Week #95

Hola Familia!

We had a leadership conference on Tuesday and then we headed out to Tandil with Elder Swanson and Elder Gutierrez. I haven´t ever served in Tandil so I get to know a little bit more of the mission. Some of the things that we talked about in the leadership conference impacted me and I wanted to share them with you.

As missionaries we set a lot of numeric goals and we strive to accomplish them. But something that we noticed in all of the mission is that the goals were all so high and the actual numbers weren´t very close. It´s great to have high goals in the mission, but if our goals are so big that we don´t even think we can accomplish them, than they aren´t good goals. I´ve learned a lot on the mission how to set good, reasonable goals. I began thinking about goals in my life. I realized that I need goals that I can reach but that PUSH me. I don´t need goals that discourage me, or goals that are so easy that I don´t even need to try to accomplish them. The Savior showed us the example. He accomplished His goals. He came to this earth to do many things. His biggest goal was to atone for our sins so that we can all live again with Him. It was His goal and He did it. We won´t be able to accomplish a goal quite so great, but the key is to have the little goals that we can accomplish so that we are exalted one day- our biggest goal. My testimony is that the Savior is cheering us on in every day. He allows us to make our own goals and then strive to accomplish them. He´s there with us every step of the way. His Atonement gives us the power to accomplish things that we can´t accomplish by ourselves. With Him we can reach our goals. We might slip up, we might fall down, and we might get discouraged, but the Atonement allows us to get back up and to keep fighting so that we can do what our Heavenly Father desires of us. I have a firm testimony of this because I have seen it again and again here on the mission.

Thanks for all the love and support. Congrats on finishing school Alexis! What an awesome example! Love you!

Love, Elder Bosco II

Week #94

Hola Familia!

I had a pretty great week. A lot of blessings and small hugs from Heavenly Father. I had the awesome opportunity to return to Pehuajó and to see the progress that has taken place there. The Vila Family is doing alright. They were extremely active until about February. They were planning on going to the temple with goals and everything, but it has been pretty hard for Vanesa. She has experienced opposition and trials and she is struggling with her testimony. But Alejandro is still very strong but he doesn´t know what to do. We shared with him that of the importance of building his own life upon the rock of Jesus Christ. As he does that, we told him that his family will follow him. It was a sweet experience being able to see him. I wasn´t able to see Vanesa or the kids, but it was a treat to see Alejandro with a firm testimony in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Please keep them in your prayers. I pray for them often so that they can make it to the temple. Elder Paternina (The Zone Leader in Pehuajó that is Branch President there right now told me that he is doing everything to help the Vila Family make it to the temple). It put me at peace knowing that such a great Elder is praying and looking out for them.

I think the sweetest experience of the week was during the testimony meeting on Sunday. We met in a different rented home that is a lot cleaner and brighter. The Spirit was very strong and there were 4 couples there that were inactive when I was there a year ago. Elder Paternina is working hard to help them all get sealed in the temple. I sat next to Hno. Llanos. Him and his wife were very active many years ago until they got offended with the leaders in the church and went inactive. When Elder Fallentine and I got to Pehuajó, we established a good relationship with them. We often visited them to exhort them to return to church. Many times the conversations ended up being a little frank, to the point, and a little hard for the harded heart people. I often felt that maybe we were wasting time with them because they would never accept what we were saying. They would always complain and argue about something. I can honestly say, one full year later, that the Lord does His work in His own time. He can soften the heart of anyone. Let me tell you how..

When I visited the Llanos family, Hna. Llanos answered the door happy to see me and one of the first things she did to me was apologize. (Huh???) Yes, she apologized to me for the arguments that she started with us. She told me that she was extremely grateful that we had visited them and shared with them those messages. Hno. Llanos (who was even less attentive than Hna. Llanos at the time) told me with tears in his eyes that it was because of those visits a year ago that they are active in the Church. They have changed. They let go of the natural man and changed. Elder Paternina told me that Hno. Llanos is one of the strongest men at church right now. Hno. Llanos told me that he would never forget our names in his household. I start to ask myself, what did I do? I thought I felt like I was wasting time with them when I was here a year ago... Oh that´s right. I didn´t do anything. The Lord did it ALL. Once again, I was the recipient of a blessing from our Heavenly Father.

Let me tell you one thing, the mission is incredible. I will be sad when it´s over.

Thanks for all the love and support. Have a great week! Love you!

Love, Elder Bosco II

 

with alejandro Vila

With some of the members in Pehuajó. They were all less active members when I was there a year ago. What a blessing it was to see them active again!

 

The new church in Pehuajó. It´s so much better! but still a little rented home.

 Pehuajó

week #93

Hola Familia!

I absolutely loved General Conference again. As I sat there hearing the last song from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on Sunday Evening, it hit me that it would be my last Conference on the mission. It made me sad because I know that it will never be the same. It made me think about the last Conference that I watched before the mission. I´m not going to lie, it feels like that was yesterday. In the beginning of this week we worked with Elder Bowen (from the MTC) and Elder Maldonado (again because he got transferred.. lucky him haha) in Villa Mitre here in Bahía Blanca. We spent a few days working hard with them and tonight we´re going to Pehuajó to work with Elder Paternina (from Columbia). I´m super excited because I served in Pehuajó over a year ago and it was one of my favorite transfers in all of the mission. I´m excited to see how the people are doing!

One thing I noticed about the Apostles and Prophets when they speak, is that they are living testimonies of the gospel. They always share personal experiences on how they´ve seen the gospel work in their lives. They find such a deep meaning to everyday events. I loved what Elder Stevenson shared with us about losing his car keys. Something so simple that helps us learn about the restoration of the Priesthood keys through the Prophet Joseph Smith. Other Apostles shared stories that enlighten our mind to the mysteries of the gospel. I began to think why I can´t do that more with my life. Why can´t I be so in-tune with the Spirit that I see everything through spiritual eyes. Well the Lord gave me an opportunity to learn something like that yesterday through a mistake we made. It was a mistake, but I learned a lot. haha

Last night we were in the Bus Terminal waiting for our 7:30 bus to go to Pehuajó. We got to the terminal at about 6:45 and we waited for the bus to get there. We were in the right spot. Buses came and left and we kept waiting. Finally 7:30 arrived and the bus we thought we were waiting for hadn´t come yet. There were other buses but we didn´t think it was ours because it wasn´t the bus we thought it would be. A few of the buses left and 7:40 came around. The bus still hadn´t gotten to the terminal. 15 minutes after the appointed time, we started wondering if we had missed our bus. And we realized very shortly after that yes, we had missed it. Dang it... Those buses are pretty expensive and we felt terrible. We talked to some people working and they said that there was nothing that they could do. We had lost the bus, the ticket, and the money. I said a little prayer and I felt peaceful and calm. I had a feeling to talk to a lady at a different booth. She was extremely nice and somehow she allowed us to change our already invalid ticket for a ticket the next night. What a miracle and blessing. Being a lot more eased at mind, I began to think about the situation that had just occurred. We had been in the right place at the right time, but we missed the bus. It came and stopped right in front of our eyes and we missed it. It wasn´t what we thought it was. It was there for over 15 minutes and we let it go by because we weren´t truly prepared.

As I pondered on what had happened, the Spirit enlightened my mind to realize that the second coming of Jesus Christ will come in a similar fashion. First of all, many people aren´t prepared for it. And they will obviously miss it. But I´m thinking more as members of the Church with tickets. We know it´s coming. We know the signs. Just as we had tickets with the time and place that it was going to arrive. But if we aren´t alert and spiritually awakened. The Lord will come and we will have no idea. He will wait there and we will have no idea. And finally it will be too late. And after it´s all said and done, we won´t have time to look for the bus because it is too late. The faithful covenant people of the Lord have already taken the bus and we were sitting around looking for something else. I pray that I will be prepared for the Second Coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I hope it won´t pass any of us like the bus passed us in front of our eyes. If we keep our covenants faithfully, I´m sure that we will have no problem when He comes again. He will come soon. I know that without any doubt.

Thanks for the prayers, love and support. Have a great week. Love you all!

Love, Elder Bosco II

 

Watching the Priesthood Session

Alexis, Belen and Tiziano

With members from Cerri (Bahía Blanca)

Omar and Marilu Menendez

Member from Arias (Bahía Blanca)

 

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!

Week #91

Hola Familia!

This week we are in Mar del Plata again and we´re working with Elder Valenzuela (from Chile) and Elder Maldonado (from Uruguay). I´ve learned a lot this week and I wanted to share with you something that has been the very focus of our work for the last month and a half- efficiency. Elder Dement and I are trying to help the leaders in the mission work more efficiently. Working efficiently is something that I´ve learned a lot of with Elder Dement because he is an example of working like that. Everything he does he does efficiently so that his time is well spent. And just like every other missionary that has ever served the mission, we realize that when our two years our running out, we look for ways to get more out of our time. I´ve asked myself that a lot lately, "how can I get more use out of our time?"

These last few weeks I´ve realized that the Holy Ghost is the most efficient worker in the world. If we work with Him, especially on the mission, we are working efficiently. What we´ve found with missionaries is that the Spirit only comes when you let it come. This means that we need to be obedient, organize our work, and have a clean house. Even though we only have a few days in each area, we realize that it´s worth out time to clean the house and organize the work on a map. Doing these things allows the Spirit to be with us as we plan for our days at night. I have found also that being clean and organized actually allows us to be obedient. It´s becoming a lot more clear to me which Elders  work efficiently because they do the little things necesary to have the Spirit with them. When we allow the Spirit to dwell with us in our homes, we can leave in the street and preach the gospel with the power and authority of God. And the greatest part is that the Spirit is with us testifying our the words that leave our mouths. We have seen the success and fruits as we do this because we just found out this week that the zone leaders from Viedma, Necochea, and Santa Rosa all have a baptism for this weekend. What a blessing it was for us to hear of their success!

I´ve been extremely blessed to be able to work with Elder Dement because he has taught me so many things about how to work hard. Just his example has helped me improve and become better. I´ll be blessed for the rest of my life from what he has taught me.

Thanks for all the love and support! I´m so happy to hear about the temple dedication in Provo! I hope everyone is doing well!

Love Elder Bosco II

Elder Yeates just sent me these pictures haha. He´ll be a good friend after the mission at BYU

Week #90

Hola Familia!

I called it! Nobody is going to believe me, but if you need proof, ask Elder Dement. I guessed that Collin was going to go to a mission speaking some Chinese language- especially after hearing Mckay and Aaron´s mission calls. I am seriously so excited! It´s as if the Lord gave me a shot of steroids. I´m seriously so pumped! Does that mean that I´m going to speak with Collin when I get back? That would be really cool. I can´t even start to explain to everyone the Spirit that I felt when I read that email from Collin. He has got two years of experiences ahead of him that will bless his life forever. I´m still in the middle of these two years and I can already tell you that my eternity has been changed. 

This week we´re in Mar del Plata and we´re working with Elder Swanson (my MTC companion) and Elder O´rourke (The Elder that Elder Isom trained when we got here in Argentina). They are great missionaries! We are helping the zone leaders create model areas that can be seen throughout the Stake and so we helped them change areas. It´s a pretty cool experience being white washed and starting with little knowledge. You have to trust in the Lord and in His tools that He has left us- like the Area book. We put a big map on the wall and we put about 150 names on the map of people that we can work with. While working yesterday with Elder O´rourke, I had a pretty cool experience.

We passed by a less active members home that Elder O´rourke had known from about 8 months back. We weren´t sure if it would be worth our time to visit him, but I had a feeling that we should, so we did. We got in his home and he was happy to see us. We started talking to him and he introduced us to his 17 year old neighbor Leo. Leo sat down on the table and we continued to speak to the less active member. I remember having the impression, "speak to Leo," so I did. We got talking and he told us that he is looking for a Church where he can feel comfortable. The last few weeks he had been going to other churches and he just didn´t feel good about them. He didn´t like the way they asked for money, or what they did to present "miracles" in their congregation. I asked him if he had seen the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He said that earlier that day was his first time (coincidence right? haha). We left him a short message with an invitation to visit him another day because it was getting pretty late. I could see that he was pretty excited. We left their home and I started asking myself, were those thoughts my own thoughts or were they impressions from the Spirit?. Still thinking about it in the morning, the thought came to me, "Of course they were from the Spirit! From who else would they be?" I realized that when somebody is striving to live worthily of the Gift of the Holy Ghost, their own thoughts can actually be from the Spirit! If we are living with the Spirit in our lives, than He is part of us! Maybe it was my thought, maybe it was His promptings, but when we´re worthy of the Lord´s Spirit, is there really a difference? It was a lesson that the Lord taught me yesterday. Oh how important it is to be CONSTANTLY worthy of the Spirit.

Thanks for the great news! I´m really excited for Collin and all of his friends! Have a great week!

Love, Elder Bosco II

The zone leaders in Bahía Blanca called us today telling us that Nestor is going to get baptized on Saturday from Cerri! That made me extremely happy!

(from Santa Rosa)  Elder Valle, Elder Chronister , Elder Bosco and Elder Dement. watching a soccer team practice on PDay

Week #89

Mini golden gate bridge in Necochea

 Necochea

 I also visited the Laguna Family! The kids are doing great!

Santa Rosa, La Pampa!

Santa Rosa, La Pampa!

I got to visit Ruben Cardenau when I was in Necochea. He´s doing awesome! He receives his endowment on March 25 and he told us that he has done temple work for his family 5 generations back. It´s a pretty cool story, I´ll tell you one day.

Hola Familia!

This week has been great! We have been working in Santa Rosa with Elder Chronister and Elder Valle. They are both great friends and outstanding missionaries. Yesterday I worked with Elder Chronister and I loved it. I think our relationship is similar to that of Dallin´s and Elder Bean´s. I feel like I´ve known Elder Chronister my entire life and that we´ve always been great friends. It´s weird how we had to meet up in Argentina to get to know each other. haha. I hope that Elder Chronister´s mom can get this letter. I just want her to know that she has an amazing son. He´ll never know how much he´s taught me in the time we´ve known each other. He´s definitely one of the best missionaries out here. He works hard and it´s very clear that the Spirit is with him and guides him constantly. It was fun contacting and teaching with him because it all seemed natural. I´ve never been his companion but we already knew how the other teaches so we were able to have some cool experiences. I´d like to share one with you all that we experienced together yesterday.

In the morning we were looking for a way to print out a big map of the area and while we were walking, we stopped and started talking to a man, Toledano. He was about 60 years old and he started telling us that his wife was doing some tests on her body in the hospital. She has been in bad health and they had to come to Santa Rosa to get these tests done. He told us that they were from a little city with about 600 habitants and they had to drive a few hours to get to Santa Rosa. Because he has almost always lived in this little city, he had never seen missionaries before. We felt that we should offer him a blessing. We told him that we held the Priesthood of God and that we were able to give blessings of health to all who need them. He loved the idea and he asked us to come back that night at 7 oclock. He showed us what hotel they were staying in and then we left. We got there at night and he was waiting for us. He welcomed us back to his hotel room and we entered. His wife was laying on the bed and they were getting ready to leave Santa Rosa and return to their home. They waited until we got there because they wanted a blessing. We explained to them what a blessing was and then we layed our hands upon her head and gave her (her name was Santa) a Priesthood blessing. She sat still without saying a word but every time words came out of my mouth, I could hear Toledano whisper "amen, amen, amen" with his head bowed and his arms folded. I can´t remember all of the words that I said, but I surely remember the Spirit that I felt. Even more than that, I remember feeling the faith of Toledano and Santa. They had no idea who we were. The only thing they knew is that we were two young boys from the U.S. with a white shirt and tie and that we represented Jesus Christ. Even though they didn´t understand the Priesthood, they recognized us as having something special from God. It was sincere faith and trust that Toledano had in his Savior Jesus Christ and his Heavenly Father. We walked away knowing that we may never see those two again, but knowing that we had been instruments in the Lord´s hands. Elder Chronister and I talked afterwards and agreed that the preparation to that blessing started a long time ago. It has been some time now since we´ve been spiritually preparing to give blessings from the Lord.

That was one of the experiences that I had yesterday with Elder Chronister that strengthened my testimony in the work of the Lord. As we do our part (which is really small) the Lord will do the rest. 

Love, Elder Bosco II