64 Days to go...

¡hola familia! gabriel got home from buenos aires this week and really liked it. we met with him and the lesson went very well and we ended up having him pray right there to get his answer. it was a very powerful moment and he felt the spirit very strong. he said that he felt the way he did while he was in the temple. it is a little frustrating though because even though he has his answer and he wants to be baptized but he likes his wine and he doesn`t want to give it up for now. he says that in the future he will feel more prepared to make that change. i guess we need a little patience with him and continue to support him as he makes those changes. he went to church yesterday, he participated, the members make him feel very welcome and he is excited to be there. i just don`t want him to be an ´´eternigator´´. it has been kind of tough this week. our area got really dry and we dropped a lot of people because we feel that they aren`t going to progress. i have been talking a lot with my companion and we made a plan to really include the members in everything we do. i feel like we are running by ourselves and we aren`t getting things done that way so we are going to have a different focus this week. elder syddall and i are thinking about our vision for our area and for our zone and developing goals to be able to attain that vision. we talked a lot on the bus and we are excited to get our plan going. we realized that the members in our ward don`t have enough faith, because in the last 2 years, our ward has only had 6 baptisms, and the missionaries before us have been working without them. we can`t have the success we want without the support of the members. we are going to work with them this week and invite them to do little things in the week to help their friends and families accept the gospel. we ask them to help us but our vision is to get our area to the point when we have to help them with the work. here in centro, we feel like that is the only way to be able to progress. in the zone, we had 2 baptisms. we had to travel to 25 de mayo on friday for one of the baptismal interviews and it was awesome. everything went very well. our zone is picking it up and it looks like we are going to have baptisms every week in the month of septiembre. we are very excited with the progress we are making. this week, elder zeballos is coming to our mission and our zone conference with him is going to be this thursday. i`m kind of nervous because the president lovell`s assistents told us we are going to have to rendir cuentas to him. we are working really hard but i don`t feel like we are doing it very effectively. i feel like our zone can do a lot more and i want it to reach that potential so we are going to talk with our district leaders and have each companionship think about their vision for their areas for the rest of this year, and set goals to make it a reality. dad- percy syddall is my companion`s grandfather. in my time here, i have never used my personal debit card to buy stuff, and this week i realized that it expired last year! things have kind of slowed down but i know that things will pick up a lot this week. i`m looking forward to it and we are ready to work even harder! thanks for writing this week! con mucho amor y animo, elder summers

72 days to go....

¡hola familia! Jamie- ¡Happy Birthday! i hope you have an awesome day on Friday and i will be thinking of you all day! This week was another awesome one and i learned a lot. we had our zone conference on friday and it was great because president lovell came out with his new vision for the mission and announced the new standard. he wants us to focus more on the investigators that we have so that they progress instead of finding so many news in the week. we talked a lot about how we can help the people we teach progress and a lot of that comes from our planning. we talked about lucas 14:28-30, and our preparation. we do that with our studies in the morning and we talked about how we can plan and practice what we are going to teach. another new change in the mission is that every missionary is to study the language for one hour every morning before leaving the apartment. we now start our day at 11 instead of 10:30. we found paola again, and she didn`t read what we left her. we feel like her boyfriend (he is a member) is discouraging her because he doesn`t want to go to church again. he says that he isn`t ready to make changes in his life but he knew the gospel would help paola feel better about her family`s loss. it seemed like she kind of lost the spark but we are going to see what happens. gabriel is awesome because this week he went to buenos aires to check out the temple in the open house with his brother and the youth in our ward. he should be coming back today and his mom told us that he was feeling great. we are so excited to talk to him tomorrow and see how he is doing. azul is awesome too because she invited a friend to go with her to church with her little sister. the girls get along very well and they look forward to going to church every sunday. the thing is with her is that she is unsure about getting baptized. we are talking with her and her mom to try to help them get baptized together. that would be awesome. florencia is losing the spark too. there isn`t much more that we can do for her, she isn`t reading, praying, going to church, interacting with anyone outside of her house... it is sad for me but she doesn`t want to do anything. we are going to stop visiting her and give her a few weeks because she isn`t progressing anymore. the sellman family from oregon is doing great. the thing is that the mom doesn`t want us talking about God with their kids. we went to the kitchen with the dad, jose, and we talked with him for awhile about what is going on and he really opened up to us about a lot of things. he explained to us how a lot of terrible things have happened to him and his family and he is bitter with God, but he has a lot of questions about why we are here and about the true church (because he had a bad experience with the Catholic church). we asked him to give God another chance and he promised to read a part of the Book of Mormon that will help him. he thanked us for listening to him because he hasn`t been able to talk about those things for awhile and he felt better. we are hoping that he can feel the love that God has and that it can open a new door for him. in the zone, we have gone 3 weeks without a baptism. that`s really bad. it looks like this week we are going to 25 de mayo again for some more baptismal interviews and we are going to talk with gabriel and challenge him for this weekend as well. Thank you for the package! i got my package last monday. i am taking more pictures now. elder cortés wrote to me today. he told me that he can definitely feel the difference not being missionary any more and that it is not the same trying to teach people about the gospel. i imagine it would be like peter parker without the spiderman suit. that`s why i am grateful to be here and i`m taking advantage of my time while i am a missionary. i am thankful for all of your support while i am here. i love you guys! con mucho amor y ánimo, elder summers ps- jamie, otra vez, ¡feliz cumple!

79 Days To Go...

¡hola familia! it has been a crazy week but it has been fun. i get along really well with my new companion, elder syddall. i took pictures with him but for some reason, i can´t send the pictures on this computer and that really bothers me... oh well. things are going well and i know that we are going to have a ton of success this transfer. i am thinking that i am going to be finishing my mission with elder syddall. crazy thought. he is half samoan, half tongan. he was born in new zealand, lives in california and he plays the ukulele. he was the missionary in allen that got cut in the face by some anti american and he almost died. you can probably see something in the news about it. he has an awesome scar. we got a reference for a woman that is the girlfriend of a guy that isnt going to church but he wanted us to pass by because he knew that we could help her. recently, her niece passed away and she didn´t understand why things like that would happen. we taught her about the plan of salvation and it was an awesome lesson. with elder syddall we teach really well. afterwards her boyfriend explained to her about blessings and she asked us for one so she could feel better. she told us that she felt really calm and she felt good about everything. during the blessing, paola had a very warm feeling. we set a baptismal date for the first of september. i don´t know when we will have our zone conference with elder zeballos but we are going to have one conference this friday with just president lovell. i talked with him and he said that he can do my interview afterwards to get my ecclesiastical endorsement. he says that he only has to go over the moral code with me so it should go well. there have been quite a few changes in the zone and we are really excited. all of the sister missionaries are going to train new missionaries. elder syddall is really excited to start as a zone leader and i have been going over a few things with him. he has a lot of energy and it is fun working with him. on sunday, gabriel went to church and he brought his mom and his little brother that are already members but haven´t been attending. gabriel still hasn´t prayed yet and we are thinking he is scared of his answer. during sacrament meeting, the bishop asked for a few testimonies from my comp, and other members, and all of the testimonies were about how God listens to us and answers our prayers. pretty direct. gabriel offered to go with the youth of our ward to visit the temple in buenos aires before they rededicate it. that should be an awesome experience for him. azul and mili finally made it to church as well! they loved it and they were so excited to be there. they got along with all of the other girls too and are looking forward to next week. it has been a week since we went by their house because of all of the changes and we didn´t have time to go to their neighborhood in parque industrial. when we got there, the girls dropped the cane and told us we needed to visit more often. they are 10 and 7 and they love praying, reading the scriptures and singing hymns. we just need to get their mom to go to church too but it is hard for her. she is very supportive of the girls and wants them to go to church. one sister in our ward brought them on sunday and they were all very happy. brother nuñez did baptize his family and it was very special. they are active in the church. he blessed the sacrament on sunday for the first time and he taught the class in priesthood. his daughter jenifer is getting baptized on the 25th of august. i haven´t got my package yet but i haven´t heard anything from my district leader. the bolsa goes to him. omar finally had his operation on his shoulder and he is feeling better. he has a fecha for the first of septiembre to get baptized, and we found a guy named alexis from paraguay that now has a fecha as well. we are very excited because we feel like we are really progressing. last night the bishop invited us over to his house and we talked about a ward mission plan to help have more baptisms in the ward and reactivate more members. we are really looking forward to this next week! sorry i could´t show any pictures this week. maybe some other day. i hope everything goes awesome for you guys this week and i´m excited to see more of your pictures! i love you all. thank you for your letters! con mucho amor y ánimo, elder summers

86 days to go...

hola familia! hey! i am writing really quick just to let you know i`m still alive... i haven`t had the chance all day to write because there are a lot of changes. i am waiting in the bus terminal right now and a whole bunch of missionaries are passing through and i have to supervise them and make sure they all get their bus tickets. my companion finished his mission this morning so i am here alone and it is a little stressful. my new companion is named elder syddall. i have never met him before but i heard that he is from california and his family is samoan. he is arriving in half an hour. i don`t have very much time. this week was awesome though. we had a zone training that my companion and i had with all of our elders and it went very well. there we talked about the goals we set for our zone and we practiced some things that we needed to improve together. it turned out great. it has been really crazy this week. 2 elders were kicked out of their apartment so they are searching for a new place, and our zone was changed a lot this week. 3 missionaries are going to train in the zone so we are excited to get some new missionaries. next week i will have more time to write, but now i`m going to see what i can do for my school endorsement. i love you guys! have a great week! elder summers hey! i just got my school stuff done. i am going to call pte lovell tonight and see if i can have the interview over the phone... but everything is good. elder syddall is awesome and we get along really well. we are chilling at the terminal waiting for one more elder to come in and he hasn`t written his family yet so i figured i could take advantage and get that endorsement stuff done. everything good. transfers went well last night. really crazy, and the other zone leaders in neuquen didn`t do anything. there were a ton of missionaries and i had to direct them all and make sure everyone went to take out their tickets. the last missionaries left at 12:30 and we went to bed at 1:30 in the morning. i am a little tired today but i am feeling good. elder guillen, my comp from cinco saltos left last night to bariloche and a few families i knew came to see him off. there i talked to them and found out how all of the investigators we found together that were progressing were baptized after i left. sandra, carmen, jose, rene, and franco were all baptized and they have callings and are attending church every week. franco is going to serve a mission! i was so excited to hear about that. it was great hearing about them all last night and it gave me tons of ànimo. everything is going great and i am looking forward to a great week with elder syddall! con mucho amor y ànimo, elder summers