Tayler - December 28, 2014

Well not really anything else happend after talking to you guys so i will probably keep this pretty short. I will send you pictures of our christmas dinner too. The only thing that happened this week was in church i was teaching the gospel principles class and ight as it finished the councelor of the branch president came in and told me that i had to give a talk in sacrament meeting. my companion had already been told like at the begining of church so he had a little heads up so i had about 20 minutes to prepare a talk. So i talked about conversion and about how we can become converted and i read the story f how alma and the sons of mosiah and the story of how the father of king lamoni got converted i ended up with about a 13 minute talk so i think it went very well i dont get nervous or nothing anymore if i have to get up and give a talk the good thing about being a missionary is that basically you can talk about whatever and all the people think that your are talking like you know alot when in reality i just explained a few scriptures but it was very good. well thats about it i love you and i really enjoyed seeing you guys too.


Love Elder Baer


Lechón

mate i bought from a guy in the park

Lexie - December 28, 2014

Whoo!
That was about the weirdest christmas of my whole life! Not going to lie I never actually felt like we were in christmas. Christmas season or anything. But thank goodness Heavenly Father knew I could only make it through one without my mom! Next year we will be the lone ducks! How weird! First and foremost. OH MY GOSH. on Christmas eve this is how it went down. We ate breakfast, cake at 11, Lunch at 330, dinner at 6 and dinner again at 8. And nothing about food is small here.


The day after christmas I ate the worst thing of my mission. Tofu tostadas smothered in ketchup. UGH! I ate as fast as I could. And on top of that i really didnt feel great to my stomache that night. Ugh my mouth does not like ketchup. That has not changed! But i am a good missionary and ate it all with a smile on my face! It was so funny at the same house, they have 2 little boys that are crazy and just scream and say bad words while we are there. We are working on that. But I was helping one of them say the prayer and he left me mid prayer so I just swtitched to the other one and we finished. Too funny! Oh and the member who we went to see to call you gave us a christas present! 4 lip liners! I do not even use make up hardly ever sooooo we will esee what happens with those but its the thought that counts! They are a really awesme family. They got baptized as a family a year ago and are working on goingg to the temple. So the fun continues. After callig on christmas we were walking in the street and a drunk man on his horse said (lindura de mujer, mil besos! ) Just abuot fell off his horse making kissing sounds. I hear those about 5 times a day. It amazes me somedays how bold the people here are lol.


Alright so here is the low down on the work this week. We had such a hard week and really need to find new people. My companion is so frustrated and so am i. We are working good together still! But this area is just not going anywhere. We realized the other day, she has been here for 5 months and of the more than 2000 people she has conatcacted in the street here no one has been baptized. Just so you know the missionaries SHOULD NOT find the people to teach. The members should. They are the people that know who really is prepared to hear the gospel. Sure we can find people street contacting but the really success is in member references. Dont be afraid to give references to the missionaries! They will be sooooo happy! So we are working on that and hopefully we can find some things to make this area better. Oh one more funny thing. Yesterday we were teaching a lesson to a member famiy and they were trying to remember the word great apostocy. So they were guessing and one of the daughters said Genocide! hahaha, no not called genocide. It was so funny. Anyways, I think that is about it. Love you tons! I hope you are online to chat and I want to see a picture of your earings! Talk to you soon! Love you!


Love, Hermana Baer

The reason I am getting fat! Tayler do they have these where your at?

MTC companion sighting!

Part of my area. And yes those are banana trees with the big leaves behind me!

Lexie - December 22, 2014

Holy Moly. What a week! I am stressed beyond measure in this very moment and holy moly I finally got somthing sent home and I will never do it again! That was the most stressful thing. Everything is way more complicated than it needs to be here and it just about destroys my stress levels. Anyways! With that send there is a package going home lol. Nothing exciting, mostly just letters.

Ok here is my week in a nutshell. I will tell more thursday. We had a beautiful baptism on saturday at 8 in the morning! We are so happy and I will send a picture. Her name is montsey. She is the family that the parents arent married so the mom cant be baptized yet. The dad has been inactive basically his whole life. Also I bought tampons this week. 80 pecos for a box of 18! That is something like 8 bucks! Isnt that ridiculous! No one uses them here and no one knows how. It is kind of weird. We sand with the family of that daughter that got baptised at our ward christmas dinner on thrusday. The dad had to be rudolph and oh dear he was kind of dancing like a stripper. I was dying. So I have that video to share one day! And now I konw rudolph in spanish! lol. We made a photo booth for the ward part and it wasa AWESOME! Pictures to come! There was a murder around the corner from our house, so that is pretty intense. No worries. My companion is about as lock happy as grandpa so we are safe and sound in our house! We found a family that has 10 kids this week. We are going to see them tonight so I hope all goes well. And we had an acitivty with president george on saturday as well. More pictures to come. That is everything quick! We are short on time today but I will send more If I have time. Love you tons!

Love, Hermana Baer
See you soon!

President George had to give us shots. No idea what it was but it went well lol.

We were in the angel choir for our christmas performance. Good thing the bishop let me use the table cloth for the sacrament becasue I did not have anything white to use!

So we havent caught any rats lately. The last one was the one I killed with a broom. But we are catching little nasty lizards that are all over in the houses and cockroaches. Delicious huh. What a way to die!

Companions!

Tayler - December 22, 2014

This week was really good but it still doesnt feel like christmas here it is just so dang hot. and it rains alot but what are yu going to do. On wendsday we had a christmas meeting with the whole mission. And we sang christmas carols and played that game where everyone has a candy and they read the story and pass the candys to the left or the right. after that we ate lunch we had chicken wich was yummy and after that we had a spiritual part of the meeting. there was a choir and they sang lots of songs about christ. It was more about jesus than christmas and it was very good. after that we watched the movie Ephraims Rescue wich if you havent seen you need to it was really good. my companion told me it is kind of like 17 miracles but i never saw that either. then on saturday we had our branch christmas dinner wich was fun we played soccer and pingpong and ate lots of chicken so that was fun. then yesterday we went to help our recent converts because they were cutting grass yesterday with machetes so i cut some lawn with a machete wich was crazy and then we were playing soccer with them and i twisted my ankle so it kind of hurts right now but basicaly that was my week it was very good also we went to the temple with a family on thursday but we got there late and they didnt let us come into the waiting room but thats ok. well i think thats it i love you

Christmas Tree...

...and on christmas eve we are going to spend with a family in the branch they are going to cook a whole pig on the parrilla wich is what they use to cook meat here. it is the same thing they cooked the chicken on it is just like a grill but they use charcoal and wood and stuff and it makes it taste super good so we are excited about that.

Tayler - December 15, 2014

well this week went by really fast and we have transfers this wednsday so we will see if i will be leaving of staying to tell you the truth i dont know what is going to happen. but this week we did a lot of service with one family we are helping them build more on top of there house but here they just build with brick and cement so its not quite the same. also on tuesday there was a huge storm. i was on the bus going back to my apartment and then it started raining super hard and it was super windy and they cut the electricity in our apartment for like a day because lots of power poles and trees fell over and the wires broke so that was kind of crazy we got super wet too cause we had to walk like 4 blocks from where we got off the bus until we got home so we got really wet. and then saturday we were with our recent convert family and it was a nice day and then we just saw huge black clouds coming and it started raining super hard and we had to take cover in their house for like 30 minutes to wait for the storm to pass. but they only have like a tin roof so the rain and the little bit of hail was super loud in their we couldnt talk to anyone for the whole time. and basically that is what happend this week. no one came to church with us so that was disapointing and we dont really have any investigators still so we need to work on that.


Love elder baer

Lexie - December 15, 2014

Hola!
Greetings from a really weird week. Not really. Just kind of slow. It felt like we couldn't find ANYONE at home. But the week ended wonderful yesterday because one of our investigadors accepted her baptism date for this saturday! So we are getting ready for that and very excited. Her name is Montsey and is 13. She is in the family that we have been teaching that the dad is a member. But him and the mom aren't married so she cant be baptized yet. And their youngest turns 8 in march so maybe I will still be here for her baptism. We will see! But I am very excited for them.


So I have had a week full of realizing things. It has been pretty cool but two things in particular. One, we have shared a lot about faith with people this week. What it means and how faith is an action word. We know that faith without works is dead. Anyways. I have realized that sometimes we say prayers for things but we dont do our part. I think I have done that a lot in my life. Asked for help with things but not wanted to actually change what I was doing in my life. So now I know why it doesnt work! Goodnesss something so simple but a lightbulb went off in my head. Also I was studying this week about the difference between a testimony and conversion. You should read the two definitions in the bible dictionary. it is crazy how different they really are. My comp. and I talk a lot about how people fall away from the church. We teach a lot of people that are inactive and something I hae realized is that plenty of people say they have a testimony. That they know it is true and that is what a testimony is. A knowledge of a truth. But conversion is the action and I know now that if we are not acting on our testimony we lose it. That is what happens when we decide not to go to church or read our scriptures or pray. We are not acting on our conversion which is a process not something you just get. It has been really good for me to study and I am feeling so blessed for this opportunity to strengthen my testimony but always progress in my conversion in the gospel. I hope you hae a wonderul week! I am SO excited to SEE you!


Love, Hermana Baer

Lexie - December 7, 2014

Hola mamita!

Today is the first day of this transfer and whooopie! I get to be with Hermana Agustin again! We are way excited to have another cambio together and keep working hard. I love working with her. Holy moly that is a gnarly incision! Hopefully it is starting to feel better already. I am sure it is, Gordon is a miracle worker! It was a good week here. A little slow, it was hard to find people in their houses BUT! we did get to watch the christmas devotional! I loved the Oh come all ye faithful! It was way awesome. It was in spanish so I wouldnt say I got the gist of every message but what i did understand was really good lol. Some times the voice overs for things like that are so fast it is hard to catch everything. That and all the apostles and everyone speak in really formal english lol. So it transfers into big fancy words that no one uses here! I am feeling fine. No more stomache issues thank goodness! I am sure something I ate just went down bad. All the water we drink here is from big jugs that we buy in the stores from water purifying places so I dont think it was that. But I have been drinking lots of the electrolite drinks that they ahve here (not gadorade) the strong stuff lol. Just to make sure I dont get sick again.

It is begining to look a lot like christas! Haha not. It is soooooo hot. 100 degrees and humid just does not speak christmas to me lol. But I am sure all will go well. There are some fun plans for a missionary choir one night, and also our ward will have a christmas dinner that I am pretty excited about. This really is a really fun ward. Other than that... Oh i remember! This was funny. We continue to catch rats in the traps in our house. Way fun right? But it is the sticky traps so they are still alive. Usually we just chuck them out side and they die in the sun but I decided the other day to take it outside and wack it with the broom until It died. My companion that I was a psycho but I decided I would rather get hit in the head than baked in an oven to die. Wouldnt you agree? Not sure which is more humane but the little dude is dead now lol. I hope you have a wonderful week! I cannot believe how close we are to christmas! I cannot even wait! Love you tons! thank you for all that you do for me and always remember what the spirit of christmas really is! My advice would be, you and jake should give away some more book of mormons! But that is just a thought! We recieve the cards for he is the gift last week one wedensday and have been giving them out. I just watched the video on lds.org and it is really good. Thank you for letting me know about it! I will talk to you soon! Have a wonderful week and a quick recovery!


Love, Hermana Baer

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Tayler - December 7, 2014

well i am feeling better. here in this area it has been a little different than in my first area. usually avery 2 weeks i get sick so its getting to be pretty normal. it might be the water, we have a rule that we cant drink the water but sometimes we end up drinking it anyway wich is probalby not good and that is probably why i am getting sick more in this area than in my other area. and we did not watch the christmas devotional i forgot all a bout that and i dont think they really have that here because i didnt here anything about that.but yes i know elder christofferson was here because we had a meeting with him wich was very cool.but its really weird here it doesnt feel like christmas at all. it is super hot and there is no snow so it just feels weird.  well also this week i finished jesus the christ it took me about a month to read and it is super good. i love how it explains everything that jesus said and did so it makes a lot more sense. i loved that book. well thats all i got just make sure you get the time set up for skype, i love you and have a good week and i hope your knee gets better.

Love elder Baer

Lexie - December 1, 2014

First off, favorite christmas memory. Hmm. Idk if I have a favorite. I will always remember when Tayler blew the trump horn thing off of Grandmas tree in my ear and I about died my ear hurt so bad. I think christmas is always special because we get to be at grandmas. I already know that it isnt really going to feel like christmas here (literally since it is like 100 degrees still) But more than anything it is weird to think that one day we wont all be together at grandmas for christmas with oranges in our stockings. I guess we will have to see what happens! Weird to think it will probably just be you and me next year! Jake and I are going to trade spots lol. It was a wonderful week here! We had so many lessons and worked so hard to complete all of the normas de excelencia that we have for our mission. Everything went well and then almost no one came to church so that was a bummer. It is really hard to motivate others about how important church is but we have several ideas so hopefully this week goes better. One of them is explaining the different classes and what we do. I think a lot of people have fear of what people do in churches, and like they dont belong. I have been working on reading the New Testemant a little bit with my personal study and I love the part (that I believe is probably in several chapters lol )But I like how it is put in Mark 2:17 The church isnt a place for people who are perfect. Church is like a hospital for sinners! The only way to feel better is by attending. I love this and it is important to remember not only for those who arent attending right now but for those that are attending. Not a single person is perfect no matter what position they hold. We all have the same goal in mind and we are going to stumble and fall every second trying to reach it. But the amazing this is that we have church and the people there to help pull us back up when we fall, not to laugh when we fall. Our wards and branches should be a huge family congratulating the triumphs and giving comfort when we fall. NOT a place to point fingers.

We had some really great experiences this week and I love my area. Last night we had a missionary acitity in our stake and all the missionaries in our stake (about 20 of us) Sang army of heleman with parts in spanish and parts in english. We might not have sounded so pretty but the spirity was so strong. I find something new every day to be grateful for and am so excited for a new weeek! This is the last week of this transfer and we are going to hope and pray my companion sticks around for another one! She wants to as well! We work so hard together and have laughed so much. She bought a dress for 10 pecos the other day and was laughing so hard because she couldnt zip it over her boobs so I said let me try it! And i couldnt get it over my hips lol Opposite problems! I bought 3 skirts this week! ill send you a picture in one. It is super cute! I bought a nice grandma skrit for 20 pecos too! I have used it once this week. It is super comfy lol. We bought it where they sell clothes like DI style but the clothes are just in huge heaps and you have to search for what you want lol. It is funny because all the clothes have goodwill tags. I wonder how that all works? Anyways, I love you tons! Have an amazing week and holy moly it is DECEMBER! Love you!

Love, Hermana Baer

Tayler - December 1, 2014

sounds like you had a good week. and i hope you feel good from your surgery. and yeah we have the pass along cards and i have seen the video of the church. we are supposed to really focus on that and sharing the true meaning of christmas. we watched the video in the house of a member and it was really good. also they made another video during like easter this year i dont know if you have seen it it is called i think thanks to him the spanish name is gracias a él so that should be the translation. so yeah we had a very busy weekend this weekend. we had one baptism on saturday and another on sunday and also 3 confirmations in the church and i gave a talk in sacrament meeting. and it all went really good. the talk was what made me the most stresed but the time flied i felt like i talked for 5 minutes but before i knew it the branch president go up and told me my time was done and i talked for about 15 minutes that was crazy. i am pretty sure the gift of tongues was doing its work because i dont really remember a thing i said. so that was this weekend i will send you pictures of the baptism last week and the 2 this week. i hope you have a good week. i love you and it would be easier if you set up a skype for me but you need to talk to dad this week so i can plan a time to talk also im not really sure what time difference it is right now because of daylight savings stuff so if you can figure that out too that would be good.

Love elder Baer

also i thought the other day i found a house that said familia baer on the outside so we went to go and contact it but it was actually familia baez wich was disapointing and no one was home anyway.

Tayler - November 24, 2014

Well here there is no type of thanksgiving celebration at all so i will be going with out thanksgiving for now but thats ok. We had 3 baptisms yesterday i will send pictures. They were three kids whose mom is a member but they were inactive so that was cool and their confirmations are next sunday so that was an exciting day yesterday. we also went to the temple with them on saturday wich was also super cool i love to go to the temple it just doesnt feel like i am in argentina when i go there it definatley has a different feeling. So yeah we had a good week and we have 2 more baptisms planned for this weekend so we are very excited for this week too.Well thats all i can really think of to tell you. I havent been feeling the best this week i think i ate something bad the other day and i am still recovering and yesterday we ate a lot and i am not feeling the best today but thats just kind of normal. I love you.


Love Elder Baer

Lexie - November 24, 2014

Las Vegas!

Not sure If I have told you. But I am in las vegas. There is a section in my area called las vegas. So all the combies dice las vegas!

This week was intersting. One of our investigadors told us he didnt want us to visit again because my companion wouldnt give him a hug lol. It really isnt funny but I think he has a little bit of mental problems and he said we were fakes and he wasnt really our brother. Anyways, long story short is we are not welcome at his house. Sad deal. The good stuff is that we have an amazing family that came to church again this week. Not only that but the whole family went to activities at the church this week and the mom and dad went to a stake activity for married couples. So awesome. Hopefully the daughter will be baptized soon while the parents are figuring out how to get married. The dad is married to someone else so he has to get divorced first. Taht happens sooooo much here. But they are amazing. We are teaching them how to do Family Home Eveing tonight. Something we are going to do when I get home! Oh my gosh something else funny. We went to the pharmacy with president georges wife and she was starting to feel like she had a bladder infection or urinary tract issues. So I had to try and translate to the doctor so get her medecine right. Holy moly. That was so difficult. So hopefully the gave her the right stuff or I am in trouble!

This week went by super fast and we are teaching some really great people.

Tayler - November 17, 2014

Dear mom we had a super busy but awesome week this week. On saturday we had a meeting with elder christofferson wich was super awesome he talked about the atonement and that we need to preach repentence but in a different sense than people usually think we need to teach the restored gospel so that peple can actually have a true repentence and finish their repentence process with baptism wich is why baptism is so important. so that was pretty awesome i dont think i have ever had the opurtunity to listen to an apostle live so that was cool. also we got to go to the more nice part of buenos aires to listen to him my mission is basically pretty poor and its kind of dangerous but the north mission looks a lot nicer it was a lot cleaner not as much dogs and it looks very european basically nothing like my mission. But the meeting was super awesome and i could feel the spirit very strongly. Well also one day we did divisions this week and my companion went to the area of my companion from the mtc and they got robbed that day so that was crazy my area is pretty calm and nice but on the other side of the highway that splits us from the other area is super dangerous and the elders get robbed over there a lot more. so i am thankful that i am in this area so far in my mission i havnet been robbed yet so that is good. And basically that is what happend this week. we also didnt have a phone basically all week because our phone broke and they gave us a new phone but it could only receive calls so basically it was worthless for us. And thats it we had a good week. i will send pictures of the lizard we caught last week.


I love you
Elder Baer

Tayler - November 10, 2014

We had a kind of interesting week this week. We started off really good we were having a lot of success finding people and with our investigators and then on saturday we just kind of hit a wall or something. Sunday was really hard because President Robertson came and talked at our stake conference and then he did an interview with our crazy investigator and he told us that we cant baptize because he is to crazy wich kind of is disapointing but oh well life goes on and also we lost another person that was going to get baptized during lunch so we lost to of our best possibilities for baptisms this month wich is disapointing but its ok we have a lot of other good possibilities. But yesterday we did go and eat breakfast with a family before confrence we made pancakes and syrup our of the maple stuff that tyrel gave me and the family really liked it and then we all went to conference together. Also the other day we caught a lizard by the church and we braught it back to the apartment. When we caught it it started to scream wich i have never heard before so that was interesting and thats about it that happened this week. I love you and hope you have a good week.


Love Elder Baer

Lexie - November 17, 2014

So glad you are online to chat today! I hope that you will have time to write back. I like the picture of bailey and the kitty lol. How nice that they are friends! It sounds like things are going good! That is wonderful! Except of course for all the weird lumps and bumps you are having cut off of you lol. I am sure all will go well this week with Gordon. He is a miracle doctor! This week was interesting. We had some really good things happena and some stuff not so great but we are staying posotive! Sometimes it bugs me that we have to send all these numbers into our leaders but I know it helps us to work more! Can you believe I have officially been gone for six months? On this day next year I will be home! To mop the floor for you and eat your pancakes! My companion made us pancakes this morning but they were more like crepes lol. I really am loving this area and three weeks has gone by so quickly. I think that is part of being in a new area. We did something WONDERFUL this week and that was working with the members! So many member went with us to lessons and wow.. The work is so different when there is someone who actually lives here that is helping. My companion and I have decided we are going to asign our progressing investigadors a member, someone who can go visit them other days and pass by for them on sundays and be in the lessons. I thik it is going to help us out a lot.



I have been sleeping super weird since I got here. I feeling like my brain wont turn off. Like I am dreaming but it isnt dreaming, its thinking . Its super weird. But its making me ridiculously tired. Any ideas? I cant think of anything specific for christmas. Unless you wanted to send me one more of thos jody skirts. The four skirts you sent me are pretty much all I use. But other than that, made some chrsitmas mas goodies. I don{t really NEED anyhing else, but what ever you send I will be so happy with! Thank you! I cant think of anything more right now so ill get my other emails sent and write some more if I think of something. Love you!

Love, Hermana Baer

We had intercambios this week so I was in a different area with Hermana Rocha who is from Bolivia. The member that we went to visit here said there are HUGE iguanas behind his house that wade on the rocks in the pond thing that is behind us.

Our lesson with little ones this week lol.

Lexie - November 10, 2014

Whoo!
Hola!
Glad everything is going well and good luck to you and Jaocb tomorrow. I am sure all will go well! I am glad things are going a little better with the male drama. I think that what you said is perfect. President George has told us the same thing. We have to focus on today. Not on what we are going to do when we get home and not what we did before. Only in the now and if we do that Heavenly Father can bless our futures with out stressing! What a blessing! This week flew by again and we found a wonderful famliy. I am so excited for them, they went to church this week and the dad is has been inactive his whole life. The kicker is they arent married but that is like 90% of the people here so hopefully we can get taht figured out. If you are online and able to email me back would you please do me a HUGE favor and send me the picture of our family when we took tayler to the mtc? It is probably on my facebook or something but I want to make tayler a present and I need that picture. And any other with me and him or me and tayler and jake. Let me know, thanks!


My companion is really great and we are working tons. It has been really nice that we are both kind of newbies and are learing together how to do things. She is so patient with my spanish and when I feel bad for not being able to communicate somethihg perfect she is really good at reasuring me that I am learning a new languagea nd she understands. She is 23 and is from somewhere close to Mexico City. She has a law degree here in mexico which I think is a little easier than in the states lol, but she is really intelligent and knows so much about the gospel. I thank Heavenly Father every day for putting my a companion that makes me want to be better. I think that is what we are supposed to do when we get married too right? Find someone that makes you better. Anyways, It has been a wonderful week and I cannot even believe that in 4 days I will have 6 months in the mission! I just know 1 year is going to slide right on by and that freaks me out.

Con mucho amor, Hermana Baer

Tayler - November 3, 2014

Wow we had a really good week this week. Only that it was raining all week long and it is still raining like crazy basically lots of parts around here are flooding because the people here dont know how to build houses and no one has a good roof so yeah. But we did have a whole family come to church so that was really cool they all really liked it too so we will probably have 3 future baptisms with this family the dad and 2 kids because the mom is already a member . also we talked to one partmember family and the dad of the family who isnt member told us that he has made his own goal to be baptized for the end of this month so that is super awesome we have tons of possibilities for baptisms this month and we are really excited. and yesterday a man gave me a nice rain coat and rain pants to keep me nice and dry s that was super nice of him he isnt even a member but he is always really nice to is his wife isnt a member either but has been going to church for the last 5 years. I cant beleive that Jacob is already done with football i cant beleive how fast time goes by. I already have like 8 months in the mission and it feels like i left like yesterday and it is just going to keep flying by. But yeah i am doing really good i was also a little sick this week but i am doing a lot better now and i hope to stay that way i think i ate something bad and it mad me sick for a few days but i kept working anyway. I love you and also you really need to make me a profile on skype so i will be able to call you for christmas it is super important.dont forget to do that. Also there was a tornado in my mission the other day. It hit a little town in the country but that is crazy i have noticed the weather here is very similar to Iowa. I love you



Love Elder Baer

Lexie - November 3, 2014

Ok so this is about the slowest computer ever so this is all this week. My new district, awful picture of me. No worries. And the firestation is in our area and they have a little zoo next too it for animals they ahve taken out of peoples houses. There is this little guys. I think racoons. And thesse little crocodiles and a bunch of big old snakes. One is shadding right now and its all blue it is super weird. I will try to send more when I can.

Ok, I love my new area! It is so hot and the house has rats but I dont even care becasue the ward is awesome, the area is flat, and we have WATER! So yeah, really good week. I worked harder this week than I have my whole mission. Everyone keeps telling me that my spanish is awesome and even though I know it isnt it helps me work harder and feel better. Its amazing what posotive words can do! My companion is Hermana Agustin and she is wonderful. We have a lot in common and are very differnt too but it has been really good. But holy smokes she likes to make breakfast in the morning, well we trade off days I guess that is what she did with her other companion. Anyways, some days I eat a sandwhich, a quesodilla and a bowl of cereal for breakfast. Holy smokes that is a lot of food. So i try to eat less on my days to make breakfast. Anyways, the bus trip here was long and filled with super weird movies which are even weirder translated into spanish. 6 hours! And aparently the whole car sick thing is still in me because boy did I feel gross. But I didnt puke so its all good! We found some great new investigators this week, one is a famiy and the dad is an inactive member. Their lesson was great and I feel really good about them! We talk to soooo many people ever day. My companion is amazing with contacting and I can already tell some of the reasons I am with her and the things I need to learn. I love being a missionary but I also love that it is NOVEMBER! Can you even believe I will be home in almost a year? Taht blows my mind. Anyways, everything is going really great. We are going to centro today so I can buy these plastic shoes to use when it rains because it rains a ton here. And I guess we are in the rainy season too, so it is like 2 or 3 degrees cooler than normal. Yippee! lol. That and I really want a sombrero, so I will be searching for one of those too! Love you tons!


I have had some wonderful letters to read from family so thank you to all! Here are some answers to some questions! My favorite conference talk was proabably Elder Bedner (from what I could understand in spanish at least) I loved that he was speaking to people that are not members of the church so that everyone can understand better why in the world we want to share this messagewith everyone! They know about halloween here but they celebrate more the day of the dead! They take flowers to the cemetery but also food and drinks for the dead people! I love the food here but my favorite thing is the tortillas. They are wonderful and I am so going to buy one of the tortilla press things to bring home when I finish my mission! I think thats about it. I hope everyone is doing fantastic! Thank you for all your letters!
Love,Hermana Baer

Lexie - October 27, 2014

Alrighty everyone! I am printing out your letters to read but i have two minutes to write today because woooooo cambios! I am headed to tapachula!! six hours bus ride ahead of me today and tapachula is down by the coast and boarders guatamala. Youll have to look it up. Its way hotter there so lets hope I ose some dang weight! I love you alll soo much and I am sorry this is such an awful letter. I will make up for it next week. Love you all! Ill send pictures of my new place soon! Love you Love you Love you!!


Love, Hermana Baer

Tayler - Ocotber 27, 2014

Well thats cool that jacob scored some but a bummer that they lost and that is cool that utah is doing good dad sent me the article they are having a pretty good season so far so thats good. This week we have had a really awesome week. The inactive family we found are awesome only the mom is member and all fo the kids are super excited to go to church and everything and they all want books of mormon to read so that is awesome they didnt go to church though this weekend because they didnt wake up and when we visited them after church they felt really bad and they told us they are going next weekend and nother is going to stop them they are planning to get there like 30 minutes early so they dont miss anything. Also we ate lunch with some inactive members yesterday too and we were teaching some of the family members that arent members and the dad bore his testimony and it was so awesome i never expected this man to say anything so powerful it was super awesome though we just need to help activate the family and they will be very strong and very good to help the branch. We also so a guy in the street the other day that when we first looked at him he looked like bigfoot but when we got closer we sow that he was digging throught the trash to find plastic bags and when he found them he just tied them onto himself so that was weird. And it is so hot and humid here right now the weather here i think is similar to iowa there are even fireflies so thats cool. But yeah just sitting here writing emails i can feel sweat drippping down my back but thats just normal now. But oh well i just got to get used to it. Thats all i got and the lemon juice worked on those stains so thats good. I love you


Love elder Baer

Lexie - October 20, 2014

Ok now for my interesting week lol. Two hilarious things happened. and pictures are to come no worries. So I belive it was thursday orfriday it POOURED! it has been raining all week which is nice because it is cool but awful because we are soaking wet and I am so dang sick with a stupid cough, more on that later. Anyways. We had a lesson in the lowest Street in Real del Bosque which just so happens becomes a river when it rains because it is where all the wáter goes. And like literally a river. so we had to cross this nasty Green river to get to our appointment so we said out and help hands ands started. My comp screamed and I let go of her hand and crossed and made it to the other side. Water litterally up to my knees, and she had lost a shoe!! Hahaha. It was so funny. So I had to cross again to get back to her and then my brain started working and I realized it was way better to have my body facing the current thatn to walk straight across. So funyçny. But my comp kep sayingt I am just not strong enough tthe wáter is going to knock me over! Lol to funny. So i gave her my shoes and we walked abck to the apartment to get her others. The streets here are so nasty . It was like walking on slime because the sewer wáter is always running down the streets. Yeah so that was gross but super funny. Next story. So this is kind of awful and I felt so bad. I was so mad on Sunday night when we gave our information to our district leader and I told him my personal goal this week was to not kill anyone. But of course everyone took that way to literally and we got a visit from our hermanas that are our leaders this week so ask what was going on. Talk about emberassing. So I felt awful and like this ridiculous burden on everyone for my sarcastic attitude so I decided we were goijng to go see our president so I could talk to him because I was just not happy over this. So we went and i chatted with him and he thought it was hilarious and said that my goal this week should be to not kill my distrcit leader lol. So thats my this weeks goal. anyways, it was way nice just to talk to someone in english for a while and he understood taht. I really have the best misión president ever. Anyways, funny thing is they knew I was sick and have this humidifier mask thing they had me use. But turns our you put vadca in it lol. So they have this big bottle of vadca which I was inhailing through this mask lol. The best part is on saturday he showed up atthe house to bring the humidifier to me to use for a couple days and brought the whole bottle of vadca!! Hahaha, serious confidence in us right lol. So we have this huge bottle of vadca at the house. So funny. Anyways, thats about it for this week. I know that the Lord is blessing our family in huge ways and I cannot even belive that I am quickly approaching my 6 month point. How crazy is that! Hopefully good news next week on where I am going because president George said he was thinking about a new área for him. I will cry If i dont leave but I guess we will see. Love you tons y que tenga una semana muy bonita! Te amo muchísimo y espero que este bien.


Love, Hermana Baer

Lexie - October 13, 2014

We went to a beautiful canyon with president George and his wife last monday. Pictures are coming. And that was a nice break. I recieved a package from tyrel! wooooo! It was a message in a bottle. pretty fun. Oh speaking of tyrel, another persna this week asked me if my picutre with him was my dad. Ooooo that about makes me crazy. The littlest things are setting me off something awful. Blah. Anyways, we are headed to the central part of town today to do some shopping. Hopefully i will find myself a sombrero hat thing because I am so sick of using my umbrela for shade every day. There are no tres here so were in direct sun all day long. if you have sent my package thank you sooooo much! And if not and you wanted to but a cheap Little sun umbrela to stick in there I wouldnt mind that at all! All the umbrellas here are huge for the rain. Anyways, I think thats all for right now. Write me abck if you are online. I love you tons. Sorry my email is so depressing this weeek. I am really having a hard time with this whole misión thing. Love you.


Love, Hermana Baer

Tayler - October 20, 2014

Well we have had a good week this week. we have been working with a man named Eduardo and it is going really good with him the only problem is he is kind of crazy and we have to really go over things a lot for him to understand. also we found a part member inactive family the other day and they are super awesome too we taught them the restoration an the mom told us she wants to come back to church so hopefully they do next week. also yesterday it was mothers day in argentina because they do everything weird here so happy mothers day from argentina. and yesterday our branch president came up to us before sacrament meeting and told us we were talking in sacrament meeting so we prepared talks really fast and then they told us not to worry about it because a bunch of people were going to bare testimonies because we got a new branch president but he doesnt even live in our area so thats kind of weird he lives like 20 miles away. also it has been getting very hot and humid here so it is really tiring to walk around all day but its something that we have to do. other than that i dont have anything else about my week. I love you


love elder baer

Lexie - September 22, 2014

So this week went pretty good. Really fast which usually means we worked a lot. Always nice! yesterday it rained buckets and buckets. We were up in a different area eating lunch with a member and its all dirt roads. So we walked through the mud to where the collectivo stop is and were soaking wet. Then we started the trek down to the main road. We were plowing through so much water lol. My companion was freaking out but I just felt like I was at home. Goodness knows why I know so many people that enjoy getting their trucks stuck lol. Anyways it was super fun. We got to the main road and there was a huge line of cars because there was a dip in the road with a river going through it. I cant even explain how much water there was. So crazy. But we finally made it home! Our house was like a cockroach cemetary this week. We killed so many (I love raid it is the best thing ever) But neither of us like cleaning them up so they were just dead all over the house. Goodness I hate those things. My comp found one in the bathroom upstairs (alive for the moment) and she screamed so loud I thought there was a dang python in the house. But no, just a cockroach. I sure dont like them but they freak me out a little less now.


I also finished the Book of Mormon today. Wow what an accomplishment and how crazy to think it only took me like 3 months to read the whole thing. I cannot even explain the amount of power there is in that book. What Joseph Smith says in the begining is so true, a man will get closer to god by reading this book than any other book on this earth. I love that promise. And I cant believe how much stronger my testimony is now. We had the opportunity to teach a guy this week who works one of the gaurd shacks for a priviate area near our house. he is extremely religious and reads the bible every day in his gaurd shack. My companion was little harsh with him and it was turing into more of a fight than a sharing the gospel moment and I dont like that at all. I still dont understand everything but I decided I was going to introduce the BOM. I cant even explain how the whole mood of the lesson changed. I absolutely love that we arent here to shove this message down peoples throats. Its not our purpose. Our purpose is to invite others to come unto christ. And what better way than through the BOM. Anyways, I invited him to read it and he agreed.I think he actually will because he likes studying so much. So well see what he thinks in our next lesson but it all depends on if he asks god if its true with a sincere heart. Because I have no doubt in my mind that if someone really wants to know this book is true and reads and ponders it they are going to know. Without a doubt of the truthfullness of this book and of the gospel. I am feeling so much better and more confident this week. The spanish is coming. I was reading through our practice book we used at the MTC and I cant believe how much I have learned. I have loved that I can actually communicate a little with the members and our investigators. Every day feels better. I gave a note book to a lady in our ward that cooks amazing food for her to write down her recipies! So ill keep that up during the mission so we can eat some real delicious food when I get home! Ohhh and we had pazole 2x this week and oh my gosh I love that stuff. Soooooo much. Anyways. Thats about it this week. It went quicky! Thank goodness! Cant believe how happy I am and how absolutely tired also! lol. Love you tons and I hope you have a good week!

Tayler - October 13, 2014

well we had a good week here too. mostly because of what happened last night we went to visit a sister that isnt member but goes to church every sunday for like the last five years. and when we got there she told us that she was praying for us to come but she didnt have our number to call us. so we were able to give here the blessing that she needed and after she showed us tons of pictures of her grandaughter who served her mission on temple square. and she got married a few months ago and lives in idaho now so that was kind of fun to see all those pictures. and then we went to visit some other members and when we got there they were at their daughters house next door and we talked to the daughters husband that has never talked to the missionaries before wich is weird because here all of the part member families always have been taught by the missionaries before but we found this man and probably have a good chance of helping him get baptized along with their daughter and we can activate the wife all at the same time wich is cool. but yeah my area is really big we have to take a bus like 20 minutes to get to church and lots of it is pretty poor. but there is a train station in my area and by the train stations here there is always a ton of stores and stuff to buy so thats kind of fun to go look at all the cool stuff to buy. but its all good here so far i havent been robbed so thats good and the other day the nephew of one of the members in my other area started talking to me but i didnt recognize him but he told me he was their nephew and he lived there so that was a cool coincidence. but yeah its a good area its only a branch so church is kind of stressfull sometimes but its good. Well thats all i think. i love you


Love Elder Baer

Lexie - October 6, 2014

Hola!
Como esta la madre mas maravillosa en todo el mundo!? Conference was great! Even if it was in spanish lol. Not going to lie I didnt understand much because it is so hard to concentrate for that long on the language. But what I did understand was really great! I am not going to lie I am feeling a little bit hate for spanish deep in my soul but Ill just keep working on it. I have to learn it! So last week I ate a chocobana! Just a banana dipped in chocolate and all cold and such and wow was that delicious. So prepare yourself for those when I get home! We went to the temple but missed the session.... sad deal. So we did initatories. They made us take our bras off? Is that normal? I can remember but I thought it was super weird. After that our president and his wife took us out to dinner and today we are goig with them to see the canyon here! I am so excited I will send pictures next week! He is so awesome. Glad to here everything is ok with taylers mission president. How crazy is that! So I go the best compliment of my life this week. Someone told me I am fat but I have a small face. Gosh people are blunt here lol. So my self esteem is through the roof right now! NOT: gosh dang it I am gaining weight and it makes me so mad. But oh well. Lets hope I am some where rediculously hot for my last area! I listened to a little bit of the john bythe way that i have on the ipod this week and he quoted something from a conference that I LOVED He said that nothing is going to suprise us more when we get to heaven than how well we know our Heavenly Father and how framliar his face is to us. How cool is that. I have realized that prayers are the most important thing here and that our prayers should never be something we have to do but something we want to do in every moment of the day. I ahve been trying to get better about having a prayer in my heart in the lesson and walking in the street to help me out here. Because honestly it is our relationship wit God that is the most important.

Tayler - October 6, 2014

Yeah conference was good i really enjoyed that they allowed the leaders to speak in their native language so it was cool to hear that in spanish. conference is not quite as good when its translated because you cant here the power in their voices but the talks that were in spanish you could here it. and yes i like president uchtdorfs tak too, also i like president eyrings talk about the personal revalation and i think it was elder hales to about the prophet and stuff like that those were my favorites and i also liked that talk about the 4 things that we can doto help our families 1. family pray, 2. scripture study 3. family home evening 4. temple attendence. i know that we didnt really do the best job at those things but i feel like i should tell you that if you and jake do them together it will be a blessing in our family and i donk know its just a sugestion that you could have family home evening with jake on the weekend or something and could invite dad over to so he can be involved i think that would be awesome. I have learned here that we can learn all we want but if we dont apply those things in our lives we will never gain the blessings from them. Well thats what i learned in conference and we also had 2 investigators go with us so that was cool they really enjoyed it too. And yeah it was pretty crazy that president robertson got kidnapped and it happened in the stake next to the stake that i am in right now but its good that he is ok. he has been having these problems recently he also gt his car robbed a month back i think but i am glad that he is ok. He is a cool guy very nice. Well i think thats all i got for this week. I love you


Love Elder Baer

Lexie - September 29, 2014

Hey mom,
Package arrived! Thank you lol. People get packages all the time so I am pretty sure all is well with sending stuff here. I dont think there is as much a problem here as in argentina. Dang it with football. I am sure jacob is pretty bummed. Dang it. Hopefully they can work through it and he has a fun last year still. so weird that it is his last year. I am already excited for him and keaton and morgan to start getting their mission calls. Its coming up fast! This week was.... well.. It was alright I guess. We had a conference with presdent george that was very exicting. Gosh he is so awesome, I am so blessed to have him here. He talks like ely folk and is just so relaxed its awesome! Anyways, drum roll please..... we have permission to go to the temple!!!! I am soooo excited! So we have to change half of our p day because the temple is closed on mondays. So today after lunch were going to work instead so that we can go to a session this week. I am soooo excited even though it is going to be ridiculously hard in spanish. Oh well! We have permission to go once every cambio if we are here in Tuxtla close to the temple. We also took one of our investigadors to the foyer of the temple this week for a lesson. Its so cool to have lesson in there. So hopefully it helps her out a little bit. Her mom and sister were baptized about 3 months ago but she is just not feeling it. So well keep working on that. Last monday was interesting. We made cookies at a members house all day long (the truth is they were awful cookies lol) my comp doesnt know anything about cooking so we were just putting ingredients in a bowl till it looked good and baked them at who knows what templerature till they looked done. Yeah, so that didnt go to well ha. Anyways, this week was good and honestly I am just really looking forward to going to the temple this week. Ill let you know who it goes! oh! Also we have permission to take our converts to do baptism. The deal is though that we have to take our own names in order to go. I am not sure if we have any family names or anything I know grandma is pretty on top of getting all of that work done but if you could check on that for me that would be awesome! Oh also we started handing out last week to our investigadors progress record things for reading the book of mormon. We found a cool one. Anyways, one of our investigadors that is 11 I think read 14 chapters and explained them all to us. it was so awesome! So it worked for quite a few people! Yay! I hope you have an awesome week, I am glad grandma and grandpa could come visit. I love you tons and I will talk to you again soon!

Love, Hermana Baer

Tayler - September 29, 2014

Hey this week i finally got transfered to an area called Laferrere 2 so thats pretty cool. And my companion is from canada so he speaks english and he only got to this area 2 weeks ago so we are learning the area together. The area is huge it used to have 2 companionships but now there is only one and we had a baptism yesterday because they just closed the other area so we inherited the investigators of the other elders and we met the lady on wendsday and we baptized her yesterday so it was kind of weird but it was kind of a cool experience. Well i guess the weather here is the opposite of home it is starting to heat up here because summer is coming its going to be weird to have summer in december. Thats too bad to hear about Jake game. Well i am not sure what else to tell you i have had a good week and i feel like i have a new energy to work in my new area. I love you


Love Elder Baer

Tayler - September 22, 2014

This week, I have finally figured out how to study without falling asleep. i started to take notes about everything even if it was stuff i already knew i would right down all the important things and then i can stay awake and focus on the important parts of the things i am reading. I also started to study the lessons in preach my gospel. wich if you break them down and analize them they are truly amazing so many things and so much to learn but it is truly amazing to know that all of that is to make sure that we can return to live with our families again. Also we taught a young single mother the other day. we talked about the influence a mother has on her children and read the scripture of the stripling warriors when it says that they learned from their mothers. And i wanted to thank you for being the best mom and teaching me a lot and always loving me it is really important for me to know that. Also we had some other great lessons and usually i am learning more when we teach than anyone. I begin to recognize all the blessings that i have had in my life that i take for granted that truly are great blessings. Well for know there isnt anything i want right now i would have you send me dolars but i dont know if they would make it all the members want to buy dolars and they pay more than the bank so i already sold all the dolars i had. but i dont think its really worth sending them. Well thats all i got from this week. Also if you know i would like to know the outcome of the UofU game. I love you.


love elder baer

Lexie - September 15, 2014

Hola!
Happy to say I am feeling much better. This week was still awful. But Im feeling a lot more postiive about this week. Tomorrow is Mexicos independance day so well be having a hard time finding people this week but hopeuflly all goes well. We had our baptism on Saturday. Beautiful that we had 3 baptisms and the dad was able to baptize them! But other than that the whole program was awful. Everything went awful. Our mission leader guy in our ward is so busy with his work so the program was awful. there were kids banging on the glass during the baptisms and there were hardly any of the 200 members that are active in our ward. Ridiculous. Makes me so mad. Just so you know be active in the ward! I wish I had been more now. And feed those awesome missionaries as often as you possibly can! We ate with pres george and his wife last week and i think it helped me feel a little better. He is so great. Hna. George showed me her quilts she brought with her. She has a quilting machine so she was telling me i can send her my quilts one day to quitl ha. That and president George said if Tyrel doesnt wait for me hes crazy. So Im feeling pretty confident about that situation ha. Anyways. Other than 3 baptisms it was a pretty rough week. We had people come and check our apartment for president george this week to see if it was clean and sucha nd they made us take down all of our pictures. Taht was pretty sad. It feels a lot less homey now. But wow, i was realizing the other day how much more comfortable I am here. And people in the ward I think are starting to notice that I am a little more myself now that I can comunicate a little. Ive got a million things I want to try and do today so I have to cut it a little short.

 Love you tons and thank you for your advice. Cambios were today and I didnt change so I am determined to have a better 6 weeks with my companion. It was my 4 months in the mission yesterday and she gave me the nicest present. A ton of peopple have this shirt here that they gave out during the world cup and I always say that I want one. Well she gave me hers. She said she is a mexican so she doesnt need it lol. Anyways, it was very sweet and we really do have our good days. I just need to be patient with this next 6 weeks and do my best. I feel like I have been slacking so much and it is very disheartening when we go home at night. Looking forward to a much better week. Love you tons. Have an amazing week and Ill talk to you soon.Now if you ahve a second!


Love, Lexie

Tayler - September 15, 2014

Things went a lot better this week. I am not frustrated with my companion and we were able to get a lot done this week. We found a few new investigators that are super good and they are going to get baptized for sure next month but i probably wont be here to see them get baptized because we ahve transfers next week and i dont think i will be staying here another transfer i already have a ton of time here. Also on saturday we did a service project for some members and the mom of the member made a ton of empanadas wich were delicious i will send you a picture. But i am super sore from the service project still me back is killing me. Thats good that jacob is going to visit people that is something that i probably should have done more of. Now that i am here on the mission i know how important it is to have members come with and visit people. and that it helps to be able to learn kind of what missionaries do. Also i am pretty sure that you are not supposed to hug elders i am not sure how it works in the us. but here in argentina it is something that you cant do. but yeah i am feeling a lot better right now so i am ready to take on another week and it should be good. Yesterday it rained all day and i didnt have an umberela so i used my coat and it kept me dry for the most part so that was good my agenda got super wet and lots of the ink kind of washed away but i only have this agenda for one more week so thats ok. I think thats about it I love you, and even if you wanted to send a package i cant recieve packages at all they dont let them in to argentina. so dont send a package.


Love Elder Baer