Octopus is delicious! Mon. September 14, 2009

Hola mi Querido Familia!

This week was awesome! We worked way hard and saw lots of miracles happen. We are teaching a way awesome familia...the Famila Padilla. We`ve been trying to find them for a while and finally found them. They want to get baptized and they are married! How awesome is that! They are a young couple are just got here about a year ago I think from Bolivia and they got married at a Registro Civil in Bolivia! They want to get baptized, they have a 10 year old son, they are married, they are awesome people. I am so excited for them! They want to read the Book of Mormon and they obvisously want to know it`s true before they join the church. Please pray for them, they want a big change in their lives.

We also set my first baptismal date this week! Juana Zeballos, one of our investigators, the mother of a very recently returned missionary said that she wants to get baptized on the 26th of September! I am so excited for her! She had a stroke a few years ago and can`t communicate hardly at all, but she can understand others perfeclty fine. She is so excited about her baptism and we are way excited for her too. We`ll keep on passing by her house.

This week we`ve really been changing the way we go about contacting and teaching. We are teaching towards baptism and really letting people know that we want them to get baptized the first time that we teach them. We teach them about the importance of baptism and then we tell them when we are setting a baptismal date and ask them to prepare for that date. This is awesome because it really helps us to teach with power and get right to the point. We`re not wasting time, they`re not wasting time and it helps them realize the power of the message. We did this towards the end of the week after our Zone Leaders taught us about the importance of putting a date with people. That, coupled with the converting power of the Spirit and the Book of Mormon combined, has really helped us out the last few days. It is really helping us to teach with power and Heavenly Father is putting lots of incredible people in our path that are ready and want to get baptized. This has been a fantastic week and I am really learning the about the power of the message.

I`ve also been studying about Charity, which is the pure love of Christ and I was thinking what about how I feel when I feel the pure love of Christ... Those feelings that I feel when I know that Christ loves me are the exact same feelings I want others to have about me. I love learning about this and putting it into practice.

Last Preparation Day we went to this really fancy restaurant in Mendoza Centro. There I ate some Octopus tentacles, some cow stomach, and some other things that I really don`t know what they were, but I knew that I was only going to have this experience pretty much once in a lifetime so I decided to chow down on what I could. I`m still alive so I think we`re all right. I`m just glad I didn`t think too hard about what I was doing while everything was still going on, otherwise I may have had a hard time...Wow that was good.

Anyway, after that we went to the Plaza de Independencia. I should learn more about it before I write about it, but it was awesome. My companion has pictures on his camera that I will get and send. It was such a fun day! While we were walking in Mendoza Centro a bird decided that it wanted to use the restroom right above Elder Mendoza`s head (the name of one of my Zone Leaders, not to be confused with Mendoza Argentina). It wasn`t too hard to laugh at that.

So here`s some cultural stuff. Everyone loves soccer down here. There are two teams that it seems like everyone follows...River and Boca. I have a feeling that when they play later this month there will be a lot of rejections if we are clapping doors. We`ll see how it goes...I`m still deciding who to cheer for. The members obvisouly have varying opinions of what I should do. But I have the feeling they are a little biased. In one member`s house there is pretty much a shrine dedicated to Boca. There is a giant stuffed Lion (with padding, not a real lion  ) with tons of Boca garb on it. We`ll see how it goes, I`ll make a decision sometime.

I love you all. Keep working hard and e-mail me questions of things you would like answered.

Love,
Elder Hoglund