A Witness to Their Faith

¡Hola!,                                                                                                           

Happy Halloween! There isn’t any trick-or-treating in Argentina but I’ll make sure to buy myself a Kit Kat or something tomorrow so I have the Halloween spirit.  Haha!

            We had another beautiful week here in Villa Krause.  I’ve learned that the sun hits a little harder here in San Juan than in the other cities in the mission.  The afternoons are getting pretty hot and my farmer’s tan is coming in really nice. Our week was very effective.  One of the most promising investigators we’re working with right now is Lantaro, who is the 10-year old son of a less-active family in our ward. His dad has been a member for 10 years but a while ago he moved south to work and during that time, he lost contact with the church.  Then, when he returned, he didn’t get back into the habit of attending church. So, we are trying to help the whole family break their habit of sleeping in on Sunday and instead, build the habit of coming to church. Lantaro is such a stud! Even though he’s only a 10-year old, he reads the pamphlets we give him like they’re comic books. I think that eventually the family will take a leap of faith and come back to the chapel.

            On Tuesday, we had interviews again with President Panzacchi and the two of us had another good chat. To be honest, the mission has changed a ton since the change in Presidents but it’s been good to have some changes.  President Panzacchi is really focusing on the urgency of our work by simplifying the lessons and making sure that we aren’t losing any time. President and I also talked about the faith and confidence needed to find the people who are truly waiting for us and prepared to receive our message. I’m not gonna lie, this is something that is always hard because we get rejected a lot.  But, having faith and confidence to keep working is necessary in order for us to eventually find success in our work.

            

             Another investigator who is progressing well is Jessica. She is a young mom, whom we found a few weeks ago. During our lesson with her this week she told us that she is cousins with a large family of members in our ward. We were so surprised to hear this news and so excited as well because her relationship with this family has provided her with a lot of knowledge about the church. She is a devoted Catholic so we are trying to help her understand the ways our church is different. Jessica has turned into one of our homies and she always making sure that we have dinner.  So, we’ll see what happens with Jessica.

            The highlight of our week was a little road trip we took to an hour south, into the Assistant’s area.  In this area, they are working to establish the church in a town called Media Agua (look it up on Google) and they are having a ton of success. We went there to give one of their investigators their baptismal interview. So, we were lucky enough to interview the first members of Media Agua. They baptized seven people in one day so it was a pretty cool experience! The people in this town think the missionaries are deity. So, that’s pretty cool too! The best part of the day was, during the interviews, I had the opportunity to listen to the new members bare their testimonies to me about the truthfulness of the gospel.  Three months ago, they had no idea the church existed and now they live in a town where twenty people go to church.  It was an awesome experience to witness their faith!

Have a GOOD WEEK!

Elder Roderick demonstrates how to drink mate tea.

Elder Roderick

A New Home, an Open Chapel and Priesthood Power

¡Hola!                                                                                                                     

The most exciting thing that happened to us this week was that we moved apartments. After housing missionaries for ten years, the old pench was suffering a little bit but now we are living in the fast lane because we have a brand-new apartment. We spent Tuesday getting settled in with all of our things so now we are feeling like we’re home.

            The other big event of the week was the “Open Chapel” we held.  It was basically an open house type event for all of the members and the public in our area and it was initiated so more people can get familiar with the chapel and learn about what we do inside. An Open Chapel is a very helpful event for the missionaries because all of the members have the task of bringing a friend who isn’t a member to the event.  The idea is that once the friends have seen the chapel and learned more about it, they’ll want to continue to learn about the church. SO, this week we worked hard to invite everyone we know to the event. Then, on Saturday we had the big event and it was actually a huge success. We received a ton of referrals for people to teach and we were busy showing people around and making sure that everyone felt comfortable. Due to the event, we were very blessed to receive many people to teach, which is always a good thing.

            We also taught a lot of lessons this week. Like I told you a few weeks ago, our schedule changed in the mission and now we work the entire afternoon without coming back to our pench to study. So, we’re still getting used to the blazing heat at 3 o’clock in the afternoon.  This week our long afternoons resulted in some success.

            Last week I told you how, out a nowhere, a man stopped us in the middle of the street and told us about how he had a lot of pain in his stomach because his ex-wife was a witch and she had cursed him. He begged us to give him and blessing.  So, we did and he immediately felt a huge relief from the pain and the spirit we felt was actually really strong. We took advantage of the time we had with him and ended up teaching him about the restoration of the Priesthood power and how we have the same power that Jesus and His apostles had when they lived here on earth. This new knowledge sparked his interest because he is Catholic and hasn’t had contact with LDS missionaries before.  So, all of the principles we shared really interested him, especially because he had a personal experience with this Priesthood and felt its power.

            To be honest, the work is going really well down here and we have a ton of people to teach, with is such a blessing. I think the main thing we struggle with is getting people to attend church and show their faith a little more through their attendance. Everything else is going really well and it should be another great week!!

Elder Roderick

#TeamJesusStayWinning

            

On the Lord's Team

¡Familia!                                                                                                                 

This week we found out that San Juan is full of witches and witchcraft.  Literally, five different people told us stories about witches. To be honest, it freaked me out a little bit. One man approached us on the street and he was in a panic.  He told us that his ex-wife had put a witch on him.  So, he asked us for a blessing to help him feel better. Fortunately, we didn’t have any personal experiences with witches, but pray for us anyway.

We actually had a really good week of work.  We walked and taught a ton so that made it good week. We are working with the Murua Family and we’ve seen some really cool things happen with them.  They are a very Christ-like family and they’re always looking for ways to help others. Their recent project is a foundation to provide food for kids who don’t get fed enough at their own home. They had everything ready to start feeding kids, except for a place to make and serve the food.  They’d been looking for weeks and hadn’t had much luck.  Then, one day after a lesson, they received a call about a property that was ready for them to buy and the next day they had the keys. Then, this week we passed by their house to give a blessing to their grandpa and they told us they were struggling with the government and having difficulty getting a donation to buy more food. So, we show up and out of nowhere, the husband enters the house with 11,000 pesos in his hand! Literally, it was a miracle! Now they think that every time we pass by, something wonderful is going to happen. Our experiences with this family have actually been really cool because we haven’t really done anything different than we usually do. But lately, they have been really blessed.

 This week we also taught Karen a couple of times. She’s made such great progress but it’s tough for her to continue to progress because her boyfriend is addicted to drugs and alcohol, which of course, affects her too. While working with her, I’ve realized how much a person’s decisions and actions can affect others. It’s hard to watch Karen try to make correct choices and make progress as an investigator only to be brought back down again by her boyfriend. 

Also this week, we were lucky enough to find three more great families to teach and they all happen to live on the same block. The best part about serving in Villa Krause is that there are so many families and people who let us into their homes.

This week I thought about how fortunate I am to be serving a mission. I am so grateful that God trusts me to teach some of His children.  Serving a mission is not easy and we get rejected a lot more than we get accepted but it truly is such a blessing to be an instrument in the Lord’s hands. I don’t know what I did to be so lucky to have the opportunity to serve a mission and to have so much support from home to push me along. I feel so grateful to be a part of the Lord’s team. Every day is a humbling experience and an opportunity to realize how blessed I truly am.

Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast 

of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; 

yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, 

for which we will praise his name forever.

Alma 26:12

Elder Roderick