21 April 2010

La Cucaracha, la cucaracha, running up and down the wall!

Hey family,

Well, I´m hoping I get your letters before I have to go.  Somebody´s getting a little bit lazy on Saturday mornings eh? Haha well its ok.  So Nathan, are you going to be living in Wyview?  Who´s your roomate?  When do you head out?  Thanks for the pics, they were awesome.  The girls are lookin very grown up eh.  I´m thinking that I´ll come back and I might already have some brothers in law and nieces and nephews!  Hey, do you guys think you could send me a sweater?  Like a plain black one, v neck style pull over, something that I could wash if it got dirty.  Gracias.  Also, a CD of some good, new, church music would be nice.  It can be anywhere between soft Casting Crowns/Mercyme or hard MOTAB.  Hey, by the way, you guys can read my letters to president if you want too.  Sometimes I share stuff with him that I don´t have time to tell you guys.  Dad will have to spray a little WD-40 on his spanish to keep up...HAHA just kidding.  Sorry if I´m picking on you a lot this week Dad hehe.  !OS AMO A VOSOTROS!

p.s. the  cucaracha was in the church!  I was debating on sending it to you, but i did it anyway.  Hope you dont get queasy.


Dearest readers of the blog,

I need you all to do something for me.  Go to google and search "obelisko Buenos Aires" and "9 de Julio Buenos Aires".  Just browse through some of the pictures you see, paying attention to the width of the street and the number of cars on it.  You´ll notice that this street is the widest street in the world.  Probably the most insane as well.  Well, this week I drove the whole lengh of that street, starting at the casa rosada (Argentine white house) and ending up on the freeway.  Yep.  IT WAS AWESOME!  So we were running some missionaries around the mission and doing some other errands and we ended up on the avenue.  We actually got lost right in front of the casa rosada, did some loops, ended up back on the right street (all the streets are one way here) and then got funneled in on 9 de Julio.  We usually have a GPS, but it lost signal right when we made a wrong turn!  Haha anyway, it actually wasn´t that bad, but it was way exciting.  Once you get the hang of it, you kind of know what to expect in the Argentine traffic, so I wasn´t like dying, but the traffic was seriously crazy.  There is no such thing as driving courtesy its every man for himself haha.  Anyway, I just wanted to tell you about that experience.  I may or may not drive in downtown that much in the future (the mission usually just uses the train and bus systems), but I loved it.  It was like Playstation 1,000,000!  I didnt get any pics taken because Elder Peterson was helping me drive.  Maybe next time.

So we´ve been having some pretty good success in our area lately.  We haven´t had baptisms for a while, but we´re getting a lot of people ready.  I really want to be able to see a family that I baptize get sealed in the temple, so I¨m going all out to find and teach and baptize families.  God´s plan is so amazing.  Families can be together forever.  And its amazing because that seems to be people´s number one preocupation.  When talking about their problems, everyone talks about their family. Even when they are talking about health, a job, etc., they always mention that their families suffer this together.  I´ll give you an example.  We passed by an investigator´s house, Walter, last night.  He came out looking very rough, very upset.  He told us he was having some problems in his family.  When we probed a little more we found out that his son, who lives in Peru, has lung disease and is very sick.  In our first visit, Walter asked us if there was life after this one.  His biggest worry in life is his family!  Thats why I´m so decided on changing the biggest problem for people into the biggest blessing.

I´d like to offer a challenge to you guys.  Our mission president was invited by an apostle to do this with the whole book of mormon.  Read one chapter in the book of mormon 3x, looking for references to the atonement of Christ.  It doesn´t matter which chapter, all of them work.  Not only in the words that are spoken but in the actions of the people, the powers of Christ, the suffering, the requirements to gain access, etc.  I promise you´ll find new things every time and that you´ll learn a lot more about how much the Atonement affects you.  You´ll also have more desires to share this with others.

Mom, thanks for the s´mores, we loved eating them, especially Elder Coria.  It was his first time.  I think Megan Bricker had something to do with the smores too.  Thanks! 
Also, thanks Hansen family, your package was very delicious!  You guys are so good to me.  Have a great week and invite at least one person to go to church, read the BOM, etc.

Love,

Elder Hales

KTF

1 comment:

  1. Hey Elder, it seems that you are doing some really cool stuff in buenos aires. I'm also going to argentina in just about a month or something, i'll be there for about 6 months doing charity work, i'm really excited about it.
    I've looking for buenos aires apartments to rent while i'm there, do you have any information about it?

    Thanks
    See ya

    ReplyDelete