Christmas

Oh how sweet it was to hear my family this christmas dayª"  I was touched by your words of love and can÷t believe that a whole year has gone by without your warming hugs  There is a lot of work to do here in Uruguay but let me tell you, there is a lot of work to do in Arizona tooªªª  ;)  I had a great time chatting with you all and was blown away once again at the beauty of our family and home.  There are so many blessings that i took for granted.  I am humbled every time i remember what kind of life i lived before the mission.  Here, i am in a GREAT ward/area and yet i am STILL in humble circumstances.  I love my family and love the joy that comes from conversing with them.  It was great to see all the Instagram photos.  I was unable to download them because they are not JPG files.  If they are JPGs i can download them and look at them during the week on my little dvd player. :) for future reference.

Ju´st to give you a glimpse of what i am going through right now, in this instant... i am in a "Ciber" or public computer lab and i have a drop of sweat dropping of of my nose every 10 seconds, one dropping off of my elbow every 5 and my white shirt looks as if i have been dowsed with a hose!!! hah.  It is so stinking humid here that i sweat GALLONS of water everyday.  Oh well, we keep working anyways! ;)

Today we played basketball again and i tore up the court! helps when only 4 people on the court know how to play. ;) i`m not quite like lo` McKay!!! looks like he is doing quite well!  Hope to hear about his success.  Let me know if he is planing on going to college and where!  Mission updates if there are any. :)

All is well in Uruguay, just surviving the heat.  we had quite a turn out from the ward`s activity for the end of the year, almost 100people came to see the primary do a skit about the birth of Jesus and then we did an activity with the ward to show them the importance of working together.  We had a sunday FULL of blessings.  records in every aspect!  We had 102 people in church (Normal we are 80) we had 2 investigators (the two that we were not expecting to come to church) and 6 less actives!  WE just got a returned missionary that got home and he is super excited to help us.  I know that we are going to see GREAT blessings in this ward!

Love you all!!

Elder Reay

12-17-13

Otra foto de mi compañero y yo.  Tristes que vamos a cambiar áreas pero sabemos que los traslados vienen de Dios.

The last day with my companion.... hard thing to grasp but it had to happen! haha :)  Elder Macavilca and i had a great change together and we have both ended up BETTER missionaries and better men. :)  Some day you will all get to meet him!

This is called the Mastil in las piedras.  Outside the stake building.  we arrived early to a meeting and took some photos before we left for a huge tri-zone conference

The zone leaders just walked in to write their families.  One of them is going home tomorrow.  Super crazy to trry and understand the feelings he mush be experiencing

This ismy district!  We ROCK! :) haha

Having fun in a house full of latinos... now we will have a house full of GRINGOS!  everyone is leaving the district.  ALL the latinos left... the three gringos stayed.. :) my only chance is that hermana Coon and Hermana young train a latina so that i can practice my spanish! haha

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Sorry i forgot to tell you about changes last week!  haha. i got home and told my comp that you were going to kill me. :) just so you know, every six weeks it is going to be this way... haha.  I am so excited for CHRISTMAS!  quite sad that i am not going to be spending it with elder Macavilca, but my new comp is from my group!  Elder Parker.  He is from louisiana and has a THICK southern accent.  I will probably pick it up a little. ;)  I set up a Skype profile and sent the username and password to dad`s email so you guys can connect to one of your lap tops or something to make sure there aren`t any bugs.  We have a member here named Josè Fernandez Paz, he used Skype all the time and has his computer hooked up to a television screen.  Maybe i will ask him to connect with you one day this week.  If he does, i will tell him to do it at 10 o`clock here, i`m pretty sure that will be 5 o clock there.  he speaks little to no english,k but served in Mexico as well as his little sister.  They are a great family and it is a huge blessing that they are going to let us use their home.  He, (Jose) will connect with you and send you and instant message through SKYPE to let you know when were going to do it.  We are allowed to Skype the 24th or the 25th.  When my new comp gets here we will see what fits his parents better as well.  So if everything goes my way i think that we will be calling you the 24th but the time is depending on you guys.  We could also try to do it early christmas day.  So when you all wake up, we can talk! I like that idea, but we will see. ;)  I can`t wait to see you all!  We get one hour each. :) Presidents permission.

Ok... So here are some fun facts for you... this week i had one of the FUNNIEST experiences with the Spanish language.  When you are learning a new language,you learn rapidly how to make it look like you know what they are saying when in reality... you`re lost.  So this week i got a text from a member (the members that are going to let us use their house for Skype) and she asked me if we had gotten ahold of the "Pigs" for christmas... I had NO IDEA what she meant.  SO i asked my comp and he said, "she must just be messing with us, pigs are super expensive here." so i texted her back, trying to flip the joke back on her and said, "We heard that YOU were going to buy us one for the christmas season!" she said we must have confused her with the other Majo in our ward and so we left the "Joke" at that.  two days later (Yesterday) we were having lunch with them and Majo`s mom asked us AGAIN if we had gotten ahold of the pigs for christmas.  I looked around confused and they all looked at me, i said, "why do you keep asking me about the pigs??" and they said that they had been looking for pigs all week because WE had asked them to!  My companion and i looked at each other and said, "We didn’t ask you to look for PIGS!!! why on earth would we do that??!!"  Then we started looking though the conversation on her phone and come to find out... a week ago i had sent a text to Majo asking for LEAHONAS.... but i misspelled it and put LECHONAS which means pig here.... haha. we laughed so hard! they spent a WEEK looking around uruguay for cheep pigs.  haha.  They had COUNTLESS conversations about why on earth the elders would want pigs... especially because they are so stinking expensive!  We laughed so hard yesterday.  That will be an inside joke with this family for forever.

Here in Uruguay, NOBODY has ac.... instead, everyone buys those outdoor pools.  EVERYONE.  almost every house has one outside their home,and oh how i wanna hopp´on in one!  It is BLAZING hot here.  

We have a baptism this week!  Super excited! his name is Michael.  (My-cole) and WOW let me tell you he has progressed way faster than we expected.  He has schizophrenia but has medications that keep him normal and in a right state of mind.  When we teach him... you can feel his spirit reach out and touch you.  He has purchased a suit, white shirt, tie, a briefcase (For all the pamphlets and books we have given him) and he has come to every activity and church meeting since we met him.  THat includes, 2 activities of futbol, 2 sundays to all the reunions, 1 big family home evening held by the ward, and is currently helping us re-activate his neighbors!  He is a missionary at heart. :)  He will be baptized on the 21st as a christmas present to all of us. :)  

I love you all so much!!

Merry christmas!

SEE you in a week!

12-09-13

Nine years old?  Pa!!!!!! mi hermanito está creciendo cada vez mas rápido!  Feliz cumpleaños hermano.  Te quiero.  I can`t believe that there is less than one year left.... seriously. like it doesn`t enter in my brain. haha.  My whole mission I have had those little "Memories" moments when I remembered "What happened a year ago...” ha-ha.  Now, every time I share a story about something that happened a year ago, it will be missionary stories!  Ha-ha.  :)  I love being out here so stinking much.  There is just no way to describe it in English.  Saturday we had a zone conference where our stake president came and spoke... let me tell you, there is a LOT of work to be done here in Las Piedras but the Lord has called one Brilliant man to lead the bishops and branch presidents in our stake.  He helped each one of us break through in revelation for our own areas in HOW TO WORK WITH THE MEMBERS AND LEADERS!  Man it is so stinking important.  We had 3 investigators in church today.  Let me tell you.  I love missionary work.  It has been hard to have such and INCREDIBLY long time without progressing investigators or investigators in church.  But yesterday, we had legitimate progress as THREE non members showered and got ready yesterday to go to the chruch.  Today all three of them came to play Futbol with us and when we ended, they all wanted to know the next time we were going to come over to their house!  One’s name is Michol.  He is a super soccer player and schooled us all today, he understands doctrine as it is taught to him... without delay.  Haha.  So many of our investigators have HUGE barrios that impede their progress in accepting the Gospel, but Michol is ready, he is 21 years old, has a kid but is not married nor living with the mother, and is currently fighting a small case of skits-o-fren-i-ee-ah.  No idea how to spell that. haha. But when we are in the charlas, HE explains to his parents the doctrinal points that we have discussed and then his parents learn even more!  oh it is so beautiful... the other two investigators are Braulio and Nahuel.  Nahuel has some real learning disabilities.  We have had three lessons with him already and wow... things are moving slowly.  It is quite a blessing that his mother is able to teach him along side of us.  She is a less active that we have recently re-activated and she wants her son to get baptized so so bad.  But we have to make sure that he makes the division for himself and that he understands the doctrine.  Braulio is his Uncle... (the brother of Nahuel`s mom)  But they are both the same age. haha.  Kind of a "Westover family" ha-ha.  They both are 12 years old and super interested in futbol... like most kids their age. Ha-ha. but Broulio has a special ability to bring the WHOLE world with him. He is a very popular kid and when we have charlas with him, almost the whole neighborhood is in the house because he is there.  We are excited to see his desires to learn the gospel because we know that if he decides to be baptized, we will see many more young men make the decision.  

Can’t wait for our Christmas scype call!  This Christmas music is getting me super excited. :)  I love the Christmas season!

Thanks so much for the quote.  I have told many people something around those same lines because they always say, "if your church preaches so much about families and how important they are, what the heck are you doing on the other side of the world for? I mean you can’t even write them or call them save ONE day a week! What are you CRAZY?"  Interesting to see how powerful it can be to answer them telling them that i left my family and comforts of the Usa so i could stand in front of THEM, and teach THEM how to improve their lives.

Love you all.

Until next week, keep looking for miracles and find those less actives who need some help.

Love

Elder Reay

P.S.  Can’t remember if I told you or not, our church has been burnt down for almost two months now and we have our Sunday meetings in las piedras, the church has contracted a large buss for everyone to make it there.

12-1-13

P-day to celibrate the 14 baptisms that we had in our zone!  Our xone is used to getting around 7 or less per month.   Date is wrong in the camera...  This was today

We had three baptisms this week!   Super excited. :)  Wish you guys could see the happiness they had in their faces as they entered that very ICY water... haha. :) even though the hot water heater shut off the day before the baptism... It was a very successful service.  ;)  We are seeing some real promising work here in my area, there are about three hundred inactive members and even more that are not registered in our files.  Just yesterday we found two people that were baptized in Las Piedras and then moved to our ward without telling anyone.  It is quite hard working in small wards, makes me think about how small our ward must be now that they split us up.  How many active members are attending?  There is quite a lot of work to do.  We have this one less active named Ana Maria.  She is an EXTREME smoker, she has cut back significantly and STILL smokes 25 sigs a day.  She is the only member in her family but has such a beautiful testimony that it touches me.  Her husband reminds me a lot of Ronney our neighbor in his views of the church.  I am hopping that they will all be able to band together and help Ana Maria get to church again.  Her son is great. His name is Pablo and we are trying to teach him, he just plays futbol all day everyday so it is hard to get him to sit at the table when we show up for the charla.  

Yesterday was fast and Testimony meeting and let me tell you how amazing it was to have 90 people in church and see so many youth stand up and bear their simple testimonies, our recent converts also stood up and bore their testimonies, along with our powerhouse bishop.  Bishop Dos Santos is amazing and super focused on missionary work.  He is always talking to the members about the DESPERATE need to LOOK UP and sees how many beautiful missionary experiences there are around them.  Everyday our members pass by opportunities to share the gospel and it is all out of the lack of focus.  We are working on focusing our members more on missionary work, and boy what a task... Helping missionaries to focus on missionary work is a walk in the park! Even for those rebellious elders... But members have some CRAZY schedules, so it is proving difficult trying to teach them how to implement missionary work into their daily lives.  

I am the prelude piano player now in our ward, man I lose myself in the keys...  I wish I had more time to practice so I wasn’t playing the same three songs I’ve come up with this year.  Ha-ha.  

Sure was nice to see you all bundled up heading to the football game, next year i`ll be going with you. ;) haha.  I love flagstaff so much, can’t wait to live there and be back in the woods again. ;)  Let me know how things are going with my scholarship, it has me a little pre-occupied.  Thanks for all the photos.  That really does my heart good to see you all in your daily get to gethers. :)  Oh how wonderful it was to see Grandma’s living room so full of loved ones, to think that I have gone a whole year without setting foot in that room, without seeing all of your smiling faces. ;)  Just wish you could see the members here and how much they truly help us with our physical needs.  The Iturria family is amazing... when we come back to Uruguay, they are one of the first families on the list. :)  haha.  The mom reminds me so much of my little sister Chelsea, so full of love and ready to help everyone that comes her way.  She is defiantly my favorite member. :) I know I’m not supposed to have favorites.  But when they are so much like my family, you just Gotta love em. :)  I’ll try and send you a photo next week, as well as a photo of my comp and I in our cowboy hats walking down the dirt roads of 18 de mayo, sweating our butts off. :) Ha-ha.

I love you all so stinking much and don’t forget it!!!!

Love Elder Reay

P.s. Christmas is coming. :) get that Skype account good and ready. :)