Buenas Tardes!

(email from July 6, 2015)

Hey Everyone! 

Hope everyone is doing great and staying nice and warm up on the northern hemisphere! It has been a pretty chilly week for us! We are definitely in the middle of winter down here, it was scarfs and gloves and heavy coats basically all week. The great thing is that this winter it hasn´t rained as much as last and I am hoping that for at least the next five weeks it stays that way!

It is now completely official that I am a missionary of the Buenos Aires East Mission, unfortunately we still haven´t had the chance to meet Presidente Nuñez but on Wednesday we have a special conference with all the missionaries from the three stakes here in La Plata with him and his wife! So I am excited to meet them! 

This week my companion and I have been working hard to look for some new investigators and lift the area up a little! We were able to contact a few good people and we are striving to get the members involved. It is interesting because I honestly feel like it is harder now to find people to teach then when I was a new missionary and I have thought alot about it and my conclusion is that it is a sign of the times. Elder Russel M. Nelson said, 

¨In Luke 21, "The Earth shall be in distress, nations with perplexity, the seas and the waves roaring. Men's hearts failing them for fear." What we're seeing is a prediction that in these latter days people will be afraid. Men's hearts are failing, and that includes women,because they forget their identity and their purpose.¨

Adding my personal thoughts to what Elder Nelson taught, we are surrounded by a world full of temptations and wrong doing, so many people are so confused and don´t know what to do with themselves or their lives. As the world continues in its course of ¨distress¨ and ¨perplexity¨ men´s hearts will continue to fail and the work will only become harder. BUT I am convinced that as we strive to obey God´s commandments and come closer to Him we will be guided and we will be able to help bring others to His fold. My dear friends and family stay strong and hold fast to those gospel principles that unite families and help us to become better people. Don´t let your heart fail you because of the fears of the world, our Savior Jesus Christ said it the best when speaking to His Prophet Joseph Smith for a group of church members in Doctrine and Covenants 50:41-42 said,

 

 41 Fear not, little children, for you are mine, and I have overcome the world, and you are of them that my Father hath given me;  

42 And none of them that my Father hath given me shall be lost.

We are the Father´s little children and Jesus Christ overcame the world, I know that if we put our faith and our confidence in Him we will not be lost but we will be guided to a safer place where we can enjoy the blessings of the gospel and not fear what the world has in store. If we want to remain faithful during the trials of these last days we must be obedient and we put our trust in the Lord. Strengthen yourselves and your families and you will all be blessed. To close I want to send out what the First Presidency and the Quorum of the 12 Apostles sent out to all of the leaders and members of the church this last week it truly is an inspired invitation! 

As members of the Church, we are responsible to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to illuminate the great blessings that flow from heeding God’s commandments as well as the inevitable consequences of ignoring them. We invite all to pray that people everywhere will have their hearts softened to the truths God established in the beginning, and that wisdom will be granted to those who are called upon to decide issues critical to society’s future.

May we all pray for the benefit of our future society for the sake of our posterity. I love this gospel and I hope you all know how much I love you. I am so thankful for my Savior Jesus Christ and for what he did for me. What a marvelous blessing we have to know that He died for us and that through his atoning sacrifice we and our families can be saved! I  am pretty sure we don´t even realize what we have. Keep on doing what you gotta do! :) 

Hope you all have a great week and are still reading! :)  Tomorrow I am going to finish el Libro de Mormón for the second time! I am excited to hear where you guys are at! Love you all! 

Elder Hall

 Scripture study by candle light as they burned all of that outside when they were protesting last month! haha 

 My last picture with Presidente and Hermana Thurgood! 

 Intercambios in Dolores! Such a fun trip with some elders who have become great friends over the course of our missions!

 New shoes! (well fixed shoes!)

 Hermano Stoghe cooking Pollo al disco! Or Disk Chicken! Soooo good! Usually it is cooked over coals 

but it was raining!

 Saying goodbye to Elder Perez!

 Traditional companion with the cathedral pic!

 My last agenda! I found this in a Liahona! hahaha and then you will have to look the scripture up. When a missionary ends his mission he ¨dies¨, so it makes it pretty funny! and then on the back is the family pic, and in silver letters you cant see the scripture in Mathew 19:29!