"It was weird leaving behind a bunch of families I had grown to love..."

Hola mi familia y mis amigos,

como les va? Well this last week has been really bitter sweet for me. I got transfered from Santa Teresita after 6 months serving there. Despite all of the challenges that there were to face, I will miss that place a lot. There were a lot of people that i grew to love muchisimo. Its crazy how that happens. 

Well before i tell you where i am i want to reflect a little on the last couple weeks. I did a bunch of fun stuff. I got to milk a cow on P-day. We got caught in a big lightning storm which cut all the power and then we had to walk in knee deep water back to the pench, one of my best buddies, Elder Merkley, played some sweet songs on his hermonica that some members gave to him ç, and a bunch of other stuff. Some good memories that i wont ever forget. I will miss all the missionaries from La Costa. They are the best.

Yesterday at church was awesome. We commited the hermano lopez to go to church 3 weeks consecutively and if he did he was going to bless the sacrament for the first time with me. I have been working with this family from the start and I am so glad that after all the work with that family that they are on a good path and have the desire to keep on going. It was an awesome moment to be up there with hermano lopez. 

It was weird leaving behind a buncch of the families i had grown to love. There was rosa and a 3 families that we reactivated that were really hard to say bye to but I have faith that i will see them all again one day, in this life or the next.

Well I am now serving in an area called Kilometro 26. Its in the city so i feel like a fish out of water right now, but i hope i can adjust good. Im not really sure what to expect but i hope everything will work out good. Well Thats all for this week. I love you all!

Elder Whitaker

"I felt the spirit so strong while testifying about Joseph Smith being called as a prophet..."

Hola mi familia y mis amigos,

Hows it going up there? I had a pretty solid week this week. It was probably one of the best weeks i have had in santa teresita. We started off this week and it felt like spring had already arrived. We were in short sleeves and sweating in the sun and it felt great but then all of a sudden a huge storm came and it had been thunder storming on us for the past 4 days straight. Its pretty awesome out here with the lightning and stuff. Its so much easier to see the road at night haha. My waterproof jacket stopped being waterproof so i have been using this emergency camping parka over my jacket. I found it in my camping stuff and brought it as a joke but now im super stoked that i brought it. All the roads are super flooded so are having to blaze trails and jump over puddles and mini rivers to get to visit people. my long jump has improved a lot. 

As far as work it has also been a good week. We finally found soime investigators. We have been doing a lot of contacting in the streets and stuff and we found a couple solid people. theres one family that im really excited about. We had a really good lesson about the restoration with them. I felt the spirit so strong while testifing about joseph smith being called as a prophet and the book or mormon and i believe they felt it as well. Hopefully we can continue working well with them. 

Because it was raining so hard it was a little hard for people to get to church. but the familia lopez, familia elias, and hermano ruiz went! half the church was people we have reactivated. That made me super happy to see. We have had some good lessons with them. Its amazing how the spirit will let you feel in your heart the truthfulness of the book of mormon or of gods plan for us, or the atonement. We have had some really spiritual lessons this week just focussing on the basics and letting the people feel the spirit instead of trying to explain all of their questions. If you can know with a surety that these basic things are true, you can go forward with faith that the rest wil work itself out for your good. 

Well thats all for this week. I hope all is well with all of you. 

Elder Whitaker

The rain is making  tons of frogs come out everywhere.

This trailer serves as the hospital in Santa Teresita (fingers crossed Ty never needs it).

"I feel like I'm just sowing a lot of seed to be harvested in the future..."

Hola mi familia y mis amigos!

Que tal? I didnt have time to write last week so im sorry for that. It has been an interesting couple of weeks. Well my new comp is pretty cool but with one flaw, he doesnt know how to cook. I have had comps that cook my whole mission until now so now i have been forced to learn. luckily from watvhing my other comps so much i kinda have an idea. My cooking is getting better and i cook more than slop now. I can make empanadas, milanesa ( argentino fried chicken) pasta and i am inventing with sauces, and burgers. im still trying to learn and get a little more variety though so if anybody knows some basic recipies that a beginner could pull off let me know.

We have contacted just about all of the people that live in santa teresita. now we are breaking up our work so we are in santa teresita one day, then in mar de Tuyu another day and then in las toninas another day. We havent spent too much time in the other cities before so we dont have many people to teach. Im using my boyscout skills to read all the maps and stuff because neither one of us knew where we were. We have been doing a lot of contacts and just talking with people in the streets. Hopefully we can find a couple solid people to teach. we will see this week what happens. 

We had a pretty fun P day the other day. we went to the dunes on the beach as a zone and messed around out there. I invited Marcelo and Julian to come with us. The are 2 of the 4 young men down here and we have been trying to reactivate them. They have the same ages as my brothers so i feel like they are my brothers. I invited them because i remember when i was at home waiting to go on my mission with no firends the missionaries from back home invited me to do stuff with them so i wanted to pay it forward. They dont ever get the chance to be around other mormon kids so it was cool that they could see how things can be for them in the future. We all had a really good time together. 

Well the work goes on here. I feel like i am just sowing a lot of seed to be harvested in the future but i am fine with that. I know that I probably wont see a lot of sucess in numbers while i am here but the other day in church i was thinking about how amazing it will be to see in the future and on the other side of the veil how my work went here. I feel good because im working my hardest to do whats prepared for me now in this moment and because of that im tranquilo.

Elder Whitaker

"una otra semana gloriosa en la costa..."

Hola mi familia y mis amigos,

How is everyone doing? enjoying the summer sunshine? Que suerte because down here it rained a ton and because my area is just a big field next to the beach with sand for streets it turned into a swamp. Our bikes were practiaclly useless (yeah we got new bikes) so we were playing crocodile hunter in ties trying to cross our area to visit people. Also because we have searched out almost all of the list that lives close to us we are starting to go deeper into our area and look for new people so we are ridding like 14 km on our bikes to find people and if we cant use the bikes, on foot. I weigh the same as i did before my mission but now my jeans that i had before that i use for service now are getting a little closer to skinny jeans on my thighs because of my leg muscles after so much biking.

This week went pretty well. We had some pretty solid lessons with some less actives that we found. I can tell all of you with a surety that God listens to our prayers, especially to those of little children. The little girl that wanted to be baptized and came to us has been praying for her dad to stop smoking and come back to church and this man, who never wanted anything to do with us, agreed to meet with us and we had a really spiritual lesson and he was at church yesterday which was a miracle. 

Some cool stuff from the week: on our way to church yesterday we saw an old guy trying to kill another guy with a shovel. That was a fun time. Its a good thing the old guy was old and couldn´t run. Also we had Elder Merkley and Elder Rachummi with us for lunch the other day and we made some slop. Elder Merkly wanted some picante so he started to cook a jalepeño. He didnt know how though so he cut it all up and let out all the liquid inside and then it evaporated and the picante gas spread thoughout our whole pench and we all felt like we got pepper sprayed and were crying. it was a good time hahaha Well i hope everyone has a good week!

Elder Whitaker

ps.  The title of this blog he wrote says "another glorious week in La Costa".

p.p.s  Ty wrote me a special little note that made my week!  "You probably thought I wouldn´t remember but....HAPPYBIRTHDAY Mom!  I don´t remember how old you are either so i can´t make a good joke but i wanted to wish you a happy birthday. I went down to the beach with my new comp and took this picture for you! thats a genuine Argentina sunrise right there! I hope you have a really good week! I love you so much! Its crazy that it has been so long that i have been away from you but i owe you a big birthday hug when I'm back. I hope all the jackwagons are nice to you for your birthday! 

Love you!

"one of the greatest lessons I have learned down here, is how to love..."

Hola mi familia y mis amigos!

Que tal todos? I hope you are all doing good. I got some letters yesterday that some of you sent in april so it was a long wait but i will be trying to get back to you soon! Its awesome to hear from you though. I will be staying another 6 weeks in La Costa in the bottom of the mission so my communication will still be a little bit limited. I am excited though for the chance i have to be down here though. 

La Costa is one of the hardest areas in the mission but it is also a really rewarding place because we are down here establishing the church. In all the other zones there are stakes but we are a district down here with only branches. the average attendance when i got here was around 20ish and yesterday we had 43 which made me really happy. We work a lot with the less actives but I have found a lot of joy in that. Less actives or new people. Its all one work. I never realized how big a deal home teaching really is, but now I am going to promise to never miss a month. I know that if this branch had home teaching there wouldnt be 250 somehing inactive members. I have had a lot of challenges down here but it has taught me a lot. One of the greatest lessons i have learned down here is how to love. Im not going to lie, before my mission i was pretty self focused. This area has taught me a new way. I could have gone to a new area but my comp was going to leave too and i didnt want to leave all these people who i had grown to love down here to get lost. If there were new missionaries they wouldnt have known how to find them and they werent going to recieve visits from anybody else. As i have heard about the struggles and stories of the people down here I have been filled with a love and desire to help them. Sometimes i feel discouraged like we arent making progress but this past week we have had people share with us the difference we have made in their lives and one of the families asked that we ask that one of us can stay. How could i say no to that? I hope that we can do more than to just help support them in these next 6 weeks. 

A cool story that happened this week. there is this family that is less active. They have two girls, 12 and 8. The dad doesnt want anything to do with the church and smokes but the little girl had hopes that her dad could baptize her. It was hard to see because we knew that the dad didnt want to change. this last sunday the two girls got up and went to church by themselves and the littlest asked me if she could be baptized by one of us. She told us she did her homework and prayed to her heavenly father and that she had read in the pamphlet we left for her and red the scriptues in it and wanted to be baptized. It is amazing to see how the spirit has touched her, even being so young she has the faith to follow the savior. I was amazed by that. 

Well thats all for this week. I hope all is well. I love you all.

Elder Whitaker

Ty made "slop" for dinner!

Ty lost a bet and had to shave his right leg...

"We got to see a guy that wouldn't go to church a month ago, give a talk in sacrament..."

Trey said Ty probably likes Argentina because he looks so much bigger than everyone there!  :)

Hola mi familia y mis amigos!

Hope you all had a happy world cup. Argentina almost did! it was crazy. i was locked up in the pench but we could here everybody yelling and lighting off rockets and stuff which was legit. So close. In a way I am kinda glad its over though because people will start letting us in again and we wont have our appointments fall because people are watching the games. Less walking in the cold for me hahaha. 

This week was pretty good. We have been working with the youth a lot and im actually tutoring some adults in chemistry and math. Its pretty funny that i am having to remember how elements react and bond and stuff and how to work with equations after so long. Its been more than a year since i had to touch the stuff but my students are passing their tests so thats good hahaha. We had some more less actives come to church. We got to see a guy that wouldnt go to church a month ago give a talk in sacrament meeting this week which was super awesome. We had 2 kids that we have been working with get up early and walk to church without their parents which was pretty awesome. The work here is slow but it is progressing and it feels awesome to see the progress. 

One of the things that we have been teaching a lot to the people down here is that we arent just here to drag people to church. A lot of people think we are here to boost the numbers of the church but they dont understand that we dont gain anything from that. None of the leaders of the church get any money for their service. We are here because we want to serve them. We know that they are our brothers and sisters, children of God, and that we are here because we have prayed to know if this message is true and if it will bless our lives and have recived the answer, "YES". It is true because we have felt the spirit say it is and then we have lived the teachings and seen our lives be blessed. The gosple is simple. We are here in the earth to become better and return back to live with god and our families and the only way to do that is by following christ´s example. By following in christ´s footsteps and what he taught, if we have faith, are constantly repenting to change ourselves to be better, are baptized, and recieve the gift of the holy ghost and follow its promptings we become better people and will have the opportunity to live with god and our families forever. Its is something simple, but beautiful. And the best part of our message is not that we are trying to convince them we are right, we teach that they can know for themselves the same way we have come to know. Prayer and living the teachings. Thats the part that makes this work possible. If it was just me trying to convince people nothing would happen but when people feel that its true, that is where it changes their lives. Im grateful that God answers prayers and helps me out here everyday and i hope that all of you back home always remember that, 

well I love you all and hope for the best with all of you. ¡Que esten bien!

Elder Whitaker

"I finally got a bunch of letters and stuff...Thank you!"

Hola mi familia y mis amigos,

Como están todos? We had interviews with the president of mission the other day so I finally got letters and stuff for the first time in a while! that was super nice. I got the letters that a bunch of friends and family wrote me back during conference weekend and I want to thank everybody for those. It was so awesome to hear from so many different people and the stuff you guys all wrote me really was awesome to hear. I will try to write back but i dont have the adresses of everybody so if you dont get a thank you note. This is me thanking you. It is golden to get letters! Hopefully people keep them coming hahaha.

Well this week was pretty good we had a lot of fun stuff. We played soccer with some of the youth, we got to walk around in a pretty awesome storm trying to find people that werent sleeping, and I found some sheep. Sheep are pretty fun to play with. It made me remember when my little brother Trey rode a sheep for the 4th of july rodeo up in utah and the sheep had "demon eyes" and bucked him off. hahaha love you little bro. We have been teaching a lot of less active members and we are starting to see some sucess. We have reactivated about 3 families and are working on getting some references so that we can teach their friends too. It is starting to work so hopefully we can find some people to teach this week thats coming. It was super awesome to be in church and have one of the guys we helped come back to church go and bear his testimony. Maybe we arent baptizing a bunch of people down here but we are helping in other ways and it feels good to see that work paying off. The woman that me and my last comp baptized like 3 months ago is still going really strong and now she has a calling as the secratary of the relief society which is super cool!

It was super weird to be outside of the states for the 4th of july. It is crazy that last year at this time I was back with friends and family. I was kinda tempted to buy some fireworks for 4th of july but i decided I had better not. Hopefully you all blew some stuff up for me. well i hope all is well back home!

Elder Whitaker