Tons of Pictures!

3 Mar 2008

Querido Familia,

Disculpe si otra vez no tengo tiempo para leer las cartas primeramente y entonces responder. Pero, ¡Tengo fotos! (basically Drake will write later. He doesn't have time to respond because he has pictures!)

I think I´ll list the photos by their file number.

77. From right to left, Noelia, Ricardo Diaz (her brother who baptized her), Karen (whom I baptized), me, E´Gonzalez, Alexis (an eight year old kid from Castillo II, son of converts), Florencia (who was baptized by E´Gonzalez), E´Gonzalez (the other one, often known as E´Gonzalez Hijo because he has less time than me in the mission), and E´Lloyd.




78. Las Mellisas (the fraternal twins) with their Mom Roxanna, who was baptized last week (sorry, I´m not able to send photos of that baptism right now, they were taken without the chip in the camera; I forgot to put it back in. So, I need to bring my camera with the link to be able to send them), and us. It was truely a hassle to help give enough courage to Karen and Florencia to get baptized. I was so relieved when they showed up for the bautismal interview Friday because we weren´t sure if they would come.


79. This is the huge family of Noelia. She and her Mom live in Tucuman, a different province in Argentina, in a rural area far away from any chapel. So, she was never able to get baptized. But she was already living as an LDS before, including reading the Book of Mormon and fasting when she needed more spiritual strength. Nearly all of her uncles and aunts are members living here, with their families. She had a lot of support.


86. This is a picture of me with a golden sword made out of a tie and wood. It is really cool. E´Gonzalez and I got it for this past week during our district meeting from the Zone Leaders for working so well with the members. We comply with the 10 weekly lessons with a member present, because of the work that E´Gonzalez puts into calling everyone and the willingness of all of the members here in Castillo I. In this picuture you can see the cheap 5 peso watch that I bought in Villa Amelia, a part of the pensión (that´s the side of E´Lloyd and E´Gonzalez hijo), how I´m a bit tanner than I´ve ever been in my life, and sorry Mom, my goofy smile as well.


89. Our small district/pench dwellers (pench is an anglicized version of the word pensión) at the temple today. This also shows E´Gonzalez hijo with a moustache. (He cut his lip shaving this morning and had to put on a band-aid).




83-85. These are all photos of an approaching storm that we took from the roof of our pench. I love the sky here. It is so flat, we have such a huge horizon; you can see out forever from a high place. This storm was pretty bad, with a bit of hail and all. It kind of came out of nowhere too. My companion has been a bit sick recently, so we stayed in the pench to rest a bit when we saw this storm approaching rapidly. He said that they were “las tinieblas de afuera” which literally means misty darkness of outside, but also refers to Outer Darkness. Luckily, we weren´t outside working when it hit.

...And now to write a bit about this past week.

First of all, the baptism went really well. There was a ton of people! We did a joint baptism with Castillo II, so with them, la Familia Díaz, and everyone else, it felt like an active ward...being about 50-80 people. To make it even more grand, President Benton decided to show up. The only problem was there wasn´t as many refreshments as usual.

Right now, we are without baptismal dates, but we have several good progressing investigators who could very well get baptized next transfer. First and foremost is Ana María. She has been attending every activity and meeting she possibly can (spending all day at the church Saturday) and is constantly asking good questions. Daniel, the husband of Roxana, came to the baptism and then came to church and could turn into a good investigator again. Walter, the conyuge of the couple that was having problems last week, really is showing his desire to have a better family life and Silvia said that they are going to go to the lawyer today in order to get the papers necessary to get married. We also found an interesting investigator a few weeks ago, but yesterday was the first time we could find “him” with time to teach. Miguel is a cross-dresser that we taught the first lesson with the spirit present and challenged him to change. He said that he would love to change and have a family, but he´s been like this his entire life (and he looks and sounds like a woman now). If he can change, it will probably be one of the biggest changes I´ve seen on the mission, but I know it is possible through the Gospel. Friday we taught an investigator, who hasn´t read in the Book of Mormon yet, but we decided to read parts with her and she said “I don´t know, but I felt something strange while we were reading.” We immediately explained the feelings of the Holy Ghost again. We have a few others I´d like to talk about, but I´m out of time.

I love you all and I wish that the Spirit of change can constantly mold you into who you are to be.

Love,
Elder Drake Ranquist