13 June 2011

Thanks for the emails. This does feel weird knowing I’ll be home before next Monday comes around. Congrats Dave and Elizabeth.

This week went really well. We had 8 investigators at church. We’re looking at 2 baptisms on the 25th and 2 more on the 2nd of July. My companion will keep baptizing, which is really great because Elder Peña’s been called to train. That’s so cool. It makes me feel good because I just trained him. And he’s feeling good because it shows that the Lord trusts him. there are few elders that train in their first area. If his new companion is from the USA, he’ll have just 6 weeks more than him. Ha, Ha, that’s funny.

I gave a talk in church. I had planned to talk about the Sabbath day and the sacrament; that just didn’t feel right. So at the last second I talked about the things I learned on my mission. It was cool because we had two visitors from the stake, two freshly returned missionaries, a sister and an elder. The sister served in Argentina and the elder served in Idaho.

Thanks for the pictures. I think that’s it for now. I don’t feel like this has to be super long. Thanks for the support and prayers. I love you all. The Lord has truly blessed me during these two years of service. I know even more than ever that the church is true, that the Book of Mormon is true, that Joseph Smith really saw God the Father and Jesus Christ, we truly have a living prophet.

Thanks again for the sacrifices you have all made for me so that I could be here.

Love,
Elder Whitaker

6 June 2011

Thanks for the emails. I’m a little stressed out right now because it’s raining. As a result the email place was closed. I guess the regular 10 year old customers don’t play internet games when it’s raining. Bummer. So after leaving and coming back a couple of times we jumped on a bus to another email joint. Be glad you have a computer with internet in your house. It’s a lovely thing.

Other than that, this Sunday was awesome. We had two confirmations, our four recent converts all showed up, and we had 7 investigators. That’s big. Silvia, who got confirmed yesterday, brought her sister and mom. They have baptismal dates for June 25. The daughter and grandson of another recent convert came; unfortunately they don’t live in our area. We found two 9 year old girls who are twins that belong to a part-member family and they came. They’re technically not even investigators yet; our first lesson with them will be tonight. Oh, and our ward mission leader’s sister came. Our ward mission leader loves us.

We also had a really good week this week focusing on heaven-sent questions or inspired questions. The church has new Preach My Gospel dvds and one of the sections taught us about that. The Spirit knows the investigator perfectly, so let the Spirit ask the questions. A cool quote was “heaven respects agency so much that it will draw and never drag things out of people.” With inspired questions we were able to help someone feel the need to find their Book of Mormon and read it, we helped someone know that God loves them, we helped someone realize that they already believe the Book of Mormon is the word of God. It’s been really cool. I wish I could’ve figured this out earlier. An explanation of the picture – that is the Montevideo International Airport. I can see it from various locations in my area, and all the planes the land there we see and hear coming in, a constant reminder that I’m going to be inside that airport soon. It’s weird. But I feel good. We’re working hard. I’m positive I’ll leave this are baptizing. There’s nothing worse than arriving to a dead area.

And Mom asked if I had menu suggestions for when I get back. I think you could pretty much guess what I would like to eat – the same stuff I asked you to make before. I’ll be happy with pretty much anything as long as it isn’t “this will help you on your mission when they serve you weird food.” And with respect to that mission preparation, I got pretty lucky here in Uruguay; there wasn’t that much weird food.

I think that’s about it. Just so you know, Tuesday is transfer day. I’ll take all my gear to the temple hostel. At 3 PM we’re going to the temple with President and Sister da Silva. That night we will have a FHE with President and interviews. On Wednesday morning we’ll finish packing and have some time to hang out, maybe visit some people or places in Montevideo. At 3 PM we head off to the airport and leave at 5ish.

Thanks for everything. I love you all lots.

Elder Whitaker