Jordan's June 7, 2010 letter

Dear Family,

Hey there! I´m very happy to be able to write you all this week- this week was a whole lot better than every past week, without a doubt. We taught twice as many lessons as the week before and we completed with our contacts for the week (for the first time of the transfer) and we´ve found a bunch of new investigators who really seem to have a future in baptism here soon. I´m glad with how everything worked out and I know now that we just need to keep pushing onward when times get tough; everything will work out fine if we put our trust in the Lord and do our best to obey Him and do what He wants done :).

The "highlight" of the week was a General Authority (from the first quorum of the Seventy) who came to visit us. His name is Elder Marcos Aidukaitis from Brasil, and man he was awesome! I´d have to say that out of everyone who I´ve heard from in my time in the mission, he´s the guy I liked the most. I guess the reason would be because it was all about missionary work and how we can get baptisms, and he shared a bunch of stories with us about his mission and it seemed more like a learning environment than a talk. I was really motivated by what he said. One thing I´m going to work on is "thinking like God" - he was saying how in our time here we need to learn to think like Him and be centered on the work, and not be thinking about any other thing while we´re out working. I really liked it because that´s something that I know I could work on - sometimes it´s easy to get distracted by other things - and I tried it out and I really felt like I´ve had more success out here since I´ve started doing that. He is an awesome General Authority! I learned a ton of stuff from Elder Aidukaitis (and he´s a really tall guy too!).

The work is picking up a lot more too. There´s some things that are going much better, some things that aren´t as good - we found some really great people this week and we have been really excited getting them ready to get baptized. Sunday sure was hard though! We were praying lots that people could come to church, and to show our part to the Lord we started to look for people right at 8:00A.M. It was cold! And it was way early (and, at least hear in Argentina, there is basically no one outside at that time of day...EVERYONE was sleeping) for everyone, but we went around in search of investigators anyways. We passed by everyone, including those who said they were really excited in coming this week - and NO ONE was answering!! Some answered and said "it´s way early in the morning, we´re all asleep...there´s no way we´re going to church today." I was starting to get really bummed, because we´d made tons of plans and it seemed like it was all falling through. However, after paying for a remis and driving around a bunch...we got one kid to come with us to church!! Woohoo! And he was just getting ready to head off to another church with his family - they told him it was fine to go with us, though, so he came and enjoyed church with all of us. It was great! I was super happy and grateful to the Lord for the success that He blessed us with on Sunday. It was awesome!

I also gave my testimony up at the pulpit on Sunday, actually for only the second time in Argentina. I was nervous at first, but when I got up to give my testimony I realized that it was basically the same thing that I did with every person on the street every day out here in the field. I love it because my fear of the pulpit finally left me, and now I like going up there! It was a good experience and I was very happy to do it.

Everything else is going great - Elder Anderson and I are getting along great and enjoying the work here in Buenos Aires. I´ve been a little low on money - today I had to pay the light bill, and it seems like the guys in the offices gave us less money this month than last month. At least I have peanut butter and flour! I´ll basically just eat that all week because I don´t have money for anything else basically. And cereal! Yay for cereal!

Dad is the best Dad in the world! I´ll be very happy to be with you guys again, without a doubt. Some Elders talk like when they get home that they´ll want to be out of there fast again - I guess that´s their idea, but for me I´ll be happy to be with my family again and to have more family adventures together! And my coat is working just fine - right now I´m just using sweaters, and I´ve got jackets and my trench coat. I should be fine even for the coldest of days. Oh and I sent Carson´s email recently so he´ll be able to read it today if he gets the time :).

That´s it for now! I love my family!

Love,
Elder Nuttall