Summer is here!

Hola Familia,

So this last week was pretty good. All these weeks can be very difficult with my companion and stuff but I'm hanging in there. So last week on tuesday I did divisions with elder thomas which is always fun so that was good. And besides that we didnt have much luck in finding new investigators which was sad.. we are gonna work really hard with maira this week to get her baptised this sunday so we will see what we can do with that. They didnt come to church yesterday since manuel apparently got really sick but yeah. So besides that I really loved the meeting last night! I dont know how many of you got to see it or if you even did mom but it was awesome! I wish all the members in the world were able to attend cause they talked a lot about our duty as members to preach the gospel and how the missionaries in the wards and stakes are there to only help the members and the bishop and ward mission leader in their own missionary work and not the other way around. Here in argentina its mostly the other way around. A lot of the members dont do much so that was very good for some members of our ward to hear that last night. I loved all the videos and stuff they showed too. Very cool! I looked really hard to find trent but I didnt see him on there haha. hmm also I'm going to finish the book of mormon this week!! :) finally! Its such a great book and I have such a strong testimony of it! I have no doubt in my mind that its true and has a power to change peoples lives! It's the greatest!! Besides that this is the last week of the transfer so I will be emailing you guys next tuesday instead of monday and I'll tell you where I'm at and who I'm with if things change. Also this wednesday we have a special meeting as a mission (I knew they would do something like this haha) because this is president and hermana gulbrandsens last week in the mission! so crazy and weird! Everything is going to be so different! A verse I liked in the book of mormon today is the very last verse in the whole book of ether. I believe it is ether 15:37? or something like that. the last one in the whole book. today we got permission to go to pilar with elder arostica and elder solum to play soccer and eat at a pizza buffet so that should be fun :) les amo mucho!

 

Elder Buxton

 

I forgot to read your email and respond to that hahaha I'll do that now. Thats nice that its warm there. It is now very cold here.. and its worse that its humid too.. congrats on reaching your goal mom!! :) and thats awesome that cass starts her job!! so weird! haha yep mom us as members can do so much more.. and theres so many things that I didnt even know existed until I came on the mish like ward council meeting and all those meetings and things. It's pretty sweet! okay well thats all haha. les amo!

How are you?

Hola familia,
So I'm writing earlier today and you all are probably asleep still haha but I'm writing early because we got permission from president to go to a campsite in pilar thats owned by the church that has like a grass soccer field and basketball courts and grills to cook stuff. So we are going there as a zone and we got permission to leave in the morning so we have time to do stuff. So yeah pretty much its gonna be super sick! :) I havent played on a grass field in over a year and a half.. demasiado tiempo! Okay so second thing. Happy fathers day!!! :) I hope it was a great day for all of you especially you dad! your the best!! :) Well besides that it was a rough start last week but then the end was better. My comp was mad at me about some stuff in the beginning but never said anything, just decided not to help me with anything. So on thursday after weekly planning (which I did by myself) we had a companionship inventory and it took a while but I finally got him to open up a little bit and we had a good like 45 minute talk. It was really good and now things are a lot better and we are working way better together and we are happier and everything so I'm very grateful for that. It was definitely the lords blessings. So because of all that stuff we havent been able to find any new investigatores.. we found one last week who is athiest (dont know how to spell that anymore...) but we had an interesting conversation with him. I love that whenever we have talks like that we cant ever lose cause we have the truth :) and I dont mean lose in a bible bash kind of way. But every 5 seconds he would say "there is no God and there is no jesus christ. They dont exist!" It was actually pretty funny haha. I love the gospel! :) manuel got confirmed yesterday which was good and his uncle whos a member is like shy and doesnt know much so when the bishop told him to do it (he confirmed juan and didnt know how to do it at all) he said to have me do it so the bishop told me to just do it so I was like "okay :)" so that was basically the first time I confirmed someone haha it was sweet. I baptised him and confirmed him :) besides that we had dinner at cubillas again on saturday which was the 5th birthday I've celebrated in that house haha and we played charades and mafia. It was a lot of fun! so this week I officially hit my 1 yeah and 6 months mark which means that I start 6 months to sexy :) haha thatll be fun. Many missionaries do things like diets and stuff but Im just gonna have the goal to do really good excersices everyday and eat less junk food and galletitas. Its gonna be great! and um next sunday we have the meeting Im sure youve heard about. President monson is doing a conference with all the new mission presidents in the mtc and it will be broadcasted to all the missionaries in the world and all the presidents of the organizations and their spouses in all the wards or something like that. And does that mean trent gets to see president monson? so yeah besides that we have been passing by a lot of members house and looking for old investigators and less actives in the area book to ask for referrals cause the weeks before we were basically just doing the same things over and over again. We havent had much luck at all and we had less lessons last week because of it but we are gonna get down on that cause I know that there are people prepared in our area. i love the promise we have in alma 13:24.


Yeah dont worry mom I will answer all those questions about my comp and stuff when I get home. I'd rather not write those stuff and not focus on them. But I have definitley been blessed by the lord with more love and charity and patience towards not only my comp but also the people and members in my area. Oh good mom I'm so glad that everything went well with the surgery. I was very worried.. so so very grateful that it wasnt cancer or anything like that! :) you have no idea. But thank you for your words mom. I love reading you thoughts and what you think about things especially since you probably understand me the most out of everyone on earth haha. hahaha erin is getting married? weird.. yeah tell me who it is if he went to timp. Your just mailing my package tomorrow? I thought you mailed it last week? I probably wont get it for over month then.. if you sent it last week I would probably have got it at transfers but oh well. Thanks mom! les amo! chau chau! :)


Elder Buxton

How was this week?

Hola familia,
So this week was a pretty good week. So we found out that elder cook 2 weeks ago had a meeting with the other 3 missions I think and then had a meeting with just our mission. Thought that was pretty cool! On wednesday we had our last interviews with president. So weird that he leaves in 3 weeks.. :( it was really good though. Mine was short and sweet but I really liked what he told me in the end. He stood up and said "I love you elder. We will forever be friends." I'm greatful that I will always have president gulbrandsen as a friend. I hope that you guys can one day meet him. They told us there too that that was the last time we will see him so we are doing something else with them in the next few weeks. Guess we will see. On saturday we did some service in savio with a family helping them build a different part of their house to make it bigger. And we ate with them and had cake too cause it was the kids birthday too. His names yanpierr. You gotta pronounce that really latin like or it doesnt make sense haha. But hes 17 and is way sick at soccer! Oh and on friday we did divisions and elder thomas came to my area so we could do maira and manuels interviews. So thats always fun! I dont know what happened to maira but in the end she didnt want to get baptised.. She will though so dont worry. Manuel is just a capo though and he asked me to baptise him so yesterday we had a baptism and savio had 3 so it was a sweet day! We had to look all over for baptismal clothes for everyone on saturday night and we ended up going to yanpierrs house again to eat birthday cake and stuff with all the young men and women waiting for the elder from savio to get back. It was really sweet cause we are way good friends with the youth in the ward. I'll send some pics now but we have been working with leila (the girl with the hat on in the pics I sent like a month ago) quite a bit cause she is a recent convert and shes just awesome! We are trying to find through her. We have a little bit but no one that was prepared. We are gonna contact some referrals from her tomorrow so we will see. I'll send some pics right now if it works. Hopefully it does. After church we ate a familia peñalozas house us 4 and that was a lot of fun too. So yeah and after sacrament me and elder solum went all the way to pilar to get baptismal clothes for everyone but in the end everything worked out good and it was a spiritual ordinance :) Well those were pretty much the highlights of the weeks I guess. My mind is jumbled right now sorry haha. Tonight we are gonna eat at familia cubillas house and then again on thursday I think for another birthday. So that will officially be my 5th birthday celebration in that house hahaha I have 4 videos of each one. And if I stay here for the next transfer I will be there for my birthday and I think like 2 more of them are in august too haha so nuts! Oh and something that we learned in the interviews meeting that I liked it that president taught us the importance of and how to really confess our sins to god. Many times we just say please forgive me for the bad things I've done during the day or week. But thats not technically confessing our sins since we didnt mention a single one. Its kind of interesting but president told us that if we pray to remember what we need to confess it will be given to us. So we each went away from others and did that and then confessed them to god. It was really cool. It almost doesnt make sense: asking god to tell us what we did wrong so that we can remember that thing to tell it right back to him haha. But thats how repentance works. We have to do each part.


The waters of mormon month goal is for the mission mom. Matt and tanner are moving in there now too? uh oh.... they should all be on missions!! haha. Oh man you guys have no idea how much I miss carpet!! Are we ever gonna get carpet in the family room? Wow mom I hope that everything goes okay today! I know you will be alright! Your always in my prayers! cassidee going to cali? So lucky!! And no no news about the package.. have you heard anything about the ward package that that sanders person sent me? It might be stuck here.. he might have to send an email or something to get it sent back.. and yeah I've been thinking about taking a couple classes at UVU right when I get back. That would probably be a good idea. When would you need to sign me up and stuff? Thanks for the letter that cass wrote! I'll read it in the week. les amo at todos!


Elder Buxton

How are you?

Hola Familia,
Well this week was a week of ups and downs but I really have a testimony that if we find the good in things and in our situations that we can still be happy. So this last week was full of crazy stuff. First of all like I said last week the temple was way awesome obvisously! haha. And we stopped in liniers station (my old area) to eat and I got to see jared and antonela! So great to see them! And then on tuesday we had district meeting and then we did divisions and so I went to matheu with my DL who is elder tomas who has like a couple transfers less than me and is new as DL and struggles with spanish but he is so funny and we get along really well. So it started to rain and hale harder than I have ever seen in my life... every street was flooded up to our knees if it didnt have some type of hole or sewage system so it was interesting trying to get to district meeting by colectivos in that haha. Then the power was out at the church so we did it in the dark which was interesting haha but then divisions was really good cause to be honest I was excited to get away from my comp for a bit (ill explain about him in a sec). So then on wednesday we had a meeting with elder cook!! :) It was so awesome! It was just our mission but I think he had a meeting with the other missions in buenos aires before us. Not sure though. But it was so sick! The area president was there and a few other 70s and before it started elder cook wanted to shake our hand so we all got to go up and shake all there hands. yep still havent washed my hand after that ;) we heard many of them talk and then elder cook obviously talked in the end and it was such a great talk! He said many things that were personal to me and that I needed to hear so I'm greatful for that. And by the way he testified of some things I wouldnt doubt that he has literally at least heard the voice of the lord. Pretty crazy but who knows. Well I guess he does but still haha. Then on thursday we had zone meeting. (pretty much a week of spiritual meetings :) I love meetings now haha weird right mom? ;) ) And that went really good. We set goals and everything and based on the scripture in mosiah about the people that were baptised in the waters of mormon we decided (for president gulbrandsens last month on the mission) to follow the scripture and set that as our baptism goal for this last month. 204!!! our record is like 199 in one month I think so its gonna be sweet WHEN we break it. So yesterday we went and got maira and manuel this time to make sure they came to church which they did and juan too and they all went to their right classes finally!! And so maira and manuel will be baptised this next sunday! :) and the elders in savio have like 7 baptisms planned which I'm thinking will get narrowed down to about 4 or 5 at the most so we are gonna have a big baptism day next sunday to help us for this months record! The month is now called "the waters of mormon." Okay so besides that the other week a parrilla (grill, retaurant) opened up next to our pench so we went to go buy something when we didnt have lunch last week and the couple that owns it are members in a different stake! So they basically told us that whenever we dont have food or want something that we just go by them and they will give us what we want :) What a blessing and tender mercy of the lord!! So we took advantage of that a couple times last week haha. Besides that some hermanas were mad at us and me yesterday so we had to fix some of that so its all good now. And we are gonna try something new this week to find new investigators since we arent finding by what we are doing cause there arent many less actives in our area. So this week we are gonna pass by lots of active members and ask for referrals and what not and we are gonna find some news! I know it will work! Okay this is long. Last thing. Things in the beginning of the week still werent very good with my comp cause he was still doing things he shouldn't be so our district leader got involved with me a tiny bit and stuff and I wont lie that last week a couple times I prayed that my comp would get transferred.. but after the meeting with elder cook and the zone meeting I knew that was wrong. So I changed my prayers. I started to ask for ways to serve and love my companion and help him and to have something to talk about during the week and stuff and things are way way better now. Obviously he isn't perfect now (neither am I AT ALL) but we are talking and stuff so that's great! I love prayer! I know it works just like I know that this church is true! Oh and I'm in alma 54 I think. I'm behind. Here's my favorite scripture for the week. A great example for all of us! alma 48:11-13,17.


Oh and apparently sandy has to wait like a month more for her call cause of some stuff so that stinks.. haha wow cass finally got her license? I'm kinda scared not gonna lie... haha and yeah austin should get a job. How often is he at home? Thats good if he really is gonna finish the back porch. Yesterday at lunch we talked with hermana peñaloza (sandys mom) for a while about family and stories and stuff and this might sound weird but it got me really excited to be able to have long talks with you mom. And it really made me appreciate the mom you have always been even more than I already appreciate it. Thank you for everything!! :) She (Cass) wrote a letter about me? smart little girl.. where does she come up with this stuff?? haha. I wanna read it! Well I guess thats it for now. Tonight we have dinner with a family in savio the 4 of us and tomorrow another birthday at familia cubilla in savio. It will be my 4th birthday eating in that house! haha were gonna eat an asado! :) Well ¡les amo mucho! ¡gracias por todo!


Con Amor, 

Elder Buxton