Week 88!

hey hey hey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
well this week was pretty good because we had 2 BAPTISMS!!!  woohoo!!!  hahaha it was pretty interesting because now it's starting to get cold out, like fall time.  and on friday we went to the church to clean the baptismal font and first off it was still full from the same water that there was 3 months ago!!! there was trash, dirt, a dead toad, and toad eggs...  hahaha it took us a while to clean it up but then we realized something else....dun Dun DUN!!!!! (dramatic pause) the water heater doesn't have gas.................................  and to get gas you first have to call Montevideo to ask for the money and then they have to sent it to you so it takes like forever....  so the guys that got baptized got baptized on sunday, in cold water, in fall, on a cold day, with rain... haha i was suprised that the parents gave the aproval of it but they did!  hahaha but it was super cool because one of the mom's of the boys that were getting baptized came to the baptism and she's a less active member and she brought a friend of her's tothe baptism with her.  her name is Betiana and she's about 35ish and she's got a kd that's 18 years old.  she doesn't go to church very much but we ended up talking to her about the church and baptism and stuff like that and it ended up that we gave her a Book of Mormon and she accepted to get baptized on the 26th of may.  so we'll see what happens.  but i'm super excited for this month and iknow that i'm going to have a blast with Elder Verdugo.  yeah we're getting along super well and having a blast working together!  but hey the internet is being really dumb this week so i got to send this now.
love ya,
Elder Tyler Atkinson
PHONE CALL:  haha i'll call you guys on sunday at 7 at night guayan time and then you guys can call be back!!!!

Week 87!

¡hola hola!

¿como andàn todos?  i'm hoping that you're all going great over in the United States!!!  i'm doing quite well as well!!!  hahaha sorry that i forgot to tell you guys that this week has changes.  but as i was expecting Elder Verdugo and I are staying the exact same and we'll be together for 6 weeks more.  but this week hasn't been TOOOO exciting but there have been a few things.  this teusday pasado we had divisiones with a companionship.  i stayed here and elder Verdugo left, i stayed here with a kid named Elder Webster from St. George, UT.  the sad thing is that we almost lost him before he got to the us.  haha he was on the bus from mercedes headed to Fray Bentos and there are two stops that us as missionaries siempre use, the terminal and a plaza next to our house.  this time we had told his comp that he needed to get off at the bus terminal.  we waited for his bus to show up and when it got there he wasn't on the bus!!!!  we asked the bus driver if a missionary was on the bus and he said that he had already gotten off the bus!!!  so we were like CRAP and we took a taxi to the plaza that he may have have gotten off at.... HE WASN'T THERE!!!!! so we went back to the terminal to try to find him and we tried calling his comp in Mercedes and everything but after 10 minutes he finally shows up in the bus terminal.  hahaha i almost crapped myself thinking that we had lost a missionary.  what apparently happened was that we got car sick on the bus and had to get off the bus because we was going to throw up and just started SPEED WALKING in the direction of the bus!  haha at least he's safe now!  he's got the same amount of time as my kid Elder Duke and barely knows ANY SPANISH.  it was super fun talking with him because he's obsessed with football.  so we got to talk quite a bit about the NFL, BYU, and college football in general.  i remember right before he got on the bus to go back to Mercedes he told me, "thanks for talking about football with me. (he's with a latin comp that is obsessed with soccer) i needed to talk about something other than soccer"  hahah he's a funny kid.  but besides that not too much is going on...  this week we have two baptisms on sunday of two cousind named Santiago and Enzo.  so with lots of prayers it will go as planned.  but besides that not too much has changed!

love ya,

Elder Ty Atkinson

Week 86!

well helloooooooooooo la la la (seinfeld),
hahaha i hope that all of you are going great way up there!  i`m doing quite well and this week went by FLYING!!!!  first off i went to DOLORES (pains) on divisions, i went with Elder Elliot who has like a year and 2 months on his mission.  he`s a total stud and he`s super smart, he`s majoring in Neroscience at BYU.  haha he`s pretty interresting, he`s from Kansas.  but it was fun then we did divisions again on thursday with Elder Baer and his comp Elder Chamberlain.  this time i stayed in my area in Fray Bentos but Elder Chamberlain came with me!  he`s a freaking geneous, he`s already made his own app for the IPOD.  just from that one app he told me that he earned more than $100,000 and he`s a proffesional DJ/guitar/synthisyzer/drums player.  so he's pretty interresting.  he's got about 8 months on the mission so far and is struggling to learn spanish.  he's trying a ton and that's the part that is the most important.  he's a great kid.  on other news... Juan Humberto we think is hidding from us... i guess he is having quite a tough time trying to quit smoking...  so we're trying to help him with that but we'll see what goes on... this friday we had a cool service project as a whole town.  we went to a school of music to help clean it up. it was trashed and it hadn't been cleaned in YEARS.  we came as the church and did a morning of service.  we cleaned from 8 in the morning till 12:00. that lady in charge was soo happy to have us come and help clean up.  and we had two people in church who are going to get baptized on the 28th of this month.  their names are Santiago and Enzo.  they're cousins and we have been reactivating their families and they're starting to come back and they want to get baptized!  haha  it's pretty cool.  and also today for P-Day we went fishing.... kind of........  haha we didn't catch anything because the area that we went to had been polluted by "Fecul matter"  haha but we passed by a place that wasn't nearly as contaminated and we got a few nibbles.  haha it was pretty cool.  i finally found a place to send pictures!  so i'ma try to send you a few of today going fishing!
love you all,
Elder Atkinson
P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHAUN!!!!
P.S.S. i'm going to try to send some more pictures right now

Week 85!

yo wassup???
i`m doing pretty good! actually quite a few things happened this week first offwe went to Montevideo this week to a meeting and i was able to go through the Temple in Uruguay for the first time!!!!  it was actually super cool being able to go the temple in spanish and feel the spirit.  it`s weird that it took me soo long because they always send the new missionaries through the temple wen they first get to the mission but when we started we showed up a day later then the mission was expecting and our plane was delayed like three hours so we were only in the mission home for like an hour and a half and then we left to our areas.  aand all of the other elders from my group have all served in Montevideo so they`ve been able to go but i`ve never served there.  so it was super cool and the spirit was SUPER STRONG.   we came bck and worked super hard and found quite a few people.  and we have a few people come to church like this one guy named Juan Humberto... no me acuerdo if i have told you guys about this guy yet but if you think about the most HOBO looking guy ever, that`s what he looks like.  he`s 55 years old but because he`s been smoking a LOT he looks lik he`s 70 years old.  he`s balding and the hair that he does have is long and gray.  he`s got a gray un trimmed beard and not one tooth in his mouth.  he`s super funny, and we decided that we were going to bring him to church because we hd been teaching him for 2 weeks.  we inveted him to general conference last week nd his friend (member) went by him and they startd walking together and on the way over he decided to stay in a bar on the way.  but we passed by him this week and he decided to actually come!!!  right bfore we get to the church he had to finish his last cigarette.  he been smoking for soo long that he always has a 2 liter bottle of water and a tin cup that he uses to moisten up his dry mouth.  hee gets into the church without a cigarette and with his water bottle and cup.  he´s drinking and veryone is just watching him because he looks like a hobo.  during the sacrament he takes the bread and he`s all happy and waits for the water and i knew that something would happen during the water...  when the deacon comes around with the water he tries to give juan the water and juan says, "it all good, i alreaady have water" and he wouldn't take the water.  the deacon starts laughing and i tried soo stinking hard to not laugh myself.  after that he was ok for a while...  because he was drinking soo much water he had to go to the batherooom twice.  well because it was easter we had a musical number from our primary,  juan humberto was super xcited because he loves listening to music.  half way through he gets up and i thought that it was to go to the bathroom but NOOOO he got up and started TRYING to sing and stood next to the director and tried to leead the music!!!!  oh my goodness!  obviously we had to get up and take him back to his seat but i was trying soo hard not to laugh but it was one interresting sacrament meeting!  hahaha  so those were probably the most interresting things that have hppened to me in this last week!  but obviously i`ve got to go... but thanks for all of you emails!!!
LUVS,
Elder Atkinson

Week 84!

hola hola

this week has been pretty stinkin fun!! nothing too special has happened but i just have one phrase to describe me right now,¨i love the mission¨ even though it´s hard, long, fun, happy, sad, etc...  you just always look back on all of it and say WOW i´m so glad to be here.  this week was one of those weeks.  Elder Verdugo and i went to mercedes this week to settle a few problems with companionships being truchos and stuff like that then we did divisions on tuesday and i stayed in the area with Elder McCraney and he´s in his 7th change, osea almost a year.  interresting story is that he is from Laguna Hills, CA.  so i asked him if he knew who the McBrides were in Laguna Niguel and he told me that the name is super familiar and i showed him pictures that i have of them and he said that tayor looks super familiar.  small world...  but this week on thursday we had to travel back to mercedes to go to interviews with Presidente Heaton.  it was super good to talk to the predsident and we couldn´t leave till all of the interviews were done so we didn´t get back to our area until 6 in the afternoon.  but once we got back we wworked super super hard trying to get lessions with members and trying to find some more new people.  especially to get people to general conference was super hard just trying to pass by all of them and to get them excited to go.  it was even more difficult on saturday and sunday because it was the beginning of the¨SEMANA SANTA¨ or the WHOLE week before easter is just a big fiesta week.  but we ended up having quite a few imvestidators coming to church and being able to feel the spirit.  it was a GREAT general Conference!!!  i don´t know if it has to do with me getting a little bit older or something but every time there is general conference i get more and more excited to watch it!!!  like seriously i get freaking PUMPED!!!!!  so this week was super good fill with lots to do!!!  i love you all and can´t wait to hear more about what´s going on!

love ya,

ELDER ATKINSON

p.s. hahahaha remember what elder evans said in conference about letters to elders  (wink wink) hahaha