March 28, 2011

Dear Family,

Well this week was downright awesome. First, a clarification, Tucuman is a pretty big city, and it has zones, so I am now in the other zone on the opposite side of the city. Anyway, I love my new ward, it is called Villa Alem, and it is wonderful. It is the biggest ward in the mission with 4 missionaries and roughly 160 active members. It used to be much bigger, and they’ve already divided another ward and a branch off of it because it is just solid. It’ll probably form the next stake here in Tucuman.

Anyway, my new companion is seriously awesome. He is super new, on his second transfer, but is not afraid to talk, and his Spanish is improving super quickly. He’s also a super genius and knows tons about the gospel and we get along fantastic. This week we taught several lessons where the spirit was just so strong that I couldn’t help just walking around with a big grin on my face the whole rest of the day.

One of our lessons was with a recent convert who relapsed to her smoking addiction and is having a hard time quitting. We read Alma 43:45-50 and talked about how even when our opposition is strong and we want to give up, we just need a little inspiration. It can come from church leaders or scriptures, or thinking about loved ones, then, if we pray with all our might we can overcome the difficulty. With her, we had her write down a list of reasons why she wanted to quit, an inspiration list. It included her health, being free, her children and setting an example for them, and being able to feel the spirit. We then challenged her to read that and pray every time she felt like smoking. So far she’s been doing good. I’ll let you know how it goes.

This weekend we have General Conference. Can you imagine? We have the opportunity to listen to the prophet of God. What an incredible opportunity!!! Don’t miss one minute!

The church is true!

-Elder Spencer