Scratch that a few weeks ago. I´m moving to the Temple. (Sent: May 26, 2014)

BEFORE I FORGET!!! (Because I have for the past few transfers) Next week is transfers, so like every six weeks, P-day is moving to next TUESDAY. I won´t be writing again until then. Mom, don´t spend all day hitting refresh because your dumb missionary son forgot to tell you again. :)

FAMILIA!!

Oh I´m feeling so much better right now. Thank you for all being so positive in your emails. I´m praying hard for you all, and I´m glad to see that you´re humbly being perfected through all your trials. And what´s more, I just got back from the temple trip that we took as a mission. It was incredible.

So this week ended up really rough. We experienced down right miracles, but to get it out of the way, nobody came to church. It just goes to show how strongly the Lord respects agency, even when He clearly shows His love and activeness in trying to call His children home. But with that in mind, let´s focus on how absolutely awesome He was in helping us out this week.

We found this young couple this last week who were awesome. To describe their situation breifly, they´re in a lot of trouble financially. A lot. They sell pretty much anything that they can in Ferias, (flea markets) to make money, and Sundays are their greatest sales days. We spent the entire week testifying to them about how the Lord would bless them for keeping His commandments. The Spirit was so strong through all of the lessons. We had some great scripture studies with them, experiences with Priesthood blessings to calm them nerves, powerful member testimonies of the Sabbath Day, and even felt impressed to promise them as representatives of Jesus Christ, that if they showed faith to keep the Sabbath Day holy instead of sell on that day, that He would bless them with a solution to their problem guaranteed. One of these occasions, we were praying with them at night while it was raining and they had no power. We were soaked and freezing, but while praying, the Holy Ghost was testifying so powerfully, that I stopped shaking. It was incredible to see God answer their prayers so directly when they asked if they should attend Church this Sunday, as the young man looked us in the eyes and told us that God told him all would be well if he just did what God wanted him to do.

Well I´m a little short on time this week. I´m sorry. But the good news is that I got my camera back, and I´m sending a flood of pictures. I just want to leave you guys, testifying that I know the truthfulness of this Gospel better than I ever have before. I know a little better of the sweet and infinitely powerful love that our Heavenly Father has for us. He shows it in the most incredible and consistent ways. Please know that He does. Love each other, as He loves you. I love you all so much, and I´m so glad to be in a family that is striving to live worthy to live together forever in the Celestial Kingdom.

Hasta la próxima semana. ¡Hurra por Israel!

-Élder Goff

P. S.

1. Is it ironic to you that the Temple is built on the street of the Virgin Mary?
2. Aw, aren´t you all so cute? Happy Mother´s Day!
3. This cool bridge... and the part that they accidentally built wrong and decided to leave....
4. There´s that cool boat I was telling you about.
5. Stupid rules takes out all the fun of going down the stairs.
6. Map of the World. Notice that all of North America is labled as the United States. ´Merica.
7. Elder Adamson´s a bit of a hooligan.
8. Elder Zollinger and I acting like a couple of 5 year olds.
9. At the wheel.
10. Somewhere in the city. Remember, the government says that reading is sexy.

 

I love you all. (Sent: May 19, 2014)

Familia,

That was a rough round of emails. But I´m incredibly humbled by your examples. Thank you so much for having the kinds of character to push forward doing good despite all the trials that occur. You´re all inspiring to me as I watch you remain faithful, happy, and considerate towards others despite the chaotic trials that are thrown at you. Thank you for teaching me humility and perseverance. I´m keeping you all in my prayers.

I had a little personal funeral for Izzy in this Ciber. I don´t care how weird I look crying in an internet cafe over a dog 7,000 miles away with 80´s music in the background; it was cool. Heavenly Father assured me of the immense love that He has for all of His creations. Even our dumb, old, overweight beagle with arthrytis, cataracts, and a broken tail. Even though I don´t really understand well how the Plan of Salvation applies to animals, the Spirit told me that she´s in a good place. Descansá en paz, Izzy. :)

Okay, to change the subject, I´ll tell you a crazy story. River and Boca are the two giant soccer clubs here, and we´re right smack dab in the middle of the two stadiums. Last night, River won the national championships without our knowing it. While waiting for the bus at the end of the day, we saw a bunch of River fans celebrating, and one of them told us they won 6-0 against Quilmes. Thinking it was all chill, we watched them chant and wave their flags around, wondering where the bus was. Finally we decided to go over to the subway to see if we could get home that way, and saw that it was all closed down. All the while, more and more River fans came pouring out of the train station. We got a little nervous as we realized that we were late for curfew and would have to walk home 45 minutes. We called the Zone Leaders, and they suggested that we pay a little extra for a taxi. We stopped one, and told him where we wanted to go, and he looked at us like we were insane, and said that he couldn´t cross 9 de Julio, the famous intersection with the giant white obelisk. And we soon found out why. It was filled with fans in white and red, in their cars, taxis, on top of moving busses, yelling, chanting, shooting fireworks, and all sorts of mayhem. The assistants suggested we stay at a members house until it calmed down, but there was no one that we knew of nearby. Finally we realized that there was no choice but to walk right through the middle of them, because there was no other alternative, and the mob was growing fast. I said a prayer that we could walk through invisibly, and we crossed the 15 lanes of stopped traffic, and we only had one drunk fan growl at us from his car. :) Soccer is crazy.

I did divisions with Élder McRory from Brigham City in an area called Chacarita. They have a little villa in their area, which is laughably small compared to Villa 31. I felt like a celebrity telling people that I normally proselyte in 31. But this little villa was fun. Ryan, practically everyone in it was from Chiclayo, Perú! You´re going to love it there. They are such awesome people.

We had a baptism lined up for this last Sunday, but the young woman that we were going to baptize disappeared, and we´re still trying to contact her. It was a huge disappointment, and we´re getting a little worried for her, but we´ll keep praying that we can find her when she´s not at her new job and keep progressing. But we found and awesome stud named Alfredo. While teaching him, we asked him why he was so interested. He told us: ¨I always watch the Jehova´s Witnesses and Evangelists walking, asking people questions, and knocking on every door in sight, but you guys walked differently. You seemed to have a purpose, and I thought that your message was classified or something. So I wanted to know why it was different.¨ I almost started laughing at the unexpected answer. That street is one of the streets we contact the most on. But then President Ayre´s words from the mission meeting with Elder Gonzalez came back to my mind. ¨We´re not a tracting mission. We´re a working with the members mission, and an abrir la boca mission.¨ There´s a new kind of meaning to that to me now. I´m going to be sure to go about my responsibilities efficiently now, seeking the elect, and giving the best opportunity to everyone I meet to accept the Gospel, trying not to just throw it in their face.

Another interesting experience. We met this lady who made us the most INCREDIBLE chipabarrero (cheese bread from Paraguay), but who is solidly Catholic. The member that we were with seemed a little frustrated that she wasn´t willing to understand something that he held so sacred, and began to argue with her. I felt extremely awkward, with Doctrine and Covenants running through my head ¨If ye have not the Spirit, ye shall not teach.¨ Finally wished her well and broke away for the appointment we had. The man we met with insisted that nobody could take away his faith by telling him that he had to read the scriptures or attend church to show his faith. While calmly testifying to him that faith must lead to actions to truely be the Faith that Christ mentions in the Bible, I felt the Spirit incredibly strong.

I was talking to E´ Adamson about it, thinking it was a little weird that the Spirit was so strong while teaching such a small principle. In the blunt way that he does he told me ¨it´s because you felt the opposite just before.¨ And he was right. It doesn´t make any sense to try and teach the Gospel without the Spirit. Because two 19 year-olds who just barely learned Spanish are terrible at teaching the Eternal Gospel of a Perfect, All-powerful Being. But when the Spirit´s there, It does Its job slendidly and powerfully.

I love you all so much. Thanks for your honesty, for your love, your examples, and your faithfulness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Don´t ever lose your faith, and always remember the everlasting love that I, but even more, God has for you. You will be blessed on an enormous scale for your faithfulness and selflessness that you are showing in these times. I love you, and I´ll be praying and fasting for you all this week.

Hasta la próxima semana. ¡Hurra por Israel!

-Élder Goff

P.S. I have some more bad news for you too. I left my camera in Chacarita when I was doing a division. They´re going to give it back to me today, but I can´t send you all the cool pictures of this old military boat that we toured last week on P-day. I´ll be sure to send them next week. Love you!

¡Feliz Día de la Madre en EE UU, Perú, y Bolivia! (Sent: May 12, 2014)

¡Familia!

It was so good to see you! Even though that lazy laptop didn´t want to carry my voice 7,000 miles to you, and that lame smart phone betrayed us in the middle of our conversation about latino soap operas being directed by the devil. But thanks for talking to me! Elder Costa says that your all beautiful. :)

I don´t really even know what to write because we just barely talked. Something I don´t think I told you yet was about President Gonzalez. He´s the Area President for Southern South America, (basically Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and I think a few other countries) and he came to talk to our mission this week. It was incredibly inspired, and he gave such great advice. He stressed the importance of helping people live all five principles of the gospel, and helping them achieve, true, deep conversion when baptized. His vision of growing the Kingdom of God is impressive. He also stressed the importance of paying tithing, citing examples in the scriptures of calamities that came to when Israel in the time of Malachi or the Nephites when they neglected tithing.

So pay your tithing, and fast offerings. :)

The whole week was filled with miracles as we opened our mouths to speak to just about anyone in the Villa. We were blessed with finding a lot of new investigators, and even less active members who just walked right up to us and asked for help to become reactivated and recieve all of the blessings of the Gospel again. But then that dang rain came just like every Sunday, and only one of our investigators came to Church. But she´s a champion, an out right miracle. I´ve been trying to contact Mary Carmen ever since I was with Elder Critchlow, because she has an impressive teaching record, and the previous Elders had a lot of good things to say about her.

Then a member in the ward told us that she was at her aunt´s house quite often, and that´s just where we found her. She remembers just about all of the missionary lessons, and now has quit her job that was preventing her from going to church. And best of all: SHE DOESN´T HAVE A BOYFRIEND!!!!

...okay that sounded really weird. Don´t get the wrong idea, I´m just super happy that we won´t have that roadblock with the law of Chastity that we´ve had with everybody else.

So this week I was reminded about the ways that God works to prepare people´s hearts, and then puts them in our way when they are prepared to hear the Gospel. I challenge each one of you to start sharing the Gospel with anyone, even if it´s just in small and simple ways, so that they can begin preparing for it. Pray for them by name everyday, and never pass up the oportunity to share your testimony. Thanks to the Holy Ghost, the most powerful words ever spoken are those of a simple, pure, and sincere testimony.

I love you all! Thanks for all that you´re doing!

¡Hurra por Israel!

-Élder Goff

P.S. I got bad at taking pictures again this week, but here´s some awesome ones that my companion took.

1. The view of the Paraguyan Plaza from a members house who lives on the fourth floor. (For a villa, the 4th floor is sketchy)

2. The hippy urban backpacker we met the other week.

3. Elder Zollinger and Elder Costa work in the more colorful part of the villa, and. It´s. So. Cool.

World War C (God´s Army vs. Las Cucarachas) (Sent: May 5, 2014)

¡Hola Familia!

A quick update on our all-out-war against the Cucarachas. We brought out heavy artillery with a new bottle of raid last Monday. During our last Weekly Planning Session, the Cucs launched an ambush on our Area Book, and a piles of blank sheets of reports. In our counter-attack, we found their nest in the corner behind a bunch of cardboard boxes. We spent the next hour or so going bezerk, causing not much less than genocide among the insect population of apartment 2C. Our planning session was shot, but the good news is, the Cucs are only visable in the morning just after we turn on all the lights and open the front door. Every now and then we have a skirmish, but I think we´ve turned the tide, and they´re permanently on the retreat... that is as long as we have Raid left. I´ll give you more of an update next week if Elder Adamson and I are not charged for war crimes. ;)

I´ve got to say, I think I made Elder Zollinger´s day with that one. (He´s the Elder from West-Point Military Academy.)

Yesterday while on the Subway, Elder Adamson started talking to an obviously American tourist from Massachusettes who was going urban backpacking. When he realized that he was from Idaho, he got so excited and took a picture with us. Oh man his Spanish was so hilarious. Pretty good, but mixed with all kinds of American slang: ¨¿Entonces, cuanto tiempo llevan acá, dudes?¨ He sounded exactly like the Sea Turtles from Finding Nemo. *Thick Surfer´s accent*: ¨¿So, where did you a-pren-der your e-spa-ñol?¨ I don´t know if he´ll put up the picture on his website or not, and I can´t really read their handwriting, but look up something about ¨Vipassana en Damma Sukadha (Brandsen)¨ I think that´s what they wrote down for us. So we talked a little bit about what we do as missionaries, and gave them some pass along cards, and they left all excited. Haha, I know that it´s ironic for me to say, but American tourists are hilarious.

So this week was pretty interesting. In the past few days, it seems like something just clicked, and we started talking with everyone. We were pretty amazed at the fluidity we could speak with people, and how we could turn even the most random side comments from people on the streets into sharing a message about the Restoration. We were really blessed this week with a lot of new investigators. We have a few families who are progressing well, and I´ve grown so much love for them. I get so excited when they tell me about how they´re rapidly giving up coffee, and love to hear their stories about eating 2 kilos of bread to keep their minds off cigarettes (whatever works :) ).

It seems that really the only thing keeping the majority of our investigators from making the covenant of baptism is marriage. That´s the issue for 99% of the people we´ve met. I´m shocked by the perception of a family that Satan has engrained in people´s minds and saddened by some of the awful things that happens to the families here. But some of the most spiritual lessons that we´ve had have been when we testify about the divine establishment of the family, and the possibility of Eternal Families. I want to testify again of the incredible blessing that families are. The family is central to everything we do in the Gospel, and even the entire purpose of the Creation, just as 1 Nephi 17:36 and Doctrine and Covenants 49:16 declare.

Even in the midst of all trials and problems, thank you for making our family the greatest priority. I know that as we do all that we can to come closer to Heavenly Father, and use Christ´s Atonement to rid ourselves of all evil and sin, not only ourselves, but our whole family, will be richly blessed and strengthened, and we will be able to live together forever in the perfect happiness provided by the presence of our Heavenly Father. I love you all so much. Thank you for your support. See you Sunday, and Happy Mother´s Day! :)

¡Hurrah por Israel!

-Élder Goff

P.S. Pictures! I´ve been taking a lot more lately. You should be proud of me.

1. Elder Adamson mocking Elder Critchlow´s classic picture position. They were companion´s in the MTC so he can do it. :)

2. Our biggest ally, Raid. ¨Las mata bien muertas¨ means ¨It kills ´em real dead.¨ That´s right. ´Merica.

3. This is a scene of the carnage that fateful Thursday.

4. I found this comic in the pension of another Elder. Frankenstein´s bride is saying ¨But we already have a marriage beyond the grave.¨ :)

5. (Alma 29:8) All the Book of Mormons that I´ve found in our pension. Except the Chinese one that we actually gave away before I took this picture. There´s Spanish, English, Italian, French, German, Portuguese, and Japanese.

6. A view of part of the Villa from the roof of a member.

My ¨Casteyanqui¨ is really empeorando (Sent: April 28, 2014)

Familia,

Thanks for all your stories and emails this week. Ryan, I can´t believe what a freaking stud you and your friends are. You´re such great examples of how the Gospel of Jesus Christ can be applied to every single aspect of our lives, even in High School.

So I´m still here in la Villa Poderosa, trying to get my mind out of Spanglish mode (or ¨Casteyanqui¨ as Elder Zollinger calls it), and losing miserably in the war for our apartment against the cucarachas. (If we get money for the month today, we´re going to buy Raid and just go nuts in there. It ends today.)

Oh, so I got robbed. The other day, I bought these really cheap cookies because I was starving, and I left my scripture bag open by accident. When we got to the Villa, I saw that they were gone, and I had only eaten two cookies. How. Dare. They.

But the same day, when boarded the Colectivo, the driver immediately started asking us questions about the Church, and trying to site biblical references to the Trinity and Saints, (they never really make any sense, and are always widely taken out of context, but he tried to anyway.) We simply tried to testify of truthfulness, and invite him to pray about it. He slowly became more persistent, and then accidentally cut off a taxi. There was no accident or anything, but as Argentine drivers do when nothing really serious happens, both drivers errupted in anger, and began yelling all kinds of profane things and threatening each other. The taxi driver got out of his car, and the bus driver kept yelling at him ¨Do you wanna fight? Get on the bus, and we´ll do this right here!¨ It was all talk, and no action, and finally all of the annoyed passengers talked (or screamed) some sense into them, and they got back in their driver seats and we continued on. Then he seemed to realize that he lost all credibility in his knowledge about the Gospel of Peace, and awkwardly said ¨sorry, some people are just idiots.¨ We chuckled, and gave him a mormon.org card if he had any more questions when we wasn´t in traffic. Haha, oh porteños.

This week has been pretty incredible with following promptings of the Spirit. For example, yesterday. Our area is in the middle of the Villa, which is literally miles long, so we have to walk like 15 minutes from the entrance to even reach the beginning of our section. While walking, I was thinking about the plans that we had, and kept thinking about passing by a certain family. It was weird, because they are perfectly active, and we had other plans to pass by for investigators and other people who would seem to bepriority, but I finally mentioned it to Elder Adamson. So we went by, and the Hermana, holding a baby that wasn´t hers, said ¨Oh Elders! Just now I was talking to my friend about the Church!¨ After talking for a few minutes about an incredibly inspired mix of the Restoration, Plan of Salvation, and baptism, we invited her to be baptized. She humbly accepted. It was incredible. It´s been quite a long time that we´ve found an eligido (someone who doesn´t have anything impeding being baptized other than learning the doctrine and attending church), so we were a bit stunned, and Elder Adamson whispered, ¨we just found an eligida.¨ Then we fist bumped.

I love you guys so much. And I love my mission so much. Please don´t get offended when I say that I never want to leave here. Of course I want to talk to you guys, see your faces, and be there for you when you struggle. I´m here for anyone of you every P-day if you need to talk- and if there are special situations we can arrange something on another day. But I´ve grown such a love for the work of the Lord, and I´m enjoying immersing myself in it with all my might. I´ll keep praying for you every night, and please know how much I love you and how happy I am to be a full-time servant of the God.

Hasta la próxima semana.

¡Hurrah por Israel!

-Élder Goff

P.S. I was a little bad at taking pictures this week. Sorry, I´ll try to get some more. But I saw this in the book Las enseñanzas de los Presidentes de la Iglesia: José Smith. One of the mob members looks exactly like Josh Brothers. :)

6 more weeks of the best Choripan in the world! (Sent: April 22, 2014)

¡FAMILIA!

It seriously feels like so long that I´ve talked to you guys. I´m sorry I forgot to remind you about the transfers. Like before, every six weeks, our P-day moves to Tuesday because that´s when we do transfers. Sorry!

So I have un montón de cuentos to tell you all. (That´s literally what just popped into my head to tell you. My freaking Spanglish is getting worse.) But first of all, I think transfers came around several weeks too early. These past six weeks with Elder Critchlow flew by. But being the stud he is, he left as a Zone Leader for the nearby zone in Chacabuco, and Elder Molina as a Zone Leader in Liniers. Elder Zollinger took over for Elder Molina being District Leader, so he´s staying in our tiny little pension/cucaracha (cockroach) battleground with me. His new comp is Elder Costa from Brazil, and my new companion is Elder Adamson (Elder Critchlow´s companion in the MTC) from Idaho. We´d already done splits together twice before in Matheu, so we´re good buds, and I know that there´s a lot of good that´s going to come from this transfer.

Okay, let´s get going. First of all, last night when President Ayre called to let Elder Critchlow know that he was moving up, he asked him to give me the phone. Then he started to tell me, ¨Elder Goff, I have a special assignment for you. We´re looking at opening a new area where there is a high percentage of Chinese people...¨ At this point I just busted up laughing, and asked him if I had told him about that story. He laughed and told me that his wife found it on the internet. I guess that sometimes more people read my letters than just you guys after all. Hola, Hermana Ayre! :)

On Sunday, we had lunch with the Bradley family in our ward. There are a lot of people in the inner city that speak English, and this family is actually from Provo. They´re awesome and told us all about their traveling, living in places like Buenos Aires, New York, and India. Their little son, Jackson, reminds me so much of Uncle Greg and Aunt Alison´s kids, Henry and William, and he kept pleading us, ¨come play with me!¨ So after giving a spiritual thought and prayer, we played a little with Jackson, who was so excited to play basketball with the missionaries. It was the coolest thing to play games with a little kid that speaks English again.

While talking with a member one day, she mentioned to us that two new neighbors had just moved into the rooms above hers, and the mom had commented to her how she couldn´t understand why God didn´t love her anymore. This hermana served a mission about a decade ago, so she asked if we could come share a message with her. Talking with her later that same night, and after expressing some deep sorrow for her past, she accepted a Priesthood blessing. She told us that when I annointed her with oil, she felt at more peace than she ever had before, and was carried into a beautiful place. After Hermano Gimenez ended sealing the annointing, she asked through tears why we had taken her back to this miserable world. We testified that God really did love her, and wanted her to know it. The following day, her son, let us know that he already believed the Book of Mormon to be the word of God just after hearing the two verses we read the day before. He told us about a dream he had after praying for forgiveness that night, where he went to a paradise and heard a Voice telling him that his sins were forgiven, and that Whoever´s voice it was loved him. We testified that all good things come from God, and the two were incredibly happy. They both accepted baptismal dates right away, and we´re excited to keep working with them. Elder Critchlow and I agree that they´re going to have a lot of struggles in the coming weeks, but we are amazed by the faith that they have.

I´ve been amazed by the amount of love that our Father in Heaven has shown to His humble and blessed children in the Villa 31. Although that we had a relatively suprising small amount of numerical success during our transfer together, I´m so grateful for the time I had as Elder Critchlow´s companion. The miracles we´ve seen together will never leave my memory. If nothing more on my mission, I´ve learned what divine love from God feels like, and how to have such love for others. As Christ told us, the greatest commandment of all, is to ¨love thy God with all thine heart.¨ I´ve really found that to be the easiest commandment to keep, and makes all of the rest easier. I´m so grateful for the time I have to serve Him in His most noble of works. Thank you and may God bless you for your support you show me despite your own hard times. I love every one of you.

Hasta la próxima semana.

¡Hurrah por Israel!

-Élder Goff

P. S. I have a million more pictures for you:

1. Elder Adamson, my new companion.
2. I don´t know if I ever told you about Elder Critchlow´s fake tooth, but it fell out recently. We got it fixed, and he has an appointment this Saturday nearby to get a more real looking one, so we´ll get to see each other again.
3. President Ayre is putting together a mission website of pictures of us, and asked our zone to meet him at the River Soccer Club stadium.
4. I got really brave one Sunday morning when no one is out in the streets, and took this picture from inside the Villa at a member´s house. It´s not extremely exciting, but it´s much better than the one I sent last week.
5. La familia Gimenez. They´re absolutely incredible. I wish I could tell you more about their story, but that´s for another day. Basically they´re all recent converts, and every day have another friend that they want us to talk to. Heavenly Father is going to bless them so much for what they´ve done for Missionary Work in the Villa.
6. This stud´s name is Fernando. He´s a recent convert that is so awesome, and has become my good friend.
7. La familia Girrett. This family is indescribibly incredible. Their son is the one that yelled ¨Que valiente que sos!¨ when Elder Critchlow rescued his toy from the dog in the street. I can´t begin to describe how much faith they´ve shown since we´ve met them. I love these people!
8. The last day with the Juncal Elders in the last transfer.

I might move to Villa 31 after the mission (Sent: April 14, 2014)

¿Qué tal familia?

Another week in the Villa. Oh man, I wish I could take pictures so you can see this place. It´s so incredible. I think I might just move here after the mission. Haha, no that´s a lie. But at the end of every day, Elder Critchlow and I talk on the way out about how great of an opportunity it is to work inside. So few people get the chance to see such a cool place. Even though we haven´t had as much numerical success as we´ve expected, this has been one of my favorite transfers of the mission.

Like I´ve mentioned before, there´s a lot of other missionaries from other churches being in such a crowded area. So at the beginning one day while we´re walking to our part of the Villa, one guy calls out ¨Hey! Do you guys believe in Faith?¨ We replied that of course we do. He started to tell us that he researched our Church and knows all about it. He proudly declared that he believes in the ¨Faith of Abraham¨ and insisted that we believe in the ¨Faith of Shirtland¨. ... We kept asking him who ¨Shirtland¨ is, and he just became frustrated. Finally he said, ¨well look, I´m drunk right now, but I guess we´ll see in the end who´s right.¨ Then he walked off. So there´s my experience with talking to a drunk Pharisee that believes only that the children of Abraham will be saved.

Our investigator pool is unusually slow for a villa. It´s not really uncommon for people to have problems with the Law of Chastity or Word of Wisdom, but unfortunately for us, all of the people who have the greatest desire to be baptized have these kinds of problems. They have to wait months to get married because of the strange laws in the Argentine government, so it´s a bit tricky sometimes. But one of these investigators is incredible. She and her daughter are extremely receptive and so we´re continuing to teach them while we pray that their situation will change.

The other day, she asked a question about the ¨five things that we can´t eat¨ that a loud member (bless his heart) blurted out in the middle of a prior lesson. So we pulled out the pamphlet on the Word of Wisdom, and before we even really said anything, she looked at the front page and said ¨okay, so I´ve got to stop drinking tea, and coffee. I´m good with the other things.¨ I was kind of caught off guard by how willing she was, and almost said, ¨well yeah! Great! So that´s the Word of Wisdom,¨ and move on. Haha she has so much faith it blows me away. I pray that her boyfriend will follow her example so that they can be baptized as a family and experience these blessings together for eternity.

This Sunday, she and her family came to Church. The little four-year old is a stud, but when he sees us, just goes nuts. One day we were walking down the street, and he dropped a hacky-sack that a dog grabbed. So Elder Critchlow took it out of the dogs mouth and tossed it to him and he happily screamed ¨¡Qué valiente que sos!¨ (How valient you are!) Haha, que capo. But during lessons and sundays, he is incredibly irreverant. I think his poor mom gets embarrassed of him and leaves right after the Sacrament meeting. I had the thought to describe to her that she has no need to worry, that little children are the glory of God. Really, He doesn´t mind that her four-year old is a little of the walls, because He´s just so happy that their within the walls of the chapel on that Sunday. That they´re accepting His Gospel. That they´re trying their best to improve. They´re incredible, and they´re going to be blessed in this Gospel. I´m excited to keep working with them, and have faith that Heavenly Father will help them overcome their mountain of struggles.

I love you all. Thanks for your continued support! I´m praying for each one of you every day.

¡Hurrah por Israel!

-Élder Goff

Okay we found an internet cafe that´s ridiculously expensive, but it lets us send pictures. So here´s a whole bunch.

1. Happy Hump Day Elder Critchlow!

2. So there´s this gigantic building- palace really. It looks super cool, and when we found out it was a museum we were super excited because of the awesome gun museum we went to recently. It turns out that it was a museum on Water and the Sanitary History. Basically a giant palace built for plumbers. What a bummer. (No pun intended. Okay maybe a little bit.)

3. We were going through our Emergency Box to see if anything had expired. The rule is that if it´s expired but still edible, you can eat it and replace it. We were starving that morning, and were thrilled to find out that the granola bars had expired a week or so earlier. Woo!

4. President asked me and Elder Zollinger to take over the grill at the BBQ that he threw for the two nearest zones.

5. There´s probably the best picture you´ll get from me of the Villa. It´s from the train, so it´s a terribly out of focus, and you have to stare at the sketchy backside. Sorry, it´s a whole lot cooler inside, but I´m never taking out my camera in the streets.

6. Elder Critchlow shot a basket while jumping on the President´s trampoline, and made it!

7. Don´t worry. Despite how this picture looks, we work hard during the week. :)

8. Pretty much all of our investigators are references from this guy. Hermano Gimenez is such a stud!

9. This is our ¨Elder Indiana Jones¨ picture. :)

Conferencia General (Sent: April 7, 2014)

Familia!

I´m glad I got you good this year. I´ve been dying all week to see how the joke played out. :) The ironic thing is that the same day that I sent that letter, we went to eat at an all you can eat buffet called Delywok. It looks like a giant piece of Chinese caligraphy. I wish I would have taken a picture of the outside, but I took a few inside. Then we went to the gun museum. I took about a million pictures there too. :)

So lets talk about Conference, because I hardly remember anything else that happened this week other than that. The first day rained all morning. Here, they pretty much expect that the whole country is going to shut down if it rains, so people were shocked that we still wanted them to come to Conference with us. I wanted to tell them that we should fear God more than we fear rain, but we just tried to encourage them instead. Nobody came, and my suit got soaked in those lovely flooded villa streets. And the Saturday sessions would have been perfect for our investigators and recent converts. Elder Critchlow and I kept looking at eachother and slapping our foreheads. Especially when President Eyring said ¨some of you may have been invited by the full-time missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...¨ But Sunday morning, it didn´t rain, and five investigators joined us! It was incredible, and I can´t wait to talk to them about it in later teaching appointments.

We got to watch the whole thing in English this time, so I was extremely grateful. One of my favorite parts was Elder Holland´s talk. When he spoke of the world wanting comfortable gods, ones who ¨not only don´t rock the boat, but don´t even row it,¨ the whole room of missionaries cracked up. YES! His unique perspective reminded me of the real character of Jesus Christ. Yes, He absolutely is infinitely loving, merciful, and deeply desirous to save all mankind. But He is eternally intolerant of sin, and cannot give the least amount of leeway. Those who recieve His blessed mercy are those who are humble enough to forsake sin and follow Him. His atoning sacrifice was a solution, not a loophole. He gave us salvation, not an excuse.

Elder Bednar´s talk was awesome as well. I liked his example of the burdens that were neccessary for us to progress. I was thinking about this, and agree that our load must be full of things of value to us when we get to our destination. Sure, we could get through our trials with a heavy load of whatever type, but when we get to Heavenly Father, at the end of the snowy road, what are we going to show Him that we brought? A bed full of junk that´s been ignored? Or fire wood neatly chopped and ready to be used? Lots of things can get us through trials, but if we don´t let the trials change us, our loads not going to do us a whole lot of good when we get out of the snow.

I could talk about everyone´s talks. Oh man, it was so inspired. I hope and pray that everyone of you take advantage of the incredible opportunity that you have to re-study all of the talks. I´m so disappointed that we have to practically wait six more months to heard the voice of the prophets. But I do want to take the time to testify of them. My companion and I were trying to give another chance to investigators back in the villa and got back from the subway too late to participate in the sustaining vote. But even though I missed the formality of raising my hand in a closed, unsupervised room with a dozen other missionaries, I want to publicly declare my support for the leaders in God´s kingdom, divinely called, rightly ordained by Priesthood Authority, and empowered by the Spirit. As a required characteristic of the restored Church of Christ on the earth, His Church is led by inspired prophets and prophetic apostles in just the way that He established it. I´m grateful for their faithfulness in carrying out the revelation they recieve from Him, and support them in standing up for truth and righteousness in a changeable world of persistent evil.

As President Eyring and others warned, the opposing power that the Adversary has will grow porportionally to God´s Kingdom on the Earth- never overpowering it, but always present until Christ again comes to vanquish his forces. But until that time, I´m so grateful to know that Christ as provided us with these blessed representatives of Him. De este testifico, que la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días es el reino del Señor establecido de nuevo en el mundo hasta la segunda venida del Mesías. En el nombre de Jesucristo, Amén.

Hasta la proxima semana. ¡Hurrah por Israel!

-Élder Goff

P.S. Pictures:

1. The Zone yanquis listening to General Conference in English (except for two hermanas in a deep conversation).

2. Delywok

3. Elder Molina was taking the picture

4. Elder Zollinger went to West Point. Needless to say, he loved the gun museum.

5. Elder Critchlow

6. Elder Critchlow and I with General San Martín at the Gun Museum.