July 30, 2012

hola familia
So this week was a pretty good one I guess. we did divisions on wednesday so I was with elder jorquera here in tortuguitas which was great. Me and him are way similar and we work hard and we just have fun. Its way awesome. But yeah so we have an investigator named belen. She is about 25 or something. her husband too but he is working all the time so we havent taught him in a long time. But anyway, earlier last week she told us she doesnt like being pressured into going to church and stuff and we pass by every day to get her to come and get her to read and stuff. But she basically kinda got kinda mad about that cause I guess she doesnt like us just showing up. But then last thursday our zone leaders told us all to go out and put a baptimal date for this last Sunday. It was the end of the day and we only had a lesson with belen to end the night so we just decided to put one with her even though she doesnt want to and is mad at us kinda sorta not really. But yeah so we went there and satan really tried everything to stop us. First of all there wasn't a man there so we couldnt go in. So we went down the street and got a member to come and then we started talking and the power went out and she had to go buy candles. And then when we started talking again the grandma (whos way nice and shes the grandma of daniel my first convert but shes way catholic and has a hard time hearing) started going off about her life and stuff so it was really frustrating. but somehow we talked seriously about baptism and we bore testimony and everything. It was so spiritual and powerful and during it she said she knows she needs to be baptized. It was awesome. she has been to church in the past but not recently.But we really brought the spirit and at the end we asked her to pray on her knees to end the lesson. She began to do so but never does it on her knees and she never likes to pray in front of people but she did and in the middle she just started crying and after the prayer we sat there and just let her feel the spirit really strong and she accepted the date for sunday and she felt the spirit way strong. It was an awesome lesson. We did divisions again on Saturday to do her interview and I went to del viso for the day with elder jorquera which was fun. But she passed and stuff but she only wants to do her baptism when her husband can be there. She didnt end up coming to church yesterday but we have a lesson with her tomorrow night to talk about everything so hopefully that goes good. Her husband doesnt have work thursday so we are really going to try and get her baptised on that day but we will see cause shes been kinda maybe the past 2 days. But yeah we ate lunch on Saturday with juan and he got confirmed on sunday so that was really good. I really love him and he really loves me and we are just way tight and I hope to never lose contact with him. He wants to come to the united states in a couple years to visit me. I told him he could stay with me and we would go party and stuff all the time. So if I'm living at home still when he comes I hope thats okay mom ;) so this wednesday we have lunch with familia nieve. We have lunch with them every wednesday but something has come up every wednesday and we havent eaten with them this whole transfer. But this is the last week of the transfer. Oh yeah I forgot to tell you transfers are next monday. but yeah so hopefully we eat with them this week. gabi neive is a recently returned mission and just such a sick kid. I love him! He has helped me out so much and he's the nicest guy ever but yeah they are making me a cake :) for my bday. And also another family is making me a cake on friday and another girl in the ward is making me one too :) so hopefully I'll be eatin lots of cake this week. But yeah hopefully itHll be a good week. here are some pictures finally too. Make sure you show the jersey to david please haha. Maybe next week I will be emailing from a different area and with a different companion. I guess we will see! This week also I'ive been studying a lot about the atonement and repentance and it really has helped me a lot to better understand things and focus on what I need to improve and work on. Also during studys in the mornings its really cold especially this past week and at night too but during studys we have to turn the oven on and open it to warm up the room and keep warm haha but yeah.

yeah the temple was way awesome. Those kids I met were in the mtc here in buenos aires as missionaries. They have been out for like 6 weeks but yeah it was cool. Hey I love peanut butter! I would just rather have something else filling that space in a package haha but you can send me some whenever if you want. I'm glad he understood my thing to him haha sounds like a fun bday I guess. He didnt write me about it but oh well its fine. yeah I dont think jacob wrote me either but tell him to write me for next week. I wanna know how things are going with him being home. The terrys are for sure moving there? yeah I would like to trade the truck in when I get back if it still works and get some more money and then buy a different car and sub. That would be great. I dont know what else we are really going to be involved in with the temple but we will see. We have been putting flyers under peoples gates and passing them out in between appointments that we have but yeah. We have interviews with president every other transfer and zone conference the other every other. So we have something with president every transfer at least. yeah I was just gonna ask you when does tim go to the mtc??? His farwell was yesterday huh? wow so crazy. I guess thats it for this week. les amo a todos mucho!!! Thank everyone for the birthday emails too. I love them all!!

Love, Elder Buxton



also 2 last things. one is like I said I have been styuding repentance and stuff a lot this week and I have realized that I have done a lot of stupid stuff in my life and everything. so it would be awesome if you could tell everyone in my family I am sorry. to you mom, austin, ashlee, cassidee, logan, kyler, megan, mckenna, etc. I just want you all to know how sorry I am for a lot of stupid things I have done and for not being a better example. but yeah I have just been reading a lot about confessing your sins and I have confessed everything to the lord and now I want to say sorry to all of you if I may have hurt or done something to any of you. I'm not the person I was 7 months ago and so yeah I'm sorry. thanks mom!

July 23, 2012

Querido Familia
Okay so this week was a really kinda bitter sweet week. okay first things first. That forgiveness scripture I was talking about last week is D&C 84:61. Okay so last tuesday we got a call from one of the assistants saying that we needed to call sister gulbrandsen (mission presidents wife) which was kinda weird cause you dont normally get calls like that. So we did and she told us that we were one of the 8 companionships in our whole mission that got chosen to go to the temple one day and help them with whatever to prepare for it to be open to the public in all of august. So we went on wednesday and got up at 4:30 and had trouble getting there a little bit but we got there good. The temple is soooo sick!!!! We were so stoked when we were told we got picked. So we were there all day wednesday with another companionship from our mission. The others do it different days. But yeah so the mtc is literally right next to the temple and we did a bunch of moving furniture and things in and out of the mtc, future temple president and mtc presidents rooms, and the temple. It was so sweet! We met some way cool guys and people. The main people in charge of it are all from the united states and dont speak spanish but all the workers are all Latins. So it was kinda funny having to translate back and forth a couple times for some of them. haha its the sweetest feeling when you get to the point where you dont have to have your companion by your side translating for you most the time. I'm so glad I'm at that point already :) very grateful. but anyway. So we did that and then we ate lunch in the mtc with some latins and some greengos. I met 2 kids from orem that went to orem and they know all the people we know like brandon porres and jared bodine and nicole gowans and hilary the goalkeeper and stuff. So then later at like 5 we finished and we got a tour of the temple. Oh so freakin beautiful. We went in the celestial room and they had just put up the chandeleer (i have no idea how to spell that haha) and they turned the lights on in it. fuah! re maravillosa!!! Then after we took some pictures with the guys we worked with and stuff. About the pictures real quick we were playing futbol with franco and some friends just barely and we went and ate and I didnt grab my camera... so I will have to send some pics next week. Sorry! no se como me la olvidé... pero bueno esta bien. We took collectivos and trains to get back and didnt get back until 9:15. barely in time. It was crazy cause apparently there was a train wreck somewhere and that threw everything off. But we drove through capitol at night in the colectivo which was way tight too. All the lights and stuff are awesome. Then the next day we had interviews. So we got up at 4:30 again and had to be back to capitol at the mission house. So that all went good and I got my packages and letters :) I was happy about that. Thank you for the package!!! Also it was way funny how almost since I got here hermano gutierrez has been asking me about getting rice crispie treats and then on Thursday I got a package from kirsten and her family and guess what was in it? rice krispie treats haha it was awesome to see hermano gutierrezes face light up when I shared with him haha but yeah be sure to tell kirstens family thank you and I love all of them!!! So besides that it has been a struggle with our investigators. juan isnt comfirmed yet cause some stuff happened and didnt come to church but this week for sure we hope. We went to his house on saturday and went and bought milanesa( sooo good) and cooked and ate with him but yeah. And we kinda lost some investigators too which is sad but oh well we are just gonna have to work on finding some more this week. One thing that president is huge on now and so we all are now too is daily contact with all our investigators. So we have to see them all in person everyday cause they are much more likely to progress and come to church if we do that. But with some it can be difficult. So yeah I guess thats it for this last week. oh yeah also it was elder dewsnups birthday on saturday so that was cool. I filmed him opening his birthday package. He got some cool stuff. One thing he got that I forgot to tell you that they dont have here is peanut butter. So that was cool.

Austin- ¡hey che! como anda hermano?! feliz freakin cumpleaños mañana!!! espero que tenga el mejor dia de todo su vida! okay no todo su vida pero bueno. espero que tenga un dia buenisimo y que coma mucha torta (me encanta la torta aca! con todo mi corazon). digame este fin de semana como fue su dia y lo que esta pasando en su vida ahora. desculpe que estoy hablando en usted. ¡¡te amo muchisimo!! tambien quiero que sepa usted que su padre celestial le ama mucho! y el siempre esta ahi para usted cuando le necesita. ¡hasta luego che!

Well I hope austin can read all that haha if not go get David I guess haha. che = dude, in argentina. yeah it was sweet cause I was talking to juan and then his friend a lot about music. Its funny cause I never thought something I could use to relate to people here would be the music I listen to haha. anas house is cheto (rich) like the binghams house. It was way sick. Its still pretty cold here but during the day the past couple days its been pretty warm actually so thats good. Yes I really enjoyed cassidees letter. I wish I had time to respond to it right now. I might even have to just write her a letter to respond to it. I guess we will see. Does she want me to respond back to it? Thats cool and wierd about georgias calling though. oh sweet im glad you got austins eagle project done! thats awesome! Jacob is coming home already? wow that was fast... tell him to rewrite me this week cause I wanna know how he feels about coming home and how things are cause I wont be able to send him a letter fast enough. Austin bought a scooter? wow. where? how much? does the truck and sub still work? Well I guess thats it for this week. les amo mucho!! hasta el proximo lunes!

Elder Buxton




also we heard about the batman experience in the movie theater. Way stupid and way crazy! Its all over the new papers here and it spread way fast down here. Everyone knows about it.

July 16, 2012

hola familia
so its been an alright week. so first of all I'm trying to send these pictures so I hope it works. I will explain them if can get them to work. but yeah so we bought cascos (helmets) ealier this week so we are on bikes now. but guess what? I baptised juan on friday!! It was way awesome! and its sick that we are baptising weekly too! but yeah juan is so sick. Its was funny so when we went to pick him up for his baptism he was blastin some eminem and I started rapping to it for a sec and so now juan thinks I can sing now too haha but yeah me and him are a lot alike. he didnt come to church yesterday and get confirmed cause some of his family came over at 7 in the morning and they had an asado (argentine barbeque I guess except 10 times bigger, better, and sicker) but yeah so we went to visit him after church and talked for a bit and had cake and coca and yeah hes gonna come this week to get confirmed so thats good. eusebio got confirmed though which was good. also there was quite a bit of songs that I regretted not putting on my mp3 before I left so this last week I had one of the familia cruz girls do it for me and so now I have a lot of songs that I'm allowed to listen to that I wished I put on before so I was happy about that. we also taught this last week a lady named ana and her husband who we've been trying to teach for over a month but haven't been able to get an appointment set. they live in a country which is a freakin rich place where you can only get in if you live there or have someone that lives there come get you. so we did that the other night and its so freakin nice! I really felt like I was home. driving by all the homes without fences or gates in front of them and everything and then their house is way nice too. but they have a son that is studying at the U so they went there and toured the temple and all that so thats how they know about the temple so hopefully things go good with them. yesterday there was a stake leadership meeting or whatever and our president was there so he invited a lot of us missionaries to go and it was about the temple. each of us companionships recieved 4,600 invitations to the temple that we are to give out to people and go put on everyones doors so that everyone gets invited to the open house. so that should be really good. okay so I dont think the pictures are going to work this week but I will send them next week. and one of them you have to show david. the other day juan gave me a jersey that he wanted me to have and its a neymar jersey. tell david that and I will send the picture next week so david can get even more jealous haha. so we have interviews this thursday so hopefully I will finally be able to get one or some of your packages and if I have letters too. so yeah I think that was some of the main things that happened this last week. also that couple came to church again yesterday. claudia and familia silva didnt though.. but hopefully next week. Its also been really really cold this last week. especially at night and in the mornings and we dont have much hot water so that definitely doesn't help. something else cool that these past few weeks when we talk about the holy ghost with investigators I have been able to share the experience when me and cade and austin and us wanted to go to harmons and I had a bad feeling so we turned around remember? It helps to use that story to help people understand a little more how the holy ghost can work. so I'm blessed to have had that experience and be able to share it.

oh also could you look up the talk "you know enough" by neil L andersen from the oct 2008 conference and send it to me next week? that'd be awesome. how did you see I send a letter to jacob? and yeah when you send pictures to me the smaller the better (to an extent obviously) cause the huge ones I cant make smaller so I cant really see the picutre. yeah I'm going to print off cassidees email and read it later and I will reply to georgias email through you in a minute. who was all at his call opening? and how was it? like what did he do for it? wow I hope the eagle project goes great and that he gets it soon! my companions birthday is this saturday and then mine is in 3 weeks so hopefully we will be getting some tortas (cakes) from some members :) I honestly love the cakes and desserts here. so good!! I make a flan actually every week now and eat it with dulce de leche. fuah its so good!! but yeah for laundry we have a guy that works for the mission that does most of the laundry for a lot of the areas. he is supposed to come once a week and pick it up and then brings it back clean and folded the next day but we are farther away so he comes to us about every 3 weeks or so.. but its okay. we pay less so that's good. sweet I'm excited to get tonis package!! wow sounds like bill wise things are kinda ruff. I'm really glad that you are trusting in the lord though cause he wont lead us astray. thats honestly what helps me keep going when I'm scared to get a new companion cause I know that I will have all my companions for a reason. that honestly brings me a ton of comfort. I always pray for you guys so dont worry. just always trust the lord and do what he wants. forgiveness is actually something I was thinking about this morning during my study and theres a scripture about being forgiven that I have marked that helps motivate me here. Its in d&c 88 verse something. I dont remember. I will look it up and send it next week. well I guess thats all then. les amo mucho!!

Love, Elder Buxton

July 9, 2012

hola familia,
so this week was a pretty good week I guess. so remember juan? yeah so we went to his house everyday and called him mutiple times a day for the past 2 weeks but we hadnt been able to find him. thats why I never said anything about him in my letters. but this last week we finished an appointment and didnt know where we were going after that but I just started walking to juans house and I'm not really sure why but we went and we finally found him! we talked to him and he had been working a ton in capitol and everything so yeah we finished teaching him what he needs left for his baptism and talked about his baptism and everything and so we were good to go for yesterday mostly. then he had his interview with elder black on saturday for his baptism but he didnt pass one of the questions cause of a thing about participating in an abortion with his girlfriend. we talked to him about that and well he has  had a pregnant girlfirend but not with his baby and he agreed with the abortion but apparently they broke up a couple of days ago but because he didnt pass that question our mission president, president gulbrandsen, had to come and interview him. so he did and everything went good they said. I was in del viso with elder jorquera during this part with president and stuff but yeah so he was good to go on sunday but then we went to take him to church sunday morning and he wasnt there and we called him and he went to capitol to visit some relatives from peru. really dumb but he should be good for this sunday. gotta love going and looking for investigators every sunday at 7:00 in the morning in the bitter cold... he really is a way awesome kid and hes a lot like me in many ways. but anyway we baptised eusebio yesterday! his son baptised him which is the secretary for a different stake and that went really great. also on sundays the new counselor in the bishopric is the gospel principles teacher but when hes not there or when he has other things to do (which is most of the time) we teach the class. so we teach it about 2 or 3 sundays a month. but we were teaching about the sacrament and about renewing our baptismal covenants every week. and we were teaching eusebio and also claudia (the mom that is having problems getting married but we baptised her kids). It was so so sad to see her run out of the class crying because she isnt able to be baptised right now. she really has such a sincere desire to be baptised but knows she cant right now and so she is kinda struggling with that. we have a family night with her and another family tonight so hopefully we can help her with that. she talked to the counselor of the bishop yesterday after that too so I think she will be okay. also on saturday we had lunch with a less active older couple that we visit about once a week. they have been inactive and havent gone to church in 15 years. by some miracle we got them to come to church yesterday. no idea how but it was great! we also have some other investigators too but they are still in the beginning and not really progressing as of right now but we will see. so yeah thats some of what happened this week. today we are in del viso and gonna hopefuly go play soccer cause they have a church activity cause today is argentinas independence day. our ward never does activities.. its stupid. oh well I guess. oh also you should get a letter I sent to kirsten this week. I dont know her home address so it would be great if you could get that to her. also is there a way to forward me steggells emails? curious to know how hes doing.


yeah my comp is doing better and we still dont have helmets yet but we are gonna go buy them soon. they are freakin expensive.. ha yeah I probably shouldnt have told you the part about the gun. I wont tell you those parts anymore haha but dont worry you know we will be fine. yeah people are really really poor here and will take anything cause they can sell anything here. but yeah oh well we got a new phone for now but its from another area cause they had to close some areas cause we are waiting on 28 missionaries in the states that are waiting for their visas so yeah pretty crazy. wow that so crazy about the fires and everything! and without fireworks that would suck!!! yeah its been really cold here recently and yeah like shawn said you can like feel it more. Its hard to explain. but yeah it kinda stinks. haha yeah of course they won the 3v3. thats way sick! wish I was there to play.. haha well its good to know that maybe theres some people that care about me right? hahaha. thats good austin got accepted to uvu. hows it coming with selling the car? Is my transformer still intact or did austin destroy it yet? does the sub still work? yeah by the pictures sounds like blanding was a lot of fun and I knew cassidee would have a blast! yeah definitely have her email me and tell me how it went and everything. we just gotta remember to always love everything no matter how hard it may seem. but dont worry you do have austin cassidee ashlee matt and me that all love you to death! more than you could ever comprehend. not to mention your heavenly father! yeah my turn in 2 years!! haha. austins hair is so freakin long!! when I saw the pictures I was wondering when I got another sister.. ;) sounds like it will be a fun week this week. good luck! I'm always praying for you guys! I'm really glad you loved that story. I really loved it too. Its a good one. haha thats weird about summer kletmesen too. and its weird to think that your summer and my winter are getting halfway done. finally!! so ready for summer even though all the missionaries here tell me that I dont want summer. Its ridiculously hot and humid but I'm just sick of being sick and stuffed up and cold so I dont really care. I guess thats all for this week. les quiero muchisimo!! Dios les ama mucho tambien!!


Con Amor, Elder Buxton

July 2, 2012

hola familia,
happy 4th of july! sad I dont get to celebrate it.. :( okay well this has defnitely been the strangest week of my mission. so first of all that scripture I told you last week was wrong. It was actually helaman 12:2-3. It was close though. and also if your sending me pics could you for sure send me some of me steggell and tim from my eagle court of honor and also some from me and steggell in disneyland and also some pics from my date with kirsten to transformers 3 with david and austin and them. okay so this past tuesday my companion got pretty sick after lunch and an appointment we had right after lunch so we went back to the pention and he was in and out of the bathroom the rest of the night and really all night sick throwing up and yeah it was pretty bad. the next day he rested and stuff and so we finally left the pention at like 5:00 the next day I think and we went to an appointment and then at about 7:30 we were on our way to another appointment and we dont have helmets for our bikes right now so we were walking and we were about a block away from the church and we got robbed by 2 kids with a gun... for mom and dads sake (since they are probably the only ones that would even worry too much about me for that haha) I will tell you the details when I return from my mission. I only lost a little bit of money so I was lucky. my comp.. not so much. he lost the cell phone, his watch, a copy of his passport, his temple recommend, his licence card thing to be a minister, and the keys to the church. so recently they changed all the locks on the church cause of that too but yeah it was really stupid and its really hard to have appointments and things when we dont have a cell phone... but we are managing. we should get a new one this week we think. but yeah everything is fine we were really calm about it and yeah we are doing just fine haha. so yeah dont worry about me mom and dad. some other stuff is me and my comp finished the book of mormon on thursday too so we read it in 57 days which was awesome! also when my comp was sick I read a liahona and there was a story in it that I loved that you should look up mom. its called "start moving" by elder von g. kectch, area 70 of salt lake. In the 2011 july liahona. if you can find it that would be sweet.its a good one. so yeah that was pretty much our week. Its been really random with the weather these days. today is really cold and rainy. yesterday it was cloudy and looked way cold but it was way humid and we were outside in shortsleeve shirts. Its really weird. but yeah and so this transfer ends 3 days after my birthday so if I get transferred I will be able to pick up any letters or packages so if anyone is sending me things for my birthday they might want to do it soon so that it is in the mission office when I get there. one thing that our president has been talking about recently that I decided I wanted to share with you guys cause I really love it is he gives us an example of his 2 kids. and they are fighting and so as a parent he tries to get to the bottom of it. like tom why did you throw the shoe at your brother? because he punched me. why did you punch your brother? because he called me a mean name. etc... theres never a bottom to it. but then he tells us that when we get to judgement day and we are before god do we think that he is going to ask us why we punched our brother? no. heavenly father will not ask us why we did something bad to someone else or how others treated us. he will only ask us how we treated others. regardless of how they treated us. I really loved that and he also related it to less active members. I would not want to be in front of god at that day and have him ask me why I didnt go to church ever again and give him a dumb reason like someone accused me of do this when I really didnt do it. god will never ask us what caused us to react the way we did. he has blessed us with agency. the ability to choose for ourselves regardless of how we are treated. that was kind of a summary of it and in my own words too but yeah I really loved that. and I love you sending me talks and articles and stuff. they really are my favorite about my personal study when I get to read them. we also still are teaching Eusebio. I think I told you about him. yeah I did. he is still set to get baptised for the 8th so we will see how that goes this week.

yeah you guys are lucky you get to barbecue and all that. eat lots for me I guess! man I miss the 3v3 tournament.... hmm thats weird about my emails last week but at least they came. who all reads your blog that you post my stuff? haha just curious. dang he didnt end up going? dang thats too bad.. did cassidee like the trek? yeah I hope you guys can really get his eagle done. that would be sweet! oh dang. hopefully he gets accepted real soon. Is he planning on trying out for the UVU team? who has he been hangin out with recently? do cade and trent come over much? yeah I got that email that said that from dad from shawns email. but we havnet heard anything about us getting to do anything so I dont know if its true or not. I guess we will find out. and yes please I would love to read brents and shawns emails. I did last week and I love seeing how their doing. so send me those if you can. oh yeah georgias bday is in september huh? I was thinking november. wow thats crazy!! when he gets his call tell him to email me!! and thats way weird about richie and the people getting married haha. yeah I havent gotten anything for a while cause we havent been anywhere to get them. we should have interviews with president either this week or in the next couple weeks so my stuff should be there for that. wow efy will be awesome for cassidee! she will absolutely love it!!! I guarantee she will cry when she has to leave. that stinks she will miss the 4th and the reunion but at least she isnt missing everything like me! haha I remember I missed the 4th one year cause I was in new york at efy but we kinda did something for it so it was still cool and I was with brent so that made everything even better haha. I really miss him and steggell and shawn. I hope you enjoy your vacation and get time to relax and everything like you need and definitely deserve. thank you for the article. I'm excited to read it! los quiero muchisimo!!!! que tengan una buena semana!!

Love Elder Buxton