1st week in Argentina!!

¡Hola familia! what´s up? so sorry if my spelling on here is all weird, i´m still trying to figure out the keyboard haha. but what´s been going on? what´s new? that´s way cool about the temple dad! Tell Spencer I said hi the next time you see him. That´s ok way cool that you guys get to go up to San Jose to see the Wickstrums!!!! Tell Daniel sorry I haven´t written him yet, i forgot to get his address before I left and then kept forgetting to ask you all for it.

ok so Argentina is pretty crazy. i only understand about half or maybe a little more of what everyone is saying to me which cool and frustrating at the same time. not always knowing what´s going on is kinda tough but that just means i need to work harder on the language. President Detlefsen is awesome! Him and Hermana Detlefsen are super cool and way awesome. When we landed in Bahia Blanca we got picked up by President and the Asistants, hung out at the mission office, had a little orientation type thing and spent the night in a hotel down the street. The next day we had to do a bunch of paper work stuff to make sure we were "legal" in the country. they have a bunch of random laws here that don´t always make sense but thats ok.

Anyway so I met my trainer that day too, his name is Elder Hopper, he goes home in march and we got sent to Santa Rosa which is like 6 or so hours away from Bahia Blanca. It´s this little pueblo type deal and really humble. We live on this little shack behind the house of some members. We´re with 2 other Elders who work in the area right next to ours. They´re all way cool and super nice. Elder Hopper is new here too so this week has been interesting. We´ve been doing a ton of contacts which hasn´t yielded any success yet. We´re trying to get to know the members better and try to work with them and hopefully the work will go forward from there. (I forgot to bring my camera, but I´ll email pics next week). But yeah so it´s been kinda crazy that both of us are new in this area, that hardly ever happens and it´s always tough at first cause neither missionary knows anyone. There´s a couple here, Alejandro and Nadia who are getting married on Fri and we´re gonna try to put a baptismal date with Alejandro tomorrow night. Nadia is a member but has been less active for a while. Besides that we just started with 2 other people but we´ll have to see how these next few lessons go. So not a lot of investigators right now, but I think we just need to get the ball rolling and everything will be just fine. There are a bunch of less actives so we might be doing a lot of less active work too. We´ll just have to wait and see how it goes and everything. I can´t think of anything else right now, but know I love you all and am doing well. Talk to you soon,
Elder Gaughan

Me voy a Argentina!!!

Hey family how's it goin? Ok so as you can probably already guess by the subject, I'm headed to Argentina!! I signed the last papers I needed for my visa last week and I got a call a few days ago and they told me I'm taking off on Wed!! So I'm pretty excited about that. Sorry I didn't really give you many details about where I am and stuff, here you go. The area I'm in is called Tucker, we're a little bit outside of downtown Atlanta. We live in a really heavily hispanic neighborhood/area which is way cool. Hispanics are super nice people and we when you start talking to them they'll actually talk to you and hold a conversation, not like most Americans who will just brush you off. So yeah I'm in Tucker right now, not sure where that is in relation to Aunt Pat (tell her sorry, but I don't think I'm gonna be able to do lunch. We don't have a car and we can't ride in a car with a woman unless there's a man too). So yeah we're speaking spanish and I've already learned a ton in these few weeks I've been here. It took me about a week to become acostumed to the accent and I'm still getting used to it. It's a branch here and the members are way cool. They're all super nice and way generous even though they don't have much at all.

Oh fun fact my companion, Elder Maucotel, was in the same MTC District as Eric Davis!! How crazy is that? He was showing me some pics and I saw Eric and was like what the heck? That's awesome!! So yeah he and Eric know each other which I thought was pretty cool.

Ok for the fun stories. We're still teaching Celia, but she's been having some doubts about baptism and things. She's gone to a lot of different churches and just wants to be really sure before she gets baptized. She's also afraid of facing some opposition after she gets baptized, which is understandable cause that happens a lot. We've asked her to pray about it and hopefully she gets an answer. We have an appointment with her tonight or tomorrow so we'll see what happens. She's been coming to church and the members have been super nice and really welcoming which is awesome. We've been doing quite a bit of work with less actives which is fun, but at times is frustrating. We know that they have a testimony, they've just forgotten it cause they stopped doing one or more of the things we should be doing (ex. reading scriptures, praying,etc.). So we're working with them and hopefully they'll start coming back to church and be active again. Besides that there's not to much going on here. I'm sad to be leaving here, but really happy to be headed to Argentina at the same time. I hope everything is going well with you all. I love you,
-Elder Gaughan

Accepting the Lord's Will

Well, Nick has been assigned to serve state side for the time being until his visa comes through. He sounded a little disappointed, but he is learning to accept the Lord's will. Yesterday (Monday), Nick left Salt Lake and arrived in Atlanta, GA. I will post a new address as soon as I get it!