La semana y metas

7 Dec 2007

Dear Family,

This has been another fairly good week. Nothing really eventful happened, I think. We went to church for the first time with the rest of the ward. It is a really good ward. I just wish that they had a larger Elder´s Quorum. The group of High Priests is fairly large, which is good, but in the Elder´s Quorum, there was the President, the ward mission leader, and a recent convert, and us. I´m glad that the bishop and several of the members already have confidence in us as missionaries. We did divisions with the Elder´s Quorum president, Brother Severino, and he said that he really wants to do them as often as he can with us. It is also nice that a lot of the priesthood holders have their own work, so they can accompany us in almost any moment. So, the work is moving on well enough here.

Right now, our best investigator is a kid named Joel. He is 15 and actually lives in La Reja, part of Moreno 2. But, comes often over here to the house of his friend, Bryan, who is 18 and is preparing for his mission. The bishop said we should teach and baptize him here, so we will work on it. The only difficulty is communication with his family, but he says that his Mom will have no problem giving him permission. After praying to ask if these things are true, he said that he felt that he already knew that all of this was true. He enjoyed church on Sunday and accepted a baptismal date for December 26th. He´s a great kid and reminds me a lot of Joshua Augason or JD Noelck in his appearence and personality.

This sunday, there were three investigators that came that just need to get married, a huge problem here in Argentina because it is just so difficult, especially for the foreigners. To get married, you have to have all of the correct documents, go to the government office in Moreno at about 4 AM to hopefully get a number to be able to wait the rest of the day to try to get a day that you can get married maybe. And that´s if everything goes well. Many times, they say you are missing a specific document or that there aren´t any open dates. And it is 100 times harder if either you are from a different country, you are a widow or a widower, or you have to get divorced first. At least, we have the good example of Brother Severino here who was patient and active in the church 4 years before he could get married and baptized. So, if you wonder why we often baptize more kids than we do parents, that is one of the big reasons.

But, we have hope anyways. Especially with Julio Flores, who is living with Silvana, a member who is reactivating. He feels good about getting married and getting baptized because the first time he went to church, he felt a peace and saw that a lot of the marriage problems that they were having where smoothed out. So, he has interest. But Silvana is absolutely sure that he is getting baptized. That´s not a question for her. She talks often about the baptism of Julio. I hope that his own testimony will grow strong instead of just go along with the flow of what Silvana says to make her happy.

Oh, and mom wrote that she was surprised that there were missions doing 20 lessons a week. The following is our standard, or what we are working to acheive, but often is difficult. And I´ll also put what I think we usually do per week.

Baptisms – 3 per transfer (3 per transfer)
Investigators with baptismal date – 5 (2-3)
Investigatros in sacrament meeting – 5 (3)
Lessons with member present – 10 (5)
Other lessons – 25 (17)
References Contacted – 10 (1)
New Investigators – 15 (15)
Lessons with recent converts and inactive members – 8 (5)
Contacts – 140 (110)

So, we have about 20-25 lessons per week with investigators. So, we teach a good bit. But the average is going up. There are Elders that are teaching 40-50 lessons per week here. The work is moving forth with greater rapidity.

I know these things are true and that is why I´m here.

With love,
Elder Drake Ranquist