to a birthday party for his mom (98!!!) and it was a big family reunion. The topic of religion popped up and he told them how he was planning on getting baptized. That opened up a huge can of worms and they all ganged up on him telling him that he was disgracing his family by breaking the tradition of Catholicism that had existed since his great grandfather. When we got there on Tuesday he told us: "Bad news, my friends, I’m not going to get baptized." We listened intently as he told us what had happened. Then we explained to him that as far as religion is concerned, it’s not really a matter of preference, it’s either right or wrong. If it’s wrong, don’t follow it, but if it’s right, follow it, no matter what the consequence. We shared with him Mom’s conversion story, and then committed him to pray and seek an answer and then follow it, promising him that happiness would come by following that answer. We also invited him to come to church for the first time. We tried setting up a return appointment, but he said that he would tell us in church when to come by. So basically, everything hung on how church went. If it went well, we would be able to keep teaching him and he’d get baptized, if it went badly, I don’t think he was planning on setting up a return appointment. Well, we set up for José to take him to church and..... He loved it!! We’ve got an appointment with him on Tuesday, so I’ll let you know how he’s doing.
We met our new mission President this week. He’s super great! He’s young, he’s got 5 kids, and he’s about 45-50. He’s super direct and to the point. He gave us a wonderful conference on the doctrine of Christ.
My time to write is far spent, there is little remaining. I love you all tons! The church is true!!!
-Elder Spencer
An excellent week!!
So update on Fernando (our 78-year old stud). We went there on Tuesday and he gave us some bad news. He had gone on Sunday to a birthday party for his mom (98!!!) and it was a big family reunion. The topic of religion popped up and he told them how he was planning on getting baptized. That opened up a huge can of worms and they all ganged up on him telling him that he was disgracing his family by breaking the tradition of Catholicism that had existed since his great grandfather. When we got there on Tuesday he told us: "Bad news, my friends, I’m not going to get baptized." We listened intently as he told us what had happened. Then we explained to him that as far as religion is concerned, it’s not really a matter of preference, it’s either right or wrong. If it’s wrong, don’t follow it, but if it’s right, follow it, no matter what the consequence. We shared with him Mom’s conversion story, and then committed him to pray and seek an answer and then follow it, promising him that happiness would come by following that answer. We also invited him to come to church for the first time. We tried setting up a return appointment, but he said that he would tell us in church when to come by. So basically, everything hung on how church went. If it went well, we would be able to keep teaching him and he’d get baptized, if it went badly, I don’t think he was planning on setting up a return appointment. Well, we set up for José to take him to church and..... He loved it!! We’ve got an appointment with him on Tuesday, so I’ll let you know how he’s doing.
We met our new mission President this week. He’s super great! He’s young, he’s got 5 kids, and he’s about 45-50. He’s super direct and to the point. He gave us a wonderful conference on the doctrine of Christ.
My time to write is far spent, there is little remaining. I love you all tons! The church is true!!!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, July 11, 2011
July 11, 2011
Dear Family,
Well this week was great! Great, but tiring. We have lots of investigators that are almost progressing well. Almost. Translation, we have been working a lot, visiting them, committing them, following up, making arrangements for people to walk with them to church, recommitting, etc. The good news is that we have about 5 people committed firmly to get baptized this and next month. The bad news is that it is pulling teeth to get them to come to church. Oh well, salvation isn’t a cheap experience.
One especially cool experience we had. Remember Fernando, our awesome 78-year old investigator who was just dying to get hold of the Book of Mormon (no pun intended). We had taught him, then he had tons of problems with a mortgage to work out, so we left him for a while. We ran into him a month later; things had improved, but he still had some issues to take care of. Well this week we had some plans fall through one night and we decided to pay him a visit. He was very excited to see us. :) He’s already in Helaman 6! We talked for about 10 minutes and circled the conversation around to baptism. Earlier, he had a baptismal date, but it had fallen because we stopped teaching him. I asked him how he felt about putting another baptism goal and he readily accepted. He offered the closing prayer, and in it prayed that he would be able to get baptized and that he would be able to prepare himself in time for his goal (mid August). It was a very nice appointment. He has such a humble, accepting heart. He loves the Book of Mormon. It’s a pretty good book :)
This week’s going to be busy! We’ve got conference and interviews with the new Mission President. We’ve also got to work like crazy to get all of our investigators to church. We had one baptism scheduled for Saturday, but he can’t get baptized because he didn’t go to church, so we had to bump it back again. My comp’s great! Today he cooked pizza for the whole district. What a stud!
Love you all tons! The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
Well this week was great! Great, but tiring. We have lots of investigators that are almost progressing well. Almost. Translation, we have been working a lot, visiting them, committing them, following up, making arrangements for people to walk with them to church, recommitting, etc. The good news is that we have about 5 people committed firmly to get baptized this and next month. The bad news is that it is pulling teeth to get them to come to church. Oh well, salvation isn’t a cheap experience.
One especially cool experience we had. Remember Fernando, our awesome 78-year old investigator who was just dying to get hold of the Book of Mormon (no pun intended). We had taught him, then he had tons of problems with a mortgage to work out, so we left him for a while. We ran into him a month later; things had improved, but he still had some issues to take care of. Well this week we had some plans fall through one night and we decided to pay him a visit. He was very excited to see us. :) He’s already in Helaman 6! We talked for about 10 minutes and circled the conversation around to baptism. Earlier, he had a baptismal date, but it had fallen because we stopped teaching him. I asked him how he felt about putting another baptism goal and he readily accepted. He offered the closing prayer, and in it prayed that he would be able to get baptized and that he would be able to prepare himself in time for his goal (mid August). It was a very nice appointment. He has such a humble, accepting heart. He loves the Book of Mormon. It’s a pretty good book :)
This week’s going to be busy! We’ve got conference and interviews with the new Mission President. We’ve also got to work like crazy to get all of our investigators to church. We had one baptism scheduled for Saturday, but he can’t get baptized because he didn’t go to church, so we had to bump it back again. My comp’s great! Today he cooked pizza for the whole district. What a stud!
Love you all tons! The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, July 4, 2011
July 4, 2011
Dear Family,
Another exciting week! It started off with another interesting story. So on Wednesday we had a service project. I really ought to just delegate them considering my past experience. This week a sister from the ward needed help taking the roof off of a shack in her backyard. Here pretty much all the roofs are made out of those wavy metal sheets (corrugated steel?). She needed the roof for another part of her house, and she had an old shack in her backyard with lots of extra roof, so instead of having to buy new roof sheets, she had us take off the old ones. Problem: we did the service in the morning so there was frost on the roof. Another problem: I’m pretty reckless when it comes to climbing up buildings. Biggest problem: the neighbors had a wall right next to the roof with a nice inviting topping of broken glass bottles. So, put two and two together and I was walking along the edge of the roof, slipped, and jammed my hand on the bottles. Yeah, bad news bears. The good news is, I was able to jam some cotton balls in a glove with my hand, and by the time we finished it stopped bleeding. It’s a much smaller wound than the machete chop, and it’s almost healed. Next week I’ll send pics.
Also, I got all your letters!!! Thanks a million!! It was great hearing from you guys and receiving all your love. I really appreciate it. Today to celebrate the 4th of July we went up to the mountains and got lost again. Haha, we accidently missed the city bus back, so we ended up taking a nice 3 hour trip by foot, local bus, and taxi. We did get to see some really cool waterfalls, though. God Bless America!
This week we also found this really cool newlywed couple. I don’t know if I told you, but here it’s pretty much a miracle to find people that are married, because the majority aren’t married (casados), they’re juntados (...together). Some people live their whole married life, have kids and everything without actually getting married. The sad part is when one dies and the other has absolutely no legal rights to inheritance and loses everything. Anyway this couple, Gabriel and Gabriela Gomez (no joke) are super legit. We knocked their door one day and Gabriel told us that he had always seen us walking around and had always wanted to talk to us. We obliged. We taught a great lesson to them and at the end of the lesson (their first one) set a baptismal date and they accepted. Gabriela said the closing prayer, her very first prayer, and started crying. It was a really cool moment. I’ll let you know how they progress.
This week I had the opportunity to give two priesthood blessings. On both occasions I felt the Spirit very strongly and was very grateful for being worthy and prepared to do that. We never know when the Lord needs us to help one of His children. Save the trouble and always be ready. The church is true!!!
I love you all so much!
-Elder Jonathan Spencer
Another exciting week! It started off with another interesting story. So on Wednesday we had a service project. I really ought to just delegate them considering my past experience. This week a sister from the ward needed help taking the roof off of a shack in her backyard. Here pretty much all the roofs are made out of those wavy metal sheets (corrugated steel?). She needed the roof for another part of her house, and she had an old shack in her backyard with lots of extra roof, so instead of having to buy new roof sheets, she had us take off the old ones. Problem: we did the service in the morning so there was frost on the roof. Another problem: I’m pretty reckless when it comes to climbing up buildings. Biggest problem: the neighbors had a wall right next to the roof with a nice inviting topping of broken glass bottles. So, put two and two together and I was walking along the edge of the roof, slipped, and jammed my hand on the bottles. Yeah, bad news bears. The good news is, I was able to jam some cotton balls in a glove with my hand, and by the time we finished it stopped bleeding. It’s a much smaller wound than the machete chop, and it’s almost healed. Next week I’ll send pics.
Also, I got all your letters!!! Thanks a million!! It was great hearing from you guys and receiving all your love. I really appreciate it. Today to celebrate the 4th of July we went up to the mountains and got lost again. Haha, we accidently missed the city bus back, so we ended up taking a nice 3 hour trip by foot, local bus, and taxi. We did get to see some really cool waterfalls, though. God Bless America!
This week we also found this really cool newlywed couple. I don’t know if I told you, but here it’s pretty much a miracle to find people that are married, because the majority aren’t married (casados), they’re juntados (...together). Some people live their whole married life, have kids and everything without actually getting married. The sad part is when one dies and the other has absolutely no legal rights to inheritance and loses everything. Anyway this couple, Gabriel and Gabriela Gomez (no joke) are super legit. We knocked their door one day and Gabriel told us that he had always seen us walking around and had always wanted to talk to us. We obliged. We taught a great lesson to them and at the end of the lesson (their first one) set a baptismal date and they accepted. Gabriela said the closing prayer, her very first prayer, and started crying. It was a really cool moment. I’ll let you know how they progress.
This week I had the opportunity to give two priesthood blessings. On both occasions I felt the Spirit very strongly and was very grateful for being worthy and prepared to do that. We never know when the Lord needs us to help one of His children. Save the trouble and always be ready. The church is true!!!
I love you all so much!
-Elder Jonathan Spencer
Monday, June 27, 2011
June 27, 2011
Dear Family,
A great week with Elder Dehnike. He’s a super fun guy and likes to talk a lot and we get along great. This week has been quite fun. A couple highlights. José got called to be a ward missionary!!! He’s so awesome! He went home teaching for the first time this week and afterward told us: "It seems to me like as a home teacher a 15-minute visit once a month doesn’t come even close to what these people need. The church also needs more strong leadership to help the weak inactives to progress." I was pretty much wowed. We happily explained him that he had caught the right vision of home teaching, that you are taking charge over the well being of the people and that you are being their ministering angel. This week we’re going to tell him that we need him to help us find strong leadership to teach. He’s such a stud. It’s gonna be hard to leave him. We’ve really formed a great friendship.
Other fun thing! You remember how we had done a fireside about sharing the gospel with friends? Well we did, about a month ago, and a whopping 7 people came. The bishop had a great idea, though, for us to teach the same thing but in Mutual and in RS, so we did. As we prepared it for each specific occasion, it turned out better and more refined, and the one we taught to YM/YW this week was really good. We taught that there are 4 basic steps:
1 Live the Gospel. Be an example (1 Tim. 4:12). Let your light so shine!
2 Pray for opportunities to share (Matt 7:7). When the opportunities come...
3 Answer gospel questions with simple, direct responses, full of testimony. Share your personal experience and blessings you have received.
and none of this is worth anything unless you...
4 Invite! They can come to church, activities, firesides, conference, mutual, visit the church website, read the Book of Mormon, read pamphlets, come to a Family Home Evening, come to a dinner with the missionaries, meet with the missionaries, etc.. There are tons of things you can invite your friends to do, and you’ll never know unless you invite them. In Preach My Gospel it teaches a cool commitment pattern: Invite, Promise, Testify. e.g. "Our family is having a FHE this Monday and we’d love for you to come to see how it is. You’ll see how much family unity it brings and you’ll feel a really special spirit. Doing FHE has really helped my family to grow together and teach my children to live righteously. So will you come?" Easy, no? And you don’t even have to use the words invite, promise, or testify to do it.
So yeah, it was fun. Use it and send me your success stories so I can share them with the members here.
I’d like to finish up sharing my love for the Gospel. Six years ago I gained a whole new perspective on things. I really know that Jesus Christ is the Savior and Redeemer of the world, and that by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel our families can be together forever. Obedience brings protection, security, and happiness. Ether 12:4. I know that when I am obedient, not only do I have an anchor in this life, but the hope to live with my family after this life. Remember Carrie!
I love you all!!!!
-Elder Jonathan Spencer
A great week with Elder Dehnike. He’s a super fun guy and likes to talk a lot and we get along great. This week has been quite fun. A couple highlights. José got called to be a ward missionary!!! He’s so awesome! He went home teaching for the first time this week and afterward told us: "It seems to me like as a home teacher a 15-minute visit once a month doesn’t come even close to what these people need. The church also needs more strong leadership to help the weak inactives to progress." I was pretty much wowed. We happily explained him that he had caught the right vision of home teaching, that you are taking charge over the well being of the people and that you are being their ministering angel. This week we’re going to tell him that we need him to help us find strong leadership to teach. He’s such a stud. It’s gonna be hard to leave him. We’ve really formed a great friendship.
Other fun thing! You remember how we had done a fireside about sharing the gospel with friends? Well we did, about a month ago, and a whopping 7 people came. The bishop had a great idea, though, for us to teach the same thing but in Mutual and in RS, so we did. As we prepared it for each specific occasion, it turned out better and more refined, and the one we taught to YM/YW this week was really good. We taught that there are 4 basic steps:
1 Live the Gospel. Be an example (1 Tim. 4:12). Let your light so shine!
2 Pray for opportunities to share (Matt 7:7). When the opportunities come...
3 Answer gospel questions with simple, direct responses, full of testimony. Share your personal experience and blessings you have received.
and none of this is worth anything unless you...
4 Invite! They can come to church, activities, firesides, conference, mutual, visit the church website, read the Book of Mormon, read pamphlets, come to a Family Home Evening, come to a dinner with the missionaries, meet with the missionaries, etc.. There are tons of things you can invite your friends to do, and you’ll never know unless you invite them. In Preach My Gospel it teaches a cool commitment pattern: Invite, Promise, Testify. e.g. "Our family is having a FHE this Monday and we’d love for you to come to see how it is. You’ll see how much family unity it brings and you’ll feel a really special spirit. Doing FHE has really helped my family to grow together and teach my children to live righteously. So will you come?" Easy, no? And you don’t even have to use the words invite, promise, or testify to do it.
So yeah, it was fun. Use it and send me your success stories so I can share them with the members here.
I’d like to finish up sharing my love for the Gospel. Six years ago I gained a whole new perspective on things. I really know that Jesus Christ is the Savior and Redeemer of the world, and that by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel our families can be together forever. Obedience brings protection, security, and happiness. Ether 12:4. I know that when I am obedient, not only do I have an anchor in this life, but the hope to live with my family after this life. Remember Carrie!
I love you all!!!!
-Elder Jonathan Spencer
Monday, June 20, 2011
June 20, 2011
Dear Family,
A great week, pretty uneventful though. My new comp is great. Elder Dehnike is from Buenos Aires and is the first missionary in his family. He’s super fun and before the mission he studied Gastronomy (which I thought was something medical, but as it turns out it’s basically cooking school). That’s good and bad. Good, because if we ever have a lunch cancel I’ll have my own personal chef. Bad, because it’ll be pretty underutilized here in Villa Alem, the best ward in the mission for lunches. We have lunch every day without fail. Yep, pretty spoiled. We joke around that this is the Celestial Kingdom, and I got sent here as a reward for surviving Frías. In all seriousness, it’s pretty nice. I’m pretty sure it’s the biggest ward in the mission, and more than half of all the stakies are from our ward.
The sad thing was having our last Zone Conference with President and Sister Northcutt this week. It was so good. They both gave wonderful talks. They have such strong testimonies of the Savior. President’s last talk was on two topics: The Lord knows us individually and answers prayers. He gave an experience from when he was 15 and got lost in the woods on a campout and was stranded overnight in below freezing weather, but survived (almost got hypothermia) and the next day was found. He had said a prayer that night and heard a voice that everything would be all right. Immediately his body started warming up. He slept in that spot and the next day about midday a helicopter found him. His other topic was about how to choose a wife. He said that that is the most important decision you will ever make then he told that when he was in highschool he made a "qualification" list for his wife. The most important qualification was that the Holy Ghost confirmed to him his decision. He told the story of how he met and dated Sis. Northcutt and really wanted to marry her, but was willing to follow the Lord́s response if the Lord said no. The Lord told him yes. :) It’s going to be really sad to see them go, but it’s nice that they live decently close (San Diego) so I’ll be able to see them after the mish.
Sorry I couldn’t write much this week. Everything is going well down here. I love you guys a lot. The church is true!!!!!!!
-Elder Spencer
A great week, pretty uneventful though. My new comp is great. Elder Dehnike is from Buenos Aires and is the first missionary in his family. He’s super fun and before the mission he studied Gastronomy (which I thought was something medical, but as it turns out it’s basically cooking school). That’s good and bad. Good, because if we ever have a lunch cancel I’ll have my own personal chef. Bad, because it’ll be pretty underutilized here in Villa Alem, the best ward in the mission for lunches. We have lunch every day without fail. Yep, pretty spoiled. We joke around that this is the Celestial Kingdom, and I got sent here as a reward for surviving Frías. In all seriousness, it’s pretty nice. I’m pretty sure it’s the biggest ward in the mission, and more than half of all the stakies are from our ward.
The sad thing was having our last Zone Conference with President and Sister Northcutt this week. It was so good. They both gave wonderful talks. They have such strong testimonies of the Savior. President’s last talk was on two topics: The Lord knows us individually and answers prayers. He gave an experience from when he was 15 and got lost in the woods on a campout and was stranded overnight in below freezing weather, but survived (almost got hypothermia) and the next day was found. He had said a prayer that night and heard a voice that everything would be all right. Immediately his body started warming up. He slept in that spot and the next day about midday a helicopter found him. His other topic was about how to choose a wife. He said that that is the most important decision you will ever make then he told that when he was in highschool he made a "qualification" list for his wife. The most important qualification was that the Holy Ghost confirmed to him his decision. He told the story of how he met and dated Sis. Northcutt and really wanted to marry her, but was willing to follow the Lord́s response if the Lord said no. The Lord told him yes. :) It’s going to be really sad to see them go, but it’s nice that they live decently close (San Diego) so I’ll be able to see them after the mish.
Sorry I couldn’t write much this week. Everything is going well down here. I love you guys a lot. The church is true!!!!!!!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, June 13, 2011
June 13, 2011
Dear Family,
What a week! Good news and sad news. Sad news, Elder Petersen got transferred to Jujuy. Good news, I have a new companion, Elder Dehnike, who is from Buenos Aires. We’re just getting to know each other, but he is super nice and I am excited for this transfer because we’re going to work a lot and hopefully have lots of success.
So this week we decided to try to use José in a lesson. Remember Fernando Herrera? He’s the guy who was super excited to read the Book of Mormon (he’s really old), but couldn’t meet with us for a while because of a mortgage problem. We ran into him and he said he wanted to meet with us again. We decided to set up an appointment with José and... It was soooooo good!!! Holy Smokes! We couldn’t have scripted him better. He bore his testimony so great, but from one man to another. He committed Fernando to read and pray and come to church and offered to pick him up. It was just soooo great, and the spirit was so awesome.
Other good news. So since we started teaching José, his wife kinda just lurked in the shadows and didn’t really comment much. Of the times he went to church, she only went about half the time. She’s a member, but has been inactive for quite a while. Well, this week we also did a Family Home Evening with them and it went great. We did that cornstarch thing about testimonies and talked about how the substance was the testimony, but it was worthless unless we constantly worked it so it could become something. It isn’t enough just to have a testimony, we need to become converted. It’s not what we know, it’s consistently living what we know so as to become. Apparently it had a good effect on them because yesterday when we stopped by for Elder Petersen to say goodbye Noemi surprised us with the great news that she had quit smoking! Yay! They’re making their way toward the temple!!
Also, we had stake conference this week. Elder Anderson, Elder Packer, Elder Zivic (Seventy), Rosemary Wixom spoke. It was soooooo Good!!!!
Anyway, that’s about it on the mission front. I love you all tons. The church is true! The Book of Mormon is great! Read it!
-Elder Spencer
What a week! Good news and sad news. Sad news, Elder Petersen got transferred to Jujuy. Good news, I have a new companion, Elder Dehnike, who is from Buenos Aires. We’re just getting to know each other, but he is super nice and I am excited for this transfer because we’re going to work a lot and hopefully have lots of success.
So this week we decided to try to use José in a lesson. Remember Fernando Herrera? He’s the guy who was super excited to read the Book of Mormon (he’s really old), but couldn’t meet with us for a while because of a mortgage problem. We ran into him and he said he wanted to meet with us again. We decided to set up an appointment with José and... It was soooooo good!!! Holy Smokes! We couldn’t have scripted him better. He bore his testimony so great, but from one man to another. He committed Fernando to read and pray and come to church and offered to pick him up. It was just soooo great, and the spirit was so awesome.
Other good news. So since we started teaching José, his wife kinda just lurked in the shadows and didn’t really comment much. Of the times he went to church, she only went about half the time. She’s a member, but has been inactive for quite a while. Well, this week we also did a Family Home Evening with them and it went great. We did that cornstarch thing about testimonies and talked about how the substance was the testimony, but it was worthless unless we constantly worked it so it could become something. It isn’t enough just to have a testimony, we need to become converted. It’s not what we know, it’s consistently living what we know so as to become. Apparently it had a good effect on them because yesterday when we stopped by for Elder Petersen to say goodbye Noemi surprised us with the great news that she had quit smoking! Yay! They’re making their way toward the temple!!
Also, we had stake conference this week. Elder Anderson, Elder Packer, Elder Zivic (Seventy), Rosemary Wixom spoke. It was soooooo Good!!!!
Anyway, that’s about it on the mission front. I love you all tons. The church is true! The Book of Mormon is great! Read it!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, June 6, 2011
June 6, 2011
Dear Family,
Great week! It got cold! Really cold! Haha, actually not that bad, but once you’re used to 110-120 degree weather, Colorado weather seems frigid. For example, yesterday I was so cold I went out with 2 coats, a scarf and gloves. Later on we checked my companion’s thermometer and it was a whipping 60 degrees. Hahaha. I guess I’ve turned wimpy. :)
So the cool news of this week is that we found a completely golden family. First, let me explain something. Our mission president has challenged us as missionaries to set a baptismal date in the first lesson we have with people. This does several things. First, it sets up the relationship and our purpose as missionaries, lest the people misunderstand and expect something else of us. Second, it gauges their real interest. The baptismal date we do is really a conditional one. We invite them to pray about our message and then ask them, "If you receive an answer to your prayers will you follow Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone with the restored priesthood authority of God?" It was about 4 months ago when President Northcutt challenged us to do it in every first lesson. For me it was very difficult at first to summon up the boldness to do that. Anyway, we were knocking doors a few weeks ago and got to a little corner grocery store and asked the lady if she knew anybody who could use a visit from the missionaries. She told us about a lady who lived half a block down. We tried finding them but there was nobody home. We kinda just forgot about them until this week we were left with a few extra minutes before we needed to finish up the night. We looked over our agendas at the contacts we had done and saw them and decided to give them a shot. The mom and her son were there. She immediately let us in and we started talking. We didn’t have much time so we taught them about how God is our Heavenly Father and the Gospel blesses families and about how to pray. It was about time to go, but we decided to be bold and invite them to be baptized. ...and they accepted! We went back for the next appointment and the wife had prayed and had had a wonderful experience. The husband was there and years earlier had spoken with missionaries, but had never been baptized. He, too, accepted. The next appointment the husband and wife had read from the Book of Mormon and the wife was so excited about it. She told us about how she was seeing such a big difference in their life. Their daughter was there this time and she accepted the invitation as well. Pretty much they are just counting the minutes until they can get baptized, haha. We feel super blessed to have found them and are excited for their progress.
Anyway, that’s about it from the Argentine front. I love you all so much. The gospel is so true! Christ is our Savior and Redeemer and he made it possible that our families can be together forever.
Love, Elder Spencer
Great week! It got cold! Really cold! Haha, actually not that bad, but once you’re used to 110-120 degree weather, Colorado weather seems frigid. For example, yesterday I was so cold I went out with 2 coats, a scarf and gloves. Later on we checked my companion’s thermometer and it was a whipping 60 degrees. Hahaha. I guess I’ve turned wimpy. :)
So the cool news of this week is that we found a completely golden family. First, let me explain something. Our mission president has challenged us as missionaries to set a baptismal date in the first lesson we have with people. This does several things. First, it sets up the relationship and our purpose as missionaries, lest the people misunderstand and expect something else of us. Second, it gauges their real interest. The baptismal date we do is really a conditional one. We invite them to pray about our message and then ask them, "If you receive an answer to your prayers will you follow Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone with the restored priesthood authority of God?" It was about 4 months ago when President Northcutt challenged us to do it in every first lesson. For me it was very difficult at first to summon up the boldness to do that. Anyway, we were knocking doors a few weeks ago and got to a little corner grocery store and asked the lady if she knew anybody who could use a visit from the missionaries. She told us about a lady who lived half a block down. We tried finding them but there was nobody home. We kinda just forgot about them until this week we were left with a few extra minutes before we needed to finish up the night. We looked over our agendas at the contacts we had done and saw them and decided to give them a shot. The mom and her son were there. She immediately let us in and we started talking. We didn’t have much time so we taught them about how God is our Heavenly Father and the Gospel blesses families and about how to pray. It was about time to go, but we decided to be bold and invite them to be baptized. ...and they accepted! We went back for the next appointment and the wife had prayed and had had a wonderful experience. The husband was there and years earlier had spoken with missionaries, but had never been baptized. He, too, accepted. The next appointment the husband and wife had read from the Book of Mormon and the wife was so excited about it. She told us about how she was seeing such a big difference in their life. Their daughter was there this time and she accepted the invitation as well. Pretty much they are just counting the minutes until they can get baptized, haha. We feel super blessed to have found them and are excited for their progress.
Anyway, that’s about it from the Argentine front. I love you all so much. The gospel is so true! Christ is our Savior and Redeemer and he made it possible that our families can be together forever.
Love, Elder Spencer
Monday, May 30, 2011
May 30, 2011
Dear Family,
An awesome week! So, biggest news, José blessed the sacrament this week! We had talked with the bishop on Tuesday about José and his progress and the Bishop said that he was super pleased with how well José had been doing and how his interview went and he wanted him to bless the sacrament this week and that he wanted to put the goal to get ordained an Elder in September when General Priesthood meeting is. On our appointment on Saturday with José we talked about Priesthood and read D&C 20 and 84 and talked about his duties as a Priesthood holder. He told us "apart from reading and talking about the Priesthood, I want to *use* the Priesthood." My comp and I were grinning from ear to ear. We then told him that he was going to bless the sacrament on Sunday and he was pretty pleased. He’s such a solid person! He just gets it. He is excited to be a home teacher and he’s excited to have a calling and serve in the church, and he’s just going through a mighty change of heart. It’s such a miracle for me to see because he’s probably the richest investigator or member I’ve seen in my whole mission, but he’s like king Lamoni’s father, so willing to give all that he has to know God. Whenever he reads the scriptures with us it’s pretty epic, he has a deep booming voice and he reads slowly and carefully, letting every word sink in. When he blessed the sacrament, it was just awesome.
More good news. An investigator we had last transfer, Julieta, (cousin of a member) had dropped us about a month ago. She told us that she just felt that the Catholic church was what she needed to follow. It was all super fishy because like the day before she was super pumped about the church and had a baptismal date and everything, but she had a baby she was going to baptize Catholic because her husband’s fam was all Catholic and wanted it like that. We just kinda told her that we respected her decision and then went on our merry way. This week, however, one night we were walking by her house and she told us that we should drop by and chat. Then she told her cousin that she wanted to come back to church, and when we were talking to her mom she told us that she had decided on the Mormon church. We had a great appointment with her and she remembered almost everything we had taught her and showed up to church on Sunday! She should be getting baptized in about a month.
Anyway, suffice it to say, it was a good week. By the way, Quentin is totally right, usually we only find the "weird" people knocking doors. Think about it, who else is home during the middle of the day: people who don’t have jobs. Therefore, give references! Work with the missionaries! President Hinckley said that it’s the key to missionary work and that if we do that we could double the amount of convert baptisms. I love you all! The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
PS- Our mission got 150 baptisms this month, a new record for our mission president.
An awesome week! So, biggest news, José blessed the sacrament this week! We had talked with the bishop on Tuesday about José and his progress and the Bishop said that he was super pleased with how well José had been doing and how his interview went and he wanted him to bless the sacrament this week and that he wanted to put the goal to get ordained an Elder in September when General Priesthood meeting is. On our appointment on Saturday with José we talked about Priesthood and read D&C 20 and 84 and talked about his duties as a Priesthood holder. He told us "apart from reading and talking about the Priesthood, I want to *use* the Priesthood." My comp and I were grinning from ear to ear. We then told him that he was going to bless the sacrament on Sunday and he was pretty pleased. He’s such a solid person! He just gets it. He is excited to be a home teacher and he’s excited to have a calling and serve in the church, and he’s just going through a mighty change of heart. It’s such a miracle for me to see because he’s probably the richest investigator or member I’ve seen in my whole mission, but he’s like king Lamoni’s father, so willing to give all that he has to know God. Whenever he reads the scriptures with us it’s pretty epic, he has a deep booming voice and he reads slowly and carefully, letting every word sink in. When he blessed the sacrament, it was just awesome.
More good news. An investigator we had last transfer, Julieta, (cousin of a member) had dropped us about a month ago. She told us that she just felt that the Catholic church was what she needed to follow. It was all super fishy because like the day before she was super pumped about the church and had a baptismal date and everything, but she had a baby she was going to baptize Catholic because her husband’s fam was all Catholic and wanted it like that. We just kinda told her that we respected her decision and then went on our merry way. This week, however, one night we were walking by her house and she told us that we should drop by and chat. Then she told her cousin that she wanted to come back to church, and when we were talking to her mom she told us that she had decided on the Mormon church. We had a great appointment with her and she remembered almost everything we had taught her and showed up to church on Sunday! She should be getting baptized in about a month.
Anyway, suffice it to say, it was a good week. By the way, Quentin is totally right, usually we only find the "weird" people knocking doors. Think about it, who else is home during the middle of the day: people who don’t have jobs. Therefore, give references! Work with the missionaries! President Hinckley said that it’s the key to missionary work and that if we do that we could double the amount of convert baptisms. I love you all! The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
PS- Our mission got 150 baptisms this month, a new record for our mission president.
Monday, May 23, 2011
May 23, 2011
Dear Family,
What an awesome week! Biggest news of the week, José got baptized!!! It was sooooo good. We did a double baptism with the other ward because a lady from there was getting baptized too. The program was super good. There were a couple talks, two other elders and I sang "Nearer, My God To Thee" and then my companion baptized him. His wife was crying (I couldn’t really tell if he was, being that he was drenching wet) and he came out beaming happy.
Sunday was super good. He showed up early for church and everything, and during classes had an interview with the bishop. The bishop asked him if he was ready to start serving in the church, so right after he got confirmed he got sustained to get the Aaronic Priesthood and then after church he got ordained. Hopefully in a year or so I’ll be making a trip back to Argentina for their temple sealing. :) Anyway, after church we had lunch at their house and José made asado (Argentine BBQ) and holy smokes, that was the most incredible meat I’ve ever eaten. It was soooooo tender and they had put it in this yummy garlic marinade. It was just wow.
Anyway, other than that, not much going on. We had been focusing a lot on José, getting him over those final hurdles, and now we don’t really have any progressing investigators. So, now that we’re freed up a little on time we’re going to be focusing a lot more on finding *lots* of new investigators and working on our non-progressing investigators.
Today we went up to the mountains next to the city where the Christ statue is where I went last year when I was here. It was super fun and we got some sweet pictures of the clouds melting down the mountain. Enjoy!
Love you all tons! The church is true!!
-Elder Spencer
José and I
José, his wife, my comp and I
Cooool clouds
Jumping off the edge of the world!
What an awesome week! Biggest news of the week, José got baptized!!! It was sooooo good. We did a double baptism with the other ward because a lady from there was getting baptized too. The program was super good. There were a couple talks, two other elders and I sang "Nearer, My God To Thee" and then my companion baptized him. His wife was crying (I couldn’t really tell if he was, being that he was drenching wet) and he came out beaming happy.
Sunday was super good. He showed up early for church and everything, and during classes had an interview with the bishop. The bishop asked him if he was ready to start serving in the church, so right after he got confirmed he got sustained to get the Aaronic Priesthood and then after church he got ordained. Hopefully in a year or so I’ll be making a trip back to Argentina for their temple sealing. :) Anyway, after church we had lunch at their house and José made asado (Argentine BBQ) and holy smokes, that was the most incredible meat I’ve ever eaten. It was soooooo tender and they had put it in this yummy garlic marinade. It was just wow.
Anyway, other than that, not much going on. We had been focusing a lot on José, getting him over those final hurdles, and now we don’t really have any progressing investigators. So, now that we’re freed up a little on time we’re going to be focusing a lot more on finding *lots* of new investigators and working on our non-progressing investigators.
Today we went up to the mountains next to the city where the Christ statue is where I went last year when I was here. It was super fun and we got some sweet pictures of the clouds melting down the mountain. Enjoy!
Love you all tons! The church is true!!
-Elder Spencer
José and I
José, his wife, my comp and I
Cooool clouds
Jumping off the edge of the world!
Monday, May 16, 2011
May 16, 2011
Dear Family,
This week went super good. It was also super hectic. First of all, José is doing well. For the last two weeks we’ve been meeting with him every other day to pump him up for his baptism. He was still having problems with dropping alcohol, so we fasted with him on Sunday to help him go cold turkey. Hopefully he makes it. If he passes his interview tomorrow he can get baptized this week. If not, we’ll have to put it off until he is able to stop drinking. Pray for him. He’s super excited and prepared for his baptism, he just needs to go over this last hurdle to make it.
So we’ve been preparing to do a big missionary fireside, focused on member missionary work. We got a big box of copies of the Book of Mormon and our ward mission leader made a whole ton of banana bread and... 7 people showed up. Yeah, kinda a bummer, especially it just happened to fall right when we were fasting so we couldn’t even load up on the bread. But, it went well anyway and we at least got 7 members of the ward pumped up about missionary work. By small and simple things....
Those awesome new investigators we found last week are doing well. As a rule with new investigators we usually try making the return appointment within the first few days after the contact or first lesson. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to get a hold of one, and the other is moving to Buenos Aires next week, so... gotta keep on working :) This week we had a pretty funny story about finding a new family, though. One night we were knocking doors and a 14 year old boy answered and said his mom wasn’t home, but would be the next day. The next day we went back and his older brother (15) answered the door. We told the older brother that we were missionaries and that the younger brother had said we should come back. The older brother let us in without protest and we walked up into the house. We walked into the living room and the mom and the sister walked in with super surprised expressions on their faces, like "what are these two random guys doing in our house?". The mom however said, "you guys are Mormons, right? Have a seat!" (we like to hear that) and they treated us super well and even fed us dinner. Haha, we couldn’t keep laughing about how randomly we got into the house, but how nice they were to let us stay and give us food. We have a return appointment to teach them this Friday, hopefully it goes well. They seem like such a perfect family ready for the gospel.
Well, that’s about it for this week. Love you all tons! The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
This week went super good. It was also super hectic. First of all, José is doing well. For the last two weeks we’ve been meeting with him every other day to pump him up for his baptism. He was still having problems with dropping alcohol, so we fasted with him on Sunday to help him go cold turkey. Hopefully he makes it. If he passes his interview tomorrow he can get baptized this week. If not, we’ll have to put it off until he is able to stop drinking. Pray for him. He’s super excited and prepared for his baptism, he just needs to go over this last hurdle to make it.
So we’ve been preparing to do a big missionary fireside, focused on member missionary work. We got a big box of copies of the Book of Mormon and our ward mission leader made a whole ton of banana bread and... 7 people showed up. Yeah, kinda a bummer, especially it just happened to fall right when we were fasting so we couldn’t even load up on the bread. But, it went well anyway and we at least got 7 members of the ward pumped up about missionary work. By small and simple things....
Those awesome new investigators we found last week are doing well. As a rule with new investigators we usually try making the return appointment within the first few days after the contact or first lesson. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to get a hold of one, and the other is moving to Buenos Aires next week, so... gotta keep on working :) This week we had a pretty funny story about finding a new family, though. One night we were knocking doors and a 14 year old boy answered and said his mom wasn’t home, but would be the next day. The next day we went back and his older brother (15) answered the door. We told the older brother that we were missionaries and that the younger brother had said we should come back. The older brother let us in without protest and we walked up into the house. We walked into the living room and the mom and the sister walked in with super surprised expressions on their faces, like "what are these two random guys doing in our house?". The mom however said, "you guys are Mormons, right? Have a seat!" (we like to hear that) and they treated us super well and even fed us dinner. Haha, we couldn’t keep laughing about how randomly we got into the house, but how nice they were to let us stay and give us food. We have a return appointment to teach them this Friday, hopefully it goes well. They seem like such a perfect family ready for the gospel.
Well, that’s about it for this week. Love you all tons! The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, May 9, 2011
May 9, 2011
Dear Family,
It was great talking to mom and co. yesterday! Updates on missionary work: José is doing great. Yesterday he went to all 3 meetings for the first time and loved it all! He got along super well with the High priests and is going to go to a barbecue with them this week. Our high priests quorum is super legit, about 10 guys (bigger than all the active priesthood combined in any of my other areas) and includes 4 ex-bishops and the current patriarch. They’re doing a great job of inviting him into the fold.
This week we had a couple of cool miracles in finding people. When we plan out the day we try to leave about an hour every day for finding new people to teach. Then we plan the exact time and place and ask the Lord to put the people that he has prepared in our way with the promise that we will talk to everyone. Well three days this week, just after talking to people for a whole hour with no success we were about to go to the next appointment, but decided just one last person. One was a lady in a park who told us how much she had been looking for peace in her life, and being closer to God. Another was a lady at a door who had recently lost her brother to a disease and wondered if she could ever see him again. The last was a girl who had been looking around at all the religions, but just wanted to find a way to unite her family. Well, we had some pretty good responses for all of them. All in all it was super cool to see the Lord’s hand guide us to these people he had prepared for us to teach.
Today for P-day we decided to check out downtown and we ended up taking a tour of the capitol bldg. It was super cool and the tour guide lady insisted in talking to us in her broken English even though there was a chileno in our group, haha. At the end we were talking and the lady (the governor’s translator) suddenly stopped and said "quick, the governor’s leaving, let’s go shake his hand" so the tour lady stopped him before he got into his car and got him to shake our hands. Pretty neat! Apparently the Argentine constitution is based a lot off of ours.
Well, that’s all folks, but I love you all tons! The church is true!!
-Elder Spencer
It was great talking to mom and co. yesterday! Updates on missionary work: José is doing great. Yesterday he went to all 3 meetings for the first time and loved it all! He got along super well with the High priests and is going to go to a barbecue with them this week. Our high priests quorum is super legit, about 10 guys (bigger than all the active priesthood combined in any of my other areas) and includes 4 ex-bishops and the current patriarch. They’re doing a great job of inviting him into the fold.
This week we had a couple of cool miracles in finding people. When we plan out the day we try to leave about an hour every day for finding new people to teach. Then we plan the exact time and place and ask the Lord to put the people that he has prepared in our way with the promise that we will talk to everyone. Well three days this week, just after talking to people for a whole hour with no success we were about to go to the next appointment, but decided just one last person. One was a lady in a park who told us how much she had been looking for peace in her life, and being closer to God. Another was a lady at a door who had recently lost her brother to a disease and wondered if she could ever see him again. The last was a girl who had been looking around at all the religions, but just wanted to find a way to unite her family. Well, we had some pretty good responses for all of them. All in all it was super cool to see the Lord’s hand guide us to these people he had prepared for us to teach.
Today for P-day we decided to check out downtown and we ended up taking a tour of the capitol bldg. It was super cool and the tour guide lady insisted in talking to us in her broken English even though there was a chileno in our group, haha. At the end we were talking and the lady (the governor’s translator) suddenly stopped and said "quick, the governor’s leaving, let’s go shake his hand" so the tour lady stopped him before he got into his car and got him to shake our hands. Pretty neat! Apparently the Argentine constitution is based a lot off of ours.
Well, that’s all folks, but I love you all tons! The church is true!!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, May 2, 2011
May 2, 2011
Dear Family,
This was an interesting/awesome week. It started off really well with my comp and I celebrating Easter on P-day. Ok, so we were at the butchershop two weeks ago and we saw that they had lamb. We were like, hey, why don’t we try lamb for Easter to try and do the old Jewish traditions. We got the lamb... a lot of it (2.5 kilos) and then on Monday we grilled it up. It was deeeeeeelicious.
From there things went a little crazy. One of the elders who lives in the apartment with us had been having bad knee problems so he had an MRI on his knee. The results came in and the mission doctor said that they would have to operate, so he had to go home (to Buenos Aires) (héll come back after the surgery), which left us in a trio until today (the transfer ended and they sent in a replacement).
It was pretty fun. The other missionary, Elder Ackerman, is super new and didn’t know Spanish or his area very well, so we tried dividing the time we worked half and half between his area and ours, but lots of the time we were in his area we got lost, haha. It made me remember how I was when I had that much time in the mission and I was left to direct in my area (divisions). Not only did I get lost, but we got robbed at gunpoint. :) He was feeling a little down for not knowing his area well, but he perked up after I told him that story.
We had an awesome lesson with Martin and Sandra (the agnostic investigators we have) and I felt like we resolved a lot of their doubts. I’ve been studying lots of gerenal conference talks lately, and that day it paid off. They were wondering why we need a prophet if we can just communicate personally with God. I had recently read Dallin H Oaks talk "Two Lines of Communication" (read it, it’s great) and so I kinda summarized that for them. They really liked the response and the spirit was great.
José’s doing great! Yesterday was his third Sunday in a row and he told us that he’s going every Sunday from now on. He’s got a little Word of Wisdom problem, he likes to drink a little wine with lunch. He says he has the will power to do it, but he just hasn’t convinced himself to yet. We taught him the story of Naaman and how obedience always brings blessings even if we can’t understand why. He committed to living the Word of Wisdom and so far he’s doing well.
Well, that’s about it, love you all tons! The Church is true! "Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words."
-Elder Spencer
This was an interesting/awesome week. It started off really well with my comp and I celebrating Easter on P-day. Ok, so we were at the butchershop two weeks ago and we saw that they had lamb. We were like, hey, why don’t we try lamb for Easter to try and do the old Jewish traditions. We got the lamb... a lot of it (2.5 kilos) and then on Monday we grilled it up. It was deeeeeeelicious.
From there things went a little crazy. One of the elders who lives in the apartment with us had been having bad knee problems so he had an MRI on his knee. The results came in and the mission doctor said that they would have to operate, so he had to go home (to Buenos Aires) (héll come back after the surgery), which left us in a trio until today (the transfer ended and they sent in a replacement).
It was pretty fun. The other missionary, Elder Ackerman, is super new and didn’t know Spanish or his area very well, so we tried dividing the time we worked half and half between his area and ours, but lots of the time we were in his area we got lost, haha. It made me remember how I was when I had that much time in the mission and I was left to direct in my area (divisions). Not only did I get lost, but we got robbed at gunpoint. :) He was feeling a little down for not knowing his area well, but he perked up after I told him that story.
We had an awesome lesson with Martin and Sandra (the agnostic investigators we have) and I felt like we resolved a lot of their doubts. I’ve been studying lots of gerenal conference talks lately, and that day it paid off. They were wondering why we need a prophet if we can just communicate personally with God. I had recently read Dallin H Oaks talk "Two Lines of Communication" (read it, it’s great) and so I kinda summarized that for them. They really liked the response and the spirit was great.
José’s doing great! Yesterday was his third Sunday in a row and he told us that he’s going every Sunday from now on. He’s got a little Word of Wisdom problem, he likes to drink a little wine with lunch. He says he has the will power to do it, but he just hasn’t convinced himself to yet. We taught him the story of Naaman and how obedience always brings blessings even if we can’t understand why. He committed to living the Word of Wisdom and so far he’s doing well.
Well, that’s about it, love you all tons! The Church is true! "Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words."
-Elder Spencer
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