Tayler - June 9, 2014

it was kind of weird to go in to the city for the first time last week. ever since i have been in argentina the only things i have seen were dirt roads and makeshift brick houses it was weird to see buildings with tons of windows like a normal building. and we drove by river on our way to immigration and i took a picture of the ships masts. its crazy because buenos aires is next to a fiver and not the ocean but the river is gigantic, we couldnt see the other side from where we were. anyways, we have like three people here that are basically ready to be baptized but the cant becuase of some little things. and that is kind of my first experience with satan trying to prevent these people from being baptized. one investigator has been sick for the last few weeks, another we need to get the signatures of her parents but they are never home and when they are they never want to talk with us, and lastly we have one that lives somewhere else but always come to our ward but because he doesnt live in the ward he cant be baptized here. its kind of annoying that we have been helping them so much but we have just kind of hit a wall but we just need to work around that and get them baptized no matter what.


when we first got here president carter told us that we were going to lose weight but i am not sure if i have. we walk all day but we eat so much for lunch, most days i can barely eat all they give me to eat, and then in a ton of our lessons people offer us food, they eat a whole lot of bread here to if you dont have bread you are not eating a real meal. so im not sure if i have gained weight or lost any but i am feeling good. beside the fact that i think i am alergic to argentina every day at times i just have sneezing attacks and i cant stop sneezing for like 5 minutes. hopefully that will go away. and its kind of weird that this city is huge but you can actually see a lot of stars wich is weird cause in salt lake you cant see any and its a lot smaller. also i think that in the states you can see venus in the early morning but here we always see it when it starts to get dark, i dont know if its different or if i just never noticed seeing venus in the states. i think thats all for this week, i will send you some pictures too. i love you


love elder baer

these are facturas they are basically donuts. this one is dulce de leche its my favorite

Lexie - June 7, 2014

This week flew by! I can't even believe I only have 2 weeks left and I had some really cool things happen this week. I took a ridiculous language assessment test on the computer on Monday and did terrible! It's timed so it was so bad. The people that gave feedback made sure to give me a bunch of positives before the corrections though, it made me feel like I was at the gym! lol. We had a great devotional on Tuesday that was about finding your identity. It reminded me a lot of Danny Poulsens talk when he got home from his mission. I shared bits of his talk with my district after. The talk was also a lot about loving the people we teach. Sometimes I think it's interesting that we talk about that so much but as my district shared their thoughts I realized that not everyone grows up with an amazing mom who loves and cares about everyone no matter what their situation. Thank goodness I had that influence growing up because I feel like i just love people! We have this adorable investigator right now that is from Mexico and has told us all about our mission. She says most people sleep in hamacas because it's so hot and she said don't eat the monkey! lol I had the coolest experience teaching her yesterday. For the first time since being here I felt like I was about to carry and lead a lesson, and in spanish! Crazy. She asked a lot of questions and for some reason I knew the answers. We talked about why the priesthood was important and why God waited such a long time before establishing the church back on the earth. I could feel the spirit so strong in the room and I just smiled as she was talking to my companions because I couldn't believe I had answered it in a way that made sense. At the end of the lesson I asked if she had any questions and she grinned and said, "No, you answered everything I wanted to know." That is so cool. Sometimes we get asked questions and we have to say something like, "That's a great question can we talk about it next lesson?" But this time everything just worked. It was awesome and she is so great. Another cool thing that happened this week was that for the first time I ever I was studying the scriptures and I think I really found something that jumped out and applied to my life. It was so awesome. I was reading 3 Nephi 13. The whole chapter is great. There is a funny scripture about fasting and how you shouldn't disfugre your face so people know lol. I found it the day after fast sunday and I felt bad for whinning about not eating all day. But! the best part was at the end of the chapter. I want to say it's verses 30-33 but don't quote me. Just go look! It talks about how God knows what we need and as long as we seek first to live the gospel then everything else will be provided. When I was researching more I found out that preach my gospel compares this to balancing work and family and it totally makes sense. Always put the Lord first and everything else will work out in one way or another. Loved the scripture.


On a less spiritual note! My teacher had the most rocking zit on his neck the other morning and he went to the bathroom in the middle of class and had taken care of it. I told him at the end of class that I was glad he got a handle on it for his date that day. He tells me all the time that he's never been so harassed by a student before. It's hilarious, he's a really cool teacher. I feel like when I'm in his class it's the only time of the day I get to be myself! I bought some rocking sweatpants here that say MTC on them so I'll be wearing those for the rest of forever. And! because it was so precious I want to just let everyone know that yesterday was probably the most unattractive day of my entire life. I had a rocking volcano zit on my cheek. My hair looked like a wet poodle and my face was melting because we were outside so much. that and I was out of all the clothes I like so I was rocking my grandma shoes(no offense grandma) which I love so much because they are so comfortable but definately not that attractive. It was a really struggling day. Good thing the spirit is there no matter what I look like! My companions was saying the other day that her parents used to always tell her, "If the church wasn't true the missionaries would have screwed it up by now." I think that's so funny and so true. All the elders here seem so young to me, they are all like my little brothers. And so many people haven't left home before this so some of the things said in lessons just make me shake my head lol. But the spirit makes up for it! Thank goodness that's how it works! That's about it this week. All the new mission presidents arrive this coming Tuesday so we're supposed to have a pretty cool devotional speaker. Fingers crossed! Thank you to everyone that has written me dear elders! It is the best feeling in the world to get mail. You are all awesome! Miss you!

Tayler - June 2, 2014

this week went pretty well. i was really focusing this week on really trying to understand and answer people when they had questions. i think it went pretty well i feel like everyday i am getting a little better, and a lot of the elders in my district say i speak really well so either they are trying to be nice or its true. anyway i think i am still not quite accumstomed to the mission life, its kind of hard for me to really pay attention to people especially when a tv is on, like the other day we were talking with someone and on the tv they were watching highlights of the playoffs and i was really struggling to pay attention. i think part of the problem is i dont understand them very good but i still need to pay attention to be able to learn faster. and i have really come to love reading the scriptures, basically i talk about them all day and i have really gained the desire to learn more and i enjoy it alot. i have been reading the book of mormon in personal study and i have almost finished it but usually i am super tired in the morning and personal study is the first thing every morning so i kind of struggle to stay awake. and with praying, that is something that i probably should have done better at home. we pray all the time every morning every time we leave the apartment and every lesson and every night we pray all the time. but i do think that i have grown closer to heavenly father doing so. we teach a lot of people how to pray and that has helped me too i have learned that prayer is a conversation i can tell anything to my heavenly father and he is going to respond in some way usually its subtle but there is always an answer. thats also one thing that i have learned to that heavenly father really has blessed our family even though we have had hard times. the blessings always come after the trial of faith. i love you.


love elder baer

Bruschetta style pizza!

Buenos Aries!

Lexie - June 1, 2014

It was a rough week. Started off with some lessons on monday that did not go well. One of the elders in our district bought all the hermanas ice cream that night, i think he could sense some irritation lol. I got a new teacher on Monday who is the person who was our first "investigator" so he knows all the stupid things we've said in lessons and that's super emberassing. Tuesday Russell M. Nelson came and talked and focused a lot on the missionary purpose. His wife gave a short talk that was really good about desperation, she said desperation can be a good thing on a mission. be desperate to contact people and desperate to share the gospel because when we're desperate for some reason we figure out how to get stuff done. it was an interesting concept. Also on Tuesday we taught our first TRC lesson which is teaching members so it's kind of like home teaching. We of course were not told this was happening so we were not prepared at all and totally flopped the first lesson. The one right after it went a lot better. The second lesson we just talked about the BOM and shared our favorite scriptures. It was a lot better than trying to teach a member like an investigator. Wednesday went a lot better and we gave a really good lesson. We were prepared and had some good examples and scriptures to use. I think I could almost do the whole first lesson in entirely spanish and that blows my mind. We started learning future tense this week which isn't bad but I fee llike past tense will probably destroy me. Thursday I went to Salt Lake to the Mexican Consulate to take pictures and finger print for our Visas. So they should be arriving here to us pretty soon. I drank a real mountain dew and had the most delicious food at Maverick on the way back to Provo. I don't even know what I ate but it's sad that it tasted that good. The MTC food keeps me alive but I wouldn't say I enjoy it most days. OH! And at the consulate we met our new mission president and his wife! They will arrive in Mexico just after us and are really nice. They are Dairy farmers from Cody Wyoming. They seem really cool. Other than that everything has been pretty much the same. The days are so long and I'm always tired so thank goodness for mints to help keep me awake!

Watch this...

https://www.lds.org/prophets-and-apostles/unto-all-the-world/mountains-to-climb?lang=eng