Hello family and friends!
Hope you all had a great fathers day and what sounds like another busy week! Here in Argentina we are celebrating the first day as winter as well as Flag Day, which was supposed to be yesterday but got moved to today to not conflict with fathers day. I guess the biggest news for this week is transfers. I said goodbye to Santa Teresita yesterday, and will likely never enjoy living so close to a beach ever again in my whole life! I am in a new area called Parque Baron in the zone of Banfield (my first zone) with Elder Gundestrup from Riverton, Utah. I will likely get to do "intercambios" in Fiorito from time to time, and am very much looking forward to that. :) I haven´t been to my area yet, so can´t really tell you much about how it is, but I will definitely have to adapt to the busy/upbeat/crowded lifestyle of Buenos Aires again. It has really been a shock seeing so many people in the streets!
This last week with Elder McClurg has been great. It really was such a blessing and privilege to get to serve with him. We had 3 investigators at church yesterday, Julio y Carolina came with their family, and I gave my 5th and final talk in the area. Of course it was tough to say goodbye to the families and investigators I have come to love in the last 6 months, but it is good to know that they are in good hands with Elder McClurg! We have had some success in the area but it definitely has not come easily. We have several investigators who could be ready for baptism next transfer and it has been a great strength to me to be able to find and teach these people who the Lord has prepared.
We stayed in the mission home again last night and enjoyed tasty homemade cinnamon rolls Hna. Asay made for us. We spent the night in an apartment they have behind the mission home y thoroughly enjoyed walking around on CARPET. One of my zone leaders from the coast also stayed with us who is going home today and it was fun talking to him and hearing some of his experiences and wisdom he has gained in the mission. Woke up to a nice HOT shower and Oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins. Hermana Asay takes good care of us. :)
Today we had transfer meeting, the first one I have been to since I went down to the coast. It was great to see all my buddies from the MTC and my old companions. There is always a great spirit their hearing from all the missionaries who are going home and to hear from Pres. y Hna. Asay. It was extra special this time since it is their "farewell" as well as another couple from Orem who has been serving in the offices. Hna Asay also gave out hugs to every missionary. They will definitely be grately missed. It is weird to think that the President I will have for the majority of my mission isn´t even here yet!
Have a great week! Thank you for your prayers!
Les amo,
Elder Ian Wheelhouse
PS I got my package today and am looking forward very much to make some hot chocolate tonight. :)
Monday, June 21, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
Rain rain go away!
Hello Family and Friends!
Sounds like we have had some similar weather this week! We´ve had a lot of rain these last several days but somehow i´ve managed to keep at least one of my pairs of dress shoes nice and dry thank goodness. I figure I´m a bit overdue for the colder weather and it was nice enjoying 2 summers in a row. (Elder McClurg has had 2 winters in a row, poor guy) Luckily I´ve got some good gear and when I´m all bundled up I stay good and warm. :) With transfers coming up this weekend, this could be my last week writing to you from the Coast!
This week we had to make yet ANOTHER trip to capital. Luckily we got to make the trip up there in a car with Elder y Hna Fitch who came down to the coast this week to inspect all the pensions. Mom you would be very proud, they even said we had the cleanest one! It was fun getting to know them and they even took us out for McDonalds, which after 6 months of not having any, tasted REALLY GOOD. They had some great stories and have a strong testimony of the importance of doing what you know is right even when you may not want to do it. They have a great missionary family, both of them having served missions in addition to this one, and 7 kids, 6 of which served missions. All 7 have been married in the temple and they are excited to be going home this next week with Pres. y Hna. Asay to be with their families again. That night we ended up staying with a couple of the office elders again and worked with them in their area for a bit. After we had a little pizza party before going to bed.
The next day we woke up bright and early to make the trip to capital so Elder McClurg could get finger printed again. There is a member who lives close to the offices that the mission always calls to run the missionaries around whenever we need to go to downtown (the driving here is INSANE). We went to the Church Offices of all of South America I think which is in Palermo (Very nice part of capital). We met some awesome Senior Couples, one of which teaches piano for their mission. We also found out that Elder Neil A Andersen happened to be there that same day, but we never did see him. We also had the lovely experience of going to an Argentine jail in downtown Buenos Aires where we had his fingerprints done. Definitely not a place I would ever like to visit again, but the officer who helped us was very friendly. One building we went to our Taxi driver parked his car in the far right lane of the street with his emergency flashers on because there was no where to park. He told me to sit in the drivers seat while they ran inside and told me if the police came to just say "ya me voy" and nothing else. Luckily the police never came!
Even with the rain and losing a lot of working time due to travel we had a pretty good week. The families we are teaching are continuing to progress but unfortunately still haven´t made it to church. Church this week was great. We had 2 great talks in sacrament meeting, one about controlling our Anger and the other about Fasting and Prayer. We hope to see some of our investigators in church next week for what could be my last Sunday here! Also we have the assignment to speak next week for Fathers Day. I´m assuming it´s Father´s day there as well? If it is, hope you all have a Happy Fathers Day!
¡Les amo!
Elder Ian Wheelhouse
Sounds like we have had some similar weather this week! We´ve had a lot of rain these last several days but somehow i´ve managed to keep at least one of my pairs of dress shoes nice and dry thank goodness. I figure I´m a bit overdue for the colder weather and it was nice enjoying 2 summers in a row. (Elder McClurg has had 2 winters in a row, poor guy) Luckily I´ve got some good gear and when I´m all bundled up I stay good and warm. :) With transfers coming up this weekend, this could be my last week writing to you from the Coast!
This week we had to make yet ANOTHER trip to capital. Luckily we got to make the trip up there in a car with Elder y Hna Fitch who came down to the coast this week to inspect all the pensions. Mom you would be very proud, they even said we had the cleanest one! It was fun getting to know them and they even took us out for McDonalds, which after 6 months of not having any, tasted REALLY GOOD. They had some great stories and have a strong testimony of the importance of doing what you know is right even when you may not want to do it. They have a great missionary family, both of them having served missions in addition to this one, and 7 kids, 6 of which served missions. All 7 have been married in the temple and they are excited to be going home this next week with Pres. y Hna. Asay to be with their families again. That night we ended up staying with a couple of the office elders again and worked with them in their area for a bit. After we had a little pizza party before going to bed.
The next day we woke up bright and early to make the trip to capital so Elder McClurg could get finger printed again. There is a member who lives close to the offices that the mission always calls to run the missionaries around whenever we need to go to downtown (the driving here is INSANE). We went to the Church Offices of all of South America I think which is in Palermo (Very nice part of capital). We met some awesome Senior Couples, one of which teaches piano for their mission. We also found out that Elder Neil A Andersen happened to be there that same day, but we never did see him. We also had the lovely experience of going to an Argentine jail in downtown Buenos Aires where we had his fingerprints done. Definitely not a place I would ever like to visit again, but the officer who helped us was very friendly. One building we went to our Taxi driver parked his car in the far right lane of the street with his emergency flashers on because there was no where to park. He told me to sit in the drivers seat while they ran inside and told me if the police came to just say "ya me voy" and nothing else. Luckily the police never came!
Even with the rain and losing a lot of working time due to travel we had a pretty good week. The families we are teaching are continuing to progress but unfortunately still haven´t made it to church. Church this week was great. We had 2 great talks in sacrament meeting, one about controlling our Anger and the other about Fasting and Prayer. We hope to see some of our investigators in church next week for what could be my last Sunday here! Also we have the assignment to speak next week for Fathers Day. I´m assuming it´s Father´s day there as well? If it is, hope you all have a Happy Fathers Day!
¡Les amo!
Elder Ian Wheelhouse
Rain rain go away!
Hello Family and Friends!
Sounds like we have had some similar weather this week! We´ve had a lot of rain these last several days but somehow i´ve managed to keep at least one of my pairs of dress shoes nice and dry thank goodness. I figure I´m a bit overdue for the colder weather and it was nice enjoying 2 summers in a row. (Elder McClurg has had 2 winters in a row, poor guy) Luckily I´ve got some good gear and when I´m all bundled up I stay good and warm. :) With transfers coming up this weekend, this could be my last week writing to you from the Coast!
This week we had to make yet ANOTHER trip to capital. Luckily we got to make the trip up there in a car with Elder y Hna Fitch who came down to the coast this week to inspect all the pensions. Mom you would be very proud, they even said we had the cleanest one! It was fun getting to know them and they even took us out for McDonalds, which after 6 months of not having any, tasted REALLY GOOD. They had some great stories and have a strong testimony of the importance of doing what you know is right even when you may not want to do it. They have a great missionary family, both of them having served missions in addition to this one, and 7 kids, 6 of which served missions. All 7 have been married in the temple and they are excited to be going home this next week with Pres. y Hna. Asay to be with their families again. That night we ended up staying with a couple of the office elders again and worked with them in their area for a bit. After we had a little pizza party before going to bed.
The next day we woke up bright and early to make the trip to capital so Elder McClurg could get finger printed again. There is a member who lives close to the offices that the mission always calls to run the missionaries around whenever we need to go to downtown (the driving here is INSANE). We went to the Church Offices of all of South America I think which is in Palermo (Very nice part of capital). We met some awesome Senior Couples, one of which teaches piano for their mission. We also found out that Elder Neil A Andersen happened to be there that same day, but we never did see him. We also had the lovely experience of going to an Argentine jail in downtown Buenos Aires where we had his fingerprints done. Definitely not a place I would ever like to visit again, but the officer who helped us was very friendly. One building we went to our Taxi driver parked his car in the far right lane of the street with his emergency flashers on because there was no where to park. He told me to sit in the drivers seat while they ran inside and told me if the police came to just say "ya me voy" and nothing else. Luckily the police never came!
Even with the rain and losing a lot of working time due to travel we had a pretty good week. The families we are teaching are continuing to progress but unfortunately still haven´t made it to church. Church this week was great. We had 2 great talks in sacrament meeting, one about controlling our Anger and the other about Fasting and Prayer. We hope to see some of our investigators in church next week for what could be my last Sunday here! Also we have the assignment to speak next week for Fathers Day. I´m assuming it´s Father´s day there as well? If it is, hope you all have a Happy Fathers Day!
¡Les amo!
Elder Ian Wheelhouse
Sounds like we have had some similar weather this week! We´ve had a lot of rain these last several days but somehow i´ve managed to keep at least one of my pairs of dress shoes nice and dry thank goodness. I figure I´m a bit overdue for the colder weather and it was nice enjoying 2 summers in a row. (Elder McClurg has had 2 winters in a row, poor guy) Luckily I´ve got some good gear and when I´m all bundled up I stay good and warm. :) With transfers coming up this weekend, this could be my last week writing to you from the Coast!
This week we had to make yet ANOTHER trip to capital. Luckily we got to make the trip up there in a car with Elder y Hna Fitch who came down to the coast this week to inspect all the pensions. Mom you would be very proud, they even said we had the cleanest one! It was fun getting to know them and they even took us out for McDonalds, which after 6 months of not having any, tasted REALLY GOOD. They had some great stories and have a strong testimony of the importance of doing what you know is right even when you may not want to do it. They have a great missionary family, both of them having served missions in addition to this one, and 7 kids, 6 of which served missions. All 7 have been married in the temple and they are excited to be going home this next week with Pres. y Hna. Asay to be with their families again. That night we ended up staying with a couple of the office elders again and worked with them in their area for a bit. After we had a little pizza party before going to bed.
The next day we woke up bright and early to make the trip to capital so Elder McClurg could get finger printed again. There is a member who lives close to the offices that the mission always calls to run the missionaries around whenever we need to go to downtown (the driving here is INSANE). We went to the Church Offices of all of South America I think which is in Palermo (Very nice part of capital). We met some awesome Senior Couples, one of which teaches piano for their mission. We also found out that Elder Neil A Andersen happened to be there that same day, but we never did see him. We also had the lovely experience of going to an Argentine jail in downtown Buenos Aires where we had his fingerprints done. Definitely not a place I would ever like to visit again, but the officer who helped us was very friendly. One building we went to our Taxi driver parked his car in the far right lane of the street with his emergency flashers on because there was no where to park. He told me to sit in the drivers seat while they ran inside and told me if the police came to just say "ya me voy" and nothing else. Luckily the police never came!
Even with the rain and losing a lot of working time due to travel we had a pretty good week. The families we are teaching are continuing to progress but unfortunately still haven´t made it to church. Church this week was great. We had 2 great talks in sacrament meeting, one about controlling our Anger and the other about Fasting and Prayer. We hope to see some of our investigators in church next week for what could be my last Sunday here! Also we have the assignment to speak next week for Fathers Day. I´m assuming it´s Father´s day there as well? If it is, hope you all have a Happy Fathers Day!
¡Les amo!
Elder Ian Wheelhouse
Monday, June 7, 2010
We're in the Capital!
Hello family and friends!
It´s fun to hear of all the exciting things going on back home! Sounds like everyone is keeping super busy and already getting started on the activities of summer. Always enjoy hearing from you all!
After a 5 hour micro ride yesterday right after church, Elder McClurg and I are here at the mission offices in Adrogue for the day. Being new in the country Elder McClurg had to go do some documents this morning, but it turns out that his fingerprint sheet "expired". So once again, $320 pesos and 10 hours of total travel time later... we have officially wasted another trip to the immigration offices. At least I got to enjoy seeing some Elders from my MTC group that I haven´t seen in a while. 2 hours of our ride down here were spent suffering through the featured movie, "Pan y Tulipanes", an Italian film with Spanish Subtitles. It was kind of cool being able to understand certain words and phrases that are the same in Italian.
This week there wasn´t much that really happened that´s worth talking about. We had district meeting in Dolores again this week, so we spent 4 hours on a bus traveling to and from that. The focus this week was using the Book of Mormon to do contacts. It is definitely something I want to improve on to use in the rest of my mission. It is definitely one of the most powerful tools we have and we definitely aren´t using it to it´s full capacity. Every person we talk to has some need or question that has an answer in the book. It makes contacts a lot more interesting trying to identify and answer the questions that people have.
Following District Meeting we did intercambios (exchanges) with the Elders from San Clemente and I got to spend the day working with Elder Hendricks (also from Orem Utah, went to MV). He is new to the area and has 1 transfer less than I do, but I learned a lot from the time we got to work together and we had a fun time talking.
We had some great success this week with our teaching and were able to teach more lessons than any other week from the last 2 transfers. Also this week we found a couple new investigators, both 20-30 year old guys from Paraguay. One of them is a nephew of a member family in our ward and we were really excited to start teaching him because we were SURE that it would be super easy to get him to church and he seemed really excited about the Book of Mormon. 3 days after finding him we found out he is already headed back to Buenos Aires to live with some friends.
We also have some investigators who are progressing really well and making good progress in the Book of Mormon! A lady we are teaching named Rosana was reading the testimony of Joseph Smith at the beginning of the book. She was really excited about the story of Angel Moroni appearing to him and she kept telling us that she feels really good whenever she reads. Another hombre we are teaching named Adrian is cruising through the book and is already in 1 Ne 11 after a week of reading and loved the story of Nephi and Laban as well as Lehi´s vision of the Tree of Life. I love the Book of Mormon and it is so awesome to see others recognize how great it is too.
Unfortunately it was another week without investigators in church. Ramon y Rosa were planning to be there but had unexpected problems with their car again. Also Jose has disappeared again, so as far as baptism prospects for this transfer... it´s not looking to great. We are seeing a lot of progress in the work and we will see some more success as we continue to work hard. I am hoping for another transfer in Santa Teresita to see some of the families we are working with get baptized in the not to far distant future.
Anyways, that´s my week! Say hello to everyone back home for me.
Les amo
Elder Ian Wheelhouse
It´s fun to hear of all the exciting things going on back home! Sounds like everyone is keeping super busy and already getting started on the activities of summer. Always enjoy hearing from you all!
After a 5 hour micro ride yesterday right after church, Elder McClurg and I are here at the mission offices in Adrogue for the day. Being new in the country Elder McClurg had to go do some documents this morning, but it turns out that his fingerprint sheet "expired". So once again, $320 pesos and 10 hours of total travel time later... we have officially wasted another trip to the immigration offices. At least I got to enjoy seeing some Elders from my MTC group that I haven´t seen in a while. 2 hours of our ride down here were spent suffering through the featured movie, "Pan y Tulipanes", an Italian film with Spanish Subtitles. It was kind of cool being able to understand certain words and phrases that are the same in Italian.
This week there wasn´t much that really happened that´s worth talking about. We had district meeting in Dolores again this week, so we spent 4 hours on a bus traveling to and from that. The focus this week was using the Book of Mormon to do contacts. It is definitely something I want to improve on to use in the rest of my mission. It is definitely one of the most powerful tools we have and we definitely aren´t using it to it´s full capacity. Every person we talk to has some need or question that has an answer in the book. It makes contacts a lot more interesting trying to identify and answer the questions that people have.
Following District Meeting we did intercambios (exchanges) with the Elders from San Clemente and I got to spend the day working with Elder Hendricks (also from Orem Utah, went to MV). He is new to the area and has 1 transfer less than I do, but I learned a lot from the time we got to work together and we had a fun time talking.
We had some great success this week with our teaching and were able to teach more lessons than any other week from the last 2 transfers. Also this week we found a couple new investigators, both 20-30 year old guys from Paraguay. One of them is a nephew of a member family in our ward and we were really excited to start teaching him because we were SURE that it would be super easy to get him to church and he seemed really excited about the Book of Mormon. 3 days after finding him we found out he is already headed back to Buenos Aires to live with some friends.
We also have some investigators who are progressing really well and making good progress in the Book of Mormon! A lady we are teaching named Rosana was reading the testimony of Joseph Smith at the beginning of the book. She was really excited about the story of Angel Moroni appearing to him and she kept telling us that she feels really good whenever she reads. Another hombre we are teaching named Adrian is cruising through the book and is already in 1 Ne 11 after a week of reading and loved the story of Nephi and Laban as well as Lehi´s vision of the Tree of Life. I love the Book of Mormon and it is so awesome to see others recognize how great it is too.
Unfortunately it was another week without investigators in church. Ramon y Rosa were planning to be there but had unexpected problems with their car again. Also Jose has disappeared again, so as far as baptism prospects for this transfer... it´s not looking to great. We are seeing a lot of progress in the work and we will see some more success as we continue to work hard. I am hoping for another transfer in Santa Teresita to see some of the families we are working with get baptized in the not to far distant future.
Anyways, that´s my week! Say hello to everyone back home for me.
Les amo
Elder Ian Wheelhouse
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