This week was amazing! Working hard and loving every minute of it! 

Elder Vargas, my new companion got in to artigas on Monday night. We almost went to the wrong terminal to go and get him though. We were on our way to the terminal to pick him up in artigas and then we realized that he was coming from Rivera and was going to be coming into Brazil. We called a taxi and got over there with a few minutes to spare. We came home, dropped his stuff, and went out to work for the last hour of the day. Elder Vargas is a stud. We came here to Uruguay together a year ago. It’s been awesome to talk about what we have seen this past year in the mission and everything we have learned and how we can aprovechar of the time we have together. We have been teaching some awesome lessons. Elder Vargas is from Chile!! whoop whoop! We have 3 Latinos in my house now! I am the only gringo! yyyyeeeesssss! This is the first time in like a week that I have spoken English hahah. But he is a stud. We have been having so much fun together. 

The first lunch we had with Elder Vargas, the members planned a prank on him. The hermano invited us in as we pretended to contact his house and then tried to rob us. I am just going to leave it at that. It was pretty good. Elder Vargas got a kick out of it. 

This week has been awesome teaching wise. With bikes we are a lot more efficient but at the same time, we aren’t finding as much because we are flying to and from lessons. I think we are going to go back to walking or maybe do half and half because we need to keep talking to everyone to keep finding people to teach. And now we have acquired 6 bikes in our house hha. So we are going to start returning some. 

So happy Easter a few days late! Easter Sunday was really good in artigas. Super tranquilo. They celebrate it just the same basically as in the states. But it’s not as big. Like they do the whole Easter bunny thing with all that stuff but it’s not a huge deal. The have what they call the "semana santa" o "holy week" en ingles. It’s super sad though because the younger generation just knows it as "turismo" when they get a week vacation and they all go travel everywhere and don’t really know what happened this week or what it is important, we kind of got hit hard in the church because everyone was out traveling or visiting with family. There were only 49 people there. But the reuniones were really good anyways. After church, we went out on divisions with some youth.

I went out with Santiago. He is 16 and is a little autistic, nothing too severe but he can’t read, doesn’t really think straight, he has a hard time speaking and just kind of says whatever comes to his mind first, but he is such a stud!! I loved going out with him so much and learned a ton from him. Every time we went into a house and sat down, the first thing he did was ask who all was there and invited them all to come into the lesson. He was just so open and frank with them. The people loved having him there because he bore such a pure testimony of what he knew to be the truth and he shared it with such excitement for the work. We had an awesome time. While were were riding our bikes going to lessons he would always say "elder staffieri, hoy es el dia!" o "elder staffieri, today is the day!." it was just so awesome to be with someone that has that much excitement about the work all the time and just lives so purely. I honestly want to go out with him again next week. And after divisions we left with the relief society president to go out and visit some people. We had a super full day of teaching and had a lot of success. So it was an Easter full of sharing the message that our Savior aun vive, that Christ lives. ahh i love it so much! And some members gave us some chocolate too :)

On Saturday night we had an awesome ward activity! We all sang karaoke, danced, did the limbo, played a whole bunch of games, ping pong, etc. everyone loved it. We made some tortas fritas and just had a great time. There were members there who hadn’t come to church in months. They were making friends with the active members the investigators that came were well received. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to see our ward coming together like it is. We may not be the biggest ward in artigas, but we are building on firm foundations, and I know that the ward is going to grow stronger and stronger. 

Well that’s all the time I have for this week. I love you guys so much! And congrats to Carter on his marriage! I am super pumped for you! 

Get out there and share your testimony! And let’s all try a little bit harder to be a little bit better this week! 

¡que pasen bien! 

Elder Staffieri