Hace Frio

Dear family and friends,

Another COLD week here in Argentina! Unfortunately a relatively SLOW week as well. Good to hear things are finally starting to warm up at home... hopefully the extra long winter means an extra long summer so I can enjoy some of that heat when I get home!! Last week I forgot to congratulate all of you for finishing another year of school! Yay!

The work is moving forward slowly but surely. We have started working in a lot of areas that have never been worked much and have talked with some great people. Probably our biggest obstacle is just trying to get the members excited about missionary work and invite their friends/family to listen to us... because we are having a hard time finding people to teach on our own! Sunday we had a great lesson in Elders Quorum about the Ward Misison Plan... and in another week or so my companion and I will be giving a training during the 3rd hour about "member referals" and give them all a baptism challenge card that the mission gave us.

Success story of the week... we have been working with the Barrios family for the last several weeks... and the mother of the family and the kids have all came to church for 3 weeks straight. But THIS week the father came after 2 years of not going! He is a great hermano y has such a huge capacity to help the ward progress (he has served as ward mission leader, elders quorum president, etc.) and all the members have nothing but good things to say about him. He is very down to earth as well and recognizes that he is the only one to blame although he has had several difficulties with work, etc. that have made it hard for him to go to church. Between the powerful testimony meeting we had yesterday, a good chat with the bishop, y continuing our visits, hopefully he can make the necessary changes to stay strong!

Yesterday I also recieved the tasty treats from one of the Kiss family daughters at church. I made the mistake of giving a taffy to one of the primary kids between classes... and before I knew it I was surrounded by children begging for "Caramelos". I told them if they were good for their teacher I would give them all a treat after all the meetings were over. After the meetings everyone was excited to try the tasty salt water taffies from Utah. I ended up leaving empty handed but it was fun to share with everyone. I figured I would be home in a short amount of time anyways and would be able to enjoy all the treats I want. ;) THANK YOU for sending the treats, they were a big hit in the ward!

Anyways, sorry so short this week! Congratulations to all those newly weds y newly engaged!

les amo
Elder Ian Wheelhouse