Ben's first baptisms!! Monday, Oct 12, 2009

This is picture of the future missionaries in Ben's ward.









First babtisms for Ben. Daniel Chincha and Juana Zeballos.









Ben hiking in the Andes!

















Hi Family,

As for conference, we were able to listen in English in one room while everyone else listened in Spanish in the other rooms. It went so well and I absoluely loved it.

As for how we find people to teach. As part of the system the mission has set up we have what are called Open the Mouths. While we are on the sreet or while we are walking we will stop people and present our message and tell them we want to come by their house another day. If we can see they´re not busy right then, we´ll start teaching them right then and there. We find many people just by walking the streets, geting the contacts and coming back another day. I want to start working here with the members more. When we teach with the members things go so well. They help so much. The members here are incredible, I absolutely love them.

Thank you so much for the prayers and support I get from home. You will all never be able to feel how grateful I am for all of you and how much I love you.

Let´s talk about this week...I am so excited to send you pictures of the first baptisms I saw here in Argentina. The baptism happened on Saturday and went so well. Both Daniel Chincha and Juana Zeballos were so excited and happy to be baptized! They both love the gospel so much and are such good examples to me! The baptism happened on Saturday and then they were confirmed yesterday in church. Daniel said that he definitley felt the Spirit very strong. I´m so happy for him! When Juana came up out of the water she was laughing and so happy!

This week we have really been wrapping up the preparation for their baptism and contacting a lot of people. Because this area is very spread out it takes a lot of time to go from contact to contact and if our plans fall through we are limited in our options in where we can go and what we can do. But this week we have tons of contacts!!! We have "opened our mouths" a ton and have a lot of awesome people with whom we are excited to stop by! I have a meta (goal). I want to have a baptismal service for 3 people on the 31 of October. I know that as we work hard and aim for this the Lord will help guide us to those that are ready for baptism on this date. I felt awesome about aiming for this goal and I will talk to my new companion about it when we have transfers on Wednesday. Please pray that we can be lead to those who are ready for that date and that my companion and I can know how to best prepare people for that day.

Speaking of my new companion, we have transfers on Wednesday. I am staying in Colonia Bombal and am way excited for all the possibilities this area has. My new companion I found out last night is going to be Elder Boyd. He is from Georgia and speaks Spanish very well. His mother is from Buenos Aires and his family lives in the United States, so it sounds like he knows both equally well. You´ll all definitely know more about it this coming week!

I´ll send this e-mail off so I can make sure I send the photos off of the last 2 weeks. I love you all! :)

Love,
Elder Hoglund