Familia,
The most exciting part of my week was receiving a
new companion! I said,
“Goodbye”
to Elder Hyer on Tuesday and then later that afternoon I received Elder Mena.
Elder Mena is 21-years old (Yes, the same age as my brother. That’s weird.) and
he is from a small town in Southern Chile. Right now, in Salto, he is about six
hours from his house. LOL! This means we are only speaking Spanish 24/7! I
asked him how much English he knows and all he said was, “No mucho.” It’s
definitely a challenge, but I love it. Chileans are known to talk really fast
and the people in Salto have their own special way of speaking, so it has
become a little more difficult to know what is going on all the time but, it’s
a great challenge. Learning a language has been one of the most humbling things
I have ever done. Nevertheless, I’m so excited to be with Elder Mena. He’s been
in the mission for 21-months so I hope he can teach me a thing or two!
This week was actually really stressful for me. First,
I was stressed and anxious about receiving a new companion and then, I was
worried about being in charge of all of the plans and making sure we were doing
something meaningful for every hour of the day. I shouldn’t have been as
stressed as I was but showing Salto to a veteran missionary was not as easy as
I hoped it to be.
This week also felt like a short one because of the
transfers and a of couple problems with the pench and our bikes. After five days
without water I was finally able to find the root of the problem and go to town
on a pipe. If you too are having water problems, just call Elder Roderick.
I wanted to “Open the Mouth” this week and use the
Christmas initiative to find more people. The initiative is so awesome and I
was hoping we could find people to share it with. To keep it simple, we didn’t
have the success that I had envisioned. Instead, there were a lot of slammed
doors and unhappy people. But, I am starting to enjoy just knocking doors and
talking to everyone I can. I think that half of the time, those I approach don’t
understand exactly what I am saying, but I’m having fun doing it. Also,
Argentina had two very random holidays this week. I think one was to celebrate
the tourists in the country?? So, I’m hoping the people were just trying to
enjoy their holidays and not actually avoiding us.
Even so, holidays are hard on missionaries because
during them everyone is doing whatever they want to celebrate. We had so many
set appointments fall through! The people celebrate hard for a few days, and
then on the following days they are hecka busy catching up on the work that
they missed. Many times, I found us sitting outside an empty house without any
idea what we were going to do next. This scenario is not exactly what I wanted
to show Elder Mena for his first week with me but all we can do is maintain a
positive attitude and keep working!
We have started to do a lot of work with the less
active members to try and strengthen the ward and excite them for the Christmas
season. This actually worked really well! The best part of the week for me was
having 18 people attend church. This was the highest we’ve had during my time
in Salto and so I was pumped. I was talking to Carla, our awesome investigator,
after the church services and she said, “This is actually really fun!” Yes! I
love it baby!
Speaking of Carla and Daniel, our work with them
has become frustrating because Carla is so ready for baptism. If we didn’t have
the problem with the Law of Chastity and them not being married, her baptismal
service would be next Friday, and then she would receive the Holy ghost on
Christmas. Obviously, this a dream for me but we are still working really hard
with them. We decided to set a date with them to make a decision about getting
married, but right now they are still hesitant. They are soooo close!!
This week I read a talk from Uchtdorf and he
basically talked about if we try to find the bad in people or situations, of
course we are going to find bad things! No one is perfect! Instead, we need to
always look for the good things in life! Especially as a missionary, I have
learned how important attitude is. Days are tough and long sometimes but I love
the grind!
Please
keep Daniel and Carla in your prayers!!
I
love you all so much!
Elder
Roderick
P.S.
Please keep the Christmas spirit going as much as you can because it feels
nothing like Christmas down here!
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