Dear Mom and Dad,
I really enjoyed your emails today. I liked the idea of being in the right place at the right time and it made me think of how important it is in the mission (and in life) to be punctual. I really, really, really have to work on that. I do feel good though about being in the mission at this time of my life, being in Ramos at this time in my mission, etc. I feel like I am in a position to create lots of positive changes in myself and in my area and help my companion in the last three months of my mission. I´m gearing up to train Sister X in just a few short days. Dad, thanks for your talk outline. It was actually really good. I liked the diagram. I feel like this transfer has taught me a lot about not letting the box in your diagram limit my choices. I´ve been doing pretty well about expanding the box or dealing constructively with the limits I face.
This transfer is ending a few days early, on Thursday, so I´m about 72 hours away from meeting my hijita, the long awaited "Sister X", as I think of her. I´ve been praying for her almost every night since I found out I was going to train. I hope I can do a really good job of helping her. President Carter definitely knew what he was doing when he put me and Hna Azcurra together this transfer though. She has taught me so much about being friendly and expressive to the investigators and about planning well and working productively. I was in a productiveness rut when I got here, but she helped me pull out of it. I´ve also learned a lot this transfer about being patient and not being moody or irritable. It´s been humbling to see how impatient and irritable and moody I really am, but I´ve really been able to improve this transfer. I arrived in Ramos in a very moody state and Hna Azcurra has a strong personality that sometimes rubbed me the wrong way, but I prayed a lot and tried to serve Hna Azcurra and pray for her and feel confident so I could pull out of my moodiness. It worked! Heavenly Father helped me heal some of my moodiness and I´m learning to keep the rest of it under control and be merciful instead of impatient. I really learned to love Hna Azcurra and we learned to work well together and be unified. I feel like all of this is preparing me to be an excellent trainer for Hna X.
Eek! I´m almost out of time as always. Big news of the week:
* We achieved all 5 of the key indicators our mission is focusing on! It was our goal to be able to achieve all five this week and we did it! We had 8 investigators in sacrament meeting and we have 5 investigators with baptism goal dates! I´m really excited for this month because all 5 investigators actually really want to get baptized. They have challenges, but I think that they can all make it! They are:
* Carlos, my homeless investigator. We are going to ask him this week where he sleeps and talk to the ward council to see how they can help. I´m going to teach him to read too. And help him quit smoking.
* Rubén, a really fantastic 17 year old kid who this week recieved an answer and told us he knows the church is true! We just have to convince his mom that he doesn´t need to get baptized in the Catholic church first. Err. . .
* Andrés (55ish) is the most prepared of my investigators. He is so humble and his heart is so ready to receive the gospel! He says he knows the church is true! He has to quit smoking though.
* Braian (14), the nephew of the young men´s president. Just when I thought he wasn´t really interested we had a really spiritual lesson with him and when I asked him if he wanted to follow Christ he said yes, so he can start a new life and move forward! He is going to get baptized in 2 weeks!
* Daniel (23), is our miracle of the week. We found him on Thursday and he listened to us explain briefly the Restoration. He said it was a sign that we had found him and told us he thinks the 2nd coming will happen in Argentina. I thought that was kind of weird, but we ran into him again later that week and he said he wanted us to pick him up for church-- excellent! When we went on Sunday to pick him up he had a Book of Mormon that a non member friend had given him and he had already read until Mosiah! He said this is the perfect church and that the Book of Mormon says all the things he already thought but hadn´t found in any other churches. He asked all by himself how he can get baptized! I´m really excited for him! I´m sure that when he learns more doctrine his wacky ideas (which I think are just because he is really intelligent but not very prudent) will fade away. And he miraculously already gave up drugs and drinking weeks before he met us. So the only thing he has to give up is smoking, which he says won´t be a problem now that he has his baptism to motivate him.
Anyway, I´m really excited about all 5 of my investigators. I think Gaston was the beginning of a new phase in my mission. Before, most of my progressing investigators were women. Now all my progressing investigators are men with smoking addictions (except for Rubén, who fortunately doesn´t smoke). Gaston update: Hna Navarro wrote to me and told me that Gastón doesn´t answer her phone calls and that he is back together with his old girlfriend, who was against him going to church. He still hasn´t been confirmed. I feel heartbroken, in a missionary sense, because he was one of my best investigators ever. I keep praying for him that he will read the Book of Mormon and pray and that those things will bring him out of the rut he is in and back to church so he can be confirmed and be a real member.
One more experience: After finding out about Gastón, I was thinking about all my converts and about the recent converts here in general and how so many of mine and so many of them are inactive or have other problems. And I felt really sad that my mission hadn´t produced very many people who were really firm, active members in the church. Why is retention so hard? But I prayed about it and felt that each of the people I had taught was incredibly important to Heavenly Father and that he was really grateful to me for having helped them. In my heart I know my efforts haven´t been wasted, even though right now it seems like the results aren´t what I hoped for. Heavenly Father has not forgotten about my converts or ceased to love them or bless them because some of them are inactive or less active. I have to hope that with time all of them will return and experience the full blessings of the gospel.
Though, I just have to say that Olga looks like a ray of sunshine. I got a letter from her thanking me for teaching her the gospel, and Hna Navarro told me that in her prayers Olga always promises that she will be true to the church forever! I hope she can go to the temple next year! I can´t wait for you to meet her. Go Olga! One more thing-- Hna Navarro´s visa came! She is going to Venezuela this week I think. Which means President Carter´s prayers that she would stay went unanswered. Seriously. My hija is so fantastic that the mission president prayed that her visa would never come so she would stay in the mission. I will miss her, like I already do, but I´m happy for her that she gets to serve the people she was called to serve.
Ok, I´m really out of time. I love you and I miss you loads. Please pray for me and my converts and for Sister X! Thank you for your emails and prayers and support!
Love,
Ellis
P.S. Christmas package ideas: (really) small toys or candy that I can hand out to the kids of my investigators. Spending-money for souvenirs would be great. I don´t really need anything else, especially because I´m coming home one month later. But if you can send something for sister X and hot chocolate and energy bars, that would be great. And letters from all of you of course.
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