To sum up the week, freeeeeeezing cold, but so beautiful and full of incredible experiences. I pile on as many layers of leggings and tights as possible and never take off my coat or gloves. And a few days ago, I learned that cold air can give you a "sunburn!" Painful experience, but the members take care of their "rubia" (blondie) and gave me creams for my face and taught me how to wrap my face in a scarf so that it doesn't happen again.
Besides the cold, we are super happy and seeing alot of miracles here! The other day, we went to visit a referral from a member. We had to walk about an hour to get to the little neighborhood that is semi out in the campo, and when we finally made it to her doorstep, she proved to be the first and only not-so-friendly person in 9 de Julio and shut the door in our face. As we walked away from the door rejected and a little bit miffed that we had walked an hour just to have the door shut in our face, I looked around at the beautiful little neighborhood and said, "Hermana Sanchez, there's someonehere in this neighborhood that we need to find. Heavenly Father brought us here for a reason, and we're going to stay here and work until we figure out why!" So we started knocking doors. We met some really nice people, but everyone was "busy" or "heading out the door," and it seemed like we had hit the neighborhood in the worst moment.
But we kept knocking and knocking, until we walked past a house with big sliding glass doors. There was a woman inside sitting at her dining room table, and I smiled and waved to her from the street. She immediatly jumped up, ran out of the room, and the next thing we knew, she was hurrying out her front door towards us. As she walked up to us, she smiled, said "hello," and then just stood there. I was waiting to see if she had something to say, maybe had talked with missionaries before or thought we were someone else, but no. She just stood there and smiled, as if she was just waiting to listen to our message and go the baptismal font that very moment! So we introduced ourselves, told her that we share a message about Jesus Christ and how we can live with our families forever, and she immediatly let us in.
As we started talking with her, she told us about her life. 40 years old, lives with her husband and little 5 year old girl, trying to stop smoking, looking for a job to support her husband, and recently coming out of a deep depression that she went through after the death of her sister. We hear about alot of crazy things as missionaries, so this was nothing dramatic. But what caught my attention was when she said, "I've gone to a lot of churches and tried alot of things, but none of those things have helped me heal completely." Mariela is definitly one of those who Heavenly Father has been preparing for a long time. We taught the Restoration, and when we showed her the picture of Jesus conferring the priesthood upon his disciples and explained the authority of the priesthood, her eyes lit up and she said, "THAT'S what I'm looking for! The church with the authority from God!" Words to make a missionary's heart sing!
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