Week 86 - June 15, 2015

This week was COLD. Its 5°C right now and we are always walking around in it. 

This last pday we went to BRAZIL! We ate lunch there with a member and then we went to visit another family afterwards. I was amazed because I can understand a lot! I cant speak fluidly at all but they can understand me! I just need to practice more! The Brazilians are awesome though. I loved the couple hours we spent there! 

This week we gave two investigators a baptismal date!!!!! Valentina who is a daughter of a recent convert will be baptized at the beginning of July. Eliana is a 19 year old girl who will be baptized at the end of July! We are stoked about them and their progression! 

I did divisions this week in the 4th ward with Elder Eiker from California. I loved the divisions. We had some incredible lessons honestly! We made pancakes for breakfast and this spicy bean and rice thing for dinner. We ate well!!! 

One day this week we had a lunch that was in an area called Tamandua, which is 45 minutes away on a BIKE. It was a long way away. It was a beautiful ride though. We took the highway on the way there and we flew down for a while. On the way back we took a trail and had to cross a creek. It was super fun! I love adventures like that. 

This week the Copa America started. The work is hard when there are big games on. Its cool though because fireworks are going off a lot! 

Our area is awesome. I really like it even though its GIANT. Its super fun and we are always finding people. The people here are so nice here and we have a lot of members that love us! Thats probably the best thing about being ZL- having a AWESOME companion. 

Week 85 - June 8, 2015

20 MONTHS!!

This week flew by. We had a zone pday together, a zone capacitation and interviews with President Smith, which we had to prepare a lot for! I love being able to teach all of the missionaries in the zone! Its really super fun! We studied a lot of the Gathering of Israel, which I am absolutely loving now. We teach it as a lesson to members so they will help us more with the work! Interviews lasted all day. We got to the stake center at 8:15 in the morning and we left at 7:30 in the afternoon. They were great though. I love President Smith. I just wish I could spend more time around him to learn more! My interview went great though. Once again very short but so great. I just asked President how I could help others more. Seriously like every word he said in the interview was just to build me up. He is an incredible man.

We are killing it in our area. We have a lot of investigators now. We are finding people like crazy but sadly most of the couples need to get married, which takes time. There is a couple getting married on the 18th but they arent super excited anymore about getting baptized. We can hardly ever meet them in their house. 

There is a family that I LOVE! Hugo and Estefani are their names. They have two super cute kids too. They are very humble but also very generous too. They always give us something to eat when we go to their house. 

The Bueno family has two kids from Utah staying with them. They got here last week and will stay here for 3 months. Their father is from Mexico and their mom is from Peru. They speak pretty good spanish but they are learning a lot too! The boy Joshua is going to be 17 this month and is entering his senior year. His sister Jessica is 15 and going to be a sophomore. They have both gone to school here and had some interesting experiences with the kids there. They are super fun to talk to though! We worked with Joshua one day this week and he loved it! 

We talked with the stake president and thought of a stake activity that we are going to start this week. Its so the members will read the BOM more! For 15 weeks we will be reading 15 stories from the BOM. This week we will be studying 1 Nephi 4 for example. Halfway and at the end we will have a stake activity in which every ward will perform a story from the BOM in like a skit. Everyone here loves the idea and we will see how it goes! 

This week all of the elders in our house made a pretty crazy compromise so that we will be smarter when we get back and so that we can be the best fathers and husbands possible! I meant to bring it to tell you guys what I wrote but I forgot it... :) 

Artigas is awesome. I love it here! 

Week 84 - June 1, 2015

This week was crazy and awesome! 

Last Monday we made tacos and it was AWESOME! They came out way better than the last time! 

Monday night we left at midnight to Montevideo. We had an 8 and a half hour bus ride and then we went to the leadership counsel. We were there for the whole day and we left at 6:00pm to head back to Artigas on a 9 hour bus ride. It was a LONG day. The meeting was SWEET though. Especially because Artigas is doing the best out of all the zones in the mission!!!!!!! We got to stand up and explain what we are doing in Artigas and what we plan to do to make it even better! It was super fun! I got to see some great buddies too! 

Saturday was incredible. We call it "game day" and its when we just visit investigators and find new people to invite them to church. We found 5 new people just on Saturday. It was incredible. We worked with 3 different members that day. It was awesome! 

We have a couple people that we are working with that are awesome. 

Hugo y Estefani are a young couple that are both awesome. They have two young kids who are the cutest things ever! I love them. They are going to church and they are planning to get married to be able to get baptized. They LOVE the gospel so muich though and its incredible! Thats what converts should be like! I love visiting them because they testify almost as much as us! Its incredible. 

We had a sick lesson last night with the Fukol Family. They are less actives but we just had like a scripture study with them. Nothing was super special about what we said but we just had the full help of the holy ghost which made for an incredible lesson! 

I bought a new Book of Mormon hard back copy just to mark where it talks about the Doctrine of Christ and the Gathering of the house of Israel. I am LOVING it so far and I am just in 1 Nephi 15! 

This week we have interviews with President Smith. We have to have a capacitation the whole day basically so we are planning already to be teaching ALL DAY! I am excited though. Its fun to teach a bunch of people! 

I love the gospel so much. I love the Book of Mormon so much and I know its true. I am so grateful to be a missionary and sometimes I dont even want to go home! I love it here. Thankfully we can ALWAYS be missionaries and always be able to help people know the truth that we know! 

Week 83 - May 25, 2015

Wow Artigas is awesome! I am really loving it so far! This is such a cool place and its amazing to be with an incredible missionary as my companion! That probably the highlight of being ZL, having a studly comp. We have been running around a lot, especially during changes. We had people get to the zone at 9am, 2pm, 2pm, and 2am the next day. We had to walk to centro, which is a long way away to greet the new missionaries in our zone! Plus we have the mission council tomorrow with all the ZLs and Sister Training leaders tomorrow and we had to do a bunch of graphs for that! I dont miss that part of the offices! 

Artigas is an amazing zone. We have some great missionaries and a ridiculously awesome group of leaders that support us. I think the main key to the great missionaries is that we have 6 companionships of Sisters and 5 companionships of Elders. 

In our zone we have 3 DLs. All three of them are new. We had a meeting with them on Thursday just to help them feel more comfortable about their meetings on Friday. The district meetings on Friday were fun. I went to our district meeting for the first half and it was really good. The DL taught a lot about the direction of the mission. Then I spent the other half in the Quaraí district meeting. Its the district with the missionaries serving in Brazil. The meeting was in Portuguese. It was super awesome because I literally could understand them! I have been practicing more and I can speak better but I can understand a lot now! Its super cool! 

My second day here we were working with our ward mission leader. We found Rodrigo, who is a 21 year old kid. We had an incredible lesson with him and we gave him a baptismal date during that first lesson. He is a stud and we are excited to work with him! He went to travel this weekend though so he didnt come to church. 

Elder Amaral and I have been thinking about things that we want to do this change so that it will be incredible. We want to do this: FLOOD the earth with the Book of Mormon. We have been studying and praying a lot about this. We have come up with the idea to have a stake study from the Book of Mormon. We went to President Bueno´s house (which btw is probably the most incredible family ever.) Presidente Bueno is our stake president. He is in our ward which makes things super easy for us. We have come up with 15 stories from the book of mormon that all of the families in the stake are going to study, one story every week. Then we are going to have each ward present two skits of these stories. I dont know if I explained it well but we already talked with our stake president and bishop and they love the idea! 

The Bueno family is amazing. He is our stake president, she is our primary president, and they have 5 kids. 3 are theirs and 2 are adopted. This week they are giong to have two kids from the states come and stay with them until July I believe. The kids are 13 and 15. They are coming just to have an experience. Their parents are from Mexico and Peru and they want their kids to learn spanish and experience south america!
Every Sunday the missionaries eat with the Bueno family. They bring two big tables together. One tradition they have is that the missionaries make dessert. It was my turn yesterday. I made crepes with dulce de leche! At first they were too thick but I got the hang of it after a while! Mom I need some easy quick recipies now too for dessert! 

I am so glad to be able to be here in Artigas. I feel like I have changed so much over the last almost 20 months and I am so grateful for that change. I know that two years in ANY college (BYU, Harvard, the Air Force Academy, or the University of Oklahoma) couldnt have changed me like this. I am so grateful that I have a Heavenly Father that loves me so much. I am so grateful that he loves and trusts me enough to teach his gospel, even though I understand just a little part of it! I am so grateful for the Book of Mormon. I know it is the word of God and that if anyone reads it and lives what it teaches, they will return and live with our Heavenly Father again. The gospel is amazing and its true! 

#InundarLaTierraConElLibroDeMormón

Week 82 - May 19, 2015

CHANGE WEEK! We just got our changes on Sunday night. I am headed to Artigas as zone leader! I will be the ZL of all of the areas in Artigas and Brazil! We have a district leader in Brazil so I will be able to do divisions in Brazil too! My companion is going to be Elder Amaral, who is from Brazil. I met him when I was in the offices and he is a great missionary. He is supposed to be ending this change but he extended his mission so it will be longer! I hope I get two changes with him! We are going to be opening an area in Artigas 2nd Ward. I cant wait to serve in Artigas!

President Smith gave us our changes after stake conference on Sunday. It was really fun because the whole zone was together in the same room. Elder Abel, who is in my ward, is going to be Elder Huntsmans next comp, which they are super excited about. Elder Baggett is headed to Argentina to be Zone Leader also! We will be headed out early tomorrow morning! 

This week in our area was great. Like I mentioned last week, we had the Meet the Mormons activity. We showed the movie and there was around 50 people there, which is the best I have seen here in Salto! Seriously I have loved my time here. In two short changes Salto has become really dear to me! I love the people here and I have learned a lot! 

We had the interviews for Jakson, Gema and Candela, the three people that had a baptismal dates! I found them, taught them, got their interview, but I will miss their baptism sadly. Its cool to be a part of their conversion! 

We have spent the last two days visiting everyone and saying goodbye. I have a ton of pictures that I will send after of people that I have met here! 

The best thing about the mission is getting to grow and learn. I have been able to learn and grow a lot in my time here in Salto! I love the people, the city and the ward here! With the help from Elder Huntsman and Elder Kelly, I have really enjoyed and grown to love Salto! 

Week 81- May 11, 2015

Hey everyone! Wow this week was ridiculously good! Mainly because I got to skype my family.

This week we went to two differnent baptismal services. One where my companion baptized a girl, and another in our ward for the other elders. There were a bunch of cute little girls that got baptized and it was fun to see their reactions as they entered the chilly water! 

I did divisions with the Elders in my district this week. I went to their area and we had a great time. We gave a guy a baptismal date and it was super cool! Their house didnt have hot water and it was literally the coldest shower I have ever taken (not that I have taken very many). Still though, the water was ridiculously cold. 

We tried to set up a lot of Family Home Evenings this week with awesome members and we had 3 that were all just super fun. I really enjoyed them and my companion did too! 

We have an activity this next friday where we are going to watch the movie Meet the Mormons. We are planning a lot and its going to be awesome! 

Awesome news: I will not be leaving Uruguay until October! My parents are coming down and we are going to spend some time here together and go to all of my areas! I am super excited! 

Thanks to all of you that have supported me! I have 3 more changes left in the mission and wow is that crazy to say. I really appreciate all of your love and support. 

Quote of the week: Attitude by Charles Swindoll-
"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company ... a church ... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude ... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you ... we are in charge of our Attitudes."

Week 80 - May 4, 2015

Well hey everyone! A little bit of everything happened this week...

A couple awesome things that happened this week; 

I finished the book Jesus the Christ! Ridiculously cool book! 

The key indicators in our mission officially changed and we only count the amount of new investigators that we find while working with members every day. 

I did an interview this week for the Hermanas in my district. A cute little girl who was really smart! I am loving the zone here! We have some of the best missionaries who are working super hard!

Winter finally has come! We had a HUGE rainstorm one day. Literally the streets were like rivers. We got SOAKED even though we had waterproof boots, big jackets and umbrellas! After the giant rainstorm It got really cold! Ive been wearing a sweater since!

Skype is going to be awesome! 

This week my comp and I had a companionship inventory that really fixed a lot of things and we are doing pretty good now! 

This week I had some awesome studies. I got a talk that is called "Beginning with the end in mind" by Elder Russell M Nelson. It was a really good talk and it explains how the final goal should be the temple, not baptism! When we talk to people in the street, we should imagine them with white clothes on. But the white clothes in the temple, not the white clothes of baptism! I really loved that! 

I also was listening to Elder D Todd Christoffersons talk from this last general conference. He says one line that I LOVE! He says that many things are good, many are important, but few things are essential. I made a list of things in all three categories and its really cool to think about what the essential things are in our lives, according to our final goal. 

I did divisions with Elder Teloma, who should be famous in the history of my mission. We have been in the same zone for 11 of my 13 changes. That has to be a record. The last time we did divisions I was his DL and he was a senior comp. Now he is my ZL and I am a DL (still)... If I am DL next change I think I will break the record of longest time as DL in our mission! Elder Teloma is a stud. I really respect him a lot and I love to be able to listen to other missionaries teach. We had a crazy awesome day together in my area! 

This past Friday was basically Labors day here. No one worked. We had a crazy awesome day and we just contacted like crazy. We got denied a lot but everyone was making food so we got fed well!! 

I got to go to gospel doctrine this week with a new couple we just found this week who are new members here. The teacher was super awesome and It made me wonder how my dads gospel doctrine classes are! I cant wait to find out! 

The mission is so awesome. I can not explain how much I love being a missionary. Its so cool being able to share the gospel every single day! I am so grateful for this sacred time I have here! I am so grateful to be able to learn constantly and understand Heavenly Fathers plan for me! 

I love you all! Have a wonderful week!