Mar 20, 2017

Hola - Not much to say about this week. I finally feel all settled into the new pench and we seem to be getting back into a rhythm.  We have been seeing a few cool things happen recently.  I fasted this week and the week before just for a few people in the area and I can say now that we are better able to understand their needs and help them out a bit better.  We have also noticed a lot of power from pray this week.  Its helped us teach better find better and just be happier.  It was funny the other day we went to go look for and investigator who told us just to knock on his door until he gets up so he could come to church so we did.  We knocked and knocked and then we started sing hymns and then songs from the movie frozen in Spanish.  He eventually got up but he wasn’t too happy and in the end he didn’t come to church.  Church was good though we had ward council and we got some good plans happy about that.  I’m sure missionaries say this a lot but members are key to baptisms, if you don’t use the members you will almost never get a baptism.  Today has been pretty fun though, we played some soccer with some Bolivians, they were not even that good.  The only bad part about today is my comp likes to sing so he has to go do choir practice.  But this week we get to go to the temple on Thursday!!!!!!!  pretty pumped, I’ll be sure to take some photos for that but hope all is good up there. Chow 

Elder Maller

Mar 13, 2017

Hola.  This week was a little stressful, not gonna lie.  On Wednesday we called the pench (office) secretary to see when we were supposed to move in and right after he was like hmmm why not tomorrow?  So we just had to ditch all our planes for that day and get ready to move everything in about 24 hours notice haha.  I think only missionaries could pull this off btw.  It’s funny, I took a picture of all the stuff we actually live out of and it’s not that much somos pobres haha.  That day we moved just about everything in but the office Elders had to leave a little early so we finished the next two days but those two days were awful.  I’m starting to understand the importance of cleanliness because we couldn’t just feel the spirit with all the boxes and everything being all scrambled.  Thankfully as of last night everything is back to normal.  Yesterday we also had Stake Conference which was pretty good.  President and Hermana Robertson spoke at it.  President also put on a family home evening for all our investigators in the zone.  I’m gonna miss President, can’t believe he goes home at the end of the next transfers nuts eh. Last night, because we live right above the other elders of Atalaya Ward we had a banana pancake dinner with candles haha and because we live above them too we go play soccer every morning its sooo fun.  All in all it turned out to be a pretty good week.  Hope it’s starting to warm up for you guys haha, here it’s pretty cold in the morning. Have a great week y’all

Mar 6, 2017

Hola Elder Jacobson and I are off to a great start!  He is a pretty cool guy, sort of a mix of Boston Shipley and Connor Cameron.  He is from Arizona and he is basically a cowboy.  He makes whips and they’re pretty sick.  Were gonna have an activity and make some soon, but if you throw an apple in the air he could make it explode with the whip, it’s soooo awesome.  Other than that Elder Jacobson is cien por cien focused.  He works hard and we really are just hoping to rock this area; pretty exciting stuff.  Today we found a Burger King!!! hype eh.  I knew I had to get a whopper except it was 160 pesos which is kinda expensive for food but its good stuff.  Something cool happened the other day.  If you remember me talking about one eternal investigator hermana Corzo, we were able to find out that she had depression and she said the missionaries never knew this about her and there is no record of this in the teaching records.  She said that the missionaries before were just like “when are you getting baptized!! when are you getting baptized!!” and apparently this made things worse.  But we were able to talk to here all about it and now she says she’s gonna send in all the papers to get married so she can get baptized!!!  She even said she wants to get baptized the same day she gets married!!!!  We are now gonna start working with the son so the both can get baptized same time but will see how thing go.  We are pretty hopeful, crazy though she has been investigating for almost 9 years now!  

I’m doing really great and am so happy to be here.  Any youth reading this know that this is truly where you want to be.  We never should fear doing good in any area it applies but it’s especially true in the mission.  I love you all and hope you guys have a great week!  

Feb 27, 2017

Hola.  Transfers!!  Elder Udall is going to the Marcos Paz district and Elder Maller is staying in Los Pinos with Elder Jacobson!!!!  Just found out like 5 minutes ago.  I’m gonna stay in Los Ppinos for another transfer with Elder Jacobson, don’t know much about him except he is from Arizona. He is  gonna be the district leader also. I’ve heard a lot of good things about him so far from the other missionaries. He’s a pretty calm guy but loves to work, which is just what we need.  I have been really happy these past few weeks, it’s just been really easy to live in the moment out here even though this area isn’t having a lot of success and were still struggling to bring people to church. The mission really is great I worry sometimes that I’m not gonna learn all that there is to be learned out here or do all the that Lord wants and needs me to do out here because really time out here fly’s by.  Btw I hit 4 months today!  It may seem to you guys like I’ve been away forever haha, but I seriously get nervous about the time here and how it works because when a moment passes it’s gone - like now. I would say this week has also been the worst for weather so far especially because they shut off our water and then our electricity and those nights were pretty hot without a fan.  Hottest day this week was 42 degrees with humidity! 

Love Elder Maller

Feb 20, 2017

Hola.  A lot more news this week! including investigators!  They all got a lot of potential too, which is great. We had divisions in Atalaya the other week with Elder Cortez and Elder Mayorga.  I was able to make a deal with him and I got to sleep in his bed instead of the floor in their apartment that night.  That night he said at around 11pm just after I had fallen asleep, he was awake on the ground next to me and I apparently rolled over and started preaching to him in my sleep hahaha.  He said I shared a scripture and testified to him that these things are true and will bless his life hahah.  Right after that I said amen and my head just hit the pillow and I fell back to sleep hahaha.  The best part about this is that I was preaching to him in Spanish!!!!!  So idk but I think that counts as the dream!! (they say once you dream in Spanish on the mission then you got the language) Elder Mayorga even said that I didn’t have an accent or anything and that I was probably speaking it better in my sleep than while I’m awake hahah.  That got me pretty happy and hyped for the rest of the day.  I was also offered this week by two mothers to marry their daughters after the mission, it was even weirder cause they were in the room at the time, haha one of the mothers was a bondista to haha.  I couldn’t imagine having bondista in-laws and I don’t want to either. Transfers are also coming up this week. Elder Udall is gonna likely leave with 6 month in Los Pinos!!  What a trooper he still going strong too; great guy.  I was reading in Jacob 5 a few days ago and I felt something really special as I read.  I especially loved verses 21-23. Hope everything back home is good and that the weather is starting to warm up for you guys love ya. 

Feb 13, 2017

Hola.  Not much to say about this week.  We did get caught in the rain though, wasn’t that bad.  We had interviews with president also and it’s pretty likely that I’ll stay in the Los Pinos area and maybe with a Latin companion, who knows eh.  We also found a Walmart today and there’s a mall right beside it that is so American, it felt pretty weird being there.  All I’m thinking about right now is General Conference.  Elder Udall downloaded a ton that we listen to every night, man they are so much more meaningful to me.  Was recently reading in 2 Nephi 26, there’s a great verse 24 and 25 I’ve realized more and more that as we extend commitments and promise blessings how really important that is.  There isn’t one thing we do in this church that is not necessary.  It all is important, God wouldn’t ask us to do anything that doesn’t have any significance. The trick is to just keep helping others to realize this.  Eh if you guys want to look up the villa called the Fuerte Apache, it’s the second poorest villa in Argentina and it’s in the mission, Elder Udall has been there, apparently its nuts. Love y’all chow.

Feb 6, 2017

Pretty good week, we’ve been finding a bunch of new investigators lately.  Not sure if it has anything to do with the changes, but that seem to be the focus in this mission right now, which is to just find find find. On Friday we had divisions with the zone leaders Elder Dye and Elder Oyarce.  I went with Elder Dye and man, we have all the same likes.  He’s from Idaho, but we did the exact same stuff before the mission.  Together we went into what’s called a villa.  I never thought anything like this existed.  It’s nuts just look it up, it’s like a maze of poverty with dogs and garbage everywhere and it smells bad to.  We spent a lot of time there and the people are really nice though they would just listen to everything we had to say and they accepted it all.  They would ask really good questions too.  That area (La Tablada) does pretty well cause almost the whole area is a villa.  It was really humbling to be there.  I thought a lot about them and their situation.  They don’t have much to be happy but they just carry on.  Saturday we got caught in the rain but kind-of a blessing cause it’s a lot cooler out right now.  Hope everything is great back home love yalll

Elder Maller