August 13, 2012

Dear family and friends,

This week was great!

For the third week in a row, Elder Howard and I have managed to teach a lesson with a member of the church present almost every single day. So we are seeing the results of our efforts and really excited for our investigators that are progressing very well toward conversion and baptism in the Church. When we teach lessons and the members help us out by bearing their personal testimonies, those whom we teach change because they see not only two missionaries with testimonies of what they teach, but also a normal person, many times their neighbor, who also believes what we are saying. Every time I have involved members in the lessons, it has been much more successful. We also had some cool experiences getting into some houses and teaching new people for the first time about the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Every time we get into a new house to teach someone new, we teach the first lesson about prophets, Jesus Christ's earthly ministry, the fall of His church, and the restoration of that church in modern days by a prophet called of God, Joseph Smith. We knock a lot of doors here in Argentina. We are encouraged to work with the members and doing that has proved to be very successful but when we are not working with members, we fill our time knocking doors. Up until Viedma I had seen no results from that. What changed is that now we work together with the members to help those people gain testimonies.

For example, just like in Viedma with Agustín Casanova who talked to us in English, here in Santa Rosa Mariano talked to us in English in the street and now has gone to church for a month straight with his family! So this Saturday, his little sister Milagros Ivonne Lucero got baptized! Elder Howard and I were very excited because she is super cute because she knows everything, and just bursts with excitement about the Gospel. She always has great stories about praying to be able to sleep better or how she wishes every day were Sunday so that she could go to church. And she is only 9 years old!! We were also excited because not only did Ivonne's brother and sister go to the baptism, but so did the mother, Marta! AND she went to church yesterday for the confirmation. She loved it so much she even expressed her desires to get baptized which is what we were hoping for, seeing as the bishop had expressed his worries about baptizing only the 9 year old. But something told both him and us to do it, knowing that the rest would follow her footsteps.

Also this week, we were able to teach Catalina Navas mother (we baptized Catalina two weeks ago). The grandpa set up a Family Home Evening on Monday and we taught using 1 Nephi 8 about the Iron Rod. It was great and I was just straight up with Catalina's mom about how she needs to do what her three oldest children have done and follow Christ because He is waiting for her to follow. He is knocking at her door, waiting for her to open. Then, on Saturday after the baptism, we went over again and read from 2 Nephi 2 about the fall of Adam which leaves us subject to both physical and spiritual death and how the Messiah, Jesus Christ, saved us from that. We must follow His commandments, however, if we hope to be saved.

I asked her to offer the closing prayer and she was very hesitant. But when we insisted, she did it. It was soooo spiritual that after she finished I said, "THIS is the Spirit of God." And there was this dead silence for about 10 seconds. Catalina's mother just cried because the Spirit was so strong. We left immediately, explaining that our only desire was to help her follow Christ and she showed up to church the next day. She'll get baptized soon :)

Thank you for your support! Please pray for Mónica, Marta, Mariano, and Nicolle!!

I love you.

Chau,

-Elder Garrison