Ay Ay Ay, POR FAVOR NO MORE!!

Well the 1st pday of the mission, what do we do!! We played soccer!! Oh my gosh I stink super bad!! It was terrible. Of course when you’re living amongst the latinos of course your going to play soccer, but I was like oh no jose!! But I played none the less with my zone! Elder McDermont and I are the Gringos in the zone so all the latinos had a good laugh at us trying to play!! Our pdays are pretty cool and relaxed! We have a day of actually regular living! The President even lets us watch Disney movies for pday, so that’s pretty cool I thought! I believe next week we are going to watch toy story 3!!! Disney is basically religion I guess!!


Well this area definitely different. My 1st 3 days or so here were a rough change but I’m loving it here now. I think I am the happiest that I’ve been in the mission here because I really have to lose myself in the work! When you come to a dead area you have to just dive into it a go for it and be courageous! The Lord has blessed us this week tremendously with the work and is blessing us for our diligence. When I got here there were only 3 investigators, or families that we are teaching. Last week we picked up 2 more and this week we picked up 5 more! It was excellent! 2 people this week stopped us the street and we like, hey I was talking with the missionaries for a while and for some reason they stopped visiting me! We were like, well we will visit you then haha! Also there are 2 girls that are attending the branch that we cover. Apparently these 2 girls have been attending the church for almost 6 months and missionaries never visited them. I asked my comp, why wont you visit them, he said that they live in Tintal, it a ward that is very far and she can only in the weekends! I was like perfect, we will visit these young daughters of God this week. So we did and this upcoming weekend we will put baptismal dates with both of them!! Also we put another date with another joven in the ward and we are going to try to put another date with a couple that we are teaching! So the goal for this transfer is 5 baptisms!!! So this will be a month of Baptisms!! We will have 5 baptisms here in Patio Bonito and I get to go to the 4 baptisms of my converts in Villa Sonia this month too!!! So this will be excellent!!! I am stoked!!


A little bit a bout the area here. Its poor, its dirt poor, literally! I’m going into huts and all! My comp doesn’t like when we go to the poorer parts of the town, but I find them very humbling and they listen to us, but we have to be careful in this area, but don’t worry, the Lord protects his missionaries. So its all good, but I believe that I wont be sending too many pics from this area. I don’t like to carry my camera with me here! There’s a part in my area where the houses are made of tin, or tarps, it ridiculous! But they people are very humble. A Lot of the people here don’t have the best hygiene in the world, we teach alot of people that don’t have teach, or have metal teeth. There’s one guy that shoved a metal thingy in his mouth to make himself a tooth, it was like, ok, if that’s what you need to do to make a tooth, ok then! I gave 2 talks this week in sacrament meeting!! One talk in the Ward and the other in Branch! So that was a great thing!!! I had a wonderful impression this week about the missionary work here! The Branch here really wants to become a ward. When we visit the members of the branch we do a lesson on sharing the gospel and how every member is a missionary. Then this thought came to me - what if every year every family in the church would bring one friend to church and let the missionaries teach this investigator in there homes, think of how fast this branch could become a ward. This has motivated the members of this branch tremendously and yesterday we had 4 referencias at church yesterday of people we’ve never met before but members brought them to church oh how great!!!!


My comp and I are working hard, but my comp has a strong desire to teach that at times he doesn’t like to follow the rules of entering houses with only girls! It is so frustrating when he enters and is sitting down and all and I’m sitting outside the door, telling him to come!! But we are doing better in this aspect. But we definitely are working hard. We walk a lot more in this area!!!


Last night I got a call from Elder V and his new Gringo comp. Elder Fifield!! Elder Fifield is going through the same thing that I went through my 1st 2 weeks in the field. You have a testimony and you want to share it with the world, but you don’t speak Spanish!! and when you have a comp that’s a bit down, that just got dear Johnned and is Argentinan, its a bit rough. So he called me and we had a wonderful chat. I’m glad that I’m not the only person that went through this trauma, its apparently a gringo thing haha!!


And now for the bad news!! Elder Fugua, my comp from the MTC, we both have been struggling since they have taken the JIF out of the stores here!! We cant find it anywhere!! We are thinking of picketing or something! haha!! But this week we have a mulitzona conferencia, and Pres Casablanca told me that he is expecting a shipment of peanut butter that he ordered for all of the Gringos!! Oh what a blessing that will be!! hurray!!!
I’m stoked to here that finally Jess Farley is Getting married!! What a relief!! She is getting really old and I was thinking that she would never get married!! haha!!!! Ah what great news this is!!! My comp and I love talking about our friends that have lovers in their lives!! haha! Congrats to the good ol Jess Farley!!!!!!!!!!! Ya I heard about the Earthquake, but not much and what’s with this rioting in Wisconisn. I haven’t heard about this yet. They don’t have the good ol Glenn Beck here to give me the load down on all of the worldly news!! haha!!


But all is well here in Patio Bonito! We are working hard and being creative to find new people to teach! The Lord blesses his servants and I am super excited and happy that I am an instrument in the Lord hands!!
Elder Hammer!!!