October 17, 2011

Dear everyone,

Well here I am in the office. There are currently 18 missionaries here waiting to go to President's house to have a BBQ before they head off to Buenos Aires and then go home. It's been a hectic day. And tomorrow, 18 more missionaries come in from the MTC to take their spots. Every transfer (or 6 weeks), this happens. Normally it's not so many missionaries at once but this group is huge! It is super interesting to see the old missionaries and their attitudes and behavior. I can tell which ones have worked hard and which have not.

But this week has been good. Elder Araya and I had some pretty good lessons with our investigators. So we're very excited to see how they progress. One of them is this man named Rodolfo. He's super cool! He is about 30 years old, lives alone, works in an office Monday to Friday, 8AM-4PM, and has a tiny two month old golden retriever. We found him in the street in front of his house last week and gave him a pamphlet. He told us that he had a Book of Mormon already and had read some of it. The second time that we passed by, he couldn't attend to us but asked for another pamphlet because he liked that first one. So we talked a bit. Turns out, this guy didn't read just some of the Book of Mormon; he read almost all of it! He's been studying theology in his own time for about 5 years now. He's probably the first person I met here actually educated on religion. So anyway, we told him that we're always in the church building if he wanted to pass by after work any day of the week and see the building on the inside. And he popped up on Thursday! He liked it and then we taught him on Friday. But not after my companion and Elder Howard saw him in the bank and talked to him for two hours while waiting in the huge Argentine bank lines. The lesson later on went super well. I have never taught someone who understood so well the first time.

Unfortunately, he could not come to church Sunday because here in Argentina it was Mother's Day. But he's coming this Sunday! I'm super excited for him and we're going to try and pass by tonight.

I'm struggling here to find more to say. I swear I have nothing to talk about because I'm always in the office! I suck at driving stick shift but I'm getting better. The other day I drove in downtown traffic and had to get the car moving over and over because we were in stop-and-go traffic. I killed it a lot. Oh, and we had Mexican tacos with a member family the other day because Elder Howard told them he had taco seasoning. They were soooo good.

Alright, thank you all for writing! I'll try to have a more interesting week this week so I can say more in my email!

Bye!

-Elder Garrison