Ramos Mejia- Week #76

It is surprisingly cooler than normal here in Buenos Aires!

Happy Pearl Harbor Day!

First…I would just like to say that Mother’s email was not only shocking, but disturbing as well. And I quote, “The move to the new house is off until February, but we will send pics of the outside at least.” What…in the world…are you talking about? Are we moving again? Why have I not heard anything more about this!?! I am completely in the dark on this one people. ¡Hay que decirme lo que está pasando en la casa! ¿Papá por que no me dijiste nada? ¿Mamá, donde está la confianza? ¡SOY TU HIJO! Oh sorry, when I get in a flurry like that I just start ranting in Spanish. Just call me Ricky Ricardo. These past two weeks have just been full of things that you have forgotten to tell me. But seriously, if you were looking for a good subject line for your email, you should have just taken the classic line from Usher: “Confessions Part II”…ok I am done.

So President has informed us that we should suggest to our families that they prepare their list of questions for “the call” -my battery is low, just so you know, I’m going to a place near by, gotta go- that was a little backstreet boy flashback by the way. So yeah, it would be best if you prepared a list of questions and topics so that we use our time well. Also, not to be trunky, but we made it through the longest time period of the mission without talking. May to December will have been the longest we will have gone without talking. So I just thought I would share that little piece of information with you. This week was good. We got out a lot more, and found some new people. We also set a baptismal date with Lucio for the 19th of December. He is really one of the most interesting investigators I have had. It seems like he has absolutely no interest in our message, but he always accepts it. It is like he doesn’t care about the doctrine, but he likes to participate in the church. He loves coming. It is weird. I challenged him to be baptized and he just looked at me and said, “Ok”…oh…ok yeah…um so you know it is a covenant with God and you have to keep His commandments right? “Ok”…um…ok great…so we are going to be helping you progress more in the gospel and helping you learn all that God requires of you. “Ok”…fantastic…

Elder Palacios and I were talking about it, and realized we aren’t sure what he wants. I am not sure he wants to know which church is true, but I thought I had him with eternal families…nope…he said whatever happens after this life happens. So we asked if he WANTED to live with them forever. He said he “supposes” it would be ok. Haha, talk about being apathetic. But, he is good friends with our bishop, who is baptism crazy by the way, and what Obispo wants, Obispo gets. Elder Sabey and I affectionately called him the Dragon. So Obispo is really pushing for us to get him in the water. We have an appointment with him on Thursday with Bishop, so that should be good, and we can talk with Bishop about what he thinks on the subject. We also had zone conference this week. It was pretty good. We were given copies of President Benson’s talk “Beware of Pride”, which I loved. Elder Bednar mentioned a little bit about pride in our lives as well, and he related it to missionary work. He said that when you say things like, “We taught the most in the zone”, or “We baptized more than anyone this transfer”, we are standing “eyeball to eyeball with the natural man, who is an enemy to God.” We have been having a lot of success in the mission lately, so I think it was inspired of President to warn us about getting prideful.

Ok I am not really sure what else to say this week. Not much happened. Elder Zivic of the Seventy was in our ward again this week to participate in a baby blessing, so that was cool. Any time I have heard him speak in the ward he has really stressed the principle of fast offerings. So donate a generous fast offering. That is the General Authority counsel of the week. Other than the stuff said at the Christmas Devotional, which we didn’t see because it started at 10:00 at night here. They are going to be re-broadcasting it next week at a better time. Also, P-day activity of the day today was a celebration of Pearl Harbor Day…eating lunch at Hard Rock Café…which is probably the most American thing we can do here in Argentina. I bought a shirt, took a picture of the stain-glassed window of the Beatles they had, and saw an autographed pair of Mick Jagger’s (sp?) pants…quality American experience.

Love, Elder Gilmore