November 7th, 2015

Hey!

Things were a little stressful this week because Elder Maldonado left and so I am here with Elder Lowe to train him and be district leader. I basically had to plan and think of everything by myself so I was a little worried about how it would turn out. Usually new elders in the offices get a period of 2 transfers to get trained but I only got one so....... yeah. It´s been going good even though I forgot to do a few things but in the end everything works out! We are in the Lord´s service so one way or another if we are trying to do the right thing, everything works out. That´s cool that Hannah and Cassidy are running the Ragnar again. I guess that is helping out a lot for Cassidy in Cross Country because what Dad has said is that she is dropping her times down by minutes! That´s so great! Speaking of exercise, in the missionary Handbook it says that we have to do 30 minutes of exercise in the morning when we get up. So my comp and I have put an unofficial schedule together in that almost every other day we go out and run (Elder Lowe is also a Cross Country runner) and the other days I do upper body work outs with push ups, pull ups and weights. So I try to get in a little bit of exercise. Then the on p-days we play soccer or basketball.


This week we also had the Mission Tour with Elder Spitale who is an area seventy. The meeting was actually kind of laid back. It was Elder Spitale´s first time doing a Mission Tour so he wasn´t too sure of what to do but he gave a good message along with his wife and Pres. and Sis. Thurgood. They talked a lot about goals and baptising and getting our focus back on that and bringing people unto Christ. They also focused on finding new investigators and how that feeds into everything else we do. They also stressed again on the urgency of the work and that we should feel the spirit of urgency because our time is short as missionaries and the second coming is very close. So we just gotta go out there and Find, Teach, Baptise, Retain, and Reactivate. Speaking of that, our investigator family, the Sanchez family, went to church on Sunday! The main reason was to say goodbye to Elder Maldonado for the last time but they really liked it. The dad, mom and their 14 year old daughter showed up to Sacrament Meeting a little late and then left after the 1st class because Sister Sanchez had to go to work and then their 22 year old son showed up halfway through the last class with his girlfriend. It was great and I wasn´t expecting that. They also really enjoyed their time in church. It´s great to have sister missionaries in the ward because they took care of the girlfriend in Relief Society and we worried about the son in Elders quorum. ha ha ha ha!


One thing interesting that I noticed when I studied a little bit about the Exodus of the Israelites was that Pharaoh was given the chance to let the Israelites leave many times but every time God Hardened Pharaoh´s heart so that he wouldn´t let them go. And so the people suffered a lot but everything happened for one reason: to show the Israelites that God was their liberator. If the Pharaoh had let them go the first time, the Israelites would have said that the Pharaoh let them go. But God wanted his chosen people to recognize him as the one that always watched over them and cared for them because they were a little slow to remember those things. Just thought I´d share that with you.


We also did splits with the other office elders and we went to the capital of Buenos Aires to drop off some stuff at the area offices (office privileges) and I took pictures and everything but I forgot my camera again... :( I´ll send them next week


Have a great week!


Elder Giles