Week 70!

hey there,
long time since we last talked right???  haha just kidding!  but it was super fun getting to talk to all of you guys yesterday and to hear how much all of you guys have changed in these last 8 months from my last phone call.  this week was super fun, first off tuesday night i went to Montevideo to pick up my KID.  i got there wednesday at 5:00 in the morning in Deo and luckily there was a Zome leader that was saiting for a fw of his new elders coming to his zone so he let us sleep in his house for an hour and a half while he was going to stay there at the bus terminal.  we got to the mission home at 8:00 AM and i had a training session with the mission president and the other trainers.  we did that for a while and we asked questions and a lot of stuff like that.  at 12:00 we got to find out who our kids were.  like i told you guys on the phone call last night my new companion is Elder Duke and he is from Eagle Mountain, UTAH (near Lehi).  he's super funny nd i know that we were ment to be comps, we have the same super random personality, he's a little more high stressed but i think it might just be because of his nerves that he has right now.  it's funny, he took 4 years of spanish in high school but it doesn't show toooooooo much. haha  he definitely knows about as much as i knew when i got here.  but he's super excited so it's fun seeing a few of his horrible fails trying to speek spanish.  but it's all good because he definitely wants to learn and is willing to put forth his effort to lean what he needs to learn.  it's going to be a FUN two changes with Elder DUKE!!!!  but because i kinda said everything to you guys that i had to say, i think that that's it.....
i love you all and thanks a CRAP TON for all the presents, letters, emails, prayers, and LOVE
Elder Atkinson

Week 69!

hahaha hey everyboday!!!!!!
as you can tell i am very excited because we got changes! Elder Principe is going to Montevideo in the most dangerous zone in all of URUGUAY!!!!  and me, i'm content with my change, it's probably because i am going to TRAIN!!! i have no idea of who it will be or anything because i go to the mission home tonight to get my kid tomorrow and we don't get to know who it is or his name until we stand right behind him and start singing CALLED TO SERVE.  so i'm excited!!!  haha i have know idea if it will be a gringo or latino but it'll be super fun either way. i'm staying as district leader and not i've got even more responcibility now with my "son".  but anyways...  this week was super FUN!!!  we had the choir thing and it turned out to be super AWESOME!!!  we sang with a catholic choir.  it was super fun and you could feel the spirit super strong in there because we were all thinking about the true spirit of christmas.  it was really funny, Elder Baer talked to me after we ended and told me "i feel like when we leave the church it's going to be cold and snowy outside.... but it's NOT"  haha it was more like 90 degrees and SUPER HUMID!!!  haha i felt the same way because when i start FEELING the spirit of christmas you start thinking about snow and stuff like that, but here that's not quite true.  hahahhahaahaha but this week the TWO baptisms went PERFECT!!!  Àngel and Lourdes were baptized and saturday the 17 and confirmed a member of the church on the 18th.  it was soo cool to see two people that were soo prepared to be baptized take that amazing step.  it was cool because lourdes actually invited a few of her non-member friends to the baptism and they thought it was super interresting.  this week has been lots of fun and i've been able to learn a lot about myself being with Elder Principe and i know that he was put into my life for a reason that the Lord and know i know!  we are ALWAYS supposed to learn something from every companion, good or bad, and i have been blessed to have had Elder Principe for these last 7 weeks! i know that i have grown so much in this time and i've realized that it's only possible if i am OBEDIENT and listen to the words of my leaders and my loved ones.  i know that is the only way any of us can progress in this life.  but onto the christmas call THIS SUNDAY!!!  i realized that it would be perfect for me if i could call you guys at 7:00 here in Uruguay then you guys could call me back!  in case of emergancy my number to the house is 4632-2953 so i'll call you at that time! 
love you all!!! CAN'T WAIT FOR THE CALL!!!!!
Elder Atkinson

Week 68!

hey everybody!!! 
i'm sorry that this dumb email didn't send last week...  yeah i wrote a huge email about EVERYTHING that happened last week!  but now i tried to look for the email and it is no where to be found....  :( yeah super sad stuff...  i'm sorry that you guys didn't get to hear how my week was.  i will try to talk about these last two weeks in this email then.  but before i for get i will ask you guys when would be the best time to CALL you guys on sunday for Christmas?  i have time anytime after 2:00 here in Uruguay.  so you all can decide.  but i've been great these past two weeks!  :)  we've been working hard and trying to have lots of success.  and just as an anouncement, we have two baptisms this week!  the baptisms are Lourdes and Àngel.  Lourdes i don't know if i've talked about her yet but she is 22 years old and is the friend of one of the Returned missionaries of this ward named Gastòn.  he gave us this reference a few weeks ago and since then she has come to church every week!  she LOVES the church and knows that it's true!!  she's excited for her baptism this week.  we also have a 10 year old kid named Àngel who is ready for baptism also, his mom is a recent convert from an other word from Taecuarembò and recently moved here with her kids.  so he'll be prepared also for the baptism.  this last week we've been working hard trying to find people and also some of the missionaries have been invited to participate in a chior for christmas.  it's been lots of fun singing with all of them and luckily i don't have to give a solo mthis time because we actuslly have good Elders that know how to sing.  but it's going to be super cool because they invited other churches to participate in musical numbers from all over the department.  it should end up being really really cool and fun.  so we've had to go at double time trying to work and have time to sing and practice with the chiors.  also this last week we did service for a blind member of our ward named Hermano Antunez.  it was absolutely AMAZING because we pulled weeds and stuff in his garden, he knows excactly where EVERYTHING is!!!  he was telling us that we need to pull the weeds that are in these specific points that he was pointing at!!!  and when he was walking back to his house he knew where EVERYTHING was, i mean like benches and stuff like that, he even knew where the branches were to duck his head and everything...  i was sompletely amazed at him!!!  i guess that was kind of a big push for me!  but thanks all of you for your prayers and your emails!  next week is changes so i will email you all on tuesday!

love ya,
Elder Atkinson

Week 67!

It looks like Tyler tried to email us early this morning (our time)...but only his email address made it to us--the letter part wasn't able to send  :(  So it looks like no letter from him this week.

Week 66!

well hey there my FAM!!!

i am doing wonderful down here and just letting all of you know i got your thanksgiving packages from the atkinsons and the christmas packages from the Atkinsons, Gygis, and Grandpa and Grandma McBride!  thank you soo stinking much and i can't wait to open them on christmas.  :)  but this week was super good and lots of fun! first off i did divisions again to help a companionship in my district get better numbers.  they're super cool guys and i went with Elder Baer from indiana and my comp was with Elder Crawford from Rexburg.  i went over to their area and worked lots with Elder Baer who is a total Stud that has about a year out in Uruguay.  that was lots of fun being able to help him in his area that has been struggling for a little while.  after that we found in our area a super good investigator named Lourdez, she was a reference from a returned missionary in the ward named Gaston.  he's been home for almost two years from serving in argentina.  she's been to church twice her whole life and has been listening to us and loves the gospel, she has a baptismal date for the 17th of december and she's super excited.  she's even preying to find a new job so she doesn't have to work on sundays.  she didn't have to work this sunday so she came to church and absolutely loved it!!!!  other anouncement, we had a BAPTISM on saturday!!!  a kid named Leonardo Prestes has been listening to us for a while, his parents have been members for years and recently got re-activated and the week before i got here his older brother Fernando got baptized.  but i finally talked to him and we had a frank conversation and he told us why he didn't get baptized and he felt better so i just testified to him about the importance of baptism and we don't need that perfect knowledge to get baptized and the most important thing is to have this desire to want to follow christ in this life.  he accepted getting baptizewd this  saturday and was confirmed in church on sunday.  i would send you pictures but i have to fix my memory card because it has a virus or something... :( but for some reason i can still take pictures.  what else happened this week... oh yeah i threw up again.....  haha but this time it was super weird, we ate at the family Atunez and it was super good and tasty, i went home feeling super good, i went home to go to the bathroom normally and then BAM lkuvbhrlsudvh, gross.  but afterwards i felt super good and 100% fine before and afterwards... super weird but oh well... but besides that i had quite a great week and i think the relacion between me and Elder Principe is getting better!  he's starting to listen a little more and we're working together as a team.  so that's great!  i can't wait to get your next emails and i gotta go!
Love,
Elder Atkinson

Week 65!

why hello there everyone!  how is life going?
well i'm just dandy here in T-Bò.  we had an interesting week this week... so this week i did divisions with an Elder From Mesa Arizona named Elder Washburn.  he's a super cool kid that has served for about a year.  (it's super weird because i'm the oldest Elder in my WHOLE DISTRICT)  but i went over into his area and worked there for the day.  hahaha interresting story: so we were knocking doors trying to find new people to teach, we nock this one door and no one answers... so we knock again.  we hear some noise coming from inside the house so we wait for a little bit to see what's going on.  all of the sudden a big window next to the door swings open super fast and we see a BIG, HAIRY, OLD, WRINKLY, NAKED MAN standing at the door!!!!   i can honestly say that i was NOT expecting that to happen just knocking doors, the both of us were soo shocked that we didn't say anything...  all that he told us was that he was resting and couldn't attend us at this moment.  i'm honestly glad that at that moment he couldn't attend us because i think it would have been a little bit of an interresting conversation. hahaha but besides that the divisions went super well and we learned a lot from it.  ok not so funny story... Gladys...  so we pass by and talk to her on wednesday to see how she is and everything and she says that she's not doing very well...  she later tells us that she smoked and drank......  that was pretty tough so she couldn't get baptized this weekend.  we talked to her about trying again and that mess-ups happen and we just need to repent and put our Faith in the lord and try to keep going on being followers of Christ.  we come beck on thursday to chack on how she's doing with her plan to stop smoking ande there was a note that said that she had gone to her ranch out of town and that she's come back monday...  the only bad part is that she will be with her husband and she told us that she always has the desires to smoke when she's out there...  so we'll pass by today and try to see what happened.  yup...  but another good thing, we're doing a combined youth and missionary choir in the stake and they invited me to sing with a few missionaries a few men's trio and quartet stuff for Christmas.  so that's super cool!  so for this companionship, we're working super hard and we've got lots of work set our for us.  i'm not sure if Elder Principe likes me anymore... haha we'll be working on stuff together in companioship study or planning and i'll ask him if he could do something and he'll say "no" all the time.  but we're trying to work together and i baught him a cake today for his birthday today!  he turns 25 today,  so i hope that that will soften things up a bit.  but yeah i gotta go!
love you all and have a great thanksgiving,
Elder Atkinson

Week 64!

yo yo yo!!!!

how's it kickin in the U.S. of A?  i'm having quite an enjoyable time here in the lovely town of Teacuarembò.  but this last week we had a CRAP TON of rain!!!  and by this a mean that the roads next to our house were three feet deep rivers.  haha it was pretty funny because we were both soaking wet and i started trudging through the river and i get half way through and i look back and my comp doesn't want to cross... i told him "dude, it pouring rain, your shoes are already soaked and everything else is wet too... you'll be fine crossing the street."  haha so he finelly decided to trudge through with me! haha  he's a pretty funny kid, he's super scared of dogs, everytime we pass by a dog (big or little) he takes his backpack off and puts it between him and the dog as if it were a shield of something hahahahaha.  but NEWS!!!!! we have an investigator that is named Gladys, she's like 55 years old or so and has listened to the missionaries for a while now.  last week i forgot to tell you that we went over to her house and had a frank conversation about what her doubts were.  she wasn't sure about a few things like tithing and smoking, but i promised her lots of blessings that she will recieve for being obedient to ALL the commandments of god and she accepted a baptismal date for the 19!!!  she went to church this last week and she is super excited for her baptism this week and is quitting smoking!!!  she's doing great and we've recieved lots of blessings seeing her change.  this last week she invited one of her neighbors daughters over to listen to us while we were talking to her.  this is a 12 year old girl named Florencia, we talked to her about the Book of Mormon and how important it is in our lives and we invited her to get baptized the 26th of this month and she accepted.  yesterday she went to church and at church i talked to her and she told me that she was reading the book of mormon with her mom (who's not a member) and she told me that they both felt a super strong spirit while reading the book and her mom wants to talk to us about the church.  she also told us that they've been reading the book together and they can already feel the difference in the spirit in their house from reading about the gospel of jesus christ.  we planned with her to pass by on tuesday to talk with her mom.  man, this area is really filled with blessings!  the thing is that we just need to follow the promptings of the spirit to find them!  i have been loving every moment of being here in Taecuarembò and i've been working as hard as i can to be a great example.  i'm super excited to see all of these miracles come together.  we're working hard together and we can tell that this area is getting better!

love you all,

Elder Atkinson 

Week 63!

hey hey hey,
how's it going in the UNITED STATES???? well i'm just dandy here in Teacuarembo, my new ward is AWESOME!!!! i'm in Barrio Lopez and it's a super small area but it is just filled with hills, hills, and SOME MORE HILLS!!!! hahaha i think that in the time i'm going to be here i'm going to get a great butt workout "YEAH BUNS AND THIGHS"-Spongebob haha but i'm serious...i think with this super hot summer coming up i'm going to get quite toned!!! hahaha but the area is realatively poor but we've got LOTS of active members, around 140. yeah but this week we had stake conference so i didn't get to see only our ward but i've been hearing that it's a pretty strong ward that is even getting better!!! so i'm getting super excited to work over here! but stake conference was super good! a councelor from the temple presidency came with his wifeand also from the mission presidency came to talk. it was amazing how great all of the talks were and how they all were focused soo neatly to work hand in hand with how important it is to go to the temple. we are only about 6 hours from Montevideo so it's not TOOOO long of a trip to the temple and the stake president made a goal that they should all try to go to the temple once every 2 months AT LEAST! the councelor of the temple presidency also talked about the importance of the temple workers and that the temple ALWAYS needs more workers and how most of the time thy have temple workers come in one day in every 15 days to the temple and how they absolutely recieve blessing for these sacrifices for traveling and working in the house of the LORD!!! i know that is true and that the lord really does give us TONS of blessings when we do the errand of the lord. i can't wait to see what else the lore has for this missionary to learn because i'm learning a TON of stuff already!!!! Elder Principe is a pretty cool kid, he has about 6 months on the mission and is super excited to work here with me. i know that we're going to have some success!!!
Love,
Elder Atkinson

Week 62!

hey there!!!! 

yup there have been quite a bit of changes for this missionary!  first off, i'm leaving Artigas after 6 months!!!!  i'm going to Taecuarembò tonight, so tonight at 10:00 GST (guayan stardard time) i will leave here and get to Taecuarembò in 2 hours.  i'm going to Barrio Lopez with an elder from Perù named Elder Principe (Prince in English) haha so we'll see how well i get along with a "prince".  haha Does that make me a king??? haha just kidding! haha but i think it will be lots of fun!  i've never met him before but i've heard that he's a pretty good Elder so i'm getting super excited for this opportunity to work hard and watch things change and have miracles happen.  i'm also going to be given a little more responcibility because i'll be District Leader.  so now i have a larger responcibility but i think i'll learn a ton when i get there.  i'm super glad to go there!  so yeah that will be super fun to change and to be in a new area to learn even more.  but this last week has been pretty interresting, Elder Siegel (the other elder in our house) just died (missionary speaking) haha he is now in his house in Idaho falls it was super funny this last week with him.  Every night we went into our patio of our back yard and we went Star Gazing and ate Brazilian versions of Otter Pops and talked about life.  haha it might sound super fruity but i quite enjoyed being there talking with him about mission expiriences.  i can honestly say that he is one of my best friends that i've met on the mission.  we're going to be grand friends after the mission.  haha but this week has been super fun and we've just found a CRAP TON of people that are ready to be baptized in this area!  it seems like that always happens the week before changes.  haha i think that in this next month they will have LOTS of success.  luckily Elder Navarro's face hasn't exploded like the last one yet.  haha we're still waiting to see what the Doctor's diagnosis is to se what he's alergic to and/or why his face explodes.  haha so we've been working hard and i can feel that the lord has blessed us here for the hard work that we have done in this ward.  i honestly can't wait to see what's going to happen in this next area!!!  the next email will be on monday like normal so thanks for all the emails and all of the prayers and love!!!

LOVE ALL YA´LL

Elder Atkinson

Week 61!

hey,

this week has been pretty interesting!  first off, i got you package!!! thanks soo stinkin much for sending me a halloween package!!! all the guys in the house LOVED their crap they got!  second off,  so... you know how every now and then i talk in my sleep???  well...  it started up again, BUT instead of talking normally my comp told my that i started sleep talking in Spanish!!!  haha he told me that in this last week i have: given a lesson, contacts, asked for directions, and even prayed in spanish in my sleep!  haha weird stuff eh? haha i thought it was pretty interresting when he told me that.  FUNNY/SAD thing: so Elder Navarro has a problem with random swelling in his lips, every now and then his lips start to swell in like one part of his lip and within 20 minutes it's completely gone and fine... it's weird because it's happened like 4 times while he's been with me.  he doesn't know why it happens, but this last thursday it happened again, BUT... it was worse than usual!!!  do you all remember the movie "Hitch"?  when will smith has the alergic reaction to the fish?  welp... that's pretty much what happened with him!!!!!!  yeah...............  at the beginning it was funny because it always happens and it's no big deal but this time it spread to his whole face!  yeah so i stopped laughing and it was getting pretty serious. luckily everything is good with him now, his swealing is completely gone and he has no side affects.  he just has to figure out what it is that makes these reactions...  ANOTHER FUNNY STORY: so... Elder Seigel and i were ready to leave to work after lunch to go to appointments that both of our wards had but for some pointless reason BOTH of our comps ended up falling asleep on their beds... so what did we do? haha there is a term for what we did called "Antiquing" haha and what you do is lightly cover someone that is asleep in flour as if it looked like dust (like on an antique) haha and IT WORKS!!! it was soo stinking funny the only part that we failed at was dusting their faces because they woke up while we started to do their faces.  it was soo freaking hilarious and my comp thought it was funny BUT NOT the comp of elder Seagel, his name is Elder Valencia and he's from Chile...  he's super annoying and tries to be way to serious and stuff that shouldn't he serious.  he needs to learn a lesson in FUNNESS!!!  but hey, don't have much time.  just want to tell you that next week are changes we're having it a wek early because Pres. Heaton has to leave for Buenos Aires for a conference.  we're not sure what day we're going to have p-day but it will be next week! so just look for this email sometime next week!!!

LOVE ALL YA'LL,

Elder Atkinson

Week 60!

¡¡¡HOLA!!!
¿Como Estàn todos?  i'm doing quite fantastic in Artigas!!!  :)  not a whole lot has happened in this last week... we did divisions this last week with our District leader (Elder Ropelato) and his kid (Elder Morales) this time i actually got to leave my area and go with Elder Ropelato to his branch!!!  this is the first time in like 5 changes that i have left my area to do divisions, usually i ALWAYS stay in my area for divisions so i was extremely happy to leave my area for a day.  we didn't have a whole lot to do because we had to wait for an elderly couple missionaries to come and do a clean chack for their house.  haha so we had to wait for like an hour for them to come because they came late.  haha oh well...  all i can say is that it was nice to leave my area to work after almost 6 months of working here in my area.  haha but besides that there is only one note worthy thing on the list...  noelia did not get baptized... but it's an interresting story, here we go...  so this last week we've been trying to stop by her every day to make sure that she would be ready to be baptized on sunday.  she was telling us that she knows that all of these things are true and that the Book of Mormon was true and everything so we were preparing for the baptism and everything.  friday she got super weird... at the beginning she wouldn't talk to us and then after about 15 minutes started freaking out at us and getting really mad at the thought of the church, we talked to her very calmly and softly with a serious tone to try to see what happened and it turns out that she has problems with anger and sometimes feels as if she's being demented be demons or something.  she told us that after a little bit of her yelling and screaming she stopped and told us what was happening and that after a little bit of us talking that feeling went away from her and she felt more calm and back to normal.  we tried to tell her that it went away because we KNOW that the Lord wanted her to listen to what we were telling you and about the importance of this stuff.  saterday we talk with her and nothing much changed with her, she told us that she thinks that this is a true church but doesn't think that it's the ONLY true church that Christ has on the earth.  our District leader Elder Ropelato came because we WERE going to do a baptismal interview but he ended up just rtying to find out what was wrong.  he told us that he found out that she has lots of problems and lots of bad things that happened in her life that she has never told anyone EVER.  so this next week we are going to work with her but we need to get back to the basics.  Reading, praying, and going to church again.  that is the ONLY way she is going to recieve this answer, is if she does that small and simple things in this life.  but hey, got no more time,

love ya'll

Elda Atkinson 

Week 59!

hey there my good old family,

 

how's life???  it sounds like you all are doing quite dandy.  i am too!  but the city of Artigas isn't doing that great...  the reason why is because friday we had like a hurricane type storm come through this town.  if you didn't know about 90% of the people have tin roofs so it was kind of bad with these 175 km/hr wind for like 8 hours.  luckily i don't think anyone died but man it was sure weird...  story: when we were walking to a lesson we were just looking around and we saw some teenagers on the roof of their house taking pictures of something so we decided to look at what they were looking at and it was soo weird.  the clouds were like in a movie or something, they were really low, black, and swirling really fast and everything.  it reminded me of the movie "James and the Giant Peach" with the scary cloud that had the rhino in it, i told my comp that and he was like "you're totally right"  it was super scary.  then all of the sudden super powerful wind takes comes out of nowhere and it was super weird.  luckily we only had like a couple hours of work left.  we only had to live through rain for about one hour.  but the next morning we were walking around and it looked like the other side of heaven after the hurricane... ok it wasn't THAT BAD!  but still there were like HUGE trees fallen over onto little houses and lots of roofs flew off of lots of houses.  we were talking to someone and their roof flew off and they had no idea where it was and we talked to them again like 2 days after and they found it about a kilometer away from their house.  lots of power went out here and everything.  it was super bad but now it's starting to get better.  on to GOOD NEWS!!!  NOELIA is getting ready to get baptized this SUNDAY!!!!  YEAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!  we have been working tuper hard with her and with her husband who is starting to reactivate in the church!!!  also we found a bunch of new investigators this last week; one of the bests is called Coralina.  she was a contact that i did like literally like 3 months ago and everyother time we tried to go by7 was never there so i kind of gave up on her.  we were working and all of the sudden i have the strong prompting to go to that house.  we went and she let us come in.  it turns out that she is very religous and she goes to church but she told us that she knows that the church thast she goes to is not the true church and that she has felt that many times but she has just never found the church that she's been looking for.  she is a very excited woman that is trying hard to follow the promptings of the spirit in her lives.  she couldn't come to church this week because she got super sick.  but we're going to pass by today to talk with her and her husband who recently was serving a peace mission in the Congo in Africa.  so this area is doing really good and can't wait to see what more there is in store for this area in Artigas!!!

love you all,

Elder Atkinson 

Week 58!

hey all you people out there who are reading this email,

 

i'm doing quite fantastic!  this week was SUPER QUICK and was pretty cool as well!  first off, we had General Conference which was freaking SWEEEEEEEEET!!!!  i absolutely loved the sunday morning session because every talk was perfect for our investigators!  they really did feel the spirit during that session!  HEY cool story that was a total miracle.  yesterday we were planning before general conference because here the first session started at 2:00 P.M. so we were trying to plan for finding investigators and what we need to do.  we very quickly realized that we have barely any investigators now because they have all been dropped or baptized.  so i we were praying like none other trying tyo figure out what we should do to find these people, we all of the sudden had the feeling that we needed to call one of our contacts that we did like a month ago that we tried calling quite a few times but never answered the phone in the past.  it was a super weird feeling for me because i was like "we've already tried calling him and it's probably a wrong number"  but we called him to invite him to the conference and HE CAME!!!  it was soo cool because before the conference he was talking to us about how he wasn't that big of a believer in crist or in god and to have to believe he would have to have lots of reason to have that decision! and guess what???  that whole session was like logical and reasonable things about this church!  he was totally in awe and was understanding total!  his name is Jorge, he's about 25 years old and he's studying to try to be a elementary school teacher.  he totally doesn't look like the normal school teacher, he'ss got:a goatee, lots of scruff, wears old school rock t-shirts, skinny jeans, and tons of bracelets!  haha but he seams like a super cool kid and i think that he will progress far in the gospel.  Noelia is also going freaking awesome!  she went to three sessions of general conference and kept asking us about the prophet and baptism and what it's like.  right now she has a baptismal date for the 15th and we're praying and working as hard as we can to get her to baptism.  so that's pretty much all that's going on in these parts.  hey these pics are of us playing soccar in Brazil as a District, the baptism of Pamela with her Aunt, and a district picture the last district meeting of the change.

 

thanks for everything and luvs all around,

Elder Atkinson

Week 57!

hey there my good ol famila!!!

 

well i just found out my change and i'm going to stay in Artigas for this next change!  i'm going to stay with Elder Navarro also, that means that i will have been in artigas for 6 months when i finish this change!  wow time sure does fly!  well this week was another good week of success and lots of miracles!!!!  first off, we had a baptism this last saturday of an investigator that is 9 years old.  her aunt is a very faithful member that is our primarty president.  she was very excited and the girl (Pamela) was also very excited becauser her mom finally gave her permission to get baptized.  so that was definitely a blessing.  we also had lots of fun because that morning we went a completely destroyed a house of a member because he built a brand new house on the same property so he asked like 8 Elders to help him destroy a house with sludgehammers and pick-axes.  i had no idesa that houses down here could fall down so quickly,  it was literally down in 15 minutes so the rest of the time was clean up duty.  haha but it was so much fun doing that.  this week was super exciting for another reason, Vanessa, the convert that was baptized like 3 weeks ago just got called to be president of the young womens!!!  she was super excited to have recieved that calling.  she's super scared but also super happy to get this resposability.  it was super cool she told us a really amazing expirience that she had when she lived in Paraguay when neither her or her father were members.  she told us that she had a dream that she went into a building looking like a really nice church.  exeryone was wearing white and that everyone was greating her with hugs and kisses.  she told us that one day she was driving in a car with her dad and they passed the Temple in Paraguay and she said that that temple was the exact building that she saw in her dream.  and she told us that she just now realized that it was one of our temples.  i let her know that the Temple in Montevideo in excactly the same temple as in Paraguay and she got super excited and is preparing to go to the temple.  so overall it was a fairly super great week in all!!!  i'm excited to work super hard this next five weeks(this next change is only five weeks)  so it will definitely be a great time to work hard and have lots of fun!!!

 

love you all,

Elder Atkinson

Week 56!

hey you guys how's life going?
i'm just living the life down here in Artigas!  it's been super fun and weird this week.  we had divisions this week and i stayed in my area with a kid named Elder Rodriguez from Honduras this is his 3rd change in uruguay and it a little interresting.  hahaha first off he's always walking around like a a vampire (hair slicked back, walkes very upstraight, and always has a sweater that has a big collar like a vampires collar), second off at about 6:28 in the morning (2 minutes before my alarm goes off) i wake up to this kid touching my face... AWKWARD!!!!  but he's a funny guy.  he's a recent convert of about a years and eight months.  he's definitely excited to teach the gospel, and to work hard.  so on tuesday we had a Zone Conference in Salto and it was super fun! especially because i got to see Elder Shaw and a bunch of old Elders that i've known for a while.  it was super fun to talk to Elder shaw and talk about how we were in the MTC a year ago and how much time flies and how NOW we can actually speak spanish.  haha  becauseat this time last year we were completely terrible trying to learn spanish from scratch.  it was super great also because the mission President talked a lot about the missionary work and how we need to go forth in faith to recieve blessings and also to bless the lives of others here.  how we're also here to help each ward, to strengthen them and to give them excitement.  hahha also yesterday we had a family night at the church again because we're trying to unite the ward more.  we watched "The Testaments" and we made tons of brownies and everyone here absolutely LOVED them!!!  everyone wants the recipiet and everything because of how rich and flavorful these brownies were.  haha vanessa and the family went and they saw that i made brownies and died when they saw them.  haha they knew exactly what they were!  hahabut the family night went super well, and not very many people had seen that movie so it was a great opportunity to talk about the Book of Mormon and how we know the truthfulness of the book through the holy spirit.  there were 3 investigatores at the activity and 5 inactives that decided to come to the activity and they absolutely loved it!  but onto a funny thing, last night Elder Siegel (lives in the house now, he's from Idaho Falls) and i played a joke and took off the door of the bathroom and hid it.  OH MY GOODNESS Elder Siegel's comp Elder Almeida got super confused and worried about what happened and the my comp was saying that every now and then he sleep walks so maybe he did it in his sleep or something.  i was trying soo hard to not laugh and it was even more funny trying to get them to go to the bathroom because they were only holding it all in.  i was dying i was laughing so hard.  but... all fun things have to come to an end... Elder Neverro found the door........ :( it was fairly sad but i think i'll get over it.  but hey you know what??? next time i email you guys i'll know what my new change is so that means that i'll email you on tuesday instead of monday.

but hey! LOVE YOU ALL,

Elder Atkinson

Week 55!

yo wussp wussp everboday???

i'm livin it up down here in the guay!!!  it's been a fun week this week,  first off...  Vanessa, Matìas, y Sofìa got confirmed this sunday!!!  now they are officially members of La Iglesia De Jesucristo De Los Santos De Los Ùltimos Dìas!!!  that was definitely the best part of this week that they have completed that tough step.  now comes the even tougher part, ENDURE TO THE END!!!  we've been talking lots with them about that kind of stuff and bringing other members to their house to keep them more involved in the church.  actually we did a family home evening with them, the family of the first councilor, the bishop's family, and some more investigatores yesturday night at the church and we watched the movie "Joseph Smith: Profet of the Restoration"  and everyone actually LOVED IT!!!  that movie is soo powerful showing all of the trials that he went through and all the other saints as well endured during that time.  i think it really affected vanessa and her kids because she just kept telling me about how fantastic the movie was and how shocked she was that all of that happened to Joseph Smith.  but it was a really great Ward family night.  this week we took that dad of Vanessa to a few visits with investigators on tuesday,  we decided to pass by an ex-investigator that we haven't been able to find for like a month.  turns out that Josè and this ex-investigator worked together like 30 years ago!!!  it was super cool because Josè was able to relate to this guy (Carlos) because of this expirience that they had together.  we had no idea that they worked together and my comp had never met carlos before so he couldn't have known that either.  they both worked in the Police of Montevideo.  so that was kiterally the hand of the lord in our lives to hsve us recieve the feelings to go to this guys house that i almost forgot that he used to listen to the missionaries before.  tomorrow we get to go to Salto for a Zone Conference so i'm pretty excited!  but honestly not too much happened this week... that is definitely the most exciting stuff that happened this week.  today we had to clean the house again and we had to bleach the walls because there was mold on the walls so now the house is filled with the sweet smell og recently bleached cement!  hahaha 

love you all and always talk to EVERYONE about the gospel,

Elder Atkinson

Week 54!

hey there everyone out there!!!

 

lot's happened this week!!!  lots of blessings and miracles!  first off last monday after  emailing you guys we went home showered and went to the house of Vanessa, Sofìa, and Matìas and we challenged them to baptism for this week and they accepted it!!!  how freaking awesome was that!!!!  we had to talk to them a lot this week to make sure that they were prepared to get baptized and everything.  it was super annoying because we couldn't find out to see if the father of Vanessa could baptize them until friday night because he had to talk to the Bishop  about a few things in his life and the Bishop wouldn't talk to him.  we had to go by the bishop's house like 5 times last week just to tell him that Jos'e wanted that stinking interview and the bishop just kept giving a bunch of excuses that didn't make any scence to what we were saying!  we had the baptismal service on sunday so saturday we were running everywhere trying to have the baptismal interviews, finding baptismal clothes, finding someone to fix the water heater for the baptismal font, and also trying to pass by our other investigatores for the week.  they ended up having super strong testimonies and are reading the scriptures every day and praying also so by the end of the week thay TRULY had testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.  i really have learned a lot while being able to witness their conversions and their lives change.  they really have been able to change their lives for the better and i KNOW that they will follow christ no matter what happens in their lives.  it was a little bit tougher for Vanesa to gain that strong answer about the church but i think that having the example of their dad here who's a recent convert from Paraguay really helped her in her questions and her doubts because they told us how much he has changed from the way that he once was before he acepted th gospel in his life.  luckily this week was fast sunday because i had a TON of stuff to fast for to make sure that everything would go well this week.  they were really ready for this baptism yesterday and here are a few pictures of the baptism this week.  the old guy is the dad (Josè), the older woman (Vanessa), and the two kids (Matìas and Sofìa).  oh and the other blessing is that there were a bunch of investigatores in church that we weren't expecting!!!  we were escpecting 4 and we had 8 in church!!!  this week has been filled with blessings really!  and the other picture is of my one year celebration.  haha it was pretty cool and don't worry nothing bad happened!  I PROMISE!!!  oh fun stuff this week i bought 8 Kilos of fruit loops which is about equal to around 18 pounds!  i'm super excited to be able to eat that!  haha they gave me a pretty good deal for it so i'm very proud of my purchase. i can rightfully say that this week was super tiring but definitely worth it to be able to see all of these great changes in their lives.  but hey gotta go!

i hope you all have a great week and lindsey good luck at COLLEGE!!!!

 

love ya,

Elder Atkinson

Week 53!

wussup ya'll!!!!

 

i'm living it up down here in the Guay!!!  this last week i was able to celebrate my 1 year mark on the mission.  yeah yeah!!!  i will say that i did celebrate but i forgot to bring my camera from the house to send you the pics but i don't want to spoil what i did so i'll just talk to you about it next week!  hahaha but this week was fairly long.....  we didn't have a whole lot of success but it's not like we didn't have any either.  one thing that was really cool was that this wednesday the stake president here (Presidente Bueno) called me and started to talk to me about an inactive member that lives in my area.  he gave me the direction to his house and we went by that day but he wasn't there so we tried passing by a few times that day because we were near the area all day.  that night i called the president and told him that we passed by a few times to let him know that we passed by and the member wasn't there and he told me, "thank you elder for taking this reference seriously, the stake presidency has been praying and fasting to find members to help this ward to reactivate."  so i told him that we were planning to go by the next day.  the next day before leaving to go out and working i prayed that we would be able to find this member (Luciano) in his house.  we passed by his house and he was there, not only was he there but his wife (Noelia) who's not a member was there with their one year old daughter.  we were able to talk to both of them about the familias and how important it is that after this life we can live with them forever if we do all the things in this life that we can.  while we were talking about that the wife started crying.  they told us that they would go to church this week.  i called the president that night to tell him what happened and he started to cry and told me that they had gone to the temple to find inspiration on how to help this ward and specifically told me "DO NOT LOSE THIS FAMILY!!!!!"  they ended up not going to church yesturday but we have a lesson with them set for tonight at 6 so we'll see how that goes.  but this week has been a lil interresting, i had to talk to my comp about having personal space with others.  for me, it's not a big deal but a few of the other missionaries have started to complain about it, that he's always in their face and he's always touching them.  so i had to talk to him about that for a little bit.  today we've been deep cleaning the house...  oh man i cleaned the bathroom and it took me 3 and a half hours to clean that mother!  it's not even a big bathroom, it's about the size of the bathroom in christine's old room!  but it was filled with mold and hatred!!!  haha it was terrible!!!  but now it's minty clean!!!  but that was pretty much it for this week!  Luv ya'll and can't wait to tell you guys more.

Elder Atkinson

Week 52! (ONE FULL YEAR OUT!)

hey ther evr'boday,
how's life going????  i'm doing pretty good! :) this week was actually
pretty interresting.  with Elder Nevarro we have started to find some
new good people and they have some real potential.  awesome story:
last night we passed by a person's house that told us to come back to
talk while we were contacting like a week ago.  we passed by yesterday
and he told us that we could pass into his house.  he's a super cool
guy with about 50 years.  he's a cop and he works in the prision here
in Artigas.  he told us that about 10 years while we was working he
was talking on a phone and got electricuted through the phone!! How
does that happen??? i have no idea but he told us that bacause of it
his hearing is bad, he can still hear but you just have to talk loud.
so we were teaching him about the book of mormon and everything and
then i asked him to get baptized and he totally didn't understand.  ha
was super confused and couldn't understand what i was saying.  so my
comp gets the inspiration to write down the baptismal invitation on a
pice of paper so that he could read it. and he said yes!!!  then we
gave him a baptismal date for the 17 of september also by writting it
and he accepted that also!  it was one of the most interresting
lessions that i've ever had.  it definitely only worked because of the
inspiration that my comp got.  it was a true blessing.  also yesterday
we had stake conference!!  it was super awesome because a few special
people came to visit:the mission president, temple president, and an
area 70!!!  his name is Rùben Alliaud and he's from Argentina!  he's a
truly inspired man of god that was called to help out this area!  one
of my favorite quotes from him this conference was "Lots of people are
willing to die for the Lord, but there are only few that are willing
to LIVE for the Lord"  and i've been thinking about that quote a lot
this last day and it really is true!  we need to always be focused in
living for the lord in every moment of our lives.  it was a truly
great expirience to be able to listen to him speak.  by the way this
week i got to meet the dad of Vanesa!!! he's a recent convert from
Paraguay that moved back to uruguay yesterday to live with them!  he's
actually a super STUD!!!  like within this last month he went to the
temple to recieve his endowments!  and of course when he saw us tha
first thing that he showed us was his scriptures and told us that he
didn't forget them in Paraguay!  i honestly think that he will help
them get baptized!  we just have to work with them to get them to
recieve these blessings!!!

thanks for everything and i love all of you guys crap tons!!!
Elder Atkinson

Week 51!

hey there everybody!!!
i'm doing great here in Artigas and that's where i'm staying for this next change! Elder Vega is leaving for Taecuarembò. yeah i'm super excited and a little bit nervous because i'm going up to senior comp.  my comp is going to be Elder Navarro from Chile, he's the one that i did divisions with in Rivera so i already know him.  it will be fun.  also a lot of responsibility.  but i'm excited and just need to rely on the Lord.  i also got the packeges from melissa and harris, and christine and scott this last week!  thanks soo much for the also for the letters filled with awesome pictures.  i think now i can rightfully say that i think i have sufficient socks for the rest of my mission after this birthday.  haha thanks everyone!  this week was super fun!  i went on divisions with elder Rios and we went back to the bikes and we found quite a few people and we also got atacked a few times from ravinous wolf-like dogs.  hahah elder rios was dying with that.  this week we had super weird weather.  one day, FREEZING COLD with rain, the next 3 days, 28 degrees celcius (don't remember what that is in ferinheit and super humid.  and then to finish the week every day was different.  haha with all of these changes in weather Elder Vega got super sick with the flu...  yeah it was tough for him but now he's great.  this last sunday we had one of the best BBQs i've ever had.  it was lamb that our first counciler killed himself on his ranch the day before.  it was super good and oh so very tender!  so it was quite delicious.  today is freaking AMAZING!!!  we went to a business that sells the rocks that are like rock-jewels like gems and stuff.  Artigas is world renound for these rocks and i found out why!!!  they have the world's largest "amathist" rock that is valued at $300,000,000 american dollars! (the rock that is dark in the pics i sent you)  this company has a huge barn just filled with these types of rocks!  it was one of the most amazing things i've ever been able to see.  he told us that 90% of the rocks they get in their mines goes to one family in China.  Obviously this family has a crap ton of money!  but yeah, i'm super excited for this change to start and to see what is going on in the next six weeks in Artigas!

love you all!

Elder Atkinson

pic number one: we're just thuggin it up

pic number two: me with the $300,000,000 rock

pic number three: another HUGE STONE

Week 50!

hey there everybody!!!!
WUSSUP WUSUP??????  i'm having a great birthday today here in Artigas uruguay!  today we got to play basketball for like 2 hours today especially for my birthday!  haha because usually the latinos never want to play basketball but i pulled the birthday card on all of them and IT WORKED!!!!  can you believe that i only have one more week of this change so the next time i'll write you guys will be on next tuesday!  man these changes are going by super fast!!!!  but this week has been super fun, the first fun thing we did was that we got permission to use bikes and head out and try to find more people.  our area on one side does not end so we could take the bikes and go and try to find some peeps.  we had a friend lend us two bikes.  funny thing is that they gave me a bike from about 1960 and they gave women's bike to Elder Vega.  the road we took was dirt with tonns of rocks... and the seats of the bikes i would describe them as sheet metal covered in a thin layer of material to give it the appearance that it's a nice seat. haha  we road out for about 30 minutes or so and found some super nice people that have never meet the missionaries before in their lives.  it was super fun, we were out there for a couple of hours working and before the sun went down we headed back.  there are quite a few hills so elder Vega was absolutely dying trying to get up the hills.  on a few of them half way up he just gave up and started walking up the hills.  haha but that day, my butt hurt sooo bad!!!!  going down those dirt roads you could feel every single rock and pebble.  for me, my muscles didn't hurt at all but i died of pain in between those two bones in your butt.  oh man it took like three days to recover from that. haha you're probably wondering what the photos are of.  the two with me and a lamb was while we were on our little trip we talked to a nice family and they let us take pictures of it.  the other two are of me and Elder Vega in the middle of where we were biking.  the one picture with him sitting down, what happened is that he set his camera down and set the timer and when he ran to his bike he slipped i was dying laughing so hard because he was sooo mad that the picture didn't work and we had to take another picture.  hahaha  we found some really cool people this week and i'm excited to work more with them.  this week we have been trying super hard to work with our members in lessons and activities to try to keep them excited here.  our best priesthood holder in the ward is definitely our first councelor in the bishopric.  he works in ranching with cattle, sheep, and ostriches.  he is an absolute workhorse.  he got baptized about 6 years ago and has stayed completely active since.  he always asks us when we can go out and work with him on divisions or just visiting members with him.  his name is Enrie Rodriguez and he's about 40 years old.  to tell the truth, and the primary are the only people to are working in the ward.  so for this reason we are trying our absolute hardest to try to excite everyone else.  i'm having fun and i think that Elder Vega is too! We're working hard and need to end on a high note this change.  of by the way, thanks for the Jimmer shirt, I LA shirt, the CD, the Tie, and the basketball hoop!!! i love them all!!!!!  i still haven't gotten the stuff from christine and scott, and harris and melissa tampoco.  but i'll definitely keep an eye out for them!  i love you all very much and i can't wait to hear more!!!
thanks EVERYONE for the birthday greetings!!!!
love you all!,
Elder Tyler Atkinson

Week 49!

WUT UP EVERYBODAY!!!!!

i'm having fun down here and getting wet down in Artigas, Uruguay!  hahaha this week has been pretty good to tell you the truth!  first thing was super funny.  so last week we were in Montevideo going to sign our papers to actually become leagal in Uruguay, it took forever!!!  we were in the migration offices for like 4 hours......  our bus leaves from Montevideo to Artigas at 6:00 and we ended signing papers at 5:45 and we were 20 minutes away from the bus terminal.  luckily the bus driver was fast because we got to the bus terminal at 5:58 and we were booking it to the bus, as we get to where the bus is supposed to be it's not there...  we look around and see it driving around the corner and out of our sight.  i was heartbroken because if we missed that bus we would have to wait till 10 at night till the next bus to artigas.  we hurried and ran to a bus director of the bussing company and he told us to just on to this random super sketchy bus with no name on it going to Rivera.  luckily the bus actually ran down our real bus about 20 kilometers down the road and we changed busses.  oh man it was pretty funny once it was all done.  also this last thursday we had interviews with President Heaton.  he's such a great man!  he gave me a bunch of great ideas of how i can help out this ward.  i talked a lot with Elder Vega after it and he came up with great ideas on how to try to animate the members of our ward.  it's going to be tough but it's definitely not impossible.  oh yeah!  the family that lived in the U.S. (Vanessa, Sofìa, and Matìas) all have a baptismal date for the 20th of august!!!  i hope i don't get changed this next change because changes are in two weeks!  their super excited about the church anf they're loving the gospel and preparing to be baptized.  this past week has been full of rain, rain, oh yeah and more rain.  as i and writting this it is raining.  i'll tell you what rain sure makes everyone in this town just SLEEP!!!  they don't do anything but sleep when there is rain.  hahaha but it's super fun seeing all of these people that are like, "i didn't go to work today because it was raining" "my children stayed at home from school today because of the rain"  haha it's absolutely Histerical to see how different cultures are. hahaha because it's not just a few people, it's EVERYONE that says that.  thanks for all of the prayers and the emails.

love you guys TONS!!!!

Elder Atkinson

Week 48!

hey there guys!!!

how's life going in the United States? ha I'm living it up down here in Artigas, Uruguay! hey i got your two packages that you guys sent me!!! thanks soo much for all of it, by the way i haven't opened the presents yet so i'm actually waiting for my birthday to open that part. Elders Vega, Rios, and Almeida say thanks for the air heads and the starbursts and the bouncy balls in the packages for them. funny story, we can't stop playing with the bouncy balls!!! we're always throwing them against the wall, floor, ceiling. haha and at times it gets a little bit out of control, haha like one person will open the door to the other elders studying and throw the ball as hard as they can and it flies everywhere!!! fun stuff, this week we went on divisions again but this time with our Zone Leaders. i stayed in my area with Elder Stevens (from Utah) and Elder Vega went to their area with Elder Franco (from Perù). it was lots of fun because i already knew Elder Stevens really well because he was in Paysandù for the three changes i was there. he's a complete STUD. i learned a lot about how to really listen to the investigators and respond with the spirit in every answer. it was lots of fun to do divisions. also a little bit of different news, Carlos isn't an investigator anymore, and he didn't get baptized either... he told us that he didn't want to follow listening to the lessons, that the church was fairly cold, and stuff like that. he told us that he thinks that feeling the Holy Ghost is yelling, casting out devils, and fainting in church. we tried to talk to him abouit that but it wasn't terribly successful... but oh well... i guess everyone has their agency. but on a happy note Uruguay just WON the Copa America on Sunday against Paraguay 3-0! oh man you have no idea how nutts the people of uruguay are about their soccar!!! they now have won Copa America 15 times! that is more than anyone else has ever won it. (uruguay 15, Argentina 14, brazil 8, and then a few teams with 1 or 2 wins) it was pretty insane that every single person was watching this game, and i mean EVERYONE!!!!!!! but it was sure crazy to watch all the celebrations after the game! but thanks for always all the great emials and prayers!

Love you all,

Elder Atkinson

Week 47!

hey guyz,
sounds like you're all doing FANTASTIC!!!!  just to let you know a recieved a package from granpa and grandma, and also your package that had the perfect push ups in it!  now i have to do my excercises! hahaha  Elder Rios and i are starting a workout routine together.  it'll be super good to do some stuff.  haha whelp... this week i've still been a little bit sick.  but i feel like i'm getting better, i bought some medicine and i feel that it's helping.  the weather here has been totally weird.  one day it will be freezing cold with tons of wind and rain and the next day it will bee hot clear skies and lots of humidity.  these types of changes it what kills ya...  we've been working really hard this week,  sad stuff is that we barely had anyone in church on sunday...  there were 20 peopl in church including us missionaries, 6 members of the stake, and 1 investigator (Debora a 9 year old girl that always comes)  i was super upset that none of our good progressing investogetors came....  and practically none of our members showed up....  but oh well. haha i was talking to one of the members of the stake that came, Hermano Dos Santos (he's a Brazilian), and  we were talking about what happened and he was like, "we need to keep our heads held high, the adversary is who wants us to feel terrible about the come out of church today"  after that i got animated and with a new mindset for this new week.  but it turns out that carlos didn't come because he had to go to Taecuarembò because his aunt died.  so he left and then Vanesa and her kids (the U.S. peeps) went to a bike race in Brazil that they "boyfriend" of vanesa was competing...  yup it's going to be a little interresting bringing up the law of chastity with her...  haha we just found out this week that she has this little "boyfriend" hahaha, but we'll just have to see what's going to happen with them.  also in case you didn't know the U.S. Womens soccar team just lost the world cup last night against Japan in penalty kicks...  yeah oh well.  haha Uruguay is hanging strong in the Copa America!  on saterday they BEAT Argentina in penalties 4-5!!!!  now they're going to play against Perù on tomorrow in the semi-finals!  ¡VAMO ARRIBA LA CELESTE!  it was intense on saturday, we were in a lesson during the game, we leave and go to an almecen to buy some food for sunday and the owner was watching it so we stayed for a little bit of the extra time. then we went home because it was almost 9:30 and Elder Rios is dying because he's listening to it from a borrowed member's radio.  for him this game was NUTS because he's uruguayo.  haha once uruguay won everyone in the streets was dancing, screaming, and shooting fireworks.  the whole celebration of artigas didn't end till about 3 in the morning.  it was pretty crasy, i'm not gunna lie.  haha but it's been lots of fun with all the mayhem of Copa America!  it was super funny because brazil lost last night and all of Uruguay hates brazil so when they lost you heard fireworks from Uruguay.  hey i sent a couple of pictures here, the first is ud with Carlos our investigator that lived in the us for 8 years, number two is our District from this last change, and the last is us with the Bishop and his family.  hey gotta go love you all and have a great time,

LOVE,

Elder Atkinson

Week 46!

hey there my good ol' family!

i'm livin it up down here in the Guay!  not too much has happened this week, but the few things of note i will tell you.  hahaha well the family that we found a week of two ago that lived in the US for 8 years CAME TO CHURCH!!!  not only did they come to church but they told us that they LOVED IT!!!!  the whole ward was super excited to see them in church and really welcomed them into the ward.  it was great to see how well they liked the ward.  this week we're hoping to give them a baptismal date of the 30th of July!  they really are learning a lot about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and they're loving all of it!  oh i don't know if i ever told you guys that i'm collecting little stickers of soccar players for an album of the Copa America (a cup that plays quite a few countries in the Americas)  there are 348 little stickers that you can collect to put in the album and it's fairly tough to get them all.  i've been trading with kids in the streets for like the last 3 weeks and TODAY i finally found the last piece i was looking for!!!  :) HALLELUYA!!!!  hahaha  so i'm one happy camper for noe ;) ha we also found a super nice lady this week named Silvia, she's 42 and she has 1 child and 3 grandchildren (the oldest is 8 years old) haha figure that! haha but she's really nice and is wanting to find the truth and she is willing and ready to follow it.  we gave her a Book of Mormon and we're going to pass by today to try totalk to her and teach her more.  Carlos update, he didn't come to church i called him yesterday and he told me that he had to work until 6 in the morning and he slept through his alarm to wake him up.  we're going to try with all of our creativness this week to find more people because the people we do have are fantastic! but they are few also...  so we're going to have to FIND FIND FIND this week.  i've been a little bit sick this week...  i've had a bad cough and a runny nose, but it's nothing serious and i'm 99.9999999% sure that i'll live, so it's nothing to worry about mom. ;) hahaha  but it sounds like you all had a great time in Washington for the Familty Reunion. so we're doing great and working super hard here in Artigas!

love you all and have a splendid week,

Elder Tyler Atkinson

Week 45!

hey,

well, i'm staying in Artigas with Elder Vega for another change.  it's pretty good because  we work pretty hard together.  we also have some super good investigators that we're working with.  yeah so we're both staying.  this week was super fun, we had divisions with my district leader (Elder Rios from montevideo) and his kid (Elder Almeida from Colombia).  i stayed in my area with elder rios and elder Vega left and went into the other area with elder Almeida.  Elder Rios is a true stud!  we found 5 people in a day and a half of working together.  i learned a lot about different ways on how to teach when i was with him.  he's a strong leader and a great comp as well.  oh yeah, this last sunday was soo stinking funny.  when we were walking to church it was fairly cold, not super cold but it was cold, and it was cold enough to put frost on the feilds and the grass.  Elder Vega FREAKED out, whipped out his camera, and kept taking butt loads of pictures.  i was dying i was laughing soo hard because he had never seen lots of frost before. hahaha  but this week was really good, Carlos came to church!!!!!!!  yeah and he told us that he had to work until 6 in the morning but he still came anyways!  we challenged him to fast this last fast sunday but he told us that he tried but couldn't because while he's working he has to stay awake by drinking water.  but this week he doesn't have to work friday so he promised that he would fast this friday.  he's really a great guy and will be a great leader once he is a member.  i knoe that because he is willing to to do whatever the lord wants him to do.  he's a great example for me to be that person that the Lord can count on to get work done when he needs something.  we've been working really hard with this new family we met that lived in the U.S.  this week they didn't come to church but with a little work this week i'm almost sure that they'll make it this next week.  we also need to give Carlos a new baptismal date.  but, things are definitely looking up in Artigas Barrio 4!!!  i'm super excited for this change and can't wait to see what's in store for me and Elder Vega!!!

love you all,

Elder Atkinson

P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY SCOTT!!!!

Week 44!

hey hey hey!!!!!
sounds like you all are doing fantasticup there!  down here it's getting cold!  the problem isn't that it's cold, the problem is the humidity inside the cold!  this week was pretty good!  we found another family who just recently came back from the united states!  it's a mom and her kids, they lived in Tampa and also in New Jersey!  they lived there for 8 years and all of them know englis perfect! haha it's super weird because before i got here i never met anyone who could speak english well, and now that i'm here i'm meeting people who lived in the US, and can speak english like a normal person!!!  WOOOO  hahaha they're super cool people and to make it better, the father of the lady that we found just got baptized in Paraguay like 1 month ago!!!!  i'm super excited to see what happens with this family! also on the carlos part, he came to our ward activity (futbol and volleyball) but he didn't make it to church.....  so we have to push his baptismal date back a week....  GOOD NEWS!!! i learned a new type of crochet for hats!!!!  haha yeah it makes the hat more saggy and it looks fancy!  an investigator taught me how to do it and it looks great! i've already finished 1 hat!  hahaha guess what?  i taught Elder Vega to do crochet!  hahaha he's a crocheting machine.  he's finished one hat also!  in the past week, only working at night before bed i've finished two hats that look siiiiiiiiiiick! hahaha it's been a lot of fun this week and everything!  we've been working hard and we're going to finish this change strong! oh by the way, our changes are going to be this next week! so, i can't email till tuesday when i'll tell you guys what's on the up and up!
love ya,
Elder Atkinson

Week 43!

hey hey hey!!!!

how's life going in the far land of north America?  i'm having a GREAT day because last week was a complete turn around!!!  we found a BUNCH of new investigators AND Carlos (the 22 year old guy that lived in Boston for 8 years) CAME to CHURCH!!!!! not only did he come to church he has a baptismal date for the 9 of July!!!  WOOOOO!!!!  he's really a complete STUD!!!  we're having a lot of fun teaching him, last time we taught him we invited his cousin to come with us because his cousin is a bishop in another ward whose been trying to share the gospel with him.  it was super cool because Carlos told us this story that the last year or two while he was living in Boston he started getting into bad stuff with some bad people.  he started really thinking about it and decided that he was going to read the Bible, almost right as he started reading the bible he kept feeling promptings to move back to Uruguay to make a better life for himself.  he told us that the first people he met when he got back here from the states was the missionaries.  he's a great guy, he came to our ward activity which was soccar and volleyball and he loved it!  he also loves talking in english with me so he doesn't loose it.  haha he couldn't remember a word and he told me, "SEE ELDER????  i am loosing it!  for this reason i keep talking to you in englih!" hahaoh yeah i got your package this last week!!!!!!  thanks a crap ton for the BYU jersey, the church news article and the jimmermania poster thing!!!  i LOVE IT!!!!  and also Elder Vega (the short guy in the fotos) says thanks a ton for the scarf and candy!  you guys are soo sweet of thinking of me!  this week we had a conference with the mission president and Elder Foster who is one of the area authorities here and it was super good!  i got to see Elder Ashby AGAIN and he told me that he keeps dying at lindsey's letters!!!  funny story: so for this conference we had to give a musical number as a zone and i had to do a solo at the beginning of it because we didn't have any good singers in our whole zone.  but that morning i hadn't eaten ANYTHING so i was literally sick and couldn't sing so some one very graciously gave me an alfajor that they had in their bag.  haha BAD IDEA!!!  all an alfajor is is chocolate and dulce de leche which i terrible for your throat for singing.  haha i completely slaughtered the somg in front of our mission president and a general authority!!!!  haha yup the good ol McBride blood coming out!!!  hahaha ;)  hey gotta go but i love you crap tons!!!

love,

Elder Atkinson 

Week 42!

hey there everybody!!!!

how's it going?  it sounds like you're all doing great from all of your emails!!!  this week has been a lot of learning and a lot of different feelings.  first off we've been trying to start a new way to plan for our weekly planning, this week one of the APs and the president came up to Artigas and gave us a training class on how to do this new way of planning that the area presidency gave us.  for this new planning we have to plan for every hour of every day for the whole week during weekly planning, of course through the week we can adjust it as things fall through and as we find new people and drop people who aren't progressing, but we have it to be able to plan more efficiently.  it's a lot of work but i can tell that it will definitely help our mission be more successful.  down part of this week, we didn't find one single new investigator....  this is the first time it has ever happened in my whole mission.  Elder Vega and i had a long talk about what happened this week to not have us find anyone.  we've been working super hard and trying to find people in this area but for some reason this week it just didn't happen.  we also talked about what we could do better to not have this happen ever again, we read through preach my gospel and we've thought of some really good ideas to be more successful.  but this week we had three investigators in the church (but not one of them was carlos...) we had the little girl who's named Debora and the couple who's not married named Miguel and Tina.  later that night we passed by the house of Miguel and Tina with a couple from our ward who are sealed in the temple, it was a great lesson because we got to talk to them about getting married.  miguel learned that if it's a commandment from God he needs to do it!!!  but tina is the one who's still a little bit scared of it.  we're going to try to work harder with her.  we had a great week with carlos.  he was accepting all of our commitments and was really doing great!  but he didn't show up for church...  after church we also passed for him and he told us that he had to work for 10 at night until 5 in the morning in his bakery so he couldn't wake up!!!  but he's told us that he's going to try to ask off for this next week.  so we'll see what happens!!!  hey sorry this might be a little short but the internet is super slow!  here's some pics of me and my comp in montevideo infront of the teatro solis which a a super famous theater and at the house of a mamber for lunch and on the border of brazil with our diastrict.

love ya,

Elder Atkinson

Week 41!

hey there everyone,

i'm emailing you from my wonderful area in Artigas.  yes it's about the same size as Paysandù with the same amount of missionaries.  my area is near the outskirts near the artigas airport.  it's starting to get cold down here, hahaha needless to say i'm using my blue fluffy blanket that i brought with me to the mission.  this week we found a new investigator whose name is Carlos he lived in Boston for 8 years and recently came back to Uruguay.  he wants me to talk to him in english so he doesn't loose it.  so i speak it to him every now and then.  we invited him to play futbol with our ward for friday and he was the first person to show up.  it was alot of fun!  there was only me, my comp, carlos, two youth from our ward, and a non member whose wife is a member.  even though there was only 6 of us playing we had a lot of fun!!!!!  we played for an hour and fifteen minutes without stopping.  but this week has been a little bit tougher but also with some miracles!  this past week we've been pushed really hard about finding people to baptize,  President heaton has been super worried about the whole mission; he told us that he recieved revelation that there are 1,500 people prepared this year to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ in this mission.  but for right now we aren't looking soo great.  part of our fast for me and Elder Vega was to find prepared people to accept the gospel in their lives.  from monday all the way to saturday we only found one GOOD person ,Carlos,  we get to church and he didn't show up....  super devastating because he told us without us asking that he was going to come to church.  a little bit through church the one primary teacher that this ward has comes up to us and introduces us to a young 10 year old girl and tells us how this girl is not a member, her parents aren't members, but her grandma is a very active member and she went with her grandma to church because she loved the example of her and she wants to follow the example of her grandma and she also wants to be baptized.  we fixed a time to go by her and give her a Book of Mormon for this week and we'll see how this plans out.  we told her that she can only get baptized with her parents approval and if her parents were with her in the lessons.  i know that it's only a 10 year old girl, but to me it's a miracle because we were truly depressed because we didn't have anyone in the church... then she shows up!!!!  haha it was a true blessing!  but i gotta go, i love you all!!!

lots of love from uruguay,

Elder Atkinson