November 19, 2012

Dear Everyone,

This week we had trials. There will always be trials. There needs to be opposition in all things because if not, there is no progress, nothing is learned, and nothing is gained. The Lord has blessed me with an amazing companion that is an example to me. We have been become closer and more unified as teachers and had dozens of spiritual experiences this week. Through dedicated obedience, hard studies, and diligent work in the street we have overcome many challenges and seen many miracles. I have never had such powerful lessons in my mission. The Spirit has been very present in our lessons and is guiding our steps in each moment. The trials have helped us grow, and we are super excited for this week because we are going to give it our all.

Our main focus is a family that my companion found on splits here in the area. I was in another area with a District Leader from Nicaragua named Elder Galan and while gone, my companion found a family named the Gutierrez family. They are named Luis and Elsa and their sons are Ezequiel and Damian. The husband was baptized 31 years ago, but his wife and son are not members because he fell away from the church after his teenage years. We have had very powerful lessons with the family this week and have a lot of hope for them! They do need to get married but miracles will happen. Their confidence in us is slowly growing as is their understanding of the doctrine. We called several members and set up appointments with them so that this week we can pass by the Gutierrez family with them. That will help them get excited about attending church and overcome social barriers. Please pray for them.

This week we have lots of plans for the zone and for the area so that we can have lots of success. The zone is on fire, and we are on track to achieve our goal of 20 baptisms this month, something almost never seen here in Bahìa Blanca. The Lord has been merciful with us and is blessing us as we continue obediently dedicated to His work.

A scripture that I liked this week was Alma 42:29. Alma tells his son that he must worry about his own sins so that they will lead him to repentance. I think that too often we focus on the weaknesses of those that surround us and fail to recognize our own mistakes. May we all be humble and recognize our own weakness. Through Jesus Christ we can overcome them and become strong. Of that I can bear testimony.

Thank you all for your letters, prayers, and support!

Love,

Elder Garrison

November 12, 2012

Hey,

Yeah no one here in Argentina knew anything about the whole Obama-Romney election. Or if they did, they didn't say anything to us. Which is weird because even the poorest person will call us murderers and tell us to "stop bombing innocent people." (Haha as skewed as their opinion is, at least they know something). I would have thought that someone might have heard something. Especially since they always ask, "And Obama? What do you think of him?" And we have to tell them that we don't talk about politics. But no one said a thing. So the truth is I had no idea who had won until opening my emails.

People here in Argentina don't know much about the Mormons. Either they try and convince US that all the churches are the same saying, "Look you`ve got the Jehovah’s Witness, the Mormons, the Evangelists, and the Catholics but guys, God is one and he is with us all no matter where you go." Which is wrong. So it`s either that or many other religions just say that we are a church of the devil. That is why it surprised me this week when the taxi driver that took Elder Forbes and I to our house after the Leader Meetings was like, "Guys I am not going to join a religion that some adulterer started. I am not going to follow some guy who had 19 wives." Hahaha we said, "Sir, you have been misinformed, Joseph Smith did not have..." And then he cut us off because he just wanted to fight. I felt like the missionaries in the States must have conversations like that all the time. It is too bad that people rely on outside sources for information on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "Ask the missionaries, they can help you."

This week my foot hurt a lot. But Elder Forbes and I still worked super hard. We found tons of new people to teach and taught an amount of lessons that Elder Howard and I probably took 2 to 3 weeks to teach in the Santa Rosa 4th Ward. My area is on the edge of Bahìa Blanca and is all dirt streets. The people are super religious and there is a different church on almost each block, it`s insane. We see missionaries and members of other churches every day. But with all that, the people still let us in and want help from God. Plus it is almost summer and with the heat, everyone is outside in their yards in the shade every day. It is super easy to contact people and find new people to teach.

This week, Elder Forbes and I had a baptism. It was super great. We had to work hard to help the investigators overcome trials and everything, but the feeling in the baptism is always worth the effort we have to put in. They are named Adela Varela and her daughter Micaela Robinson (the children here take the last name of the father but the women do not change their last name when they get married) and also Gabriel Bonomo. A lot of members went and also investigators which were Gabriela and Adela`s family members as well as some people that the other two missionaries invited.

The church building is tiny though. When you walk in, you are in the Sacrament Meeting room. There are doors on the opposing wall which are the classrooms and then on the right side in the corner a tiny hall with the Bishop Office and bathrooms. That`s it. There were only 48 people in church on Sunday and that`s about normal. So there is a lot of work to do here! I am excited.

Please pray for us so that we can find more people to get to church so that they can get baptized!

Love,

Elder Garrison

November 7, 2012

Hey

Sorry I didn't write the other day. We had a leadership meeting. We usually have this meeting once a month and it is usually on a Tuesday. But this time, we had it on Monday and Tuesday, two days long. It is really needed because we have a lot of missionaries. I think more than half the mission has less than a year in the mission. We jumped from 160 to 216 and it keeps climbing. With the age change for missionaries, President and Sister Parreño said that we are expecting to hit 250 within a few months. So almost everyone is new. I almost don't even know anyone anymore. 

Sadly, since May, we've been scaling downward in success. And really it's not the fact that there are tons of new missionaries because even a new missionary can have success right off the bat. But the mission has changed a lot. I got to my new zone and there were some big problems we had to resolve with some missionaries. However this leader meeting was super powerful. It kind of hit us all when we saw the graphs and the need for improvement. The assistants talked about what needs to be changed and one of those things is our efforts to find new people to teach. So they challenged us all (about 60 leaders) to go and find 2 new people that night. So from 4 to 9 on Monday we all went to work here in Bahìa Blanca. We found 92 new people in 5 hours (Which usually took the 32 of us in Santa Rosa a week to do). Then on Tuesday we all shared experiences and several missionaries who are headed home were asked to bare testimonies (Elder Arias included) and it was super spiritual.

Elder Forbes and I then had the job of setting up a Zone Meeting here in our zone to teach the whole zone all that we had been taught and to inspire and motivate them the same way. We had to plan last night and this morning starting at 7 but it came out SO well. We had a meeting with the district leaders and then one with the zone. Some of the sister missionaries just burst out crying at the end, it was a super special meeting.

Anyway, we're all super stoked because we want to achieve our goal of 20 baptisms this month in the zone. And 1000 baptisms in the mission by year`s end. And I also had long talks with Elder Arias about achieving my personal goal so there is a lot of work to do!! The worth of every soul is great in the eyes of God.

This week, Elder Forbes and I are going to baptize three people that are named Adela Varela, her daughter Micaela Robinson, and another girl named Gabriela Bonomo. They've had their trials but they have overcome them. They already had their interviews as well and so they'll be getting baptized on Saturday!!

Another miracle that happened this week was that Elder Forbes and I had to take a bus to our area (because we live SUPER far away) and while on the bus I gave every single person a pass-along card. Then at 4 that day, this lady called us over in the street and thanked us for the card I gave her on the bus. Turns out she used to live with a member family and used to go to church with them. She never believed because she was a Jehovah’s Witness but now she believes and wants to get baptized!! She went to church on Sunday which was Stake Conference in a faraway church building but she went alone anyway, on the bus, and was there the whole time!! She is getting baptized next Saturday, the 17th.

Anyway, I love the area. We found 25 new investigators this week so we're on fire. Elder Forbes and I get along super well and I have a feeling that we are going to have a lot of success.

Thanks for the support and the prayers! I know that this is the work of Jesus Christ. He lives and directs His church upon the earth through living prophets and apostles who have been chosen by Him and ordained with His Holy Priesthood power. Thomas S. Monson holds all the keys of that Priesthood just as Peter did thousands of years ago. Nothing has changed. And even if men with all their might try to change God and His sacred scriptures, He will not change. The Book of Mormon is evidence of that. Read it.

Love,

Elder Garrison

October 29, 2012

Dear everyone,

 

So this week was crazy. We had a zone conference to plan and organize as well as a baptism to plan and organize. And conveniently they happened to be the same day. Well the zone conference came out perfectly. Elder Howard and I were worried because the Stake Presidency asked us to hold our zone conference in a different church building than normal. So we had to go to a faraway church to set up, get tables from our building to the other, and figure out how to set everything up seeing as there is no screen for the projector. But it all came out well, and we used the wall at the back side of the stage as a screen.

 

The conference was great. President Parreño interviewed us all and he and his wife and the Assistants shared fantastic presentations. Elder Howard and I were seeing a big problem in the zone that everyone was pretty down and needing to get pumped up. This I explained to President Parreño in my interview. And after several other interviews that he did before the meeting, he decided to change what he was going to talk about. He showed us 2 Nephi 2:14 that shows that the Lord created all things in the heavens and on the earth. He explained that we have been made to act, not be acted upon. That Satan, as he had tried to tempt Jesus in Matthew 4 to forget who He really was and to change His nature, would try to do the same thing with each one of us, tempting us in every way possible so that we change our nature and become an object to be acted upon. He challenged us to be strong and to do what we were created to do. He challenged us to not forget our "nature as missionaries" which is to invite all to come unto Christ. It was very inspired and very inspiring.

 

As for the baptism, Federico was having problems all week long. Satan hit him with everything he could. Federico had HUGE fights with his wife over the 12 year old daughter and was super distracted. Regardless, we worked as hard as possible to help him get excited about Friday, teach him what he needed to learn, have his interview and get him baptized. We fought until the day OF. I left with Elder Yarger while Elder Howard stayed at the other church. We filled the baptismal font in an hour flat which was a miracle and when I called Federico, he was doing bad. He had told us he did not want to sign his baptismal record. I had to be very firm with him on that call because he had promised us that he would think about it. Well I told him he was failing God, us and himself. That he had always told us that he didn't have friends because they always stabbed him in the back. I told him he was doing the same to God, us and himself. I told him we was allowing the devil to win and that he was laughing as the Lord cried because he preferred to lose his eternal salvation over a signature. I then asked, "Will I see you at 6?" And he responded, "Yeah we'll see." So I just dropped to me knees and begged Heavenly Father to bless him.

 

He showed up 5 minutes later and told me he was getting baptized and that he'd sign his baptismal record. Miracle. It was fantastic. When we passed by after church yesterday, he was super happy. Just as excited as he was when we first came by. He hasn't fought with his wife since Friday. I saw the real power of the Atonement in him.

 

But now I have left Santa Rosa. It was hard. Like leaving Pehuajò and Viedma. They called Saturday morning and gave us transfers and I am now Zone Leader here in Bahìa Blanca, Maldonado Ward with Elder Forbes from Utah.

 

This week was Stake Conference and so it wasn't announced that I was leaving like they would have done in church any other Sunday. No one knew until after the meeting. So I took tons of pictures and said my goodbyes. The Gutierrez and Herràn families freaked out. The grandma kept kissing my hand and Marcos wouldn't let go of my shoulder, telling me that their lives had changed thanks to the gospel. I love them all so much. Federico took it well but it was obvious that he was sad. Mariano Romero fed us lunch Saturday and was pretty bummed that I was leaving. But he'll be alright, he is very strong in the gospel and he and Marcos were sustained to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood. I didn't cry though until I said goodbye to Bishop Pilati. It just sort of overcame me when I hugged him goodbye. He has done so much for us.

 

As for saying goodbye to Elder Howard and Elder Yarger, it was tough but I'll see them soon.

 

I will never forget La Pampa. I was there for almost 6 months after all and I fell in love with every aspect of that Santa Rosa. The people, the missionaries, my converts, the city itself, everything. But this starts a new chapter in my mission. And funny thing: Elder Arias is a district leader in my zone! Hahaha. I spent the day with him.

 

Anyway, thanks for the letters and pictures!! Pray for me :)

Love,

Elder Garrison