miracles

Wow it has been an amazing week here in Rivadavia!!!!!!!!!!!

So on tuesday we went to meet with the Correa family that we met on saturday and went to church last sunday. We taught them the Gospel of Christ and invited them to be baptized. All that were present in the lesson accepted (Mom, german, valentina, jeremias). They already had attendances from when they were listening to the elders before and so we invited them to be baptized on saturday. German (12) said yes before anybody and then the mom, mariela, said that before she didn´t feel like it was the time but that now she needs more guidance and to be closer to God and that she will be baptized as well. And the twins, Valentina and Jeremias committed as well. That evening we spent letting all of the members know and getting ready for the baptism. On wednesday we had set a lesson with them but then they cancelled. On Thursday we taught them the plan of salvation and like half of the commandments. They all have gone to lots of catholic sunday school so they understand things pretty well. Then on friday they cancelled again! And so we were freaking out! but we went by saturday morning and the dad was there with german and jeremias. He was totally supportive of them being baptized and sat in the lesson on the plan of salvation. They were really excited for their baptism that afternoon. So we went to lunch with the stake president, helped them wash their cars and then went to a lesson with reference from the sisters who we contacted and then came to church on sunday, and then we went back to correa to go together with them to the chapel to have their interviews and then the baptism. They were all their ready with clothes and all. The oldest brother Enso is 15 and we met him that day and mariela wanted him to get baptized and he was on the fence but we hadn´t taught him yet, so he decided to come to the baptism to see and would plan on getting baptized next saturday. 

So we went to the church and they all had their interviews from a district leader here. And then everybody started to arrive! Marielas mom, sister, neice and nephew came. The sisters had a baptism as well of a 9 yr old kid, lots of his family came and several investigators. It was a really really good baptism! Elder Garcia baptized the mom, I baptized valentina, a recent convert of elder blackman baptized jeremias and a korean man in our ward baptized german. The messages were great as well. On sunday they came and were confirmed. All of the kids loved church and have made some great friends. Enso asked us for his own book of mormon and one of the talks was about the temple and he talked about the trip to chile in october and so all of the kids were telling mariela that they want to go! She said we´ll see. We´ll be teaching them more about the temple and watching between heaven and earth this week. After mariela was confirmed, she was giving everybody kisses and I put my hand out for the handshake but she went in for the customary little kiss and i didn´t want to embarrass her so it happened. I kissed a woman in front of the whole congregation. Then after the confirmations, bishop had them all stand up as a family and said that they are now part of our family and invited everybody to get to know them, visit them and have family nights with them. It was AWESOME! 

So it´s been an absolutely amazing week. And what was amazing was that it wasn´t even anything we did, it was just a reference of old investigators that weren´t ready 2 years ago but now they have been really prepared. It was a miracle. Mariela gave a really sweet prayer in gospel principles. Probably the best prayer i´ve ever heard.

I love the mission!!!

Love,

Elder Fullmer

A good week in Rivadavia

Hello all and happy friend day(yesterday) in Argentina, 

Things are going pretty well here in Rivadavia. My favorite cookies ´toddy´ were on sale for 15 pesos at walmart!!! But more importantly, the work is going well. We found a really cool family on saturday night that came to church on sunday! 

We´ve been able to teach franco a few more times this week and have been helping him to understand things better so that he´s have his own desires to get baptized cause his mom won´t sign the record until he really wants to. We met her and had a good chat with her this past week. 

On thursday I went to Mendoza for errands about the visa. Elder Magdaluyo was there too as well as elder Connolly. It was way fun seeing them both again. It´s been a long time since i´ve seen elder Magdaluyo. And in the offices i got bad and good news. bad- Elder Pereira went home. I have no idea why but i´m going to try to contact him. good- Elder Pyne is coming back out!!! 

So the whole week was pretty good, we had taught more lessons than usual and then we had a little extra time on saturday night and we decided that instead of visiting investigadors that are struggling to progress and not keeping committments, we would go contact a family that the sisters had told us about. So we went and they invited us right in. They were wayyy cool!!!!!! Super prepared. They had heard the missionaries before a few years ago and even come to church. The mom´s sister is a member in another province and has told her a lot about the church. After we taught them the restoration, she said that one thing she loves about the church is that we have the fullness of the gospel. that we know the plan that God has for us because that´s something her church doesn´t have. SWEET. and then he´s a little bit more tough but way cool and loves talking and listening. So she came to church with three of her kids. I sat by one of the kids at church and he knew some deacons that sat by him and invited him to mutual. SWEET! And the mom loved it and knew a few people. They all fit in so well!!!!!!!!!!!! So they are easily first priority for us now. And amazingly prepared family!!! the family Correa. 

This morning we went to hike a mountain with a brother in our ward. It was tough but way good to get out in nature. Before leaving we passed by a radio station to give a guy in our ward something. He was on air and when we entered he asked us to sit down and we got to talk a little bit with him on air about where we´re from how we like argentina and our message for just a quick 3 minutes or so. It was way cool!!!

I know this is the work of the Lord that he guides and directs it and is constantly seeking to help us. 

Love, 

Elder Fullmer

back to albardon!

It´s been a decent week here in Rivadavia. We have found a couple of families, one that pretty much already dropped us and one that seems a lot more interested and sincere.

On Saturday morning there was a youth activity for both of the stakes of san juan in albardon. We got to go for like a missionary blitz hour where we all went out and handed out pamphlets to people in the plaza and invited them to hear the youth choir sing a little later on. I saw Natali from the alganaraz family as well as Valentin from the Munoz family!!!!!!! He´s doing really well! he told me he´s going to church and passing the sacrament. I´ve heard Luci and her dad aren´t doing quite as well, but i´ll be back there to do exchanges one of these days. 

On saturday night we went to teach a lady, patricia that we had met last week and she invited us in. Her husband was nice but wouldn´t come listen when she invited him, but her daughter Florencia listened as well. 

yesterday Argentina played against germany in the world cup final and lost. We had to be in the pension before it even started, it could be a little dangerous especially since i look german haha. 

Love, 

Elder Fullmer

pictures

Gonzalo Ochoa

goodbye Elder Periera

Saying goodbye to President and Sister Avila

Message from Sister Avila

The Avilas are done

Hola Pte. y Hna Goates!!!

Ups and downs ups and downs! 

It´s over all been a good week here in Rivadavia, definitely some struggles, but we´re figuring things out. So on monday night the assistents told us we would be cancelling the zone meeting on tuesday and have the zone meeting this week instead, with the information from the counsel with pte Goates. So Tuesday evening we left for mendoza. It was fun seeing all of the other zone leaders even though we saw them all just a week before haha. In the morning we were ate facturas (Argentine wannabe donuts haha) and drank some juice while waiting until presidente and hermana Goates walked in. He´s pretty tall!!!!!! They are both so nice and happy to be here. We could tell that they already love us so much! They both speak spanish really well, with lots of accent but great grammer. She spoke about the atonement and everything Christ went through and suffered during his life and at the end of his life. She counseled us to mark and study the character of Christ in the scriptures. President Goates talked a lot about unity. and read lots of scriptures from D&C. One scripture i loved talked about how a group of early church leaders united their hearts and then were able to recieve a revelation which is related in the rest of the section. He talked about how the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one in purpose and how Christ mentions that over and over again, which shows how important that is to Him the relationship that he has. All that he said about unity was very applicable to Elder Garcia and I. We´re were like floating on different boats generally headed in the same dirrection but not really on the same page. But we´ve been able to talk and work a lot better since then. Pte also talked about the quality of baptisms. We are going to be teaching lesson 5 before baptism now and then working a lot more closely with investigators to fulfill the baptismal requirements in d&c 20:37. And then after baptism we will be working a lot more with them to keep them active with their eyes on the Temple. He told us that the Apostles had promised that by focusing on getting conversions and not just baptisms the number of baptisms would increase. The recent converts will be sharing the gospel, members will be more animated and willing to help with the work. He also told us that the act of baptism isn´t what cleans us of our sins. But rather that keeping that covenant. And so if we are really desiring the salvation of these people, we should be looking for more than just the number. It was a really good meeting! They didn´t talk much about themselves because they are going around to all of the zones to do that and wil. be coming here tomorrow.

The work has honestly been pretty hard. Appointments have been dropping left and right like flies, but with the new unity that we have we are staying positive and hoping for things to get better. We stopped to buy some asado on the street and one of the guys that worked at the meat place spoke really really good english. He was really interested in talking to us and got our number and we got his and we may go to his english class at college in a few weeks to talk to everybody about what we do. and should be going to teach him on wednesday. Really cool guy! Also, an active family brought a nonmember youngman friend to church on sunday that we´ll start teaching this week! So we´re excited about that!

Have a great week!!!

Love, 

Elder Fullmer

Adios Presidente y Hermana Avila

Shoutout to Mom and Dad, Happy 23rd anniversary!!!! You´re the best and i love you both so much!

Shoutout to Peter, who leaves for his mission to st louis this week!!!

Shoutout to America! Happy 4th of July everybody!!!!!

Well it´s been a week of some ups and downs.

Monday pday was awesome! It was way fun to get together with everybody and play soccer and basketball and then do some activities. and then there was also like a president avila joke telling time. hilarious!!! I love the Avilas. 

Tuesday we had mission counsel and it was great. Pte Avila analized tons of verses from Jacob 5 and got choked up as he talked about how it´s his last time training missionaries... WOW.  and Presidente Goates got here on saturday and wants to meet with all of the leaders on wednesday so we´re going back to mendozatomorrow night haha. 

We´ve been teaching some really cool families but had a lot of last minute rejections and nobody came to church......... 

I loved a talk yesterday from a high counseler who mentioned how when Christ went to raise lazarus from the dead, mary and marta had to move the stone and then Christ did what they couldn´t by resurrecting lazarus. really cool. never seen that before. And last night we had a church tour with the reference of marina and daniel that we got a couple weeks ago. 

I love you all! Keep the faith!

Elder Fullmer

pday but not pday

So i´m writing today because on monday we´ll be in the offices for pday and so they gave us permission for today. 

It´s been good but realllly busy week here in Rivadavia. 

highlights

Tuesday at lunch, the family we ate with told us they have a reference for us, or a lady they know that had cancer, is going through chemotherapy and its really tough and she accepted that we could come to give her a blessing. So we went that evening with the brother and his sister in law that knows the lady, Marina very well. It was really cool to teach her a little about the priesthood and faith and then give her a blessing. Her and her husband were suuuuper nice. And they told us to come back whenever we want. 

Then on thursday we went back and taught lesson 1 which went really well. They liked it, had a few questions about the Book of Mormon and accepted to read and pray and may possibly come to church tomorrow. 

On wednesday there were transfers, and we stayed the same but went to the terminal to make sure everything went smoothly with those leaving and those arriving. It´s way fun to welcome new missionaries to the zone. Wednesday evening we went back to the terminal to recieve a the 3 elders that are training and their new comps!!!!!!! We got to meet them all and then we took elder Wengert (he came down with me and has a transfer less than me), and his companion elder Willard to their pench in Benavidez cause they will be washing the area aka they´re both new to the zone. 

We´ve called and passed by rodrigo several times this week but haven´t gotten in contact with him. I feel like somethings probably wrong cause he´s usually pretty easy to get ahold of. 

We taught Roberto this morning. He listens to us and all and commits to doing things but really hasn´t kept the commitments. So we talked to him about seeking first the kingdom of God and he committed to coming to church tomorrow so we´ll pass by to go with him. 

Other than that, we´ve been really busy planning a ward activity for this afternoon where we´re all getting together to go visit people that aren´t coming to church. We´re hoping it will be a big success! 

Also, another great news.... we were told this week that Miriam and Jorge gutierrez from san miguel got married on wednesday like we had planned out with them my last week there and will be getting baptized today!!!!!!!!!!! Wooooooo!!!!!!!!

I love you all!!!!!!

Love,

Elder Fullmer