Wassup!

How is all going back in town? It is weird thinking that there is still so much stuff going on without me. It is good to hear that you are all doing so well. Sounds like dad is having fun in sin city. It makes me laugh now to think about the name and then think about a priesthood holder walking into it and Satan probably just cringing knowing that he’s there. And mom’s back home holding down the fort. The guy that is staying with you, is he going to still be there when I get home? It would be cool to get to talk to him. And how are all the grandkids and the siblings? Everything doing good.

This last week was a pretty good one. We are doing the work well and getting things done and we should have a baptism this week and 2 more before I go. It was funny. This last Friday we did an activity together with our ward and the two branches that meet in our building and it was super cool. We made pizza for everyone and played bowling, everything with a spiritual message of course.

The other elders have a baptism that should be happening not this week but the next that he asked me to baptize him. I was super surprised, I was the first person to talk to him when he went to church with his family and I was surprised he remembered because that was like 2 months ago. It just goes to show and I learned a very important lesson from it. When new people come to church, the thing they look for most is a friend. Be that friend. The majority of the baptismal interviews I have been able to do have said the same thing. One of the questions I ask is who they want to baptize them and when they say who I ask why specifically that person, just out of curiosity, and they almost always say that it is the first person to really befriend them and stick with them for the whole time they were getting to know the church. Sometimes it is the elders, but in the best case scenario it would be a member, and that means that the members are doing their jobs.

This Sunday in church we went to ward council and they were deciding on the new schedule because our ward is moving to the afternoon. We decided on 5 -8 in the afternoon because it was the one that makes the most sense as far as the obra misional and all of the purposes of the church. Many others did not seem to be in agreement and now I believe that certain members are a little.... miffed I guess you could say. Let's try to think about things that are spiritual as spiritual please. I like the quote that mom sent me this week.

"Many blessings in life are missed because worldly judgment was applied to what was really a spiritual decision."
Gregory A. Schwitzer

That one is a winner. So this week we played basketball again for p-day. It is a good challenge, mostly as a test of patience because not everyone knows how to play and most are much more apt to play football than basketball and some of us smaller folk leave the court a little damaged. I don’t think it gets to the level of church ball, but close.

I love you all. I think about you often. Thanks for the package. I made a delicious cake with the peanut butter. Want the recipe?

100g sugar
2 eggs
vanilla
8 spoons of oil
mix
3/4 cup milk
mix
300 grams nesquik (i dunno if hershey´s cocoa would make it turn out the same)
mix
flour (about 400g it´s like a pound i think)
then you can mix in chocolate chips if you want.
grease and flour a pan and put it in the oven on medium heat for about 30 min.
then I cut it in half and put peanut butter in it.
everyone loved it. Hope you like it too!

Love Always, Elder Jeffrey Darrell Rose

Here things are really good!

I’ve gotta say that I wish that I had known what I know now about 2 years ago. I have learned a ton and have been enjoying doing the work a lot. This last week the 3 day training meeting was fun. It was interesting to see the things that the first presidency is emphasizing and the way in which they are changing Preach My Gospel, or actually adding to it since it is the same, just with more parts.

We’ve been working hard, sometimes it is a bit difficult, like all things are, but I feel confident that we are doing the best we know how. We have some way cool people that we are teaching right now. This last couple of weeks has taught me something. I think as missionaries we get caught up a lot in the glory of things. Not so much in a prideful way as wanting to be part of all the cool things that happen. The people that my companion and I are teaching may or may not get baptized while I am around, but that really is not a huge concern as far as who is there when it happens, but rather that they are taught in the correct way and that they do get baptized in the end.

I have seen so many way cool things in the mission. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, because I know that it is going to make everything so much more worth it afterwards. Let´s be honest, I would love to be home right this moment, but I want to be here more. There are still things to do and things to learn. And there are far too many to learn right now, but I have got to take advantage of the time that I have while I have it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the people that I am going to miss when I go, and the list is not short. When you are in this field of work, you not only get to know people, but you really get to know them, you understand them, you become family with them, and it is a wonderful thing. I wish that every person here in Argentina I could do something for before I go, and I am thinking constantly about what I can do. Beyond the things that you can do for a person in a physical sense, I think the most important thing will be the influence that we leave behind in this life. It is a very weird thing, life. Its ups and downs and sidesteps and unforeseen bumps. But it all serves us for our experience.

I realized something very cool while teaching a couple of younger kids recently. That is that they, notwithstanding their young age, have an understanding of who they are, what they want in life, a distinct personality. One of the things that I saw recently that most affected me was a 13 year old girl who said that she was atheist, that she didn’t believe in god for what had happened in her life. I was awestruck and my jaw dropped a little as I heard her explain it to us. But there is something more amazing. She now is starting to believe in Christ, she is praying, reading the Book of Mormon, has gone to church, and she is preparing to get baptized. Each and every one of us are children of our Father. And that is special. I love you all more than you know and I miss you probably as much as you realize. But I’d like to think I miss you alllllot. Anyways. Till next time. Thanks for everything!
CHAUUUU
Elder Jeffrey Darrell Rose
p.s. I got the package, thanks a ton. All the roommates and even President and Sister Northcutt were pretty excited about the Big Hunks. :)

Hey U:

Everything here is just fantastic. We really had a really amazing week last week. It was a killer, just one of those weeks that you wait for and work so hard for as a missionary. We had more lessons, more new investigators, more people in church than we have ever had since I have been in this area and we are really working with some extremely amazing people this time around. I and Elder Graham are doing well. After the big talk that we had last week everything has improved 100%.

So anyways about the week, we’ll start from the beginning. We are teaching the Navarro kids, a mom who is a member but way less active and her two kids that are 10 and 13. They went to conference this last week and came to church this week as well. They are going to get baptized in a few weeks. The Bajinay family; I think I told you about them. They are two sisters that live with their mom. Somehow we finally got them and they came to church. That was way cool because it was a huge step in their progression. They also brought one of their boyfriends with them. They were taken very good care of by the members and they have friends in the ward. There is a really cool old guy in our ward named Bro. Mendelek. He asked us to talk to his grandkids and we talked to one and she came to church, then we went to their house on Sunday night and talked to the mom and she said that she would like us to talk to her other 2 kids as well. Super sweet.

Things just seem to be working out now. We are also teaching a cool young couple that has 2 kids and he is in the army. They had the desire to go to church this week but right when they were planning on leaving, family showed up on their doorstep and they had to hang out with them (that may seem odd but that is very common here that family just randomly shows up on your doorstep.) On Sunday at lunch, we got a phone call from some other missionaries that said a member spoke with them about visiting a lady. They gave us her address and we went to see her at 9 last night. She is an older woman who has gone through some hard stuff lately and she was way open to what we were teaching and she is stoked to go to church.

I learned a lesson this last week. And this is it. Suck it up and work because if you think things are hard, they only get harder. Trust in the Lord with all thy heart and things will work out. This week we have today and tomorrow to work and then on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I have a leadership training meeting to go to with president and so I will be there on those 3 days for the morning and then return to my area for the afternoon. It will be interesting; I hope that it all works out good. We will just try to cram a bunch of really good appointments into the afternoon and have some really really cool days with our investigators.

Today for p-day we went to the zone chapel and played soccer. It was pretty fun. Then we went to Burger King with a couple of other companionships and now I am here. So that is pretty much the whole week. Things are going really well here and I know that it is due to the blessings of the Lord and our efforts to get along better as a companionship. The rest of it is rather easy, teaching the gospel is not hard, we are lead by the spirit to do it, but in order to have the spirit, there needs to be a proper environment in which it can dwell. Always learning. You’d think we’d figure it out after a while right... hahah. Anyways, I’ll leave you for now. Talk to you next week. LOVES!

Chau y un abrazo gigante

Elder Rose

Things here are going great - Last Transfer

Things here are also going great. I am here with Elder Graham and Elder Donaldson and the new elder in our apartment Elder Wilson. I was with Elder Wilson in my last district as well and so it is fun to meet up with him and live together. Things are looking good. We had an awesome time in conference, we got 3 investigators to go, and we would have liked to have had more, but the others that we have invited didn’t come through. The 3 that went were the two kids of the less active family and a lady that we are teaching who suffered from a stroke and is somewhat paralyzed from the waist down. We did a lot of running back and forth between our area and the stake center and we definitely ran ourselves into the ground, but it was way worth it. Super fun. After priesthood session I was craving Chinese food, but there was none to be found and it ends at 11 o´clock at night here so it was pretty late. The transfer went well; we got Elder Ramos to the terminal and picked up Wilson. So now there will be four of us gringo folk in the apartment together so hopefully I don’t come home talking like a gringo.... So you asked what day I actually get home, it should be the 17th of November. That´s weird.

Things are good and set up for this last transfer. We have found a lot of really good people lately and we have a lot of investigators that are committed to baptism that we are trying to help out a lot. There is a young couple with 2 kids that we are working with. Then the 2 kids that went to conference and the lady that went to conference. Sebastian is struggling and we are struggling to hang on to him. The friend of a member, Miguel Angel. Actually really cool story about that. We saw him in church last week and he said that he had received an answer and that he knew that he was going to get baptized, his challenge or rather our challenge with him is finding him because he has a very difficult schedule and his parents don’t want us to teach him in their home, so that complicates things a little bit. Things are good though. Then there is a family of the mom and her two adult daughters, they are also right there on the edge, they have the desires to learn but they are lacking the desires to act on what they learn and will not be able to get to where they need to be if they are not willing to take the step.

So as for conference, the talks were amazing, I picked up a few main topics that were very prevalent. Apart from the general topics that are very common such as pornography, debt and all that, they focused a lot on the prophet and following him, agency, and repentance and family relations. I really enjoyed the talks by President Monson, President Uchtdorf and president... man I liked all the talks, but there is just such a thing that happens, that in the moment certain things just apply to you. You just hear them talking to you and then when you go back to review the talks you find something else, that is why it is soooooo important to take notes and to remember the stuff that you learn. "The dullest ink is better than the most vivid memory" not sure who said it but they were right. There are still a lot of things that I am working on and I love conference because it just makes you realize how much stuff that you need to do to improve.

I had a really good talk with Elder Graham last night after the conference was over and we talked about a lot of stuff. We worked some things out, were really open and understand things a little bit better now. We are growing together. I think that I have taken for granted the good companions that I have had in the past that were just automatically easy to get along with. He is an amazing missionary, and it has just been a little bit more of a struggle than in the past to find our groove with each other. We’re getting there and we will only get better. I love you all. I love you. Thank you for being so amazing. I admire you for watching conference and learning from it. It put a smile on my face to hear that you watched all the sessions. I love you so much. I will talk to you later. CHAUUU
Elder Jeffrey Darrell Rose