Dear Family,
It was great talking to mom and co. yesterday! Updates on missionary work: José is doing great. Yesterday he went to all 3 meetings for the first time and loved it all! He got along super well with the High priests and is going to go to a barbecue with them this week. Our high priests quorum is super legit, about 10 guys (bigger than all the active priesthood combined in any of my other areas) and includes 4 ex-bishops and the current patriarch. They’re doing a great job of inviting him into the fold.
This week we had a couple of cool miracles in finding people. When we plan out the day we try to leave about an hour every day for finding new people to teach. Then we plan the exact time and place and ask the Lord to put the people that he has prepared in our way with the promise that we will talk to everyone. Well three days this week, just after talking to people for a whole hour with no success we were about to go to the next appointment, but decided just one last person. One was a lady in a park who told us how much she had been looking for peace in her life, and being closer to God. Another was a lady at a door who had recently lost her brother to a disease and wondered if she could ever see him again. The last was a girl who had been looking around at all the religions, but just wanted to find a way to unite her family. Well, we had some pretty good responses for all of them. All in all it was super cool to see the Lord’s hand guide us to these people he had prepared for us to teach.
Today for P-day we decided to check out downtown and we ended up taking a tour of the capitol bldg. It was super cool and the tour guide lady insisted in talking to us in her broken English even though there was a chileno in our group, haha. At the end we were talking and the lady (the governor’s translator) suddenly stopped and said "quick, the governor’s leaving, let’s go shake his hand" so the tour lady stopped him before he got into his car and got him to shake our hands. Pretty neat! Apparently the Argentine constitution is based a lot off of ours.
Well, that’s all folks, but I love you all tons! The church is true!!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, May 9, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
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
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
Monday, April 25, 2011
April 25, 2011
Dear Family,
We had a great week! Happy Easter to all!!
Easter here is kinda funny. So Argentina has lots of European influence (e.g. they use bidets). The Easter here is funny because they are suuuper Catholic, but they have big commercial traditions as well. For example, Easter eggs. I never really noticed much about Easter eggs in the states. Maybe the occasional chocolate bunny, or just lots of chocolate in general. Here however, they have a big custom of Easter eggs, which are big hollow chocolate eggs that have some goodies inside. The week of Easter, on almost every street corner there are people selling them, and they range in size from a grape to a football. Very entertaining. At the same time, there are big Catholic traditions surrounding Easter. One of the big ones down here is that they do lots of reenactments of the torturing and the crucifixion of Christ. Two nights this week we were sitting in the apartment at the end of the night planning for the next day when we heard what sounded like a riot outside. We looked out the window and saw a group of people acting out the scene of the Roman soldiers whipping Christ (with pretty legit costumes and everything) as a parade taking up the entire street with about 100 or so people watching them and following them. They went pretty slowly and stopped for a little bit when the got to each intersection, acted out a little more, and then a car that was following them with a big loudspeaker on top would start reading off some prayers and they continued the acting until the next intersection. I tried getting a video of it, but it was pretty dark, so I only got a few decent pictures. (There were a few egg-salesmen and a man with a popcorn cart who trailed behind too). It was nice to see them giving attention to this important time, but I felt like they just completely missed the boat, focusing on the trial and persecution after Christ had already done so much of what the Atonement is in Gethsemane, and forgetting to show the triumphant resurrected Savior.
Anyway, José is doing great and progressing well. We had lunch this week with him, and at the end of lunch after sharing the scripture we asked them the standard missionary question "Who do you know that we could share the gospel with?" José’s wife is a member since she was a kid, but is now inactive and working on reactivating. She gave us the standard member response. "Oh, elders, we know lots of people, but none of them would be interested in the gospel." José however, butted in and gave an awesome response: "Elders, we know lots of people, but we don’t know if they’re interested *yet*." What a great response! So many times we see our friends as they currently are, and how well their current self would fit in the church. We forget that people can change. That’s actually kinda the purpose, to change. And how do we know if our friends are interested unless we give them a chance? So be like José. Be great missionaries! Your friends are depending on you to bring them the gospel whether they know it or not.
I love you all tons! Happy Easter! Remember what it’s all about, then share it with someone!
-Elder Spencer
We had a great week! Happy Easter to all!!
Easter here is kinda funny. So Argentina has lots of European influence (e.g. they use bidets). The Easter here is funny because they are suuuper Catholic, but they have big commercial traditions as well. For example, Easter eggs. I never really noticed much about Easter eggs in the states. Maybe the occasional chocolate bunny, or just lots of chocolate in general. Here however, they have a big custom of Easter eggs, which are big hollow chocolate eggs that have some goodies inside. The week of Easter, on almost every street corner there are people selling them, and they range in size from a grape to a football. Very entertaining. At the same time, there are big Catholic traditions surrounding Easter. One of the big ones down here is that they do lots of reenactments of the torturing and the crucifixion of Christ. Two nights this week we were sitting in the apartment at the end of the night planning for the next day when we heard what sounded like a riot outside. We looked out the window and saw a group of people acting out the scene of the Roman soldiers whipping Christ (with pretty legit costumes and everything) as a parade taking up the entire street with about 100 or so people watching them and following them. They went pretty slowly and stopped for a little bit when the got to each intersection, acted out a little more, and then a car that was following them with a big loudspeaker on top would start reading off some prayers and they continued the acting until the next intersection. I tried getting a video of it, but it was pretty dark, so I only got a few decent pictures. (There were a few egg-salesmen and a man with a popcorn cart who trailed behind too). It was nice to see them giving attention to this important time, but I felt like they just completely missed the boat, focusing on the trial and persecution after Christ had already done so much of what the Atonement is in Gethsemane, and forgetting to show the triumphant resurrected Savior.
Anyway, José is doing great and progressing well. We had lunch this week with him, and at the end of lunch after sharing the scripture we asked them the standard missionary question "Who do you know that we could share the gospel with?" José’s wife is a member since she was a kid, but is now inactive and working on reactivating. She gave us the standard member response. "Oh, elders, we know lots of people, but none of them would be interested in the gospel." José however, butted in and gave an awesome response: "Elders, we know lots of people, but we don’t know if they’re interested *yet*." What a great response! So many times we see our friends as they currently are, and how well their current self would fit in the church. We forget that people can change. That’s actually kinda the purpose, to change. And how do we know if our friends are interested unless we give them a chance? So be like José. Be great missionaries! Your friends are depending on you to bring them the gospel whether they know it or not.
I love you all tons! Happy Easter! Remember what it’s all about, then share it with someone!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, April 18, 2011
April 18, 2011
Dear Family,
This week we had some great things happen. Our best investigator, José, told us on Tuesday that he wanted to get baptized, and he felt like he had repented in his head, but not in his heart. He told us that he struggled a lot with prayer and having sincere prayers. (He said that every time he started to pray Messi popped into his head to score some epic goal, haha.) We had a really great lesson about prayer, read about Enos, and then helped him work out his problems with it giving suggestions, like thinking out what he was going to say before praying, or whispering silently the words rather than just thinking them. We then committed him to pray. Our next lesson with him, at the end of the week, he said that the week had been super difficult at work, but that he was able to find so much peace and strength through prayer, something which had been so difficult for him earlier. He had also never come to church before, and before, it was like pulling teeth to get him to commit to coming. That appointment, however, he told us how excited he was to come to church this week! We also had planned to reset his baptismal date that lesson because it had fallen, and when we were getting to the end of the lesson, he brought up the subject of his baptism himself and told us the day he wanted to get baptized. There you have it, prayer can change the night to day!!
In other news, our other investigators aren’t doing so hot. Fernando had lots of problems with a house he has in another providence, so he is traveling a lot and doesn’t have time. And the others have kinda fizzled out a little which gives us lots of time to... ...look for new ones!! We actually found some really cool new investigators this week who were super super receptive and we have lots of appointments for the coming week with them, so hopefully that will turn out well. In the mean time, we’ve also been working a lot with inactives and part-member families, and we’re starting to see some progress there too. The work progresses, brick by brick.
Anyway, love you all tons. The church is true! Tell everyone you know!
-Elder Spencer
This week we had some great things happen. Our best investigator, José, told us on Tuesday that he wanted to get baptized, and he felt like he had repented in his head, but not in his heart. He told us that he struggled a lot with prayer and having sincere prayers. (He said that every time he started to pray Messi popped into his head to score some epic goal, haha.) We had a really great lesson about prayer, read about Enos, and then helped him work out his problems with it giving suggestions, like thinking out what he was going to say before praying, or whispering silently the words rather than just thinking them. We then committed him to pray. Our next lesson with him, at the end of the week, he said that the week had been super difficult at work, but that he was able to find so much peace and strength through prayer, something which had been so difficult for him earlier. He had also never come to church before, and before, it was like pulling teeth to get him to commit to coming. That appointment, however, he told us how excited he was to come to church this week! We also had planned to reset his baptismal date that lesson because it had fallen, and when we were getting to the end of the lesson, he brought up the subject of his baptism himself and told us the day he wanted to get baptized. There you have it, prayer can change the night to day!!
In other news, our other investigators aren’t doing so hot. Fernando had lots of problems with a house he has in another providence, so he is traveling a lot and doesn’t have time. And the others have kinda fizzled out a little which gives us lots of time to... ...look for new ones!! We actually found some really cool new investigators this week who were super super receptive and we have lots of appointments for the coming week with them, so hopefully that will turn out well. In the mean time, we’ve also been working a lot with inactives and part-member families, and we’re starting to see some progress there too. The work progresses, brick by brick.
Anyway, love you all tons. The church is true! Tell everyone you know!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, April 11, 2011
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
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
Monday, April 4, 2011
April 4, 2011
Dear Family,
An awesome week! It started off with this wonderful investigator we have. His name is Fernando and he is an older man. Last week we were looking for an address and asked him for directions. We got to talking and he told us that he had always seen us walking around and had been curious about what we do. We asked him if he had a minute to talk and he did and invited us into his house. He is super sincere, just trying to become closer to God and open to really anything. We taught him a little about how God calls prophets to guide us and how he established his church during Christ's ministry. We left him a pamphlet to read and came back this week. When we got there he told us that he didn't have very good memory, but read the pamphlet every single day and had lots of questions. His biggest question was: Where can I get a copy of the Book of Mormon and how much is it? He was in luck because we just happened to have a few copies of that book lying around so we could give him one. He was super excited to get it and we're getting together on Tuesday so hopefully it goes well.
The thing that struck me most about that experience was that it was just some random guy whom we asked for directions. He asked us why we were so different from the normal young people and we responded with a simple invitation. How many people do we know like Fernando? People who would accept the gospel, but are held back by shyness (ours or theirs). In conference, I think President Uchtdorf said something like: "We should preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words." Be wonderful examples of the gospel and when people ask why you are so different, respond with a simple invitation to come to church, or learn more.
I hope you loved conference!! It was wonderful! How about another temple for Colorado?! And for those of you who saw priesthood session, go BYU Basketball!! =)
I love you all! The church is so true!!
-Elder Spencer
An awesome week! It started off with this wonderful investigator we have. His name is Fernando and he is an older man. Last week we were looking for an address and asked him for directions. We got to talking and he told us that he had always seen us walking around and had been curious about what we do. We asked him if he had a minute to talk and he did and invited us into his house. He is super sincere, just trying to become closer to God and open to really anything. We taught him a little about how God calls prophets to guide us and how he established his church during Christ's ministry. We left him a pamphlet to read and came back this week. When we got there he told us that he didn't have very good memory, but read the pamphlet every single day and had lots of questions. His biggest question was: Where can I get a copy of the Book of Mormon and how much is it? He was in luck because we just happened to have a few copies of that book lying around so we could give him one. He was super excited to get it and we're getting together on Tuesday so hopefully it goes well.
The thing that struck me most about that experience was that it was just some random guy whom we asked for directions. He asked us why we were so different from the normal young people and we responded with a simple invitation. How many people do we know like Fernando? People who would accept the gospel, but are held back by shyness (ours or theirs). In conference, I think President Uchtdorf said something like: "We should preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words." Be wonderful examples of the gospel and when people ask why you are so different, respond with a simple invitation to come to church, or learn more.
I hope you loved conference!! It was wonderful! How about another temple for Colorado?! And for those of you who saw priesthood session, go BYU Basketball!! =)
I love you all! The church is so true!!
-Elder Spencer
Monday, March 28, 2011
March 28, 2011
Dear Family,
Well this week was downright awesome. First, a clarification, Tucuman is a pretty big city, and it has zones, so I am now in the other zone on the opposite side of the city. Anyway, I love my new ward, it is called Villa Alem, and it is wonderful. It is the biggest ward in the mission with 4 missionaries and roughly 160 active members. It used to be much bigger, and they’ve already divided another ward and a branch off of it because it is just solid. It’ll probably form the next stake here in Tucuman.
Anyway, my new companion is seriously awesome. He is super new, on his second transfer, but is not afraid to talk, and his Spanish is improving super quickly. He’s also a super genius and knows tons about the gospel and we get along fantastic. This week we taught several lessons where the spirit was just so strong that I couldn’t help just walking around with a big grin on my face the whole rest of the day.
One of our lessons was with a recent convert who relapsed to her smoking addiction and is having a hard time quitting. We read Alma 43:45-50 and talked about how even when our opposition is strong and we want to give up, we just need a little inspiration. It can come from church leaders or scriptures, or thinking about loved ones, then, if we pray with all our might we can overcome the difficulty. With her, we had her write down a list of reasons why she wanted to quit, an inspiration list. It included her health, being free, her children and setting an example for them, and being able to feel the spirit. We then challenged her to read that and pray every time she felt like smoking. So far she’s been doing good. I’ll let you know how it goes.
This weekend we have General Conference. Can you imagine? We have the opportunity to listen to the prophet of God. What an incredible opportunity!!! Don’t miss one minute!
The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
Well this week was downright awesome. First, a clarification, Tucuman is a pretty big city, and it has zones, so I am now in the other zone on the opposite side of the city. Anyway, I love my new ward, it is called Villa Alem, and it is wonderful. It is the biggest ward in the mission with 4 missionaries and roughly 160 active members. It used to be much bigger, and they’ve already divided another ward and a branch off of it because it is just solid. It’ll probably form the next stake here in Tucuman.
Anyway, my new companion is seriously awesome. He is super new, on his second transfer, but is not afraid to talk, and his Spanish is improving super quickly. He’s also a super genius and knows tons about the gospel and we get along fantastic. This week we taught several lessons where the spirit was just so strong that I couldn’t help just walking around with a big grin on my face the whole rest of the day.
One of our lessons was with a recent convert who relapsed to her smoking addiction and is having a hard time quitting. We read Alma 43:45-50 and talked about how even when our opposition is strong and we want to give up, we just need a little inspiration. It can come from church leaders or scriptures, or thinking about loved ones, then, if we pray with all our might we can overcome the difficulty. With her, we had her write down a list of reasons why she wanted to quit, an inspiration list. It included her health, being free, her children and setting an example for them, and being able to feel the spirit. We then challenged her to read that and pray every time she felt like smoking. So far she’s been doing good. I’ll let you know how it goes.
This weekend we have General Conference. Can you imagine? We have the opportunity to listen to the prophet of God. What an incredible opportunity!!! Don’t miss one minute!
The church is true!
-Elder Spencer
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