Is it really Valentine´s Day?

It´s so weird to think that it´s Valentine´s Day. Here in Argentina, it´s just another Monday that is dreaded by workers, whether they be single, married, or dating.

It´s Elder Wagstaff´s (our District Leader) last Monday in the mission, so, naturaly, we made an asado. I love the meat down here. I wish we had these cuts up in the states.

Things are finally starting to change here in Casilda. Kind of a bummer that it took so long because Pres. Zanni sent me a text the other night and said "Start saying good-bye to people, but don´t get trunky!" (trunky is like homesick, or when a missionary gets it in his head that he´s about to leave and looses his desires to work). So I think I´m going to get transferred this next week.

One thing in particular is we finally have an investigator that we can totally count on to keep her commitments and not bail on our appointments. She is a super loaded 50 year old psychologist (psychologist´s down here are really respected and make a TON of money). I find her proffession to be really interesting. I say that because the first time we met with her, she totally opened up to us and told us everything. Every problem she has. Everything she´s gone through. Everything. The mission is a really interesting place, I doubt there is any other setting in the world where a rich middle aged woman would tell two 18-year old kids all her problems, and expect them to know what to do to help her out. It blows my mind.

Another thing is the church attendance. We have been stressing the importance of coming to all 3 hours of church a ton, and finally just switched the schedule, so now we have sacrament the first hour, and priesthood the last (most wards in Argentina have sacrament last). We thought that there would only be 5 people (Branch pres and the 4 missionaries) in sacrament last week when we started, but, we have about 30ish people last week (we´d been hovering around 20) and we had over 40 yesterday. That hasn´t happened since November. It was really awesome to see so many people show up to take the sacrament and renew their baptismal covenants. Thinking about those American wards with 400+ people seems unreal and dream-like to me. 40 seemed crowded and full.

The pride cycle is real. Every time I humble myself, I find myself thinking something really prideful, and then I end up killing the spirit and just damaging myself. I think that´s the thing about pride, it hurts us more than anyone else. That´s one thing I´ve learned here, pride hurts us more than anyone else. Everytime I get prideful, I always do more harm to myself than good. So I recommend to all of you to not get prideful.

Anyways, sorry this letter is kinda weird. Kinda rushed cuz our time for P-Day got cut, and we didn´t find out until we sat down and read the letter of the president.

Hope you all have a great Valentine´s-Day!

Elder Brown

D&C 43:35