June 29, 2015

Our zone going to the temple 

Lovin the life out in campo

Dear Family and Friends!

What a fantastic week it has been here in Rodriguez. We have been super blessed by the Lord it has been so incredible. I have loved the little miracles that He has blessed us with, it has been truly amazing to see.

Elder Schoonover continues to grow and do great. His Spanish is getting really well and is he is learning to take on a bigger role in teaching and contacting. I am always amazed by the faith of these young missionaries. We get along super well and working together is a blast. Sometimes the language barrier can be the funniest thing. So yesterday we had a big lunch with our branch president and his family.. and right after we went to do some follow up with a family we had contacted last week. So we clapped and they let us right in.. and when we went in we saw that they were just finishing eating. As we sat down they asked my companion "usted sabe que es pollo y asado" (do you know what chicken and bbq is) and before he could say yes they asked "ustedes quieren?" (do you want some) and with all this confusion he just said "yes" and so they brought out plates and we had to eat again.. we literally almost died haha it was hilarious.

So this week was incredibly rainy (well the weekend) and pretty much the whole city got flooded and the power kept going in and out.. classic Argentine winter I love it! It was definitely a wild time in our bikes, we got super soaked and muddy out in campo but it all makes for the great mission experience!

So like i said this week was fantastic and our investigators continue to do great. This week Oscar and Andrea (who get married on the 17th) and then Maria (Andrea`s mom) are going to have their baptismal interviews! We are more then excited for them, they are so prepared and incredibly excited. It has been so awesome to see their testimonies grow. Oscar was very doubtful about the whole thing 3 weeks ago, but now he has a solid testimony. The other day his daughter was at his house (she lives in a different part of town) and we ended up teaching her for the first time. Oscar was sharing his testimony about how this is God's true church and how much it has helped him, he also told us that he is going to make his daughter come to church with him someday! haha. It was super cool. So they came to church on Sunday even though it was raining like crazy, that was a miracle in itself.
We also have another awesome married family.. the family Villagra. Eduaro and Diana were taught over 2 years ago by missionaries and decided to get married, but they never were baptized. We just started teaching them and things have been slowly progressing. We have been focusing a ton on the temple and on family (they have 3 young kids) and it has been going great! They also came to church yesterday for the first time with us, which was absolutely incredible! We were seriously so happy for them.. more then words can explain. They have baptismal dates for the 25th of July so we are working with them like crazy as well!
We have one or two other possibilities for July as well. One is Florencia, the niece of Oscar and Andrea. She is still undecided about her baptism but she loves church a lot. Besides that we are already starting to focus on August and trying to prepare people for then.

Last night we did meet a really awesome guy though, he has been less active for quite a few years. His older daughter is a member and his younger daughter isn't, he has the desire to return to church but it's quite hard for him. We are going to start working with him a lot... and to do so we invited him to join us in an appointment on Tuesday. We think that a great way for him to learn will be to listen to the discussions again, and then to bare testimony when we give him the opportunity.. so we are super excited about that.

Love,

Elder Hansen