Monday, March 19, 2012

Preparando muchos bautismos que vienen rĂ¡pidamente...

¡Yola!
How is everyone doing???
This week was a really good week for us. We are still coming up with better ways to reach our goals every week and this week was a success! We had a baptism in the ward, but it counts for the other Elders that were working with her before we got here. It is a complicated situation, but it counts as their baptism because they were too stubborn to give her up when we came and they moved to the area next to us. Ha ha. Oh well. We were able to go and have a really good spiritual experience. Our goal for our ward is to have a baptismal service every Saturday this month(we are well on track), all we have to do is baptize these next two saturdays that remain.

We have many good investigators at the time(I say this about every week, but we just don´t have the baptisms to show it...yet. But we are expecting to get a bunch of people in the waters of baptism within this transfer!!! We just need to get them to church. 99.9% of Argentines do not have a set schedule and it is impossible to fully commit someone to come to church or just about anything else. One of the biggest obstacles that we have to work with is to help people keep commitments(with truly means helping them repent and come to Christ). To any and all of you that are the praying type, you should definitely keep the people that the missionaries are teaching in the world in your prayers.

Before I forget, and before you send off my package, I have one more request...ha. Seems like I think of something new every week. If would be heavenly if you could send me a bunch of garlic butters from little caesars. I just remembered how much I liked those and how they would go really good with pizza here and various other dishes. Do you have Elder Mahoney´s address in Ukraine yet? I have a letter ready to send him.

My comanion and I get along pretty well. We have our differences, like every companionship is going to have, but we have become really good friends and respect each other as missionaries, which is the most important thing. We have been working really hard together and we are seeing the blessings of it. He is a really good example to me because I still have a ton to learn out here.

¡Good job pops on your race! That sounds like a pretty scary encounter on the freeway. Be careful out there. My prayers can only go so far for you guys. But it sounds like Heavenly Father is still watching over you pretty well.

Yay! The lexus has finally reached our family! Lexi is very lucky because I bet you bought it pretty cheap compared to the other lexus´s that you find online. What else did she get for her birthday? It is another Elders birthday today, so I bet we are going to be doing something pretty fun.

Last week we were able to go the buffet Las Tinajas! It was SUPER good and we all ate waaaaay too much. At Las Tinajas, if it is your birthday, you get free food. We are not going to go again though...ha. I had a fun little experience after we ate because I did not play the cards right and ended my fast with a buffet. I wasn´t able to go out and proselyte that Monday night...

Elder Hudgens sent me his flash drive with a bunch of pictures that I wasn´t able to get on my camera when I was in Colonia Bombal, so I attached a few for your enjoyment.

For a bit of a mini-spiritual thought, I want to share a tadbit of what our stud bishop has shared with us. First to give you a little background, my bishop is 29 and I am pretty sure one of the best missionaries of this dispensation...maybe. He told us about two transfers of his mission(12 weeks) that he just about changed everything about the way he looked at and performed missionary work. He read a talk(I can´t remember exactly what it was called but to translate it to english, it would be "serving with all your heart, might, mind, and strength") that explains the true, deeper meaning of D&C 4. This talk explains how to be a missionary that puts all into the work for the Lord and how to fully set yourself apart as a missionary to really see the miracles that the Lord has prepared. For missionaries, this concept can change everything about the success that you have if you live what this talk speaks about. My bishop said that he was able to baptize 25 people in those two transfers.

Love Elder Larisch,

La Iglesia es verdadera
All these pictures are from his first area with Elder Hudgens