Making Progress

Familia,                                                 

It was another great week down here in the ARG, preaching the good word and trying to help a couple more people.

Due to transfers on Monday, P-Day on Tuesday and General Conference over the weekend, we had a short week.  We basically only had three days to work so we had to take advantage of them. 

A couple of days ago our bishop gave us a ward directory that included all of the members.  So, we were able to identify those who are less active and we spent a large amount of the week looking for these families as well as those families who are part-member.  Let’s just say that our efforts to track them down didn’t work out too well.  We basically just ran around the town trying to find out where all of these people live.  We never got truly lost but we were all over the map.  Since we have double the area to cover, you could say we walked a little bit!  Ha ha!  Our attendance in Sacrament Meeting has been a little low lately so, we are trying to boost our attendance by looking for some less-active families to give the ward a little boost.

Probably one of the best things that happened this week occurred when we received a text from the Agüero Family, a family of investigators who we’ve been working with (and we actually thought about dropping them a few weeks because they didn’t seem to be making any progress).  But, they came to church a few weeks ago and then on Thursday, they sent us a text that said they got married so they could be baptized!! We received the text and looked at each other like we couldn’t believe it.  It was such a great feeling to see this family take a huge leap of faith and agree to make a covenant with God!  We are beyond pumped for them!!

The other good thing that happened this week was a less-active member found us on the street and asked us to visit her and her family.  So, we went by her home and her entire family was there.  We found out that nearly half of the family isn’t a member so, we were excited about this new connection.  During our visit, the Hermana told us about some of the difficult things their family has been through and she asked us to help them put their lives back in place so they can come back to church.  This experience was pretty humbling because we had just met this Hermana and she put complete trust in us to help her put her life back where it should be.

General Conference was such a blessing as well.  It’s like a holiday for the missionaries because we get to relax and just receive some inspiration from the leaders of the Church.  In Argentina, on Sunday, the majority of the members go to the Stake Center to watch Conference.  Then, during the break everyone has a little picnic.  So, we took advantage of that and had a picnic with all of the members and our President Panzacchi.  It was awesome and I think I’m going to start the same tradition in Utah when I get back.

I really enjoyed this Conference and I especially loved the talks about humility, Russel M. Nelson’s talk about the Book of Mormon and Stephen W. Owen’s talk about repentance.  One thing he said that is cemented in my mind now is, “without repentance we can’t progress in life.” For me, the mission has been a process of repentance as I try to leave everything and do my best to follow the Lord and His example by helping His children.  Repentance, more than anything, is leaving behind bad thoughts, actions and words in order to follow Christ.  Being on a mission has been the best place for me to do these things because it’s legit what we do each day. We wake up early, go to bed early, study for hours, and spend every other minute of the day on the street, trying to help others come unto Christ.

“WITHOUT REPENTANCE THERE IS NO PROGRESS IN LIFE.”

Have a great week!

Elder Roderick