HOLA!

Haha well, I hope everybody´s doing great.  I´m doing awesome.  So last Sunday was Stake Conference and it was awesome.  The talks were amazing and Pres. Argyle and his wife even spoke.  Then, on Monday we found out that President Gulbransen´s visa was delayed, so he didn´t end up coming this week.  They asked Pres. Argyle to stay a little bit longer to cover the mission.  Pres. Gulbransen should be coming soon, I´ll let ya know.  We also had breakfast with the president and his family, it was amazingly delicious.  Waffles and keish.

  This week we saw some great progress in our investigators.  Daniel has dropped from smoking 2 packs to 1 cigarette a day!  He´s also softening out and feeling the spirit a lot more in the lessons.  We taught him and Alicia the law of chastity this week and they weren´t too hot on getting married.  But, he also said he didn´t want to quit smoking and look at him now.  Haha, I´m positive they´ll be getting married very soon.  They also met a lot of members this week, which was awesome.  Just in the week and a half that we´ve taught them, we´ve seen so, so, so many changes in them.  There is more love in their home, there is less smoking, they are reading and praying together.  INCREDIBLE.  They both committed to be baptized as soon as possible (aka after they get hitched).

Mariana and German are doing pretty good.  German isn´t too interested, but Mariana has been reading a ton and talking to ALL her family about the gospel.  We had a lesson with her, Graciela (her step-daughter), Beatriz (her mother-in-law) and Chritian (her son).  They all committed to get baptized.  We have to help German and Mariana get marred as well, which will be tricky.  But Graciela, who is recovering from drugs, smoking, etc. is doing awesome.  She´s super, super ready to get baptized, she just needs to learn a little bit more.  We´re also teaching Mariana´s sister and her family (Rocío).  We´ve only had one lesson with them but we are going to teach them today and help them get to church tomorrow.

This week we found the family of an inactive member.  The member is never there, but we started teaching his two brothers, Victor and Mariano.  Victor listens OK, but Mariano is way excited and has been loving the Book of Mormon.  Their mother is deaf, so we haven´t had a chance to really talk to her that much, but she´s been reading the Book of Mormon as well!  Mariano and Victor both committed to be baptized the 24th of July.

So just yesterday, we had a way cool experience.  Elder Peterson and I were walking to an appointment and I saw a man smoking, standing outside a tintoria (I don´t remember how you say it in english, its the place where you clean and iron suits and stuff).  Anyway, I showed him the Book of Mormon and asked him if he had ever seen it.  He said no.   I testified that it talked about Jesus and that if he read it, he would have the power to quit smoking (a recently gained testimony from seeing Daniel).  I asked him if we could talk with him inside, and he said yes.  We walked inside and he had like 50 year old machines for pressing suits. We asked if we could talk with his family as well.  His sister was in the other room, so he went and called her.  We taught them the restoration in like 5 minutes.  At first, the sister was super opposed and said she was evangelical and would only read the bible.  At the end of the lesson she accepted the invitation to read the Book of Mormon and prayed to finish the lesson.  We were in and out in like 15 minutes and we had already seen changes, which is what the gospel is all about.  MILAGRO. 

Well, I guess Argentina is playing right now in the World Cup. I honestly hope they lose so we can start teaching during the hour and a half when they play every week haha.  I love you guys.  I sent my family a package from Argentina, maybe if you hurry over to my house there´ll be some alfahores left over.

Hasta pronto,

Elder Hales