Been over a year! But I'm still here don't worry!

How is it going? Thought I would write a quick email to keep you all updated on the past week at least. I am currently in my last area, and I am coming home in about 2 months. I have loved my mission so much. Truly a life changing experience that I am going to continue to build upon for the rest of my life.

 I am currently serving in Resistencia, the capital of the mission serving as Assistant to my mission President. Last transfer I was with President Reber, but we recently changed President´s last week and now I am with President Barlow! It has been such a unique experience learning from the both of them and their Christ like examples. 

But I thought I'd share a bit about what's going on in my area and in the transition of Presidents. My area is Barrio 2, and it is pretty famous for being the hardest and most dangerous area in the mission. There are some pretty ugly parts at night, but we have been pretty cautious so nothing has happened. But on Thursday, a man with a knife threatened to stab my companion and I for 500 pesos! Luckily we escaped him and ran to a member´s house, but it was definitely a scare. 

On Monday, we had some plans to go to an area a bit far from our apartment, but we felt an impression to go visit our Bishop and see what members he would like us to visit. We got there and talked for a bit, and he mentioned a less active member that we have already tried to visit many times. We went anyway, because you never know what can happen when a member refers to someone. We got there and talked with Hermano Arriola who mentioned that he had a neighbor that we had also talked to who was a member. Again, you never know. We clapped at the door and a man who was visibly irritated that we had stopped by at about 9 o'clock at night, told us he would text us if he had time another day to have a lesson with him. I tried to be more personable with him and said that I liked his shirt because it was a Muay Thai MMA shirt. It softened him up a little bit to where we could talk a little about the UFC. Still a bit annoyed, we gave him our number and went home. When we got home, we checked our phone and Manuel had left a text saying "10am. Tomorrow in the chapel. Be there." and nothing else. We were a bit shocked and the next day, eagerly headed over to the church building, where we found him waiting outside! We walked in, showed him the chapel, and I played "Come follow me" on the piano to start the lesson. When we started, we asked him a few questions to see why he was interested and he totally opened up and told us about the feelings of guilt, anger, and regret that he had felt for his past life and the need for peace that he had. The spirit was so strong as we testified of the gospel of Jesus Christ and his healing power in our lives. This is truly my favorite part of the mission. Testifying of truths that I have seen change and bring hope to my own life. I am so grateful for Jesus Christ. Those feelings of guilt, pain, anxiety, depression, bad habits, whatever it may be can be washed away through faith in Jesus Christ, true repentance, baptism, the gift of the holy ghost and enduring to the end. We invited Manuel to be baptized and he accepted. For years he has been rejecting the missionaries that have stopped by his house, and that day the Lord had mercy on him and changed his heart because of his true desire to change. He has been reading the book of mormon daily with his wife who is a member of the church. He told us in the next lesson of the immediate peace he has felt has he has kept his commitments to read the book of mormon, pray to God, and go to church. Jesus Christ is truly the Healer, and the Savior of the world. I am grateful for the witness of the Spirit that I have received of this truth and the evidence of it daily in the lives of others and myself.


Now this part is about the change in President the past week.


I am so grateful for the Reber´s. They have changed my life and perspective on the love the God has for his children and the importance of keeping the commandments. I truly will miss them very much, but it has been so cool to be hands on getting to know President Barlow!! He is such an energetic and happy man who loves God so much. We picked them up from the airport and immediately got to work with meetings and presenting them to the office Elders. It was an emotional whirlwind saying goodbye and hello to 2 mission presidents! His wife is the sweetest lady and his daughter Betsie also is so awesome! President wanted to get right away visiting all of the mission, and so we did a week long tour with them, driving them around the different Zones meeting missionaries and having brief testimony meetings with them. On one of the trips, my companion, who doesn't have a Argentine Drivers license yet, got pulled over by the police, who threatened to fine him and put him in jail!! I looked back to President Barlow thinking that he would solve the problem, but there were just crickets!! I tried to explain the situation to the officer, that we are doing a mission tour, and how I was tired from driving and how we decided to switch off because we have just been waiting for the license to be processed. The officer went away to write up the ticket, and by a miracle, came back and told me to drive the rest of the way home and to be more careful!! We definitely had a laugh when that happened. We got to the city of Posadas at our hotel at about 12 o'clock at night, where they told us that the reservation had not been booked and that they were completely full. We desperately searched for a hotel, and another miracle! We found one with only 2 rooms left. So many miracles this week!! It has been so cool getting to tour the mission, definitely hard for our area, but we still had our friend Veronica who went to church! I am going to put some pictures in here to show a bit of the trip.


I love you all so much! I love the mission, and am going to miss it a ton, but I am truly grateful for my testimony and conversion that is growing daily. I miss my family a lot, and to see them I am excited, but I truly want to cherish every last moment of these months. I know Jesus Christ lives. He loves each and every one of God's children and knows them by name.

I loved this sweet letter from Luke!  So great to hear his words instead of mine :)  Here are a couple of other details he shared with us on our call...

• Elder and Sister Reber were late to the airport to pick up the Barlow's and so when the Barlow's got off the plane it was just Luke and Elder Suarez....no sign like they usually have welcoming the new missionaries.  So Luke felt bad like it was anti-climatic :)
• As they were leaving the airport President realized he forgot his bag in the airport.  It had an ipad and other expensive electronics.  They started to run back for it and there was a man running out of the airport with the bag looking for them!  What a tender mercy!
• Luke has loved being with President and Sister Barlow as they experience all of their "firsts" in the mission and in Argentina.
• Luke didn't realize how much a new president doesn't know.  President Barlow even asked him if he and Elder Suarez have an area or if they are just with President the whole time :)
• Luke was amazed because each zone they went to President Barlow shared a similar message but it was very different each time.  At one zone he shared about when he and Sister Barlow got their call.  They had a personal meeting with President Nelson!!!  
• Luke was impressed because a couple of years ago Sister Barlow felt prompted to learn Spanish so she went back to school and got her degree in Spanish.  So she knows a lot of Spanish but they were speaking a lot of English so Luke had to keep translating for Elder Suarez.
• After one of the zone conferences President and Sister Barlow and Luke and his companion stopped by McDonalds before heading out to another area.  Suddenly a bunch of missionaries had the same idea and started piling into McDonalds.  President Barlow was excited to meet all of them (Luke was a little anxious because he knew they would all want to come talk to President but they were in a bit of a hurry to get to the next area).  Then all of a sudden President says "I'll buy you all lunch!"  WHAT!!!!  ha ha ha Sister Barlow leaned over to him and said "I don't think we're supposed to do that!"  President Barlow said "Well I'll just have to ask for forgiveness"  ha ha ha
• When they went to El Dorado President and Sister Barlow were supposed to go to the branch there.  They decided to attend another ward.  So Luke and Elder Suarez went to the branch and as they pulled up the Branch President ran up to their car and as they got out he shook Luke's hand and said "President it's so great to meet you!"  He thought Luke was the mission president!  ha ha ha.  Luke and Elder Suarez texted President and Sister Barlow and told them how bummed the branch was that they weren't there so they came to the branch a little later.  Unfortunately the branch president was in meetings and didn't get to meet them.  Later they went to dinner at this branch president's house and he was in tears because he didn't meet president.  He kept saying "I can't believe I missed the chance to meet an apostle of the Lord!"  Well he's not really an apostle! :)  Elder Camacho was there and teasingly piped up and said "Well at least you got to meet President Rose!" ha ha ha! 
• Luke is really loving President Barlow.  He is so fun and outgoing.  Last night as Luke and Elder Suarez were leaving he gave them a hug and said "I love you so much, you are like my sons!"  

What an exciting week!!!!  I'm so happy the transition is going so well.