Monday, September 12, 2016

Transfer 1 in Calafate Completed!

Well, I have officially completed my first transfer in Calafate, and to tell the truth...it was sooo long. Haha, it seems like I have been here for months...even though I still can't speak the language. I am enjoying it though, but let's just say each day is pretty long still. But I feel like this transfer will fly by since we have a ton of people to teach now. We worked really hard finding people last transfer, and now this will be the transfer of teaching and baptisms! hopefully...

So we had another zone meeting in Rio Gallegos where we figured out transfers. I will be remaining here with Elder Araujo for at least another transfer to finish my training, and actually it's likely that I stay here for 4 transfers (6 months), so I could be here for a while. Which I would enjoy actually, because I would like the people that I have met here to see my progression in the language! I think that would be pretty neat!

Elder Quintanilla from the other companionship is leaving to be a Zone Leader in Trelew. Elder Cortez is coming here. I've never met him, but I've heard he's pretty cool!

So you know how I said last transfer was a transfer of finding? Well, to prove it to you, we had 2 investigators when I got here. Now, we have 22! We were finding and contacting like crazy, which resulted in a lot of happiness when someone accepted, but also a lot of discouragement, because just imagine how many "No"s we received to get those 22....I'll help you out...a ton. So yeah, I'm glad we have a solid base of investigators to teach now!

We found a lot of new people this week, and we went crazy teaching them last night since we got back from Rio Gallegos Sunday morning at 1 am. We had six straight lessons, each for about 30 minutes. Which was crazy because people normally aren't home too often, but that was cool to have 6 of our investigators/future investigators home! 

Something super cool happened during one of those lessons. It was with a woman named Martha. She is probably around early 30's in age. We had knocked her door earlier last week, like Wednesday or something, and she said come back on the weekend. (That all happened at the door, so yesterday was the first time we were in her home). As we began to talk with her, she did not seem interested at all. In fact, she said that she didn't like religion. She had no opinions on God and didn't want to talk much, but we knew she had to be a little interested if she let us in. So we continued to talk and ask questions. It was by far the most awkward conversation/lesson I'd been in so far, and it was just strange. But as we asked a bit about religion in her life, we noticed that she was rubbing her eyes, and it seemed like she was almost crying. We had given her the Restoration pamphlet, and she was flipping through that. When I noticed that something might be making her emotional, I just went for it and bore my testimony. I bore testimony of God's love for her, His plan for families in this life, and the happiness that comes from the Gospel, and why I chose to leave my family for two years to talk with people like her. To share what we know. She began to cry super hard. Tears were falling from her face, and we still don't know what or why, but something hit her hard, and we believe that the Holy Spirit was testifying to her that we were representatives of Christ, there to help her. We are going back on Tuesday, and we hope that she will open up to us and tell us what is going on in her life so that we can help her! It's crazy how you can love someone so fast, but I already want her to feel the love of her Father in Heaven, and for her to know her individual worth in the eyes of God. Missionary work is pretty cool man. Definitely my most spiritual experience thus far on the mission. 

Even though not much can top that little story from yesterday, following that lesson we also put a fecha with Damian for the 8th of October. We now have three fechas, and we hope those will all come to pass!




Banana Bread, aka "Heaven":


The best ice cream:



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