hey everyone! 11/28/2011 Week 42

hey!

Hey i have a question......is my middle name spelled LarsOn or LarsEn??? I´ve always thought it was with an O, but after some recent events I am beginning to doubt myself.....

So this morning a little bit of extermination was done in our apartment to get rid of the millions and millions of cockroaches :( We did everything from step on them, slapping them with shoes, to spraying them with some random spray that we found hiding in the apartment....it didn´t have a label on it, but we decided it would "probably kill bugs?" It did stink, so i´m guessing that's a good sign that it worked haha.

We had some success in the work this week, including helping 4 from the "15 families" list come back to church and some other less-actives have been coming back and staying consistent. I love the members of the ward here and they have been a really big help for us, more than my other areas i believe. We did divisions last week with a couple of priesthood holders in the ward and visited some less-active families.....and i may or may not have ridden on the back of a motorcycle......long story that's not so long but i won´t tell it. We´ve just been pushing forward in the work and there´s nothing more satisfying for me than being able to share the gospel everyday. This week was a roller-coaster type week....good days.....not so fruitful days.....but i learned that even though we don´t have control over things that happen to us sometimes or having success in life/work, we can always control our attitude :) Being happy´s a choice!

I´m sorry i don´t have too much to write this week, it just seemed to fly by really fast. it´s crazy to think i´m almost 20.....it´s about time ;) jaja broma. anyway, i know this church is so true!!!! I love you all so much and i´m glad you had a great thanksgiving :) Tis the season.

Fun fact: finished reading the book of mormon in spanish this past week!. one of my few achievements of anything in this life haha.

Escritura de la semana: D&C 59:7

Con amor,

Elder Winger

It´s almost Thanksgiving! 11/21/2011 Week 41

Hey fam!

Well, today was a p-day was very special for us here, and i would like to name it officially as "American Day" Our district, which consists of 5 americans...and a chileno haha, went BOWLING!! There is a super nice hotel/casino/bowling alley/mall/etc that is in Rosario, so we decided to visit it. I must say it was probably one of the nicest places i´ve seen here in Argentina haha, it was pretty fun. Anyway, i did terrible at bowling, as should be expected. Out of everyone, i got last place. But everyone got a mcdonalds big mac after, so everyone was a winner :) ...yeah, i´ll just keep telling myself that.

This week Elder Waid did a lot of good work, and i´ve never thirsted more than now to serve the Lord with all I´ve got, at in continues to increase as my testimony and love for the gospel grow every day. I was very blessed to be a part of a couple really powerful lessons this week and we currently have 6 people with baptismal dates, 4 of which i think will be baptized.

The family of the week that I want to share with you is the Arana family. It consists of a father, daughter, and her three kids. When we "clapped at their doorway" instead of knocking, they allowed us to come in....which i would soon come to realize was a huge blessing. Oscar (the dad) has never allowed any of the "millions of missionaries that are always passing by" to come in, but we got lucky i guess huh. This family all believes in God, but never have really gone to church, read the bible, or anything like that. Anyways, to make a long story short, we´ve had an amazing couple of lessons with them and they came to church yesterday. Now, you know how it´s hard to keep children reverent in a place for more than 5 minutes or so? yep, we had quite the battle during sacrament meeting on Sunday haha. Lorena (the mom) has 3 kids who are 10, 4, and 2 years old. In order to try and control the yelling, playing tag, playing hide and seek on the stand, doing somersaults in the aisles, and crying......i tried incorporating drawing with them, doing origami (which all i know how to do is fold a piece of paper like a napkin....like i would do at Coppermill haha) and doing anything else to keep them "quietly entertained). But it was a fun adventure, even though i personally didn´t get to "relax and enjoy during sacrament"....maybe a little taste of what´s to come in the future ;). But this family is really nice and i think the gospel so far as really been changing them. We will have a few hurdles with the word of wisdom i believe, but the Lord is the one performing the work. I always feel so blessed to find those people who the Lord´s prepared to hear our message , and Elder Waid and I are continuing to work hard to find them. It has been a little bit discouraging lately not having baptized for 3.5 transfers....but i am still enthusiastic for the work and i know that no effort is wasted. Hey, someone´s gotta do the planting if another is to do the harvest :). I love the Lord and am so grateful for his sacrifice. I know the work of preaching the gospel is the most important thing that any of us can ever do in mortality. it´s everything. the gospel is everything.

So is everyone very excited for thanksgiving this week?? i still expect a place setting for me at grandmas ;) It looks like a bunch of us Elders are going to have a thanksgiving together next Monday, so we will see how that goes......but i know that no other thanksgiving can beat the FEAST at G Carma´s and G Richard´s! I love you all so much. thanks for your support, your prayers, and your faith. Keep strong, these are the last days.

Elder Winger

Weird transfer changes! 11/14/2011 Week 39 & 40

hey family!

Well, I made it safe and sound to my area here in Villa Gobernador Galvez! It´s been quite an adventurous first week and I¨m excited to do some work here. My companion Elder Waid is a cool cat. He´s from Arkansas. I keep getting companions from all the weird states (New Hampshire, Arkansas, etc....) haha just kidding, but we get along well. When I got here, I soon came to realize that the area was somewhat "dead" aka, 0 investigators haha. But, we quickly got to work, and we have a lady named Belén, that is a reference from one of the recent converts in our area, that we gave a baptismal date for the third of December, so we are hoping that all works out. On another note, the ward is quite large here! There were 80 people there yesterday! But, the number that need help to be reactivated is quite astonishing....there are 450 members in my ward. 80 attending. bring it on. I'm overly joyous (weird mood) to serve the people here, and we´ve been continually blessed by the Lord.

Right now i´m living in a four-man apartment with Elders Hernandez from St. George and Elder Nuñez from Chile, and we´ve had just a blast so far.

As far as my area goes, I love it. Plenty of dirt roads and people to talk to, my prime conditions :) . As far as the work continues, we´ve had some really powerful lessons this week with Belén and a couple of other people as well. We are teaching a man named David, who´s living with a lady who is a member but less active, and he really has the desire to be baptized and be with his family forever, so we are currently working on trying to get them married hopefully within the next month or so.

Experience of the Day: Where we currently are is really close to the Monumento de la bandera (Argentina Flag monument) so we decided to go visit it today for p-day, and also do some street shopping . As we were walking, suddenly this monstrous parade of people starting coming down the street, screaming, playing instruments, the real deal. But they were all dressed up in crazy costumed! Everything from egyptians to wizards, dragonball z characters to fluffy orange pillows (i think?) but it was pretty wild, there were like 200 people probably. Anyway, after narrowly escaping their stampede, we continued our journey to the monument. The monument was really cool! All of the things are being to "wear away" but it was a cool site, i´ll try to send some pictures.

Anyway, the work is going well, and i´m glad to hear that everyone is doing excellent back home. Have an amazing week, i love you!

Elder Winger

Happy Halloween! 10/31/2011 Week 38

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Hello everyone! Happy Halloween!!!! Here in Argentina if i didn´t know the date, i probably wouldn´t really notice that it was Halloween....some people have some decorations and stuff for it, so it´s at least acknowledged haha.......but i guess i´ll wait until tonight to see if it´s actually celebrated in the same way as in the states...just to give it a fair chance ;). I was at a members house yesterday for lunch and the daughter of the family was asking me how Halloween was in the United States....I told her "just like the movies." She responded with, "do you really go door to door asking for candy?" I said yes, and she just went off about how lucky we were haha. So yes, the Halloween cheer may not be as vibrant here, but then again.....maybe i´ll have to find a way to change that....

This past week we have been having quite a bit of success in the ward! Remember the first week that I got here in this area and we had 13 people in church? Well, yesterday we had 44! It was quite exciting and i´m hoping we can continue bringing people back to church. There are a lot of members that were going regularly a few years ago (some of them former bishops, counselors, and others with callings) that stopped going for reasons that they don´t know and us tampoco. But we currently have investigators that have baptismal dates so that´s pretty exciting! Also this week is going to be a little wacky....we have p-day today, p-day again on Friday and transfers on a Saturday (due to that the president has a meeting to go to for all the mission presidents) I´m not really sure what´s going to happen as far as transfers go, but i´ll keep ya posted.

As far as holidays go here, it seems like there´s a holiday every 2 weeks or so....but i never really know what it is haha....people just say "it´s a holiday today" just to take an extra day of work off...my personal opinion. Haha, but we did have mother´s day a couple of weeks ago which was really nicely celebrated. All of the mother´s received flowers at church, just like home, which i thought was really special. One sad observance that i´m not looking too much forward too is the absence of THANKSGIVING :( obviously not celebrated down here, but i may or not be celebrating it alone with my companion spending a ridiculous amount of pesos on food that could possibly go in the "it´s-not-turkey-but-its-still-meat-and-other-food-to-improvise-thanksgiving-tradition" category. yay.

Now turning the time over to weather: the sun is hot, now preparing for extreme heat conditions. The climate is still bearable but slowly drifting downhill. I´m still really white, unprepared, and i will most likely be scorched according to local weather enthusiasts. I was thinking of maybe using sunscreen or a nice sunshade of some sorts....but i think i´ll just go "man status" and brave the heat straight on. should be a fun ride.

Anyways, i want to thank everyone from the family who sent me pictures this week!! of the newborns and the wedding of Savannah as well! thank you!

Also this past Sunday, my companion has a real knack for singing in Sunday......so we got up in front of everyone during sacrament meeting, not having practiced before and just relying completely on "winging it"....anyway, we were singing the Spirit of God and when we got to the chorus of the second verse, Elder Tague decides all of a sudden to give me a "grand solo" so i just sang the chorus solo style and it wasn´t exactly pleasing to my ears so i can´t imagine it wasn´t anything greater than terrible for the congregation. Singing FAIL. :)

My testimony has been growing so much out here and i´m loving every week that i have to serve the Lord. I can´t believe how fast time continues to go by, and it´s hard to grasp onto, but i´m trying to make the most out of it and rely completely on the Savior to do what he would have me do. I´ve really been continually having to be humbled in order to be a faithful servant of the Lord, something that has been so hard, but the blessings always come if we continue to do what we are supposed to, even when times get rough. God knows us better than we know ourselves.

I hope that everything continues to go well for you all. I love you all so much and it seems like everything is consistently changing from when i left! Haha but i guess ´change´ is the only constant thing about life right? Thank you for your prayers and support. I know that this is the Lords work and have gained the sincere testimony that i never chose to serve a mission, but have been called by him to serve him (3 nefi 5:13)

UN ABRAZO y BESO!

Elder Winger