CHILL WEEK

Hola Familia!

This week has been a pretty chill week, so nothing too exciting happened.  I will try and remember all of it!

We went to visit one of our investigators and as we approached the house of we saw his face through the window and he looked like he was super wasted. Me and my comp were so sad but as we went inside we saw that he had screwed up his knee pretty bad and he was on some pain meds. He had crashed on his Moto on Tuesday and we were visiting him on Friday and he couldn't remember anything that had happened the past 3 days. But luckily we visited him yesterday after a visit to the hospital and he is all good now! The hospital just cleaned his knee. He is one of the people we are focusing on really hard because he wants to be baptized but he needs to get married to the girl he´s living with first and she doesn't want to. We are working with her also and hope that she will be able to gain a testimony. So that´s all the news really investigators wise.

Last night was super cool, when we were coming back from the visit there was a gaucho (Argentine cowboy) parade in front of our pench. I guess it is for National Sovereignty Day (Dia de la Soberania Nacional) which is today.  It was AWESOME!! There were at least 3 or 4 hundred horses that rode by! There are holidays here like crazy. I think since I´ve been here there have already been 3 or 4 holidays.

And right now in the internet cafe they are paying Justin Timberlake... So I ain´t complaining, haha. But I haven´t been robbed this week luckily! I will use grandpa´s card to buy a new camera! But not today because it´s a holiday.

Tell David Ward and Grandpa Shields Happy Birthday for me! And have a Happy Thanksgiving! 

I am so Grateful for all of my friends and family that I have and I am so grateful for all of the examples I have in my life! Thank you so much for being there when I needed help and someone to just talk to in my hard times! Love you all!  And I am obviously grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ and my Heavenly Father!! Or else I wouldn´t be serving this mission right now!! Haha, Love you all!

Elder Ward

BROKEN IN

Hola!!

This has been an exciting week so I hope you are all ready! And since you asked about photos mom  I have to tell you that my camera got stolen. And also my iPod and speaker!  So all of my pictures are gone, and I´m going to try to buy a new camera this week. We actually got our pench (apartment) broken into twice before the mission offices got us bars for our windows but all is well now! We got bars and now the pench feels safe again!

So glad that you got to hear from the Cali Elders, literally love them so much. Hope they are doing good! Can´t wait to meet up with them after the mission is over. So this week was FULL of travel. There was only one day that I  didn't have to sit on a bus for at least 2 hours so that was dandy. I had exchanges with my zone leader on Tuesday and Wednesday. His name is Elder Cardozo and he´s from Argentina so that was definitely a different experience having a native comp, it was super fun though. He´s a stellar missionary and was super patient with my Spanish and I learned a lot of Spanish from him too! The other zone leader Elder White, was with Elder Udall during the exchange.  They were riding our bikes (we have bikes because we are in campo) and Elder White ran into a parked car while on the bike. He screwed up my bike pretty bad too. But luckily we have a recent convert that owns a bicicleteria (bike shop) so he fixed my bike up.  We call my bike the "Rusty Steed" because it´s just a piece of junk, haha.

On Saturday morning my mission and the Buenos Aires Norte mission got together and listened to Elder D. Todd Christofferson (I think I spelled that right)! It was super cool. Him and some other important church people talked to us about how we could apply the atonement to missionary work. How pretty much nothing has any true meaning without a Savior and the atonement. So that was pretty stinkin cool! Also last night we had a late appointment out in campo and as we were riding back and there were fire flies EVERYWHERE!!! It was literally one of the sickest things I have ever seen. And then as I was gazing at the fireflies my bike chain broke... So that was fun. The Rusty Steed never fails to live up to it´s title. 

Well I love all of you! I have felt the prayers of all of you and I hope that I will be able to send you some sick pictures of the beautiful and majestic ARGENTINA!

Con Amor

Elder Ward

LOBOS

Hola!!

This is weird because the keyboards in Argentina are a little different, and it says I am spelling everything wrong, haha... But here we go! Hopeefully I can tell you everything that happened in these last 2 weeks! So I was super sad to leave Cali, but me and my comp decided we were going to work super hard for our last transfer together! sadly no one got baptized but we left that area with some solid progressing investigators! We also had to let go of a few investigators too which was super sad because we dropped my favorite investigator. Hopefully she realizes one of these days how much this gospel can bless her life!

In news of travel, I hopped on a plane at 11 am last Monday, and ended up in Argentina 7 am on Tuesday, and there is a 4 hour difference, so I had lots of travel!! It was good though, probably the only time I´ll be able to catch up on sleep in my whole mission, haha. And all of the visa waiters from my MTC district got their visas and were on my same flight, so that was fun to talk to all of them.

My first days in Argentina were crazy! We got to go see the temple and it is GORGEOUS!!! We then had lunch at the Presidents house and just chilled for a while, during his interviews with all of the new missionaries. We then went to the mission office, had more food, talked more about the mission then walked to where we were going to sleep that night. We slept in this massive apartment building that had at least 20 floors and we stayed on the 15th I think. It was a cool experience and all the missionaries that lived there were really welcoming and just studs. Then the next day we went to transfer meeting and I met my new companion! His name is Elder Udall and he´s from Mesa Arizona! He´s super awesome and I feel like we are going to work some miracles in this area.  Elder Udall is the district leader and we have a relief society (the rest of the district is only sisters. The Area is called Lobos. It´s fairly rural and I LOVE IT!! and it took about 2-3 hours by bus to get to Lobos. I have loved meeting the people here even though I can´t understand their Argentina accent. It's funny, here they have a different name for Spanish, instead of Español, it´s Castellano. We have a branch here and all of the people in the branch are just awesome! Everyone of them loves the gospel and, well they just rock.

So some new things about Argentina.  They have siesta (the long lunch) and there are a ton of dogs that just run around the place.  Luckily most of them don´t bite.  

Love everyone so much and I am so grateful for everyone! Love you all!

Elder Ward

MICHAEL HATCH IS THE BEST!!

Our dear friend, Mike Hatch, occasionally has work in Buenos Aires and he had a trip this week.  He was so kind to take a Christmas package for Spencer and deliver it to the mission office.  Thanks Mike!!!

ARRIVED SAFE AND SOUND

Elder Ward with President and Sister Robertson at the Buenos Aires Temple

LA TEMPLE - ADIOS CALIFORNIA

Elder Davidson and I

Because Elder Davidson's Birthday is in October - we were able to go to the LA Temple.  What a great day!!!

LA Temple at night 

Breakfast on my last day in California - We are all off to Argentina!!