The Tsunami of Missionaries

I've just read and responded to President's letter where he tried his best to prepare us for this tsunami of new missionaries and straight up craziness that his rolling our way. (Elder Cook described it as such when he came to visit us, and we've been using that term in the mission ever since.) He wrote a special letter to all the sister missionaries, calling us to a higher level of faithfulness and diligence in such a wonderfully President Carter-ish way. Well, first he described in hefty detail all of the challenges that are coming our way with 19 of us sister missionaries who will be receiving 57 new sister missionaries in the next three months.  And then he said, "The Lord has chosen you at this time, in this place, to be missionaries of strength, confidence, intellect, and spiritual power. . . .both the Lord and I know that you can do this, and you can do it well. It is your time to stand up and be valiant in your calling." 

Wow, I'm feeling a little bit humbled and, to be honest, a little bit nervous. But if there's one thing I've learned in this service its that we truly can "do all things" in Christ.  I know that He is going to continue turning my weaknesses to strengths (one of those being flexibility!) as I put all my trust in Him and move forward with faith!  

Now for the work in Padua! Well, we're preparing the baptismal service for three of our little friends who we've been teaching.  Juli and the two adorable twin boys, Adrian and Ezequiel. (Have I told you about them?) Their mom is an inactive member, but the older sister is super active, and when we went to visit her one day, we met the twins and absolutely fell in love. :) I'll have to send pictures next time, but they are two of the most beautiful, cheekiest, most charming little gentlemen I've ever met.  They're ten years old, and when we talked about the gospel of Jesus Christ with them and their mom, they said they wanted to be baptized!  So we've been teaching them for about three weeks, they've been coming to church, and we're been able to help strengthen the family at the same time.  It's been a huge blessing teaching those two.  

The Things That Matter Most

It has been an amazing week here in Padua and a week where I learned just how much I love Padua!    On Tuesday and Wednesday, we had divisions, so I went to Aldo Bonsi to be with Hermana Castillo (seriously! don't know how President allowed it but he did!) and Hermana Carrillo stayed in Padua so that she could learn the area better.  The division was great, and we had some good times, my little Peruana and I. But I think the greatest blessing was being able to return to our dear little scruffy pensh and the tree-lined steets and come to the realization that I adore Padua and missed it so much!  After thinking that I could never love a place and people as much as I love San Justo, this was a great realization for me. :) 

This week, we have been working alot with a beautiful family named the Familia Iglesias. Well, we've actually been working with them for about a month.  They are a mom and a dad with 5 CRAZY little girls and 1 baby boy.  The two oldest daughters are both members but have their records in a different ward where they were baptized, so the hermana's before us discovered them by accident. The mom, Monica, is absolutely wonderful, and wants really badly to get baptized, but she and her husband aren't married, so that's a road block.  The third daughter, Julie, is the one who is going to get baptized in a few weeks (I sent pictures with her I think.) and she is such a character! She has the attention span of a little puppy, but is so earnest and adorable that we miraculously keep coming back (despite little 4 year old Nicole who tugs on my hair with grimy hands, 6 year old Morena who yells over us in the lesson, giving us a minute by minute recap of her day at school, and muddy puppies that jump on my lap). Lessons are always an adventure and we always leave exhausted, but I love that family with all my heart.  They live in humble circumstances, but are so incredibly good, and we are praying and praying that Monica and her husband, Marcelo, can get the marriage papers going so that she can get baptized! They didn't really see the need, but all the talks in Sacrament this Sunday were about living the Law of Chastity, and after the meeting, Monica went up to the bishop and told him that she was going to start the paper work this week! Marcelo approves and loves the church too, but works such long hours that I still have never seen him. 

The other day we went from a lesson with familia Iglesias in their tiny, very humble home to contact an old investigator who lived on the other side of town in practically a mansion.  As we sat in her beautiful home and talked with her, she told us of her woes with her divorce and her life of drifting in and out of relationships with different men, despite the things that the missionaries had taught her about the Law of Chastity.  It was so interesting to go from the polar opposite in the Iglesias happy home where they struggle to buy bread and diapers but are accepting and beginning to apply the principles of the gospel, to this mansion where the very nice but very very sad woman didn't want to accept the gospel and whose life right now is very cold and empty. How grateful I am for the Gospel of Jesus Christ that brings happy moments to our everyday existence and greater perspective of the beautiful things to come.   

We were able to find Clotilde after two weeks of crazy medical appointments. I don't think I've ever mentioned to you that Clotilde has pretty serious health problems, cancer being one of them.  But we had an AMAZING lesson with her and, as always, are inching ever closer to the light bulb moment.   

Beautiful Mission Moments

Wow, such a good week and such a good day, I can hardly wait to tell you all the news!  This has really been full of so many of those moments that just make me think, "I am so HAPPY to be a missionary!" And to be here in Argentina, at this time, in this area, with this companion, it all just seems too good to be true.  So here's a little glimpse into a few of those beautiful missionary moments I had this week. 

Slipping through the mud: On Tuesday, we had appointments set up for every single hour of the day, which is a dream come true for me. It makes nightly planning sooo much easier.  And I don't know what happened that day, but nearly every single one of our appointments fell through, and we spent a day walking from one appointment to another and clapping our hands, only to find blank, quiet houses.  We seriously walked more than I've ever walked in one day, and at 8:00 at night, we were absolutely exhausted as we made our way to our last appointment, hoping with all our might that they would be there so we could sit down.  We were in the area that has dirt roads, this street didn't have street lights, and it had rained the night before.  It was pitch dark, and we somehow managed to get ourselves into mud up to our calves, and I lost one of my shoes to the suction of the thick mud.  We just laughed and laughed, and in that moment when I was so tired and filthy and could have been so distraught, I was just overcome with the joy of being a missionary where I get to have these kind of funny little experiences.  Plus in our day of a lot of walking we talked to alot of wonderful people in the street who I have high hopes for.  

Riding in a train full of missionaries:  On Wednesday, we had a special conference with all the missionaries in the central offices to listen to Elder Cook! And one of my favorite moments (besides listening to an apostle of course) came as we traveled to Ramos Mejia. We went in train, and as Hermana Carrillo and I boarded, we spotted black name tags and clean cut heads in the other train cars.  We went to be with the Elders, and at every stop, more missionaries would get on the train, and people would look at us kind of weird.  I don't know why, but it just filled me with joy to be with so many missionaries, riding along in the crowded train. 

Leading a chorus of 400 in our missionary anthem:  Elder Cooks talk was amazing. He taught us about the power of OUR faith to help our investigators progress. I'll talk more about that later.  But then after his talk, we sang "Called to Serve" and President motioned me last minute to direct the hymn. So I hopped up, but had no idea what a spiritual experience it would be!  I looked out at 400 something missionaries, all with bright smiles and singing with all their hearts, and the strains of that familiar song just pierced me to the core.  In Castillano, the chorus ends with something like "God will give us courage, let us fight in the celestial cause," and as I looked out at that army of God's servants singing those words, I KNEW that we are truly engaged in a celestial cause.

Hermana Carrillo's Miracle on the homefront:  I've told you a little about Hermana Carillo's story, but quick recap is: Mom and Dad have been struggling with separations and reuniting and then separating again ever since she was little.  When her mom and she and her brother got baptized, they had just left their dad in Bolivia I think for the third time, and were determined to never go back.  But Hna. Carrillo's missionaries promised her when they were teaching her that if she got baptized, she would be able to have an eternal family. And thirteen-year-old Herman Carrillo thought to herself, "Uhuh, sure. You don't know my family." Her dad came to Argentina a week before she left for her mission, and he was a changed man. Then she got the news in February that her mom and dad had gotten married! Many missionaries have been working with her dad, and in recent weeks, it seems like he's getting really close but struggling to stop smoking and keep other commitments.  

SO. . . Hermana Carrillo lives in the Buenos Aires South mission, and we had this conferece with Elder Cook with the Buenos Aires South mission. Weeks before the conference, we kept saying, "What if you see the missionaries who are teaching your dad?" and that was one of her greatest hopes.  But it turned out that they were super rigid in getting us in and out of the chapel, and when the meeting ended and President excused the South mission, we were sad that we hadn't seen them.  Then randomly, three Elders came running up to the front, whispered something to President, and then came running up to Hna. Carrillo.  "Hermana Carrillo? We're teaching your dad, and he's getting baptized in two weeks!"  Hermana started crying, I teared up a little, and as they talked about his progress and I looked at Hermana Carrillo's face, I saw something that is hard to describe.  The Spirit that filled that little circle was undeniable, and it was an experience I'll never forget. 

And NOW, Hna Carrillo just got the email from her mom saying that the baptismal interview is confirmed and that President called to talk to the dad and tell them that Hna Carrillo is going to be able to go the baptism!  I don't know if I'll be going, but either way I don't care. It's just been the most amazing thing to see the promise to missionaries fulfilled, that as they serve with all their might and strength, not only the people in their areas will be blessed, but those at home as well. :)

Chlotilde Meets Her Match

After a few weeks of chilliness, Buenos Aires decided to give us another little bit of autumn, so we're warm and content sitting in the little internet cafe. :) It's been a wonderful week in Padua, I've learned alot of lessons, and I'm super excited to go into this next week with alot of faith and diligence to apply the things I've learned!  That would be one thing that I'm learning on the mission, is that we're ALWAYS learning. And that we WILL be learning up until the very last day of our lives!  I feel like I understand alot more than I did at the beginning of the mission, and yet I continue to learn something new every day.  If the mission really is a little microcosm of life, then I imagine that even the wisest oldest person on earth is still learning. In some ways it's really humbling because you think to yourself, "Man, HOW long have I been a missionary? Shouldn't I be a perfect missionary by now?"  But of course we all know the answer to that question. :) We'll never reach perfection in this life, and it's exciting to always be improving and growing.  

The week was full of amazing moments.  On Thursday we went to Clotilde's with our district leader Elder Viana and his companion Elder Yoder, and wow was it an experience.  Elder Viana likes to come to our area to meet our investigators, and it's the closest we can get to divisions where we can learn from other missionaries.  He is an incredible leader and missionary and I learn SO much from him and his example of being a bold, fearless agent of repentance.  But to be honest, I was a little nervous about having Elder Viana and Clotilde in the same room, because if Elder Viana is bold and confident, he's met his match in Clotilde.  SUCH a classy, peaceful lady but has that undeniable "history professor" air about her. Like I've mentioned, Clotilde's big hold up is the Apostasy because she just can't find the evidence in history to support such a bold claim, that Christ's church literally was not on the earth for 1800 years.  So I somewhat nervously set up this appointment with Clotilde, asked her if it was okay that we brought our leaders with us to the lesson, and put my trust in Heavenly Father that everything was going to work out okay. 

Not only did it work out, but it was an amazing experience for everyone involved!  At the beginning of the lesson, I sat and watched in horror as Elder Yoder (from the US) and Elder Viana (from Uruguay), both VERY prepared and very knowledgable missionaries sat across from Clotilde and handed her the doctrine of the apostasy with all the authority of James Talmage himself.  Clotilde would make a rebuttle to something they said, and they would open the Bible and teach tell her with just as much confidence that she was wrong. I never knew what it meant to be bold until I watched those two teach, and I thought to myself, "Well, there goes our golden investigator.  We've lost her for sure. There's no way she's letting us back after this!" But as the lesson progressed, I was amazed at what I saw. Instead of getting offended or closing up, Clotilde got really excited about the discussion and began asking questions, expressing doubts, and when we walked out of that kitchen that night, we left Clotilde very pensive and thoughtful and very OPEN. What I had thought was going to be straight up "Bible Bashing" 

was really just bold declarations of truth, and when we declare the truth, the Spirit has a chance to testify.  Those Elders had the Spirit and every word that came out of their mouths was guided by the Spirit, so instead of causing contention, it created peace and everyone was "edified together." Seriously an incredible lesson for me.  

We had a ward temple trip this Saturday, and we got to go with Clotilde and familia Villasenor to have a lesson in the gardens and teach about the temple while the members were inside.  Clotilde told us that she was going to come with a lot of questions for Heavenly Father, and we promised her that if there's one place in the world where she would receive the answers, it's the temple. Then she actually invited a friend to come too!  It was beautiful. She left very thoughtful and said that she feel's the answer is close. All those prayers going up from Highland, Utah are being heard! :)

Saturday was a big holiday here in Argentina, kind of like our 4th of July, so the Hermana's brought little blue and white pins to the temple trip to pin onto everyone's jackets and everyone in Argentina was supposed to eat a traditional May 2th food called locro, a super hearty beef and chicken stew. We didn't manage to fit in the locro, but the 9th of June is another day of independence for them, so I'm told we'll get another chance to eat Locro.  

Sunday was the baptism, and it was so beautiful!  It was amazing to see Fabian's dad go up and bear his testimony, timid and quiet but burning with a freshly renewed testimony.  After years of inactivity, that family has made so many changes and are steadily working towards being sealed together in the temple!  

I love this work and I love you all so much.  Have a beautiful week!

Lessons From Fabian

It has been a wonderful week in Padua, with a few highlights in between that I want to tell you about.  This Sunday is the baptism of little Fabian, and he is soooo excited, it's the cutest thing ever!  We pass by about every other day to teach him more, and he and his little sis Valentina now wait at the window for us to walk up to gate, and a clamor of shouts and squeals sound from inside the house.  The other day we taught the Restoration and watched the movie of the First Vision.  I watch that movie all the time, but there are certain times when it just hits me how amazing and real it is.  This was one of those times, and as the movie ended, there was a tangible spirit in the room.  Even the little 2 year old twins were silent.  I looked at Fabian and asked him, "How do you feel right now?" He paused and looked up the ceiling as he always does before he answers a question, and then said very slowly, "I feel . . . I feel the way I think I'll feel when I go to heaven." It was one of those incredibly beautiful moments that make the mission what it is.  

Good Things Ahead

I gave you a litte update on Andres and Clotilde.  We have a lesson with Andres tomorrow, it's been a while since he was on vacation.  But I'm excited to put into practice all these things I've learned and have been sharing with you about being bold and letting people know what's up.  We'll see how it goes!  I didn't let you know yesterday about a little boy that we just started teaching whose parents are members and are just starting to come back to church after years of inactivity.  They are the most adorable little Peruana famliy, and I'm so excited to teach little kids again!  Time to pull out the games and plan of salvation map again!  Actually, I just recently used the plan of salvation map with Andres and Gabi after telling them that they were getting way too deep and way too off track and needed to learn the basics that our little four year olds learn in primary.  I told them to stop talking, look at the pictures, and pay attention to their feelings. And for the first time since teaching them, they sat and really listened as we talked, and the spirit rushed into the room. Amazing how everything comes into focus when we go back to the basics. The beautiful, simple basics.

Anways, I'm happy and loving life here in Padua.  President just implemented some new goals for the mission and for each companionship to help us work better with the members, and I have gained a huge testimony of following his counsel, yet again!  In zone conference, he gave us a training on how to work with the members, and I have to admit, I sat back and was a little bit like, "yeah, yeah we've been told this a million times." But then when I went out and actually DID what President counseled us, following his directions exactly in our visits with the members, I saw miracles happen!  The members are AMAZING here in Padua, and it's as though they caught this new vision and excitement for missionary work this week. They have been giving us references, and I'm so excited to start teaching the friends and family of the the members.

The brand new little apartment next to ours is still empty and sad, waiting for the promised hermanas. It is going to be absolute CRAZINESS when all of these little visa waiters get here.  Like I told you, the number of new missionaries will outweigh the experienced missionaries.  But it's going to be such an exciting time for the mission and sooo much fun! We're also really excited because Elder Cook is coming to speak to all of the missionaries in Buenos Aires.  Good things ahead, in Buenos Aires and in Highland, Utah.  :)

Amazing Week in Padua

It's a beautiful afternoon here in Padua.  One of those days where everything just goes right, when you have a spring in your step, when everyone on the busy streets is happily licking away at ice cream cones, when the Spanish just rolls off your tongue without any stuttering. :) Those are always great days.  

We just got done with a zone activity where we watched 17 Miracles and ate empandas. Wow, that movie sure is a tear jerker, I'm still trying to get back into the real world as I write this email.  So amazing what those faithful saints did just to follow the will of the Lord, and it's so incredibly inspiring to see how the Lord blessed them for their faith.  It made sassy Argentines and sore backs seem like nothin.  I know that with faith in the Lord we can do all things and see miraculous things in our lives and in the lives of others!

Speaking of miraculous things, we have had a pretty amazing week.  It's been tough in some ways seeing as it's Hermana Johnson's last week in the mission, which is a crazy roller coaster emotional experience for any missionary.  Lots of goodbyes, lots of tears, lots walks down the memory lanes of the mission with her. :)  She is such an amazing companion and I'm gonna miss her a ton.  We've had some tough experiences but even more wonderful experiences in our one little transfer together, and when two people experience such highs and such lows together, they're bound to be friends for life. :)  It's the beautiful thing about companions.         

This week, we had a miracle with a wonderful lady named Irma. We stopped by the house of a lady who was a street contact, and she told us that she didn't have time to listen to us and that she wasn't really interested, but that her mom, Irma, was going through a really hard time because the grandma (Irma's mom) had just passed away, and the daughter thought that it would be really good if we could go visit her.  She gave us Irma's address and we went on our way.  As we turned the corner, a little old lady walked past us and we said hi to her like we do to everyone.  She slowed down and looked at us, we slowed down and looked at her, and it was one of those freaky moments where our intuition (aka the Holy Ghost) knows better than we do.  "Excuse me," said Hna. Johnson. "Is your name Irma?"  Talk about creepy! Haha jk, it was actually a really cool experience, and as we explained who we were, Irma began to tell us her experience, and she broke down and cried right there on the street corner.  We set up an appointment to go talk with her a few days later.  When we went, we taught about repentance and the gift of Jesus Christ's Atonement (Irma's anguish over her mom isn't that she won't see her again.  It's that she believes she didn't care for her the way she should have while she was in her last years, and she has feelings of overwhelming guilt.) It was so wonderful to be able to testify to her about the peace and relief from guilt that the Atonement of Christ brings to our hearts.  Irma came to church on Sunday, and is now preparing for baptism in May!

The other Padua folk are still doing great.  Well, Gabriel isn't progressing very much, but we are still teaching Andres in all his intellectual confusing-ness, Clotilde with her slow but steady race towards the finish line, and Matias has been crazy with basketball tournaments, so we haven't been able to teach him this week.  

Hna. Johnson and I have talked about how this transfer has been a little bit of the refiners fire for us, mostly because we feel that we are constantly doing our best to learn and improve, contstantly trying to trust in the Lord and do this work with all our hearts, and helping our investigators progress towards baptism is proving to be a real challenge!  But I know He has great things in store for these people and for me, and I have learned some lessons this transfer that have really changed me.  I would say the greatest lesson has been that of humility. :) 

This week I have also learned alot about the power that Jesus Christ has to turn our weaknesses into strengths.  One of my greatest weaknesses on the mission I would say has been a lack of boldness in my teaching.  As we help these wonderful people begin the process of repentance, we are expected to be devastated when they don't complete with commitments and call them to repentance.  But too often I sit down at the table, ask the question, "So were you able to read in the Book of Mormon?" receive a negative, and tend to say something like, "It's okay, buddy! Just try harder next time!" Okay it's not quite like that, but I'm definitely trying to become a bolder, more loving teacher, who corrects my investigators and calls them to action because I love them. 

As I've worked on it this week, I've seen that investigators react in the opposite way that I feared they would react.  Instead of getting mad and telling us to never come back, they are eager to do better and do these small simple things that are going go bring them so much happiness.  

Mom asked about a typical P Day, so here it is. :)  Wake up, clean the apartment, make our usual banana pancake breakfast while the other showers, do our usual morning studies, read letters and open packages!, head out into the busy morning (wearing our proselyting clothes and name tags just like any other day), typically go to the cyber to email, go to the little market to buy milk and flour and jam (the new staples of my pancake diet), go to different little shops to get things done (the watch shop to fix my watch, the meat shop to buy milanesa to make for lunch, the fruit and veggie shop, the office supplies shop). I think I told you in one of my very first emails that my favorite thing about Argentina is all it's little shops! Then we usually head back home, I do more cleaning :), we write letters and so on.  Not terribly exciting to be honest!  

People of Padua

It has been another wonderful week here in beautiful Padua, and I've got alot of updates on all the wonderful/crazy/hilarious people that we are teaching right now.  We're still going strong here with beautiful warm weather and just dreading the moment when the freezing wet winds will come our way but hey, just like Mom always says, the church will still be true. :)  And we'll just push through the rainy months and keep working with all our might to find Heavenly Father's children here in Padua who desperately need the gospel. 

So update number one, Andres.  He is soooo cool and so going to get baptized. :)  Okay, so he's got a while to go, but honestly this guy is the best.  I think I told you last time about all his credentials as a Bible scholar and what not.  So we had a lesson about prophets and the apostasy, and it was really hard for him to take it all in. For him, to hear someone tell him that the authority of God was taken from the earth and that the men who tutored him all his life don't possess that authority kind of rubs the wrong way.  Plus, he has this idea that the church is just another U.S. institution sticking it's nose in other countries' business where they're not really needed or wanted.  

And yet, through all these doubts and theories of his, he is miraculously progressing!  Two young girls that are WAY less educated than him sit across from him and say in very simple Spanish yet VERY directly, "Andres, we know these things are true.  Tonight, will you read this chapter of the Book of Mormon, and pray to ask God if it's true?"  He sits there for a moment, thinking, and then just says, "Si" with a smile that says "Man, how did they do that? Why did I just agree to that?" But he's keeping his committments, reading and praying, and that's the important thing, because the minute that we start to ACT for ourselves is the minute that we start receiving answers and developing our own testimony.  I have a feeling it's going to be a long journey with Andres, but I am so excited to see how Heavenly Father answers his prayers.

Clotilde. . .  she is so wonderful, and yes Mom, you guys would be BEST friends! You are so similar in a lot of little ways.  One being your meticulously clean homes that are always warm and smell nice like flowers or warm spices. That's a tad bit unusual for Argentines. :) Clotilde is sooo ridiculously close to baptism, it's not even funny.  Teaching her, I've learned alot about patience and ALOT about "teaching people, not lessons," a principle we learn in the MTC.  My black and white approach to life just doesn't work in teaching Clotilde, and as we've changed our approach and thought about whatClotilde needs instead of how we want to teach, we've seen miracles. We go piece by piece, answering each of her doubts with love and testimony, and I've seen her heart open even more and the lights go on. Keep praying for Clotilde. :)

The other day we were walking along in the "cheto" part of town (cheto is the Argetine word for ritsy) when a man pulled over and yelled from his car in English,  "Hey! Are you guys Mormon?! Are you American?!" We smiled and called back in the affirmative, and he pulled over to a side street to jump out of the car and shake our hands. He had the weirdest New York/Latin accent, and we learned that he spent the first 18 years of his life in Florida with his Argentine parents, but lives here now. And he is obsessed with the U.S. and the beach.  His name is Gabriel (when he's in Argentina. His "American name" is Joseph) and he is SUCH a character! Long story short, we've started teaching him, he came to church on Sunday and really liked, so we're going to keep teaching. It's kind of like teaching a 9 year old boy, but we'll see what happens!

The future elders are awesome.  Well, we've actually only been able to teach one of them alot, his name is Matias.  He's 17 years old, and he's just an adorable, shy litte basketball jock who wants to learn more about Jesus.  We teach him outside because his parents are never home, but we met the mom and she's super nice, so we're going to try teaching her as well.  Neither of his parents are very religious, but Mati started going to a little Evangelical church by himself when he was about nine. He's quiet and shy, exactly the way I imagine Cam being around two sister missionaries, :) but he lights up when we talk about simple principles like prayer and being able to talk with Heavenly Father.  He's super busy with basketball, so our next goal is helping him get to church. 

Happy Autumn Days

It has been a glorious week here in Padua with warm, autumn days, crunchy leaves and soooo many incredible people that we have taught and met.  

Clotilde continues to progress and continues to blow me away with her understanding and her amazing questions.  She came to church yesterday, sat down in Gospel Principles, and took careful notes in her manual (which, may I remind you, she's read all the way through).  After the class, which was about priesthood authority, she went up to the teacher and began asking him question after question.  But the thing I love about Clotilde is that she never tries to argue or "bash."  She just wants to understand. She is so, so close to baptism.  Just waiting for that confirmation to tip the scale between confirmations and doubts. We are praying in every moment that she will receive "the answer" and that we as her missionaries will know what to teach and what to do.  

Solange and Silvia are sadly not progressing very well.  We just passed too many days without being able to have contanct with them, and I think sneaky little Satan takes that time to implant little lies like, "I don't have enough time for this."  I still love them so much, and we haven't given up completely, but it's going to take some time to get back in their home and reinfuse the spirit into their lives.  

This week, we met the coolest guy named Andres.  Mixture between Cam and Zach Meinzer, if you can try to imagine that. Mostly just because he's trendy, LOVES photography, and LOVES triathalons! We met him when we were down in some obscure corner of our area where we never go, but we went to contact a referral that ended up being a fake address. So we decided to knock a few doors, and the first door we knocked on was Andres.  He's kind of a Peter Pan.  Middle-aged, single man that has this awesome job doing modern architecture and pursuing all the hobbies in the world, but still hasn't felt the fulfilling joy that families and the gospel bring.  He served a mission for his Evangelist church as a kid and knows the Bible frontwards and backwards, but there's something about him that's just looking for "more." To be honest, we've only taught him once, so I might be getting you all excited for nothing. But I have a good feeling about it so we'll see!

We've seem to hit a new trend of teaching young men, or future Elders, as we like to say.  I love teaching youth because they're just so frank and open, just like young Joseph Smith.  I'll get you the update on them next time.

I am loving being here in Padua, and loving more than ever being a missionary.  It's funny how every transfer brings challenges that are SO different from the last, but every challenge is like it's custom-prepared to help me change my weaknesses to strengths. Heavenly Father is so involved in this work and is preparing wonderful things for very special people in Padua.  I love this gospel with all my heart, and I know that it is the restored gospel of Jesus Christ! 

Patience and Answered Prayers

How is everyone in springy Utah??  It sounds like you're all doing great.  Conference was definitely an amazing time to recharge and get pumped to continue in the Lord's work!  Although I have to admit that I was downright exhausted last night after two solid days of charging around helping our investigators get to conference and then thinking during all the talks, "What is Jose thinking/feeling right now?" or "Is Clotilde going to receive the answer that she's been praying for for months?" It puts a different spin on General Conference when you're in the shoes of your investigators, listening to the words of a living day prophet for the first time in your life. 


As I told President in my letter this morning, this week has without a doubt been one of the most challenging and one of the most fulfilling weeks of my mission! Isn't it funny how those two often go together? I came into Padua just in time to witness a wonderful baptism, but then as often is the case in missionary work, it was like, "Soooo, now what?" We had pretty much zero progressing investigators (meaning that they're working towards baptism) and after leaving an abundance of investigators and support in San Justo, I felt a little overwhelmed starting from ground zero.  But we got to work. And worked . . . and worked . . . and worked.  We went to visit old investigators that were in the area book, visited members, talked to absolutely everyone in the streets, in colectivos, in the stores, and tried to stay worthy and open to the whisperings of the Holy Ghost.  And boy, did Heavenly Father come through.  I know that Heavenly Father hears our prayers and always, always answers, even though we sometimes have to wait. The waiting part is what I learned about this week.  I had to pass through some rough moments, kneeling by my bed at night crying because I was just so tired and didn't know if He was even listening, but I never should have doubed that He was there.He loves us so very much. It's just that sometimes has to let us press through the chill of adversity so that we can really rejoice in the warmth of the blessings. 

He loves us so very much. It's just that sometimes has to let us press through the chill of adversity so that we can really rejoice in the warmth of the blessings.One of our coolest experiences came on Sunday, after a week of craziness. On Sunday morning, our prayers were answered and Heavenly Father rewarded us for our patience. One of the many appointments that we had made during the week actually came through, and not only that, but it was a lesson with a mom and a daughter who's husband had died just one month ago. We were able to share the hope and light of the gospel with them, invite them to be baptized, and commit them to coming to hear the words of the prophet that afternoon. When I called the daughter in the afternoon to confirm the plans, she answered the phone with an energy that was completely opposite to the timid, depressive girl we had talked to in the morning. She said, "Hermana! I don't know what's going on, but I feel so good! I could eat a real meal for the first time in a month, and I had energy to clean the house." After a month of searching in psychologists' offices and persciptions for the cure that she so needed, the gospel of Jesus Christ brought her the remedy that her broken spirit really needed. They came to conference, loved it, and are  preparing for baptism.