Nuevo Pres. Stapley

Dear family and friends,

Another cold rainy week and as always I am rushed to write this and get back to my area to go to work! With the rain the last couple days we have discovered some new holes in the roof of our pension and I got a nice cold shower this morning while I was cooking my oatmeal in the kitchen. Luckily it hasn´t rained enough to flood the streets, but from what I have heard the city I am in (Lomas de Zamora) is famous in Argentina for their flooded streets.

The highlight of this week was definitely our Zone Conference Tuesday morning with Pres. Stapley. Before the meeting started he and his wife went around to each missionary from the 4 zones that were there (40-50 missionaries) and briefly got to know us! Embarassing story... his wife got to me before he did and asked me what my name was, which i thought was odd since we all wear name tags. I must have had a really confused look on my face because she didn´t give me too long to react before she asked "where is your plack elder?" Then I realized I had taken my coat off with my name tag still on it. I guess I should consider myself lucky to have her notice before President! They are great people and his wife actually speaks really good spanish and I imagine will learn quickily seeing as she already speaks 2 other languages besides english (one being portugues helps too).

There were several great messages shared and all of Pres Stapleys presentations were very business man like (HE was the CEO of Deseret Mutual for 12 years or so). He gave us 2 spider web charts... the 5 focuses of the mission and the 5 principles to be more effective missionaries. (Maybe you´ve already seen them dad in La Estrella). He also commited us all to read 2 Nephi 31 five times during the week and that the principles in that chapter are what we need to improve as a mission. Very inspired and inspiring message! There were also some interesting changes made... such as Zone Conferences and Interviews will now be held once every 3 months instead of once a transfer cycle. Also the first presidency wants us to be focusing even more in Preach My Gospel and they have come up with 8 new Workshops for missionaries to apply the principles taught in the book that we will be doing in Zone meetings, District meetings etc.

Overall it was great getting to know Pres. y Hna Stapley a little bit and I am looking forward to the many things that I will be able to learn from both of them!
Anyways other than that it´s been a pretty normal week! Hope you are enjoying the busy summer and keeping nice and warm for me!

Les amo,
Elder Wheelhouse