March 25, 2013

Dear Family,

Sounds like an awesome spring break. I´m kind of sad I wasn't there, but I think I probably had more fun here. Sorry, haha. I hope you guys will get home ok! 

Oh yeah, so I have covenanted with God and everyone to have the greatest week of my whole mission. So I'm pretty pumped. La noche blanca is this saturday, the classic uruguayan bishopric got a little overwhelmed with that announcement in sacrament meeting, so they just called me up and had me do it. So we had two baptisms lined up for that night from us, and there was like thirteen more in the zone. But then... opposition struck. So now one of our investigators can't get baptized this saturday and we're thinking about dropping her for a few weeks to help her realize that the gospel is more important than she thought it was. But the other one is basically a guaranteed baptism, EXCEPT for the fact that she got sent to her grandma's house for bad behavior, haha, so we had to beg the hermanas that live in that area to teach her the charlas until she comes back. And we might have to leave our area to teach her this week, but she's the daughter of an active lady, so she's basically already in the water. Our only other firm investigator is a seventeen year old kid named federico, who is in dire need of the gospel. He needs a lot of direction in his life, he's just kind of doing whatever comes up right now, and spends like 12 hours a day playing Call of Duty. But he recognizes the feeling of the spirit and loves God, so I think he'll put his life in line as he begins to excercise faith.

Yeah, and also we had the craziest sunday ever yesterday, couldn't even begin to tell you about it, but the highlight was that Elder Kempton and I had a really cool spiritual experience where I was able to give him a pretty special blessing. It just reminded us both that God really knows us. He watches over us and worries about our problems just like we do. The only difference is that he helps us to solve our problems and bear our burdens.

Oh yeah, it's starting to get quite chilly at night. And the cereal was divine. Everything disappeared really fast from that package, because I live with four elders now, so all the Christlike sharing really makes stuff disappear quick. 

I totally forgot to bring my camera with me, but Elder Kempton and I have been on this quest to get a picture with this legendary goat that lives in our area. And I got some really funny ones, so I'll send them next week. But that goat is sharp. It already knows what we're thinking. So most of the pictures are of me chasing it around, trying to be in the frame with it.

I got a letter from Halmoni today, but nothing from grandpa yet, I think she said that he wrote one...

Ok, so I had my interview with the president this week. I asked what his plans are for me. He gave me a bunch of confused ramblings. Well, he wasn't confused, but I was after listening to it. But the zone leaders got the lowdown. They say there's three options for me. 1)Elder Kempton leaves and trains somewhere else. I train here. 2)Elder Kempton stays for this next change, then he goes home and I train. 3) I go to the offices and become a secretary this change, and Elder Kempton trains. So...yeah. It'll be interesting, whatever happens. And I'm basically pumped and ready to go now. The language is flying, I've kinda caught the vision of the mission. I'm pumped to work. I would love to train someone, cause honestly i just love helping people. And this saturday is my seven month anniversary! Woo!

Ok, love you all, bye!

P.S. Read alma 32 and think about how many times he says that faith is not a perfect knowledge and also when he says it. Pretty interesting. 

March 18, 2013

Dear Da,

I hope you caught the irish accent i threw in for you there. This week was just great. As a zone and stake, we've been working on this thing called la noche blanca, where we're putting on a big old baptismal service the thirtieth, with all the missionaries in melo working the lights out to get a bunch of people. As expected, there was opposition. Elder Kempton and I were working with 4 people to get baptized that day, and not a single one decided to come to church. Even though we went to all their houses and woke them up. So...yeah. We're still gonna have maybe two baptisms that day from us, and the future looks very bright. The members love us, and they keep giving us well prepared friends to teach, so this area is just golden.

It is very good to hear news from home, as always, and good work Thunder. Tell aunt trisa that I just barely got a letter from them and it was very motivating! I am so excited for James, Jory, Jake, Ethan and all these other guys that are about to leave. They are going to have the time of their lives. Especially James. He's going to discover the legend of the Mate. Uruguayans and Argentinians run around all over the place with a thermos of hot water stuck under their armpit and a cup of mate, which looks and smells pretty weird. But they all drink it. Every single one. It's like pouring a bit of hot water into some fragrant grass, then drinking it through a strainer. Kinda gross, but I'm probably bringing some home.

So here we go, answering questions! My health is finally awesome! I'm good to go. But all the toe injuries took their toll. I'm weighing in pretty heavy, like 178. But I've been doing so many pushups and pullups, so a lot is muscle. I look pretty different now. I was just fat before I got to melo. I was weighing about 186, yikes. But I've been steadily losing weight for three weeks now, so the future is brilliant. Sleep has been getting easier for me. For the first six months, I was like I always was at home, just taking forever to fall asleep. But I've just been getting more and more tired through the course of my mission, so now I get knocked right out. And not being cold cause i'm in a toasty sleeping bag helps too. I definitely feel the Lord strengthening me all the time, because I am just exhausted every day. It's so mental too, because I just spend all day worrying about people. And spiritual experiences wear you out. And last night we found a new investigator at like 7:52, taught him a lesson, and then we sprinted home to be there by eight, so that made me pretty tired.

As to opportunities to teach, I teach. And we solve problems. I'm getting so much new experience here, and the best part is that the language issue is all but gone, so I just talk with people. I have really grown to love talking to literally everyone I see. It makes me feel like I'm not gonna miss any opportunity that the Lord would give me. Bearing testimony to random strangers and feeling the spirit touch them is so cool. So thanks for all the prayers, everyone, because I got soooooo much help learning spanish.

Elder Kempton and I do work. We get along great, almost too well, haha. I love working with him too. He's a great missionary, a real example of diligence. I just hope I'm not ruining his discipline too much!

Ok, last bit of news, basically all the email restrictions are gone. So anyone can send me emails now, and I can answer! But keep sending letters, I like those too.

LOVE you all!

Remember Ether 12:28

Love, Elder Pyper

March 11, 2013

Good day, everyone!

The week was just ok this week. It was obviously totally fun, but I´m still learning a lot of lessons about how missionary work goes. It´s weird, cause in Carmen it seemed like no matter how hard I worked, nothing ever happened. Here it´s the opposite. If I didn´t work as hard as I could one day, I feel awful, but still a member shows up and gives us six references basically just ready for baptism. So I am still working on my diligence. But we`re getting better. Living in a house of four elders makes it way harder to exercise discipline, but I`m off to a good start this week.

So the sister missionaries are there in enid huh? Are there only two for the whole ward or did they just replace one set of elders? Oh yeah, I didn´t even burn my sock. I totally forgot. But it's totally fine. I just didn`t want to burn a tie. 

So yeah, basically here in Leone the amount of people to teach that we find just depends on the amount of people we talk to. It´s very very interesting. So this week I´m trying to reacquire my good habits of talking to everyone, no matter how late you´re running. It`s the only way to show to the Lord that he can put those people in your path and you`re going to talk to them.  My comp's only got like two months left in his mission! So it's anybody's guess what's gonna happen to us here. I hope I kill him off, because I'm starting to get scared of responsibility. If he goes somewhere else his last change, that will just be very interesting for me. WE'll see what happens.

RACHEL. Happy birthday!!!! You're only one year from the best year and a half ever

I've been thinking a lot about familes lately as well, because I'm seeing firsthand how much better the plan of salvation works in families. The problem is, families are almost a thing of the past here. If you find a family that has kids, is married, and not separated, then it's just a miracle. The majority of the converts in this mission are teenagers. So I want to baptize families. I'll keep you updated on how the family search is going.

So here's the cool spiritual experience of the week. All four of us are getting ready to leave the house, and the zone leaders leave like two minutes before us. As we're leaving, they're coming back up the stairs to tell us that Angel (one of the converts here, a 15 year old kid) has run away from his house, and is waiting for us outside the church. So we go down there, let him in and talk with him a bit. His story is really sad, he's an orphan who's been shunted from foster home to foster home his whole life, and he had just had enough verbal abuse, I guess. So as he tells us this story, I'm desperately praying, asking to know what to say. The answer comes, "you can't say anything, you have no authority here." Then I thought, "Then we need the branch president here RIGHT NOW, please." And lo and behold, the man walks in ten seconds later, and didn't have a clue what he was doing there. Just purely following the spirit. So he went back home for a bit, we're still trying to figure out if he's gonna stay there... But it was awesome to see someone being an instrument in Gods hands as an answer to my prayers. Our president is a real stud.

So we do have daylight savings here. We accidentally all woke up an hour late last week. But this week it was for real.

DyC 75 2-5. Best scripture ever.

Read it everyone who's going on a mission.

Love you all! Have the best week.

Elder Pyper

P.s. I made a bet with a kid this week that if I made a penalty kick on him, he'd have to come to church. I buried it. He still didn't come to church.

March 4, 2013

Dear Family!!!

As an answer to your question, I did transfer this week. I transferred here to melo. I have kind of the outskirts area, but it's quite large and there's a lot of people. I love it. I love all the members and people here too. It's crazy, I almost became fluent overnight when I got here. I think it's because the people speak better, there's a little more education here. But what a contrast to carmen.

I feel as if the Lord has set me free out of the refining fire. He's given me all the tools I could ever ask for, blessed me with the gift of tongues, for real, and given me a huge opportunity. He's said, "Let's see what Elder Pyper can really do." I just gotta keep relying on him and working. I really think the only thing that could hold me back here is my own level of effort. The branch president is a twentyseven year old stud, there's a group of recent convert teenagers that are excited to share the gospel. The sky is the limit here.

My new comp is also great, another gringo. We have bonded quite well, and we're excited to work. I also live with the zone leaders now, which is way cool. One of them is my twin. We have a ton of weird similarities.

I got a sweet batch of letters today, including from Melanie, Chloe (Hood rat), and BRECK. It was inspiring to hear from you all.

But yeah, that's about it. I guess I'll ramble a bit more.

If you noticed that I took a solid chunk of money out of my account, it's because I ordered a sweet pair of scripture cases. If rachel goes on a spanish speaking mission, I'll totally bring her some scripture cases for her spanish scriptures.

Ok, two things for rachel. Can you tell emilie that I think she's good to do whatever? And also, can you send me the Phantom Goatee picture? It's the one of me and garret flexing traps shirtless and he looks like bane.

I can't believe sister missionaries are coming! It makes sense, because the number of sisters in our mission is going to double in the next two months, so they got to put them all somewhere. Yeah tell rachel to get out there. And tell her to start studying with preach my gospel. It's money.

That snow is nuts. Stay warm. I got the package as well. Everyone says thanks.

Also elder francis is here in the zone. I saw him today and we had a therapy session, haha. I love this man.

OK bye! Love you all! Take care of yourselves and watch out for drunk less actives! (No one's thrown or shot a rock at me in 5 days!)

Elder "El Fuego Inextinguible" Pyper (Mormon 9. Good chapter)

Feb. 26, 2013

Hello dear family. 

The week was so good. I am feeling really optimistic. We've been trying to use family history as a hook to find investigators and increase retention and activity. We finally had a breakthrough with that this week. We got the only young man in our branch totally hooked on family history when Elder priedeman and I found out that we're both related to william the conqueror. So we're very very distant cousins. It's good that we're relatives cause our companionship is already over. Your very own Elder Pyper is off to big city to face some new challenges. But the lack of people will not be one of them. Carmen was a tiny tiny village and my new area is apparently in a big city. So that's good. I'm excited to learn how to teach better cause honestly I didn't do a whole lot of teaching here. It was finding finding finding. So tomorrow night I'll be in Melo. It's way in the interior of uruguay. But it's a biggish city. I think there's a few hundred thousand people there so that'll be nice. Really I'm kinda bummed out that me and elder priedeman have to go seperate ways. He's like my best friend in the mission now. But my new companion is named Elder Kempton and apparently he's awesome. Vamos a ver.

So I guess everyone's going to BYU. Congratulations to rachel and emilie. And tell rachel to keep thomas away from emilie. BYU is a blast they're going to love it.

Did you get any snow? How's the weather out there? It was super rainy this week and I was on an interchange with Elder Dallin on monday. It was raining buckets and elder Dallin is a brand new elder. So it was an interesting day going around completely soaked and doing everything for us haha. Hey! I just found out that one of my friends in the salt lake city mission is in rock springs right now. So that's cool.

Well my goal for this new area and this six weeks is to be completely diligent. The scripture that will drive me is Moroni 9:6. It is very good. I'm still trying to learn to push myself to my full potential and I think the best way I can apply it is with the language. For one thing I'm pretty much fluent but there's many words I don't know. Just gotta strive to speak spanish all the time. It's hard when you have a funny comp that quotes nacho libre all the time but it's something I can do to dedicate myself to the Lord better. 

I'm pretty sure I'm training in six weeks so it's time to purify myself as much as I can and get ready to be a real big example for this new kid I'm gonna get. He might be eighteen. That's so crazy. Hey! How's kevin doing over there in texas? I also got a letter from halmoni recently which was much appreciated.

My toe was actually a miracle. I can't remember if I told you guys this story but my toe healed miraculously in like a day and a half. I had that surgery. Various doctors told me I wasn't going to be able to walk for a full week. But I was working two days later. But then the other side ingrew because the doctor randomly cut the toenail on that side. It got really swollen and nasty again but I just prayed it away. I could not bear the thought of sitting in the apartment another two days while people were perishing in unbelief. So I think it's getting better again. At least it doesn't hurt anymore.

Today I am exactly nineteen and a half. I now have six months in the mission. So I'm gonna burn a sock tonight and wonder where all that time went. And we're gonna go get quesadillas from a mexican dude down here. He's the only other person in Uruguay who knows what spicy food is. It's gonna be a fiesta. Seriously the time is flying by. I hate it. I'm trying to have fun every moment though and that is turning out to be a good strategy. I do feel bad for the poor sap that replaces me in carmen though. It was the only thing I knew so I didn't know how different the work was there. But here we go! New adventure time! Vamos arriba!!!!

Love you all!

Elder ´El Crecimiento Real´ Pyper

Feb. 18, 2013

Dear Dad,

First of all, I can see the pictures. Sorry for not answering that question in like seven consecutive emails.

Oh my gosh. Jory's going to brazil. This is unreal. Does he know that portuguese sounds like speaking spanish with a mouth full of ice cream? It's familiar sounding but not understandable at all. And tell James that the Argentinian and Uruguayan word for bro is che. It's pretty useful.

All that church stuff makes me miss church. It's hard being a missionary here in this sense, that you can't rely on other people to make you feel the spirit like that! We don't really have talk-worthy members here, so me and my comp speak all the time. Sacrament meetings are just interesting, haha.

Well, this week was the miracle week. It was super good. On monday, I realized that I'd kind of lost just the pure joy of sharing gospel knowledge with people, so I made some plans to remember that I just love sharing the gospel during the week. It worked. Brought a really special spirit, we found several really prepared people. People were literally snatching book of mormons from our hands. We were getting led by the spirit like crazy. And it never fails to amaze me how I always think I know what the spirit is doing, but I just don't. Like the other day, I felt the impression to go to visit this one angry old man, but as we walked to his house, I realized it wasn't him we were supposed to visit. Mostly because he yelled some poorly formed spanish at us and walked inside. It was the neighbor that was prepared! He wanted to read the whole BoM just standing there on the porch. So lesson is, just follow the promptings. Don't try to understand them. 

Scripture of the week is 2 Ne 32:8-9, because praying is truly difficult. Getting people to pray is hard. But they respond when you read them that.

Here's a picture of the giant cookie we made last night. And the other one is me drinking strawberry juice while my companion is being the district leader. Check out all that weight I gained.

Happy belated valentines day to you as well! I went all day without thinking about it!
Love you too

Elder "La Destreza" Pyper

February 12, 2013

Hi dad.

That is just some sad sad news. I do not like to hear about missionaries dying. I'm fairly certain that I've got more to do after my mission, cause I can feel angels walking by me from time to time. They say the devil lives in Carmen, and I believe them. But there's missionaries there too. It's a battle. Speaking of the OKC mission, keep an eye out for Elder Cutler. Tell him I said hi.

Well, I am coming off the absolute worst week of my mission, haha. It all started with surgery in a south american hospital... It was absolutely the scariest experience of my life. After waiting for more than two hours, the doctor told me to take off my shoe, took a look at my toe for like three seconds, and told me to put my shoe back on and follow him to the "operating room." It just went downhill from there. Apparently the south american method of solving an ingrown toenail is to cut off half the toenail and kill the nailbed with a razor. So, they did that. It hurt a little. But it was almost an instant fix, so that's cool. Now I'll just have a really narrow toenail for the rest of my life, haha. So that's my news. So we sat in the chapel calling people to come have lessons the next day, cause I couldn't walk. But by thursday I was fine. Then we just had a really hard four days. But my faith is unshaken. The Lord is ready to expand his kingdom exponentially, and I know it because there are going to be seventy six new missionaries in the next three months. That just means your boy is going to be training real soon. Possibly in two weeks (I don't think so) but very probably at the end of next change.

Bekah, I got your letter. I already sent a reply. I have not had any more baptisms, the people are hardening their hearts. I love my new companion. We are best friends. We have a hard time speaking spanish because we're cracking jokes too much. I also got two packages this week. The camera is funcional, so I'll start sending pictures now and then. 

I'm eating well, sleeping well, everything is going just fine. I'm feeling sad, because I think I'm experiencing that missionary sixth sense that tells you when you're leaving your area. We'll see. I love working here because the task is so immense. At times it seems impossible. The branch president is only in town sundays, the branch mission leader is inactive, there's only two worthy priesthood holders, and one's in a wheel chair. A lot falls on us. So we have to rely on the lord a ton. But I'm ready to throw myself at this the last two weeks I have here.

Love you guys! 

Elder Andy