changes! (8/24/10)

New Companions: Elder Thorderson and Elder Luke

Vilma's baptism

Hey fam!

insert!! hey guys this is elder polera!!!! how are you guys doing? oh noooo!! hes back. later !!!

Sorry fam... had to take a picture with my new comp to send you. So... yeah. Elder Turtleneck is in the cyber with me. He really liked mom's "have to go help emily poop a brick." We're still laughing.

Well changes today - I am headed to El Pinar in the Este Rural zone. Search for Solymar, Uruguay in Google Maps, that's my area. I'm gonna be with Elder Luke. He's from 29 Palms, CA. In the middle of the desert. He is of Samoan descent (he almost hit me when I asked if he was Tongan. haha) and his fam is living right now in Logan. So he's a pretty cool kid, I'm excited. I'm getting assigned as a DL (again, I'm SOOO happy!) and Elder Luke is saying that the Pres sent me to him to teach him. I told him that his main job isn't to learn - it's probably to keep me focused until the end! :P Nah.... I'm doing good. Not trunky at all. (Elder Turtleneck says "Now that you aren't with Elder Polera." haha so true!)

Other than that, not much to report. We're all tranquilo here. Vilma got baptized, Elder Arnold had a SICK fireside with the investigators and recent converts. And I had a personal interview with him... pretty intimidating. DONT WORRY - I didn't get caught. (That's Elder Polera. What I meant to say was that I didn't do anything wrong.) He just wanted to interview a couple of the ZLs and I got picked.

Well here are a couple of pics - Elder Luke and me and Vilma's baptism.

Love you all!

Two Decades Gone???? (8/17/10)

pyk cake is the cake that Pablo and Katharine made for the Dìa del Niño... which happened to be the day after my birthday. We'll pretend it was a birthday cake.

daddy's boy is me in a bib that says "I'm of my dad" aka Daddy's Boy. Some of these dichos just don't translate over...

analia m is the lunch we had with Analìa Martinez and her fam - Elder Wagner, Elder Thorderson, Analìa, Juan Antonio, Analìa's mom, Daniela. It was fun.

analia m cake is the cake they made for us. I love those rocket candles. Maybe I could make a rocket out of like 50 of those - but they don't actually produce thrust.

analia a is another Analìa Arambillet creation.

Well... two decades down and like only 3 to go, the way I've been eating cake lately. :D Here are some pictures.


Well we had a good week this week, but the zone struggled. We had like 15 people lose their baptismal dates for this month, which means our achievable goal of 20 baptisms this month dropped to 4. We keep chugging along though!

I got the packages - thanks! I did get a little confused though - I got those in only 11 days. Was there another package on the way from a while ago that had boots and stuff? Still haven't gotten that one. I am definitely popular with my girl scout cookies though. :D Thanks a ton for everything, even the random blue socks. I love you guys so much!

Ummm Vilma is on track to get baptized saturday. She's strong and we had a FHE with her yesterday with Analìa M. and Daniela. She's definitely the strongest convert I have ever seen, we are super excited for her. She's super excited too. We talked a lot about how she passed up the opportunity to get baptized when she was like 19 and now it is her time, her chance. Pretty intense. And the fact that we found her after she asked us to bless her store... haha cool stuff.

Let's see... I changed travel plans a little bit. We'll go to Florida first and stay there, then Trinidad on Thursday. Easy little switch, but it will be better for travel. Thus we have two nights in FL, one in Punta del Este, and then the remainder in Deo.

Well there ya go. Pictures speak a thousand words... total word count of this email: 5,424. :D

Love you!

Hello Again! (8/10/10)

Hey fam!

Well we are doing pretty well here. Vilma's kid's birthday is the 28th so she won't be able to get baptized that day. (Her other kid's birthday is the 14th, how weird, huh?) So she asked if she could move her baptism to the 21st. Ummm.... YES! :D We've seen a really big change in her, we're excited to see her progress. She's doing really good and is pretty pumped for her baptism. We've got someone for the 2th (an old lady named Elida that read 300 pages in the book of mormon in a week and a half) but I'm not sure she'll make it this month. We'll see.

We have a conference with Elder Arnold next Wednesday - he's the new area president. We're pretty excited.

My comp decided we are doing a zone fast this week to get our zone goal of 20 baptisms this month. The day he chose? Saturday. Huzzah.

We had a high councilman come to our ward sunday, he said something that really hit me. He said that we shouldn't judge ever. He was talking specifically about humanitarian aid and the canned-food mormons that Pres Uchtdorf talked about. Then he said that "In the 5,000 people that Christ fed on the mount, he knew that some of them would later join in the cry of "crucify him". But he still fed them." WOW! I'm sure he got that from a GA talk, but I really liked it. Super true.

Dad: would you be up to staying until tuesday the 4th? That way we can do a family home evening on monday and go to the temple on tuesday. Also give us some leeway as far as visits and trunky shopping. I'm still confused about saturday as well... that's the day we'll go visit my last area, but I don't know which area that is yet. We'll just plan on booking a deo hotel for that night as well. The trinidad/florida hotel idea is good, I think that's the only instance it will work though. They're close enough that it would work (like an hour and a half in car).

Well I love you guys, TTYL!

Hey fam! (8/3/10)

Hey, so some fun stories from the last few weeks to start off. :D

Sunday, June 18, is Independence Day here in UY. Since it was a Sunday, we sang the Uruguay national anthem - which is pretty cool. Except the person who was supposed to bring the sing-along CD didn't show up. I made the mistake of saying that I play the piano and have sheet music for it, so we went and got the music and sang the anthem. I definitely butchered it. Our EQ pres plays the piano (not like me though) and he had to sit next to me pointing to the sheet music while played so I could follow the repeats and stuff. It is a super hard song and I didn't do it justice. Haha that was probably the most nervous I have ever been for a public performance, I was trembling after it ended.

I went like a month and a half with long fingernails (I didn't bite!) I was going to take a picture and send it to dad (he still owes me $10 from a deal we made that he would give me a dollar for each nail if I could grow them all out) but then they started to bug me and I couldn't take it anymore. So I'm back to short fingernails. :D

I think that's it. Hmmm... missionary work. Everything is good... we have a goal to get two baptisms this change. Vilma is one of them, she's going to get baptized the 28th. She's super set, and we are feeling good about her. President Da Silva came with us to the charla and it went really well. He also went with us to Pablo and Katharine, Pablo is an RM and is living with Katharine. In the end we committed them to get married so Katharine can get baptized. Huzzah. But they will probably end up getting married next month because of the ridiculously long time it takes to get people married here. But we'll see.


Dad, as far as the trip:
I have been looking at the options, and I think it will be best if we rent a car and stay in hotels in the areas we are visiting. That will also be better for siestas. More or less (because my 7th area is still a big question mark) we will be in Trinidad Wednesday, Florida Thursday, Maldonado Friday (for new years eve), my 7th area Saturday, Montevideo Sunday (including church in Las Piedras) and on Monday we'll just hang around Deo and do some trunky shopping. I'd like to get in a temple trip, but it is closed on Monday. :( That means we'll have a night in Trinidad, a night in Florida, a night in Maldonado/Punta del Este, 2 nights in Deo, and then the plane ride. Huzzah. I'm still working on the details of the visits and everything, but I've got food and travel pretty much figured out.

Other random stuff: still waiting for package. I am going to get scripture covers made, they are going to cost like $100. And my birthday is coming up, what do you want me to buy for me? Or should I wait till I get home to find the 78 red Mustang in the garage?

I think that is it for today. Love you all!

Hello! (7/27/10)

stud group.jpg is our group at this leadership conference - all of the gringos and like 5 of the latinos are leaders in the mission. We are super studs.

happy birthday.jpg is Elder Wagner's birthday cake (and Analìa A. - I heard dad talked to her on facebook?)

wow.jpg is what you get in the bottom of a glass bottle when you leave homemade maple syrup in it for 2 months.

wally.jpg is with Elder Wally in the cyber on change day. He's going to live with me up at USU now that I've talked him out of BYU. (Mom note: That's my boy!!)

Hey fam!

Quick email today, we've got a lot to do today. I'll have a SUPER good email next week, I've got lots to write about.

Dad - I'll have answers for ya next week - I was going to suggest that we head home tuesday, but if we have all day monday the plans change a bit. The easiest thing to do would be rent a car and stay in local hotels (instead of home base in Deo). I'll have options for you next week.

I should have been more clear on the PMG changes - it isn't a problem so much about using PMG or about what it SHOULD be, it is about effectively learning and applying what is inside. It is all pretty exciting.

Well I promise I'll have a good email next week. Love you all, thanks for the pictures!

Exciting Week! 7/19/10

Hey fam!

This is a really exciting week and a time of change and progress in the mission. We have recieved instructions from the first presidency as far as Preach My Gospel and the approach we use to teach it. Lots of missionaries get to the field with different levels of ability as far as teaching and focus - because the MTC focuses on the missionary discussions and not as much how to teach them. So the First Presidency has released a new study program to compliment (not replace) Preach My Gospel. There are 8 principles that this program focuses on to help us direct our studies and focus in on the real work. With this new program, missionaries will get to the field with a better understanding of what missionary work really is and not just how the teachers say it ideally is. When they get to the field, the mission will have been using the same approach and everybody will be on the same successful page. Right now, all of the Zone Leaders and District Leaders from the mission are in Carrasco doing a 3-day seminar for these 8 principles, and the seminar will be repeated every 2 months. It is pretty exciting to know that we are right in the middle of a BIG change. There are other small changes, like instead of zone conferences and interviews every month and a half, they take turns (aka once every three months) and Zone Leaders' Council is every month. They are really trying to get out of the "transfer cycle" way of thinking because months are the same all around the world, but the transfer cycles don't correspond across the missions. Pretty exciting.

Other than that we are pretty tranquilo. Analìa slept in yesterday because she had a huge headache. Wagner and I had an hour long companionship inventory to try and work out some of the kinks. I am super sick and threw up yesterday but we went out to work anyways and now I'm worse.


Dad -
If we go back Monday, that gives us time to make some visits and see some places. If you want to see more of UY, we'd have to stay longer. But I'm fine with Monday. Sad to know Mom won't be coming down, but we'll take some good pictures for her. :D Bring the D90.

>> From the information below, it looks like it would be best for me to arrive Tuesday (the flights arrive around 11:30am). I would just proceed directly to the hotel (just in time for a siesta) and wait to pick up Steven either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning after his final interview.
Agreed.
I think that's it. Good luck at work!

Well that's the news for the week. Give a big hug to Tina for me, I've been thinking about her this week. Keep goin' girlfriend!

-Elder Thorderson