Ellis' last e-mail

Dear Mom and Dad,
I feel a little lost. A little sad. And a little guilty. My mission is finally ending. I´m thrilled to be seeing you in a week and excited to begin a new phase of my life, but I feel like I´m giving up something beautiful and meaningful and epic. I feel sad to leave and guilty because I´m also happy to go home. Even in these last few weeks I´ve continued to learn and progress to become a more effective missionary and it hurts to know that upward trajectory will be abruptly cut short in a week. I could be so much more effective, teach much better lessons, baptize more people, if I could just have a few more months here. I feel guilty that I haven´t worked harder or baptized more people or been more "meticulously obedient".
However, I´ve also matured enough to realize that this angst, while real, is as generally pointless as angst usually is. However I feel about it, my mission will end in a week, so I might as well just do my best and make the best of it and be happy.

Some reasons to be happy:
Today I was allowed to call my converts to invite them to a fireside where we can meet again. It was kind of a surreal experience to call people I have had almost no contact with for months. I called sweet little Evelyn and the phone was weird and her voice sounded tiny and about a million miles away. Ok, that sounded angsty again. But one of the blessings was talking to Hna Danes, who is now serving in Hurlingham, when I called to ask for numbers. She told me that a woman that I contacted during my last week in Hurlingham was baptized on Christmas and that her daughter was baptized last week. And she told me that she and her companion found a woman I taught once with Hna Navarro who is going to get baptized this week! Her name is Máxima. It was a miracle because M´s brother came to visit and told her he had just been baptized and M said-- "oh, I think I have a pamphlet from your church". She pulled it out and her brother saw my and Hna Navarro´s names and our phone number and said--"they have to come teach you!" So her brother called the number and Hna Danes and her companion started teaching Máxima again and now she is getting baptized this week! I´ve probably written our phone number on a pamphlet less than a dozen times in my entire mission (for safety reasons), but miraculously I left our number on M´s pamphlet! Máxima is the fifth person who has been baptized from contacts I´ve done in Hurlingham, apart from my converts (the others being that mom and her daughter and two references I passed to the elders when I realized my investigators lived in their area) My time in Hurlingham was challenging in many ways and I spent two different transfers without baptisms, but Heavenly Father has worked miracles so that people I contacted or taught could get baptized. It´s a testimony to me of what preach my gospel says: no effort is ever lost! All our good efforts make a difference, even if it doesn´t seem like it at the time!

And when I called Claudio Banega (dad of my first two converts) in Luján, he told me that two weeks ago the family was SEALED IN THE TEMPLE IN URUGUAY! I was so so so so happy. I want to cry just thinking about that.
Speaking of going to the temple, Andrés is going to go in March to do baptisms for the dead for the first time!

Another reason to be happy: Hna Navarro sent me a super cute email encouraging me in my last week on the mission and Katie sent this amazing email saying how important it has been to her to be able to serve a mission simultaenously with me! That made me feel really happy. Yay for good friends!

News of the week:
We had four investigators in sacrament meeting! That is the most we have had as a companionship. Silvia´s son Bryan came (but not Silvia because she was sick), an awesome member brought his kid neighbor (future baptism for Hna Pullan I bet), Carlos (my homeless investigator who actually isn´t homeless cause I realized he lives on my street in an apartment with his sister.) came, and a Peruvian chef we contacted on the street last week miraculously showed up by himself (but we are going to let the elders teach him because he is single and lives alone). So that was exciting. Unfortunately, none of my investigators who had previous attendances showed up, so that means no more baptisms for me. I´m sad about it, especially because I love love love Aylen and really wanted to see her baptism, but I´m ok with it. Andrés baptizing Ariel was pretty much the most fantastic baptism I could have hoped to end my mission with, and my Hurlingham miracles give me hope that many of my investigators will be baptized in the coming months.

Anecdote: According to Preach my Gospel, the Book of Mormon answers the "questions of the soul"-- deep questions about life or personal questions about your own problems. I´ve found this to be true during my mission. Yesterday I had an interesting experience with this principle. The answer to the question "Why should I not abort my baby if I´m a single mom with three kids living in the villa with few economic resources?" is found in 1Nephi 17:1-8. Incidentally, verses 2 and 3 also answer the question "Why did Hna Clark not need to freak out about the health consequences of Argentines feeding her meat and no whole grains for 16 months?" But yeah, we are going to keep working with this investigator and help her realize that abortion is not the solution to her problem. I sure hope we can get through to her.

This week my goal is just to help as many people as I can and express as much love as I can for my investigators, for my companion and for Heavenly Father. I´m going to work as hard as I can and try to leave my area with lots of investigators with baptismal dates.

Thank you for 18 months of support, emails, and letters. I love you and I´ll see you in a week!
Love,
Ellis

P.S. Almost forgot. Priorities for our epic Argentine adventure: visiting converts. I´ve realized I probably won´t be able to see everyone, but top priorities are Celeste and Elvira, Gastón, Evelyn, and Olga in Hurlingham, César, Ariel and Andrés in Ramos (in the villa) and the Banega and Reyes families in Luján. I want to go to church in Luján, because that is the best branch I served in and you will love it. If we have time to make it to Las Heras that would be neat, but my "converts" there may not remember me that well because I wasn´t actually present for their baptisms, so it might be kind of awkward and a lot of travel time. When you arrive we can have "weekly planning" and figure out how to balance convert visiting with visiting dad´s areas and doing cultural stuff, shopping for gifts to bring home, etc. I don´t know what there is to do in the capital, but lots of stuff I´m sure. You will probably, I mean definitely want to see the basilica in Luján (is that an appropriate Sunday activity? Hmm.) We could probably easily visit everyone in Hurlingham and Ramos in one day.