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