It's almost May....

hola familia!
So this week was a good crazy week. There are always ups and downs but as long as we notice the Lords hand in the day or week then thats all that matters. So this last week on I think tuesday we did divisions and I went over to savio with elder walker. It was pretty dang fun! We preached some gospel and we met a couple that are inactive and have been for a long time and they are really cheto (rich) and they own a huge like outlet mall thing almost but smaller and they bought us dinner and some other good stuff and we were talking to them for a while and it was really cool. Then in the morning me and elder walker ate smores that he got in a package a bit ago. They were so very good! Miss those things! We took pics but I will send them another day. On wednesday we had a mini missionary work activity where we just watched a movie at the church. We had some people come. Not many but some and thats really good cause the last one they did before I got here nobody showed up. So we are improving! :) haha. We watched finding faith in christ. haha I think thats what its called in english. I forgot. Then on thursday after weekly planning the zone leaders randomly wanted to do divisions. We werent too excited about that but we did them and elder venegas came here to maschwitz with me for the day. He was here in savio and maschwitz a year ago. It was his first area. So he had some fun seeing some old friends. He has 3 months less than me. Hes in elder jorqueras group. But yeah it went really good and a lot better than I expected. Oh and on saturday we finally got our new phone!! :) We had to travel 2 hours to san fernando to get it but thats okay. We can finally text and we have a lot more credit to call now too. So much nicer! So besides that last week with familia diosque they pretty much told us that they wanted to come to church and see how it was before they decided about getting baptised. They did and they had to leave early so we have a cita with them tomorrow. And we found out on friday that the parents arent married.. gol I was so ticked and sad... they told us in the beginning that they were. So yeah. The parents and the 10 year old came. maira and manuel didnt come.. so only juan the 10 year old can get baptised this sunday... we have been working alot with micaela this week to get her separated basically cause marriage will take a while. We put a date with her for the 5th and she accepted. She already knows that God wants her to get separated, she just needs to follow it. She missed sacrament meeting but was at the rest on sunday. We have a cita with her tomorrow too and we are bringing a recent convert named ana who went through the exact same thing to get baptised. She got separated and then baptised and then her dad got baptised and then her boyfriend too. So we are hoping the exact same thing will happen with micaela. Should be a good lesson. Today is elder arosticas birthday so we are gonna play some soccer so thats good. We also have a dinner with familia cubilla (anas family, and the same family we ate with in some of the pics I have sent home) for his birthday tonight so that should be fun too. Besides that it rained the past couple days and is started to get a bit colder now so it looks like fall is coming. Besides that we have a couple investigators but they arent progressing much right now so we will see. We still need to find more so thats what we are gonna be doing this week. So that was my week in a small nutshell haha I'd be writing for hours if I explained everything.


fuah mom!! congrats on straight A´s!! :) Thats awesome! sos una re capa!! There have been missionaries in our ward? Weird! The people here are really surprised when I tell them Ive had the missionaries in my house like once in my life haha. Yeah I have jacobs email cause he emailed me I dunno what day but just a one line thing giving me his email. I'm glad that austin got a job! Thats really good. I really just hope that he is still thinking about going out. He has until hes 25 to go back out but yeah hmm. Tell her (Cassidee) to email me and tell me how it (prom) was! She looks a little too pretty in the pic mom. Keep your eye out ;) yeah I had an email from trent last week and just printed it out and read it and almost thought it was a joke cause you didnt say anything about it and neither did austin.. haha yeah me and elder walker are freaking out that we are skyping you guys in 2 weeks already.. I swear I just saw and talked to you guys last month..... let me know what time is best for you guys and I will figure things out here. les amo mucho! :)


Elder Buxton

How are you?

Hola familia,
So this week was definitely a week of ups and downs. Satan likes to work very hard on us. Especially me.. I dont like that he knows my weaknesses and how to destroy me but that does give me the chance to grow cause I have a loving father in heaven whos even more powerful :) So this week we worked hard on finding new investigators. It was really hard and still is cause our members aren't exactly giving much refferals for now.. not sure why.. but we continue to work. So we worked a lot with famila diosque this week and committed them to come to church almost everyday. We were so sure they were going to come and then it was really sad when they didnt show up... I was really sad in sacrament meeting cause I was in the place where I was supposed to be in the whole world feeling the spirit and peace and my investigators werent there to feel it... :( we taught flia disoque on saturday and when we showed up there was a couple other extended family members that we taught too so that was good. They actually asked us to come to their house to teach again. One is a guy named enrique who wasnt that interested. But there were 2 girls that are sisters who want us to come to their house. One is 23 and one is 27. So we are gonna pass by this week and see what happens with that. On saturday the ward went to the temple and micaela went with her mom and sister (they are recent converts from last year) and so they are just chilled outside around the temple. The mom should have a temple recommend but hasn't had an interview yet I dunno why. And the dad is not a member. Hes kinda a more angry man.. haha but in the past missionaries have tried with him and he just doesnt like to commit to anything so we havent tried with him at all cause hes not interested. But it just so happens that he came to church with his familia (micaela didnt come) yesterday. Me and my comp taught the gospel principles class which went good. We talked about the church in old times. Antonia (micaelas dad) had quite a few questions about the apostasy which we had a good discussion about apart from the excommunicated member that was there saying random things and was trying to almost argue with him more than anything.. She has some problems in the head haha but it all turned out good. And actually the dad talked to me after and ask for us to come over wednesday. I ask if it was to do service (hes been wanting help building a part of there house) but he said no that he wants to have a lesson. So I was like haha alright of course! :) So we will see what happens with that tomorrow. Thats kind of all the details for this last week. Theres a girl here named sandy peñaloza who is waiting for her mission call to come right now that is just freakin awesome. I talked to her yesterday and she said that she really wants to go out with us but she works every day except saturdays so saturday she is gonna do visits with us like all day on saturdays. And she told me yesterday that she found a way to maybe quit her job and find one for in the morning so she might do that this week so that she can go with us days during the week too. That would help out so very much since she is a great example and lives the gospel. Also her dad has a stake calling and he is a capo too and is gonna help us more. So many members here make up excuses to not go with us but hermano peñaloza comes with us even if he just barely got home from work 2 seconds earlier. Its awesome! :) Besides that its been pretty warm this past week. We use sweaters now in the more nighttime but its always warm during the day. But I think its going to start to get colder soon. We will see I guess. This wednesday also we are going to do an activity in the church and just invite everyone in our areas to watch a church movie. So hopefully people show up. Oh yeah and on friday we had our coordination meeting with our ward mission leader and all the young men and elders and high priests were playing soccer. We finished and we were watching a bit and then one team was missing 2 players so me and elder arostica stepped in and after that we never left the court from winning every game :) haha it was sick. Some guy after every time he lost kept saying "theres no way this kid (pointing to me) is greengo. Hes got to be like german or from england or something." hahaha I thought that was really funny. Me and elder arostica play very well together. Not sure why but we do :) oh yeah and on sunday an hermana from tortuguitas who I was really good friends with and sent you many pics of me and their son franco whos 18 and their dad was at our church cause she has a stake calling and she remembered me! :) and so I talked to her a bit and she said that franco has kept like 3 little papers of elders writing their info (facebook, email, etc.) like the 3 elders who he was better friends with ya know? and mine was one of them apparently! :) I thought that was cool. I miss franco! Hes a capo! But yeah thats about it for this last week. Oh and mom did you get that message that yamila sent to you the other day? Oh and I'm in I think mosiah 10 in the book of mormon in case you guys were wondering ;)


Yeah me and my companion get a long pretty good. He doesnt exactly have a ton of desire to be here in the mission and be completely obedient so I try to be an example to him and help him. And it really helps that if I do something then he does it too. So that way we can always be obedient :) Obviously I always have things to improve on but I'm workin on it! Hey whens prom for cass?? Is she excited? Wait john went home..? really? oh man.. :( thats terrible! Elder martinez emails them? He can only email them if he has permission from president. or maybe he thinks he can cause he is in the south.. technically after july 1st when it becomes its own mission and if he stays in that mission he can email them cause they dont live in the boundaries of his mission. But yeah I dunno. I'm glad it went good with jacob leaving. Hope hes doing good! Can you send me his email? I dont have it.. I also hope that jacobs example can encourage austin as well. Elder walker and his comp are in capital doing tramites to make his comp legal and they just called me cause they are with elder harrison and he wanted to talk to me. It was so great to talk to him for a minute :) haha. Well I guess thats it for this week. les amo mucho!


Elder Buxton

p.s.s. we just got an email saying that the weeks of transfers we will get our new comp and have p day on tuesday that week. so i will let you know when that happens. Its not for 4 more weeks.

How was this week?

Hola familia,
So this week was a rough week but it was kinda good at the same time haha. So a couple things first is that this transfer elder walker is my district leader!! :) haha its so sweet! So he has to call me every night and its awesome! Also elder barakat is with elder whitzit in palermo haha thats so sick. Me and elder walker thought that was really funny. Okay well this last week our numbers were not the best.. We really are struggling with finding progressing investigators. I know there are prepared people in our area I just am not sure how to find them at the moment since the members have been struggling to give us referals.. But we will keep working. micaela kinda fodged our citas like 4 times this week so I'm afraid she is falling from us. We found out she has some doubts so she is gonna write them down and we are going to help her. familia diosque doesnt want to get baptised right now but we taught them lesson 2 the other day and it was really good and they invited us to eat pizza with them after so that was cool. Maybe we are getting somewhere with them. Also can I just say how fat me and my comp feel this week! haha we had lunch and dinner almost every day this last week. It was awesome!! :) but we almost want to throw up everynight... hahaha its great! But yeah also we found another investigator named marisa who is a little different but doesnt have a religion and she has really good beliefs so we are seeing what we can do with her. Besides that we are running low on investigators.. but its been good to have strengthened our relationship with the members last week with all the dinners and stuff. So hopefully they can give us so more referrals. hmm so yeah that was kinda our week.. oh! and on thursday we met as a zone and watched the priesthood session! :) We missed pres uchtdorfs talk and the end of pres monsons and half of another guys because of time but from the rest they talked so much about missionary work and the importance of it and the involvement of the members. It was awesome and I hope that inspired many people to help us more. They are putting such a huge emphasis on missionary work these days. Its great! :) I really hope austin was watching and intentively listening also! But yeah so that was pretty much our week. We really just gotta find this week..


Thats so awesome you all went to the temple together. Must have been an amazing site with everyone in the celestial room! Also as of right now I am just about to start 2 nefi 31 tomorrow. Thats pretty good for 2 weeks no? :) I love the book of mormon!!! not gonna lie though the isaiah parts in 2 nefi are killer in spanish!! hahaha. They are hard enough to understand in english so just imagine in spanish.. haha. Its okay I still learn from him though. Some thoughts I kinda had this week that I was really thinking about as I taught my investigators is that like it says in the book of mormon this generation is so quick to do evil and forget their god. Like there are so many people that get answers and know what they need to do but then they just dont do it. Its really frustrating! And I cant even imagine how God feels about it happened all the time with all his children. But something we all need to get better at that is so critical in this world right now is that we need to stop doing what we want and we need to start doing what God wants us to do. We think we always know whats best and we convince ourselvs that it is. But what God tells us is always the best thing for us cause he loves us so much more than we can comprehend and he is the only one that can really see the whole eternal perspective of everything. I'm trying really hard to help my investigators to see that and to see how what we are doing is not just some other little church. There are so many little churches in our area that are little extensions to peoples houses with like 15 chairs and a keyboard and microphone set up. How can that possibly be the church of god?! But I dont blame those people. They are only kept from the truth cause they know not where to find it. Thats where we come in! :) haha but anyway.. mom I hope your looking forward to a lot of gospel based conversations when I get back haha ;) thats interesting about austin but I hope he is doing good! haha health care in argentina huh? What have you learned so far? Well yeah I guess that is it for now. Thank you for your words mom and for being such an awesome example at home as a mother, excerciser, and a disciple of christ! :) les amo a todos! que les vaya bien esta semana!


Con Amor,
Elder Buxton

Wonderful Conference Weekend!

Hola familia,

Wow I cant believe conference is over! I was so sad when it finished cause I love conference.. it was so great though and I hope you all enjoyed it like I did! okay so we had transfers today... haha. So elder barakat left and went to palermo (my old area) and I talked to elder whitzitt this morning who is in palermo and so they are now companions haha its so weird and cool. So my new companion is elder jarpa from chile. He has 1 year in the mission this month. He was just barely companions with elder alder but yeah so it should be a good transfer. We will see. So basically this last week was hard to work cause of conference and cause for the month of march we broke the confirmations record!! :) so on friday we went to the temple!!! It was so sick! I love the temple!! Sessions in spanish are so different but cool! and its always so great to have president there waiting for us in the celestial room to give us a big hug and tell us he loves us. It really made me think this last time how it will be to really enter into the celestial kindgdom and have our heavenly father waiting for us to do the same thing. In an uncomprehendable feeling. Cant wait though! So besides that on wednesday we had zone meeting (which we have every month) and it was really good. Something I liked that I learned was that how satan knows that to kill something or to kill us he has to attack at the heart. So he knows our weaknesses as people and as companionships and as a zone and thats where he targets everytime. But with the help of our heavenly father we can make our weaknesses become strengths. Satan works in very mysterious ways and is very smart but we have a father in heaven and a savior who are smarter. But yeah so then after the temple we stopped in liniers to eat and it was sweet cause I got to see antonela! She is doing really good and she called jared and let me talk to him so yeah I enjoyed that. Also this last week we got an old phone from tortuguitas so we have something in the mean time until our real phone comes. Also elder barakat got kinda sick this last week and lost his voice like I did. But he only didnt have it for a couple days is all, not as long as me but he is doing a lot better now. So we have been working more with micaela and we made the plan to try to get her baptised yesterday by telling her to just at least sleep in her moms house every night so that she is living the law of chastity. We had a long talk with her in between sessions on saturday but then it came down to me having to ask her some awkward questions.. cause we needed to know if she was living the law of chastity besides the baby she already had and besides living with her boyfriend. We found out that she wasnt... but she came to both sessions on saturday and was gonna come to both on sunday but didnt come sunday.. We arent sure why but we will find out. With familia diosque they kinda told us that they didnt want to get baptised.. cause they went on vacations and satan worked with them a lot... but the parents came to one of the sessions on saturday. So we will see what we can do with them. We really are just gonna be finding for the next week so wish us luck! hmm what else. Lots happened but its too much to explain. Conference was so great! I love our little greengo room with food and stuff :) its a revelation party ;) haha. but it was me, elder walker, pinkston, arrington, macnab (not my comp in the mtc), and elder stocking our zone leader. The others were in the other stake center. But yeah it was way good and I hope that you all recieved revelation to the questions you had. So yeah my mind is running fast. I dont remember everything I was gonna say but thats okay! haha. So yeah that was a small portion of my week haha. I liked all of conference but a talk I really liked was I dont remember his name but he talked about forgiveness and how heavenly father wants to forgive us. It sounded a lot like president gulbrandsen to me so yeah I liked it alot. But I liked all of them! 

I'm glad you enjoyed conference and had questions mom. yeah send me a couple. I think a guy in our ward is gonna print out some from the priesthood session for us too. we will see. 

Yeah it rained pretty hard one day and we were literally soaked. Every inch of our bodies. It was kinda fun haha but yeah we are okay. Capital got flooded pretty bad! Good thing we werent there. A quote I really like that I dont know if I have shared with you is this "you cant be happy if you dont want to do the things that bring happiness. even if you do those very things." Kind of interesting and had never thought about that before my mission. Also mom that talk by elder bednar I read on saturday was so good!! I loved it! thank you! :) Thats too bad you couldnt go to the temple but at least your going this week so thats good! ¡que disfruten! :) So yeah I finally got your package today so thank you mom! And I got dads too with the backpack! My blister was pretty bad for a few days but its better now so thats good. For a couple days I could barely walk it was so bad.. sounds like ashlees birthday and stuff was fun so thats good. Tell her (Cassidee)to just hang in a little longer and I will be home and always be there for her when she needs a friend or anything. haha your words never bore me mom :) Keep up the good work everyone! I think thats it for this week. les amo a todos muchisimo! :)

Con Amor, Elder Buxton

p.s. I look up to you mom for fasting every sunday so far. Keep it up!!

New pics from our friends in Argentina!

Happy Easter!

hola familia,
feliz pascua ayer!! :) So this week was a kinda difficult week but thats okay! So today we moved..... we are all pretty sad about it.. I'll miss being in a pent with elder walker and arostica.. We will eat with them a couple times this week so that will be good and then in general conference too but yeah. And then me and elder barakat got kinda more sad when we saw our pent.. Its really small and we don't have anything for right now. We have beds and a table and stuff but no fridge or microwave or food or anything.. We were supposed to get out money out today but all the ATMs were out of money.. We have been wasting time moving and running around all day. Not the funnest p day.. but we will survive. Later we are gonna go play soccer so that's good. Okay so last week we had our easter conference thing with president which went really really good. We talked a lot about the atonement and repentance and the power of the book of mormon. When president talked about repentance he was like crying and everything and it was way good. The spirit that was there was pretty incredible. Also that meeting we got the same challenge as we did a year ago. To read the book of mormon cover to cover but this time we are doing it in 90 days instead of 60. Not sure why.. but me and elder walker didn't want to read it in english again so we are reading it in spanish this time :) Its going great so far. We have to mark the same stuff as last time too. hmm the last few days we have been getting up at 6 in the morning to go to the church and do some excercises and kick a ball around and stuff which has been really good. But I have a blister on both feet And they are like not normal. They are like bruised underneath somehow so they are definitely affecting me during the day. Especially friday when we walked somewhere between 10-15 miles. It was pretty bad. Just no one was home.. besides that flia godoy has kinda dropped off the map.. its really sad :( flia diosque was gone all weekend so we will see them this week and help 3 of them prepare for their baptism this sunday. We also have micaela who is doing really great. She just needs to get married or separated. But she committed to live the word of wisdom last week and she comes to church every week and is excited for general conference. Besides that we are in the searching phase for right now.. But yeah. Me and elder walker had like a 2 hour talk the other night about a lot of stuff which was really good and now I'll really miss not being in the same pent as him. Besides that we shared a video yesterday thats like 5 minutes long but they lost the control so we couldnt change the language so I had to translate the whole thing which was kinda fun and kinda hard haha but yeah anyway. Besides that not a whole ton happened.. something I liked from my book of mormon reading the past couple days is when it talks a lot about the bible in like 1 nephi 13 and 14 and stuff. And about how it was easy to understand and read and simple when it was written first but so many people took things out and corrupted it which is why so many people are so confused these days cause of the bible. But its alright cause its all part of the plan of salvation so it had to happen. But yeah I like that part :) besides that I am so so stoked for general conference you guys don't even know!!!! :) I love our little greengo room where we watch it in english and bring just junk and eat stuff. And I'm so excited to receive revelation to a couple questions I have. Its gonna be great!!!! :) oh oh! and we found out yesterday that we broke the confirmations record this month!! Which means we are probably going to the temple like this week!! :) :) Its funny cause we broke the record that we set when me and elder walker were in this zone a year ago. So we have broken it twice now :) oh and its the last week of the transfer already. So crazy it went by so fast! My comp thinks he is leaving next week. Guess we will see!


That's cool you guys went to the young womens broadcast. I'm glad you liked it! I'm sure it was good to see the Terry's again also. In our ward if someone doesn't show up to church who is supposed to talk then they ask one of the missionaries to talk. If we are lucky they ask us before the meeting starts. Just goes to show that missionaries always have to be ready :) I haven't talked yet though so we will see. My comp gave a talk a couple weeks ago. Wow so austin really did come home then? :( I'm kinda shocked right now.. me and my companion have been praying for him all week. But yeah we all have our agency and we can do as we please. But there are always consequences to our decisions whether they are good or bad. But yeah I dont really know what else to say. I wont ever love austin any less and I know his heavenly father wont either. I'm just sad that he is gonna miss out on all this stuff that I'm learning that I know I cant ever learn anywhere else.. I heard that 2 years as a missionary with the stuff we learn and know is equivolent to what we would learn and understand in 40 years at home. I thought that was interesting. but anyway. We pray for you too mom and family so don't worry haha. When did austin get home? What time? Did you guys pick him up? How was it? Is he different at all? I'm curious to know what all happened. Well I think that is it for this week. les amo mucho!! preparense todos para escuchar a las palabras de nuestro padre celestial y para recibir revelations! va a ser de diez!!! :)


Elder Buxton