Wow...what a week.

It´s good to be busy. If you’re busy it means that things are improving.

Elder Valerin and I had a good laugh last night amidst filling out piles of paper work in the area book. He said "Why can´t we just go back 10 weeks ago, we never had anything to fill out."

It´s true. Busy busy busy busy busy. We run in the pension, plan and fill out the area book and don´t finish until 10:30 when I can barely make it into bed, and then we run through and do it over again. It fills like a hamster in a wheel running and running and running. It never stops!

But it feels amazing. Every time I get stressed out because there´s so much to do, I just stop and think about how horrible it was to have nothing to do. It really is a wonderful feeling to be busy. Avellaneda is a miracle in progress.

To answer a few of Mom´s questions:

Avellaneda is part of what the other missionaries call "the mainland" It constitutes where about 80% of where the mission happens. It´s the southern suburbs of Buenos Aires. Avellaneda is the northernmost point of the entire mission. And my area is the northernmost point of Avellaneda. Up the mitre, over a bridge, and I´m in Capital federal. The rest of the mission extends past the city districts and down through the coast with little towns and big fields. It´s a lot bigger than the Mainland, but also there are a lot less people and by extension less missionaries.

La Plata, Ensenada was where I started my mission. It´s like a branch off the mainland. La Plata is another city just to the southeast of Buenos Aires. Whenever you type in Buenos Aires on Google images, you´re going to find pictures of La Plata. It´s beautiful. Ensenada was just north of La Plata right on the shores of the Rio de la Plata.

I would encourage all of you to Google map it. It shouldn´t be too hard to find.

So I´m pretty much in the middle of everything in Avellaneda. I love both places, but I feel closer to my new area now. I feel like everything I had, all the successes in Ensenada were inherited. I´ve seen everything happen in Avellaneda. Many many miracles.

Transfers go down in two more weeks. I was absolutely positive that I was going to stay here. Elder Valerin has been here for three transfers, and I’ve been here for two. But apparently comp. mayor almost always stays for four transfers. What´s more, he hasn´t trained yet and only has three transfers left in the mission. So, according to Elder Valerin, all fingers are pointing to him staying another transfer to train and me packing my bags. Apparently comps here never stay together more than three transfers unless they´re zone leaders. In short, someone is going to leave in two weeks.

I never had thought about how terrible it would be to leave this place. In the beginning, I was counting down the days, but now, I can´t leave. Sylvina is getting ready for baptism in the near future, but probably not until next transfer. To baptize her by week six, will take something miraculous. Neither of us wants to leave without seeing her in the water. We know it´s selfish, but she really is amazing.

This week her daughter Nicole came down with an illness. It´s not identified yet, and they ran a few tests, but nothing brought back any convincing results. We stopped by on Saturday night and explained what a priesthood blessing was, and we offered to give her one. They both came to church the next day, so things are getting better.

Speaking of bringing people to church, we had to go on splits with two youths from our ward, taking cabs to different sides of our area to get everyone. We ended up with six people in our sacrament meeting this week. Perhaps the biggest marker of improvement yet.

Additionally, we found this week, we found a lot. We were led to people in very distinct ways.

One person literally hunted us down on his bike after seeing us pass by and brought us back to his house. We have an appointment with him later tonight.

Another, Saturday morning, might have been my favorite find on the mission. As we were out tracting, we didn´t have very solid plans, and as a result were finding rejection at every door. What made matters worse, the Jehovah’s Witnesses were out as well, contacting close to us, and so we had to leave the area originally planned. As we faced an especially bad rejection, a truck drove by selling fresh watermelons for 8 pesos. I turned around to look as it went by and Elder Valerin asked me "do you want to go buy one"

My first response would have been a self righteous "no! We keep working." But we really didn´t have any plans, and we both felt discouraged. I decided to get the watermelon instead.

We began to head back to the Pension, to drop the awkwardly sized green appendage off, when we passed by an elderly woman who shouted from her porch "Hey! Is that a watermelon?"

Clearly she was no expert on fruits.

"Why yes," I replied, "It is a watermelon."

"I was waiting for the vendor to drive by, but I missed him."

I paused, and replied "Well if you want, you can have ours."

She refused, but then started talking to us. We found out that missionaries had passed by a long time ago and left the BOM for her to read. After a little persuasion, she let us into the house and we shared a message and a prayer with her. We have an appointment to return tonight as well.

Sometimes the lord does indeed work in mysterious ways.

So Avellaneda 2. And me. I don´t know if I’ll be leaving in two weeks. I just know that I’m trying my hardest to make the most of it. Regardless of what the verdict is, I´ll be ready. And I won´t leave here empty handed. The lessons I’ve learned here will last me a lifetime. In the meantime, I´ll just be working and enjoying how good the Lord has been to me here. Knowing that if He could support me in Avellaneda, he could support me anywhere.