Christmas in July? Cold Enough...

Dear Everyone,

I write to you all from the very cold and very wet country of Argentina once again. This past week has been anything but warm. We have been flirting with 0 degrees celcius and a lot of humidity. Oh, how I just love Argentina in the winter. Beside the cold, this past week has been really crazy.

To start off, last Tuesday we had a surprise meeting with the whole mission. Apparently the church is going to change Preach My Gospel and add or only have (I can’t remember which it was) 8 chapters. Now I don’t know yet whether that will complicate things or make things easier. I assume it would make them easier or else they wouldn’t bring them out. They are teaching us the new system of everything now but it won’t take into effect until next May. Sounds like a long time away but mind you, I will almost be done with my mission at that time. But the new lessons that they showed us are a lot better in my opinion. The new lessons use the spirit a lot more. Kinda like how Preach My Gospel changed the recited lessons to free speaking lessons, well we are now changing it to make each lesson more of a spiritual experience for the investigators.

I don’t know if that made sense because we are supposed to do that anyway but I am losing my ability to explain things in English. Since I live in a pench of 4 English speakers, we all speak English. I think if anyone from the states heard our conversations, they would think that we were speaking another language. And we are speaking another language. It’s called spanglish or castiyankee. They are interchangeable. It is the language spoken by most missionaries from the United States and even some Latinos who know English. Jaja. That was my funny moment of the day. That is what we did Tuesday.

Wednesday, my companion and I went back to Ramos Mejía to do the paper work for my comp so he isn’t illegal. So while him and a bunch of other people his age went, I went with Elder Packer and we did some work in Ramos Mejía. Elder Packer is one of the funnest missionaries ever. He is from Rexburg and a Madison High football player. Nicest and funniest guy I have met on the mission. He is trying to convince me to go to BYU-I with him when we finish our mission. (Our branch president just came in to the ciber and just said hello to me. That was weird lol) He has the same time as me. We went into the MTC at the same time. So we did that all day Wednesday.

We are already at Thursday and we still haven’t worked in our area so we are lacking in the datos department, but we made up pretty well. We have a couple of new bolivians that we are teaching that just came from bolivia. So we are now up to 4+ bolivians that we are teaching. We are teaching Jorge, Robert, Andres, and I forgot the last one. Jorge is the closest to being baptized. He believes that everything is true but he wants to wait until he knows more. We have told him that we doesn’t have to wait to know everything and that we need to do some things on faith. And then that got me thinking, why do I do a lot of the things in the church that I do? Habit, puede ser, but I think we as members of the church have a knowledge of a lot of things the world doesn’t know. We should have the faith that we know that everything is what the Lord wants. Our way never seems to be more rewarding. The Lord is always looking to reward us for our patience and long suffering. I always remember President Uchdorf’s talk on patience during last conference whenever I am feeling a bit frustrated in my life. All of us get frustrated and a little hot tempered but that's where we need to learn autocontrol.

Sunday, it rained a whole lot. A lot more than normal. The past two Sundays we have had above 130 people in church and that is way above average for being winter. This Sunday, we had a grand total of 29 people in church. We dropped 100 people at church. Unbelievable no? And two of them were our investigators. It was a sad day. And half of the electricity in the chapel didn’t work so we didn’t have a functioning piano. So you can imagine the singing that went on for sacrament meeting. And that’s how my week was.

Thank you Mom and Dad for writing this week. Also Cui Cui and Grandpa and Abuelita for sending your love. Te amo muchísimo. Gracias por tu apoyo. Estoy divirtiéndome acá en Argentina. Estoy emocionado que ustedes van a venir próximo mes. Ustedes pueden pasar por personas que yo conozco si quieren. Bueno, Gracias a todos por sus oraciones por mi y los otros misioneros. Les amo mucho.



Elder Pickett