¡Sorpresa! [Surprise!]

Dear Family and Friends

Looks like we have arrived to the final week of summer vacation! Hope you all have enjoyed the warm weather... I am looking forward to some warmer temperatures coming up soon hopefully. It has been an interesting week! I know your all anxious about the surprise but you are just going to have to wait. :)

Elder "Gundy" and I started off the week fantastic and are working hard to meet some high goals that we set. One morning doing contacts we clapped a house that my companion convinced belonged to a drug dealer... when a nice old lady (Ines) answered the door and warmly greeted us "ELDERES!". Thinking we had tracted our way into another inactive member we were a little taken aback but she went on to tell us that it had been 10 years since she had talked with the missionaries and that she always wondered when we would show up at her house again. She told us that she had never gotten baptized (her daughter was) because her husband didnt want her to and that he had passed away several years ago. She was very excited to see us and we set another cita for the next day to meet with her and had a great lesson talking about the Book of Mormon. She has quite a collection of church books and LOVES the hymns. (She actually sang one to us at the door when we first found her). Very neat lady and she seemed very excited to come back to church!

Hump day was fantastic. We had a great morning doing some more contacts as well as the cita with Ines, and in the afternoon we had a Joven in our ward named Martin come with us to several citas. He has his mission call and leaves for Chihuahua Mexico in November... CAPO! We had a good lesson with an "eternal investigator" that the missionaries have been teaching for a long time, then he had to leave to go to school. That evening a member invited us over and made a cake for us for Hump Day and we played a card game with them. We got back to the pension and planned. Talked with the other Elders a bit and got all ready for bed. Around 10:20 we got a call from Pres. Stapley... SURPRISE! He said he needed to do an emergency transfer that affected us and informed me that I would be transfered to Wilde in Avellaneda to be with an Elder Alvarez who has 3 months in the mission. Apparently his companion has had some problems with his knee... but since then I have heard they hadnt gotten along well with each other. Anyways, I spent a good part of the night packing and got very little sleep before we had to be in Banfield to make the change at 10 the next morning. It is hard enough leaving an area for a normal transfer when you have time to say goodbye to people, take pictures, exchange information, etc. but I didnt get to do ANY of that and admittedly I was a pretty sad/frustrated with the change.

So now I am here in Wilde... and I actually like it a lot! My companion is awesome. He is from Neuquen Argentina (down south in the Patagonia). He is the only member in his family, but since he has been in the mission his parents have started going to church. He was baptized 8 years ago when he was 12 years old and I guess has been really active ever since! I am learning a ton about the culture from him and all kinds of nifty new words. :) Our area is FANTASTIC. The members here are great and our lunch citas every day are fantastic. Everyone has been really suprised about the chance but they have been very welcoming. In church this Sunday I got the good old welcome to the ward/bear your testimony deal! We had 5 investigators in church... and should be baptizing 2 of them in the next couple weeks! We are very close to Capital Federal so our area is in the Big City. Today for Pday we played some soccer then went to a NICE mall close to our area to eat lunch. It seems to be a nicer area and for the most part very clean... but we still have some CRAZY villa to keep things interesting. My only complaint is not having hot water to shower the last 2 days... brrrr.

Anyways, short on time again.... enjoy your last week of summer vacation and hope to hear from you all soon!

les amo,
Elder Ian Wheelhouse