Hey Family! (12/13/10)

Wow... two weeks.

Well we had an interesting week. We pulled a baptism out of nowhere, Agustina Balbi told us on wednesday that she wanted to get baptized before she went to Salto on vacation (this friday the 17th). So we baptized her saturday. She's super happy... it's weird. I don't really know what to think. But she made the decision all on her own. So huzzah.

Augustina's baptism

Lucìa is doing pretty good. We called her Friday to invite her to the baptism (she went) but she misunderstood when I invited her and she was like "I don't want to get baptized yet!" haha good times.

We are doing pretty well here in the area, not letting up on the reins. This Sunday Claudio's family came to church for all three hours, so that's a little miracle. They really liked it, Claudia loved the RS lesson.

Tina: here's a pic of a really old buoy on the beach. Thinking of you!

Well I love you all, not much else.

Counting down--NOT! (12/6/10)

Well we've got like one month left... I just looked at my watch and it says 12/06... that means less than one month. Wow.

We are doing pretty well here. Nothing out of the ordinary to report. Yesterday in church we counted 10 non-members. There may have been more, but we weren't able to confirm. 10 might be the most I have ever had on my mission. Claudia and her kids came (that was 3) and Lucas came again (Facundo Lavega's friend). Everybody else were new people. So that's good news. Lucìa couldn't come though. She had to help her mom work (she sells stuff at the weekly fair in Maldonado every friday and sunday morning).

Well we have our mission christmas fireside on the 17th. I talked to Sister Da Silva, and she says that each zone is going to be asked to provide a musical number. I plan on having Sister Lee (clarinet) and Sister Walton (singer) do La Nochebuena (thanks for the new music dad! we prefer the v2) representing their zone (Rocha) and see if I can talk my zone into doing Far Far Away. I'll have to work in the Sisters.

I told Elder Davies about Haloti - turns out Haloti was his hero when he was playing on the defensive line at Oregon. He's super jealous I got to play church ball with him, but just thinking about it brings back the back pain from getting boxed out by him. :P

Mom - I need a super good meat loaf recipe. I don't recall eating any meatloaf that I liked (hehe) but maybe you or Aunt Rebecca or Nanny have a good recipe. We have a ward activity and the price of admission is a meatloaf. So I'm going to give it a shot. No spicy allowed. I'll need the recipe for next week!

Hmmmm.... what else is there to report? I think that's it. No pictures today, didn't take any good ones this week. Sorry.

I'll look for Nativity scenes... but chances are slim I'll find anything, and if I do it'll be chinese. I'll need money to buy them too. The only iconic Uruguayan nativity I'd be able to find would be if everyone had light blue jerseys from the world cup (the baby Jesus wearing #10, of course).

Well, I love you all! Send me some pics of Tina playing ball this year! :D

Another Week! (11/30/10)

raul.jpg is Raul's baptism pic. Daniel baptized him. (Raul's the bald one. He's 43.)

plata.jpg is the family we ate thanksgiving with. Good people, and they signed up for Christmas lunch too.

pancakes.jpg is our thanksgiving meal.

painting.jpg is Raul, Elder Davies, Daniel and I painting the house this saturday. We still need to buy a door and bedside tables, but at least the hard part is done.

nadia.jpg is Nadia's baptism pic. The whole family showed. Good times.

Hey fam!

Not much to report this week [that's a lie, we just don't have a lot of time and a picture is worth a thousand words (and you're getting 5)].

So we had a baptism Saturday out of the blue. Yay! Raul got baptized. Nadia too, but that's a ward baptism.

We found an awesome girl named Lucìa. She's super cool, 13 years old and her mom is worried about her because she is having teen issues. But she isn't really. We had our first lesson with her Wednesday, then she came to Mutual Saturday and church Sunday. Then yesterday we visited her and my comp (Elder Vera, we had a companion exchange) put a baptismal date for the 8th of January. Maybe if she progresses well we can baptize her the 1st and Dad can see a baptism in Uruguay. How cool would that be? Haha

Not much else on my end. I rolled my ankle bad playing soccer today. :( I think the only time I have felt more pain is when I straddled the tree. But that was significantly more pain, so no worries. Our travel time tripled though because we are traveling "en el once" (on the eleven - like 11 - two legs! haha spanish joke.)

Pedro Dominguez is rocking as bishop. I am super excited to have him.

We did confirm that we are doing a missionary fireside, but I have not yet been given a green light to prepare music. But I'll get it.

Ummmm I think that's it for today. I look forward to hearing from you guys next week. Good to hear that Tina's playing Varsity and that the Utes beat BYU. Next year are they still going to play - just out of conference? How's Utah's BCS ranking? My comp is rubbing in the fact that Oregon is #1 (yeah, he's a fan). Good to hear that Thanksgiving turned out well too.

Dad - be thinking about something small/cheap like a picture or something that we could gift to the families we visit when you come. We'll be visiting no more than 60 families. :D

Love you all!!!

Hey Fam! (11/22/10)

here's a pic of my suit. Needless to say, I'll be taking it in to the dry cleaners. (it's mold)

Hey family!

How's everybody doing? We are doing pretty good here in El Pinar. We saw some miracles, some pitfalls. Let's start with the bad.

Elder Davies and I were sick this week - I was worse than he was. It was some sort of cold, runny nose, congestion, headache, the feeling you got run over by a bus... no fun at all. So there were a couple days we only worked half the day. I started getting better after a blessing from the bish, but it was like 5 days in all. Yuck. So because of that, our numbers took a hit. But we worked hard when we were working.

Miracle time.
We found Raul, the one who had a baptismal date for last Saturday. Did I tell you he disappeared? He found work or something and we weren't able to find him for two weeks, and he didn't come to church. So we were eating lunch with the bishop on Friday, and he gets a phone call from a recent convert Daniel who was fellowshipping Raul. He was like "Raul is at my house and he says he is getting baptized tomorrow. What do I tell him?" haha so we finished eating quickly and went to Daniel's house to have a charla with Raul. We moved the baptism to this Saturday and explained why (lack of lessons and church assistance, needs to be prepared). He was cool with it, so now he is working extra hard to get "prepared" for baptism. In our charlas, he volunteers for both prayers, he reads all the scriptures, he threw out his rosary, and the most common phrase he says is "if I'm going to be ready for next Saturday, I have to ______, right?" haha it's funny. He's a good guy. We told him that he has to be on time to church (he's always late) so he showed up half an hour early when the church wasn't even open. Haha good times.

We also had some people show up to church that we weren't expecting. One guy who was close to getting baptized a year or so ago, but didn't make it. He's the son-in-law of one of the coolest members of the ward (Cardozo who always calls me "jefe" haha) and husband of a pretty intensely inactive member. But they both showed up on Sunday with all the desire in the world. He came in a suit and a nice tie, they were smiling the whole time. After the meetings, they asked us for the lunch calendar so they could sign up to give us lunch. Super cool people. He is in an unstable work situation so he can't take the charlas right now, but he said the moment he gets it worked out he'll call us.

Hmmmm... What else is there to report?

Elder Davies is doing good. He was invited to the mission leadership conference next week (oooOOOooo) so he's trying to read the Book of Mormon before that. Good kid.

Oh, I met Hoefling's parents. Cool people. His mom is always smiling, his dad is just chill, absorbs everything. He had a Nikon D300 with an extended battery pack and like a 50-300 lens. Quite a monster. I got to use it to take a picture of them, I took one but couldn't get my finger off the trigger fast enough and it took another one (I guess it was on burst mode). They had me take another just in case, and sure enough, two pictures again. It was pretty cool.

Sorry, I didn't mean to talk so much about the camera. What I meant to say was that they had my package! They didn't leave it at the mission home, it was still in their car. Happy day! So thanks a lot! Turns out that Missionary Mall ordered the wrong style shoes, now I have two pairs of the exact same shoes. Haha but that's okay. I REALLY don't want to wait until Christmas to open the gifts. We'll see how long I can handle it.

Oh, on Friday (thanksgiving) we are going to have a thanksgiving meal with the Plata family (they are super cool). Their daughter can't cook very well, and she can really only cook one dish well. So for thanksgiving we are going to be having pancakes. Haha yay. Just thought you should know. At your thanksgiving meal, someone better say they are grateful for the food, because somewhere out in South America there is a missionary eating pancakes for thanksgiving. :D

Dad, here's a little bit more of our itinerary.
Wed 29th - visiting Florida. Hotel Florida.
Lunch: Milton y Doris, Dinner: Chivitos at Cafe del Centro.
Thurs 30th - visiting Trinidad. Hotel Florida.
Lunch: Flia Pedreira, Dinner: Carrito El Fape.
Fri 31st - visiting Maldonado. Hotel Maldonado (Punta del Este).
Lunch: TBD, Dinner: Asado with Flia Libonatti
Sat 1st - visiting El Pinar. Hotel Montevideo.
Lunch: TBD, Dinner: Flia Moreno.
Sun 2nd - visiting Libia, Las Piedras, Camino Carrasco. Hotel Montevideo.
Church in Libia (9 to 12), Lunch: Flia Tejera, Libia visits, Las Piedras Sacrament meeting (4:00?), Las Piedras visits, Camino Carrasco visits, Dinner: Pizza with Analia A.
Mon 3rd - visiting Salto. Hotel Salto.
Lunch: TBD, Dinner: TBD. (We'll see on this one, we can eat lunch on the way up, check out some cool sites, there are options.)
Tues 4th - visiting Montevideo. No hotel.
Lunch: Asado at the Puerto, Trunky shopping, Temple (session at 5:00), Dinner: Pizza at La Redonda, Fly home. (temple session ends at 6:30, dinner is close, we'd be at the airport at 8 at the latest. Is that early enough? If not we can do trunky shopping Monday morning, lunch in Deo, and not make as many stops on they way up to Salto.)

Those arrangements look awesome. Can't wait to try them out. Sister Da Silva is not sure if we are going to have enough time to set everything up in time. But we'll do something.

Got my SLCC app sent in, they admitted me as a non resident. http://www.slcc.edu/enrollmentservices/Residency.asp Looks like I have to fill out a stupid form. Yay.

Well that's it for today.

here we go! (11/16/10)

rain.jpg is cooking the burgers (it started to rain. haha)

asado.jpg is me and Elder Mendoza tending the fire to cook the burgers.

zone.jpg is the whole zone with our new cool shirts. Yay!

Hey fam!

Well here we are, change day! Turns out me and Davies are staying together, as expected. Everything is going good here, still struggling with Agustina, Claudio's fam is doing good, and Raul has disappeared. Huzzah.

We had a good FHE with the Balbi fam yesterday, I made an AWESOME apple cake. We watched "On the Way Home" - a super old church movie. It was pretty sweet. They are doing good. Sunday I did my first priesthood ordination, Oscar and Ignacio were conferred the priesthood, and Oscan asked me to do it. It was pretty scary... I didn't want to give him keys accidentally in spanish. haha

Not much to report this week, just a quick note to let you know I'm alive.

Tell Tina I'm super proud of her and look forward to schooling her one-on-one in bball. haha

Well time's up today. Love you all!

(MOM NOTE: New email sent later that day)

Haha I sent a short email because I had to take time out to resize photos and stuff - then i forgot to send the photos!

These are from the zone activity I told you about. It was alright, the sisters showed up late and we didn't get to play volleyball.

Love you all!

Say hi to Emily for me too, tell her that I am looking forward to seeing her!

Chugging Along! (11/8/10)

Birthday Present: Scripture Covers Back

Birthday Present: Scripture Covers Front

Hey fam!

Well I've been promising you guys a long email for a while now, so here it goes!

We had a pretty good week this week. Monday was P-Day, no zone activity so we were able to relax. Finally. We had a FHE with the Balbi fam, that was lots of fun. Tuesday we didn't have district meeting since Wednesday we had Zone Conference. That went well, we had a temple session with the pres and his wife. Then I splurged at the distribution center buying books for the 6 new members we have in the ward. Thursday we didn't have anything noteworthy... Friday a companion exchange with our DL. Elder Mendoza (the DL) worked here in El Pinar with me, and Elder Davies worked with Fajardo in his area. It was alright...Saturday we did service a large part of the day with Nicole Moreno and her family. It was good, we were ripping down trees. Before we got there, they were clearing the tops o the trees of branches so they would come down without doing any harm. Just as we got there, they pulled off a branch and it nudged the power line. Nothing bad happened... it was just a tap. But the neighbor came out and started a big fuss that he saw the line move, blah blah so he called the police about it because they were cutting trees not on their property (which they weren't, the base of the tree was inside the property line) so they ended up having to go to the police station to make a statement. It was a pretty exciting day.

Sunday was rough. Nobody came to church. Well... Lots of people came to church, I guess they heard that we have a new bishop and they decided to come to see. But nobody that we wanted to come - the Balbi fam, Raul, Soledad... it was pretty rough. We don't really know why either. Bah. But we finished off Sunday with a good charla with Claudio's family. Today we have a FHE as a zone, should be interesting. We are doing it in our church, definitely the nicest in the zone. I'll have pics next week.

Oh hey speaking of pics, I finally got my birthday present! I don't remember if I told you guys, but the guy that made the scripture covers made them too big (as if to fit spanish scriptures) so I had to send them back to him, along with my scriptures to get a good fit. Well I got them back Wednesday, they are basically awesome. Here are pics of the front and back. No other pictures for the week. Sorry.

Okay, back to the good email. Here is the area report.

Balbi is doing okay, I guess. We are having a FHE with them and the Puyol fam on Tuesday. The Puyol fam is awesome! :D I really don't know what is going on with Agustina. Puyol keeps telling me that we have the right to inspiration and we'll get it worked out, but I'm just lost. She says one thing with us, and her mom tells us differently, then she ends up doing something completely different. It is super frustrating. Elder Davies just has so much faith that she will get baptized in the future that he isn't too worried about it, I'm freaking out because I want her to get baptized NOW. It's hard loving the people so much that you want to take away their agency. (Wait... maybe that's what lucifer was thinking! Nah just kidding. Don't let anyone in the High Priests Group know I said that, it just might become doctrine! Haha) so yeah, that's a frustrating situation.

Raul is struggling. We can tell that there are some legal issues as far as the house he is buying - he is worried about getting kicked out because the landlord is changing the contract or something. But there's something else going on. But he didn't come to church Sunday either.

Claudio is a convert to the church, he was baptized when he was 12 and is now preparing for a mission. For some reason, his family has taken interest in the Gospel. So we are now teaching his mom, Claudia, his 8-year-old sister Micaela, and his mom's 9-year-old sister Romina. (Yes, I know that's called an aunt, but it sounds weird calling a 9-year-old his aunt!) They are pretty cool. Yesterday was our second charla with them, we watched the Restoration movie and Claudio gave her a Book of Mormon. She cried when we told her that Claudio wanted to gift her a new BoM, and she said that when she was watching the first vision she felt that it was true. So she (Claudia) and Romina accepted soft baptismal invitations ("Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God?") but we didn't feel like it was the right time to put a date. Claudia said yes if she receives answers to her prayers. For Romina a simple "yes" was enough. So they are rocking.

We haven't seen Marcela again. She's the one that lived in Boston.

We've got a kid named Darío, he's pretty chill. He's like 20 years old, finishing up high school. He's really thinkative (man my English is terrible. Thinkative = pensativo) and has been through various religions. He's excited about the BoM mostly because it is a solid proof, which other churches don't have. We've only had one charla with him though, so we'll see how he does.

Other than that, we've just got contacts or references to go back to, so we are slowly progressing here.

Alright, that's the report.

Dad, I don't know if you have had any luck with the hotels, but I'm going to make a last minute change. Mon, Jan 3, get a hotel in Salto. It's a four hour drive out there, but that's 1) where we'll need to visit the Balbis and 2) some scenic stuff we can see up there. Everyone talks about Salto. That will be a good way to wind down the stay - We'll be up in Salto Monday (get there in the afternoon) look around, visit the Balbi fam, and stay the night, since we wouldn't be able to come back down to Deo in time. Then we come back down to Deo on Tuesday, do lunch and trunky shopping downtown, then temple and dinner, then to the airport. What do you think? I didn't really have anything planned for Monday anyways, so this will be good to fill up that hole.

Mom, my Student ID (well my SLCC acceptance letter) should be in a ziploc baggie that was in that mail sorter thing on the wall in the kitchen. It might have been moved to the safe. Or you guys put it in a box. But check with dad first because I don't think he would have packed away important papers in the storage unit.

Alright, say hi to Tina for me, and Corry if he calls again. I'm rooting for Tina in her basketball tryouts, good to hear she gave the big girls a run for their money! Oh also say hi to Uncle Sterling - it is his birthday Friday. :D

Well love you guys! Have a wonderful week!

2 months? Serious? (11/1/10)

Wow, time is flying, guys. How is it on your end?

Well the Balbi fam (part of them) got baptized Saturday. (pics included) It went well, but Agustina ended up staying dry. She decided not to show up for her baptismal interview... she came with her family, got to the street corner, and turned around and went back home. So we are pretty sad. But I guess that's okay, she'll get baptized eventually. We hope. The rest of the fam is super happy, but Silvina is kinda torn because she left Agustina behind. But the fam is doing good, we have an FHE with them tonight. I baptized all three of them (they asked me to) and I confirmed Silvina (she asked me to). Pretty fun stuff.

We FINALLY have a bishop! I'm not sure if I ever told you guys, but we haven't had a bishop for a year here in El Pinar, and yesterday we finally got one. He's the former EQ pres, Pedro Dominguez. We are all excited that we finally have priesthood keys in the ward. He's a good guy.

Ummmm not much to say in this email, we're just chugging along. We have Zone Conference on Wednesday - temple trip! :D My comp is struggling a bit with homesickness, but I'm working him. :D

Well send my love to all in the family. I'll try and have a better email next week, I promise.

Love you all!