Richardsons in Buenos Aires

 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 ...