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

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

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

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

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