Last Christmas in Argentina

Hello again!

It was a very nice week and finished off very nicely being able to talk to you guys yesterday. Everything's well, not much has changed over the last couple of hours haha.

This week was good. Like I said it went by pretty quick, andwe were supposeed to have a baptism, but at the last minute she backed out because she was having a lot of doubts. We went and tried to help her understand and feel sure, but she wouldn't budge. But she wants to keep going to church and be baptized in the future, she just wants a little time.

We should also be having a baptism this week in the other ward that we're in charge of, which is going to be great! She's awesome and is going to progress very well in the gospel. He's a less-active that's coming back, and they're going to do great things together, that'¿s for sure.

Christmas was great! Like I said, my comp was pretty sick, so we were inside most of the two days, but the members that we were going to eat with brought us a lot of food and so we still had a good time hanging out and relaxing for a while. Yesterday we ate a super good asado and hung out with the missionaries, I'll send pictures.

Other than that everything's great! I love you all,have a great week!!!!

Elder Grondel

Pics

Louisa

Hello there family, how are you?

Everything's great here in Plottier.

This week was kind of hard, but this weeks going to be evenm better, so it's alright. The beginning of the week was great and everything was going well, we were preparing everything for the baptisms we're going to have next week. We went to Juan Carlos, and the cita was going well, but a member came into the kitchen where we were teaching to heat up his water to drink mate, and Carlos got nervous and stood up and said that he had to go to another commitment and we set up a cita for Saturday, and he didn't show up. Neither did he come to church the day afterwards, so we don't really know what's going to happen.

Our other investigador with a baptismal date, Claudia, told us this week that they aren't going to be able to come to church on Christmas day so that she can get baptized, and so they wanted to push the date back another week, which is kind of a bummer because that will be after transfers, and I could possibly be leaving. But she's great and going to get baptized, and that's the important thing.

Louisa, the grandma of a recent convert family is also doing very well! She still has her date for this weekend, and last time we talked to her, she was very excited and committed! But she couldn't come to church yesterday because she had extreme back pains... so yeah, it was kind of a tough day. We tried to go see her but didn't answer the door or the phone, but we have faith that she'll still get baptized this weekend and be able to keep going. She's an amazing woman, and so we're hoping for the best there.

Thank you all for you support and love always, it means a lot. During this Christmas season, I invite all of you to think in ways you can become more like Christ, and serve other people! When we focus on others and try to do nice things for them, our problems and troubles become a lot smaller and tend to resolve themselves. I love you all, and have a very Merry Christmas!!

Elder Grondel

3 wards

Hello family! How is everybody doing? We had a great week here in Plottier, we're seeing a lot of great things, and are excited for the next couple weeks!

This week we worked super hard with the investigators that we already have and looked for a lot of new ones, and we saw miracles. Right now, we have 3 baptismal dates for the 24th of this month! The first one is Claudia Muñoz, who lives in the other ward in Plottier, but they're aren't missionaries in her ward for now, so we're teaching her! She's great. She has a couple doubts about modern-day prophets(mostly just wy all of them are from the US) and tithing, but she said she would pray about that and get it taken care of. The most important think is that she wants to get baptized! The thing she loves more than anything is being able to be sealed to her family for time and all eternity, that's something she really wants to do, so we're focusing on that.

The second baptismal date is Louisa, who's the grandma of a recent convert family Viedma. She showed up to our Family Home Evening we had scheduled with them, and she loved it! We invited her to be baptized, and she accepted. She came to church yesterday as well to see her grandson give his first talk in sacrament meeting! It was a great experience.

The last one is a man named Juan Carlos, who is the guy that I told you about who lives in the other ward that doesn't have missionaries because it's a dangerous area (hence the subject title, working in three different wards for the first time in Argentina). He is an amazing man. His neighbor that was slightly less-active invited him to church in October, and he went, and loved it! Since then he's gone almost every week. He's about 60 years-old, and wnats to get baptized, but wants to do it right. He was a little worried about it going to fast because he'd never met missionaries before, but we explained that he's already had a lot of preparation going to church so many times, and he said he's going to pray about getting baptized next weekend! We're going to have a white Christmas here in Plottier!

We also did exchanges with the assistants this week, which was super fun. I went with Elder LeBaron, who's a really great guy and we had a good time. Taught a lot and had fun. They have a really nice apartment in downtown Neuquén, so it was fun to spend a night there.

Other than that, it's been a pretty normal week! Everything's going great! I love you all!!!

Elder Grondel

My comp finally brought his camera, so here's some pictures from the last couple weeks

In December drinking Horchata

Hello family!! This week was fantastic! Everything was great! Sorry for not writing last week, it was a packed writing day

We started December! And so did the new Christmas campaign Light the World! It's been fantastic! We've been giving out a ton of pass-along cards, we have a goal in the mission to end December without a single one of the pass-along cards! So we're trying as hard as we can to give them all out. So far it's going well! My companion and I are having a great time finding clever ways to give them out and are just having a great old time.

This week was pretty normal, not a lot of exciting things happened. But we are finding a lot of new people and having some success. The Lord is blessing us greatly. As we were visiting a recent convert this past week, Our mission president called us to inform that there is an investigator in a nearby ward of the stake that currently doesn't have missionaries because it's a dangerous area, and that he has been coming to church for about a month, and he wants to get baptized! And that he wants us to go and teach him! So we're going to be having an appointment with him pretty soon here to talk to him and get him prepared to be baptized in the next couple weeks! We're really excited and very grateful for the Lord's hand in our work.

Our zone also got even smaller. Elder Montoya from Mexico has been having problems in his shoulders and recently they found a tumor-like thing that's a not tumor in his shoulder. This week church headquarters told him he should go home to get it taken care of, so he left and his companion went to another area. So now our zone(district) is 7 missionaries ha! But we have some good missionaries and things should turn out well.

I love you all have a great week!!!

Elder Grondel

Sorry for no pictures my comp always forgets his camera haha