Another week under the sun

Querido Family and friends,

Little late writing again, we went to Mar de Ajó for Pday today and got back a little late. We got together with 4 other Elders in our zone (5 elders from the states and 1 from chile) and played some good old American Football and threw a frisbee around on the beach! One of the members from the branch in Mar de Ajó is a huge Green Bay Packers fan, and lucky for us he happened to have a regulation NFL football that he let us use and he came and played with us for a bit too. It felt nice running in the sand barefoot but I cut my toe on a sea shell and we had to be careful not to step on dead jelly fish... there were about 20 in the boundaries of our football field. Couldn´t have asked for more perfect weather. It´s been nice and sunny the last week, probably 65-70 degrees with a nice ocean breeze. :)

This week we spent lots of time doing contacts, not my favorite thing to do, but we are doing all we can to find some more people to teach without much success. We´ve talked with a lot of great people but we have wasted a lot of time going to cita´s we have set with people and them either not being there or being "too busy" to talk to us. Luckily we haven´t come across many more people who are only here for vacation, so the investigators we have found will at least be in the area for a while. :) We have had some success in one of the other cities in our area Las Toninas and make the 30 min bike trip out there 3-4 times a week. We are teaching a great family who are members of la Iglesia Universal, but the hardest part of working in an area so far away is getting people to church!

Also this week we have been working with a less active member who was baptized a month or two before I got here named Oswaldo. He is struggling a lot right now and worried a lot about finding a job and being able to take care of his daughter. On top of that he lives in a house with his Mom and brothers who are Bandistas (very scary religion, they sacrifice animals to spirits and do a lot of bad things...) and there is just a very bad feeling in the house. We are trying to get him to meet with us in the church, but it´s difficult for him to progress if he can´t feel the spirit in his own home. People are so quick to question why God isn´t helping them but are never willing to do the simple things and be obedient to the principles that are going to bless them and eventually help them overcome their problems. It´s amazing the power that comes from reading from the Book of Mormon everyday, praying morning and night, and going to church. Yet there are always a million reasons to not do these simple things.

Our investigator José is still progressing slowly but surely. We are hoping to take out a new baptismal fecha with him this week for the end of the transfer. We are continuing to read the Book of Mormon with him and he keeps coming to church and doing the things he knows are right. Also this week we found an awesome guy named Marcelo. We talked to his wife doing a contact and set a cita to come back to talk to him. He´s 30 years old, and basically told us straight up that Religion is something that´s not important to him right now, but he invited us into his house anyways and we had a great discussion with him. He had some really good questions and I think that a lot of people here aren´t interested in religion because they see so many churches that are the creations of man who are only in it for money and who don´t practice what they preach.

Anyways that´s all for this week! Tomorrow we have Zone Conference and Interviews with Pres. Asay in Villa Gessell, one of the only areas in our zone I haven´t been to. So I´m looking forward to a 2 hour bus ride at 6 tomorrow morning. As always it will be a great opportunity to learn from our leaders and hopefully apply some of the things we learn to have more success in our area! Hope you all have a great week! Pass on a Feliz Cumpleaños to Elder Oviatt for me! Hasta luego.

Les amo,

Elder Ian Wheelhouse