Letter from Goya - 26 September 2011

"The Friendly Drunkards always please me with saucy tales"

Dear Friends and Family,

Brooke's cobbler kitchen? 

All is well this week. Argentina celebrated the first day of spring this week, as well as "the day of the student" and about 6 other holidays (it seems) so classes were canceled at least half the days this week and everyone was out celebrating and playing the soccer. The weather is a mixed bag of cold windy cloudiness and hot blazing sunshine (with a generous helping of mosquitoes and other biting bugs--although so far my insect repellant has been working to ward them off). Spring is always a little fickle, but I love it. Flowers are blooming and things are growing and all around Goya there are Mulberry trees weighed down with dark plump mulberries, and I stop whenever I can to grab a few. The Vera family have a tree outside their house and they are always very amused by how much I love to eat them. One of these days I am going to make a mulberry cobbler.

This week I have noticed that missionary work can be sad. Or, rather, as a missionary I often hear and witness some very sad things. I feel acutely my baptismal covenant I made to "mourn with those that mourn." I think especially as sister missionaries people (especially women) learn to trust in us and  often want to unload some of the heaviness and sorrow in their hearts when we visit with them. They open up to us, pour out there souls to us and we listen and try as best we can to offer comfort and peace by talking about the Savior. This week we visited the daughter of a recent convert. She has 6 small children in a very small home out in the country. Her husband has a drinking problem and this week it has been getting worse. Another man we have been teaching finally opened up to tell us about how lonely he is. His wife left him 10 years ago. He has no children and he doesn´t feel any hope that he will ever find someone to love or share his life with. He feels depressed and finds it hard to motivate himself to make changes in his life when he has no one but himself to live for. Another sister spoke to us about her struggle and her anger with God, her anger with her father´s horrific death and her own inability to conceive and have children.

Brooke's bedroom

Although these things are painful to hear--sharing these moments with these people has also been very meaningful for me. I love them. I hurt for them. Every night I fill my prayers thinking about them and pleading for them to my Heavenly Father. Sometimes I feel acutely my own inability to help them or to offer words of wisdom or comfort and so I pray that God will help me to be able to say and do the things that they need.  I am SO young, and I have NO idea what it would be like to have to deal with these things myself-- still, I have  found power and truth as I have found small opportunities to bear a simple testimony about the atonement and invite them to put their faith and trust in He who really does understand.

Missionary work can be sad but it can also be extremely rewarding. Lujan´s grandchildren always come running to greet us when they see us walking down the road to their house, shouting "hermanas" and hugging us with so much force they almost knock us over. This week, one of the youngest grandchildren, Alejandro learned how to say "hermanas" and now he enthusiastically shouts with the rest when we visit (it is more like "manas! manas!"). It is so precious.

Now I will explain the title of my email. I brought my Shakespearean magnetic poetry with me on my mission and have been making sentences on our fridge here. The first sentence I made is the perfect introduction to the following story.

One of our investigators is a spirited 69 year-old man nick-named Peluza. Coincidentally, this was also the name of the dog we had when I lived in Chile. Usually this name is reserved for pets. We have no idea what his real name is. Everyone calls him Peluza.

Peluza stopped us in the street one day. He told us that he felt our hearts were speaking to one another. Or something similarly grand and poetic. He said he would like to listen to our message. Peluza is a recovering alcoholic and in our first meeting he shared with us about how God saved his life and helped him to stopped drinking. A few days later he invited Hermana Da Silva and I to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting as special guests. We agreed with the idea that it would be an interesting experience and a good way to find more people to teach.

Now I will set the scene: It is a Friday night in a tiny room tucked into the back corner of a Catholic church. There are AA Posters and slogans plastered all over the peeling yellow walls alongside  aging pictures of Saints and the virgin Mary, rosary beads and crucifixes. Three earnest, graying Argentine men--the entire branch of AA Goya--are gathered there and with an air of formality (although not a cold or a rigid formality, but a formality notably softened by the humble surroundings and warm spirits) they welcome us to the meeting and ask us to introduce ourselves and talk a little bit about what we do. We do so and they all listen with rapt attention and an occasional enthusiastic nod. When we are done, one by one they begin to wax poetic about how wonderful we are and what a beautiful work we are doing here in Goya. It almost felt like the leader of the group, Mario, was presenting us with a prepared speech as the other 2 men interjected at key moments proclaiming things like:

"You are here on a mission, a beautiful mission!"

"You come here to share the precious things of the soul!"

"What you are doing is SO important!"

"You are not here as a sacrifice, you are here for LOVE!"

"People don´t always listen to you! Sometimes people turn you away!"

"People here are stubborn, they are lazy. They have no idea what they are missing!"

magnetic poetry

Keep in mind that 2 of the 3 men had never met us before in their lives and that NONE of them are members of our church.  After several minutes going on like this, Mario whips out a piece of paper and says "now I have a few questions for you!" Then, reading from his paper he asks us to explain and define the atonement, Aaronic priesthood, the Melchizedek  priesthood and the apostasy. Surprised, we go through each of these terms and define them for him. When we finish he exclaims happily, and as if we had just passed a test, he presents us each with package of cookies. It was very bizarre. I guess he received a pamphlet about the restoration several months ago and wanted to see if we could explain some of the words in the pamphlet.

We ended out visit by singing to them Abide With Me Tis Eventide, and only when we finished did Peluza begin to laugh and talk about how funny it was to have two Mormon missionaries singing hymns in a Catholic church. In the end we ended up getting the phone numbers and addresses of every one of them and will be stopping by to teach them sometimes this week. 

To close, I have included pictures of my apartment (inserted above), so you have a better idea of what it looks like. This week I will be taking pictures of our area around Goya and will send them in my letter next week.

So far I haven´t received any letters from the office but getting mail is a slow business hear so i look forward to any communications that are still in transit! Please keep writing to me! I take time every Pday to write letters.

I love you all!

Hna Parker