Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Otro día en paraíso (Another day in paradise)

Hello!
Good afternoon from the blessed land of Argentina! Elder Larisch here to give the weekly update.

The weather in San Juan today is about 24 degrees Celsius and a bit too windy for my liking. Especially because I left the pench without a sweater today. What a poor decision. Well, ya learn from your mistakes. Am I right?

Reporting in week 24/9/2012 to 30/9/2012... We had a pretty good week this go-around. Many happy moments accompanied with blood, sweat, and tears, and blisters. We had various service projects this week(that is where a few of the blisters come from. I have found out that I have baby hands). Such a good feeling doing service(physical labor for needy). Even though we are not raising our numbers for the week in lessons taught or new investigators, we are able to bless the lives of others and even help strengthen their faith through our example and hard work.

We have been working a lot with Agustina, Joel, and their fam to get more people baptized. We are working with one of their referrals to a family of 10. Wow, that would be SICK if we could start working with these to families together! Let´s hope for the best because they are all over the age of 8... We are preparing the baptism for Nicolás Vega this weekend, from a recently activated less active family. It should be an awesome service this Friday. I don´t know when we are going to do the confirmation because of General Conference, but it will most likely be this week. Omar(another investigator) wasn´t able to come to church and has been working a lot lately (vending vegetables in a cart all day), so let´s hope that he can find time to meet with us and get baptized the following week. He is super awesome, and his wife even started opening up to us a lot also. That is a very brief investigator update. You´re welcome.

Well we only have one more week in this transfer. Next week you will be getting news on if I stay or if I go(now) to another place. I´m pretty sure that I will be stayin here with Elder Johnson for another transfer even though we won´t be in training anymore. He is putting on his big boy pants, and you know what that means, we won´t have to stay inside the pench until 12:00 every day doing the 12-week study program. Don´t get me wrong though, the program is a miracle and has given us lot´s of success, but I like workin in the morning. Élder Galati is going home this next week(our District Leader and other Elder in our ward), so that will also be a big change of environment. No matter what, after this transfer, a lot of stuff is going to change.

Well, I don´t know who is stoked for General Conference as much as I am. We just bought our conference ties(and a missing belt and a few pairs of socks to replace the holy ones that I have) so I would say that we are pretty ready. Take out your ballpoint pens and journals for taking notes because we are going to receive the word of God(Amos 3:7...if you will). I don´t want to jynx anything, but I am just writing this so if it really happens, I can look back at this in a few years and say that I predicted it but yeah...Mendoza temple...

We had our interviews with Presidente Ávila this week. I still can´t believe that our president is human. He goes so long without eating and sleeping that I know that he is the Lord´s servant and he is receiving an outpouring of the spirit to help all of the little missionaries that he has under his wings here in this mission. I love the interviews because they are an awesome time to ask questions(because this man knows all). Good times.

Dang, I am just going to have a lot to tell you next week I just don´t know how I am going to do it. We have a few trips to Mendoza(for the renewing of my Visa or something and for training pt. 2 from Presidente), we have a baptism, we have general conference, and we have new transfers.

Spiritual Thought:
http://www.lds.org/church/events/members-and-friends-of-the-church-invited-to-participate-in-october-2012-general-conference?lang=eng
More of a "Watch this video!" type of spiritual thought to realize what is going to go down this weekend in Salt Lake and feel the spirit of General Conference. FYI, I understood the one from Mexico and Brazil(thanks to Gma and Gpa Fletcher).

"The heavens are indeed open, the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored, the Church is founded upon the rock of revelation."

-Our beloved living prophet on the earth today, Thomas S. Monson

That is all for this week. Thanks for all the support/prayers. Till next week.
Un abrazo,
Elder Larisch
La iglesia es verdadera