Hey Mom!
Great to hear from you!! I got the package, thank you sooooooooo much!! I have a confession, however, that the m&ms arrived at a time when there was almost no food in the pension and we were waiting for our monthly allotment so... I only shared them with a few investigators... :D Thanks for all the stuff again!! It was super cool to read the letters from the other missionaries.
That’s awesome Steve is in the Bishopric. You guys are pretty lucky because out here there is no bishopric; there isn’t enough priesthood leadership to go around. It sounds like you guys are just going from one party to the next! I guess that’s how summer is. I’m glad to hear all the good news (and the bad news too, opposition in all things, eh?). As far as the smoker quitting, any suggestions would help. We kinda got nothin’. Right now he’s smoking 60 a day (yeah, a ton, right?) but has a heart of gold, reads the Book of Mormon and prays 3 times a day. His problem is that he is partially mentally handicapped after getting hit really hard 18 years ago doing kung fu. He has progressed tons since the accident and now he’s almost normal, but lacks the same kind of self mastery that normal people have. I’m sure in his final judgment he won’t be held very accountable, but we still really want to help him shake loose of this horrible addiction that he is captive to.
Even so, this has been the best week in the field. This week was the week of conferences. We had mission conference on Wednesday and stake conference on Saturday and Sunday. The mission conference was super cool. Our mission president talked a while about how the coming of Christ to the Americas was a type of the second coming and we need to study it to know what will happen. He also talked about the scripture that says that the day nor the hour no man knoweth, not even the angels in heaven, and read us something that Joseph Smith said that because "surely the Lord God will do nothing but he revealeth his secret to his servants the prophets" (Amos 3:7), every time that phrase of not knowing when is written in the scriptures, it is written in the present tense, and the prophet will definitely know before the second coming. Crazy, huh?
The stake conference was even better. We had a seventy from Buenos Aires named Elder Avila come and speak to us and he was awesome. In the Saturday night adult session he gave a really detailed awesome lesson of the plan of salvation and our investigator who was there loved it. He also talked about the armor of God and how important it is to put on every piece every day, because if you forget one piece or one day, Satan will attack you then and there. The next day he talked about the importance and influence of parents, and how there were a ton of Lamanites who were wicked because of their unrighteous parents, whereas with Alma started 7+ generations of prophets because they were strong, righteous influences on their children. Our investigator (Her name is Veronica Zamorano) told us afterward that she was ready to be the start of generations of members in the church, and that even though she didn’t have her grandmother or mother to look to for an example, that her 5 children and their children would have her to look to and she wants her 3 sons to grow up in the church and be missionaries so their sons can look to the examples of their fathers. She is incredible!! She understands and applies everything completely and is willing and ready to give up all her sins to know God (Alma 22:18). She is going to get baptized this Saturday and her kids probably in the next transfer. She is the first baptism that I found and taught all the way through and I am so happy because she is so strongly converted and has such a strong testimony already. We taught her a short lesson on baptism Sunday night after the conference and she was so excited for the baptism invitation. Having a convert like that and feeling the spirit touch their hearts with converting power is what makes it all worth it. I’ll let you know how the baptism goes on Saturday!!
Anyway, before I go, fun fact: The very first baptism in Tucumán (where I am right now, and the biggest city in my mission and 5th largest in Argentina) happened 50 years ago this year, and now there are two whole stakes covering the city. The cool part for me is knowing some of the people who’ve been here before me: Elder D Todd Christofferson, the dad of Alan Vawdrey (my brother in law)[****Heidi, make sure he knows that Ím in Tucumán right now and have him shoot me an e-mail if he wants to find out more about the area], and Steve Rockwood. And now Ím here walking the same streets, working the same work. That’s how the church gets built, brick by brick, person by person. By small and simple things, great things come to pass.
"Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great." -D&C 64:33
So keep on the well doing, even if you’re tired of it, and keep the letters coming. I thought that being from a family of 12 would mean I get more mail... hint hint ;) (you can use e-mail if you’re feeling too lazy to run to the post office, it really doesn’t make a difference to me).
Love you all, especially Carrie who is serving with me right now.
-Elder Jonathan Spencer
Monday, June 28, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
June 21, 2010
Great to hear from you!
This week went pretty well. Everybody is still crazy as ever over here about the world cup, and since they’ve won two games already the people are just getting crazier and crazier. This coming week Elder Vidal and I are planning to do a ward activity on the theme of the soccer tournament. So far it’s gonna be pretty sweet, I’ll let you know how it goes. Because of the craziness we had a ton of appointments fall through and we walked a ton more than usual, which is the hard part of missionary work. Teaching is easy, it’s the walking miles and miles and miles when appointments fall through that does it. Luckily, Elder Vidal and I have a good time together and we think up games to make the traveling fun. Sometimes we pretend to speak German as we walk past people, leaving them super confused since they’re used to gringos speaking English. Anyway, even though it was a difficult week, we made it fun, worked our tails off, and had a decent turnout at church anyway. I found out something super interesting this week, however. We were visiting a member one day asking for referrals when they began to tell us a little about their history in the church. Turns out they were baptized by D. Todd Christofferson! Talk about big shoes to fill! That really gave me some perspective about how big a responsibility I have, how big of a stewardship I need to watch over.
Anyway, time's short, church's true. Love you guys!
-Elder Spencer
This week went pretty well. Everybody is still crazy as ever over here about the world cup, and since they’ve won two games already the people are just getting crazier and crazier. This coming week Elder Vidal and I are planning to do a ward activity on the theme of the soccer tournament. So far it’s gonna be pretty sweet, I’ll let you know how it goes. Because of the craziness we had a ton of appointments fall through and we walked a ton more than usual, which is the hard part of missionary work. Teaching is easy, it’s the walking miles and miles and miles when appointments fall through that does it. Luckily, Elder Vidal and I have a good time together and we think up games to make the traveling fun. Sometimes we pretend to speak German as we walk past people, leaving them super confused since they’re used to gringos speaking English. Anyway, even though it was a difficult week, we made it fun, worked our tails off, and had a decent turnout at church anyway. I found out something super interesting this week, however. We were visiting a member one day asking for referrals when they began to tell us a little about their history in the church. Turns out they were baptized by D. Todd Christofferson! Talk about big shoes to fill! That really gave me some perspective about how big a responsibility I have, how big of a stewardship I need to watch over.
Anyway, time's short, church's true. Love you guys!
-Elder Spencer
June 14, 2010
This week was great! Out here everybody is super excited and energetic over the world cup soccer tournament. Out here, soccer is everything. They have a 2 hour game, and then spend the next four days on every single channel analyzing what happened and figuring out ways to say how awesome their team is. Everybody watches it, all the time. Seriously, every house we go into to teach a lesson they either have the game on or sports commentators talking about it. They’re fanatics. And if Argentina wins a game, they light off a ton of fireworks and all get drunk that night. It’s kinda like the superbowl but 5 times bigger.
Anyway, because of the world cup, this week was a little slow; we had lots of appointments fall through, but we still worked our tails off and our district met all the mission goals. The ward out here isn’t very big and doesn’t put on many activities, so as missionaries we are looking for opportunities to unite members with investigators. Our Mission President told us we should do an activity at least once a week. It gets hard to be creative after a few months in the same place but we still managed to keep things interesting. This week we put on a special refreshment: "Panqueqes gringos" which are just normal pancakes, but they have never tried them out here. It turned out great, but we spent the three hours of study time taking turns studying and making pancakes one at a time because we don’t have a griddle, just a fry pan. It turned out great and we got a ton of members, less-actives, and investigators to come and mingle. Our investigators are doing great, and we should have 2 baptisms in the coming week. We have another investigator who is super great, comes to church, reads the Book of Mormon (he started from the beginning a few weeks ago and is already in Mosiah!), but has a huge smoking problem. He smokes roughly 30 cigarrettes a day. We’ve tried a lot of things with him, having him read and pray when he feels the desire to smoke, but he’s super addicted. Any suggestions?
Anyway, all is well in the field. Sounds like you guys are having a blast out there! I should get the package from Bro. Calley this week at district meeting. Have fun, work hard, don’t forget to read your scriptures every day. It’s important stuff.
Love,
Elder Spencer
Anyway, because of the world cup, this week was a little slow; we had lots of appointments fall through, but we still worked our tails off and our district met all the mission goals. The ward out here isn’t very big and doesn’t put on many activities, so as missionaries we are looking for opportunities to unite members with investigators. Our Mission President told us we should do an activity at least once a week. It gets hard to be creative after a few months in the same place but we still managed to keep things interesting. This week we put on a special refreshment: "Panqueqes gringos" which are just normal pancakes, but they have never tried them out here. It turned out great, but we spent the three hours of study time taking turns studying and making pancakes one at a time because we don’t have a griddle, just a fry pan. It turned out great and we got a ton of members, less-actives, and investigators to come and mingle. Our investigators are doing great, and we should have 2 baptisms in the coming week. We have another investigator who is super great, comes to church, reads the Book of Mormon (he started from the beginning a few weeks ago and is already in Mosiah!), but has a huge smoking problem. He smokes roughly 30 cigarrettes a day. We’ve tried a lot of things with him, having him read and pray when he feels the desire to smoke, but he’s super addicted. Any suggestions?
Anyway, all is well in the field. Sounds like you guys are having a blast out there! I should get the package from Bro. Calley this week at district meeting. Have fun, work hard, don’t forget to read your scriptures every day. It’s important stuff.
Love,
Elder Spencer
June 7, 2010
Wow, what a week!
This week started out super cool! I got to go on divisions with the Zone Leader, Elder Lockhart, because my companion is the District leader. He’s super awesome and it turns out that he’s from the ward where I was staying last year in San Diego, so we have lots of friends in common. That day I also lost my wallet and backpack on a bus :( so that put a little bit of a damper on the day, but he had a super good attitude and helped me get the mission office to send replacements for everything I lost for super cheap. What a stud.
This week has been an incredible one in watching the progress of investigators. There’s a quote from President Monson that goes: "When progress is measured, progress improves. When progress is measured and reported the rate of improvement accelerates." This is the reason why, as missionaries, we are constantly reporting numbers to our leaders. I decided to do the same thing with our investigators and we made prayer and scripture reading charts for each of them so each day they have to mark down if they did it. Seeing their testimonies grow from this has been one of the most incredible things I’ve experienced on the mission thus far. Remember in the scriptures where it talks about the joy of bringing souls to Christ? I’m starting to feel some of that as I see the investigators that I’ve taught from the very beginning progress towards baptism. It rocks! It’s what makes all the hard work, slammed doors, cold showers and blistering heat worthwhile.
Anyway, thanks for all your letters, love and support. I got a couple in the pouch this week and it was great to hear from home. Keep ‘em coming :)
The Church is True!! Love all your guts!!
-E Spencer
This week started out super cool! I got to go on divisions with the Zone Leader, Elder Lockhart, because my companion is the District leader. He’s super awesome and it turns out that he’s from the ward where I was staying last year in San Diego, so we have lots of friends in common. That day I also lost my wallet and backpack on a bus :( so that put a little bit of a damper on the day, but he had a super good attitude and helped me get the mission office to send replacements for everything I lost for super cheap. What a stud.
This week has been an incredible one in watching the progress of investigators. There’s a quote from President Monson that goes: "When progress is measured, progress improves. When progress is measured and reported the rate of improvement accelerates." This is the reason why, as missionaries, we are constantly reporting numbers to our leaders. I decided to do the same thing with our investigators and we made prayer and scripture reading charts for each of them so each day they have to mark down if they did it. Seeing their testimonies grow from this has been one of the most incredible things I’ve experienced on the mission thus far. Remember in the scriptures where it talks about the joy of bringing souls to Christ? I’m starting to feel some of that as I see the investigators that I’ve taught from the very beginning progress towards baptism. It rocks! It’s what makes all the hard work, slammed doors, cold showers and blistering heat worthwhile.
Anyway, thanks for all your letters, love and support. I got a couple in the pouch this week and it was great to hear from home. Keep ‘em coming :)
The Church is True!! Love all your guts!!
-E Spencer
Monday, May 31, 2010
Hi!!
The further I get out here on the mission the more convinced I am that missionary work should be much more centered on the members. This week I was reading a conference talk that Elder Perry gave in the April 09 conference titled "Bring Souls to Me" which talked about how it’s the members’ duty to do the finding and fellowshipping and the missionaries’ duty to do the teaching (read the whole talk, it́s super good). It works so much better that way! We get hardly any references, but the investigators we have that are references are our best investigators because they have someone they can look to as an example of a good member. They can ask them questions when we leave (most investigators are too timid to ask us questions, so having a member is super important because members can get closer to them and be their friends). Members have a huge advantage over missionaries: they can be normal people. They can get into many more doors than missionaries can. The trick is to just be a good example of living gospel standards until they initiate a gospel centered conversation, that way you know you have a captive and interested audience and you aren’t just preaching to unwilling ears.
This week was great. I am feeling much better and we finished out the transfer here in Muñecas. I get to stay here another transfer and Elder Vidal and I decided we are going to work a whole lot more with the members. This is a whole lot harder down here because our ward mission leader only comes to church every once in a while, and the missionaries before us didn’t leave us much. It́s going to take lots of work and arm pulling, but we are putting together a big list and map of all the members willing to work with the missionaries; that way we can pair investigators with members who live nearby and can bring them to church (that is by far the hardest thing to do down here, getting people to church).
Anyway, all is well. The Spanish is going great! Ím a sleep talker, and my comp told me the other day that I sleep talked for the first time in Spanish. We celebrated, of course.
Love all your guts! Write me lots of letters!!!
The book is blue, the church is true, go cougars!!!
-Elder Spencer
This week was great. I am feeling much better and we finished out the transfer here in Muñecas. I get to stay here another transfer and Elder Vidal and I decided we are going to work a whole lot more with the members. This is a whole lot harder down here because our ward mission leader only comes to church every once in a while, and the missionaries before us didn’t leave us much. It́s going to take lots of work and arm pulling, but we are putting together a big list and map of all the members willing to work with the missionaries; that way we can pair investigators with members who live nearby and can bring them to church (that is by far the hardest thing to do down here, getting people to church).
Anyway, all is well. The Spanish is going great! Ím a sleep talker, and my comp told me the other day that I sleep talked for the first time in Spanish. We celebrated, of course.
Love all your guts! Write me lots of letters!!!
The book is blue, the church is true, go cougars!!!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, May 24, 2010
May 24
Everyone,
Wow, this week was crazy. Truly a week of miracles. It started off with me being ridiculously sick. I was kinda sick last week, but this week it hit hard and Monday, p-day, I spent most of the day in bed. I made myself a deal in the MTC, however, that as long as I could breathe I would work, so Tuesday morning I hit my knees and begged Heavenly Father to just give me the strength I needed during the hours where we needed to work. We got ready to go and my head, throat, back, stomach, and legs still hurt like crazy, but we pressed forward anyway. We got halfway down the street and suddenly I felt much better. We worked the whole day super hard. I think this week wéve walked more than any other week. As soon as we got close to the apartment, the weight of my cold returned and I collapsed in my bed. This happened the following four days as well. I was sick enough that I could very reasonably stayed home most of the week, but the Lord lifted me up and carried me as I put forth my best effort. I am 100% sure that I could not have worked without the divine help I received and this experience was another addition to my testimony that our Heavenly Father really does listen to each and every prayer we say and is ready and waiting to pour out his tender mercies upon us if we will just ask. The results of this were also phenomenal. Instead of wasting the week in the apartment, we completed and then some on all of the mission goals. We found several golden investigators and our investigators who had previously been uninterested started progressing. Moral of the story: Pray always and do your very best, and the Lord will build the very best you.
-Elder Spencer
PS. Today for our P-day we went to a zoo down here. It was super fun. They dońt have nearly as many safety features and you can reach out and feed most of the animals (at your own risk, of course). They had lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!) and Cougars!! Woooo!!! But my camera died before I could get a picture with my relatives (I bleed cougar blood). The birds were incredible, tons of super cool colors. Ím going to send a couple pics of them.
Wow, this week was crazy. Truly a week of miracles. It started off with me being ridiculously sick. I was kinda sick last week, but this week it hit hard and Monday, p-day, I spent most of the day in bed. I made myself a deal in the MTC, however, that as long as I could breathe I would work, so Tuesday morning I hit my knees and begged Heavenly Father to just give me the strength I needed during the hours where we needed to work. We got ready to go and my head, throat, back, stomach, and legs still hurt like crazy, but we pressed forward anyway. We got halfway down the street and suddenly I felt much better. We worked the whole day super hard. I think this week wéve walked more than any other week. As soon as we got close to the apartment, the weight of my cold returned and I collapsed in my bed. This happened the following four days as well. I was sick enough that I could very reasonably stayed home most of the week, but the Lord lifted me up and carried me as I put forth my best effort. I am 100% sure that I could not have worked without the divine help I received and this experience was another addition to my testimony that our Heavenly Father really does listen to each and every prayer we say and is ready and waiting to pour out his tender mercies upon us if we will just ask. The results of this were also phenomenal. Instead of wasting the week in the apartment, we completed and then some on all of the mission goals. We found several golden investigators and our investigators who had previously been uninterested started progressing. Moral of the story: Pray always and do your very best, and the Lord will build the very best you.
-Elder Spencer
PS. Today for our P-day we went to a zoo down here. It was super fun. They dońt have nearly as many safety features and you can reach out and feed most of the animals (at your own risk, of course). They had lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!) and Cougars!! Woooo!!! But my camera died before I could get a picture with my relatives (I bleed cougar blood). The birds were incredible, tons of super cool colors. Ím going to send a couple pics of them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
