Dear Family and Friends,
On Saturday I celebrated one month in my mission. I don´t know why but it feels like it has been much longer. Maybe because in that one month my life has changed so entirely.
My second week in Goya went well. It is actually still pretty cold here. For example today I am wearing my winter coat. But I know the heat is coming. This week I got to wear my rain boots and raincoat for the first time. It was quite an experience tromping around in mud and puddles all day long. People here don´t go outside if it is raining, and they don´t send their children to school. So we look pretty crazy out there braving the elements.
So much happens every week and we talk with so many people it is impossible to recount it all. Every morning we plan and pray and my planner and prayers are filled to the bursting with names. Names of people, wonderful people we have met or that we are teaching next to the time we are going to go visit them. It is incredible how these names, these people, in such a short time have filled my life and how much I already love them. I will share about just a few:
Adela: Adela is an eccentric and talkative woman that we (the missionaries, not me personally) have been teaching for several months. She is hesitant to get baptized until she has a very strong testimony, and I can respect that, but in the meantime she is coming to church and we are teaching her. She is extremely open and will share with you every single little detail about her life. She is also not fond of the United States and likes to launch into lengthy discourses on how we steal all of Argentina´s natural resources. Yesterday in church she informed me that she didn´t want to offend me but that the United States does not produce its own honey, and we steal all of the honey from Argentina. I told her that I know for a fact that we DO produce honey because there are people from my community that are beekeepers and sell honey. She did not believe me. So, I dropped it. It will be interesting to see what happens with her. She seems open to the church, and agrees wholeheartedly with most of the doctrine, but she is still looking for a stronger testimony and is also quite stubborn in some ways.
Matias: Matias is the young man we tracted into last week who is very bright and said he would love to learn more about the church. When we came back he was not there but had left us the brochure we had given him about The Restoration with the answers to all of the questions in the back written out perfectly. We left him a Book of Mormon and returned a few days later. He came out to talk to us and said he was very interested and had been investigating. He called his dad, the theologian and had a lengthy conversation with him about Mormons. He was very kind and said he didn´t want to be false with us and wanted for us to understand perfectly his current posture. He then launched into several questions and doubts concerning how Joseph Smith could have withstood the presence of God when he had learned his whole life that the presence of God was too bright and glorious for any mere mortal to withstand. He asked questions about the origin of the Book of Mormon and brought up the scripture in Revelations about not "adding or subtracting" from the word. He did with an openness and a kindness that was visible and it was not like he was arguing but simply asking questions. When we said we would love to have a more formal lesson with him he agreed. Hermana Da Silva said he is the first person in her 15 months in the mission that she has found that is like this. His intelligence and grace is astounding. I only hope I will have the words to respond to his sincere questions. I told him I might write out some responses (in Spanish) so I have more time to think and respond thoroughly. We are meeting with him again tomorrow.
Juan: Juan is the most adorable man I have ever met. In stark contrast with Matias he cannot read, although I think this is because no one ever taught him and not because he is not able to learn. Sometimes he opens the hymn book to the wrong page and pretends to be following along when we sing. I am not sure if he realizes that anyone notices. His wife died many years ago and he lives alone. He was baptized maybe 3 weeks before I got here. He is the purest most earnest person I think I have ever met. He is a recent convert and probably already one of the most faithful in attendance. On Sunday he brought Hermana Da Silva and I this special kind of bread that he wanted me to try.
The Vera Family: Another family of recent converts. They are stellar. They are so strong. They do everything for the missionaries. Feed us lunch, wash our clothes and the oldest daughter Maria Jose, who is 13, goes out to teach with Hermana Da Silva and I on a regular basis. They were baptized last Christmas and are going to the temple to be sealed as a family in a few months.
We had a wonderful Zone Conference in Resistencia this past Thursday. Elder Foster an area authority came to speak with us and he offered us some great counsel. He said that he appreciated the focus and the success we have with baptisms in our mission but that we needed to take the next step. He quoted in Alma 4 where it says "And they began to establish the church more fully; yea, and many were baptized in the waters of Sidon and were joined to the church of God." He said that our job now is to "establish the church more fully." That we should not leave an area counting how many baptisms we have had and count that as success, but instead leave thinking "is the church (branch, ward) stronger for my work" and if the answer is "no" than something is wrong. I loved this because focusing purely on statistics or quantitative data is often misleading. The branch here is struggling in many ways and I really agree that we need to take a more holistic approach than just trying to find new converts. This week we have been focusing on how we can help establish the church more fully here in Goya and although it is more challenging I feel better when I keep that as my focus.
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| Hna Da Silva at Zone Conference |
I feel very good with the language but I still am constantly humbled by my weakness in speaking. I am so grateful for my 6 months in Chile--I have started to think of that time as my first 6 months in my mission because my experiences there helped prepare me in more ways than I can count. Still, I am such a verbal person. I love the english language. I love having total facility and command in the language I speak. I love using the subtleties of speech to say exactly what I mean exactly how I mean to say it. I sometimes feel discouraged at my inability to do this in Spanish. Sometimes it is hard to feel sincere or like I am following the spirit when I am focusing so much on saying what I can say (i.e. what I know how to say) rather than what I really want to or should say. Sometimes Hermana Da Silva does that smile and nod in my direction that signals it is my turn to speak and all I can say is something like "yes, I too know this is true and it will bless you" before I smile and become silent once more. I have a personal goal of trying to think less about speaking perfectly and focus instead on being sincere. It is just difficult to juggle it all.
Before I finish I want to recount two of the funnier experiences I had this week.
One, in a first lesson we asked one of our investigators "why do you think there are so many churches." He paused and then responded in all sincerity: "maybe so we don´t have to walk so far to make it to a church?"
The second funny experience was when we were trying to find the house of a taxi driver that we met a few days before. This taxi driver´s name happened to be Jesús. We knocked on the door and a woman answered and my companion said "hola, se encuentra Jesus?" or, basically, "Hi, is Jesus there?" The woman started to look very confused and a little startled. she said: "um, yes. But I don’t have a lot of time now." We persisted, "oh, that´s okay. we just want to know if Jesus lives here." She hesitated and then said "oh, yes, well, but I don´t know, I don´t have a lot of time." We then realized she thought we were talking about Jesus Christ and Jesus the Taxi Driver. We backtracked and explained we had met a taxi driver named Jesus and he said he wanted to listen to us and he had given us this address. She looked suddenly relieved and said "OH! My SON Jesus! Oh, yes he lives here but he is not home right now." As we walked away Hermana Da Silva and I could not stop laughing. I have always found it very strange that people name their children Jesus in Spanish speaking countries and now I am more convinced that doing so can cause a lot of confusion. Although, now we have a new door approach if we ever want to use it.
Well that´s all for this week. As always, I´d love to hear from all of you!
Love,
Hermana Parker
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