Libertador General San Martin (Ledesma), Salta - February 10, 2014

Dearest Family,

It sounds like you're all goin' through a tough time, but it was great to get your positive letters from every single one of you!

Anyway, so this week we helped a lot of the visiting teachers. It really is a great program! I love the way the church is set up so that you have someone there to help you always!

I'm kinda catchin a little of the Spirit of Elijah as I help the converts
with their family history. Thanks for helping out with my craving!

So Pablo.... He didn't get baptized. He was working extra hours all week to be able to have Saturday off for his baptism, so we weren't able to find him. In the morning on Saturday he went to go help out a cousin with a project in the mountains. The truck broke down and they had to walk back. It took them the majority of the day, and despite the fact we passed by his house around 10 times, he didn't make it back until very late. In church he talked to the branch president about a couple concerns that he had. We've never really talked about his family in Buenos Aires, but it seems as though it's a bigger deal than we thought. I'll keep you posted on when he finally gets baptized!

We had a successful family night! Usually very few people go, but this week we had quite a few. We played a game with a tower made of flour and you had to cut off parts without making the candy on top fall. If it fell, you had to eat it with your mouth only. It was really fun, and the investigators enjoyed it!

We got to paint! I love doing service projects! It was great to finally get a chance! The paint here is really different, but it's a lot easier because it doesn't require skill!

The Book of Mormon is awesome. While I was doing exchanges with the zone leader, he had to use the bathroom really bad. We stopped by a member's house, but there wasn't a male. We ended up inviting a guy from the street to be in the house with us! While I waited with him for my comp, we read in the Book of Mormon together. It was quite fun!

We also got to read with a less active who works as an undercover cop. Of all the parts we could have read, we read the title page. Wow! It invited the spirit so strong. The book just has power!

Right before that lesson, it started to rain quite a bit and our plans in the other side of the city had fallen through. It was in that moment when the taxi-driver brother of Pablo came by and offered us a lift! Little miracles make life really fun.

Yesterday there was a huge rainstorm. Normally we don't have issues with leaving the windows open, because the roof extends over the windows about a foot or two. This rain was almost horizontal. Totally nuts! Lots of stuff got wet. My shoes are drenched. It even made it over the top of my boots! Even so, it was really fun to just keep going around, saying hi to people in their houses. It reminded me of the quote from Joseph Smith - "The work of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent." I testify that it will. His work is our perfection and salvation. Sometimes there are trials, but if it weren't for those, God's purpose could never be accomplished. I love the gospel. I'm so grateful for a wonderful family that always supports me. I love you guys so much! I hope you all have a great week!

Landon

Libertador General San Martin (Ledesma), Salta - February 3, 2014

Hello Beloved Family!

The ward sent me the newsletter! That´s kinda fun! I couldn't read much of it, so maybe I'll print it later, but tell them thanks for me!

I used family search this week! It was weird from an Argentine perspective. Mine is really boring. It's all filled. Our converts have nothing. So we get to help them fill it! That´s really fun. Especially when their family members are members as well!

I've spent this week studing verse by verse in the first chapters of Nephi and something of Isaiah. It's really cool! Just reading in Chapter one, there´s so much packed into the first 6 verses! After studying all the cross references, I decided that there´s no way that Jospeh Smith wrote the Book of Mormon... Again. It just really is incredible the depth that the scriptures have!

Our branch president is on vacation! It's really great. He´s not working, so he's got all the time in the world to do whatever! We had a great branch council and we're currently working on helping the sisters with their visits. It's great!

I did exchanges with Elder Parada this past week for the second time on my mission. He's from Colombia, but he acts super gringo. It was so weird comparing the exchanges this time to the exchanges from a year ago. It was very different. Crazy what time can do to ya.

PABLO IS GETTING BAPTIZED! I'm just really excited about that. We went by to go with him to church and he was there waiting for us. He's also truckin' through the Isaiah chapters like a pro. I'm convinced that the difference between him and other investigators that haven't progressed as much is the reading in the Book of Mormon. Even though he admittedly doesn't understand much of it, just by reading it he knows it's true. The branch is pretty excited and so are we!

We had three investigators in church! It was kinda unexpected. Pablo came from the beginning. From there Lucila (who's awaiting the paperwork for her marriage) showed up late, even though she said that she wouldn't be able to come due to work. Lastly came Gladys - Elio's mom. I don't know if I've said much about Elio, but he's pretty close to baptism. He just has to decide to do it and realize that the church is true. Other than that he's good - keeping all the commandments and such. Fun thing about Gladys - she's never made it due to work, illness, and a million other excuses. Then, yesterday, even though Elio was sick, she showed up. She was about to go home when a 19-year-old sister said, "Hi! Come on in! Everyone's in this class back here!" She resisted, but the sister took her by the hand into the class. Yay for member missionary work!

Speaking of that, we had a fun experience of running into two references that just happened to like to play soccer with members. It's super easy to teach when the members have already paved the way.

Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful week! I love you all! Thanks for all you do for me!

Landon

Libertador General San Martin (Ledesma), Salta - January 27, 2014

Hello Family!

This week started well. We had a slow Monday where no one was home, but on the way back to the apartment, we saw a lady sweeping up, so we asked to help and she let us! Then we taught the whole family the restoration. Only to find out the next day that her brother is an inactive member that had moved from the address registered in the church! It was just a rather cool experience.

I had an interview with President Levrino. It's always cool to see how ecclesiastical leaders can give you direction and advice as if they knew everything about your situation. I love it!

I left my sombrero in the taxi up to Yuto. I was very sad. Then Elder Allan told me that we could go look for it. We just happened to be able to find the taxi driver. He told us my hat was in the back! It was a great miracle. God cares about the little things.

The Book of Mormon is great! We had a meeting about that on Tuesday, and we've been using it all week. Instead of going in and teaching lessons, we just read with them, and the lessons come on their own during the reading. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that that book and Preach my Gospel were made at the same time in the same factory. It's just hard to express how cool the change was! I love the Book of Mormon. I know it's true. I know that it fits perfectly with the Bible, and between the two of them, we have everything we could ever want to get to the celestial kingdom.

I went on exchanges with Elder Allan. He's a smart jock from Springville. It was really fun to get to know him better. Yuto is a tiny pueblito out in the middle of nowhere. Kind of a change from my other areas! The nice thing is that they have great AC up there. It was hard to come back to Ledesma.

We talked to an investigator that hasn't been able to get married because her future husband lost his job and they didn't have the cash to tie the knot. She prayed for help and found a job the next day! God answers prayers!

So yes, I finished up all my paperwork on Friday and I'm legal again! Also, I hit my one year mark since the time I came to Argentina (which is why I needed to renew my visa). I went down to Salta and saw all my MTC district (I can't believe I didn't take a picture). We went down and waited outside the migrations office for a couple hours. Then they told us that they'd lost all our paperwork and that we'd have to start over again. I was kinda scared, because when you have  to go to Salta, the work in your area starts going really slow, since that's what happens when there aren't missionaries. Luckily they found them and after six hours of waiting just to be present, they gave me a paper and told me I was done. No picture, no signature, nothing. I'm not complaining though! I also saw Ashley Hanks who went to Swing club with me down there! Always an adventure in Salta.

I had three baptismal interviews that I did this week. The first two went well, especially since the guy had overcome smoking and drinking addictions, but they ended up not being able to get married due to the crazy paperwork necessary here. The other got baptized on Saturday! It was really great, even though the kid scared me a ton when he said that he'd gone to jail before. Turns out that it wasn't because he'd done anything bad. Plus we had three investigators show up to the service! That's always great.

Anyway, I hope you all have a great week!

Landon

Libertador General San Martin (Ledesma), Salta - January 20, 2014

Hello Dearest Family!

So something that was different this week - I ate Trix almost every morning. It was delicious. Argentina is a little behind in its development in some areas, but their Trix are really good. The classic kind with the shapes. Yum!

I went to Salta... again. And I'm going back this next week... again. I can't imagine being the missionary in charge of paperwork for this mission. We went and stood in line for an hour and a half while they reviewed our paperwork and visa, then they gave us something that had to be paid in the bank, and told us to come back tomorrow. The problem is that we had to go back to our respective areas, so I´ll be heading back Tuesday or Friday to stand there while they do more paperwork.

Nora went to church! Nora is a lady who works kinda like a maid in the house of the brach president. We've been teaching her for who knows how long, but she's never gone to church. We tried a lot of different things, but nothing worked. We tried just dropping her, but the branch president told us that we couldn't. So this week we called her Sunday in the morning and told her to go. And she went. I love missionary work in the 21st century! And having a phone.

I heard the first good excuse for not going to church. We met a lady that a former branch president told us used to be super active. We went by, and found out that she stopped going to church because a motorcycle ran her over and left her with mild amnesia and brain damage. She was never home because she was in the hospital, and when she finally got out, she was living with her very Catholic parents who were taking care of her. Because of that, the members couldn't visit her (they didn't know where her parents lived), and her parents started taking her to the Catholic church again in her wheelchair. It was interesting to visit her. Elder Burr's dad is a neural sergeon, so he knows something about brain damage. It's like she has her testimony in there, but she doesn't like thinking about it because there are so many parts missing. Even so, lots of time has passed now, and it'll be interesting to see what happens as we continue going by.

I learned something cool this week. It's always bugged me that Paul talks about how it's better not to be married in his opinion. That goes against gospel principles. Then someone told me that he was married. According to the Bible, he was part of the Sanhedrin, and a requirement to be on that is to be married. So when he talked about how it's better to be single, he was talking to the widows and widowers about his personal feelings of his own condition. Always cool to see how whatever doubt you have about the gospel will be resolved with enough patience, scripture study, and conversation with smart people.

Our star investigator that went to church last week has an evil step mother. His evil step brothers tried breaking into his house on Saturday, claiming that they were the rightful owners and stuff like that, and it resulted in a fight, in which his stepmother beat him with a stick. He doesn't look very beat-up - I think he got the better of them - but it left him a little preocupied and he didn't make it to church. Even so, he's really committed to his baptismal date, and I'm really thinking that he'll make it, despite the fact that Satan always turns up the heat when you get close.

I got a Christmas card from the bishop! He's really cool. I was thinking the other day of all the great bishops that I've had in my life. There are so many people here who leave the church because they don't know how to get along, the leadership is still learning, and lots of little things happen to the point where they start letting it affect their relationship with God and His church. It just makes me happy that my leadership has always strengthened my testimony instead of making me quesiton it.

Last little miracle for the week! We went to go visit a less active because his active daughter was here visiting him, and we figured we'd take advantage of the opportunity. On our way, we saw his daughter talking to a friend. Turns out that the friend is a less active lady that went to church about 6 weeks ago with her boyfriend, who she wanted to introduce to the church. We tried to find that house so many times, but we could never find it due to falty directions and the fact that everyone knows the streets by nicknames. And now we found it a month and a half later! When God wants you to hear the gospel, you can't get away from it!

Anyway, I hope you guys have a great week!

Landon

Libertador General San Martin (Ledesma), Salta - January 13, 2014

Hello family!

One of my favorite quotes from Elder Holland's Thanksgiving talk from the MTC (Which can be found in the December Liahona - it was given for the first time like 20 years ago) was "I hate it when missionaries say that they're going to go home and return to real life. Well guess what? This IS real life! Your life won't get any more real than this. The life you left behind was your fake life." Ya gotta love Elder Holland!

So I went to Salta this week to do paperwork, and I'll have to go back tomorrow to finish up the rest of the paperwork. Woohoo for paperwork! It was fun to see a bunch of guys from my group that came with me. Plus we now have a cell phone! I no longer have to use crappy phone cabins! It's wonderful.

I found a bread store that sold doughnuts. Still not quite US quality, but better than the ones I found in Tucuman!

We had a cool miracle Tuesday. We were trying to get all the details worked out for the Salta trip in the morning, which is always fun without a phone. We lost a lot of time there. We also weren't going to have much time in the evening because I was on a bus for around 3-4 hours. During that hour or two that we had to work, all of our plans and appointments fell through. We decided to swing by the house of converts that were almost never home. And guess what? They were home! Including one of the converts that had moved to a nearby city without missionaries! It was a great thing to talk to them and try to rekindle a little their testimonies.

I found a baby scorpion on my pants. Not dangerous at all, but kinda cool!

So on buses it's really hard to avoid the movies. They turn them up really loud, so you can't sleep, and they turn out all the lights, so you can't read. The landscape is all the same, so you always end up catching something of the movie. But I was able to notice something really cool! In the two movies they played (one called Jump the Broom and another I remember seeing commercials for - Killers) the characters got married! It was kinda cool to see that in Hollywood the Law of Chastity isn't completely dead!

This past week we had something of a bug going around. Nothing bad, but longer bathroom visits for all of us. So of course our neighbor decided to give us a TON of chocolate cake. It was delicious! And the pieces she served were huge! But it made for an interesting day to be sure.

We stopped by unplanned to visit a Sister that used to be really active a few years ago. The last time I swung by she said that she didn't like the people in the ward, and that she was going to move to Salta soon anyway. This time we swung by again and we got a little deeper into the reason she went inactive. After serving her mission, she came back and worked a lot in the church. She made some sacrifices to be able to fulfill her calling and things like that. As the years went by she had relationship problems and issues with studies, and in the end, she decided that the blessings that she was promised on her mission never came. It just made me realize that no matter how much good we do and how much dedication we put in our service to the Lord, we won't always be blessed immediately. In fact, we may recieve trials instead of the imagined blessings. But something I know is that no matter what comes, God will fulfill his promises. Sometimes we'll have to put in practice our patience, but the blessings come. It was nice to feel the Spirit testify to all of us there when we talked about that of the truth of that prinicple.

Right after that we went to a guy who has a testimony, wants to join the church, but doesn't want to leave his girlfriend. It was amazing to see how Elder Burr was able to use one of his past experiences to help him see the importance of putting the Lord first. It's just a nice reminder that where we are assigned in the mission and the people we talk to aren't things of chance, rather that all is divinely orchestrated so that our Heavenly Father can use the experiences we've had to serve his other children.

It rained again really hard! Luckily it was Saturday, so it didn't affect church. We walked out of lunch and somebody up there must love us, because a taxi passed by shortly just before the rain picked up. Plus I used my boots for the first time. I felt awesome, like I could step on anything.

I love the little miracles! We left in the evening Friday and it was really hot. We went to contact a reference and he said, "You guys look really hot. Have some free bottled water!" God is good.

Pablo went to church! Pablo is a really cool investigator that we've been teaching since my first day here. He's been completing every commitment, except for church attendance. Everytime it was a different excuse, and there were a couple times when I was on the point of giving up, but yesterday he went!

Argentine Political Correctness

I had a surprise talk on Sunday! Our branch president has gotten into the habit of telling the missionaries during Sunday School that they're going to talk. I ended up talking about home teaching, using a little of President Monson's talk, but I think what really got the members' attention was when I talked about my own home teacher and how cool he is. I told them that for my birthday, I received a letter from Russell, which he would have had to have sent two months before. It really is a pretty inspiring example of the dedication of a home teacher. He really is a really awesome guy. What's he up to these days?

Anyway, I hope everything's great back there. How's the cold? Everyone's asking me if my family´s dying in -50 degree temperatures. Looking forward to hearing from you next week!

Libertador General San Martin (Ledesma), Salta - January 6, 2014

Hello Dearest Family!

That´s really nuts about Brother Merritt. I wish I could have been there to hear Sister Merritt´s testimony. Home teaching in Utah´s weird. Here it´s basically trying to rekindle testimonies and help people to understand that they have to act upon what they know. I feel like my experience was more training the Aaronic priesthood holder on how to do visits while the older, more experienced people teach him all kinds of great doctrine. As for New Years, it really is kinda pointless, but it´s fun to have time to think about how the last year went and what things you want to do differently in the following year. It´s always a good time for goal setting, or "planning life with purpose," like President Monson said.

Elders Burr and Willey

Anyway, so Elder Burr is a musically inclined medical student at the U, but lived half his life in Washington. He also has 10 months on the mission. It´s really different being with someone that already has time on the mission. In a good way. I feel like there´s someone there to compensate for my mistakes and take the lead when I don´t know what to do. It´s really nice.

New Year´s was lame. People here lit off fireworks, but not as much as Christmas. I was able to sleep pretty well. Just another excuse to get drunk.

So I really wish I could just help people to understand that they need to forget the other people and just go to church! It really drives me nuts when we ask people why they stopped going and they say "It´s that, I know this member of the church that did such a thing, and I can´t go to a church with people like that." When I ask them if they´ve seen Elder Uchtdorf´s talk, they always say no. If you have any doubts as to whether or not prophets and apostles know what´s going on in the world, throw them out. I swear, the members unknowingly quote him almost word for word sometimes. That´s when it´s fun to quote the rest of the talk and help them to understand that our personal relation with God through the sacrament has nothing to do with the fact that we are all hypocrites. Doctrine rocks.

Cool miriacle! We have lunch every day, but every once in a while a member forgets or has an emergency and stuff like that. So Wednesday, our lunch fell through. We went to go buy something to cook up when a member we met a week ago from Cordoba that´s here visiting his aunt yelled at us from his house. We went over to chat and he invited us in... for asado! Which is really delicious always. Elder Burr and I looked at each other and decided that God loves us.

Speaking of asado, we had a great branch New Years activity with an asado. They´re always so delicious...

I´ve been continuing with dog problems this week. Two decided that my leg would be a good place to do their business this past week. One of the joys of missionary work!

There was a testimony that the words of Bill Clinton and his book are true. I thought I heard wrong, but I verified it with the other elders when we got home. It was worth a good laugh.

I got to teach young men´s! It was quite a cool experience. It was spur of the moment, and I had nothing prepared, but the new manuals are really cool! I just wish I´d have had time to look for the talks and other resources it refers you to. It was especially cool because we had an investigator in the class. The lesson was like a training from Preach my Gospel, but in Young Mens! How cool is that!? Modern curriculum rocks.

So another cool situation from the week. We were teaching Elio, who´s gone to church a couple times now and is a sometimes athiest, and his mom had a question about whether or not baptism had to be done in a river. We started talking about the symbolism of baptism and how the running water wasn´t important, rather the covenant, when Elder Burr started talking about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. I was thrown off for a bit, but in a short while I realized how strong the spirit was, and the words of President Benson(?) came to my mind - The only doubt the investigator has to resolve is if the Book of Mormon is true and if Joseph Smith was a prophet. Everything else falls into place if we know that. It´s nice having Elder Burr here in the area to give a new perspective, and try new things, and it´s fun seeing how our talents and mesh and complement one another. I´m so grateful for the restoration of the gospel, and that with that restored knowledge, we can grow closer to our Father in Heaven, and understand better the atonement of His Son.

I love all you guys a ton! Have a great week!

Libertador General San Martin (Ledesma), Salta - December 30,2013

Hello Family!

I´m gonna see how much of this stuff from the past two weeks I can fit in in the time I have.

My last time with Elder Whittier

So first off, there were transfers today. I´m going to be passing New Years with my new companion, Elder Burr from Spokane, Washington. Elder Whittier headed off to San Salvador, close to where I started. Elder Jara, one of the other elders in our apartment, finished his mission, so yet another elder from the district of Elder Whittier and Elder Lyman came to replace him. It´ll be a fun transfer! And probably one of the hottest times I´ll ever pass in my life. I think it hit 110 or 120 this past week.

Cool minimiracle. Two weeks ago I forgot my notebook with all my studies and notes from meetings and stuff in the cyber. Later that day we thought about going to send a package to Elder Whittier´s family, but weren´t sure about it. We decided to go for it last minute, so we went back to the cyber cafe to get his address. And they returned my notebook! We ended up not being able to send the package, but had we not gone back to the cyber, who knows where my notes would be now?

I did divisions with Elder Fuentes, a cello-playing Chileno up in a place called Embarcacion. We did service moving the walls of a house. It was really hot up there. But it was really fun to get to know the elders up there while doing service!

Going back from exchanges there was some confusion, so we ended up having to take a taxi for two hours. It ended up being kind of expensive, and no one had money. I ended up being able to use a bill that I´d been keeping as a souveneir (It´s a special edition Eva Peron - you could probably google it). It was sad, but had I not thought to bring it, we would have been in a bad situation, since none of the ATMs were working that morning. Thinking back on it, it very well could have been a spiritual impression.

Haha! So I did an interview with a little girl with 8 years. During the interview, she said yes to everything. When I asked her why she believed that Joseph Smith was a prophet, she looked at me and said in a very matter-of-fact way "Because they teach me about him in church, and when I go to church, I feel good and happy." It was just really cool hearing that kind of conviction and testimony coming from an unusually short 8-year-old. Who needs all kinds of classes, knowledge, and miracles when you have a spiritual witness like that?

We had a really cool moment with the family of some converts - Family Balbino. Only two of their kids got baptized, and have since stopped coming, but there´s a lot of issues with their older son and the dad. The mom was almost in tears, so we decided to change the lesson plan to family prayer. Wow. It´s amazing the peace and tranquility that can enter a home with so many problems when the members of the family just kneel down and pray.

On a less spiritual note, we had the Christmas devotional. The first half was mostly fun - they gave us all toasters and blenders, and Elder Jara played the part of a wise man, since they give the presents here, not Santa (Even though they generally don´t come until the 6th of January). The rest of it was a lesson on faith. Kind of a cool Christmas celebration!

We did a service project where we took stuff to the "dump." I´m glad to be an American, where our dumps aren´t river beds where they take all the trash and throw matches in periodically. And where they don´t teach all the recently baptized Mormon kids to be Catholic in school. It´s the little things that make a country great.

Christmas is celebrated terribly here. Lots of drinking and cumbia - the music here that consists of... it´s like... rap mixed with electronic dance clubbing music and a Mexican mariachi? All night long. Then carrying virgins with really loud drums in parades at 1 in the morning. What better way to remember the Savior´s birth, right? Happy to be a Mormon!

We met an athiest this past week. He was interesting, but one of the things he said that I loved was that people don´t recognize the miracles that there are today. It reminded me a lot of 4 Nephi, when the people marvelled less and less at the signs and wonders. He said, "For some people, it could be a miracle that you guys can stand here peacefully talking to me about Jesus while I try my best to get rid of you and convince you that I don´t want to talk. Or it could be a miracle that a family is unified." It was just interesting to think about all the miracles that are almost commonplace, but even so, are great blessings from God!

I wanted to ask on Skype, but forgot. How are the missionaries in the ward / stake?

Elder Whittier always pet cats when we saw them. In one lesson with members the grandma of the member came, asked to take the cat from my comp, then threw it out in the street. Nothing like a senile, cat-hating grandma to interrupt your lesson on reading the scriptures daily!

I have not been getting along with dogs this week. One bit me and another bit my suit jacket and tore it a bit. Oh well. Life goes on!

I used the Christmas Cards you guys sent me in Oregon! I sent them to my conversos... converts with the translation of the quote up above. It was great! Thanks mom and Cait for thinking to send them!

J dubs came to our door! It was really fun! I asked them what was different about their church than the others. The idea of the trinity being three, no worshiping idols, world wide church, etc. Yup. We have all that. They left us with some pamphlets. I was disappointed. They ask lots of questions, but I couldn´t find the answers anywhere! Where did we come from? God created Adam and Eve! Where do we go? Some people go to live with God and the rest stay here. When was Christ born? Not December! I compared it to the answers in our pamphlets and was again, grateful to be Mormon.

Wow. I had lots to say. Hope everything goes well this week! Love you guys!

Landon