Week 2 Concordia Nebel B

Hola a todos!

Well, we had our first official full week here in Concordia, and the work rhythm hasn't slacked one bit. We've just been go, go, go the whole week, and it's been GREAT. We didn't have almost any investigators, so we've been working super hard to find people to teach. We spent a lot of the week marking up our ward list, revising the area book (where all of the former investigator records are kept), and just getting to know the streets. We met a lot of members, lots of less actives, and also found and started teaching 5 new investigators! Unfortunately, nobody came to church on Sunday, but we're just getting started, and shortly we hope to see lots of investigators at church every week.

One of our new investigators is the husband of a recent convert named Axxx. He is about 75 years old, and his body is having its aging problems, and he can't move around very much, but his mind is VERY active. He told us that back in the day in Argentina when trains were a lot more prominent, he was the general managing accountant for the largest railways in Argentina (I believe him considering the quality of their house jaja). He told us that when he was a little kid, he had always believed in God and wanted to follow him, but over the years doubt has entered his mind and that he finds it very hard to believe in a Supreme Creator. However, he told us that is not happy with his unbelief. He WANTS to believe, but he has trouble overcoming his doubt. He is so open, and was eager to read the things that we left him, and said he is willing to do whatever is necessary to know God, because he feels that that is what will make him happy. We're excited to keep teaching him.

No more time, but I love you all! And thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes! I know that this gospel is true, I know that we are in the right. God loves us, and He wants us to CHANGE. He wants us to, in other words, repent and come unto Him, and be saved through His Son, Jesus Christ. May we all change, or repent, every day, that we may always come unto Him.

Elder Meyers

From my last Sunday in Rural (Santa Fe ward) with all the members I could get a picture with.  Me and Hno Andrada.

Me and Familia Quiroz

Me with Hna Monzon, Diego, and the niece of Hnna Monzon, Siomara.  She is AWESOME!

With Elder Carrion

Me, Hno Cristian, and his stepson Kevin

Me, Hno Lisandro Reviriego (Picu they call him) and his wife.  They are amazing.  They just got married two months ago in the Cordoba temple.  Both returned missionaries.

Week 1 Concordia Nebel B

Hola de CONCORDIA!!!

Well, this last week has been pretty crazy. I was in Santa Fe up until Thursday because we had to get some things squared away with Elder Morrill, but finally on Friday night Elder Frey and I arrived here to Concordia! Since the moment we got here, we haven't stopped working. Elder Frey just got to Nebel last transfer, so he's still kind of learning his way around, as well. We got pretty much everything unpacked, organized the apartment, did some service, taught a lesson, and did some detailed planning for our area all in the first day! It's going to be a great transfer. :)

So, Concordia is pretty big, it's a little smaller than Paraná, which is a little smaller than Santa Fe. So it's the third biggest city in our mission. Concordia is a district, so all of the units are branches. There are four branches in the city, and a fifth branch in a town about an hour outside of Concordia called Federal. Right now it's a little complicated because the Rio Uruguay has been flooding lately. There was a ton of rain up in Brazil, and the river has risen between 15 and 20 meters! So right now all of the coastal part of Concordia is under water, a part of which is in our area. We have quite a few members in our branch that live in the flooded part, so they had to evacuate a couple of weeks ago. The water is subsiding now, but for now the cultural hall in our chapel is under key as it's functioning as the temporary storage unit for all of the families' belongings.

Nebel is the biggest branch in Concordia, with a weekly church attendance of between 40 and 60 members. We also have lunch every single day with members, which is a blessing. :) On Sunday, I offered to play the piano, so I played the piano for sacrament meeting. The branch president also had me stand up and introduce myself at the beginning of sacrament meeting. I also had to give a talk on the spot, because Elder Frey's old companion, Elder Chauque, had been scheduled to give a talk, but he forgot to tell Elder Frey when he was transferred jaja. So I ended up being half of the sacrament meeting, it was kind of funny.

We are super excited to work here in our branch! We have a new branch mission leader that is super excited to work! He is from Mexico and is about 28 years old and makes authentic Mexican food for us for lunch every Tuesday! Things couldn't be any better. :)

So much more to say, but out of time. I love you all, and I love this gospel, and I love the mission! I have such a testimony of hard work, when we put our shoulder to the wheel and push with all our might, even when we are tired and sore, we keep our covenants and receive divine help and guidance so that we can carry out the task that we have been assigned.

Have a great week!
Elder Meyers

In the mission office with Presidente and his cute granddaughter who was visiting from Chile

Eating together with the new missionaries (before going to Concordia)

Presidente Perez with his granddaughter

Week 52 Santa Fe Rural C Oficina (1 year!)

Hola a todos!

Well, I officially have completed ONE YEAR as the financial secretary of the Argentina Santa Fe mission. It does not seem like it has been that long at all. I can't believe that a year could go by so fast. I've learned so many things, and had so many amazing experiences. I definitely wouldn't change it for anything in the world. I never thought I would serve in the mission office on my mission (I didn't even know that existed before the mission), and certainly not for such a long time, but it has proven to be exactly what I have needed to grow. It has strengthened my testimony that the Lord knows each of us very personally and that He prepares experiences for us to learn and grow and become what He knows we can be and what He wants us to become.

This last week we found some awesome new investigators! First off, this woman found a Book of Mormon in the street that the hermanas had accidentally left while they were contacting. She was going to do some stuff in the bank, and it was really busy, so while she was sitting waiting she read some of it and loved it. Then later she saw the sister missionaries and contacted them and told them that she had read the book and that she wanted to meet with the missionaries. So the hermanas took down her address, and then sent it to us because it was in our area. We went to visit her, and she was so ready! In our very first meeting, we invited her to be baptized on the 1st of July, and without hesitation, she said yes! We were super happy. Also, coincidence, we get there and meet her husband, and as we talk to him, we find out that he was baptized when he was 15, but without the permission of his parents, and when they found out, they didn't let him go back to church. So when we went to visit, he said he feels like this is God telling him that he needs to come back to church. On top of that, their son, Cxxx, who is 18, who wasn't in the lesson, when we were talking with him afterwards, asks us out of no where, Hey, do you guys have meetings? What time? We said, 9:30 on Sundays, and he said, can I go?, and we said OF COURSE! As we've visited them this week I've become convinced that they are a chosen family. I am so excited for them.

We also had an awesome member lesson this week. An hermano, Hno Andrada told us that he wanted to introduce us to his friend, so we set up an appointment and went to his friends house to teach him. Hno. Andrada ended up showing up about halfway through because he got caught up in some paperwork he had to do, but as we taught his friend, he told us his biggest question was, all of the churches I have been to say that they are the true church. And you guys too. What makes this different? How can I know which one is true? Of course, as missionaries, we LOVE that question, so we dove right into the restoration. When the hermano got there, he immediately joined us and bore powerful personal testimony of the Restoration and of Joseph Smith as a prophet. It was a powerful lesson. Member lessons are the best.

I love this ward so much. I am going to miss them. I've come to love each member so much, and I honestly feel like this ward has become my home ward. Rural will always have a very special place in my heart, and I am so grateful for the time that I have been here. I never knew that I could love people so much, but when we serve people and labor together with them in the Lord's vineyard, we can't help but come to love them. They have done so much for me and taught me so much from their examples, their faith, their perseverance, and I'm just grateful to the Lord for allowing me to be here for so long. I know that this is the work of the Lord, and that He guides and leads each one of us. When we are in His service, and we follow Him and His commandments, we can be happy.

I love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Meyers

Candid in the office

On the phone with an apartment owner

Basketball (jaja I was the only one who didn't have gym clothes)

Went to McDonald's one last time for pday

My birthday package got here! :)

Happy (early) birthday!

Lunch at McDonald's

Week 51 Santa Fe Rural C Oficina

Mis queridos amigos y familia... :)

Well friends, I have no time left today, but I just want you all to know that I love the mission. I have learned so many things, and continue to learn each and every day. I have gained a testimony of the following quote by President George Albert Smith:

We are not here to while away the hours of this life and then pass to a sphere of exaltation; but we are here to qualify ourselves day by day for the positions that our Father expects us to fill hereafter.

Every day is a new opportunity for us to exerrcise our faith, to choose the right, to be better than we were yesterday and to come to know our Savior a little more. I know that when we are in His service, we come to know Him better.

Have a great week! Find someone to share the gospel with! :)

Elder Meyers

Finally, pictures of the helicopter of President Macri  (president of Argentina!)

Dinner last transfers in the mission home with the new missionaries (pictured the office elders and Elder Ortega)

We had to go find the hermanas keys because they fell out on a bench where they were waiting one day.  That was an adventure.  I couldn't believe the keys were still on the bench when we got there!

On the bus to Parana to do some procedures to pay light bills

Making a mission announcement about finances

Random picture doing studies

Waiting for a taxi with Elder Morrill, Elder Kotter and Elder Sotar

Selfie with Elder Morrill paying rent payments

Week 50 Santa Fe Rural C Oficina

Hola a todos!

Congratulations to all the new seminary and high school graduates! Special shoutout to my sister Emily, I can't believe she's already a high school graduate.

It was a great week this week! We found some great new investigators! One of them is the brother in law of Hna Monson, Nahuel and Diego´s mom, and when we went and talked to him he was super open to us, he gave us his phone number and told us he would read the pamphlet on the Restoration that we left him! We've been having trouble meeting with him again, though, because his wife, Hna Monzon's sister, is inactive and not super friendly to the church right now. So we'll see where that goes. Also, we were contacting this week, and it wasn't going too great. Lots of off-the-bat rejections. But we got to this one house right on the edge of our area, and when we knocked (well, clapped), the lady that came out was immediately super friendly with us, came out and started talking to us, and then called her son inside (20 years old), and he came out and chatted with us as well. Turns out, some missionaries had gone to their house during our Christmas devotional caroling activity in December, and they had loved it. Also, by some strange coincidence (nothing is coincidence), her husband, who recently passed away, had a Book of Mormon, but they never knew why, but it's always been there in their house. THEY ALREADY HAVE A BOOK OF MORMON AND THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW. It was a really cool contact to say the least. We're super excited to keep teaching them. They told us we could come back any day and teach a lesson. So cool. We also had an awesome FHE with Exxx and some members, Lisandro and his wife (I can't remember her name right now). They just got married four months ago in the Cordoba temple and they're both returned missionaries, and they have a little house in our ward, and they're awesome. We had a great lesson with Exxx and we talked about families and temples and keeping the commandments. He really felt the Spirit, and Lisandro did an awesome job helping him feel welcome and teaching him about the importance of temple covenants. Member lessons are the best.

Elder Morrill and I have been working on getting everything organized and set this week so that he can be good to go and independent in two weeks. He's already got pretty much everything down. He'll be a great financial secretary, I've got no worries.

I've been thinking a little bit this week about the changing power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As we live the teachings of the Savior, we inevitably change for the better. When we follow His commandments, we grow and progress. There is no easier way to become a better person than to follow the commandments of Jesus Christ. It is such a powerful experience as a missionary to see people's lives changing as they discover and begin to live principles of the gospel in their lives. I know that when we live the commandments, we change for the better. We are happier. We increase our faith, and our joy is more full. I love this gospel and I know it works.

Have a great week!

Elder Meyers

In the zone conference last week that Elder Carrion and I visited to give out materials, there were some workers outside trying to take out a tree on the church grounds.  When all the missionaries heard, they all ran outside to help.

They all started pulling, and they pulled so hard that the rope broke and everyone went flying and falling on top of each other.  It was pretty funny. :)

We had a sick missionary from Esperanza that was hospitalized, so I went with Elder Guevara (one of the zone leaders in Esperanza) and Elder Grecci (the sick missionary's companion) to Esperanza to get him some clothes to stay the night

San Justo!

Selfie with Elder Carrion in San Justo

With Elder Smith (one of my zone leaders) in the capilla abierta in Parque del Sur

Me, Elder Ramos, and Elder Orgill (with the nice half smile jaja) right before divisions!

Elder Orgill was a little sick and had to rest, so Elder Morrill and I decided to do some office work old school style while we stayed with him in our apartment, with paper and pencil.  It took us about 6 times longer than it would have with Excel, but it was fun.

I got to see Elder Marquez (my previous companion) at transfers a few weeks ago!

Lunchtime with the missionaries from a few weeks ago

Week 49 Santa Fe Rural C Oficina

Hola todos!

We had a good week this week, a lot of unforeseen complications with quite a few very sick missionaries and hospitalizations, but everyone is all good now and healthy, so we're happy about that. :) We had a great meeting with our ward mission leader this week, and we helped him understand what a ward mission plan was. We have goals in the ward for baptisms, but we haven't been achieving them, and we decided that it was because we didn't have specific plans to help us reach those goals. So this week we talked about some specific plans that we could make to help us reach our goal as a ward, and I'm excited for the upcoming weeks, we've got a lot of good things coming.

We had some pretty cool experiences in the capilla abierta yesterday morning as we went out to do proselyting. Like I've mentioned before, Elder Blackmon taught me to always look for miracles when on divisions, and it's continued to happen. I went out in the morning with Elder Smith, one of my zone leaders, and Elder Parker, one of the assistants. We were doing the capilla abierta in Parque del Sur, which is part of our zone (the ward right beneath Rural), and a ward somewhat notorious for being a "hard" ward, with some upper-end neighborhoods. As we went out to invite people, our assigned part of the area was one of those "upper-end" areas, but in spite of that, we found some great people! We were excited to just be out working, and Elder Smith (Parque del Sur is his area) was kind of surprised at how well it was going. He was just smiling and having a great time. He said generally people in the street in those parts don't even give you the time of day, but it seemed that almost every person we talked to was willing to listen to us and hear us out, and were rather friendly people. We found one guy, a young adult about 25-30 years old who was out in front of his car with the car hood open, tinkering with something. We were about to walk right past him, but then Elder Parker stopped and walked over to him and started talking to him a little bit. We quickly joined the conversation, and as we all talked with him for about 10 minutes, he told us how he was a law student at the university, and that he was just cleaning his car up a little bit, but that really he didn't know anything about cars. The coolest part for me was that even though, generally speaking, people like him with his background and living where he lives are fairly quick to reject our message, he was completely down to earth, friendly, and open to hearing about the gospel. It just goes to show that you can't ever judge people by how they look or what they are doing, or anything else. For us as missionaries, we can't judge who is ready and who isn't, so we just try to invite everybody, and whoever accepts accepts, just like the parable of the sower. In the parable, the seeds were sown everywhere, not just in the ground that looked good and fertile. It might look bleak and uninviting, but beneath a thin top layer there could be feet of fertile soil ready for a seed to be planted. "For the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart."

I love being a missionary, and I am so grateful for the amazing opportunity it is to serve others and spread the good news of the gospel. I love this work, and I know that there is no other work more satisfying on this Earth than that of bringing souls to Christ.

Have a wonderful week!

Elder Meyers

Week 48 Santa Fe Rural C Oficina

Hola familia y amigos!

It was a great week! We've been working well with our ward members this week, getting great referrals and finding new investigators. We've been working with the bishop a lot, and he is so amazing. He's had so many trials in his life, including literally almost dying when he had cancer in his kidney about a year and a half ago. He has been branch president/bishop for 12 years now (branch president for 9 years, and then they combined his branch with another ward to form the Rural ward and called him as bishop about three years ago), but he doesn't show it in his attitude. He continues working hard, planning, visiting, ministering, everything. We can almost never find him home because he is always out visiting members of the ward if he's not working. He is a huge example to me of persevering to the end, not in a hard, trial kind of way, but enjoying the journey and loving people. I want to be more like him.

We got some great news this week. After making a visit with Elder Levrino and Presidente Cantero, the Santa Fe Norte stake president, Presidente Perez told us that next transfer we are going to open a new area in San Justo, a city about 55 miles north of Santa Fe (about from Provo to Layton). It's a little bigger than Nogoyá, and there are two member families that are living there right now, so we're going to start what's called an organized group, which is a group that is dependent on another unit, and then once we get two more priesthood holders, we can officially turn it into a branch! It's pretty exciting, since I have arrived to the mission, we've already created three organized groups in the mission. The Lord is hastening His work, and it's incredible to be a part of it.

Something we've really been working with is family history. The church recently did a study that found that when recent converts find a name of an ancestor and take it to the temple to do baptisms within two months of their baptism, convert retention improves significantly. In a sample they did in a mission in Peru, when using family history and temple work to help strengthen the testimonies of converts, they saw the retention rate in the mission go from 20 percent to 80 percent. The Lord is hastening His work on this side of the veil and on the other, and this just tells me and testifies to me even more of the incredible power of family history and temple work. If we aren't doing family history, we need to find a time to do it. It is an incredible work with unfathomable blessings, promised by prophets and apostles. I know that if we do family history work, our testimonies will be strengthened, our capacity to love others will grow, and we will be protected from temptation and from evil.

I know that this is the work of God. This is His work of salvation. May we all look for a way this week that we can take a greater part in His work!

Love,

Elder Meyers

Also, I had a picture I was going to send, but I can't find it. It was of the helicopter of the president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri. It was this huge, military looking, white helicopter with the Argentine National Seal and everything. He came to Santa Fe for a day to do some kind of city review, and his helicopter dropped him off and picked him up in the field right next to the mission office. We went up on the second floor of the church so that we could see over the fence, and there were police and army everywhere. So that was a pretty cool experience jaja

Elder Arnold came by with his family visiting his mission!  I had no idea he was coming, so that was an unexpected surprise!

Candid in the office chair