A New Year, and Praying for Angel

Here are the highlights of this week:

On Tuesday we had interviews with President Benton during district meeting. He said some nice things to me and we talked about how I could improve. He said all three of my companions have been impressed with me and said that I´m doing unusually well for being as new as I am in the mission. He helped me set goals to use my time more effectively, which was helpful. Oh, and Dad, he wanted me to pass on a message to you. He said “Tell your father that despite being a reprobate lawyer, he has raised an excellent child.” I hope he can get away with that because he´s a lawyer too—a “ladron legal” as he likes to say. President Benton also mentioned that Hermana Lewis and I only had 2 investigators in sacrament meeting last week—unusually low for Luján. He told me to figure out what helped us have more investigators before and to do that again. Yikes!

New Year´s eve was on Friday. We went to Open Door after lunch as usual and took Paula. We´ve been having a lot of success in Open Door recently (more details to come), and I think it´s because of Paula´s help. Every lesson we teach there is a lesson with member, which really helps the investigators progress. We had a good lesson with a new investigator named Vilma. She seemed pretty interested in coming to church! We also taught Susana, a single mom I found my first week in the mission. We´ve been teaching her every week for the last couple weeks because her work schedule changed again so she could meet with us. I really like Susana. She is very friendly and cheerful. She´s started telling her friends at work that she´s mormon and she says she´s felt much more at peace since she met us, but she´s not progressing very quickly. We showed her the Joseph Smith movie about the first vision and she promised she would come to church (this is the third week in a row that she said she would come). After we got back to the pench (pension, aka apartment) Hermana Lewis and I stayed up late talking. When midnight came, all our neighbors lit off fireworks, even more than on Christmas Eve. We watched from the window. It sounded like a war zone—explosion after explosion. Some of the fireworks were pretty spectacular. I was so happy and content. One more exciting year of life is ahead of me and I get to spend it all in Argentina being a missionary! What could be better?

On Saturday we were busy making a final push to invite investigators to sacrament meeting. As usual we ate lunch with the district president, Eduardo Peralta, and his wife, Marina. Marina´s brothers and sisters and their children (all church members) were visiting, so we ate lunch all together. Marina´s family, especially Eduardo and his brothers in law, were joking and laughing and teasing and talking about church stuff just like our extended family does. I felt almost like I was at one of our family reunions. I´ve never felt so completely at home since coming to Argentina.

But my favorite experience of the week ended up being finding a man named Julio. He was working in his yard and I contacted him and started explaining a little about the church. Hermana Lewis and I shared some of Lesson 1 (prophets and the Restoration) with him, then asked if we could say a quick prayer with him before leaving. It was a completely normal contacting situation until I asked him if there was anything we wanted to ask God for, anything that he especially needed. Hermana Lopez taught me to ask that to contacts and I almost always do it. Most people say “salud”, ie health. Some people want to ask for work. But Julio said- “Just a minute, I´ll show you.” He disappeared inside his house. Hermana Lewis and I exchanged confused looks. When Julio came back, he was holding a small boy in his arms. It was his son Ángel, who had burns on his face from an accident with fireworks on New Year´s. The poor little guy had had his eyebrows singed off and he had a large patch of painfully pink skin around his eye and cheek and more burns on his ear. The burns weren´t serious—I doubt that little Ángel will have any scars—but I was touched by Julio´s concern and love for his son and his faith that our prayer could do something. I remembered the part of the Finding Faith in Christ movie when the father brings his sick child to Jesus to be healed. I felt like, in a smaller, humbler way, I was standing in for the Savior. There in Julio´s front yard I prayed aloud and thanked God for Julio´s faith and I asked that Ángel could recover quickly and not feel pain and that his family could feel the spirit and learn more about the church. It was a special moment. Julio said a very sincere thank you and we told him we would come back on Tuesday. I don´t know if Julio will ever get baptized, but I feel blessed for that opportunity I had to do some small part of what the Savior would have done for Ángel and Julio.

Well, I´m out of time as usual, but let me some up Sunday. IT WAS FANTASTIC! We had 8 investigators in sacrament meeting, which broke Hermana Lewis´s previous record of 7! We brought with us a new investigator couple, Gisela and Hanibal. They are 17 and 19, respectively, and have a 2 year old son named Oscar. They look and act older than they are, but when I remember that they are roughly the ages of Ben and Eliza, it weirds me out. They are really great though—very very creyente (believing? Religious?). And Eduard, an investigator we´d lost contact with because of a bad cell number, showed up on his own! We are going to teach him tonight and we have plans (plans he doesn´t know about yet, hehe) to baptize him this transfer! We were a little disappointed that Susana (from Open Door) and Celeste and Mario´s family didn´t show up, but then Vilma (the other woman from Open Door) walked in just before the opening hymn with her husband and three sons! That´s such a good sign that they showed up as a family! It was a miracle. I was grinning like the Chesire Cat. Success! President Benton will be proud. And, more importantly, 8 very special people are 1 step closer to baptism!
Quick Celeste and Mario update: The registro civil people told them they need to show the paper from Mario´s divorce with his first wife. Only Celeste and Mario don´t know where it is, so they might have to travel all the way to Junín to look for it at the grandmother´s house where a bunch of their stuff is stored or maybe ask Mario´s “exmujer” (i.e. exwife, but the literal translation is “ex woman”, which not only sounds sexist but makes me think of the x-men. Maybe the “exmujer” looks like Storm?) for her copy to photocopy. With Mario´s work schedule and Celeste and Mario´s fear of the house being robbed if they leave it empty, this could take a very long time. I´m going to have to ask permission to visit for their baptism because I won´t be here next transfer—if they even get baptized by next transfer. I really hope they do. Aaaargh! I need to learn more patience though. I´ve seen a lot of miracles and some very real positive changes in this family. Their lives are honestly a lot a lot (not a typo) better because of what they are learning about the gospel. I can tell Mario in particular is becoming more patient and loving with the kids. They are even reading and praying together as a family—even though they didn´t come to church because Celeste felt sick, they read the Book of Mormon and the Liahona as a family instead and prayed together too. They are so awesome! Considering that becoming a member requires some pretty dramatic lifestyle changes and lots of commitment and involves their ETERNAL SALVATION, three-ish months of investigating is really not that long. I´m going to work on that patience thing and try to have more faith that Mario and Celeste are going to make it to baptism—they have the desire to change, which is the most important thing, and they are feeling the spirit. They´ll get there. If I can just set a baptismal date with them before I leave Luján, I will feel content.