Dear Mom, Dad, Eliza, Emma, Dan, and Ben (please forward this to Elder Clark),
Thanks for the emails you sent this week and last week (I finally read them all). Reading your emails is one of the highlights of my week. Last night I read a letter Mom sent with photos of her hiking adventures and letters from Ben. Mom, you look thinner in that photo! And your hiking adventure sounds way fun! Ben, I hope you will enjoy your (hopefully) last week at the MTC. The MTC is a great place to be, but also a great place to leave! I will pray this week that your visa comes on time so you can serve those great people in Brazil who are waiting for you. I´m often surprised by how busy the rest of you are with work, callings, school and extra activities. Do you feel as busy as your letters tell? I´m glad that you are having fun, learning, and achieving so many things.
Here are the highlights/the news of my week:
* Being in a new area is HARD. I was pretty teary on Monday and Tuesday. I kept thinking about my converts in Hurlingham, especially Gastón. I visited him every day for over a month and spent a significant amount of mental time worrying if he was happy, if he was reading the BoM, if he was smoking, etc. Suddenly having a new list of first priorities was, well, disorienting. I find myself still thinking of lessons to teach to him or to Olga or Pamela or to Elvira and Celeste. I still worry about how to reactivate Evelyn´s family. Other hard things: in Hurlingham I knew where EVERYTHING was and where I was in every moment (once a guy in the street said he lived near the train station in a house with leopard print curtains and I knew EXACTLY which house he was talking about and where it was), but here I feel super disoriented and have to follow Hna Azcurra around blindly. And, yup, it´s hard to go from being a trainer and directing lots of things to having to be directed because I´m still getting to know the investigators and the area. A lesson in humility. And of course I miss Hna Navarro. But slowly things have been getting better and I feel like I´m going to be able to leave my old area behind and give full attention to my new calling in Ramos Mejía.
* Here is the good stuff: a ward mission leader who took time out of his day to make us invitations to general conference---the other WMLs I´ve had weren´t as involved in their callings. And the Monserrat family, Hna Azcurra´s HUGE miracle family of super recent converts who love us to death and give us referrals every day! There are about 16 of them, some of which haven´t been baptized. One of them is César, a 42 year old single dad who is trying to quit smoking so he can get baptized. My experience with Gastón is really helping me to help him! Good thing number three: Hna Azcurra is fearless and very goal oriented and good at managing time, so that is helping me a lot. Good thing number four: teaching in "los monoblock" and "las casitas nuevas", the housing projects in our area. The rest of the area is really well off, but in the housing projects we have a lot of really receptive investigators. More details next week.
* Other stuff: our pension is one the 3rd floor of a 14 story apartment building in front of the train tracks. This is definitely my most urban area.
* General Conference was pretty great. I listened to all four sessions in Spanish, which was cool. My favorite talks were Elder Uchtdorf´s talk adn the talk about teaching with the Spirit. I almost teared up in teh talk about the elder who wore his dad´s mission coat to the same Japanese mission his father served in. It reminded my of how Dad and I both served in Buenos Aires. I thought about how Dad was listening to that talk at exactly the same time I was and probably thinking of me like I was thinking of him. I love you Dad! We planned to have about 10 investigators in the conference, but none of them showed up. :( That was disappointing, but at least lots of the new converts in the Monserrat family came. They are a really neat family!
* A BIG highlight of the conference was that Sebastián, Gastón, and Celeste came! (we share a stake center) They were really happy to see me. Gastón seems to be doing ok. I sure hope he stays strong with not smoking so he can get confirmed next Sunday. Hna Azcurra and I walked in a couple minutes late to the Sunday morning session and when I looked around to see who from Hurlingham was there, I saw Gastón and Celeste cuddling as they watched the first talk! I THINK TWO OF MY FAVORITE CONVERTS ARE GOING TO START DATING! FUTURE ETERNAL FAMILY! It makes me really happy. Elvira missed conference because she had to go to the capital, I´m not sure why. :( I was hoping to see Olga, but Hna Navarro (who I was THRILLED to see and who was thrilled to see me!) told me she got sick! I felt really bad because Olga didn´t want to get baptized because she thought she would get sick again and has no one to take care of her because she lives alone. So like any missionary would I promised her that God wouldn´t let her get sick for being baptized. Then I promised the water would be warm, and it wasn´t! (next time I´ll have to fill the font personally). Olga swears that the water didn´t make her sick, but I still feel guilty. I hope she gets better soon.
Well, I´m out of time. I love each one of you and pray for you often. Have a fantastic week!
Love,
Ellis
P.S. I´ll give you a final answer about the picking me up thing next week. Mi cabeza sigue dando vueltas.
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