Monday, January 2, 2012

Felices Año Nuevo!!!!!! (Happy New Year!)

This week was aight. The thing is that during the happy holidays or felices fiestas it is super hard to do missionary work. Our numbers were not very good at all and we finished the week kinda feeling like we were just lazy missionaries. Don´t get me wrong, this past week was awesome; getting to talk to the fam, going to the big mission christmas party, celebrating my comps birthday on Thursday, and so forth. So we are actually looking forward to the coming weeks to just work our butts off. Having success with your investigators and members of the ward is really the ways that missionaries receive true happiness. P-days, fiestas, and other fun parts of the mission don´t compare to the happiness of when you can bring the spirit into someones life that has been waiting for those feelings for a long time. I will be working for more of those experiences while I still have my time here in this area. The 29th is the last day of this transfer and I may or may not be leaving Colonia Bombal. Vamos a ver.


The mission Christmas party was pretty fun. I played a lot of ping pong(pride = I still have yet to lose here in Argentina) and we had a big lunch, but it was some weird food and wasn´t really the best thing that I have ever tasted. The ice cream bar after was quite ravishing though. That is one of the things that I enjoy the most here...Helado! They have some really good flavors and they sell it everywhere, although the prefered place to go is called Grido. Anyways, after the meal we had a little white elephant party where I got a cool argentine wallet(because that is what É Hudgens needed...so it was his birthday present). Then we received our packages and letters. This is where everyone received their Christmas. I had already received mine because I brought it with me. The letters were really good though. I got a few from grandma and grandpa(one from thanksgiving), one from omi and opi, a few from the fam, courtney dumont, jen henderson, elder wright(he is home right now but is expected to be back on the mission el más pronto es posible), and a couple more but I cannot remember who from. Forgive me if it was from you...

The next day we celebrated Elder Hugden´s birthday by wearing our way through many hours of weekly planning and finishing the night off with the Fajardo fam(a family that invites us over all the time and just loves the Elders...recent converts). They always make the Elders big tortas(cakes) though when it is their cumpleaños. That was a good fun night.

I´ll just throw this in here. We were able to do divisions this week. I went with Elder Gonzales, the zone leader and latino. So I guess if you do the math that makes it 24 hours speaking nada but spanish. It actually turned out a lot better than I had imagined. We talked a lot and did lot´s of good work in his area. He called president ávila that night for some zone leader stuff and at the end he told the president how much he thinks I would be a good asistant. That is kind of a big thing to be talking about when I have only been here for like a month and a half. Ha ha.

The new years party. It consisted of a good asado(grill/steak) and lots and lots of food. It was very replenishing, so much to make a man tired. But still brindamos(we toasted) to the new year and went out and enjoyed some fireworks. It wasn´t the most exciting new year´s I have ever experienced because the family is a little more on the just sit back and talk instead of play games and be fun...ha. But my comp and I still had to try and have some fun. So we did.

This week we were thinking about how much Castellano has stolen from English. We made a little list of words that they use here that was a bit funny to us. Most of these are just funny to try and hear them say with their accent. Ha.Blue Jeans(self explanatory)

Blue Ray(yep)
Facebook(sometimes they just say face)
Baby shower
Internet
Hackear(just a verb that means "to hack")

Mini Spiritual Thought: I was studying Lehi´s dream a bit this week because I think it would be a good tool in teaching members about Enduring to the End(perseverar hasta el fin). The symbolism in his dream is a perfect way of seeing what we are supposed to be doing now as members of the church to achieve complete happiness in the end. Our goal is to get to the tree of life(the love of God otherwise known as Jesus Christ). How do we find our way to the tree though? The iron rod(the word of God other wise known as the scripures, other church materials, teaching of the profetas, etc. Those mists of darkness(temptations of Satanás) are always going to be there, no way to avoid those. But if you hold fast to the rod and not just be one that clings, you will get to the tree and meet your goal. I could keep on talking about this for another few pages or so because I love it so much, but I will leave that to you.

Thanks once again for all of the prayers and support that is being sent to me as well as all of the other missionaries. Prayer plays a big part in the work moving forward.

Mandando mi amor hacia ustedes,(sending my love toward you all)

Elder LARISCH
La iglesia es verdadera!!