Shock

Hey everyone what´s going on? Ok first of all the death about Danny Hainline is the most shocking thing I have heard. That caught me completely off guard and I´m still having a hard time believing it. It really is truly amazing the plan of salvation that our Heavenly Father has set up for all of us and the amazing blessings that we can recieve when we live accordingly. Wow I really don´t know what to say. He was a great person and another big brother for me. I´m gonna miss him a lot and tell Heather and the whole Hainline family that my thoughts and prayers are with them and that if I could be there I would. I love them all very much and I know they´ll be ok.

Changing the subject a little bit this week wasn´t too eventful for me. My companion Elder Rivarola was having some foot problems that he´s had the whole transfer s not a whole lot really happened with us. We spent a lot of time in the house cause he couldn´t walk very much. I have a new apprecation for being healthy and not having any problems apart from the normal aches and pains that comes with being a missionary and having to walk around everyday. Big news this week was that Elder Rivarola got transfered to Bahía Blanca cause of his health issues and I am going to be training again!! I´m really excited cause the first time I did it with Elder Thackeray I had a great time and was able to learn a lot so I´m excited to keep learning this time from the new missionary I´ll be with. He´s still not with me and I think he gets out here to Mar Del Plata tomorrow or wednesday night. It´s gonna be a great experience and we gotta work hard so that we can get a third stake out here in Mar Del Plata!!! I am loving the mission completely and I´m excited for the time I have left and interested to see the things that we can reach. Those were really the big changes. Like I said we couldn´t work a whole lot this week so nothing really exciting happened. We found 2 new investigators who are a reference from this family called the Joglars. Apparently I look like their son who is also on his misson but in chile. Everyone and their mom tells me I look like him and they´re always cracking jokes and fun stuff like that. Anyway the new investigators are some old neighbors of theirs who are really nice we´ll just have to see how they go. Sorry I don´t have any time today. I have a meeting I need to get too. Thanks for all the birthday wishes and all the support! I love you all!!!

---Elder Nicholas Gaughan

Out of Control

Hey everybody how are things? Ok this week, like it says in the subject was pretty out of control. On monday night I get a call from one of the Elders in my district, Elder Esparza, who told me that they were taking his companion, Elder Beyer, to the hospital to get checked out. He had been pretty sick for a while and had been complaining of stomach pains and they kept getting worse. So they go to the hospital and later they call me again around 1030 or 11 and tell me that they´re taking Elder Beyer to a clinic cause he has apendecitis and they have to operate on him!! Elder Esparza is from Chile and doesn´t speak any english at all and doesn´t understand very much either. So I end up calling President to see what he wants to do cause if they operated on Beyer and he wakes up speaking english no one is gonna know what´s going on. President and I come to the conclusion that it would be better that I go cause the zone leaders were already traveling for Bahía because they had Zone Leader Counsel the next day. So at 11 at night I end up getting dressed, heading down to the clinic and spending the night with Beyer because supposedly they were going to operate on him that night. So I get down there and turns out for some reason they couldn´t operate that night and were gonna wait until the morning. I end up spending the night there with Elder Beyer and got about 2 hours of sleep so the next day was an adventure. We wake up the next day and the area doctor from the church wanted a bunch of tests and stuff done to be sure that it was the apendix. That ended up taking a bunch of time and they finally decided that they were gonna operate at 7 PM. I had to leave at 630 cause I also had to go to Bahía that night for a capacitation the next day. So at 1030 tuesday night I took off for Bahía and Elder Beyer got operated on at 7. The good news is that he´s doing good now. He´s out of the clinic and back home the only thing is that he can´t work for a while. So that was pretty crazy. Then Wednesday we had a capacitation with President and the assistants which was really good and I was able to learn a lot of stuff that´s gonna help us get a lot better as a mission. For this month of March we have the goal of 180 baptisms!! It´s a big goal and something we´ve never reached before but we definitely have the potential to do it and we have been getting better and better as time goes on. This is a really exciting time to be in the mission cause a lot of things are changing and we´re getting better and better everyday, every week, and every month. So thursday of this week I just recently started working and we were getting ready for Licia´s baptism!!! She got baptized on Saturday and it was an awesome service!! Her grandson David, who´s getting ready for his mission, baptized him and it was really cool. David´s dad who isn´t a member was also there and he seemed to really like it too so we´re hoping to start teaching him here pretty soon. Licia is an awesome lady. I call her my argentine grandma cause she is the sweetest lady ever and you can´t help but love her. She is literally the definition of a sweet little old lady. Sunday she got confirmed a member so that´s one more for the new stake here in Mar Del Plata and another person who has found the truth and made covenants with our Heavenly Father. I love this work and that quote that you sent me mom is really true. The greatest joy ever is missionary work. I don´t care what anyone says. This is the greatest time ever to be in the service of the Lord!!! Oh on sunday a random homeless guy we talked to in the street came to church which was really unexpected. He was pretty drunk so that was interesting but luckily there was no harm done. This week was full of insanity and not a whole lot of time to think which is good but now I can´t really think of anything else to write cause I don´t really remember what else happened this week. The mission is going by way too fast and it´s hard to believe where I am in terms of time. A missionary just barely returned who left from Santa Monica and he said it´s super weird not being a missionary and talks about how he misses it and how he wants to go back haha. We´ll see if I´m like that, I would guess yes!! I hope everyone is doing well. 

Love you guys! 

Thanks for all your help and support!!!!
-Elder Nicholas Gaughan