December 10, 2012

I´m 21.

Yesterday a member family that fed us lunch made a huge cake for Elder Forbes and me because he turned 21 on Saturday. That was cool.

And today was great. Yesterday we had transfers and so it was Elder Arias’ last day in the mission. Today, he was in the office and we asked special permission from President Parreño to go to lunch. We were going to go with the Brustle family (remember them from Pehuajò? They now live in Bahìa Blanca again) but they couldn't go eat with us because they had to work. So they came to the office to see us and it was the most happy feeling for Elder Arias and I to see them again. They said their goodbyes and then Elder Arias and I went to downtown Bahìa and ate at this all you can eat restaurant called Bamboo. And then we said goodbye. CAPO.

As for transfers, I am still in the Maldonado Ward but Elder Forbes left. It was super hard to say goodbye to him because we had such amazing experiences together. We learned a lot together and really grew spiritually. We learned huge lessons about unity, obedience, planning, faith, charity, hope, patience, and following the Spirit. I will always be grateful to Heavenly Father for having been with Elder Forbes. But just guess where he went...Pehuajò!! Hahaha he was super excited to go and meet Elder Arias and my converts and work super hard so that the branch there can keep growing. My new companion is named Elder Furlong. He was in Santa Rosa for a transfer and I was his Zone Leader. And now he is a new Zone Leader and I am going to train him. I’m super excited.

Elder Caraza and Elder Cabrera, the two other missionaries that had been in the area with us left and now Elder Furlong and I will be the only ones here. So all of their investigators are ours now. I am positive that there are people there who can get baptized. Plus all the lunches will be ours...kind of a big deal.

As for our investigators? Elvira Dumrauf is on fire. She was telling all the members on Sunday about her baptism. She even said the prayer in Gospel Principles class. She is very excited and is super faithful about her prayers and reading the things we leave her. As for Claudia Vargas, she is progressing very well. We taught her about obedience and showed her how she needs to follow the will of the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, she did otherwise on Sunday morning. We had a very spiritual lesson with her yesterday in the evening and she was really repentant. Unfortunately that puts her baptism back a week but we'll get there.

Satan is working hard in the world against those that have testimonies of Christ. That is why we must overcome our natural man, follow the influence of the Holy Spirit, become holy through the Atonement of Christ, and become even as a child. It is the only way to find peace and happiness in this life.

Well, that is it. Thanks for the birthday wishes!! I love you all.

Love,

Elder Garrison

December 3, 2012

Big news. Change of plans. Here`s the scoop:

The change in age for missionaries has caused changes in the MTC program and now the missionaries will be spending less time in the MTC. Seeing as there are going to be changes in the MTC, our transfers are going to get shifted starting after January 2013. All missionaries will be going home three weeks early because of the shift in transfers. EXCEPT the first group scheduled to go home after January who goes the 5th of March. They will now be going home the 26th of March.

So I am going to be here in Argentina three weeks extra!

Sorry. But that means more time to baptize.

As for my package? They told me it`s there in the office but I don't get it until tomorrow! We have Zone Leader Council.

As for this week, it was fantastic! Elder Forbes and I had some amazingly spiritual experiences with new investigators that we found. We have been working hard in our studies in the mornings to achieve unity in our teaching so that we can teach with one voice and the hard work has paid off. This week we had dozens of lessons with new people that understood the lesson, accepted all of our invitations to read, pray and be baptized once they knew it was true and who then prayed at the end the lesson. Elder Forbes and I always keep quiet after the prayer that they offer and the Spirit just fills the room up. Almost all of them would then look at us and then start to cry. It has been amazing.

Saturday we worked as hard as we could to get these people to church but what happened is that none of them made it. Instead, we found two new people on Saturday that did in fact go to church.

The first is Elvira Dumrauf. She is a little old lady that a different missionary and I contacted on Friday and we found out she had been baptized several years back. But it was winter and the Elders had problems filling the baptismal font and had to baptize her in cold water. She got very sick and very mad at them and never went back to church. Therefore she was never confirmed and is going to need to get baptized again. But in the lesson that Elder Forbes and I had with her the following day, the Spirit guided us and she just sorted of calmed down, understood the need to get baptized again, and accepted it. After accepting her baptismal date she said, "What do I need to bring I can't remember what I brought last time." After she offered the prayer, she tried to start talking but I put my finger to my lips so she would just pay attention to how she felt and she just burst into tears asking forgiveness for having been so mad and said she`d go to church. When we got to church a half hour early the next morning, she was already waiting outside.

The other is Claudia Vargas. We contacted her like a month ago in the street super far from her house. As we were walking down the street on Saturday at about 7:00 pm wondering what we could do that would be the most productive because our plans had failed, Elder Forbes saw her house and said, "We`re going here." So we taught her! Her house burned down at the start of the year and her husband left her a few years back to raise their 8 children alone. We taught her and she felt so good that after the prayer, the same thing happened. The Spirit touched her heart. She promised she would go to church the next day and when we called her in the morning she said, "I`m on my way right now!"

So we`re going to be working super hard so that Elvira and Claudia can get baptized this month of December. I am super excited! The Lord tries our faith and our patience to see if we will continue hoping and faithfully obeying His will. That is what He has done I think and now we are seeing how His hand has touched these people’s lives and is blessing us more than I can even describe in one letter.

I am thankful for the opportunity to serve Him and represent His Son here in Argentina. Why do I need to stay 3 weeks extra? Not sure. But there must be a reason and I am excited to find out what it is.

Please pray for our investigators so that they can overcome the obstacles that will surely be placed in their way.

Love,

Elder Garrison

November 26, 2012

Dear family and everyone else who reads this,

This week was full once again of trials. Satan is subtle and astute and is working hard to stop the progress of the work of the Lord.

My companion and I have had our fair share of trials, the Gutierrez family is having its fair share of trials, and zone is as well having its fair share of trials. My companion and I are doing everything possible to lift the zone up and get things moving efficiently. We had another meeting with the district leaders to talk about our progress and necessary changes that must be made if we hope the Lord will continue to bless us. Obedience is key if we hope to have the Lord on our side. As well as many other things we have talked about to make sure that no time is wasted. We are checking up constantly and hoping that the zone can be an example for the whole mission and that the missionaries can really come to understand more profoundly their purpose as representatives of Jesus Christ.

The Gutierrez family is struggling because the desires of one are not as strong as the desires of the other and that worries Elsa, our investigator, because she does not want marital problems based on her decision to follow Christ. She does not feel strong enough to go forward with a commitment so important if her husband is not willing to make such commitment with her. We have tried to help her act with faith and confide in the Lord's infinite power and perfect plan but unfortunately this week she decided to be acted upon by the will of Satan and did not go to church. It was very hard for my companion and me.

Regardless, we continue working hard and the blessings of the Lord come. Gladis, an investigator of ours, the sister-in-law of Gabriela who we recently baptized, showed up to church this week and the members helped her with her little baby girl and talked to her and she had a good time. Now all we have to do is help her get married to her husband. In my area most families are formed before marital vows are made. And then the poor children get left with broken families because the low-commitment societal values lead to separation of the parents. And if not, they just never bother to get married because of some superstition that if they do, suddenly they'll split up a year later and get stuck with legal problems concerning the divorce process.

So this week my companion and I have a lot of plans to work super hard and make sure that more people go to church! Please pray for us and for our investigators! Especially the Gutierrez family so they can move forward with faith and not doubt.

I know that the Gospel and Jesus Christ is the only thing that can save our families. I know that He lives and invites all of us to follow His perfect example. We must become like Him. We must follow His commandments. And if we do so, our Heavenly Father will bless us infinitely beyond our comprehension. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. Of this I bear testimony.

Thank you all for writing.

Love,

Elder Garrison

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