Rivera Uruguay - December 12th 2011

Well I don't know about the States but down here, people are finally starting to get into the Christmas mood. The stores are decorated in centro and people have lights up. That's about it. It's not nearly as commercialized down here so it's not nearly as in your face as it is in the States. I recently decided that I want to play the accordion someday as well.... We're going to have an end of the year party with the ward on the 15 so that should be fun and we're having lunch with a really funny member family on Christmas and a pretty solid family for the noche buena, which is apparantly a lot! bigger down here than the actual Christmas Day. We'll see what happens i guess. :)

Well, Tuesday was Zone conference in T-bo which is what I mentioned last week so that was a lot of fun. It was a two hour bus ride to there and we left at 5 in the morning so that was nice. Or not. And then we talked a lot about Christmas spirit and Christ-like attributes and what we can to adopt them into our lives which was rather inspiring. :) Pictures of a special visit during that time will follow as well. (See below) One thing they told us that I believe can be applied to all walks of life was this. Cuando se termine su mision, que hara apredido el Señor de usted? Rough translation, when you finish your mission, what will the Lord think of you? I'd rather not be a missionary that let the Lord down, know what i mean? :D

Well, not a lot happened this week.  We went to coisa nossa, in brazil, for lunch. It's like a far less classy version of Tocanos but it was still great to have a meat buffet once again. We're allowed to go once a change as a district because it's so far out of our areas. Centro technically is, but we're allowed to come for p-day and district meeting because the ATM's are here and so are the Stake Centers, plus in order to really buy anything we have to come here. But the restaurant is like 6 blocks further into Brazil so we only get one shot a change. It was really good though. Funny story. We were in a free shop like 20 minutes ago, free shops only sell to americans and brazilians so they don't have to pay Guayan taxes, and there was this wall of tvs. 90% of them were playing this concert of these scantly clad chicks. I was glued to this wall of TVs. Because, there were two TV's right next to each other playing Lamborghini promo videos. Yea i'm an engineer. I didn't actually notice the girls until one of the other missionaries asked what the concert was. I was like, what concert?? I'm looking at these precision designed works of sheer beauty! It was pretty funny.,... I guess you had to be there though

So Josè absconded for like a week. Then we finally found him again. Turns out his aunt is in critical condition at the hospital and his mom and he are her only family. Which means he's missed two Sundays in a row so we had to bump his baptisimal date to the 7th of January. Then, we contacted Yonathan out of the area book and he let us right in and we taught a pretty good lesson. He already had a Book of Mormon which means the missionaries taught him at some time or another and then I extended the baptisimal commitment for 7th of January and he said yea, i can do that. He's already been to church a few times and so we went to find him on Sunday morning and he was gone playing soccer. Soccer on Sundays is something we've really been fighthing with lately but hopefully we can get through all this. Matias still meets with us and his eliminations are over so hopefully we can get him to church as well. We'll see what happens this week.


My turn to share a scripture. D&C 8:1.
Oliver Cowdery, verily, verily, I say unto you, that assuredly as the Lord liveth, who is your God and your Redeemer, even so surely shall you receive a knowledge of whatsoever things you shall cask in faith, with an honest heart, believing that you shall receive a knowledge concerning the engravings of old records, which are ancient, which contain those parts of my scripture of which has been spoken by the manifestation of my Spirit.

I love that without faith, we can do nothing. I love dearly reading from the scriptures everyday and I've been studying out of the New Testament and conference issue of the liahona everyday in my spare time. It's so nice to know that I can turn to the words of the prophets an anytime and know the will of the Lord for me.


I don't know if i've told you yet, but they have all the new missionaries bear their testimonies in their first zone conference so i went up and bore mine. It has to be in spanish of course, but i think it went well. Really though, I just want to share a tidbit with you both. I'm very thankful for the opportunity we have to kneel with our investigators at the end of every lesson. As knew as these people are to the gospel and teachings of jesus Christ, when they open their mouths to talk to him, the spirit of the lord fills the room. It's a wonderful thing to feel and an absolute blessing. God is there when these people open their mouths to speak to him. This truly is the Lord's work, I can tell you that much.

Well, that's all for now. Love from the 'guay,

Elder Simpson