Monday, October 22, 2012

¿Día de la Madre? (Mother's day)

¡Buen Día!
What up chicos? How is everyone doing eh?
Another good week in Argentina. We had some fun activities go on this week including our trip to Mendoza, exchanges with my district, and argentine mother´s day.

We took another one of those nice, long bus rides all the way to Mendoza. I was able to get through the whole book of Romanos in the Santa Biblia and still have enough time for a little siesta to rest my eyes. I was accompanied by my loyal companion Élder Johnson and a bunch of the newer missionaries on the bus. Élder Johnson and I got to do some proselyting in plain centro Godoy Cruz. A little bit tougher than here in San Juan because the people are all way busy there. We slept over at the big office pench(pension) and I got to go and hang out with the senior missionary couple in our mission, Élder and Sister Ence(they are from some small city up by the bountiful temple), and go buy facturas(yummy, sweet bread things) for all of the others that were doing trámites (paperwork) with us so we didn´t go hungry. It was kinda a long day, but I got through it.

Starting to get accustomed to the district leader stuff. Had a pretty good district meeting on tuesday with getting my Élders all excited to go get work done and be super successful in their missions. I went to Rawson(another area) to do exchanges with Élder García(Uruguay) while Élder Henrie(Delta, UT) went to my area with good ol´ É Johnson to do miracles! And that is just exactly what happened. I swear that every time we do exchanges, we get boosted with extra spirit juice or something that just leads us to amazing people and helps our investigators to progress even more. É García and I visited their top three families. In the first family(La familia Sanchez), the woman can´t get baptized because her boyfriend(for 20+ years, multiple children) doesn´t want to get married yet until he knows he really wants to be with her...ha! She is going to pray to God specifically about if she needs to separate herself from him or if there is a chance of getting married, so she can finally get baptized. In the second family(La familia Guevara), there were some investigators that weren´t really progressing that well or fast, but we found the niece of one of them who was going through a lot of problems. We don´t know exactly what we did or what we taught in that lesson, but she had a change of heart. She wouldn´t even look at us when we first entered the house, but by the end she was participating actively and wanting to go to church and get baptized so that she can leave the live she is living now behind her. I love that part about the mission. Just seeing what the Lord can do in anytime from a few seconds of changing the heart of one of his children. Cool stuff! We see it every day! The third family(La familia Martinez) is the one that they had been working with most. When we got there, the dad was smoking and drinking a ton. We focused on the family and how we could help him with the addiction program that we use as missionaries. We made a calendar and everything so that he could leave these things behind. All the family but him came to church so they should be getting baptized this week! Woo hoo! I thought that maybe you could enjoy just a taste of what we are doing out here. I feel like these families are my investigators also because I am working so much with them. It is cool to see the mission from a different angle now and work with more people.

Our top investigators in Líbano, Omar and Elizabet Rodriguez were not able to come to church because they were too busy with Mother´s Day stuff, but they are progressing a ton. In the last couple visits, we have seen a love for the Gospel of Christ grow within them. Elizabet has read the whole Libro de Mormón in just a week or two, and we caught her while she was in the middle of the guide part at the end(english book of mormon doesn´t have a guide like this one, it is pretty cool). She has a couple small kids so she has been up late some nights, so when she is bored or something in the middle of the night, she reads! We are hoping to help them get baptized after church this week if it is possible.

Yep, it was mother´s day yesterday. I can´t believe that you would all forget about mother´s day like that. ha. Kidding. All of the argentine elders got to call/skype their mothers last night. Sounds like fun. Don´t worry ma, there is only two months till Navidad.

Love you all! I send an abrazo to all those that are willing to receive it!
ABRAZOS,
Elder Dev Larisch
La iglesia es verdadera
Super Hot!! We ate a hamburger there when we went to Mendoza this week
Hermana Camargo, our Argentine mother. We had to make her something...
21/10/2012 Argentine Mother´s Day
Shaving Mordisco and Negra
Hermana Prado always makes us use very professional looking plates when we come over for lunch