Finally!

HOLA EVERYONE,

I finally get my time to write! So this letter will be for the last two weeks so I will try to get in everything that happened.

 

So two weeks ago there were two deaths in the branch of older women that were both really sick, so we saw it coming but it was still sad. Also, I´m staying here in Sáenz peña until the end of January, at least. But, we had new elders come in so the area boundaries were changed a little and it has been a good change working in a little bit of new area!! Elder Burnham is also staying with me and we are working in part of our area and some new. But, with the change we lost all of our investigators to the new elders because they are all in our old zone so we have been doing a lot of finding new people to teach. Our last lesson with Ivan before we lost him to the new elders was the word of wisdom and it was awesome because he told us that he has drank and smoked since he was a kid but he quit everything when we first met him before we even explained it was bad to him and he hasn´t desired it since because he wants to change his life!!! So it will be interesting to see where he goes with the new elders! 

 

We had a missionary activity in our church where we hid things and the members did like a search for them and that was fun to watch and it went well. Also, we had to clean the church because the president was gone on vacation for Christmas and I also got to choose the hymns for sacrament for the first time because he wasnt there! Then, after church a family here taught us how to make awesome pizza and it was incredible and now we make pizza in our apartment all the time haha. Then, we had the giant missionary activity in Resistencia with all 250 missionaries on monday!! It was awesome because I got to see all of my old district from the MTC, there were tons of missionaries everywhere, they had fun shows with singing and Christmas stuff, a white elephant for eveyone, music for christmas, and it was just a good day. But, the bus to take us back was full so we had to take the later one and didnt get back til after midnight but still had to get up at the normal time. 

 

I worked with one of the new elders a week ago and it was fun and it was a good change from the normal, but he doesnt know a word of spanish so I had to communicate with everyone on that day. We were supposed to have dinner with la familia Mercado on christmas eve but we still have to be in the apartment early until the 2nd of January so we just had a snack with them that night and made pizza in the apartment. I hit my 3 month mark in the mission on Christmas!!! We had some presents to open, mostly food from the states and matching shirts that Elder Burnham´s family sent us, made brownies, and I got to skype my family for 45 minutes and that was awesome!!!! We went caroling the day after christmas because no one could do it before, and then we had a great rest of the week with how many lessons we had and how many new people we found!! I guess people were just in the spirit from Christmas! One day we had 8 lessons and found 9 new investigators with a baptismal date!!!!! (we really found 12 new investigators but 3 of them actually live in the area of the new elders) 

 

Also, We got to baptize Catolina Gomez and her daughter andrea!!! That was awesome. I got to baptize andrea and I also baptized her friend who got baptized the same day and Elder Burnham baptized Catolina! Overall, I've had an extremely busy, but awesome 2 weeks. Sorry, this place isnt letting my camera work so there will be a million pictures next week haha Thank you everyone for your support and I always love to hear from you. Also, if you send me a handwritten letter, it takes about a month to get to me, I will write one back, and that will be about another month. Thanks again to everyone and I will talk to you all again next monday!!!

 

Les Quiero,

Elder Joshua Clarine

 

P.S. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! 2014