December 19, 2011

Dear Family and Friends,

Yeah no worries I recovered from being sick really fast. And now I tell everyone I get sick from tap water. Then they give me soda. I feel guilty because that makes me happy. Haha.

Anyway, Christmas is coming! You can hardly tell here. Because it's ridiculously hot and humid at all hours of the day. Including night time. Our fan broke last week so we're currently suffering as the office sends us money to buy a new one. This week was great. We didn't have very many lessons but we found several people that could very easily start coming to church and get baptized.

Like this little 10 year old girl named Fernanda Arce that came to church with the Branch President's family last Sunday. We taught her last Sunday and set a baptismal date. She was super excited and we were going to work with that family to help her.

Then out of nowhere her family moved.

So we did everything possible and had the Branch President's family do some calling and they found out where she moved to! We passed by Friday and asked her if she'd like to get baptized on Sunday and she said yes. So we taught her everything else super fast, had our District Leader travel in for the interview Saturday and she was baptized yesterday! We were very happy.

All the members are seeing changes. It scares us though because now they now want changes they are definitely not ready for. Like change from 2 hours of church to 3 hours of church before they even have someone to teach primary (the primary kids current spend the first hour watching videos and drawing on chalk boards and they are a third of the attending members). But we're working with the leaders, helping them understand the vision as well as the need to take certain steps before achieving that vision (like finding a primary teacher).

This week is going to be sweet because on Thursday, we'll be in Mar del Plata for SUPER P-DAY. To celebrate Christmas. And on Sunday, we're going to try and baptize the granddaughter of a member that brings her almost every Sunday. We finally had a chance to teach her this week!!

I am excited and the Lord is truly blessing Pehuajò. And all of your prayers are definitely helping us! Thank you all so much for your letters and I apologize if I didn't have time to respond to a couple! Mom, I will call on Saturday to set up a specific time for Sunday. We get 15 minutes to do that the day before. So if some strange number calls, that's me. I AM FREAKING EXCITED. My companion and I are trying to not get "trunky" thinking about it hahaha. I would also like Jake, Maddy, and Carly to come listen! So someone, tell them when I am going to call.

I love you all!

Talk to you Sunday!

-Elder Ryan Garrison