Well, summer vacation's comming to an end. I hope it went well for everyone and that you all had enough fun to last you through the next school year. I'm pretty sure that 5 months have never flown by this fast in my entire life. It's pretty strange that pretty soon I won't even be very new in the mission. Weird.

Anyway, the woman that got baptized is named Ramona. She has 7 kids and a very strange family. Four of the kids are Evangelical Christian, and one of them doesn't know that she is an investigator yet. Ramona is very nice, and it has been amazing to see how the spirit has affected her life.

It's been like the busiest week that I've ever had in my entire life. Ward conference was this week, so everyone was excited for that. We also have a ton of investigators that are progressing really well. Because of ward conference, there have been a ton of member references lately too, which is pretty cool.

I've had a ton of testiments this week of how it is that the spirit strengthens us when we're not good enough in and of ourselves, which is good, because I am pretty much never good enough. If there's ever anything that you feel like you need to do, just do it and rely on the Lord for your support.

I love all of you and hope you miss me a ton.
Love, Elder Rasband

I haven't been doing a very good job of keeping this blog up to date, and I apologize. Paul has been doing really well in Argentina and is enjoying his time there. His first companion, Elder Nichols, finished his mission on July 31st and since then Paul has been serving with Elder Hatton from Kentucky.

Here are a some pieces of his recent emails:

07/08/2009
Elder Nichols is a hard worker and he is my trainer. Sorry for the confusion. He and I are really good friends and Ill be sorry to see him go home to the states this month. He and his family are going to have a trip through the US at the end of the summer and I told them they could stop by. You can ask him about all of the silly mistakes I make. I'm sure he'll want to disillusion you.
Right now we are teaching a lot of people. One of them will probably get baptized this month if we can get some way for him to come to church--which by the way has been cancelled in all of Argentina for the next month because of the Swine Flu. Were trying to work something out where we invite him to the houses of the bishopric instead.

07/16/2009
Last week was a lesson in blessings in disguise. Because of the whole Swine Flu scare the government here asked the churches to stop holding meetings. This made Elder Nichols and me a little frustrated because we have a couple investigators that had to attend sacrament meeting in order to make their baptismal dates. Later in the week however, we got an email from the President (of the mission) that said that our investigators could attend the little family sacrament meetings instead as long as someone from the bishopric was present. It took a lot of work, but both of them ended up coming to sacramant meeting!! Not only that, we ended up having more investigators in the church than we have had since I got here. Plus, it was really cool to feel the Spirit that the members invite into their homes when they participate in preisthood ordinances.
Lately, we've been teaching a lot of young people, which has it's own set of challenges, but I find very rewarding. Strange things happen sometimes though. For instance last night we went to visit Marcello, a 14 year old that we found while we were teaching his girlfriend's family, and I looked over to the table and saw a Linkin Park album. Marcello had been listening to it before we came in, but had turned it off because he didn't want us to criticize his music. He was really surpriesed to learn that "people like us" (which is to say missionaries) like the same kind of music that he does. Unfortunately he decided to play the album after he found that out, and we had to ask him to turn it off.

07/22/2009
It was cool to have sacrament meeting in the members houses. It was really special to see how the spirit in the homes of righteous families can be the same as the spirit in the chapel. The Stake went ahead and changed everything back, though, so this week we had church in the chapel as usual.
Elder Nichols and I have been really busy lately. We have a couple of investigators that are getting close to baptism, and we are visiting them pretty much every day. It makes our day a lot more complicated because between Ramona and Julio and our Lunch we have to go to every part of our area every day.
I'm also very tired because we can't run in the mornings and I have much less energy than usual. We can't run in the mornings because our shower is broken and we are having to heat up water on the stove to bath. It makes me feel like a really hardcore missionary. Also a little smelly.

07/29/2009
We're working really hard. We have a bunch of investigators and they're progressing pretty well. We've started teaching a girl named Camila who's a friend of one of the youth in the ward. She's really cool, and she wants to get baptized, but her mom said the Spanish equivalent of "Over my dead body." We're working on that though.

08/05/2009
Life here in Argenina is amazing. I'm really happy to be here. Elder Hatton and I are going to have a ton of success. Being able to see people change their lives really is incredible.

08/12/2009
One of the people that I've been teaching since my first week in Argentina got baptized, and my new companion and I didn't really have a ton of experience in planning everything. Plus, it ended up raining really hard the day of the baptism and the day of the confirmation, so almost nobody could come. That might have been ok though, because we found out at the last minute that the Bishop's mom had made us a cake,and we didn't have utensils to eat it with. Everyone just had to use their hands.

Thanks for your patience! I will try to be better about updating frequently.