October 13, 2014

Familia: 

This week has been so amazing!! I LOVE ARGENTINA!!! Well Concepcion del Uruguay por lo menos!! This place is the best!! Its a city of 80,000 people and there are only 4 missionaries: Elder Hansen, Elder Blair, Elder Gonzalez, y yo. The people here are sooo nice! Honestly, the nicest people ever!! The first contact we made, we got in and now we are teaching a family of 7. The first contact we made in Argentina!! This place is so ready. The missionaries before hadn’t worked in our area for over 6 months. People always tell us that they have never seen missionaries before. Its kind of like when Christopher Columbus showed up to America. I remember when we sat down in the plaza one day to study; it was like we were invisible. No teenagers were yelling stuff at us or calling us names or anything similar. It was the opposite. It is so awesome! 

My new companion is elder Gonzalez. He is such a stud!! He is from Chile. He has a year and 3 months in the mission and teaches extremely well! I have learned so much from him. We are best friends already. He is hilarious and we are always dying laughing. But is super focused a la vez. We have been working super hard together and have been enjoying every minute of serving the Lord with everything we have. Its been cool living in a house of 2 for the first time since I started my mission. Ha-ha. It’s a big difference going from a house of 8 elders in the middle of the city to a house of 2 elders in a suburb. We live in a tiny apartment and our neighbors are really close. Like almost too close. Ha-ha. Ill send some pictures next week. But they are all really nice. 

Its been really interesting being here in Argentina. Its kind of like we are all isolated from everyone else from the mission. Ha-ha. Nobody calls us out here because I don’t think they know how. And its hard to call into Uruguay and it kills all the minutes on our phones. I think we have had to put on more minutes like 7 times already. It just burns through plata. This week we have had to spend a lot of time helping the other missionaries get settled in and going to buy stuff that everyone needed. So we are really excited to hit the ground running this weekend just go to town. THERE IS SOO MUCH TO DO HERE!!! We have been talking to everyone!! From people on the street, taxi drivers, people on the bus, even the guy who works in the carniceria in the grocery store. Everyone!! And 80 percent of them accept visits. I love this place!!!

Yesterday I had one of the most inspirational experiences I have ever had I think in my entire mission during a fast and testimony meeting. We have a small branch of a little over 25 people here in Concepcion and every single one got up to bear their testimony!! Every single one!!! I thought that we were going to have a lot of time to get up and share our testimony and present ourselves and stuff but there wasn’t a gap in all the whole hour!! The members all got up and shared a pure testimony about the gospel and their desires to share it with everyone else. I don’t think I have ever felt the spirit so strong in sacrament meeting before!! I don’t have words to describe it all. Then after the meeting, the members came up to us and started giving us references. I have never seen anything like it before!! They are so excited to share the gospel. I feel like we are in a branch full of Lehi`s after he partook of the fruit in his dream!!! So awesome!! This branch is going to explode!!!

Alright, well that is all the time I have for this week. Sorry I couldn’t fill you in on too much! I love you all soo much!! Sharing the gospel is the best!! Everyone needs to go on full time missions!!!

Lets all try a little harder to be a little bit better!!!

UN abrazo grande, 

Elder Staffieri