Working for the Lord

Dear family and friends,

I am doing well and hope you are too. It was another challenging week and I ended it feeling sick, but I got plenty of rest yesterday and I am feeling better today. I’m doing a lot of good work in the mission home and helping out in many different ways. I continue to do a lot of translating and always encourage new missionaries that come into the mission home.

Something that another missionary told me the other day really hit home. He said that we didn’t come on a mission just preach the gospel, we also came to work! I felt like that was just what I needed to hear because that is what I’m doing right now. Working for the Lord. It feels good and an opportunity like this won’t come again. 

This week we sent off all of the ´fieles´ (missionaries who finished their mission and are returning home), and received ´los refuerzos,´ the reinforcements (new missionaries just arriving into the mission). One of them was my really good friend from the UofA. His name is Eduardo Espinoza. He was baptized just a little over a year ago and I was able to sit in on some of the lessons he had with the missionaries when he was learning about the church.

Meeting up with Elder Eduardo Espinoza

A few months ago another friend told me Eduardo was coming to this mission, but other than that I hadn’t heard anything. So when we had our first meeting with our newest group of missionaries I looked out and saw him! It was a really cool moment. We ate lunch together the next day so we had some time to catch up. He is more than ready to be out here, and has the language down already as his parents are from Mexico. 

We made two trips to the police station with the new missionaries to take out their apostille (a special kind of certificate) required from Argentina. Basically this is the first step to legally reside in the country. It was a fun but weird experience as I got to help them with the work they had to do, I took finger prints for a few of the missionaries and filled out some of the forms that needed to be done. I felt like I worked there by the time I left! 

I’m meeting a lot of good friends here in my second area (the mission home), people that I know will be good contacts in the mission, but good friends when we return home too. Elder Moser is one of the other office elders and he has helped me a lot with my duties. He reminds me a lot of Mark McKellar, and he says I remind him a lot of one of his best friends back home. It’s a perfect match.

This mission experience really is an adventure. This past week there was no water in our apartment, again. Something that sounds like it would only be a bother, but it was actually kind of fun calling other missionaries asking if we could use their pension to shower! Also we did a lot of exchanges this week so I got to spend two nights in the apartment of the financial secretaries. I was all over the place but it made for an exciting week. 

My returned missionary roommates at the UofA all told me that a mission was like taking a fast track course for becoming the person that Heavenly Father wants you to be. I see that now. I’m being stretched in almost every way, and I’m learning so much here in so little time. I’m working with the end in mind and know that I’ll come out on the other side a little more polished, and a little more Christ like.

I love everyone!

Elder Kauffman aka Jack