Week 14!

hahaha hey there my good old family!!!!

thanks for the pic i really love it!!!  haha i'm glad to hear that you got the letter i sent!  it took about tree and a half weeks to get there WOW  this week i went on a two day division with a latino, his name is Elder Arancibia, he's a chileno and knows NO english.  i think that i'm getting better and better at spanish because i really didn't have a problem talking to him the whole time we were together.  it was a lot of fun!!!!  FUNNY STORY, while we were on our divisionson the second day (Wednesday) we had to stop working about two hours early because Elder Arancibia had a little problem,  he was "chafting" WAY BAD hahaha it was soo stinking funny because i didn't get what he was saying and he had to discribe it to me because i didn't know the word he used for it!  haha it was definitely a funny experience.  also this week we had to go to a different area (Nuevo Paysandù) because my Comp is a District Leader and he had to do a baptismal interview.  it was for this really old lady who was one of the sweetest ladies i've met here.  she was having some personal doubts about getting baptized because of the "Law of Tithing" because she thought that you had to give a TON of money to the church for tithing so we talked with her for like a half an hour on what tithing is and she ended up being great!  i talked to the elders who taught her and they said that they have taught her about three or four times about the law of tithing so it was kind of weird that she had that doubt again, but oh well.   this week i have been pretty sick... :(  not too much fun...  i got a really bad cough, headaches, and lots of SNOT.  but i'm starting to feel better now, it was pretty annoying because it was so bad that i couldn't go out and work on saturday...  both of us were practically dying on saturday.  and this week on sunday was quite an interresting day.  there was less than 20 people at sacrement meeting...  probably only 15 people were at church...  we are working the hardest we can!!!  hey i was thinking that for christmas i would call you so you can get the number and then you guys could call me back does that sound good?  i can't wait to hear more from you!!! (none of your letters or packages have gotten here yet)  but it's all good!!!!

LOVE YA,

Elder Atkinson

Week 13!

hey there my good ol family!!!
so far i have recieved NOTHING from you guys yet... sorry but they
probably will bw here soon! :)  this week was a pretty good one.  it's
awesome to hear how well everything has been going!  i'm really sorry
this this email may not be very long... it's because the internet cafe
we went to today is TERRIBLE!!!  and super slow!  it's so annoying!
but anyways, we had a Zone Conference this week,  the President and
his wife came up and gave us talks on companionship studies and how to
work hard.  they were really good talks and were very inspiring! :)
guess what???????  this is my ONE MONTH anniversary in URUGUAY!!!
yeah i know time is stinking flying by :)  it's truly crazy!  this
last friday my companionship and the sister missionaries combined both
of our wards (because we meet in the same building) and we did an
activity!!!  we told everyong that we were going to a trip and we were
flying to Hawaii, we made the ward building like an airport and the
plane was the stage.  during the flight we told them that we didn't
put in enought gas in the plan and me and my comp (the pilots of the
flight) grabbed out parachutes and jumped off the plane.  haha when
all the people came out we had ponchos, mustaches and mexican hats on.
 we crashed into MEXICO!!!  haha it was a lot of fun and we had 2 of
our investigatores come to it!!!  in total we had around 60 PEOPLE
THERE!!!  for an activity of only 2 wards for here, that is a HUGE
success!!!  this sunday everyone came up to us and thanked us for how
great the activity was!  haha i had a lot of fun doing it :)  thanks
for all your love and i'm going to try to send you some pics really
quick so HEADS UP!!!

LOVE YA,
Elder Atkinson

Week 12!

hahaha ok ok family!!!!

¡hey! how's life going for all of you?  i'm am doing great in the
wonderful land of Paysandù.  in case you are wondering what my actual
address is for google earth, it is 1107 Dr. Herrera in the city of
paysandù, the district of Paysandù.  this week has been FULL of
AMAZING experiences!!! the main one was this last saturday, we were
knocking doors in the one area and getting no success with that like
usual knocking...  we were knocking past one of our investagators
(Idina and her daughter Valentina) that we were going to drop pretty
soon because they are never at home and when they are home they don't
have time.  i saw their door and had a small feeling saying, "just
knock one more time" i told my comp that i wanted to knock the door
and he said, "ok, if they're not there we're going to drop them"  so
we went over and i knocked.  they were there! and not only that but
they had read EVERYTHING we asked them to read.  we started talking to
them and we had an AWESOME lesson!  we committed them to go to church
and they said that they would try to come.  they next morning we
remembered that we didn't tell them what to wear!!!  so Elder Ashby
thought of cutting out one of the papers of a Pamphlet we had that had
dressing standards on it and circled the important parts and also
wrote on it "come in what you have" and on our way to church we
slipped it under the door of their house.  because they said that they
didn't want us to go pick them up we didn't knock or anything.  but
THEY CAME TO CHURCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  not only did both of them go
to church but Valentina brought 2 of her 3 daughters as well!!!  i
could tell that they felt the spirit so strongly in the sacrement
meeting.  oh yeah, both me and my companion had to give talks in
sacrement meeting.  i talked for about ten or so minutes and elder
ashby spoke for about fifteen to twenty minutes.  he did a stinking
great job!!!! and i only messed up on one word the whole talk!!! i has
pretty excited about that AND it was my first week having an
investigator come to church.


ok dad this one is for you:  since i've been on my mission i have
noticed something.  how much the strength of the members affects the
church and how it is run.  i have a strong testimony that simply by
bringing your friends and family to sacrement meeting it brings a
different spirit to their countenounces.  i remember inviting all my
friends to go play basketball and stuff like that at the church but
one of my biggest regrets is not even thinking to invite them to
attend church.  i know that this family that just attended church did
feel the spirit and will recieve MANY blessings from going to church.
i know with all of my heart that this church is the ONLY true church.
if i didn't know that this was true, i would DEFINITELY not fly all
the way down to Uruguay and be down here for two years.  this is some
of the toughest work i've ever done before but it feels absolutely
AMAZING knowing that it ALL is going to the Lord.  thanks for all of
your support and prayers!

i love you all and ¡¡¡HLJ!!!

Elder Tyler Atkinson

Week 11!

¡hola!

hey there family! how's life going in good ol' Colorado?  i'm doing stinking great!!! just as a heads up, a have to drive down to Montevideo AGAIN this next monday, so i have no idea what day this nest wek i will be able to email you BUT i know we will get time to email sometime next week.  but anyways... (nacho voice) haha this week was pretty darn quick! (considering i wrote you on wednesday hahaha) it has been soo stinking HOT.  i sweat while i'm in bed going to sleep!!! we don't have air conditioning or anything and when we keep the window open every single bug in the WHOLE WORLD ends up in our room.  but it's all good.  this last p-day we went to the ZOO!!!  it was free, and in uruguay, so you can imagine what it must have been like.  there was a whole 10 different animals in the zoo, and was kept up by one old guy that lives with like 20 dogs.  the weather here has been HOT and HUMID the past 2 weeks.  RANDOM FACT, ever since i have been here i have to poop all the time.  ¡NO JOKE! but the food here is pretty good!  when they serve you they serve you soo much and then if they ask if you want more you feel rude if you say "no" so you have to eat like two HUGE plates full of food.  most of the food is either pastas or something that's like rice, chopped up boiled eggs, some veggies, lots of mayonayse and if the person is well off they will put some sort of meat in there. usually like chicken or pork.  this week we really tried to focus on teaching wilth the spirit by reaching and trying to find a "question from Heaven" we learned what that was during our training thing last week.  it really helps make sure that you are trying to stay intune with the spirit always in our lives.  we had another lession with teresa this week and she read ALL that we asked her to and MORE!!!!!  how cool is that? i'll answer that one for you-EXTREMELY COOL!!!  she says that all that she is reading are answers to prayers and questions that she has in her life.  we still have to work a lot on her to start actually coming to church but i think she is getting close and might go this next week!!!  i'm so excited to hear about Lindsey and Shaun bearing their testimonies in sacrement meeting!!!!  that's awesome!  that's one thing that i really wished i would have done more back home...  just from experiences down here it has made me realize how important it is to actually SHARE your testimony with others.  NOTHING and i mean NOTHING is better to say while you are teaching than to bear your testimony!  people will honestly feel your spirit soo much if you just share with them what you KNOW to be true.  though i may not be able to speak the language i do know how to bear my testimony and i know that the people who hear it are able to feel what i am trying to say.

i'm soo grateful to hear from all of you and can't wait to hear more!!!!

LOVE YOU ALL,

Elder Tyler Atkinson

Week 10!

hey there my family,

i'm sorry i didn't email until today...  my comp. and i have to take a bus down to Montevideo for a training conference for two days.  it was actually really really cool.  it helped us on some things that we need to change about the way we teach people.  it had some VERY good ideas for us to try on some people.  the language is coming great!  i can actually listen pretty well, i get what their saying for the most part haha just speaking it is what i'm working on right now.  haha and you know how i told you that our ward has 40 people that attend? that's actually false... that's as many people that attended stake conference.  haha so this week was my first time in my ward.  and the average sacrement attentence for that is around 22-23 people...  my companion and i DEFINITELY have our work cut our for us.  hahahaha it's pretty difficult because pretty much EVERYONE here works on sundays (even the Bishop) so getting people to church, especially investigators, is pretty tough.  we have around 8-10 main investigators in our area.  the one that we're most excited about is a lady named Teresa, she's a single mom with a 15 year old daughter who is VERY much overweight because she has some sort of illness.  her husband died like 3 years ago, she seems very interested in the gospel.  this last week we taught her about the Book of Mormon and the restoration and we challenged her that is she prays and recieves an answer about our church to be baptized, she said yes if she KNOWS that this is true.  so i got pretty excited about that.  we're going to go talk to her tomorrow and see how she's doing.  oh by the way, the Longshore's nephew is my Zone Leader!!! (Elder Longshore) haha  he is stinking hilarious!  the rules for emailing are as so, "we can read our emails fairly quick, and then we have 30 of typing time"  oh funny story,  so this sunday we were walking from our apartment to an appointment we had with an inactive member and the lady starts walking towards us.  this lady is the creepiest looking lady i have ever seen; she's probably around 35 years old but i could tell that because she's done so much drugs she lookd like she's 50 years old, she is wearing tattered clothes her hair probably hasn't been washed in 15 years, and she has about 4 teeth in her mouth and she was chewing on something that looked like tar... haha she comes up to us and says in english, "Do you speak english??" we replied, "yes" she says, "i had my first love at 15, his name was Juan-Pablo and he spoke english, and I LOVE YOU TOOOOOO!!!!!!!" we started to run away because of how creepy is was. the last things she says is "Paysandu!!!" she was the creepiest person i've ever seen.  ok i got to go... sorry...

LOVE YOU ALL,

Elder Atkinson