Estoy aca en Argentina!

Hola!

I finally made it here in Argentina and it is just insane being here and preaching the Gospel. Just extremely different. We have already seen some success and if all goes as planned we will be having three baptisms on Saturday. 

Apparently this ward, Parque Chacabuco, is famous in the mission for being super awesome because the ward is super strong. Seriously, look up the ward, they have 18 missionaries out right now and will have 25 in the next few months. The bishop just works, and the ward is super small too. Maybe 100 members, it's so awesome. 

There are four missionaries serving here and the other missionaries work in the Villa, which is just a super poor area where there are drug dealers, so they have to be careful.  So hopefully I go in there sometime soon haha. 

We´re teaching a family, a woman, Alejandra, her adopted brother, Pablo, and then her four kids, Oriana, Kevin, Uriel, y Priscila, and they are so cool. They basically all know it is true. Elder Pastrana, my companion, was writing in Priscila´s Book of Mormon last night, writing ¨Is the book of Mormon true?¨ so she could pray and she looks at him like he is crazy and says ¡Si, es verdadero! or Of course it is true!. It was so cool haha. 

My companion is awesome, super bold with everyone and just awesome. He is from Kaysville, Utah, but his dad is Mexican so he looks pretty native to here. Everyone is super surprised when he speaks to me in English, like he is a genius for knowing English haha. 

Alright well, I think that is it for the week, I don´t have much time left but I love all of you and keep writing me. ¡Ciao!

Elder Wardle

Fun Facts about Argentina

We don´t have hot water in the apartment, so we shower out of a bucket of boiled water and then we add cold water.

I sweat all the time. I´ll sit inside someone´s house drinking juice, and I´ll be sweating.

They love mayonnaise here, I have no idea why.

ELDER WARDLE WITH MISSION PRESIDENT AND HIS WIFE

He's ARRIVED!

Dear Wardle Family,

  We are so thankful to have Elder Wardle with us. He arrived safely this morning and is doing wonderful. We are so excited for this great opportunity we have together to serve the Lord. We all ate lunch together here in the mission home and this afternoon he will be meeting his trainer and arriving in his area to work.  Your son will be communicating with you on his preparation day.

We love you,

President and Sister Gulbrandsen

I'M LEAVING ON A JET PLANE!!!

So.... I got a call yesterday morning from my mission president and he said he had some good news and some bad news. The bad news was that the Colorado Denver South Mission was losing Elder Wardle, but that the good news for Elder Wardle is that I'm going to Argentina on Monday! 

So I get to email today and I'm ridiculously excited. 

This week has showed me how much Spanish I don't know but also surprised me by how much I do know, especially when talking about Church topics.  It's also been nice to be in a car, probably won't be in a car down there either haha. 

Elder Havig has been my companion and he's a red head from Arizona, showing me a lot of the ropes to do with Spanish wards. One thing that is definitely different is that they trust the Elders a lot and will open up to you (speaking about less actives in particular) and they are pretty excited to feed us when we're there. 

So there's the update for the week because I probably won't email since I'll be traveling on Monday but I love all of you. The next time I'll email will be from Argentina!

Elder Wardle

Another Week!

Just another week here in Colorado! Not much to report, at least I don't think so. 

Well, we had a really good lesson with Olesya and Nils.  She is getting baptized this coming Sunday, and she is totally prepared. So we were just planning out her baptism, and she is super excited. We talked to her how she was doing with praying and she looked at us with a huge grin on her face and said, "I got my answer." 

She told how after she had committed to baptism she was stressing out about whether if she had made the right choice, so she was praying a lot and the next morning she felt so much peace and she said, "So this is what it's supposed to feel like."  The Spirit was so strong and it was so awesome to be a part of it. 

We've been really blessed while we've been here, we've just been spending time finding new people so that's kind of tough sometimes.

Oh, funny story, so we were biking while it was snowing and my gears wouldn't shift so we went to the bike shop and they couldn't fix it because my gear shift was in an ice cube, so that was crazy. I guess that's it for this week though. I love you all, keep the faith!

Elder Wardle

Great Week!

Hi everybody!

We had an awesome week, Olesya has a baptismal date for the 24th! She's pretty excited. Our ward mission leader was there with us for the lesson and we committed her to the date and she was just super stoked and really prepared. One of those people who was just waiting to be talked to I guess. Their family is wonderful, and we're having another lesson with them tonight! 

Met with a whole bunch of less actives and we're starting to see some keep their commitments and it is so incredible to see it happen. On Friday, we were up in the not-so-nice part of our area, so I got to use a lot of Spanish. I can get my message across but understanding the native speakers is extremely hard. I can never understand when they speak so fast. 

Also got to go on exchanges on Thursday, so I was in a car for a day! Elder Hatch is almost done with his mission and he was really cool to be around, he taught me a lot about making sure you extend commitments, because otherwise they aren't going to do anything.

So we rode in the snow on Saturday! I really enjoy riding the bike in the snow, just as long as we get into a house soon after haha. That night during dinner our lock froze so we had to get a ride and then we went back and tried it and it still didn't work, so we stripped the bikes of wheels and seats, so it totally looked like we were robbed. 

So we went over there after church and the lock was cut and my companion's frame was gone! Our bikes were on the same lock so I have no clue why they didn't take mine, maybe they knew I was borrowing it from someone haha. So we went and got Elder Nielsen a new bike this morning.

I love you guys, thanks for being an awesome fam.

Elder Wardle

IT SNOWED and THEN MELTED!

Como estan?

We had a pretty great week and the weather was nice again. It snowed last Monday evening/over the night so we shoveled a bunch of walks Tuesday morning, which was pretty fun.

We live in like a retired community so everyone is older and they like it when two younger guys come and help them shovel their driveway. The snow is basically all gone by now, just patches here and there.

We've been meeting with a lot of inactives and some of them are progressing and others aren't, but that's the way the work goes. Our Russian friend, Olesya, is definitely progressing and her husband, Nils, who hasn't been active in the Church for over 10 years bore his testimony in our meeting yesterday which totally rocked! He talked about how when he was first investigating the Church he made a commitment to stop drinking coffee (He used to drink four quadruple shot mochas everyday) and he never had headaches and never went back to drinking coffee since then because he made a commitment to our Heavenly Father. Olesya is ready and we just need to set her baptismal date.

We also went to dinner with a couple who are pretty young, they don't go to church that much but they are both Islanders, he is Fijian and her family is Tongan. Well, we went to IHOP and they basically made us order twice, so that was fun, not that fun riding bikes afterward though. haha.

Other than that I think we had a pretty normal week. I love you all!

I've started understanding a lot more about why people don't do the things that they know are right. Sometimes they're lazy, or prideful, or scared, or there are a hundred reasons, but what most people forget is that the Atonement is literally infinite, that no matter what we've done, no matter what we've experienced, we can always repent or utilize the enabling power of the Atonement and be healed. We just have to come unto Him, that's our part and then He does the rest, He's already done the rest for us.

I love this gospel and couldn't think of doing anything else with this time right now. Thanks for being such an awesome family. Ciao!

Elder Wardle