Letter #62 Romans 8:24

Hello family and friends. This week was pretty fun. We had a lot of different activities and a lot of success in them. This week with the Ward missionaries was really fun because they are the young men in the ward. So this week was spent with the young men. haha

The young men also won a tournament in soccer this week. They had a stake tournament and they brought home a huge trophey. The young women also won in volleyball... so we have some really legit young people in the ward here.

We ended up having 7 people in church this week. They were: Hno. Riquelme, Martina, Uriel, Pricilla, Josefina, Andres, and Natividad.

Hno. Riquelme is the grandpa of some members here and he decided to come and watch the primary program this week. HE is way cool. Im hoping to be able to go visit him this week because he invited us over to eat some food with him. So hopefully we can share something impactful with him.

Martina is a 10 year old girl that loves to go to church. We found her visiting an elderly lady in our ward and she had a lot of visitors with her. Hna. Aguilera was preaching the gospel to all of the little kids as they were all sitting in their chairs. Then the hermana asked if they all wanted to go to church with her. Martina and Uriel said that they would go and so yeah, they showed up and participated in the primary program.

Pricilla is the sister of Maria Pia and Florencia (girls taht we baptized a couple of weeks ago). she came to see the primary program and she said that she loved church.

Josefina and Andrés are two friends that came to church randomly. Josefina is the sister of Mario (an eternal investigator who never comes to church). she decided that she´d come one day because we always went to visit him. She and Andrés loved the primary programa nd they invited us to a dinner this week as well.

Natividad.... always comes but she just needs permission fromt he mom to be baptized.

Nothing truly exciting happened this week. I am buying batteries today so that i can take a lot more pictures. I hope I receive some pictures in return.

Sorry that this week i didn´t write to much. I dont have much time!

Love you all. I know the church is true. Be safe.

Elder Gray

Photos

Letter #61 D&C 30. . . but if ye are prepared ye shall not fear D&C 136:17

Hello friends and family.

First of all, I just wanted to tell you all that I am sorry that the other letter didn´t get through. There must have been something wrong witht he computer here so Im sorry. I resent the letter from lastweek to help fill in some of the holes. 

This week was awesome!! We baptized again! José and Rocio both were baptized.

José is the coolest dude anyone could ever meet. He´s a lawyer and he´s wayyyyy smart. He was talking a lot about the priesthood in all of his lessons and he is way excited to be able to baptize his mom in a short couple of weeks. Yes, he is now helping us share the gospel with his mom. :D And he is also excited to go to the temple in...... 363 days. haha Really he is one of the most prepared people I have ever met here in the mission. Now we have the challenge of getting the not as prepared people to get prepared to partake of the fruit of the tree of life.

Hopefully I can attach some photos this week so that you can see how cool the baptism was.

Rocio, decided last week taht she wanted to get baptized this week and so.... she got baptized! haha And her other sister Belén went to this baptism and she told me that she wants to be baptized as well. So hopefully We can get her prepared in these next couple of weeks to be baptized. Then hopefully the other brothers and the mom will follow the rest of the family´s footsteps into the waters of baptism.

So yeah, I can´t complain about anything this week. We had an awesome week. Lots of success, lots of lessons, not so many assistances, but that is ok.

So the Paoloantonio family went to salt lake right befor eyou could meet them huh??? INVITE THEM OVER FOR A BARBEQUE. they are a way cool family. But if it all doesn´t work out, you can all come pick me up when my mission ends and we can go visit them here in Rio Ceballos.

We still can´t find the mom of Natividad so we can´t find out if she can get baptized yet.... But hopefully this week we can find out what happened to her. Natividad came to church by herself this week too so that was pretty cool.

During church, they announced that all the Young men are going to be ward missionaries...... WAY LEGIT! so now its just like we have 10 missionaries here in Rio Ceballos working. It will be really cool to see the explosion of missionary work and the explosion of baptisms that we will have.

OOooo i got a story for you all. I almost fainted when we were setting apart the ward missionaries. The bishop invited me to step in the circle to set apart the ward missionaries and so I was like.... ok...... We set apart Ricky, Renzo, Jared, and Gonzalo. Then when Samuel went and sat in the chair, we put our hands on his head, and then the pray started. I was doing good... Then i felt really weird... my hands got really heavy, my head felt like it wasn´t there, i opened my eyes but i couldn´t see because it was all white,.... So i was thinking, "Did I die?" but the prayer was still going so I decided to keep in to it till the end. The prayer ended, I reopened my eyes, told everyone i didn´t feel good, then went into a different room and laid down..... So yesterday i stayed in the pension and slept. Everyone told me that I ate something bad and that ive been working too hard.

But yeah, just like any other transfer, I got sick.... haha

That is the base of this week. I hope you are doing ok! Love you all

Elder Gray

Letter #60 Alma 41:10, 2 Nephi 5:27

For all of you currently following the blog, Sorry this letter wasn't posted earlier. Last Monday was a little devastating in our family seeing as his letter never came through. But sure enough he already had written one but the email just never came so he forwarded it this week! So we got TWO letters today! =)

Wow.... a lot of stuff has happened this week and I can´t believe all the success that we have had. Even though it has been such a slow week for me. It has been full of many different experiences that I can never change and I would never change.

If you haven´t already heard, I am a trainer! I received my newbie this Wednesday and his name is elder Cruz. He is from Ecuador and is reallllly cool. All i can say is that he speaks way better than me even though he has a couple days in Argentina... ;) He has 2 sisters and his mom and dad. He knows a LOT of the scriptures and relates them together really well. Its cool to hear him teach because of how well he relates it back to the person´s doubts. we´ve already had 4 or 5 days this week to work together and I have learned a ton! I hope that it continues like this.

We also baptized this week! Im adding another couple of kids to my gang of stripling warriors. Nicole and Belén were baptized on Sunday. (Sunday because all of the members here were in Buenos Aires visiting the temple.) They were so happy to be able to join their friends in the Primary. The mom also said that she felt something at the baptizm and that she is really going to start getting prepared for the 3 of November to be baptized.

This week we also have the baptism of José. He is legit. He´s a lawyer that first thought our church was a cult. The missionaries first started teaching him about a year ago but now he just barely realized that our church really is true and he wants to be baptized. So yeah, this week, he´ll be baptized by his lawyer friend Hno. Perez. It should be another really cool baptism.

We also talked to the mom of Natividad to see if she could get baptized... So her biggest doubt was that she is "catholic". After about 20 minutes of hearing her story of he listening to the missionaries, us explaining baptism and what it is for, us explaining that babies dont need to be baptized, we simply asked her a question.... Will you pray to God to know if these things are true? She answered after a long pause.... "I have always known that the Elders spoke the truth. I have always known the church is true." I was like..... What did she say?       After our discussion. we told her to pray about it and then tell us what God told her. So this week we are going to see what happened!! :D Im super super pumped.

Man, I am so happy. There are so many blessings that I am receiving for following the rules, being courteous, and serving. I am happy for the time i have been able to spend here. I hope that it never ends. That I always can have the blessing to share the gospel. I love to see the grand change in the faces of the people here when they really understand the gospel. It reminds me of the Mormon Message for youth that has the missionary teaching a guy and you can see the huge change in his face. Go search it!!

1. search youth.lds.org

2. CLick on videos

3. Click on the video entitled "stay within the lines".

4. While watching, notice the difference in the man when he actually has his doubt and question answered. These are my favorite times in the mission. When the spirit really testifies to them the truth of what we are saying, and in a short month, it ends in a baptism... just like the end of the video.

This is truly what has been happening here in Rio Ceballos. People have doubts about life, we come, we teach, they feel the spirit, and their whole appearance changes in an instant.

I really hope that all of us will have an opportunity to share the gospel every day this week. I hope we can all be a blessing in someone else´s life.

Always do what Jesus would do. Our eternal salvation depends on it.

Love you all and I hope you are all ok. :D

Con mucho amor,

Elder Gray

Letter #59: Ask the missionaries!! They can help you!!

Wow... what a blessed week we have had as we have listened to our dear prophet and our beloved apostles. I am so greatful for the guidance that I have received from them and the revelations that I will put in to action. I hope that everyone received the same type of guidance that I received: that to help us to be better people.

I really loved alllll of the talks. They each had a nice message especially directed to me as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. But the part in particular that I want to talk about it the very first thing mentioned by the prophet.

Missionaries can now leave when they are 18 years old! (for males) and 19 (for females). What a great blessing to all of us. I encourage and exhort ALL that are within the power of these words, to please consider serving a mission. Now is the time to go. We cannot delay the blessings that we receive from serving. I can purely testify of all the blessings that I have received here in the mission and I hope that one day I can make an unlimited list of them all. Prophets are called of God to do the work of His Son here on the Earth. I know that President Monson talked with God on this decision.

I also wanted to let you know some other big news that is happening here in the Mission Argentina Córdoba.... We had transfers!! And I am staying here in Río Ceballos. And im also staying with my comp Elder Goates..... And some other big news. We are both training!!! So yeah, I don´t know my new companion yet. He is still in the MTC. I really do hope that he is as ready to serve with all his might mind and strength.

Some other stuff that happened was that the Flia Moyano went to the Conference this weekend. So did José. José also went to the Priesthood session. After that session we started talking to the bishop about how José liked it and he said that he loved it but that he had to go leave and go to work. The bishop then told us that we have to baptize him. During the conference he had a vision of José being the Young mens President and saw him dressed in white just like the Prophet said. Soo.... we have a baptism the 20th.

The only bummer about this weekend was that the Mom of the flia Moyano didn´t end up going to conference so we have to postpone the baptisms of the little girls. They are soooo excited to get baptized that im sure they wont mind the delay for one more week. I sure hope that the girls start bugging the mom about her going as well ;D

Oh yeah, we received a letter from President today and I have a special message for Cassie. The president says, "Mi sugerencia para aquellos misioneros cuyas familias les administran su FB es que le pidan a sus padres o familiares que no lo hagan más y que no contacten desde el FB del misionero a personas de la misión.".....

Which translates to: My advice for those missionaries whose families are administrating their Facebook is that they ask their parents or family members to not contact anyone from their facebook to anyone in the mission.

So Cassie, another big favor that you can do for me. Please just leave the friend requests of people here in Argentina waiting for me to come home and accept them. :D love you cass.

I hope you are all doing amazing! this week was awesome. Lots of miracles and lots of love shared worldwide. I hope you all choose to love your neighbor as yourself and you keep to sharing the gospel with your family members, friends, etc.

Thank you for all of your prayers!

11 months left!

Con mucho amor,

 Elder Gray

Letter #58 Moses 7:18 Mosiah 2:24

Zion!! Our zone, las Sierras, was Zion this month! Woohoo. Every single companionship is the zone baptized. So yeah, today, we are having a big party. We all completed with all of our goals. Our companionship, elder Goates and I, got 3 out of the 5 baptisms we wanted in September. I know that I will always owe the Lord for all the blessing that I have received during my mission. There is no blessing greater than serving him in his work and to watch as his children accept the gospel by having faith, repenting and being baptized.

Florencia and Pia were baptized! It was an awesome baptism. There were like 60 people there. I also had the chance to baptize Florencia. She is so cute. They have read all the book of mormon and are now going to the activities and such. Hopefully I can get some photos of them becuase my camera is being stupid.

I gave blood and I didn´t have to end up getting stiches as well. Yeah. I know. Impressive. I was thinking I would be end up waking up, lying on the ground, looking around as a ton of people are over me but no. I did it, and I didn´t faint. :D Mom will be so proud.

We had another activity with the Young men and young women. The elders in Unquillo invited us to come and play soccer witht he Jóvenes in the stake so of course we went and schooled them all! It was way fun :D

The bishop called president because he wanted to thank the president for all the nice work we have done in Rio Ceballos. The bishop told us that before we got to Rio, there were about 75 people coming to church. Last week he told us that 116 people came to church.... So the ward has been way excited witht eh success we have been having.

We had 6 people in church this week. We had Sergio, Ezekiel, Mathias, José, Natividad, and Ruth.... So 3 new people! The familia Moyano couldn´t come because the mom got sick and so we are going to their house today to see if they can come to church and get baptized as a family in 2 weeks. Im pretty pumped.

Its fun to see all my friends´stories as they are experiencing their missions. And also for all the different stories I hear from my family and my friends. I love you all and I hope youare all doing great!

WE GET TO WATCH CONFERENCE IN ENGLISH!  woohoo :D I hope you all take the time to prepare yourselfs for conference. The words that come out of the Prophet´s mouth are scriptures and we should take them to heart as we do the 10 commandments.

Elder Gray :D