Phew!

Hey!

Wow sounds like everyone had way cool weeks this week! I'm glad you are all having fun and being awesome!

This week has been way super busy, but way good at the same time. We had transfers this week...and guess who is training the new financial secretary!!! So this should be my last transfer in the office, I'll be out of here as soon as Elder Trelease more or less knows what he's doing in here. This transfer ends the week before Christmas, so that should be when I leave, unless something weird happens.

But yeah this week has been way crazy. I think getting to see how my new comp and how the new secretary have responded to being in the office the last couple days, its showed the rest of the office staff really just how much we've adjusted to being here and how different it is from the field. Its been a mentally exhausting week for all of us, but the 2 new office elders are just dead after these couple days. But we managed to get it all done!! Last night we were still making phone calls at like 11pm and we had to wake up today at 5:30 trying to make sure everything went smoothly for the meeting. Haha needless to say, when we were finally the only missionaries left at the chapel after the meeting, we all just felt a big load get taken off of our shoulders. But it amazes us how much the President must trust us. He left us completely in charge of getting all 250 missionaries to the meeting from all 3 provinces of the mission, renting 3 double-decker buses, renting 2 hotels, and buying like $5,000 USD worth of food for all the stuff that happened. But hey, it all got done! And the meeting today was a great way to cap off the week! Elder Christofferson was way funny and it was way good. His spanish is amazing!

Francisco is still doing good. And we have an appointment tonight with a guy named Mario who is kind of a miracle reference. Long story short, one of the sister missionaries met him like 11 months ago in a different province and just found out that he lives in our area. So she set up an appointment for us to meet him tonight at the church, so hopefully that goes well!

So verse of the week comes from John 8:29. Its pretty self-explanatory, but it came up like 5 times in our meeting today with Elder Christofferson, and I like the self-applications we can make. Could you imagine if we could honestly say of ourselves what Christ said of Himself in that verse?

Anyway, I hope you have a great week!

Elder Webster

Tattoos, Birthdays, and Other Stuff

Hola,

Haha I'm glad to hear everything is going good up there. Hopefully your lesson with the missionaries and the investigator goes great again! Keep being super awesome examples!

This week was pretty busy. Haha I'm not even really sure what we did that made it so busy, it was just...busy. President has been doing his interviews with everyone here at the office, so there's been a ton of people coming in and out of the office this week. Plus it was the mission president's wife's birthday and the mission nurse's birthday, so we celebrated both of those. The days really just kind of blend together here in the office though.

We didn't get to go out to our area very much this week unfortunately. We got to go contact an interesting reference, so that was cool. She has a tattoo place in her house, and when we got there the door was open and she was inside giving someone a tattoo. She talked to us for a little bit and was way nice, but said that the mornings are the best time to find her...which is cool that she's willing to let us come back, but we can't go out in the mornings, so we had to pass the reference off to the sisters that share our ward. We also ended up passing Valentin and Franco off to the sisters also (2 of the kids from the plaza). And then last night I went on a 2 or 3 hour "exchange" with one of the assistants because they had a service activity but one of them had to be at the office, so that was pretty fun. I went with Elder Rainock. He's been way fun to get to know here in the office. We've been talking a lot more this transfer, especially since he found out he got accepted to BYU. Haha pretty much everyone in the office isn't really what you'd expect.

Well, as a verse of the week this week, I was thinking of something I read in D&C 107:30-31. The whole section 107 pretty much talks about the organization of the church, and verses 30 and 31 explain a little about how a church group should make decisions, and then goes on to give a promise to those that make decisions in that way. I was just thinking about how our lives might be different if we made all of our personal decisions with those things in mind. It says that decisions should be made with humility of heart, meekness, faith, virtue, knowledge, patience, and charity (to name a few). I can honestly say that not all my decisions are as strongly based on those characteristics as they should be. It reminds me of the conference talk from a few weeks ago when we were told to ask ourselves if the things that we do will make us better people, or not. Food for thought I guess.

Anyway, I hope everything is going great. Mom and Dad, I hope your busy jobs/activities are going well and that you still have plenty of time to do good fun stuff. I hope you all have another good week and a happy halloween!

 Elder Webster

Dead cockroaches from my shower..

A cool band that we saw in Centro

The wonders of Argentine construction

Buying stuff for meetings next week

More graffiti for the Tomba soccer team...cuz they're cool...almost as cool as River

Visit to Rodeo del Medio

Hey!

Sounds like everyone is keeping pretty busy this week! I hope you're all doing well and just as awesome as ever! And shout-out to Hailey for the letter, that was awesome!

This week was pretty good, pretty busy. We had to send home 2 elders on Tuesday, so that was sort of sad. It was a pretty weird situation. Plus, the president basically has the mentality of "if you don't want to be here, I don't want you here". Which honestly, is pretty awesome. But now that people are starting to figure that out... it seems like every week 1 or 2 missionaries comes up with a new "medical problem" that no one can solve. Anyway, on monday, my comp and I had gone out to our area to work, but, as always, the office has a way of not letting you go. We got a call from the APs asking us to drive out to San Martin to pick up the suitcases of one of the missionaries that was going home, so we ended up doing that. But the good news is that the drive to San Martin goes right by Rodeo del Medio...and the Gutierrez family literally lives on the freeway...so we got to stop there for like 10 minutes on the way back!! It was way awesome getting to see them again! The mom started crying when she saw me through the window, and none of really new what to say, so it was just a sort of awkward, happy silence sitting around there table for a couple minutes. I found out that Patricia now has 3 callings! And that Carolina and Jorge are now regularly attending church and area still thinking about baptism! Haha it was so great getting to talk to them for a second.

We also got to go find the houses of 2 of the teenagers that we've been teaching in the plaza. Neither of them were at home when we went to their houses, but we met a couple other people at their house and they all seemed really nice. We've got an appointment for monday with Valentin´s family, so hopefully that goes through. They technically live in the sister's area, so we're going to all go over there and have a lesson/pass them off to the sisters. Hopefully everything works out.

So, verse of the week. 3 Nephi 13:19-24. Its kind of a confusing explanation, but basically, when I thought about those verses, the "formula" came into my head of master-->goals-->thoughts-->actions. I came up with like 5 versions of that formula, but they're all pretty much the same. Basically, the scriptures said that your options are either to serve God or to serve the natural man. Who you want to serve will change your goals, which will direct your thoughts, which will lead to your actions. But the more I thought about it, I realized that the formula isn't so much cause-and-effect, because it works in reverse as well. Really, changing any of them changes the rest of them, over time. I guess its not so much a formula, as it is just a bunch of inter-related thingys (thats a mathematical term...duh). If you want to change your "master", you can start by changing your actions. By changing your actions enough, your thoughts and goals begin to change with them. And before you know it, you're dedicated to serving someone else. I guess that might be way He wants us to be "anxiously engaged" in good causes of our own free will (D&C 58:27). Of course, none of it is possible by ourselves, so Christ's atonement serves almost as a catalyst. (haha I miss school). You could also include things like "surroundings", "peers", and a lot of other things into the formula. Like I said...its kind of hard to explain how I got that out of those verses but...yeah.

Anyway, I hope you're all doing great! I hope the lesson that you have planned with the missionaries and the investigator goes super well! Have a fun week!

Elder Webster

Dad asked for pictures. I don't really haven any pics from this week, but I just looked through my flash drive for some random pics, because I know I haven't sent you all of them. I'm not really sure if I've sent these before on not though, I can't remember.

"Esto es CDGCAT Barrio"-- the Tomba soccer team stadium is in our area/at the edge. Its kind of known for being a ghetto team...so we don't really go over there much. But like last year Tomba made it into League A, which means I think they are officially on the new FIFA videogames, along with River and Boca. Fun fact

Other pic of the area near the stadium

Mate cups. We aren't allowed to drink mate as missionaries, just because its a social thing that people will do for hours and its kind of a waste of time...but I'll probably try to bring some back...because its way good (with lots of sugar) (Presidente Ávila made some for us on our last pday with him)

The last pic is from back in Rodeo del Medio, in the spring time here. I kind of hate that picture...which is why I figure I probably didn't send it to you.

Daily Revelation...

Hey ¿cómo estáis? haha

Haha sounds like you've all been doing pretty good this week. Glad to hear that nobody died. I wasn't really expecting anyone to die, but hey, all the more reason for me to be grateful it didn't happen. Unexpected deaths are the worst. So anyway...

Pretty good week this week. Any week that includes general conference is pretty much bound to awesome. We watched it all on a projector here at the offices. I've watched conference before while looking for guidance or answers, but this was the first time I've really taken time to think about and write down some of the questions I wanted answered, so that was a pretty good experience. I've noticed that the notes you take during conference say a lot about you...I've compared small bits of notes with other missionaries after other conferences, and sometimes it looks like we weren't even listening to the same talk. So it was kind of interesting to go back and look at my notes this time and think about what they say about the types of things I've been thinking about and the kind of guidance I need. Interesting.

As far as other stuff this week... the offices had their interviews with president on monday, so that was cool. It was a little weird, just because I remember that before I came to the offices, the only time we ever talked to president was during interviews, but now I text him/talk to him all the time. Haha my interview was literally like 3-4 minutes long, and all we talked about was about whether or not I'll be training my replacement next transfer and what kind of skills he might need. So...hopefully I train a new financiero next transfer! Haha he asked me how I would feel if I had to stay 5 transfers instead of 4, and I told him I would do it if I had to...but he laughed and caught that I would only do it if I "had" to....which is totally true.

Besides that, nothing too exciting. Paid a lot of rent money and bills this week. Hahaha I accidentally got the electricity of the sisters we share a ward with cut off because I put their bill in the wrong pile and didn't pay it in time. They called me and apologized a bunch because they thought it was their fault for not getting me the bill in time...but...I ended up having to call them later to apologize when I found out what really happened. So...that was different.

Well, as a verse of the week, I was thinking about Helaman 11:23. During Conference, it seemed to me like a lot of people talked about receiving revelation. The thing that caught my attention in this verse is that is says that they were receiving many revelations daily. It made me wonder about what exactly they were receiving revelations about...? Or, if I had many revelations every day, what kind of guidance would Heavenly Father give me? Obviously, personal revelation is personal. But if we've been commanded to pray always, and God always answers prayers, it seems logical that we should always be able to receive communication from Him. I don't know, the scripture just made me think that maybe we miss out on a lot of opportunities to receive revelation just because we realize they are opportunities. Kinda cool.

Well, I hope you all have a great week! Keep being awesome!!

Elder Webster