Whats happening?!?!?!
Hows it going? First, please send us snow. This week was soooo hot. It was 36 degrees Celsius, I don´t know what that is in Farenheit, probably like 150ish. I almost melted. I was super tired this week, but I´m still excited and learning a ton.
So this week I probably learned more about baptizing than any other week in my life. First, we had our zone conference this week. Elder Aidukaitis from the first quorum of the seventy and the area presidency of South America, went to all the zone conferences with president Argyle, including to the south. Anyway, he´s from Brazil and super tall and has a really Brazilian accent when he speaks Spanish (but he speaks English almost perfectly haha). So in this intense Brazilian accent, he taught us how he baptized on his mission. He would make a list of persons to invite to a persons baptism, pass by their house, invite them, teach them, baptize them, and then do the same thing with them. Its like a ripple effect. He shared some crazy awesome success stories from his mission and told us that he baptized every week without missing one when he started doing this. Anyway, he´s a fanatic about baptizing and way cool. He lives in Bel Grano, Buenos Aires, which is in our mission, and Elder Coria served in that area. He told me that he used to eat with Elder Aidukaitis every week and got taught like that every week! Anyway, it was way cool. He also taught how its not about just baptizing people to say you baptized, but its about saving people and helping them be happy. I know that by being baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ, we are happier than by doing anything else.
So the zone conference was on Monday. On Wednesday, however, Elder Aidukaitis wanted a special meeting with the assistants to the president and the office missionaries. So we all met in the office. There were only 10 people in the meeting: Me, Elder Coria, the two assistants and their companion, Elder Kroff, Sister Kroff, President Argyle and his wife, and Elder Aidukaitis. He talked about how we need to set the example for the rest of the mission, asked about what we do everyday, etc. Then (how I ended up sitting next to him, I don´t know. But at this moment, I was regretting it hahaha), he leaned over to me and said, ´´Elder, lets take a look at your planner.´´ (Just so you know, he's famous for this phrase…it’s a phrase of terror). He asked me to show him the day from last week that I had the most success (last week happened to be the worst week of my mission as far as numbers…more terror). He then went through everything we did that day, asking us about all the details, what we taught, who went with us, why we did certain things, etc. If this had happened my first day in my mission, I would have cried. But at the end, he helped me to see the importance of details and planning. One of the things he told us was that the difference between dreams and goals is specific plans. Anyway, it was crazy, but I´m glad it happened!
Well, that’s pretty much what I did this week. I´m starting to get the hang of things in the office and have barely avoided a lot of mistakes, but its looking good so far. This next week we have two baptisms planned, Tamara and Melissa. The two are way ready, way cool.
Don´t freeze over there in the states. I´m praying for you guys, ciao.
Elder Hales
14 February 2010
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