Final letter from the MTC

Dear Familia,

That is so sweet that you had 5th row seats to that Worldwide broadcast! Everyone here was so pumped about it. Hopefully all of the members catch on fire with missionary work! How do the members in the states feel about it all? It sounds like they are really wanting the members to get a lot more involved in finding people to teach.

Everything is going great here! Its my last P-day in the MTC. That is crazy talk! I'm excited to get out in the field and get work done. This last Proselitismo was the best ever! I am still so pumped about it even though it happened a week ago. Elder Henrie and I went out there prepared and the Lord put people in our path. It is amazing how being specific in our planning works. We tell the Lord where we are going to be at what time and he puts people that are ready to hear the message in that exact spot! I don´t have time to tell you about all the great people we met but I will tell you about a few. We went to this section where we planned to be and we were right on time and we barely caught this guy who was going in his house. It turns out his girlfriend is a member of the Church but he has never really heard about us. He was really interested in a Book of Mormon so we gave him one and then we asked him if he found these things to be true would he be baptized and he said yes! In all we committed 4 people to be baptized.  Towards the end of the day we went into a little store to buy some alfojores and we ended up talking to the cashier for ever! It turns out that she has been  searching for the true church for awhile now because awhile ago she got hit by a car and was in a coma for 3 months. While she was in a coma she had an out of body experience and saw a bunch of people in white robes and she saw this church that she knew was true. So ever since she has visited every church she sees because she is trying to find this true church. So we gave her the address to the church near her and she said she was going to go to it! The area we were in was really nice but at the same time it was more sketchy. We talked to these 3 guys and they told us ¡Cuidado! Don't go up that way more, its dangerous up there... Well guess where we had planned to be next? In that dangerous area! So we went up there but it wasn't that bad. Maybe they were talking about a place further up. Anyway, the Lord blesses us so much! Last Proselitismo we were humbled and this one he placed so many people in our path! This time we were also a little more direct with the people. I found out that you can't have an ounce of timidness in you. We talked to everyone we could and even if they didn't seem interested we still taught them. One guy we went up to didn't want to hear our message at all but once we started teaching him about the Plan of Salvation he became really interested and we got his contact info. I finally learned why we ask people to be baptized so quickly. We are giving people a goal to work towards. It also helps to find the people that are actually interested.

The MTC has been so good too me! I have learned so much here and it is going to be sad to leave it. But I am also really excited to get out into the field. President Openshaw is the MAN! We have classes that he teaches and he opens it up to any questions that we have and we answer it with scripture. We have gone way deep into the scriptures and its awesome! It gets me excited to go and study my scriptures on my own.

We have been playing a ton of soccer during Actividad Fisica... I think I missed my calling in life. haha. We usually have all of the athletic white kids that have never played soccer on one team versus all of the crazy good latinos plus the one college soccer player from the US on the other team. Us gringos actually do pretty well! haha I´m like a brick wall on defense, nothing gets by me! jk It’s a fun time.

Well thats about it. I love you guys! I will be able to send you a short email on Monday to tell you my itinerary and what not. Give everyone a hug for me! When you get back to Farmington look for my letter. I have no clue how long it takes to get to you guys.

Love,

Elder Lacey

Fourth Letter

Dear Family,

Two more weeks left in the CCM! It is crazy how fast it goes by! I have already been out for a month. That means that I am 1/24 of the way down. It sounds like a lot of things are happening up in the States though. I got your letter and Luke’s first letter last week and that is all that I had received. But today I got like 10 letters! I haven't had time to read them all yet though. I am going to write you guys a letter today though so I'll be able to respond to them. LUKE, we don't have sushi down here. Its very sad! :(

That is so cool that Luke is going to football camp and enjoying it! That is to bad about Jacob. I hope everything is alright with his shoulder.

I heard we are getting a new President! He sounds like a great man! And yes, we do get to watch the World Wide Leadership broadcast. Everyone here is flippin’ out about it because it is supposed to be some big announcement but I guess we will see what it is.

I can't believe Braquel is going to the Philippines! Tell her congratulations from me! That is going to be such a great experience. I'm glad to hear everyone there is doing well! Give everyone a hug from me at the family reunion.

This week was a pretty regular week. We went proselyting again in the same area but we got humbled this time. It was a colder day so all of the nice grandparents were inside (It is funny that I use the word cold because I was wearing a short sleeve shirt while all the Argentinians looked like eskimos) So basically we didn't have much success. We went and talked to this group of 6 guys that were just chillin’ on the street corner smoking and drinking. I was being really friendly and laughing with them but basically they called me "feo" which means ugly haha! It gets me pumped when people reject us like that because it gives us a chance to show them how nice we are. I shared a little message with them but they weren't too interested. My favorite is when you knock on a door and they yell "QUIEN ES" and we say Somos misieneros de la Iglesia d... "Go away!" Haha!

So Hermana Bell is in my District and she is the one that knows the Jenk’s family! Anyway she had to get her appendix removed this week! So that was pretty crazy. Also Elder Jessop dove into a pole during Actividad Fisica. He popped right up but he had the biggest knot I have ever seen on his head. I was close to him so I went and grabbed him. He blacked out so I was just holding him in my arms and I was trying to keep him awake. He had the knot the size of a baseball... I am not kidding. It looked like his head was going to explode. The Lord definitely blessed him because the next day he wanted to play basketball! We didn't let him but after 3 days he has made a complete recovery. I was honestly scared for his life when I saw the knot on his head.

We are getting a new shipment of Missionaries today, 0 North Americans and 50 Latinos. So E. Hobbs and E. Klauck have to move out of our room. Its sad because me and Elder Henrie are way close with them. We are definitely going to learn Spanish 10 times faster though!

Everything is going well though! I love and miss all of you. Keep me posted on everything that is happening up there.

Love,

Elder Lacey

THE CHURCH IS TRUE!

Third Letter

Dear Family,

That is so great to hear about everything that is happening! Missionary work is the best! I am so glad that you were able to have such a great missionary experience. I will pray that everything will go well with the family you are teaching. It gets me pumped up to hear about missionaries doing work! Also, thanks for sharing all of these scriptures with me. I have a pretty good system now with my scriptures. I have that little book all tabbed out now and so whenever I find a good scripture I write it in that book so that I can remember it and then I put a little note next to it about my impressions I had when I read it. So keep the scriptures coming! 

That is really cool that Perry used something from my letter in his Mission Prep class! I wish I could be back there so that I could teach the guys that are about to go on missions. I have learned so much in these past 3 weeks about what a missionary actually is and how to teach.

Buy Mikey and Dad something nice for me! Tell them happy Fathers day (and Happy B-day to Mikey). 

Anyway, there are some beautiful sunrises that I get to see everyday from outside of our classroom window. It rises over the Temple so its pretty sweet. I'll try to get a picture of it for you one of these days. Also, the other day it was really foggy. I'm not talking about New Mexico fog, I'm talking about some of this South American fog. I could barely see the temple and it is like 30 yards away!

Last Saturday we finally got to proselyte!!! It was so much fun! I can't wait until this Saturday so that we can do it again. So my companion and I got on a bus with like 6 other companionships and they drove us to a part of town an hour away and dropped each of us off at different locations. So here my 6'5 companion Elder Henrie and I are standing in the middle of Buenos Aires all alone and we can barely speak Spanish. They did drop us off in a nicer area of town though. You could tell that it was nice because there was only graffiti on 50% of the walls instead of 100%. I am grateful for the USA. The roads have these massive holes right in the middle of them so busses swerve into oncoming traffic all the time to dodge them. I am amazed that I haven't seen 20 crashes already. But anyway, it was a little scary at first. We didn't really know what to say, but after we talked to a few people I figured it out a little bit. We got to talk to a lot of old people and for the most part they were all really nice. We always asked if we could help them with whatever they were doing at the time but they always said no. But we ended up talking to them all and shared brief messages with them. We placed 2 copies of the Book of Mormon and we would have placed more but they only gave us 2! The best experience we had was we were walking down the sidewalk and we saw this guy buy a huge thing of beer and sit down with his friend on the curb. His friend saw us and got really excited. He waved us over to talk with them so we did. He started to talk to us really fast in Spanish but I caught most of what he was saying. To make a long story short it turns out that this guy was an inactive member but his friend and never heard of the Church. They both believed that religion was inside of you but they love God very much. We talked with them for awhile right there in the street and we shared a message with them but they wanted to talk more! We asked them if we could get their address and they decided that they would just show us where they lived. So we walked to one of the guys house and went inside. It was basically a garage with a bed in it. There were piles of dirt everywhere! We ended up talking with these guys for an hour which is probably to long but it was worth it. We were able to give them a Book of Mormon and we told them that some other missionaries would come by to teach them. Before we left we prayed with them and they wanted to hold hands so we did. I offered the prayer in Spanish and while I was praying they threw in some words of praise so that was interesting. After I was finished praying they each wanted to pray. By the end they were both crying. It was a really cool moment. Hopefully the other missionaries will be able to teach them soon. They wanted the missionaries to come over the very next day!

This experience really motivated me because now I know what I need to learn. I wanted to be able to teach them more but I need to learn more Spanish first. After we taught them we were able to teach a few more people. I don't have time to tell about everything that happened but basically all that you need to know is that America is awesome, the gospel is true, and... if I don't get mauled by a pack of dogs before I am done I will be surprised. DOGS EVERYWHERE. And not the nice ones either. I walked right by this dog that was laying down that I didn't see and it tried to bite my ankle off. For some reason I didn't even flinch though. I just said "Hola Perro" looking back I should have jumped out of the way! haha but it didn't get me so we're good.

Oh, one other thing. Jalfajores are the best thing ever! They are South American candy bars that are usually filled with Dulce de Leche so basically.... I'm going to get fat :)

I am sorry that I can't get to the other things that happened this week! There have been some good experience. Yesterday President Espalda (I don't know how to spell his name) gave a talk to us. He is an an area 70. But it was so great! I felt the spirit really strong. I just want to get out there and teach some people the gospel!

Anyway I love you guys so much! Tell everyone that I love them! Give Natalie a hug for me. She is so cute! That is nice of her to save up her money for me.

Lots of Love!

Elder Lacey

2nd letter

Dear Family,

There is a saying here that everyone says- "The weeks are short but the days are long" and it is so true! Sometimes I feel like I have been here for a month but time goes by really fast. Everything is going really well here though.

A week ago we all got to go to the temple and that was a cool experience because it was all in Spanish. The Temple here is Awesome! It is so beautiful. We get to go again later today. We were able to take pictures this last Sunday because the older missionaries were leaving so I will try to send a few of them to you guys. We are already the top dogs at the MTC now. We get a new shipment of missionaries today and we will be the group that has been here the longest. It is crazy how much we have all matured in the 2 weeks that we have been here. We have all learned so much.

One of my favorite things about being a District Leader is when I have to give lessons. I get to give them in English but the past 2 times that I have given lessons I didn't even know about it until 10 minutes before hand. They have all turned out really well though. I usually share a scripture and then talk about how it applies to us and then we discuss it as a group. The spirit is so strong when we have those types of meetings just with our district. My district is so awesome! We all get along really well. We did just find out that we are losing one of our companionships because the President decided to create a new District so that is a bummer but we will still be able to see them around.

On June 2 one of the Hermanas in my District was struggling because she didn't think she was good enough to serve a mission. She felt like she didn't know enough about the gospel to serve a mission. She was having a really tough time so I offered to give her a blessing and she accepted my offer. It is so amazing how blessings work! I know that the Lord spoke through me in that blessing. There was no way that I could have come up with the words of counsel that was given to her. It was a really great experience and she has been great ever since then. She said that the blessing was exactly what she needed to hear. Also, one of the Elders in my District was really sick. After 2 days I suggested to him that he should get a blessing. I anointed and his companion gave the blessing. Once again it was a great experience. The words that were spoken were not from his companion but were from God. The spirit is constantly here and I love it!

Learning Spanish is interesting. Sometimes I feel like I am fluent but then a couple hours later I can't remember a thing. In the mornings and at night I have a hard time speaking Spanish but in the middle of the day I am on fire. Its like I am on a roller coaster! But I can tell that I am learning.

Okay. President Openshaw is the man! We have these devotionals every once in awhile and he asks anyone if they have any questions. The Elders and Hermanas here take full advantage of this time. There are some crazy hard questions that are asked and he can almost always answer them through the scriptures. And it is all through memory. He will here the question and then say "Turn to alma 5:10" We will read that and then he will explain it and then he will have us go to 5 other scriptures! Its crazy.

Lately I have been so hungry all of the time! I am eating a ton though so it is weird. I am also addicted to Dulce de Leche now! haha At breakfast they have these little packages of straight Dulce and so we all horde them and save them for later. Yesterday I had 3 apples and I covered them in Dulce de Leche. It is better then a carmeled apple... I'm telling you. And it is really healthy too.......

I love you guys so much! You are my inspiration as I study out here in Argentina. Keep up the good work Luke! I love you buddy. Tell the rest of the Fam that I love them!

Love,

Elder Lacey

PS- Did i tell you about Elder Cook and the message he gave to us? I can't remember if I told you but it was awesome