Dear Family,

Thanks for the email. It was really cool. I liked it a lot.

This week has been pretty chill for me. We had interviews on Saturday and which went really well. President Rogers has approved me for the ecclesiastical endorsement for BYU. And outside of that this week has been pretty normal. We have done a lot of contacting, had a lot of weird reactinos people think we are from the CIA, people telling us to leave the premises, and very rarely a person that wants to talk to us in some other moment. So, while things are going slowly they are still moving along and we see tiny miracles each day. I love you all tons and I hope you enjoy this next week too!

Love,

Michael

Dear Family,

This week has been kind of crazy for us. We started playing soccer at 6 in the morning with our Zone Leaders and the missionaries in ) de Julio (that ward shares a chapel with us) and that has been going

Visit to Sarmiento

really well. My companion and I are the two worst players but we are quickly improving and it is a lot more fun to do that kind of exercise than to do push ups and sit ups in the pension. =) Also, this Friday and Saturday we spent the day in Sarmiento. A tiny village about 2 hours from Comodoro in bus with one companionship of hermanas. On Friday we went out to help them find more people to teach and we had a great time. We found a lot of people that were very receptive and had some really good contacts with them. Now we need to bring that same spirit back to my area and find some people to teach. And on Saturday we went out with the Carter

Elders Applegate and Sirrine

family (they are senior missionaries that are working in the mission office) That was a blast and a reminder that things will always go bad right before a baptism. We were going to go out and come back by bus but the bus was full at 1 and the other buses wouldn't really be a possibility. So, we called around and at like 5 we got in the truck with the Carters to go out to Sarmiento. It was a good experience and I really loved the drive. It is a lot different in a truck as opposed to a car.

Elder Applegate Burning an old tie

Elder Sirrine looking over Comodoro

The Road to Sarmiento

And on Sunday my companion played a musical number in sacrament that was beautiful. It was the Paul Cardall arrangement of ´A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief´ He did an amazing job. And that is really all that happened this week. Outside of that things have been pretty chill. Hope you all have  a great week and I love you all tons!

Love,

Michael

The Work Goes On

Dear Family,

Thanks for the emails and for the spiritual thougts. I really do love to hear about them. To answer your questions mom, my companion has been out for about 6 months. We are working great together, both of us have the same desires for the area and we both have good ideas for how to work. Well, the investigator we have is doing good and we are trying to find more people. We have a couple of people that we have lost contact with and some people that a member wanted us to teach that didn't really want to talk to us. So, it´s been an interesting week. This week we have some ideas for trying to find more people so we´ll see how that goes.

Comodoro Zone

My mission president has not told me anything about an endorsement to attend BYU. We have interviews on the 21st so I can ask him then or I can send him an email and see what he says. I don´t know if I´ll see him outside of that. And I think that it would be fine for dad to sign me up for classes that he thinks I would like.

I don´t know if this is the most spiritual experience of the year but on Sunday I had a really cool experience with Elder Carter. He is a senior missionary that is working in the mission office and comes to our ward. Yesterday I went with him on a visit and we went to a member´s house that said she had a person for us to teach. When we got there we found a 17 year old girl that really did need the Gospel. She told us her life story and it was kind of crazy. She´s had a lot of bad experiences and said that she was in a bad place right now. So, Elder Carter and I taught her a bit about the Gospel and shared some scriptures with her and then we offered to give her a blessing. She accepted the blessing and when Elder Carter gave the blessing you could feel the spirit super strongly. That was definitely a testimony builder about the power of the priesthood and the blessing that it is to have it.

The things that I love most about my area are that it is different and that we meet a lot of people. My area is mostly downtown with a little bit of neighborhood so we have a lot of apartment buildings, lots of people in the street and a lot of businesses. So, it is different from all my other areas that were all houses. It makes it a bit more difficult to find people that live there when you contact in the street but we do get to meet all kinds of people. I have met people from all over Argentina and last week we met a member from Chile. It´s really cool to be here and see how different people are.

As a district leader I have learned to prepare ahead of time, to teach better and to show the missionaries in my district that I care about them. I love them all and now I need to show it and help them to do their work the best they can. I am really grateful to be a district leader because it has put me in situations that I otherwise would not have been in and has helped me to learn to do things that I didn´t really want to do before. It´s been a good learning experience for me.

My current favorite scripture is Doctrine and Covenants 63:23 On Sunday we were talking Luke 4 where Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that He was the fountain of Living Water. And Elder Carter (who was teaching the class) said that the Living Water was a spiritual water. And then he asked the members to share about what brought them to want to be members of the Church, what was their thirst? It was a really cool discussion. And the reason that I like the scripture in D&C is because it tells us "But unto him that keepeth my commandments I will give the mysteries of my kingdom, and the same shall be in him a well of living water, springing up unto everlasting life." I like this because it tells us a bit more of how we can have this well of living water inside of us. That as we are obedient and do the things that God wants us to do we will learn more about the mysteries of the Gospel and that those will well up inside of us and we will be able to have eternal life.

Outside of all of the things that I have told you the other big events this week were two big meetings that I had on Wednesday and Thursday. On Wednesday we had a big meeting with all of the leadership of the mission where we talked a lot about how to be like Christ when we teach and how we lead. It was really good. And on Thursday Elder Viñas of the 70 came to visit the mission and he taught us a lot about the Atonement and had us share about how it had affected us personally. It was a really cool lesson and I learned a lot. Then he told us the things that we needed to do better as a mission and how we could work better as missionaries. He was very direct and was a very good teacher. I really liked listening to him and I learned a whole lot about how to be a better missionary. So, I´m going to apply what I learned and try to be better. Hope you all have a great week and I love you all tons!

Love,

Michael

Dinosaur Park - Farewell to Elder Cardwell

Hey Family,

Fun at an Outdoor Dinosaur Park with Elder Cardwell

The problem was just the SD card. I have another one now so I´m going to send you a lot of pictures this week. My companion is a great guy. He is almost a clone of me so we work well together. He´s from Arizona, he has four brothers and one sister. He´s a good worker. I like being with him. My investigators are doing alright. We found a new lady named Carolina who´s pretty cool and Gaston, the one who was going to get baptized is having a lot of problems right now. We´re trying to figure out things for the moment.

Elder Sirrine and Bronto

Comodoro District

Elder Cardwell and Elder Sirrine

My week has been long and boring. We have done a lot of contacting and not had too much luck. It has also been really hot this last week. But, we did find a person who had written a book about her experience being an investigator and learning about the church. That was interesting. She doesn´t want to be baptized but I think she knows this is the true church so that´s kind of odd. We also found Carolina in a member´s house. She is the friend of the member and knows a lot about the church. Now she wants to study the Book of Mormon with us which is going to be really fun. I´m looking forward to talking to her. ANd that´s about it. Happy to get your emails and for the pictures, love you all tons and hope you have a great week!

Elder Sirrine

Love,

Michael