4 Weeks!

Dear family y friends,

Hard to believe another week has flown by! I am feeling a lot better, although I still have a pretty bad cold y cough! The weather hasnt been helping much either. We have had several really nice days intermixed with several very cold rainy days like today. Right now we are here in the centro of Quilmes hoping to do some shopping. Bit of a rough start to the day waiting for a bus in the rain... y even worse is that several passed by without stopping! But, overall things are going pretty well!

Not a whole lot of news this week. Wednesday y Thursday we had another one of those Leadership Training meetings in Adrogue. Spent the 2 days with Elder Camey from my district who is training this transfer. We both suffered a bit with this nasty cold/flu going around. Not quite sure why I had to go since I will only be here a couple more weeks... but I enjoyed it anyways! It was a little different than usual, but it is always great just to hear from Pres. y Hermana Stapley! At the end of the trainings Hermana Stapley shared a movie with us about her parents y their story in Brasil. (Her father served a mission then returned several times with his wife as "senior" missionaries) Focused a lot in the love and appreciation they had for the people of Brasil. Of course it also made me think a lot of the love I have felt y recieved from the people here in Argentina! I feel like I will be leaving behind more loved ones than I will be coming home to! ("more" in quantity not necesarily quality!) I think as the time continues to go by I am realizing more and more how much I will miss this place and these people!

Saturday we were supposed to have a Ward Activity which only us y 3 sisters from the relief society showed up to. The activity was planned several weeks ago... but the Argentina - Uruguay game of Copa America just happened to fall that day. We ate some of the goodies the hermanas brought... some tasty orange rolls, homemade bread etc. then it was back to work! To end the night we did visit an inactive family who just happened to be watching the end of the soccer game. Poor Argentina! :(

Good day in church yesterday, although there were very few people. (I think probably like 75% of Argentina is sick with the flu right now!) On top of that "Winter Vacations" recently started, so surely there are at least several people who took advantage of having the kids out of school to take a trip! Maria came with her mom y 2 sons, who are very excited for their baptism this week! Oscar also showed up all on his own... gotta get that guy baptised! No sign of Noelia. When we saw her Thursday she was complaining a lot about a bad headache... so I assume she is probably sick with what I had! :S Her daughters LOVE church y are always asking when it will be sunday again! We also had several inactive families show up that we have been teaching for a while. One of them who has actually been going to church for the last 3 weeks (Gaston y Nadie) gave a talk in Sacrament meeting, and another one gave the closing prayer! I think everyone gets a little discouraged when they show up after not going for a while and seeing how FEW people there are in the church. I think there are around 700 members on our ward list... and there are only about 70-80 in church each week.

Anyways, thats it for this week! Love you all!

les amo
Elder Ian Wheelhouse