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

Rivera Uruguay - December 5th 2011

Hola from the 'guay!

I wake up every day at 6:30 and start working out, after prayers of course. I then hop in the shower, because the water is really hot and really cold off and on so you have to hop....or something like that. After getting ready, I cook breakfast which is either oatmeal with cinnamon and sugar or rice and eggs. Or rice with cinnamon and sugar. Then we do personal study from 8 to 9 and comp study from 9 to 11 and language study from 11 to 12 and then we have lunch with a member till about 1 or 1:30 and then we get out and beat the streets. We look up old contacts, less active members, struggling members, recent converts, go tracting, teach lessons. Ya know, the usual. We do this until 8:30 unless we're in a lesson or close to home and we're home by 9. We then plan til 9:30 and if I feel up to it, I do core. If not, we eat a little more of whatever, prep for bed, write in journals. Sack out at 10:30. Wake up, repeat. That's my life. Don't worry. I'm getting enough to eat. We do some manner of service every week or so.

We have not been able to meet with Nikolas since and America's daughter who lives next door wouldn't let us talk to her mother because "she's evangelical and doesn't wanna hear your message". Funny, she told us to come back when we were teaching her... Oh well.... We found a few new investigators this last week so we'll see what happens. Josè stands out because he pretty much came up to us at church and said he wanted to be baptized  So, we made the hour and 20 minute walk to his house to talk with him on Wednesday and he was super receptive and we said we'd come back for another lesson on Sunday, we'd see him at church and we commited him to be baptized the 17th of December. Well... He didn't show up to church. And then he wasn't home when we went for our lesson. So we contacted around the area and came back and hour later. And still no one was home. So we trekked the hour and 20 minutes back to another lesson. Rather nice, huh? Whaddaya do? I just hope we can get in touch with him again and get him rollin on the right path. I bore my testimony in sacrament meeting yesterday.

We have Zone Conference in Tacuarembò tomorrow which means I will not be getting the mail bolsa. That means, no mail or packages, in or out for all of this week. I started reading the new testament. I'm reading it in my spare time. It's rather nice. I've got a thumb in all the standard works now hahha I love the scriptures. Tell everyone sorry about the wait on mail. Next week!  My spanish is getting better. I understand a lot now and speaking gets a little bit easier every time. I still can't speak nearly as well as i'd like to but I know it'll come.

We call this place The Shire because everyone is super chill, no one works, they're always drinking their matè, all a bit on the short side, love to give you water and food, throw rocks at anything that moves on 4 legs, lots of campo and a decent amount of poverty. (That was something I thought you might get a kick out of. :)

We play soccer on Saturday nights with a bunch of the local kids as a means of finding new investigators. We use the courts that are on the same property as the church and we always close with spiritual thought and sometimes place materials.

The most I feel the spirit is when we kneel in prayer with investigators! Whew that stuff lays into you and you just wanna go take a nap afterwards.

Here's a scripture for you. 2 NefI 32:9,
9  But behold, I say unto you that ye must pray always, and not faint; that ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the cname of Christ, that he will dconsecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the ewelfare of thy soul.

We don't pray in just our trials, we need to pray to him at all times. We don't do a thing without talking to our Father. It's not really a sugguestion. More of a way of life. Pretty boss that we've an all knowing all powerful father we can talk to at anytime, right?

One more scripture reference. Alma 5:7-9 and 7:24

7 Behold, he changed their hearts; yea, he awakened them out of a deep sleep, and they awoke unto God. Behold, they were in the midst of darkness; nevertheless, their souls were illuminated by the light of the everlasting word; yea, they were encircled about by the bands of death, and the chains of hell, and an everlasting destruction did await them.

 8 And now I ask of you, my brethren, were they destroyed? Behold, I say unto you, Nay, they were not.

 9 And again I ask, were the bands of death broken, and the chains of hell which encircled them about, were they loosed? I say unto you, Yea, they were loosed, and their souls did expand, and they did sing redeeming love. And I say unto you that they are saved.

and
Alma 7:24
 24 And see that ye have faith, hope, and charity, and then ye will always abound in good works.


First off, might I say I love the wording of the book of mormon?  There are so many passages where the word choice is wonderful! Other than that, this is what God can do for us. I love it.

These pics are from today. We were trying to find the other elders house and ended up finding this hand.  Until next week

Chau!
 Elder Simpson

Rivera Uruguay - November 28th 2011

Hi All,

I little translations. Alfajores are chocolate cookie pastrie things. And bolsas are bags. Generally when i say that, i mean our mail bag. And recuerdos are souvenirs and apargatos are these boss lounging shoes!!!

 I realized that Thanksgiving did pass and it blew my mind. I completely forgot about it and so we really didn't do much about it. It also helps that we're freakin busy all the time so i really don't have time to think about what i miss. Its starting to get really hot and fairly humid all the time. I'm getting tan too haha.  I'm on the Lords errand and I'm not doing anything stupid which means he wont let anything bad happen to me.

I did splits this last Tuesday and Wednesday with our District Leader. It was rather uneventful except i did get clothes-lined by a clothes line. I was walking so it wasn't too bad but i found it rather humorous. This last p-day night, I walked out the door without a tie on and so I had to go get one and then my comp realized two blocks later that he was wearing apargatos! We figured we'd go with it so we walked the half hour of campo to our appointment and after we got out it was pouring. Needless to say his feet were just a bit wet and we both got soaked. :) Apargatos are a type of moccasins

This last friday we were getting a reference from a member and i watched these two youths walk into an almacen a house behind us. (we were in the street) about a minute later i heard a sound like a fire cracker so i turned around. Out run the two dudes, and the shop owners wife comes out screaming. They start sprinting their guts out and luckily a cop was on the street we were on. He bummed a ride off a moto and they took off after him. This is very lucky because there are almost no police in our area. They ended up catching the guys and the gun shot only grazed the shop owners side. Saddest part is, one of they robbers was a recent convert....

Today, we played soccer for a couple hours and then we went to this taco joint and i passed because they were 33 pesos a pop and they were pretty small so i went to the line later with Elder Johnson, Elder Mullen, Elder Heaps, Elder Killpack and Elder Mcdaniel and my comp and i snagged 4 panchos, or hot dogs, for 24 pesos. My comp and I are going vegetarian, unless members give us meat. It's really not a diet choice, just that it's a ton cheaper to live off of rice, eggs, oatmeal and fruit and veggies which the last two are reimbursable plus we've been working out so we'll see what happens hey?

On the lessons, we found this great kid named Nikolas this last week and this sweet older lady named America.  Elder Johnson has started handing off parts of the lessons to me and I kind of have to just go with it if I don't know it that well.  But the lord blesses me with most of the words I need and my Spanish gets so much better every single day which is rather convenient.

Well that-s all for now. We say good bye for the time being so that we can have the joy of another hello. I'm on a journey, as real and as frightening as you can imagine. The pain and suffering are real, but so is the joy. I fight monsters every day. Sometimes their mine, sometimes they belong to others but all the same they are as terrible and destructive as the orcs of fantasty. Each day I rise, to battle. But the difference is, I rise clothed in the armor of God, weilding the swift and terrible blade of the almighty God, riding forth to bring salvation. If I might quote a dear friend, Peregrin Took, "For Frodo." Yet on this day, I paraphrase. "For Christ", and for salvation. I'm a soldier in the army of the Lord, and I'm here to fight the great destroyer. Until next time,

Elder Andy

¡Chau!

Rivera Uruguay - November 21th 2011

Hello,

We walk a lot between appointments and a lot of the menos activos (Less actives) that we visit live in the boonies so that's like a 15 to 20 minute walk and it takes us about 45 minutes to get to the church from our home and there are investigators who live out beyond that so we really just do walk a lot. I ward mission leader is cool. He's recently back from a mission in Chile so he's still pretty mission oriented. Hey tell Uncle Darrin that there is an Elder Talyor from american falls in my district and he says hello ;)

Oh hey so the ward. It's a pretty even mix. Recent converts, life time members, old time converts. You name it, we've got it. We had about 50 people attend yesterday where as the week before we had probably closer to 80. They're all super nice and very helpful so it's just a good first ward to have.

We've yet to have someone tell us that their mom says they aren't home but there was this one old lady sitting with her daughter that we tried to talk to and she wouldn't talk directly to us. She had her daughter as a go between because she didn't want to talk to us. That was interesting. We've also been told that there is no one else at home and then we heard a toilet flush in the other room.

The dogs run rampant through the streets. There have only been a couple times when E'Johnson has had to act like he's reaching for a rock because they wouldn't leave us alone but other than that they mostly just stay out of our way. The poverty isn't that bad, but i find it absurd when people have flatscreen tv's and dirt floors. Whatever works i guess.....

Currently it's been raining for two days :) That's okay though. It will relieve the humidity that we've been having. It was atrocious once again. We played futbal with most of my district today from 1030 to about noon and then we head to the line to snag recuerdos and hotdogs. I got E'Johnson a watch because his birthday was yesterday and he gave his away to a member a couple weeks ago. We do our grocery shopping out of almacens that people operate out of their front rooms because we really only eat like rice and crackers and juice and eggs. Everything else we eat with members so we just buy cheap food. For laundry we have a sort of machine type thing in our apartment. Elder Johnson says its the first house he's had with one. Before then, he'd always had members do his laundry.

Matias' team won again so he still can't come to church because of the tourney that's on sundays. and yes we found a waffle iron for his birthday. We had some last night and again this morning.

There are little things that i pick up already that i really do like. I'll probably buy and bring a few pairs of apargatos home with me just because i love them so much. I love soccer a little more everytime i play it and so i get that too.

I really don't think anything cool happened this week. No funny stories currently. Hopefullly i'll have some next week

I finished the Book of Mormon in the MTC and i'm midway into Alma now and i just love reading out of it. I try to read out of the Bible and Jesus The Christ to make sure my studies are rounded out but more often than not i just read the Book of Mormon the whole time because it's just so wonderful to read. There is so much there and it applies to us all the time. It's the best!

Que pase bien

Chau

Elder Simpson

Rivera Uruguay - November 14th 2011

Hi,

The area we are in is called tres cruzes. Triple-X for short. A lot of the people are really poor and everybody lives in cinderblock or brick houses. Probably 30 percent are fairly well off by american standards but more oft than not, a lot are just really poor, and some are fairly prideful in their destitution. It's interesting to say the least.

We're currently working with a 14 year old named Matias. We've taught him the first lesson and had him reading parts of the Book of Mormon.  He asked about the law of chasitity so we taught him that as well. We're currently trying to get him to come to church on sundays because he  has a fecha (baptism date) and so we need him to go!

He's got a tournament that's happening on Sundays though for his team so we have to work around that. He's really receptive and seems genuinely interested. I hope it all works out. BY the way, whenIi say we taught or we teach, my comp does most of the teaching and I bear testimony near the end and add bits here and there. That's really all i can do for now.

My comp is Elder Johnson from Logan Utah. He's a metal head as well and he really loves doing the work. We laugh and joke a lot and we talk about everything. There are a lot of hills in the area and we do a lot of walking. My feet are slightly swollen every night but that's to be expected. I've yet to wake up sore so that's a good thing. We walk long distances sometimes and so to kill the time we talk about books and movies. I spent 4 hours detailing enders game and we're currently on day 4 of battlefield earth :)

The ward we're a part of is super fiel (faithful) which is nice. They're all very kind and love saying hello to us, waving when they see us, or honking as they drive past (usually on glorified dirt bikes). The dirt bikes are everywhere, they're obscenely loud and i really just don't like them.  We wave a lot.

We eat a lot of rice and chicken. I eat oatmeal for breakfast usually with some fried eggs. We make popcorn sometimes and Elder Johnson likes to make crepes some mornings. We're trying to borrow a waffle maker this weekend because it's my comps birthday and we want to celebrate.

The weather has been nicer this week. Not nearly as humid at all. It really has not been muggy which is such blessing and i hope i don't jinx us by saying that. Overcast somedays and we did catch some gnarly rain on like Wednesday. Got soaked a couple times actually but it really wasn't that bad. It hasn't been too hot and if i go without a backpack I do pretty well. Sometimes the nights and mornings are cold so I usually hang around the vivienda (apartment) in sweats and i'm fine. Christmas isn't nearly as commercialized down here as it is in the states so we really have yet to see anything christmas related at all.

So one day we were off in the back country. And a chicken crossed the road in front of us. Naturally, Elder Johnson asks, why did the chicken cross the road? I reply, to get away from the missionaries!! We see that all the time so it's just great to see that chickens do it too. We are supposed to preach the gospel to EVERY creature and this one just waan't havin it. Eesh. Missionary humor.... We did have this gnarly ant problem when we got to the house yesterday and Elder Johnson did work with some raid and a lighter. No more ant problem

Tell grami i'm getting a portugese Book of Mormon tomorrow and I plan on reading it and that i'll be looking for a tutor when I get home :)

I totally got called a devil yesterday. This guy chased us down and asked if we were servants of Satan and what the difference between Satan and Christ was. We tried to share our message but he just wasn't having it. He then asked how old we were and why we were half way across the world sharing religious stuff instead of partying and being immoral like he was at 19. I'm here because I KNOW Jesus Christ is my savior. I know that this is his work and it can bring a happiness and solace that no other thing on this earth can. I'm a literal servant of God the Eternal Father and I'm here to share his gospel of love. That's why I'm here.

Well that's all i've got for now!

Pasen bien.
Chau
Elder Simpson

P.S.

Hey one more thing! Tell anyone who uses the urugoeste@gmail.com to write to me to also include an addresss to which I can send letter back, because I can not email back and without an address I cant's write them.

Chau

Hello from Rivera Uruguay - November 7th 2011

Hola!

Soo...it´s been very very hot the past couple of days. Since I got here actually. Very very humid and really hot. But today the weather has been rather pleseant. I woke up somewhat chilly last night and had to pull my sheet over me. It was crazy :) As you can tell by the picture I took about 10 minutes ago, I´m in an area called Rivera at the very northern border of Uruguay and Brazil. I was just coming back from Brazil, just one block in, from a store. We have to get permision to go in any farther than that.

The area I serve in is called tres cruses (3 crosses) and my trainer is Elder Johnson from Logan Utah. He's into hardcore metal and extreme sports so we get along pretty well :D The transfer was freakin long. Friday morning we got up at 3:30 am and couldn't eat breakfast so that we could have blood work done upon entering the country. That and a urine test. Great huh? Needless to say, I was rather hungry because we landed at 9 am, local time, and had to go straight to the clinic. From there we went to the mission home, but we got there at like 2 pm for dinner which was brutal. We then had super fast orientation because we had no time and at 3:30 pm we went to meet our trainers. The mission home is literally on the same grounds as the temple and the home itself is like being in the U.S. again. It was wonderful. We then met our trainers right in front of the temple and then took a van to the bus station in Montevideo and then hopped a double decker bus to Rivera. We left at 6 pm and got there at 12:30 am. I didn't sleep at all and it was SO humid and hot because we couldn't open the windows.

Saturday was long but really fast. We went and contacted some people and mostly had appointments to meet. I had my first bit of carbonated water which really isn't that bad at all. It was still extremely humid and hot but in the morning we went and helped a family move. I can't remember their name. I should but i can't :D There's so much Spanish going on all the time so fast and here some people throw in Portuguese so that makes it all the better right? I'm catching a lot of rays, but i'm wearing sun screen so i don't get skin cancer :)

We started our fast Saturday afternoon after lunch with a member, (we get to drink water on fast Sundays because we walk everywhere and president doesn't want us getting heat stroke.) and this really isn't that different from any other day because the people don't really eat dinner ever. We do lunch at like 3 pm and it's huge and then on regular days we just go home and eat crackers or rice and eggs so we don't go to bed hungry.

We live in a 5 room vivienda, como a condo (5 room dwelling like a condo), probably slightly larger than our main room downstairs. We have a living room, kitchen probably the size of your walk in closet, our room is the same size as Jake's and mine was, the bathroom is probably the same and then we have a small storage room where we keep all our clothes and luggage and a room for hanging all our clothes out to dry. We mostly eat with the members and they really don't do breakfast here so I'm still figuring that one out. I feel like I understand so much more every day and the Spanish is coming along. We walk everywhere! The area isn't small and so when we have to go super far, we just catch a bus but for the most part we just walk. I come home tired every night and it's a good kind of accomplished tired. I feel like i've been here for 3 weeks already but each day flies past. It's nuts.

I know god is there. He answers my prayers and the prayers of people all over the world. He is always there and He loves us always. Even if we have hidden ourselves from God, he is there. We just can't see him anymore. I know that if we do the things we've been told to do all our lives, we can feel his love. I have already seen people here with literally nothing, living in houses they've made on their own out of cinder-blocks and garbage and they KNOW that God is there and that he loves them. Christ is our redeemer and he will be waiting with open arms until the day we turn our eyes back to our Father in Heaven. I know because I had to do the same thing.

Tell Uncle Darrin that there's an Elder Tayor from American Falls and he says to tell his old seminary teacher hello. He's in my district and he's a pretty nice guy from what I saw today. Well, that's all I've got for now. I love you all and i know that what i'm doing here is crazy, but if it wasn't true i wouldn't be here. Until next week,

Elder slightly crispy. (From the sun......) Simpson

Standing between the Brazil and Uruguay flags

Welcome to Uruguay!

Friday November 4th 2011

Dear Simpson Family,

We would like to inform you of the arrival of your son to the Uruguay Montevideo West Mission. He arrived here safe and sound this morning and met President and Sister Heaton. He will receive some training in the mission home to help him get to know the mission and feel comfortable in Uruguay. The missionaries will have lunch with the Heaton Family and, afterwards, he will meet his trainer and leave for his new area. It is such an exciting time for him, and we wanted to share it with you. We have included a picture of your son with President and Sister Heaton.

Elder Chad J. Empey
Executive Secretary
Uruguay Montevideo West Mission