"Project Utah"

Dear Family,

Well, this past week was great! It wasn't packed with teaching investigators, but we got a lot of preparation done in the area to have more success as soon as possible! SO what we decided to do this week was start something that we like to call "Project Utah!" What it means is to get a block with a fair amount of people that we already know and do everything possible to activate and baptize the whole block and create a system for them to all have visits from members and that they all attend together on Sundays. We decided to do two project Utahs, one on each side of our area. And so far it's working great! We have a lot of investigators and future investigators now.

So, the best part of this new mission plan that we have here is that we had results already. I like fast results. :) So yesterday we had stake conference. It was a satilite transmision for all of Argentina by Elder Nelson, Elder Clayton, and a few other general authorities. The only problem is that we had to go to the stake center that is pretty dang far away. Anyway, we still had six investigators come with us!! Two complete families! One is the Medina Family and the other is the Ruiz family.

The Medina family is the cute old couple that we found the other day. I wrote previously how I had done that rushed contact with the man walking next to us in the street named Ramón. Ramón and his wife, Graciela, are great people! Graciela is epileptic and has seizures and convulsions, but she is a very calm lady. Ramón is a stud! He's 63 and still acts like he's 23! Nothing stops that man. For example, this past week, Graciela locked him outside of the house on accident and then she fell asleep. Ramón tried knocking several times, but when she woke up, she thought it was him working on the house still. So what Ramón did was get on top of the roof, climb over to the back yard, and then jump down on a fence, and then to the floor. It was so impressive! He's the coolest little old man. Ha ha! Anyway, they are so great. We taught them about the plan of salvation and answered their many questions. They really like the idea of being an eternal family and especially the idea of the resurrection. Ha ha! (Ramón is balding. :)) They were doubting going to church because it was farther away and Graciela's ankle was hurting her and got really swollen. We told them that if they had the faith to get over this trial then they would see that it was just one of Satan's tricks to keep them from hearing about how to have their own eternal family. They accepted our challenge and when they woke up on Sunday morning, she didn't feel any pain and was able to walk just fine! They had a great time at the conference and met lots of people.

The other family, the Ruiz family, has a few trails in their lives. Their son, Nahuel, died just a week ago from a lung failure. We found them through our investigator Hilda and have surprisingly been progressing really well. Even their two daughters came to church with us. The parents are Ramón (yes, another one) and Sara. They're quite educated and very polite. When we went to pick them up Sunday morning, we almost were robbed by their son's friends. As we turned the corner and started to clap the house, these two kids came running around the corner with clubs to come take our stuff away but they were so drunk and drugged that Elder Cruz and I could have easily just pushed them over and nothing would have happened, but right as they were coming around the corner, Ramón came out and Sara came out of a store across the street and recognized the kids. They actually came up and apologized to us after that. Ha ha! But they made it to church with us and loved it!

Alright, we need to get to the bishop's house and start working. I have a great feeling about this week! I'm so excited to work.

Love you all! 

Elder Blake W Cowan

PS We have bats in our house!