A Little Late, but Worth the Wait

This is me with Elder Parry and my "brother" a.k.a. the other Elder he trained.

Dear Family,
Thank you so much for the e-mails and pictures! We've been keeping busy over here. P-day was today, Tuesday, because we had our Zone Conference yesterday, our first Zone conference with President and Sister Lindahl. We were there with Guaymallén which is why I ran into Elder Parry again. He's doing well and the Elder he just barely trained already left for the offices. I'm not sure who his companion is now. As for how many missionaries are in the Mendoza mission, I'm not entirely sure but I know it's just a little under 200. It's definately interesting living with the Assistants and it's not without its perks. For zone conference they drove us in their car which made it much easier and faster. Unfortuantely they had to leave much later so we had to take a bus home and all our stuff is still in their car, but we'll get everything back today. Fortuantely we still had our scripture cases so we're not entirely in need of our stuff. They also have a very different schedule sometimes. Last week their entire week was going to different zone conferences so we only saw them in the morning and at night. They also have their P-days on Saturday so the apartment gets double cleaning duty, which is always good. It sounds like the dance festival was a lot of fun. It sounds like the trip to Washington D.C. will be tons of fun too! My new companion's very animated which makes things more fun. He's learning English so I make sure to teach him important phrases like "What chu talkin' 'bout?" :) Sounds exciting with Joel trying out for American Idol. We'll have to plan for when he becomes famous and all the news reporters start interviewing the family. Hopefully they won't make it to Argentina. So with our interviews during Zone Conference I found out why President Lindahl has interest in computers. He owns a computer company that tracks about 4 million products a day, running C+ and Oracle. That's pretty much awesome, I'm not going to lie. The mission's getting a "check-up" so everything's being looked at. Sister Lindahl checked the agenda of every missionary and gave prizes to the Elders with the best agendas. She's also going around and checking the Elders' apartments to make sure everything's clean and taken care of. You can tell when they talk that they have a lot of love for the missionaries. They really were called from God to serve in Mendoza, Argentina. We're all glad to have them. Well it sounds like everyone's doing well and I can't wait to hear from everyone next week! I love you all!!! Bye!!!
Love,
Elder Williams

A 30 Year Wait

Dear Family,

Thank you so much for the e-mails!!! Once again, thanks to technical problems, I'll have to keep the e-mail a little short but not too short hopefully. I did manage to get a picture through :). It was so amazing having another baptism already though Elder González and Elder Duarte did all the work. Oscar, the man Elder González baptized, has been investigating the church for 30-some years! I was fortunate enough to be with Elder González when he extended the baptisimal commitment that finally stuck :) . He lives with his friends, the Cobos family, because he'd been kicked out of his house by the police when his mother left the house because supposedly a paper's missing or something concerning ownership of the house. He offered a prayer before the baptisimal service and you could tell how ready he was for baptism. He'd already been reading in Jesus the Christ and he wanted to make sure that if he's going to be baptized he'll be able to keep the comandments and stay faithful for the rest of his life. He already has a great support group from the Cobos family so we know they'll keep him faithful. It really was amazing! Ok, time to respond to letters really quickly: For Mom: I'm doing great, how are you? I'm glad my letters made it so quickly so I'm going to have to send more because the post office is about a block away from our apartment...and I'd love to return to a Mormon Chino Hills :) . For Dad: we do ride the bus from time to time, in fact today we'll take the bus to the Libertad which is like a Wal-Mart the size of a small country. We're not actually going to buy anything there but it just happens to be the closest ATM. I actually got a card a few days ago that's kind of like a bus giftcard that you swipe with a RFID tag inside. The buses don't take cash so you use the card when you don't have change and if you don't have exact change you can put the extra on the card for later. Even though it's already been five months I still don't quite feel like a veteran yet. I am more in the routine of things though. Elder González is my second companion who was made senior companion when I arrived. We're all learning together. Everyone thinks I'll go to the offices from Godoy Cruz so that might be when I become senior companion. The office elders trade off being senior companion every week but always leave the offices as senior companion and sometimes as Zone Leaders. For Lisa: sounds like it's nice to have your car back again. Nothing like an accident to make your car better than it was before :) . Congratulations on the Pearl of Great Price test! You definitely returned to school with a vengeance.
Well I'm running out of time so I'll share one other quick story. Yesterday was el Día del Amigo when friends swap presents and things like that. We always pass by the Pizaro family, a less active family, and in honor of the occasion they gave us little presents that her cousin made for her to sell. They're such an awesome family, I'll tell you more about them in my next letter but I've got to go. Thank you so much again!!! I love you all!!! Bye!!!

Love,
Elder Williams

Transfer and New Companion

Dear Family,

Thank you so much for the e-mails!!! Sorry I can't respond to everybody individually but there was a minor password problem with MyLDSMail.net and I had to reset my password. I'm also a little thrown off because this is a regular English keyboard, which would be great and everything if it wasn't for the fact that the computer translates it automatically into a Spanish keyboard...meaning I have to type certain characters from memory because they don't match the keys I'm using. It's all messed up and I'm all confused and I lost 15 minutes trying to sign-in to my account. Why am I in to computers again? Half of the world of computers is fixing the problems created by computers. Yay. Ok, enough complaining about computers. I GOT TRANSFERED!!! I'm now in Godoy Cruz, sharing an apartment with the assistants to the president. My new companion's name is Elder Gonzalez, AND HE'S FROM URUGUAY!!! ¿Qué tal? He's even from Montevideo and he knows the mall Aunt China lives next to. The assistants are Elder Smith from Utah and Elder Peralta from Santa Fe, Argentina. We live ACROSS THE STREET from the chapel, which is amazing. Two blocks down the street is the huge Super Vea supermarket. Across the street as well is an Internet Café (which is closed right now so I'm in the Internet café a block down the street), and also a block down the street is a laundromat! In reality our apartment is in the area of the assistants but it's only a few blocks to our area. We also have church here at 9:30 in the morning but we start with priesthood and end with sacrament meeting because the ward of the assistants starts with sacrament meeting and ends with priesthood. The bishop of their ward is the guy who (with his family) cooks for the missionaries every zone conference (they're amazing cooks). We already have a baptism coming up this Saturday! For Julie and Dave: the question is more what haven't I eaten that's good? So a memorable street contact would have to be when I said "Hi, my name is Elder Cabrera." I started laughing after that and I have the feeling that lady wasn't terribly impressed. For Jennifer: I've met tons of good investigators in my new area and we're going to have some baptisms in the coming weeks. I'm a little jealous that you can drive, especially because the assistants have their own car. For Lisa: I can't think of any specific pictures I want but thank you so much for the pictures you've sent! Our new apartment has two stories, a little cement enclosed area in back where you can turn a knob to open the roof, a nice little kitchen, a living-room-kinda-thing, and a huge water heater! It's an unbelievably nice apartment. A few missionaries said this isn't actually the mission with an apartment this nice. My companion worked in construction before the mission and bought a piano that looks like the one Abuela has. For Mom: my companion says he knows San Rafael a little and might know what particular area you served in if you know the specifics. I found two amazing cookbooks in the apartment that I can't wait to use but at the same time, we get lunch from the members every day of the week except Mondays (although we did get lunch today). Our new mission president is still amazing and he came to our area yesterday and the day before because he baptized a woman who ran into him and the missionaries while they were manning a little stand. Well, I gotta go but I love you all and thank you again for your letters!!! Bye!!!

Love,

Elder Williams

Hello President Lindahl!

The last couple of weeks, Lawrence has sent letters basically responding to things I've written to him, and not really saying anything new. So, excuse the break in posts. I think we're back on track now!

Lawrence has a new mission president, which, as we learned from their meeting at the MTC, is a pretty awesome guy. Here is the news from Argentina this week.

Here's a picture of my zone with our new mission president, President Lindahl

This is my picture of my two missionary companions from the mission field.

Dear Family,

Thank you all so much for the e-mails and for letting me know how everyone's doing!!! Since I lost a bit of time sending pictures and everything I'm going to try and respond to everyone in the same e-mail so I won't forget anyone or run out of time. Work's still going well here in San Martín. This past week we've been teaching a girl whose parents are members but less-active and she wants to be baptized. She goes to church with her grandmother but they attend the wrong ward so the grandmother is technically listed as inactive as well. This past Sunday was the second time she attended our ward so she's on track to be baptized the 26th of July. Our other investigators (who still have to get divorced) are still doing well but Oscar, the husband, had to go to the hospital for surgery. He's going to be alright but we couldn't find him when we went to the hospital. The staff didn't know where he was either so we had to leave after a while and work elsewhere. We had a really nice conference with President Lindahl. He's excited to be here and already had an interesting experience on his 3rd day of being mission president. One Elder had passed out and his companion had to call at about midnight, asking what to do. He told him to give his companion a blessing and the companion recovered fairly quickly after. President Lindahl also shared with us that as he was praying with his assistants, he felt as if he was in the room with the Elder, giving the blessing himself. It was really awesome to hear President Lindahl relate the story, standing with the elder and his companion in the conference. President Lindahl hasn't asked for any computer help yet but I'm sure the office elders are taking care of the computers for now. I'll find out tomorrow if I'm getting transferred to another area, such as the offices, but supposedly all of the office elders in there right now just barely went in so they'll be there for a while to help out the new president. I still might go to another area in the mission though. Speaking of computers, Dad, update.microsoft.com is usually pretty good for downloading patches and you can just run it automatically. For Jennifer, the food's amazing and we get lots of noodles and milanesa which is awesome. The milk's fine and the Spanish is still coming. For new investigators, we taught the sister of the bishop, who received us really well. She says she's Christian but doesn't attend any church in particular. She's really nice to us and she went to the activity we had on the 20th of June. We're also going to have an activity on the 9th of June (I think he meant July) which is like the Argentine Independance Day. For Mom, my new companion, Elder Cabrera, is from Missiones, Argentina and teaches really well. This transfer which technically starts today is his last transfer in the mission. He also speaks English really well since he's studied for 8 or 10 years before the mission. His parents and sister aren't members of the church but his parents attend church every so often and maybe are waiting for him to get home before they get baptized. I definately think there's hope for them. He's told me all about who Eva Peron was when I asked him about her and he also helps me to learn a little about Argentine history and who the people are on the back of the money. Our area's a little on the large side but not large enough to merit bikes. We don't usually travel on bus but there are areas, such as Alto Salvador, that are too far away to walk. The hospital is in our area and we've visited a couple of times even though only once did we find our patient. The visiting hours in the afternoon are exactly when we're inside during the siesta. Have you been getting my letters I've sent by snail-mail? Anywho, I'm about out of time so I wish everyone the best week possible and I'll send another letter today in regular mail. I love you all!!! Bye!!!

Love,

Elder Williams