Such a great week! We were so busy all week and it was awesome!

Last night we found out about transfers!.My companion and I are staying together in the same area! Which means I get to stay in Marcos Paz!!! I am pretty relieved because change is always fun but this area is so awesome. It is really weird though because our mission president almost never does stuff like this, so we will see what happens.

This week we taught so many lessons and found so many great people. On Tuesday we found this kid named Agustin and his mom Gladys. We had met Agustin a few weeks earlier in the streets and finally got around to headed back to his house and meeting his mom. They are so awesome. At first we are really skeptical because when we met his mom she was surprisingly friendly and asked some weird question like if we can't get married down here in Argentina and stuff like that. But we have had two lessons with them and they are just so awesome. They just really have a pùre desire to find the true church that jesus christ established. We are super excited for them. They are really strong potential baptisms for this transfer. The only thing is on our way out of their yard our last lesson we saw some marijuana growing in some planter boxes...so we will see what happens with all of that...

Our buddy Pablo the devil worshipper is doing great. He is reading a lot in the book of mormon and has stopped doing animal sacrifices so I guess thats really good. He says he has been having trouble lately though with Satan trying to get him back to his old ways. Like he said people have just been coming to his house offering him drugs and ¨tons of women from the street¨ have been trying to sneak into his house at night... He just really need Jesus....

This Sunday we had 4 investigators at church! It was so awesome. Our 17 year old investigator Belin came with her cousin. Belin was a reference from the sister missionaries in our ward. We have only taught her like three times but we had a lesson with her this week and we made her commit to come to church and she actually came! She walked all they way from her house which is like an hour walk! The only bad thing is we are probably going to have the sister missionaries start teaching them. Our last with her just got a little too questionable. She just had a ton of questions like asking us if we get the weekends off and like what type of music we like, and if we know the local strip club (the funny thing is we live right by it haha), and just a ton of other hints that made us think she might be more interested in us than in the gospel

The sad thing is that stuff just happens a lot lately. I would like to blame it on my companion and I´s stunning good looks but it´s probably just because we are American. The whole family and relationship stuff of this culture is kinda messed up. Everyone has kids when they are like fifteen and absolutely no one is married. Its a struggle. But we are fixing this country one family at a time!!

For easter we didn´t really do anything. It was just a normal day of work but it was still great!

Have a great week!

This week was pretty great! 

The weather was all over the place. One day it would be hot and miserable and then the next day it would be freezing and stormy. It was so awesome though to have a break from the heat. The people complain about the weather here so much it always surprises me haha. Even if it is so perfect they are never satisfied.

For some reason this week we ran into a lot of people who are into the devil worshipping stuff. It's always so fun to talk to them. We started teaching this one guy this week named Pablo. He is awesome. He was really into some freaky stuff but his wife and family left him about a month ago and he has started to believe in God. After we had our first lesson with him about the restoration he said he felt a lot of peace but was kinda disappointed because he was hoping we would cast devils out of him or whatever haha. I didn´t want to disappoint him so then I pulled the classic ¨How to beginning teaching¨ line in Preach my Gospel of ¨Our message can't be learned in a one single visit, can we come by again...¨ haha, I got him good. 

The rest of this week went pretty well. We would of had transfers tomorrow but this transfer is one week longer so next week I will know if I am staying or leaving Marcos Paz.

Have a great week!

Another week in Argentine paradise. 

It was definetly a rougher week but it was still pretty good! Once again, nothing too crazy happened. I think I am just getting used to weird stuff I guess. But now that I think about it, I think this week I saw my record of dead dogs burning in a pile of trash. So I guess thats kinda cool and exciting...

This week we didn´t have any investigators at church again:( super sad:( Sundays as a missionary are so awesome but just so brutal sometimes. My companion and I always call Sundays "Game Days" and I really think the name fits because we always get so tired by the end of the day.

This week both of our bikes broke again so that has been just awesome. I really enjoy walking but our area is just so big to handle on foot. We are hanging in there though.

Story of the week:

Yesterday we had lunch with a semi active family in our ward, the Lopez Family. It was our first time meeting them and the dad of the family during dinner was telling us about his mission he served in Rosario Argentina. It was so cool because then I told him how my Dad served in that same mission and they are about the same age so they probably served together. He then looked down at my name tag to see what my last name was and then his face just dropped... He thinks he knows me dad!! We couldn´t believe it!! It was so cool!!! He is almost positive my Dad was in his zone when he first came to the mission field. He knows he has a picture too but we just didn´t have time to find it, but he is so excited to look and find it and then he says he will show us. Such a cool experience!!

Oh also this week I did divisions with our zone leader Elder Starr. We had such a good time haha. He is from San Diego and he goes home in a few days. And the cool thing is it turns out he is really good friends with some of my buddies from college that live in San Diego too!

I guess this week just goes to show how small the world of Mormons is haha.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Townsend

Finally some pictures

Another week in Marcos Paz! It went pretty well! We are continuing to find a lot of people and are really progressing in the area.

On Wednesday this week we got to see the apostle Elder Bednar! We had to wake up at 3:00 am and travel to the offices of the mission. We then took buses to the North Buenos Aires mission where we got to listen to him and his wife speak there. It was so awesome! We all learned a ton! 

This week the weather wasnt too bad either which was so nice! It felt so weird to get home at the end of the day and not be drenched in sweat...

On Saturday our ward had a ward temple trip. Our converts Cristina and Leandro who we baptized these last two months both went! We weren´t allowed to go with the ward, but they told us they absolutely loved it!!!

The rest of the week was pretty normal, nothing too crazy. On Friday we did some service for a family in the ward that does our laundry. We helped them take a tree trunk out of their backyard. It was so much fun! We made the cake we have been making that everyone in this ward loves so much. We still dont understand why everyone here thinks it tastes so good. The whole ward thinks we are like master bakers. We are still keeping it a secret that we make it from cake mix from a box.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Townsend