November 22, 2010

Dear Family,

Another incredible week. It started out pretty interesting when we got home with my comp and it turned out that there was no power. My poor comp had all his stuff packed up and when we got back after teaching that night there was no light to unpack. Our neighbor gave us some candles and we spent that night in the dark. The next day, my birthday, there was still no light. I was planning on making some birthday pancakes, but with no power, I ended up taking advantage of the breakfast time to defrost the freezer. We worked that day, the member where we had lunch surprised me with a cake, which was super nice of them, and when we got home there was still no power. However, ten minutes after we walked in the door, they turned it back on and I was able to blow out the candles!

After that the week went great. We had lots of awesome appointments and we are going to have a baptism in 2 weeks, so we are pretty pumped about that. Every day I am more thoroughly convinced that the success of missionaries is 100% blessings. We can work the whole day with investigators who are nowhere near progressing and use our very best knowledge of the scriptures and we will not succeed. In the end, though, all the people who progress and are baptized are people that we have to exert almost no effort in teaching because they accept everything and understand everything amazingly fast. The Lord has tons of people out there who are ready to receive his gospel, but they just don't know where to find it. It’s been such a blessing being led to find some of them.

This Sunday we were running a little late for church and walked in during the opening hymn of priesthood meeting to find nobody other than the area president Elder Arnold sitting in the room. I immediately felt completely embarrassed and decided from that day on I would never ever be late for church, because you never know when a General Authority will show up to your ward. He is a super great guy and taught us a lot. We also had the Primary program this Sunday, so all in all, despite the embarrassment, it was an awesome Sunday. Today I decided to give myself another shot at cutting hair and it actually turned out really good! (Except I think it’s a little short in the back; oh well, the difference between a good haircut and a bad one is 1 week, so I’ll live.) My new comp and I are doing great and I'm loving it here in Salta. It’s hot, but beautiful.

Anyway, got to go. Love you all tons! Send me pictures! I want to see your bright smiling faces!

-Elder Spencer


Salta the Beautiful



Saying goodbye to Elder Miranda in the bus station



New haircut, done by yours truly!

November 15, 2010

Dear Family,

Another great week. Sad news was that today was transfers and I had to send off Elder Miranda. Every time transfers happens it’s like I lose a brother. The good thing is that I get a new one to get to know for at least a month or so, so it ends up working out fine. My new companion is an Elder from Buenos Aires (the Capital of Argentina) who totally looks like an American. His name is Elder Garay and I just met him about 3 hours ago. He seems very nice and I’m looking forward to getting to know him well.

Other good happenings of the week: Right now we are teaching a man who just kinda showed up to church with one of the member families. He’s so great. He asked for a D&C and a Gospel Principles manual and he studies a ton between appointments and is super receptive. Talk about prepared! We can only teach him once a week because of how his work schedule is, but we always teach him in the house of the member family and they even help him study in between appointments. He will definitely be baptized soon! Fun fact: 66% of investigators taught in the home of members are baptized. That is a golden statistic, when you figure that only about 1% of the people that let us in their doors the first visit get baptized. Moral of the story: Invite over a friend the next time you have the missionaries over for dinner, because there is a 66% chance they will get baptized.

Anyway, that’s about it for this week. Things are going well. Today we went to an all you can eat restaurant to celebrate the big 20. I honestly wouldn’t have my birthday any other way than right here in the Lord’s field havin’ a blast working. Love you all tons!

November 8, 2010

Dear family,

Another awesome week. Things are continually improving out here on the edge of the civilized world. The downside to being on the very, very, very edge of the city is that the roads are 98% unpaved. Normally, that is not a problem, but apparently there exists for a few weeks every year in Salta (which lies in a valley surrounded by mountains) a time of windstorms, and if your roads aren’t paved, dust storms. I swallowed so much dirt that every time I ate anything it had the delicious aftertaste of dirt. Dońt worry, after lots of water, mouthwash, and teeth brushing, it’s gone away, but I learned an important lesson: God made dirt, dirt don’t hurt, however, it don’t taste good either, so keep your mouth shut if you are in a dust storm.

More cool news. My investigator Alejandra from my last area and her daughter got baptized this week! The dad who was inactive for about 30 years is also coming to church now and they are enjoying the blessings of the Gospel as a family! Yay! Next stop, the temple!!

Speaking of which, we had a really cool conference with a Seventy (Elder Ayllou, I think) who came here for a stake conference and gave the missionaries a special meeting. He spent most of the time answering questions that we had and then at the end he told us that Salta is going to have a temple. They have not picked the ground or anything yet, but in some future time, when the stakes are strong enough, Salta will have a temple. He told us that a temple is not built with money or materials, but with faith. We need to faithfully strengthen the stakes, wards, and members, and one day we will be able to come back and see the dedication of the Salta, Argentina temple. It was soooooo cool and the spirit was so strong. I can’t wait for the day when I can come back and see the Salta temple dedication. What a cool promise from a servant of the Lord, but like all promises from the lord, it is according to our faith that it happens. (Moroni 7:33) So, lesson learned, let us be in the business of temple building, by faithfully strengthening our wards to the point where the Lord can build one.

Love you all tons!!

-Elder Spencer

November 1, 2010

Dear Family,

This week was great. I’m starting to notice a pattern. Every week is great, haha! Happiness does not depend on circumstances, it depends on our obedience. If you are obedient to God’s commandments, you can have come what may, and love it. :)

This week was hot. really hot. really really hot. (95 degrees and it’s only the beginning of spring.) There is a hill right next to our area, about the size and distance away as Y Mount from BYU. This Friday, it caught on fire all by itself and burned half the mountain. Hot hot hot. Fortunately, we had lots of appointments the hot part of the week, so we spent more time in than out. Even so, I am now nice and bronze, except for my nose, which is cherry red unless I use sunscreen. I started using sunscreen.

Also fun, this week we had a Mother’s Day dinner (they celebrate it in October down here) for the moms of the ward and the master chef of the chickens was yours truly. It was so fun! We charcoal grilled 20 whole chickens and they turned out soooo yummy! The best news is, only 12 moms came to the dinner, hahaha, so we got to take 2 chickens home! This week was also great because we finally found some more people who would actually let us in their house and teach them, after a nice long dry spell of that the last few weeks. We are happy campers and hopefully this Sunday we’ll have a few families in church.

The best news of the week for me happened when my old comp called me to update me on some exciting things in my old area. First of all, remember my baptism Veronica Zamorano? We baptized her, then two of her kids, and we were teaching her two older daughters before I left and the baptism of one of them is scheduled for next week. Well here’s the news. Her "husband" (they were never married) had always been pretty against us. He was never rude to our faces, but he did not want for her to get baptized because he belongs to a rock and roll evangelist church. She kicked him out of the house because he was turning the kids against her and the church and telling them they could do bad things. Anyway, fast forward a few months and now all the family but him has been attending regularly for 2 months. They improved so much as a family and it was so incredible to see the change. Anyway, Alberto, the husband, was walking by the church one day, and stopped and looked at it and started crying because he had been seeing all the blessings his family was enjoying and he was missing out on his family and the blessings. He is now listening to the missionaries, and he came to church this Sunday for the first time. He is making lots of changes, including dropping alcohol and lots of other vices, and he wants to be baptized. I am so happy to see this family come together. That’s what the gospel is for, families. They can go from the most destroyed, separated wrecks (as they were), to complete happiness by living gospel principles, and one day they will be able to enjoy this happiness that they have worked so hard to build, by changing their lives and accepting the gospel, for eternity as they go to the temple and are sealed.

The church is true! Salvation and true Happiness aren’t easy to reach, but they are sure worth every brick we lay to reach them (D&C 64:33-34). I love you all!

-Elder Spencer

October 25, 2010

Dear Family,

This week was great! It was one of those ones that shows you what you’re really made of. We had it planned to be a super effective week and we had members scheduled to go out with us every day. Unfortunately, nearly all of our appointments fell through. Almost every single new investigator we had did not show up for the second appointment and we ended up walking a lot, passing by every investigator we have to at least teach someone. What made it great was that despite all the difficulties we had, we were still able to teach several people and the people that we are teaching really are progressing. They are reading the Book of Mormon on their own and keeping their commitments and in those lessons we did have, the spirit was felt. Despite the hard times, we were really blessed.

The family I told you about are definitely progressing. This week we had a lesson with them and the bishop and his wife, who live across the street. It was a super great lesson. They have been having problems with family unity and the dad recently came back to the family after years of being separated. Because of this, the kids don’t really listen to him that much. We taught them about how fatherly leadership should not be one of forcing and shouting, rather leading by example, service, invitation, and love. I told them how my own dad never forced us to go to church, just woke us up with a glass of cold water if we slept in and made pancakes to serve us. A great example of the leadership prescribed in D and C 121. They really liked the lesson and still haven’t come up with a wedding date, I think partly because of the family unity problem, but are progressing well and doing prayers every night as a couple and then as a family and also FHE. This Thursday we have another appointment with them so hopefully by then we can get things rolling some more.

This week I finished the Book of Mormon again. It is the word of God and physical evidence of the veracity of the church and truthfulness of the restoration. Read it. Cherish it. Those pages contain the power to change lives, increase faith, and invite the spirit more than perhaps any other thing I can do as a missionary.

Anyway, got to go now. I love you all! Choose righteously! It takes courage, but it’s worth it. Elder Scott said in his conference talk that happiness in this life comes from making many right decisions, none of which is hard to make. No matter how difficult your circumstance, you can always find happiness, peace, and safety for the soul by choosing the right.

-Elder Spencer

PS, this week we got to our house one day to find our gate blocked by a cow eating the bushes in front of the sidewalk. We ate well that night... haha, just kidding. (There really was a cow though!)

October 18, 2010

Dear Family,

Another great week in the green hills of Salta Argentina. Well, it’s actually more like dusty roads, and brown hills right now, but, they say that in the next couple months all the hills turn completely green, so I’m pretty pumped.

This week we’ve been keeping up a lot of what we were doing last week. We don’t really have any good investigators who are progressing so we’ve just been knocking doors pretty much all day every day. Bad news, it’s pretty hot. Good news, I have a very enviable tan, and we are starting to find lots of really good people willing to listen to us. This week we have been working with a part member family where the whole family are members except for the dad, and they aren’t married. Missionaries have been trying for a while to convince them to get married so the Dad can get baptized, but the problem is that the mom and kids don’t have a very good relationship with him. We tried taking a different approach and have been teaching them about charity and the importance of FHE, family prayer every night and scripture study to form family unity and now they are starting to show lots of progress. They told me the family is changing tons and they are starting to feel a spirit they never had felt in the house before. We were pumped. This week we are going to have them make a goal for when they can get married, now that they are starting to feel ready. I’ll let you know how it goes :)

Other than that, pretty normal week. We had a stake conference this week with super good talks. One of the speakers dropped cane on all the youth (and adults) by saying that the same person who tells you he can’t memorize scripture mastery could probably recite to you in a heartbeat the latest pop songs lyrics. Haha. It’s funny because it’s true.

Read the scriptures. They are important. They aren’t a novel, they are an exercise program. You need to do what they say in order to get any results. Love you all, the church is true!!

-Elder Spencer

October 11, 2010

Dear Fam,

Not much time this week, but it sufficeth to say, great week. My new area is right outside of Salta capital, at the very very end of the city. The roads are pure dirt. Translation, the soles of my shoes are completely worn out. I’m having them replaced tomorrow for a whopping 15 dollars, haha, gotta love cheap labor and such down here. Luckily another elder left another pair in the apartment which, while uncomfortable, will work until mine get fixed.

The area where I am is jam packed with people and it’s pretty poor, but the people are super nice and receptive. There weren’t many (...any) investigators progressing when I got here, so this week we busted our bottoms to find a ton of people. We did, but unfortunately none of them came to church, so this week we are going to keep teaching them and find tons more until we can find someone who will progress.

This p-day was awesome. It was a holiday (one of the very, very many) so we went with the ward to a little town that’s about 30 minutes away from the city that is super cool and has awesome mountains and a lake. Super awesome views. Salta is really pretty. There are mountains everywhere and I love it here. About as hot as San Diego. Anyway, because we went there, we don’t have much time to write. So, love you all tons, church is true, and I’ll let you how things are next week if things get a little more exciting.

Love,
-Elder Spencer



Dog bite. It got a little bit bigger and puffier than this later on. (buff leg, eh?)





Saying goodbye to our awesome investigator Alejandra