Happy Birthday, Elder Williams!

On the 27th we celebrated Lawrence's birthday without him there. We couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a picture to send to him. Here we are celebrating Lawrence's birthday together. Happy 20th, old man!





If you haven't seen the post about the phone call home yet, scroll down!

Christmas Phone Call!

We actually didn't get a letter from Lawrence last week, and it seems that this week will be a repeat. I don't know if this has to do with Christmas or not. But we DID get to talk to Lawrence on Christmas day! That was a real treat! He had a total of 40 minutes alloted, and we kept him going for 44. What a rebel! We each passed the phone around and got to speak to him. It wasn't so much the content of the conversations as just getting to hear his voice. I don't think anyone learned anything new, but it was so wonderful to get the chance to speak to him. It made it seem like he wasn't so far away. Here are some pictures of people on the phone with Lawrence.

Waiting

More waiting . . .

. . .and our favorite missionary sent us a picture of himself talking to all of us! I'm not sure why it's so blurry.

It's unlikely that we'll all be together again for any of the other phone calls home during his mission. So this was a special opportunity for us. We miss you, Lawrence! Hopefully a real letter will come soon. I should mention, for anyone who is curious, his Spanish is amazing. He doesn't sound like a returned missionary, he sounds like a native speaker. I'm not exaggerating. Just wait till he comes home!

¡Feliz Navidad!

Dear Family,
Thank you all so much for your love, letters, and support!!! Before I forget I should explain what’s going to happen for the phone call: We’re 5 hours ahead from California so for example it’s 4:49PM here and 11:49AM there. The phone number for you to call will be (this will be the entire exact number for you to dial): (sorry guys! Not going to post that on a public blog!). Here’s the cool part: you’ll hear Elder Pedersen’s recording say in English and Spanish that you’ve reached the Mendoza Mission it will then later say if you’d like to speak with the Historian, Press 3. You’ll get to hear Elder Pedersen’s English which is pretty good. As for when would be best to call: on Christmas day we’re not allowed to go out and proselyte so any time during Christmas is good for me. If you want you can send a quick e-mail with a time that would be good for you on Christmas day. In case we can’t get any e-mails back or forth around Christmas I’ll just say 11:00 AM your time which will be 4:00 PM my time. If there’s a better time for you please don’t hesitate to e-mail me back. There may even be a little bit of time on Christmas Eve to call. Whatever works best for you. If there’s anything urgent I need to know, send an e-mail to (sorry again!) which is the office’s e-mail and is checked constantly but should only be used in an emergency. As you might have guessed I’M REALLY EXCITED TO HEAR FROM YA’LL!!! That’s quite possibly one of the best Christmas presents I could imagine.
As for the latest in office news: Elder and Hermana Jarvis are still having a good time and we even went with them to buy some curtains for some of the other missionaries’ apartments. We got to drive President’s Chrysler to the “Easy” (that’s right the store name is English) (a hardware store) and Elder Jarvis told us, “you didn’t hear this from me but you and Elder Miles are the best drivers we’ve driven with.” That made Elder Miles and me feel pretty good. They even invited us over for the 10 cent tour of their new apartment which is looking pretty nice. Hermana Jarvis is decorating and put out a little nativity as well as a picture of her family. When we ran some other errands and borrowed the car from them we came back afterwards to return the car keys. Elder Jarvis had his mp3-player out and was listening to some of the music I helped him put on it (it actually took 2 full days for his iPod to sync correctly with iTunes on his new laptop (yes it froze (several times))). We also went to the Libertad with them though they didn’t buy anything while we were there. Since we were already there though I bought a chocolate fondue :) (it was basically less than $3). Also while we were shopping we went to Wal-Mart and ran into one of our investigators, Romina, who works there. Oh and in big projects (we’re seriously going through at least 5 projects that your average human being would only have to do once in their life and they all just happened to be occurring while I was in the offices) the Mission had managed to get a bunch of money from Salt Lake to spend on fixing up apartments and buying new stuff like plates, silverware, beds, fridges, etc. Unfortunately the money also came with a deadline which means all craziness broke loose. One of the assistants said, “I can spend money really fast!” Fortunately he was not in charge of our expenditures (I believe him too). Right now all the stuff we bought is already on its way to the offices but at the same time, the offices are in no way a warehouse. The Hermana Lindahl might not be terribly pleased with the mess but hopefully we can get everything delivered quickly.
I received the most wonderful letters from the Ward (sent by Bishop Jones) and the Campbells. It’s always amazing to feel the love of our ward family and I only wish I could have 100 of our ward to spread some love down here in Argentina. Thank you again for your letters and I hope you all have such a good week that even Snoop Dogg gets baptized (I don’t know if you heard about that (and yes it’s a fake)). I love you all so much!!! Bye!!!
Love,
Elder Williams

P.S. Let me know if you’d like individual letters or just this general letter like I’ve been doing, I just figured I wouldn’t have much difference between my letters and this way everyone gets a longer letter.

P.P.S. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

P.P.P.S. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

P.P.P.P.S. Fireworks are on sale :D

P.P.P.P.P.S. We thought about getting one for the white elephant gift exchange :D (just kidding)

My Brother is Amazing

Pizzurno, the road I live on. You can actually find it on Mapquest (although google maps probably works better in this area).

Here's my house. It's big. (Side note from Lisa - The basket on top of a pole in the middle of the picture is for trash. They have it elevated like that so the dogs don't get into it. They had those in Uruguay too.

Dear Family,

Thank you so much for your e-mails!!! Well, let's just say this was a pretty interesting week as far as weeks go. It all started when President came over to talk to me and asked to meet with me for a moment. It turns out he had a meeting coming up in which he had to present a few graphs in front of 8 Stake Presidents, 1 District President, an Area Authority, and one of the Church's regional doctors. As soon as I could, I got all the graphs ready using the numbers of baptisms from last year as well as October and November's numbers. The graphs were meant to show progress towards a goal set by the Area Presidency, basically asking each stake and district to double baptisms. The letter quoted President Hinckley and said "we have not been heeding this prophetic council in our stakes or in this area." The Area Presidency will have to report to Elder Richard G. Scott in April 2009 about how everything is going on reaching the goal. Needless to say everyone is feeling the pressure. Well I prepared the graphs so they could be edited to follow the progress from here on out until we reach the goal in the stakes and in the mission. President had me go over to his house from the offices (I don't know if I mentioned this before but the mission president's home is a good distance away from the offices where we work) in order to show him and explain all the graphs I made. After explaining it for a while and showing all the ways to present the graphs President said, "I have an idea, you could explain the graphs, Elder Williams." Needless to say I was taken a little aback by his request. I hadn't imagined being in front of an Area authority and all those stake presidents presenting the numbers. Well, that was Saturday afternoon. The meeting was Sunday morning. I've definately had better nights of sleep before in my life. I did some minor tweaking to the graphs and everything and even printed out handouts for everyone in attendance and then got ready for the meeting and made sure my suit was clean. I woke up extra early to prepare everything and to get ready and at 8:30 or so President Lindahl picked me up for the meeting. President drove me and Doctor Cook to Guaymallén where the meeting was being held and asked me more or less how to get to the Guaymallén chapel. To make a long story short, we got a little lost on the way but we found some members on their way to church and they gave us directions to the chapel. Fortunately we still got there early so we didn't have too much of a problem. When we got there we shook hands with all the leaders there and found our seats in the high council room as the meeting was about to start. They talked about various subjects such as helping the wards and taking care of the chapels. When it came time for President to present his part of the meeting he turned the time over to me and I plugged in my flash drive to start the presentation. One of the stake presidents was kind enough to offer to pass out my stake president's handouts (since I didn't know who anyone was) and I started with the first graph which was of the mission as a whole. I then went stake by stake to show how many people had been baptized and how many people we would need to reach our goal for the year (October to September of next year). I showed the monthly average and pointed out that the Excel graphs I made were editable so they could track their own progress and see how things were going. They asked me to e-mail the graphs to each of them so they could use them and I could e-mail the monthly numbers so they could follow along. I was a little nervous but everyone was very nice and there weren't any major problems. Afterwards I sat down and just listened for the rest of the meeting since there wasn't anything for me to participate in as they were discussing addiction recuperation programs. Afterwards I shook everyone's hand and President and I had to leave since my companion, Elder Miles, was basically doing divisions with one of the ward members while I was gone. One of the stake presidents had brought a GPS for President that guided us back home so we could pick up Elder Miles and go to lunch at a member's house. I had to switch the GPS from Spanish to English (and the voice from British to American English) so President could understand it easier but it worked really well for being in Argentina with a lot of small streets most map services wouldn't find. Fortunately the stake president who gave President Lindahl the GPS had loaded all of the chapels in the mission as well as President's house and the mission offices. If I'm ever rich and famous, I'll get a GPS :) . That was basically the big highlight of the week. It was a really amazing experience because I really got to challenge myself. I can't think of too many times in which I could prepare for a presentation like that. I am pretty glad it's over though. Hopefully the graphs will help the leaders of the church in our mission see their progress towards the area's goals and give that extra bit of work we need in the mission. It was a really fun project though (just the presenting it part freaked me out a bit).

Oh, and I do remember Elder Barrow from the MTC! He wasn't in my zone but he was on the same floor in the MTC classrooms and our teachers would have us switch classrooms and teach each other. His teacher in the MTC sung in the April General Conference while we were at the MTC so that was pretty cool. Tell him hi for me! Tell him he only has to baptize all of Southern California (that's not too much to ask is it?). I'm sending a few pictures too and they're of outside! You'll get to see a little of what I see everyday. I love you all and I can't wait to hear from everybody again!!! I love you!!! Bye!!!

Love,

Elder Williams

P.S. Hermana Lindahl's Razor cell phone broke...mostly broke so she's having me fix it and I found out you could use it as a cellular fax machine...that was interesting

Zone Conference Week

Dear Family,

Thank you so much for your letters, love, and support!!! I'm sorry I wasn't able to write you on Saturday but my P-day got moved to Monday (it's kind of a trial run for Elder Slater our district leader who wants to see if P-day works better on Mondays). It's also in the afternoon meaning we work in the offices from the morning until lunch and then go straight into P-day for the rest of the day. Saturday becomes a full day of working in the mission field helping our investigators get to church on Sunday. We'll see how it all works out in the end. As per Mom's request I'm going to try and take my camera out more with me so I can get some pictures of Argentina OUTSIDE (I didn't even know Argentina had an outside! (probably a sign I've been indoors too long)). So we're in the middle of the week of conferences meaning that all hecticness broke loose starting at the beginning of last week. I had all of two days to finish the first side of "Aguas de Cuyo" and all of 30 seconds to finish the other side so hopefully it turned out all right. President told us not to worry about the weekly newsletter this week because things were so crazy. It gets better too: yesterday was the last day of November meaning the last baptisms of November. Now I have until about Friday to hunt down all of the baptisimal forms and get the information entered into the computer. Needless to say it might take a little while. We (Elder Miles and I) also spent all of yesterday afternoon updating the transfer board in the offices and in President's house. President is already getting ready for transfers in about two weeks and things will be yet more interesting. Some of the really good news is that a new Married Missionary Couple (an MMC as I like to call them :) ) got here not too long ago and Elder Miles and Elder Slater are already training them to be their replacements which means that Elder Fuentes and I will be the only young missionaries in the offices. Elder and Sister Jarvis (the new MMC) will be President's Secretary and Financial Secretary. They're really friendly and have been working really hard to learn how to do their new jobs. They're both working hard to learn the language better and are improving really fast. In other news, our Multivan (the bus) got traded out for a Chrysler Caravan with a 7 CD changer (I thought it was a little excessive but the car already has over 70,000 Kilometers on it and is technically a loaner car that used to belong to the Cordoba mission. Elder Jensen thinks it might have been the car that was in Cordoba when Mom was in Cordoba. I actually like the car but I found out it'll only go up to 150 MPH (I'm just kidding by the way (it actually makes it to 160 MPH :) )). Yesterday was also really amazing because Marcos Gonzalez and Juan Bellido received the Melchizedek priesthood. They were converts from Elder Searle and Elder Pedersen, two of the missionaries in the offices when I first got to the offices. You can definitely see their progression towards the temple and being sealed to their families forever. Marcos is now basically the mission doctor and has been working close with the missionaries. His mom went to his ordination to watch which is really amazing because this was the first time she went to church since I've been here in Godoy Cruz Centro. She's not a member but the fact that she was willing to go to church after so much time shows she might be changing, even just a little bit. The mission is really doing better and better every day. Elder Scott (as in THE Elder Scott) committed President Lindahl to have over 100 baptisms before the end of the year and today we got the final numbers from November which reflected we had indeed made it to 100 baptisms :) . It's really a reflection of no matter how hard Satan is working to take us down God is always pushing us up and Satan is less than a mere atom compared to God's Universal power. Thank you again for your letters and I hope you all have an amazing week!!! I love you!!! Bye!!!

Love,
Elder Williams

the symbol is the baptism symbol

This is the newsletter I work on and put out every six weeks (everyone in the mission gets one)

Here's the other side of Aguas de Cuyo

He aquí, el escudo de la misión Mendoza