Richardsons in Buenos Aires

 We made it through another "every six week" transfer period in which we say goodbye to missionaries who are returning home as we attend the temple with them on Tuesday mornings and then welcome a whole new set of missionaries coming from the MTC's in Brazil and Mexico City who arrive on late Tuesday night flights.   I suppose we have been here long enough and gotten to know the missionaries well enough we are very sad to see some of them leave.   They have worked so hard for 18 months or 2 years and now they have worries about what comes next in their young lives.   These missions have prepared them well for what comes next, we look forward to seeing what they will do. Transfers also means we have new missionaries in our district, both Elder Martins and Elder Luke were transferred to other areas so we are now officially the longest serving missionaries in Pilar which was bound to happen and will likely continue.  We already love the new missionar...

Teaching our English Connect class in the Pilar Ward is in its third week and we are enjoying getting to know our Ward members better through teaching them English.  I tell them that they are teaching me Spanish as much as I am teaching them English.   It's a fun group as you can see from the picture below.  When I'm at Church, they introduce me to others as their "English Teacher" which makes me smile.    During our last class one of the members brought his 7-year-old son to class who sat quietly during the class coloring with colored pencils and paper.  The next day the dad sent me this picture that his son drew during the class.  When asked what he drew he said that when he heard me talk about Jesus Christ during the class he drew a picture of me next to Jesus Christ and we were both kneeling while we prayed.  Sometimes we don't realize how much children are listening to us as we talk with their parents.  I would hope to be able to pr...

 This month has continued to be a month of road trips as we complete apartment inspections for missionaries in the Northernmost areas in the mission.   We just completed a road trip delivering a contract to San Pedro and then heading to Gualeguaychu to spend the night and inspect the three apartments there.  I have learned that each mission has an area that all the elders want to serve in, mostly because they are so far away and often different than the rest of the areas in the mission.  In the Texas Dallas mission, it was serving in Pecos Tx, in Lima Peru North it was serving in Iquitos and in the Buenos Aires North Mission its serving in Gualeguaychu.   It's a town that supports three sets of elders that is as far north as you can go in our mission on the border with Uruguay. It had a beautiful cathedral in the city center with artistic paintwork throughout the building, we have always enjoyed visiting cathedrals wherever we travel.  So many sma...

 With the recent missionary transfers last week, we are getting to know a number of new missionaries in our Pilar District which now includes two sets of sister missionaries in our district.   We took them out to lunch at McDonalds earlier this week and then went to visit new members so they could get to know them and we could get to know those members better also.   Two of these sisters are from the United States, one from Uruguay and one from Peru.  One of the missionaries from the US has a grandmother that lives in Zarate in our mission and she has been able to visit her grandmother while she has been here.  Interesting how many missionaries have some ties to Argentina as they are called here. Visiting these new members is always a humbling experience as they often live in very humble circumstances but have a strong testimony of the gospel.   One of the biggest challenges for these members is simply getting to church which often includes b...

 This past week we discovered that having Easter and General Conference all in one weekend was a pretty special few days in the mission.   The missionaries had over 699 people attend the sessions of general conference, what a great way to introduce the gospel to the people in this area.  We were talking to one set of missionaries that invited around 15 youth on the street to come in and see what was going on in the Church and they all agreed to come in.  I'm not sure they stayed the whole 2 hours of the session but that is one example of how broadly the missionaries try to introduce the Church to anyone they come into contact with each day.   As we have talked to missionaries from South America we have tried to tell them about the Easter traditions we have in the United States and we could tell they didn't quite understand the concept so we made two Easter Baskets for the two Hermanas that live in our apartment complex.   It was a lot of fun ...