Day 117

¡Hola Familia!
it has been another great week but the work has been really frustrating. our families are failing and we now dont have many people to teach, which is disappointing because we have two huge areas. right now we are focusing on having noches de hogar (FHE) with families in our wards and they promised that they are going to bring their non member friends that will be willing to listen to us. yay! im really excited for it. our first one will be tonight so you should pray for us.
this week, we had the opportunity to take a bus at 430 wednesday morning to get to neuquen for a conference with e´aidukaitis. he is a 70 and is from brazil. i loved his accent and his enthusiasm and the conference was very good. i have to say that he dropped the cane really hard but he dropped it with love. he told us that on his mission, he entered a church and baptized the whole congregation, then he asked us what was impeding us from inviting everyone to be baptized and was wondering why we werent finding very many people. after that conference, we took another 3 hour bus ride to zapala to start fresh. our goals to find, teach, and baptize have doubled and we are working even harder. during the conference, i felt this strong yearning for my first baptisms and i know that they will come soon.
Pablo finally finished the book of mormon and he prayed to know if it was true. he has a strong testimony of it and he knows that everything we have taught is true. now he just wants time to feel better about his situation. we gave him a blessing of strength and comfort so he can feel better and overcome his challenges because he told us that when he starts coming to church, he is never going to stop. he just feels like a hypocrite right now because he isnt 100% but i know he will feel it soon. he wont commit to a date but definitely is progressing. its coming!
our other families told us that they dont want to listen to us anymore. they felt good when we were with them but when we arent, they have family that tells lots of lies about the church. it makes me really upset because everything these people learn about our church comes from their churches. im really getting sick of these other churches here. the catholics here are only catholics because of tradition and they have no idea what they believe. the jehovahs witnesses are very hard and all they want to do is bible bash. i only have hope for the evangelicos but they only go to those churches because they dont have to do anything there. as long as they accept Christ they are done. it makes finding very hard because they tell us they dont want to change and they are very comfortable with where they are but we always make it very clear that we arent there to convince anyone, just to share a message and they can ask God if its the truth. i believe that we can have baptisms every week and i think that they are going to start very soon. we found a list of incomplete member families for our ward and branch and if you can believe it, we have stacks of papers. WOOOO!!! im pretty excited to start looking for those people instead of clapping every door. clapping can be fun but a lot of people are annoyed with me because i am from the US. apparently, because i am north american, i am corrupt and all i say is a big fat lie because all north americans have ruined the world. bah. our area books with records of past investigators are garbage and we threw away lots of the records because there was no way we could find those people again. the missionaries in the past all did a very bad job so we are working on building up our progress reports to look real pretty and be more useful.
i got my package and i was really excited to get all of those pictures but i didnt get any pictures of my mamita... thank you for all the candy. it helps calm down the kids in my ward because they are crazy. during the meetings, it is funny for me because nobody really sings the hymns but the guy conducting and he doesnt sing very loud. it doesnt help with the kids playing the hymns because they dont play perfectly but i started singing really loud for everyone and now they sing along with me. awesome. there about 30 people in each ward but the ward has tons of kids climbing everywhere and screaming. yikes. yesterday during sacrament meeting, a kid ran up to us screaming that the bathroom exploded so we went to check it out. a pipe burst and water was everywhere but i was able to shut off the water and fix the broken valve. what a stud i am, no?
my comp and i passed the sacrament too and one of the members told me that i have a bounce to my step and that i dont walk like a real missionary because my walk isnt very serious. that broke my heart. but my comp told me that he has never noticed anything and he walks next to me everyday.
i bought misself un balón this morning just to practice in the pensión and i am getting a lot better with my control. awesome. we play futbol with the members every friday at 7 until 915 and we run back to the house to be home by 930. we follow all the rules ;). have you guys googled where i live? you can probably find it on google earth, right? i live on trafúl and we walk up and down the street called 12 de julio everyday. that way you guys can see where i go. oh! i also learned how to dance salsa but i couldnt do too much because you need a girl to do it but im pretty good with my feet ;) x2. the people dont listen to salsa very much here. the majority of music that i hear in the street is cumbia or regetón (sp?). cumbia is very loud and has a rhythm like a train and then regetón is the music for people to dance very dirty. so i hear... i understand almost all of the lyrics now and i really like salsa music. it is a shame that there isnt much of it here but that is ok. i want to buy a voice recorder to record some of the stuff that i do with my comp. that would be really cool, verdad? then i can send it to you guys and listen to my voice instead of reading my emails.
e´aidukaitis also talked about having more faith to find people. we show our faith through our work. our diligence in the work is the test of our faith, and when we have enough faith we can do anything. por eso, es muy importante. i like DyC 8:10 and 1 nefi 10:19. those scriptures pretty much say what i just said but even better. i know that faith is really important in this work and it is the first principle of the gospel for a reason. we find people everyday that are perfect and golden but then they end up living in other areas of zapala. shoot. we are praying to find more investigators that SPECIFICALLY live in our area. that should help us this week. this week is going to be a huge turning point in my mission and im really excited to get started.
i know that i need to take more pictures but now i feel awkward whipping out a digital camera in front of these people because they dont have very much. there will be more pictures of us next week, i promise. this is a reminder for more pictures if they have not been sent already... thank you! i love my family muchísimo!
con una sonrisa grande y mucho amor y ánimo,
elder summers.