New Thangs

A lot of stuff has happened this week.

With the President there are some cool changes! Elders can now baptize! We can play futbol and other sports with other people on P-Days (we have a soccer tournament today in fact). We have 1 hour and 30 minutes to email whereas it was 1 hr and 15 before. I was VERY stoked when we first heard these changes last week. We got to meet him last week! He´s awesome. I got to sit by the President´s family and talk to them during lunch. GREAT family.

“The Get to Know the President” meeting. 3 zones. Find me?

 

Remember Elder Holloway? My trainer? He´s been made a NEW assistant!!! He´s got just a year under his belt. It goes to show that the Lord qualifies those he chooses! I´m very proud and excited for my pops, Elder Holloway.

3 generations of missionaries. Elder Holloway, my pops, and Elder Ponce, my Mexican grandpa.

We watched the Finals!! Yes and with permission! The President gave the whole mission permission to watch the final game. Sad although it was. We were at a members house with the other 2 Villa Elders. When one Argentine player made a goal, we screamed, yelped, hugged, ran outside and screamed, we came back inside and it was still 0-0. The player was offsides. And then Germany won. But it was fun nonetheless!

Things get moldy FAST here. We are constantly fighting it in the apartment.

Today is transfer day! I should be going but we will see what the Lord does!

After lunch with a family member.

The bouncing Eli!! She´s the little gordita!

We still have our good teaching pool, but still having a hard time to progress people. This last sunday too, 2 less-actives committed to come to church and that we would pass by in the morning to help them get there. Buuuuuut, they both fell through. One didn´t answer the door, another was just…gone. Oh agency you littl´ devil.

Love you all!

Elder Orme

PS: Just found out where I´m going! I´m heading to the Rosario Norte area! WoW! I don´t know anything else yet. Bye Empalme, love ya!

Propios Agentes

Hola Familia y Amigos!

We have a new president here in the mission! His name is President Zanni. I hope you can see his pic somewhere. I´m VERY excited for the work. One thing we have learned so far from him is that we are our “propios agentes”, our own agents, and as we are obedient and faithful the Holy Spirit will guide us perfectly! And oh do I really feel like the Spirit is guiding our work more now. Why? we are VERY obedient. We do everything in our power to do so. My teaching skills are improving. My language skills are improving. My focus on the Lord and leaving myself behind is improving.

Working with members! This awesome, returned-missionary, young single adult member helps us a lot to visit people. Rock star! Fun to talk to!……..

Ice Cream! It´s not hardely as rich as Coldstone or Trader Joes ice cream but “Grido” is the famous brand here and their was a great offer for a kilo and a half. We ate it over the course of a week!

We haven´t met the President yet, we will this coming week! He´s 40 years old and has 7 kids! 5 of which will live in the mission home. The Zone Leaders have said that he has brought a lot of young fire, energy, and Spirit to the work. Exciting times!

Plus, he has cut out the project of always getting 140 contacts every week. We also had a specified hour during the day to contact. That´s cut out. We are our own agaents! This is great, because now it alleviates the pressure off my companion. With the 140 contacts, we were failing in other areas. Elder Fish has related to me how he felt like he was really going for the number instead of focusing on the people. He has repented :) and now we have a goal to fill all areas equally well, according to the Spirit that is given us.

On the bus with Ismael again!

Since getting all this news, I have felt the Spirit guiding our work MUCH more. And it feels so good to guide it because there is also success. We had a bottom-load of lessons towards the end of this week, and they all went well becuase we let the Holy Spirit guide. We will continue to do so!

For Reagan and others: The Spirit will sometimes direct you to do things out of the ordinary…follow it! For example, we went to some less-actives. The Perlo Family! Such an awesome family. They speak english because they used to live in the US. Mainly it´s just the Dad works on Sundays and they lack some daily gospel living. The Elders have been working with him for a while. We were chatting, and I was about to follow-up on whether he´s been reading his scriptures like we committed, but it felt WRONG. I was steered by soft yearnings of the Spirit to just continue chatting. So we did, and we found out some VITAL information that they expressed to us as we chatted. It was a fun and great time, not to mention Sister Perlo had just made tons of home-made donuts which I scarffed!!! The vital information is too long of a story to explain but it’s GREAT NEWS for them! The news is a secret from everyone, even their kids! But they have confidence in us. And it´s because we followed the Spirit!

The Family Perlo

With the two Perlo cuties! They just have 2 reaaaaallly cute girls, They draw us pictures all the time.

Just an example of the Spirit guiding us. There´s lots of others but impossible to relate it all! So great things!

One thing: If the Spirit tells you to do something or say something to someone, DO it. EXPRESS it. If you don´t feel like the Spirit is saying anything specific…GO for whatever you feel is your best judgment. These trials will come when we are like, “I don´t feel anything” (in a whiny and complainy voice) like I have done in the past. It´s a TRIAL. God says to GO for your best judgment then! Don´t just sit! As long as we GO, listening for the yearnings of the Spirit (which may come from other people!), God will guide in HIS way. And in the end, after our trial, the greater light, the greater perspective, and the greater knowledge WILL come! It´s happened so much to me in the course of my little life. So when those trails of testimony or Spirit come…what will you do??? “Press on enduring! With steadfast faith in Christ!”

Argentine field.

Argentine bridge.

Family and Friends, believe and follow the teachings of the Prophets.

Now for funny things:
-I bought a 2 peso flag and taped it outside our front door to show our Argentine patriotism for the World Cup. It lasted for 2 weeks!….now it´s stolen. :)

-“Mayonaise, mayonaise, we all scream for mayonaise!” They use it with EVERYTHING. I don´t mind.

Love,

Elder Orme, the IV

Vinculo

Hola Hola,

We found a great little family! We´ve only had one lesson with them so far but they seem promising. The parents are married! Yes! It´s rare to find a married couple. Claudio and Lydiana Rodriguez with young girl Milagro.

We were contacting near our home. We walked up to a pleasant, blue home with 2 dogs in the dog-walk and a parrot yelping and climbing up the dog-walk gate. We clapped and a little, petit woman came out, Lydiana. We introduced ourselves and she was nice. A man walks up from behind who turns out and it´s her husband, Claudio. He greets us and we present ourselves. He turns a little cold as he explains how he has lost hope in religion because every church he´s tried has had people praising and showing off their false “righteousness” in church, but then being a completely different person outside. Therefore, he tries to walk in the light of Christ he has on his own. I didn´t think he was going to let us in but we asked him if we could enter his home and talk with them for a tad and he said yes! I was surprised! Cool! Let´s go for it! It was a great lesson. Claudio said on his own that he felt a good compelling feeling inside of him that brought contentment and peace to his heart. We told him…”that´s the Spirit!” They want to pray, ask the Lord, and study the Book of Mormon to find out more truthfulness. Claudio was apparently baptized in the LDS church when he was going to church with his friends as a kid…but completely forgot about all that. But he was really excited that he re-found this church and the promises it has. To be continued!…

Culture: People drive however they want. I´m very surpised I haven´t seen a crash yet. I´ve seen dogs get hit by cars yes! but not car vs. car.
Another dead cat!
We´ve found a lot of people who used to live in the States…usually Florida, but returned to Argentina when it was hard for them to find work there. All of them have said, “I lived in the States, life is better there, here…it is not the same.” But they have work here. Much is governed by the way a country founds its principles and people! Every person´s home can be their own little stick of promised land as they found their home on gospel principles and strive to live them!

    

Sergio said he would come to church this past Sunday, but didn´t. He’ll get there.

We wake up to ice on the ground now! Luckily we are warm enough!

If Argentina and USA win their individual Eighth Finals for the World cup…they will face off!! Both games happen the 7th of July.

Ah! Have a happy July 4th! What a fantastic holiday! Go throw a frisbee, eat a hamburger, and watch the fireworks for me!

Love you!

Elder Orme