4-30-12

Hey fam,

All is well. It is winter! Sweaters, and my big coat all the time now lol. Today was a semi nice day so we played soccer this morning. Then we went to downtown to go have some fun, but because it`s a holiday, we have no money... lol. The transaction hasn`t gone through on our missionary cards.  We got some subway, and now we`re here writing! La Plata is so cool. I love it. It`s a lot colder, but I like it a lot. I`ll probably be here for a while though. There is still one kid who came with me who is still in his first area. It`s rare to already have three areas. The zone leader with me only has 5 and he goes home at the end of this transfer. Oh ps, the zone leaders name is Elder Martindale, from price. He was best friends with Branden Gagnon. Branden went on a mission to Africa, and already is home.

So the new area is nice. It`s small, and there aren`t any villa areas. It`s actually the nicest area I`ve been in. It has it`s poor parts, but there`s not too many. We have a couple really cool investigators, and I`m excited to find some more.

The ward is huge! So many active members, that`s nice to see. And we have lunch every day. It`s really nice. We are planning to do skype, but we go to church at 2-5 our time you guys are 3 hours behind, so we`ll talk and see when we are planning to do it. I`m guessing if we have to call, we`ll just go to the church and call for free.

my comp is awesome. I want to send pics, but the usb port is locked up. I can`t find where to plug it in. I`ll keep looking. Elder Wheelers sister just got married in the bogotà temple in columbia, he was happy for her.

We`ve been working a lot with looking through inactive members, and old investigators, because we don`t have very many. We only have like 2 or 3 real investigators. Which doesn`t fill up the agenda all day 7 days a week... lol. But that`s okay, we`re doing well.

It was Elder Martindales birthday on Sat, we had a big party for him. Elder Wheelers birthday is the 18th too, so we are just going to party it up here in Villa Elvira.

I have finally hit 9 months. I don`t feel tooooo young in the mission anymore. I still have a long way to go, but it`s a good chunk.

Well I love ya guys! I`m doing well, and I`ll talk to ya soon.

Elder Gardner

4-23-12

Well... a lot has happened in the last week.

First off, we had some problems with our baptisms, so we only ended up baptising 2 out of the 5. I`m happy that two were able to, but 5 would have been so much better. Supposedly, this coming week. I sure hope so for their sake. Second off... I GOT TRANSFERRED! I am now in La Plata. I have officially left the metropolis of Buenos Aires. It is very rare to leave the city. Out of 250 missionaries, about 42 aren`t in Buenos Aires. So, we have buenoes aires which is a province, and the city is the capitol of Argentina, but La Plata is the capitol of Buenos Aires. All of the government stuff is here, and it`s BEAUTIFUL. It`s clean too. lol. There is a lot less garbage on the streets. I`m supre excited though. My new comp is Elder Wheeler, from Columbia. Yupp, my first Latin comp. He is really cool. He`s 22 just about and has about 17 months in the mission. We share an area with the zone leaders, and they are both awesome. We also live with them in the same apartment which I hear is beatiful. It took us about 2, 2.5 hours to get here by train. You should google La Plata, it`s amazing. It`s city, city too. I don`t know about my area yet, we haven`t gone. I ate at BURGER KING today. MMMMMMM. I downed a steakhouse burger, fries, and a brownie milkshake like none other. IT was sooooo good. lol. There is a McD`s here too. WOOT! My area is called Villa Elvira. So a little tip about Argentina, there are things called villas. They are like... the ghetto of the U.S. They are the poorer people with very humble homes and there is a lot of crime there. So, I am headed to a villa. lol. Okay! I`m not worried, I have no idea if it is all villa or what but we`ll see in about an hour. I actually am reallllly happy to be here. I was not wanting to get transferred because there are plans in Glew to baptise about 7 people within the next month, and they are all looking pretty promising, but I know I`m here for a reason, and I love the area. We`re definitely going to visit La Plata.

Mothers day, we will skype. I forgot my password... so I`m going to try to figure that all out before mothers day. And we go to church at 2 in the afternoon, so we will probably call later in the day. I have no idea though. We`ll see. I`ll double check. will you do me a favor? And pay my tithing on my tax return? I would wait and do it, but I`m afraid I will forget to do it.

I`m glad you liked the pictures. I was going to send more today because of the baptisms, and I have a ton from saying goodbyes to everyone yesterday, but `my camer is packed way down in my luggage. My suitcases are falling apart :/ I might have to buy new ones here soon. We`ll see. The wheel on one broke, so that makes it reallllly hard to do transfers lol and then the other one ,the stitching is separating where the handle is so when you pull it, it almost just falls apart. It might make it through one more transfer.... maybe.

The weather here is chilly and beautiful. With a sweater, I feel amazing. No more sweating all day, and all night. So, with the language. I have a Latin comp, so I will be speaking spanish all the time! It will be good for me. And speaking in sacrement, I`ve only done an actual talk once. But they always ask us to bear our testimonies. Especially when we are entering or leaving an area. My glasses are doing well. I only use them when I study in the mornings. I don`t like to wear them out in public because it basically screams hey! I`m American, ROB ME! Plus, it`s a pain when you sweat so much. But I do use them in the mornings.

Well that`s all the great news for this last week, baptisms and transfers. I`m content though.

Talk to you guys in a week!

Love ya!

Elder Gardner

4-16-12

Hola padres.

how are you guys doing? I`m doing well.

This last week was amazing! We had some really great lessons, and it was just great. We have plans for 5 baptisms this week, but we`ll see. It seems all of our plans fall through, but these ones are really looking well. And then, an investigator we`ve had for like 3 months just finally accepted to be baptised. I can`t believe it. We had such a great spiritual lesson with him and it was almost 100% inspiration. The spirit was so strong, and he is getting baptised the 29 of april. We also found like 8 new investigators this week, a whole entire family. And we found some old investigators doing contacts this last week. They were investigators 8 years ago, but got bored. So, wè`re passing by tomorrow, and we`re going to make sure they are excited :) Wow, the work is picking up. I`m a happy camper. We are working hard still and hoping for the best. The only thing that scares me a little bit is transfers! They are here in a week. My comp and I both feel like I`m leaving... which would kind of suck when I`ve worked so hard in this area and am finally reaping benefits and then I have to leave. But I will go where the Lord wants me to go. There would be a reason for it. 

We had some fun FHE`s this past week. With the french toast, and with the cobbler. lol. They loved it. Not as good as ductch oven, but it sufficed. 

I`ve seen a little bit more improvement with the language lately, with understanding people. Now I am better at understanding people than speaking lol. But I`m still doing great. I think I might be getting a Latin comp for my next one. I`ve gone a good while without one. That would be okay with me, I could use a couple weeks speaking only spanish. I`m just glad it is now instead of my first couple of weeks. 

9 months. it doesn`t seem like that is too long compared to 24. But it`s still a good chunk. I heard from 6 months to a year is the longest part of the mission. It kind of feels like it. And then once you hit a year it just sales downhill because you know a lot and are just working through it. So we`ll see! But right now, I still feel very young in the mission and a year and 3 months still seems a long ways a way. 

OH! Also, I think that I can fly directly to the Vernal airport when I come home. That would be super nice. Because I remember Cadin left directly from the Vernal airport to go to England, so I`m sure I could do  the same on the way home. 

I heard Argentina stopped all trade with the US? How odd! I don`t know if it`s true or not..

Well love ya fam!

Elder Gardner

And for bday package, I`m not too worried about anything, and don`t really need anything. I`m doing great! 

I did get your last package, did I tell you that? 

4-9-12

Hola Fam!

I´m glad you guys had a blast camping :) I am a lil jealous, but I can wait a year and 3.5 months. How crazy is that? Soon, I´ll have 9 months. It seems like that´s not very much compared to 24, but that´s a long time. And then I´ll have a year!

Yeah, we heard about the Argentine consulate. How weird right? Only 7 per week... I´m positive you two won´t need a visa to visit, it´s just to live. But honestly, they could send the missionaries out here without visas. I have had zero problems. It would be safer to have the visas, but yeah. Two elders in my zone were stopped and asked for goverment papers, so it was good that they had them. Because if they didn´t, they would have probably robbed them. The police here are... not really police. Only in capitál are the policemen real police. Crazy Argentina. I´m pretty sure that we would have to pay for my ticket, i´m still trying to verify though. If we do, it would just be better to go in the nice weather. I would say november is a good time. It´s right before the hot part of summer, and before heavy tourism. So, if we wanted to go to the beach, we could with less tourists and stuff. That´d be nice.

Elder Reynolds and I think I´m getting transferred this transfer. We´ll see. I wouldn´t mind leaving, but we also just had the work pick up. As of now, all of the planned baptisms are the sunday before, but if anything happens, I´ll miss the baptisms of the people I´m treaching right now, which would suck. But I´m not here for the numbers, I still am helping the people. But it would still be nice to be there and see them.

We found 4 new people this week to teach. 3 of them are cousins to some recent converts. They are awesome little kids. They want to learn a lot. The other is a daughter of an inactive member who has a mental disability. It´s so humbling teacher her. She is so cute though. She loves learning about God. This week should go a lot smoother than the last few weeks. Last week went well, but this week should be better.

Casey said it´s rumor that David Archuleta is going to Argentina on his mission. He´s in the MTC right now. So who knows, maybe I´ll be his new comp ;) lol.

We had a massive Uno tourny today. It was fun. I love my zone right now. My last one didn´t get along very well, but this zone is awesome. I traded some ties today, I got some new nice looking ones :)

Well That´s about it for this week!

Talk to you soon. I´m still working on pics for ya.

Elder Gardner

4-2-12

Things are going great here in Glew. We´re all energized from the GC. No, not Golden Corral, General Conference :) We had a blast this weekend, all the yankee elders got together and the stake president put it up in a different room in English for us. WOOT! It was so nice to watch it in English. Boy, I miss that language. Neither investigators came. One tried, but he got home too late. But he showed up right when it ended.  We´ve officially dropped the other.   Sad, but we can´t waste our time anymore. I was actually really upset when we got back from conference because we didn´t know about the one yet, and that he had attempted to come. Elder Reynolds and I were talking about how upset we were and he says imagine how Jesus feels? It´s so true though. I feel upset because of how much we´ve worked for these investigators and I feel like they should have done more. Imagine how Jesus feels as he sacrificed himself for us. And then almost immediately the recent talk of President Uchtdorf popped in my head. His talk about forgiveness to others, and the law of mercy from our Heavenly Father only takes affect if we show mercy to others. So, from that we decided to give Pablo another chance. I thought a lot about it all night. Like I said last week, I´m not here for me, I´m here for the Lord. I need to stop worrying about ME and MY feelings and thing about what he would want and do. That is really hard to do sometimes.

Sorry, But I didn´t have too much time for pictures this week. I´ll try next week when it´s a little bit less hectic. Today we needed to take money off our cards, but they have taken all the ATM´s out of Glew. So we were traveling all over and none of the other ATM´s had money so we had to travel to three different cities to get our money out today... LAME! It took us three hours :/ Oh well I guess, we have to eat right?

I hope you guys enjoy your Easter camping trip this weekend!

Talk to you next week,

Elder Gardner