YOU WON'T REGRET IT!

Hola Familia!!

Another busy week has passed.  We spend most of our days in the Truck.  Man I got to take a picture of it! It is a Ford Ranger, and I love it, haha I mean it has had some problems because it is literally running non stop all day every day, but it is a sweet truck!!

You asked about my stress levels.  Well from one to ten, ten being like going home because of too much stress, like a 5, haha. I mean I just really don´t want people to be illegal here, at least here in Argentina if someone is illegal for like a month the won´t deport them so that is good, but yeah it is kind of difficult, haha. But I love it! It is an opportunity to be able to grow and get to know a different style of missionary work! And now that we pretty much never talk to ANYONE except missionaries, every single time that we are with someone that isn't a member we talk to them about the gospel!!! Because honestly the part I miss most about being like a normal assigned missionary is being able to TESTIFY often about Jesus Christ and be his witnesses!!! That for me is the best part about missionary work.

So no we don't get to proselyte. But like I said we contact people all the time. Some other thing that we don´t do is eat, haha because there is so much work to be done that we pretty much eat lunch at like 6 or sometimes we just don´t eat. But one day we were out by some little little cities that are in the farthest part of the mission. The campo cities are Monte, Las Flores, and Cañuelas (all of them are close to Lobos!!) Oh man I wish I could just drive over there and see the people there, but unfortunately it is not in this mission.  I did take some pics of some signs that said Lobos on them!!. And it was like 4:00pm and we happened to stumble on this like restaurant in the middle of nowhere on the highway, so we stopped there to get some food and got talking to the owner/chef/waiter of the joint. And we started talking to him and his wife had died from cancer a couple months ago. And right then and there we started to talk about Easter and that through Jesus Christ our families can live together forever. And the man was left speechless and then he started to weep. We hugged him and all that stuff and now this next Sunday our mission president is going to go to the sacrament meeting of one of the little cities and is going to visit him on his way home and have a lesson with him. WOW. THE CHURCH IS SO DANG TRUE!!

And another thing. We were paying the rent of one of the pench´s and we gave a little card to this lady that was about Easter and we also testified of the same thing and she started crying! Then she told us that that same morning she had read a news article about a little girl that had been molested and she just asked God why all this had to happen, to such a little innocent girl. And now the missionaries are going to go by her house and she is super excited to learn more about our message. 

Yeah even though people told me that I wasn't going to do any proselyting, I have still seen a ton of miracles a seen a ton of prepared people!

ANOTHER MIRACLE THIS WEEK!!! Ok so every week we have our district meeting and I don´t go to them because we don´t really have a ton of time, but this last Tuesday (we have the district meetings every Tuesday) a lady walked into the church and said that she just needed to talk to somebody and that she just couldn't handle life anymore. So the missionaries from our ward had a lesson with her (Hermana Ellie Holt, and her comp Hermana Concenés) and she committed to be baptized and everything and we gave her a blessing and it was just awesome!! 

So yeah here´s the website that has the new Easter video. Share it with someone, you won´t regret it! BUUUUUUT. You will regret NOT sharing it!

FollowHim.mormon.org

I love you all and hope you all have a good week!!!

Elder Ward

SUPER POWERFUL

Family!!

Well it is pretty strange that my p-day is now on Saturday!  My new job is gooing really good, I mean we have only done a couple things like we took an Elder to the Mexiceo Embassy and this next week I think I will be starting to do the normal things that we have to be doing to get people legal here! I would explain it all to you but I have no idea what all the words are in English.   Pretty much my ultimate goal is to get people to have a temporary I.D. for 2 years, and after I get that I.D. obviously my job is done because they won´t be here any longer then 2 years.

My companion and I get along really well.  Some times we get really bored in the car and have a ton of fun and play games and just tell funny stories and yeah, Elder Ginatto is super awesome!  I actually knew him pretty well before I was even his comp.  We served the the same zone when I was in Laferrere and we got to be pretty good friends then.

There are in total 8 missionaries in the office.

2 are the secretaries.

2 are like traveling assistants (that are never with us because they stay with a companionship for like a week, stay the weekend with us and then stay another week with a different companionship. 

2 are us.

2 are a couple serving a service mission that are like part time missionaries that live here (they are actually from Ezeiza!)

And then there is a missionary couple, they are related to President and Sister Thurgood.
So yeah! That´s the offices!

We live in a pench with just me and Elder Ginatto.  The traveling assistants stay there on Sunday nights.  It is like 5 or 6 blocks from the church where the offices are at so luckily not too far away. But either way it doesn´t really matter because we have a car. WUUUT!!!  We are always in the car because we are always so busy!!! One day we were driving in the car from 8 in the morning till 11 at night, and don't worry we take turns driving so that one of us just doesn't get too tired.

I have no idea how long I will serve in the office.  The next time I see president I will ask him because usually he tells the people in the offices how long they are here so we can train others to take our spots. But yeah this next week I might know what is going to happen so yeah, I´ll keep ya updated. 

Well just so ya know my updates on the weeks are going to be a little shorter then usual because we are driving around in the car for most of the time of the day.  I really am so excited that I was given this calling.  It is just another way to get lost in the service of our God!  I mean we lose sleep, our p-day is cut short and sometimes we don´t even have a p-day.  But it doesn´t really matter! As long as I am serving someone it is good! I mean our Job pretty much exists so that the other missionaries can focus on their job of inviting others to come unto Christ! I mean we still do that too!! 

Today in the morning we had to go pay a rent of one of the pench´s. And the lady of the Alquilers was super nice and I got to get to know her son and he worked at the Canyons like 3 years ago!  We then shared this new project that the church has got going for Easter and I will send the link next week because it is seriously SUPER POWERFUL!   The name of the project is "Hallelujah."

Love all of you and have a good week!!!

Elder Ward

BUSY, BUSY

Well I have a new assignment!  I got called as something that is called the ¨Visero¨, it is a missionary that works in the offices of the mission. I am in charge of the whole missions visas and being legal in Argentina.  I am in charge of about 200 people! Usually the last Visero stays a little bit to train the next one to show him what´s up but I didn't get that privledge... I will just have to figure it out on my own, and use all of the stuff that he left me here in the offices.  But I am excited about it, I think it will be fun!  Luckily I will be able call the last Visero so that is good.  Let´s hope that I don´t explode! It is going to be an awesome experience and I will have to rely a TON on the Lord to help me to know what to do and be able to make hard decisions!

Also my companion is named Elder Ginatto. He is from Brasil and is the ¨Pensionero¨ Or like the apartment missionary, so basically I have two jobs since I have to be with Elder Ginatto and do all the apartments and do all of the Visa stuff! I am gonnna be super busy and it will be pretty awesome! 

We pretty much don´t have an area because we are always busy with all of the visa and apartment stuff.

This is kinda gross, but I got athletes foot.   It was so bad!!  I could just feel my foot throbbing all the time!  It was keeping me up at night and it was just painful all day.  One night I prayed that it would feel better because it was starting to effect my work.  The next morning I woke up and it was completely healed. It was seriously a miracle. I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY! The Lord takes care of us so much!!! 

The weather is still pretty hot, these past couple of mornings it was a little cool because it has been raining the past couple nights but this next week it is supposed to be hot again.  IT will be pretty hot up till like April. 

This last week we had a pretty cool experience. We were in the house of a member... And to be honest we were just there because we had to use their bathroom, haha but while I was in the Bathroom one of the kids of the family (11 year old) told Elder Funk that he had a cousin that he wanted to share the gospel with. So we went right over and they were home! It was awesome! We had a really cool lesson with the whole family about keeping the Sabbath Day holy and they said they would come to church.  Ok so they didn't come to church after all but they felt the Spirit during the lesson, I felt the spirit, and it was very cool! I hope that Elder Funk can help them to be able to progress!!

Also Elder Funk and I were able to do a service project to help a family clean out a bunch of junk in their yard.  I am going to miss Elder Funk.  He is so awesome!!

I don't have much else for today.  I forgot my notes and we did so much stuff today that my mind is just like blank.  But today was pretty interesting. We got a bunch of new areas that had opened up, we went and took new missionaries to their new area. Busy, busy day!  That was all that pretty much happened this week. Hope that you all have a good one and that you do something fabulous this week that helps someone else!!! LOVE YOU ALL!!!

Elder Ward. 

P.S. I will have my P-day on Saturday and sometimes I won´t have time to write you so I might even write you on Sunday. Love ya!

LOVE MISSIONARY WORK

What a great week!!! ALL of the missions from Buenos Aires where invited to attend a conference with Elder Bednar.  It was AWESOME!!! I saw a bunch of familiar faces!!! I saw Elder Alexander, Elder Donnely and Elder Blake from the West mission and my MTC group, I saw some friends that are in the North mission that I know from school (one of them is the cousin on the miner`s in our ward), I also saw one of Nate`s lacrosse Buddies Elder Chris Jones! I didn't recognize him at first but then I realized who it was. We didn't have much time to chat and take pictures because they were pretty strict about having us sit down so ELDER BEDNAR could come and leave as planned because he has a busy week planned down here in the South America South area!

President & Sister Robertson and missionaries from the BAW Mission

Elder Jones

Elder Miner from the BAN Mission

We were there for 3 hours and it just flew by! I felt like it was 15 minutes but my notebook was fuuulllll by the end of it. He taught us such important stuff that was so critical. He didn`t want us to write ANYTHING down that was said by him, or by the area presidency. He wanted us to write down what the spirit was teaching us because he is the teacher and the person ¨teaching the class¨ is there to just invite the spirit. And he gave us 3 talks that we needed to read before hand which were ¨Ask in faith¨, ¨Converted unto the Lord¨, and ¨Learning by Faith¨. 

He talked about the concept of Agents and Objects. Here`s an example. If I say in a prayer ¨please bless the people that didn`t come to church this week that they will come next week.¨ That is being an object, waiting for God to out of no where have all these people miracilously come to church. Which he can do... Or you could say this ¨Please bless everyone in the congregation that they might help those who didn`t come this week to feel the importance of coming to church.¨ I thought this was important because in the previous example we are planning on using our agency to help a greater cause, and expecting miracles from our work. The other one is waiting for the miracles to happen without doing anything. 

Yeah. I definitely felt that that man was a Special Witness of Jesus Christ on the earth. WOW!!!

In other news.....Transfers are next week.  I won`t hear anything until this next Saturday! So for sure by this time next week I will be with my new comp or here in Ezeiza!! I am thinking that I am going to go, but we will see what happens.

The family that was going to be baptized is super busy during the week and the only days they can meet with us are Saturdays. So it made it impossible for them to have been baptized this month, I am thinking that at this rate that they will be baptized at the end of march. The only problem is that we have to teach them all of the missionary lessons and that`s like at least 8 or 9 visits.

Oh my lanta I had a funny thing happen. SO after the Bednar conference we were super tired because we had to wake up at 3:30 to get over to the capilla in the center of Buenos Aires in time.  After it was over we had a meeting where we reviewed what we had learned.  I was nodding off big time. Elder Funk said something like. ¨I learned that is is so important to UNFOLD the scriptures-¨ and for whatever reason I interrupted him when I was half-conscious and half-asleep, I do not even remember this but I said ¨Oh yeah! Like a banana!¨ Elder Funk looked over and realized I was completely knocked out and he just burst out laughing and I woke up and he told me what happened and yeah. Good times. 

MORE MIRACLES!!!! Yesterday we found 2 families that want to hear the missionary lessons. One of them were references from some members (one is a less active and his wife isn't a member and they just had a baby) And the other family we just contacted them and supposedly they are family of one of the members in the ward! It was super awesome to find them, we can`t wait to contact the member and tell them what happened!!!!

We were fairly thrifty this month so we decided to eat some good ole Salmon this week. It`s kindof expensive here, but man. IT was worth it, and we didn`t get too much either, haha

Ok well that pretty much sums up my week. We luckily had a ton of lessons this week and we keep getting more and more. Elder M. Russel Ballard said that we should have at least 15 lessons a week, and we have been strugling with that the last little while but these last 2 weeks we have been doing it! And surpassing the number! It`s AWESOME! Especially because since the Elder Bednar thing we have changed the way we teach and it makes me think of the new teaching program for the youth that is come follow me or something like that where the general Authorities said that the teachers should do 20% of the talking and the students 80%, and being missionaries we have to do a little more because we are teaching them new principles but we listen more and we are focusing more on the investigators!! WOO!!! LOVE MISSIONARY WORK!!!

Well hope that all of you ahve a good week!!!! 

Elder Ward

Wow that was long email... ENJOY!!

Thanks Grandma Ward

Thanks Momma!