Another Week in Salto!
First off congrats to Mr. Wolfpack, Derek Downing!! That is so awesome that you won. I called it!! I pass the torch to you my friend. And Chris Benson, I miss you too man. I am so pumped you got to watch our boy Derek take the title. I love you and write me an email every now and again!! That goes for everyone who is reading this. I miss you all and want to hear from you all! Briar and Sierra, I am so pumped for you to get to the MTC. It honestly is, well, not the best hah. But its only for 6 weeks right? So just hang in there. And Taylor is on his way to Chile!! 

So this week has been kinda crazy. On Tuesday we had a district meeting all the way on the other side of centro, like two cities over, and as we walked down the street from the house we see our bus go by. We missed it by like 20 seconds and that one bus made us 45 min late to our district meeting. We were standing in the street with this look on our face like NNNOOOOOOOO!!!! Ha-ha. But it was actually hilarious. Then later we had a meeting with our investigator Tamara. It went kind of rough. We asked her at the end why she wanted to be baptized, and she was just silent. Scary. She couldn’t say why, and it makes sense because she has been kind of disinterested. 

On Wednesday it rained. And rained. And rained.  But it was also the first of May, which means labor day for the Uruguayans. It looked like a ghost town. We could walk down the middle of the road. There was not a soul out. They hate the rain here. Hate it. All of our lessons canceled so it was kind of frustrating. But hey, we didn’t come here for the easy days and golden investigators, we came here to work!!  So we went and visited a less active recent convert, Nicolas, he is 16 years old. He stopped coming to church because his girlfriend, who is in the ward, broke up with him. Come on man!! So we sat and talked to him for like an hour and I related to him the best I could. At the end he understood that we understood where he has coming from and I assured him that it is going to work out and that he needs to come to church. We told him to turn to the lord and exercise faith. He took our offer to go to church and we left. I also had my first asado on Wednesday!! I had blood sausage. Everyone has told me horror stories about it but it wasn’t even that bad. We also had a golden contact. Her name is Jessica and she is 26. She is awesome. 

On Thursday it was still raining. I know what Brent Plyler meant when he said the thunder shook the ground. Our whole house was shaking from the thunder. It’s the loudest crack you could ever hear then the whole world rumbles. And the rain on our tin roof just makes it that much louder. So I didn’t get that much sleep Wednesday night and Thursday night too. But anyways, we started our day and it was going really good. Found a few new investigators and then went over to Jacqueline’s house to teach her and her kids. aaaannnnddddd her boyfriend Julio was there, he has just returned from the campo the night before. So we taught them about the law of chastity.   Jacqueline is so ready to be baptized, but the only thing holding her back is she isn’t married and has a live in boyfriend. I am so happy we brought a member with us. He is such a stud. We brought our elders quorum president, Brother Gonzalez. He took it away as soon as we started talking. He committed Julio to marry Jacqueline. It was nuts. I could barely understand what was going on but they are going to get married hopefully. We will see how it pans out. Then we went and taught our English class at night. That was cool and it’s helping me with Spanish too. 

On Friday it started out rough. Tamara’s older sister Jessica texted us and said that Tamara didn’t want to take the lessons anymore and she didn’t want to get baptized. Whoa. Stab in the heart. It’s crazy how quick you come to care about these people. We told her that we would come by the next day to talk to her. Then we had our weekly planning. Worst day of the week. We are inside seriously until like 3 in the afternoon. I go insane. I hate sitting still. I want to get out and go find people. I didn’t come on my mission to sit in the house all day. That afternoon it was sunny and had one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen. We had a lesson with Jessica again and invited her to the baptismal service the next day. 

On Saturday we had a baptismal service with someone the sisters found. It was so awesome. The spirit was so strong there and we had some of our investigators there. We had gone to Tamara’s house earlier that day and asked what was wrong and what we could do and all of that stuff. And it ended up to be a kind of lowering the boom lesson to the family to reactivate them. We challenged them all to come back to church and guess what, they started to come. They came to the baptismal service and also to the church the next day!!

Sunday was a good work out day. We went over to Jacqueline’s to try to get her to come to church but she wouldn’t come because Julio didn’t want to go. So after 20 min of working with them trying to get them to come, we eventually just left empty handed. When we got to church we realized that none of our investigators showed up to church so we went out searching. It was a busy morning. We probably walked 5 miles before sacrament trying to get everyone to church. Okay maybe it was a light jog ha-ha. But we got some of our investigators there so that is what counts. 

This week was way awesome. I can’t think of a better place to be right now in my life. I have come to grow so much in the gospel already. I cannot get enough of the scriptures. It’s so weird that I get so pumped up in the morning for personal study. I have never been that way. I know what it means to really feast now. And I have a bottomless pit of a stomach so it works out well. I know of the power of prayer and I am so grateful for it. I love this gospel so much and am beginning to see peoples life change because of it. I am happy alllllll the time out here. Yeah at times I get a bit stressed but that is only because of Spanish. Ha-ha, one day I will be able to speak it fluently. 

I am out of time but I love you all. I miss you. You are in my prayers. 

Elder Daniel Scott Staffieri