Ice Cream is sooooo good - February 6th

Hola familia,

Bueno, para empezar…I feel really jeoulous of all the snow that you guys are receiving. How I miss the snow! But I will live. Right now I am just trying to bear the heat for a few more months. Almost there though and I am quite use to it now (sort of).

To my surprise, we were able to go to the stake center and watch the funeral of Pres. Hinckley. It was quite the trouble getting there though from Jardín America. We went to a second branch that we have in our area in the morning and we usually rely on the president there to give us a ride to the ruta afterwards because there are not buses that pass by very frequently, especially during siesta hours. The president wasn´t there that day and it seemed that everything that could go wrong went wrong. Still we were able to thumb our way to the ruta and talk with a few doctors while we rode along. Medicine here is a bit different. I am glad we live in the states. But anyway, by some miracle we made it to posadas just in time for the funeral. I was so tired but thouroughly enjoyed the funeral services. Pres. Hinckley was an amazing man. I was impressed with all the service that he gave in his lifetime.

It turns out that interviews were not in our apartment, but the president did stop by and pick us up to take us to the church in Garupá. He didn´t even look at the apartment but he and his wife asked about it. We cleaned it really good beforehand so everything was ready for them. Interviews were great though and I had a chance in the car and in my interview to talk with the president about our investigators and some other questions to better myself. There is always something that I need to better. Still I see the huge amount of progress I have made.

We are trying to work with the branch president here to get him teaching and working on some callings so that the members can grow and participate more. We have managed to get him to teach preisthood for the past few weeks which frees us up to teach Sunday school a little more calmly. I feel better about it. Hopefully we get calling some teachers or something though and we can focus more on helping them out. Still, the missionaries usually have a Principles of the Gospel class for new members and investigators. We will see what we can do. We have a lot of investigators that have potential to be members I think, including a new family that we found this week, family Pizak. They were saying that there were no prophets in these days though and then we told them that there were. They thought that was pretty cool and then said he is hiding or something. We were like, no he is right out there for the world to listen to. They thought that was really cool. They are definately going to read and pray. They understood the lesson so well too. They are a family that have studied to be teachers (profesors) for the school and they understood everything really well.

Me and Elder Cranford are in Posadas today and we just went to the Provincial records place to check and see what we could do for the Benites family. They need the birth certificates. Since they are private papers we weren´t able to get copies for them, but they are going to send the stuff to Jardín America so they can go and pick them up next week. One step closer. Almost there I think.

Well apart from all that I am just continuing on like normal. The only problem is that life in Jardín America is not exactly normal. We were traveling all week last week (almost every day) for divisions, interviews and Corpus (the other branch we have in another city). This week I have traveled Monday and Tuesday for divisions, today we are in Posadas since we spent the night here and have to travel back to Jardín America (2 hours), afterward tomorrow I have to travel for divisions again with some Elders in our district and to do a baptismal interview for their investigator (never done that before), Friday I will return to my area and Saturday we will travel to spend the morning in Corpus again. Every single day with a day of “rest” on Sunday.

So things are good and busy and I feel great. Even with all the traveling we are haveing a lot of success in my area and I feel like we are on the verge of having like 20 baptisms. That is how I feel anyway. There are so many great people in my area right now. I just hope they can feel and know the importance of what they are recieving right now.

Love you all,

Elder Aaron McDonald

PS They have some really good ice cream in Jardín America and we treat ourselves to some quite frequently.