Elder Vanderlinden - Uruguay Montevideo Mission

We decided to take some photos in a random trash field in our area with Elder Mason 
(the short one) and Elder Jones. They are both good friends of mine. 
Elder Jones is training Elder Mason.

Hola!

I hope that everyone enjoyed the wonderful conference weekend that we had. I loved it! I was extremely touched by many of the talks and I know that our investigators were as well. If you guys didn`t get a chance to watch conference, I advise you to make the time and do it! I noticed that in this conference, it seemed like all of the speakers went back to the basics. Praying, reading the scriptures, going to church and enduring to the end. They also talked a lot about how good people pass through trials too. However, it is important to know that we can always find comfort and support in the gospel.

This week has gone by extremely fast! On Tuesday, we had interviews with our mission President. It was a great opportunity to meet with him and discuss his goals for the mission and for me personally as a missionary. 

One interesting story from this week: We have this one family of members with probably the biggest dog in the world. It is a dog from Brazil and apparently they use packs of these dogs to hunt Jaguars....sooo yeah it is a massive dog! It goes insane when we enter in the house, so the Dad has to leave and hold it back even though it is on a huge chain and it just pulls the Dad around. We went to visit them and we quickly ran in the house as the Dad was holding back the dog. Then, exhausted, he let it go. When it reached the limit of its chain, its collar snapped off...and the dog ran straight toward us. My companion quickly jumped to the other side of the table and the dog lunged at me. His huge head hit me right in the hip and almost knocked me over. I quickly swung my arm down and smacked the dog right in the side of the head. Then I grabbed its neck and shoved its face towards the ground...the Dad ran in and jumped on top of the dog like a horse and yelled for me to get back.....they were like hitting the dog and wrestling it so that it wouldn`t turn and attack me. Then I reached in my pocket and there was some of the dog food from his mouth.....that was a close one! 

-Elder Vanderlinden

Quote of the week: "I am not losing you” -General Conference