Happy Turkey Day!

It´s autumn here in Buenos Aires. Leaves falling from the trees. After a long hot summer, I finally am dusting off the sweaters and bundling up. Winter chill is in the air, and for the first time since Christmas about a year and half ago, It´s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. The funny thing is, it´s pretty universal in the mission. Christmas music is not hard to come by. Hot chocolate. The only thing we´re missing is the decoration. Unfortunately I left my Christmas tree in Avellaneda. I figure that as my birthday and Christmas are almost exactly six months apart, I can start celebrating Christmas on my birthday and my birthday on Christmas. In addition to the benefits of my own sanity, all of Argentina will be celebrating with me. ...Just humor me mom. Wrap my birthday present up with some little Santa wrapping paper and send me another stocking.

This last week has been enormously successful. Many people came to church unexpectedly, and Elder Gibbs and I felt very blessed. We took out two baptismal dates. One of those is with the investigator Macedonio. He´s paralyzed and very poor, but he´s found a way to make it to church two weeks in a row now. Amidst all the half baked excuses so many people have for not reading and praying, seeing Macedonio find a way to get in his wheelchair, sacrifice his time and his money, money to pay for a taxi, to come to church is a moving sacrifice.

The other baptismal date we recently took out was with Viana. She is a 17 yr old who moved to our area recently from Paraguay and is living with her active LDS family. It makes it easy to teach her so surrounded by active members who can encourage her to read and pray. She is so humble and sincere. Her answers are profound and basic. It just seems like the gospel makes sense to her. We ask questions like "how can we know the truth amidst so much confusion?" And she´ll respond, "We have to ask God." Simple. It just makes sense to her.

Our other investigator, Jimena, is coming very close to baptism. She is 13, and her parents were baptized about two months ago. She wants to wait until she´s ready and has had nearly all the charlas at least three times. Recently she admitted that she was close and chose Elder Gibbs to do the baptizing. She still is resistant; at this point it just comes from being a rebellious teenage girl.

As for other investigators progressing, Victor has taken a bit of a slump and can´t find it in himself to read or pray. He´s trying, but can´t show the faith as he needs to find work. We found another man a few weeks ago, Damian, who has received the first two lessons in about four visits. He committed to going to church on Sunday, but we couldn´t call him like we promised as he was already sleeping when we tried to remind him. This week he´s planning on coming for certain.

In short, there are many successes that are happening in our area right now. I know the Lord blesses us when we try to do our best. Unfortunately I´m about out of time now. Love you all! It´s about time for thanksgiving here in the southern hemisphere, so happy turkey day!