This week wasn't easy, but it was rewarding!
On Tuesday we taught Antonia, the lady we found last Saturday. She's pretty old (66) and she understands everything and has a lot of faith, but its hard for her to remember stuff. For that reason we kind of have to teach her as if she was a little girl. It was really really funny to teach her about tithing. She had no issues with paying it, but it was really hard for her to figure out how to calculate the 10%, and when she doesn't know the answer to a question she guesses. So we got some pretty funny answers while we were testing her haha. But I love Antonia. She's a really good person, she has almost nothing, but she is always helping her neighbours and the people that have even less than her. But most of all, she is super excited about the church and she was super excited about baptism. That's how it should be! The gospel is something happy the people should be excited about it. I imagine there were lots of people like Antonia when alma baptized 3000 in one day in the book of Mormon.
On Wednesday, we taught Nancy again. She has this cat that always wants to "suckle" her ears...its really funny \ gross. Its a boy cat and he only does it to girls haha but its really distracting during lessons. Anyways Nancy told us about how her landlord cut off her power and wants to kick her out. Why? Because he found out that she goes to our church and he hates Mormons. I was scared that she was going to not want to go to our church anymore because of that but it didn't stop her. She said shell just find a different house to live in. She has a lot of faith. She also has a bad bad past but she is totally committed to change. In the past 2 weeks she's already stopped smoking, ditched her bad boyfriend, and is about to move houses all for her faith. She's changed so much and its so amazing and she's a lot happier now. The difference is obvious. She used to sleep all day and never talk but now she's happy and actually doing something with her life its great.
On Wednesday we went to Las Varillas for our district meeting, aka the most boring place on earth. I am so so happy I'm not there, and I feel bad for the sister missionaries there. There is only one active family there and apparently they don't get a long with the sisters. There is also absolutely nothing there in that town. Its rough. Thankfully we got to come back in time for a soccer activity at the church in our area, and we roasted up chorizos too it was good.
On Thursday I had to go to the church to try and figure out how to pay this guy who made me a leather scripture case. Its pretty cool. He wants me to pay him with an electronic transfer but my card won't let me do it (I think cause my card isn't from Argentina haha) and I still haven't figured it out. He calls me like 5 times a day its really annoying. The bank people don't even know how to help me its ridiculous. But anyway while we were at the church trying to figure it out a member was there and he asked us to take the curtains to a lady named maria funes so that she could wash them. We were kind of annoyed because it was way out of our way, and he could've done it in 5 mins on his motorcycle. But we did it, and we found 3 new investigators there. They had a question about why god let's innocent people die in wars in the middle east, and we were able to answer the question really well using the book of Mormon. They seemed really interested and I gifted the book of Mormon to one of them, and they want to go to church. So obviously we are happy now that we had to take the dirty curtains to that lady! God works in mysterious ways that we can't always understand until later.
On Friday it was kind of awful. It was super hot and windy and dusty (the first hot day since I got here) and on top of that my comps bike broke so we got to walk around all day. I never realized how big Arroyito was until I had to walk. It's so slow and we can't get anything done because it takes go long to get from place to place. But we were able to get one good thing done, which was to get the mom of milagros to sign her baptism paperwork. I can't remember if I've talked about milagros before or not. She's 14 and her whole family are inactive members, except her dad, but she likes going to church and she wanted to get baptized. It was a struggle to get her moms permission (it reminded me of the girl Genesis in La Rioja. She got baptized after I left). But in the end she signed it.
On Saturday the zone leaders came to give Antonia her baptismal interview. She passed of course. We also had to clean the church at 5. It took a long time. Our investigator Mariano came to help us clean.
On Sunday we had 4 baptisms lined up. Our baptismal goal for the month was 4, and at times it didn't look like we would meet the goal. But by a miracle all 4 baptisms happened yesterday! The names and ages of the people baptized were: Nancy Castillo (36) Antonia Villalba (66) Milagros Zapata (14) and Mariano Tramontana (26). Nancy and Antonia were for sure baptisms, milagros and Mariano we weren't sure if they would go through. Mariano told us that he would show up to church at 10, but by 10:30 he still wasn't there. So we went to an empty classroom and prayed, and I prayed that he could wake up and "arrive" at the church. But after the prayer we remembered that faith = action. Faith without action is nothing. So we went to go get Mariano ourselves. I was worried that his parents would open the door (he's scared of his parents they don't like the church) and that he wouldn't go with us because of them. But, his parents just happened to be in Cordoba for the day, and Mariano was alone and able to come with us to the church and get baptized. God is in control of the situation and he will make sure what needs to happen happens. I felt like nephi going into Jerusalem alone to get the brass plates...he said he was led by the spirit, not knowing beforehand the things that he would do. I didn't know if his parents would be home or not. If they were home it would've ruined everything. But we just did what we had to do and it worked out, and we found Mariano alone. Kind of like nephi found laban alone hahah.
So went back to the church and changed into our all white suits, to prepare for the baptism. The font was filled and all the people were there, but then milagros told us that she wouldn't be baptized unless her mom was there. So we went with a member in his car to look for Milagros' mom. I felt really weird knocking on the door wearing my all white suit, I'm sure it caused a scene haha. The guy who opened the door got scared for a second when he saw us I think, he jumped when he opened the door hahah. But we found the mom, (her names Graciela) and she was able to come see the baptism.
So in the end all 4 baptisms went through. Stuff always falls through in the mission. The elders in San Francisco had 2 baptisms fall through yesterday, but for us yesterday it all worked out. As a zone, we achieved "Zion"... That's what they call it when every companionship in the zone has at least one baptism. We all feel pretty good about that. I think this was the first time in my mission that that has happened in one of my zones.
Now that all our best investigators have been baptized, I'm sure next week will be all about finding new people to teach.
That's about it for this week. I love you all and I hope all is well!
-Elder Christensen
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