Richardsons in Buenos Aires

Biggest news of the week is the arrival of grandchild #13 to our family as a little baby boy, Rhett Nathan Richardson was born to Kyle and Shaylee.   Even over 6,000 miles away from them, our family keeps on growing! It is hard thing for us to think that he will be walking before we see him in person, it all feels right in our hearts to do what we are doing each day here in Argentina.  We have three sister missionaries living in another apartment in our building and we have told them they are "our stand-ins" for our three daughters so they have taken to calling themselves, Allison, Melissa and Kelly and they know which one they are.   Wonderful sisters, we are sad that transfers are occurring this week and we will lose two of them to other zones but happy we will able to keep Hermana Jimenez from Spain or our "Kelly" and a brand new missionary that arrives this week will replace the other two and we will get to know her very well over the next six weeks.  ...

 We continue to gain understanding of how we can help members, leaders and missionaries on our mission as that is the major part of our calling as MLS missionaries in Argentina.   There are three pairs of missionaries serving in the Pilar Ward and we took two of the pairs to lunch at McDonalds on separate days to ask them how we could help them and from those meetings scheduled a night to go visit newly baptized members and begin to talk about the temple and what they needed to do to begin preparing to go to the temple.  We visited 5 families on Thursday night and below are pictures from those visits. Thanks to Elder Carter for being our photographer in the foreground of every picture  :)   It's a bit of a challenge to talk about the temple when they are still so unsure of what it means to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints but we want them to get to the temple on a Ward Temple Trip in March so we want to get them thinking about a rec...

 We continue to have new experiences in Argentina that challenge us in so many ways but doing thi sas a couple makes it rather fun to figure things out or discuss together how we will do something better thant we tried it the first time.   Each day we immerse ourselves a little deeper into the work we have been called to do in the Pilar Ward.   The picture below explains well why the Mission President asked us to attend in Pilar which is about 40 minutes north of where we currently are living in San Fernando. The Ward had 12 people baptized today and has baptized over 50 people in the last few months so there is alot of work to do in fellowshipping and helping them understand better what the next steps are after baptism.   We went on some visits with the Elders Quorum President on Thursday night which challenged us with our ability to communicate and also kind of threw us into how much we still have to learn in working with these new members...both the...

 We continue to get to know the Northern area of Buenos Aires and feel like each day we feel more comfortable driving to places we need to drive to on a regular basis.   Our week mostly consisted of doing missionary apartment inspections and driving out to cities in outlying areas to get contracts signed for new missionary apartments which is challenging given my limited Spanish Vocabulary for Real Estate transactions but somehow we understand what is needed and have been successful for each contract so far.   We love the missionary apartment inspections as we get to know the missionaries, ensure their apartments are safe and functional, deliver a spiritual thought and often leave them a treat.  I have discovered a little sleeve of cookies with a milk chocolate center in the shape of an animal which are quite tasty (Yes, the kid in me still loves animal crackers).  I tell them missionaries if they get the monkey they will have a lucky, successful day.....