Thanksgiving and the Temple!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!! We had my grandparents and some family friends over. It was great...ate plenty of food...watched a movie...the typical Thanksgiving activities minus the football. All in all it's been a very nice Thanksgiving break!
Now on to Drake...
25 Nov 2008

Hola mi familia,

I give my well wishes once again from Villa Amelia (actually, in Rivadavia because we live outside our area), Merlo, Buenos Aires, Argentina. I hope you can start feeling better Dad and I´m glad that you feel better Mom. And I hope that both you Jessica and Jonathan feel well tambien (yes, algunas palabras come out of my mouth easier in Castellano que en Ingles). I am doing well. I have the small runny nose on occassion, but I haven´t gotten sick here yet. I feel bad for Elder Born though. Since he has gotten here, it seems like he has gotten sickness after sickness. He and his companion have been locked in the apartment several times. And my companion, Elder Spendlove, has to carry around paper towels and tissues because he has had bloody nose after bloody nose the past few days.

You say you are all starting to get into the holiday spirit of Christmas. People are starting to mention it here and I think the spirit of Christmas will enter with the opening of December, but I´ll admit, I´ll have a hard time recognizing Christmas. My mind has a hard time disassociating Christmas with winter. I get to experience my first Christmas in summer next month and it will be really weird. Christmas and sweat, they just don´t seem to go together. (Yes, it is starting to get hot here, but one thing I am so greatful for is there seems to be a constant breeze). But I hope all of your preparations will go well.

Dad, I really haven´t heard the word greenie here, but I think I´m still a nuevito. I´m not really a compañero menor yet, but he isn´t exactly mi entrenador either. I´m somewhere in between. I know that I need to be patient with myself, but I want to fulfill my responsibilities as a missionary now and not wait. I know I have potential, but sometimes I feel I´m not doing the best or most I can do in order to fulfill that potential or to prepare my self to eventually fulfill that potential. I know that diligent work over time will bring me to that point.

Mom, I´m glad that Wednesday Letters prepared you for Time Out for Women, because I believe I gave that to you for Christmas last year. And that you enjoyed the conference. And of course I enjoy the letters I receive. Letters are important to every missionary. I didn´t read all of the proofs of the Book of Mormon that you sent me yet, but I believe that I´ve heard almost all of them. When Elder Nelsen came to el CCM (Centro de Capacitación de Misioneros or MTC), he shared those with us.

Today has been a good day so far. We went to the Temple! I´ll admit that I really miss going to the temple every week and I think that I´ll make that a goal for when I have a temple close by. We had to get up early in order to make it to the first session. Only three companionships in our zone made in time for that session (including us, my companion likes to be early to everything and I am in accordance with him). It felt good, it felt like I was home in a way. A time to relax a little from the rushed concerns of a missionary. The session was in Castellano, but I was able to understand nearly all of it (it also helps that I´m familiar with the words anyways), but I still had to concentrate enough that I wasn´t able to ponder on it too much.

After the session, we had to wait for the other missionaries to get out of a later session, so the temple workers asked us to help with sealings. I really like those as well. They really are the capstone, or better stated, the crown of the ordinances of the Gospel. I sat as witness and acted as son for a few. While there, I could see myself being a temple worker one day. I think it would be nice. Afterward we went to the Distribution Center (pretty small) and I bought a Children´s Hymnbook because I will be playing for the Children´s production in Sacrament Meeting. They also had a lot of books that I´ll eventually want to put in a Gospel library, but that we aren´t allowed to purchase and study (all in Castellano too).

One of the things that I´m realizing is a major part of the work of a missionary is work with less actives. I didn´t realize before how much work that missionaries do to try to reactivate and strengthen the members. My companion (and I a bit) gets a little frustrated because a lot of the recent converts were bautismos y no conversos reales (real converts). Nearly all of the baptisms in the past two years in the ward are inactive. President Benton explained to me in an interview last week (the interviews are always good) that the people don´t make strong commitments at all. Many people say, Si Dios Quiere (Godwilling) to various commitments. And we work hard to try to get people, investigator or not, to follow through and get married especially when they´ve been together and loyal for 15 years or more. My companion says, “The decision was made 15 years ago. All you need now to comply with God are the papers.” We are going to have activities every Thursday in order to try to help the ward bonds strengthen and to help investigators come to church.

Well, I leave you once again (I can´t remember the words of With Heart and Voice). Yo sé que Jesucristo solamente formó una Iglesia con profetas y profetas y su autoridad como el fundamento. Sé que esa Iglesia se cayó y fue restaurado por medio de José Smith y que tenemos la misma organización como esa Iglesia.

Les amo mi querida familia,

El Elder Drake Ranquist