April 11, 2011

Dear Family,

Wonderful week! Today was great! We went down with both of the Tucuman zones (about 50 missionaries) to a dam and had an asado (Argentine BBQ). My first companion taught me how to make a pretty solid charcoal fire, and I learned about my 2nd month on a mission that a frisbee works really well for fanning fire, so I made the fire and it turned out pretty delicious. That’s one of the great parts of Argentina, the meat. There’s meat in every meal. Meat meat meat meat. You still have to be careful, though. Last week my comp and I decided to make "choripan", which is basically just bratwurst, but you use the Argentine mystery sausage, chorizo. Yep, we both got pretty sick off that and had to have healthy dosages of pepto bismol afterwards. Oh well, it was pretty delicious.

Well, the missionary work is coming along really well. Elder Petersen and I get along fantastically and we have a great time working together. Fernando’s doing great. In one week he read to... (drum roll please) ...1 Nephi 19! Pretty impressive. I think that’s the farthest I’ve ever had an investigator read. We had a great lesson with him this week and we brought over the stake patriarch, who happens to live in our ward and be about the same age as him, and it was a good lesson. One of the coolest stories from this week was that of a couple we’ve been working with, Martin and Sandra. He’s an inactive and she’s not a member. They have lots of weird beliefs, kinda agnostic, they think that God is just an energy. This has always presented a problem with prayer because they don’t feel like God is anything you can direct yourself to in prayer. We talked about prayer a little and then invited them to pray every single day to ask God if he existed and if our message was true. They didn’t want to because they didn’t think it would work. Then we explained that that is when faith comes in, and sooner or later we will always be backed up to the wall of faith, having to walk into uncertainty solely trusting. We invited them to trust in our words and pray every day, and... they accepted! We were so excited that we fasted this weekend that they would get a response. We have an appointment with them tomorrow and can’t wait to find out how it went.

Well, that’s about all for this week. I love you all tons! The church is true! Tell all your friends, for "their souls are precious" (Alma 31:35).

-Elder Spencer





My good lookin' comp Elder Petersen and I





The beautiful views at Cadillal