Week #92

Hola familia!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM AND COLLIN! You know that I would never forget that!. I can´t believe that Collin is already 18 years old and ready to go on a mission. I´m also really excited to hear about all of these Taiwan mission calls. There is a lot of work to do there and the Lord is calling on the best to do it. You think it should be getting cooler here-- and it is-- but there are still a few days and nights of heat. I´m sure it means that it won´t get too cold here in the winter but we'll see. 

This week was transfer week and we got to welcome all of the new missionaries. I love meeting them because they are always full of FIRE. Sometimes as we go through the daily routine as a missionary we lose this fire, but it´s always nice to see these Sisters and Elders with the desire to serve. It was pretty cool seeing Amanda Yapias from Provo High School. She's doing awesome and she'll be a great missionary. 

This week we are staying here in Bahía Blanca for General Conference so we´re spending a few days in Bahía Blanca 1 with Elder Giliam (from Alaska) and Elder Caparroz (from Brazil). We're in Arias (my old area) and it has been a good experience being back here. I wanted to share with you guys an experience that happened last week in Mar del Plata:

We taught a man named Pablo. We sat down behind his house in his little patio and we started talking to him. He had been contacted the day before but he already had a lot of confidence in the missionaries. He told us that he had a lot of questions that he wasn't sure of but he wasn't sure that he could ask them. He told us that he asked a Pastor from another church these questions and the Pastor told him that the devil was putting these questions in his mind to confuse him. We laughed a little bit and we told him that we would do our best to answer all of his questions. We started with his prayer and he asked us his first question. It was something like this: "Where would we go if we get baptized and where would we go if we don´t get baptized." I simply explained to him the three kingdom of glories and how we have the opportunity to live with God if we get baptized into his Church. He found that interesting so he asked, "God is like a Spirit isn't He? Some kind of energy?" Elder Maldonado showed him a scripture from the bible that we were made in His image. We testified that God lives and that He has a body like us but it is perfected. Pablo found a lot of interest in the easiness of the answers and the amount of knowledge that we have. I began to ponder about what Pablo thought about us. He thought that we are geniuses and that we knew everything about God and religion. I laughed in my own head realizing that we DO know a lot. But the funny thing is is that a Primary child could answer these questions. The Spirit put this thought in my head: I know these things from Primary. And I realized that they were built upon little by little as I studied the scriptures daily, as I went to sunday school, as I took the Sacrament, as I went to seminary, as I put to practice this doctrine in my life. Line upon line, precept upon precept, I realized that the Lord has helped me know the deepest doctrine and mysteries of God as a CHILD! I thought a lot about you Mom. I realized that day of the importance of Primary and how it has shaped my life. The framed picture on our kitchen wall says it all, "All I need to know is what I learned in Primary" I can't say it any better than that.

Thanks for all the love and support! Have a great conference weekend and have a great Birthday Mom and Collin! Love you guys!

Love Elder Bosco II

We were in Mar del Plata with Elder Maldonado and Elder Valenzuela

Saying bye to the oldies! They were some great missionaries and examples

Yep... I opened my last tooth brush that you wrote on Mom hahahaha     MOM NOTE: I send my elders with 8 toothbrushes dated so they can get a new one every three months- he's on his last one!!! Missions don't seem so long when you they only need 8 toothbrushes!