Dear Family and Friends,
It has been quite an eventful week and I hope I can get to everything in this email.
Things started off a little rough. The beginning of the week it rained a lot, and my umbrella broke, and everyone looks at you like you're crazy when you go tracting in the rain or show up for scheduled appointments (rain means everything is automatically canceled).Hermana Hobbs was feeling a little down about the language and we were both tired and there was one day in particular where it seemed that despite all of our best efforts and planning ALL of our plans and back up plans and back up back up plans fell through. That night we went home determined to do something to keep up our spirits.
So, naturally, we decided to have a celebration. It was February 2nd so we celebrated Groundhog Day... in the most traditional way we know how: eating riccotta raviolis with acorn squash on handmade Groundhog Day placemats. We each tried our hardest to draw what we think a groundhog looks like, but neither of us could really remember. We decided it is a brown animal...with four legs...and a tail...that lives in a hole. Someone should mail me a picture of a groundhog so I can do a better job next year. Anyways, since we are in Argentina we decided we should write Happy Groundhog Day in spanish on our placemats, and to our delight the word for groundhog in spanish is "Marmota de las Americas." Anyways, things started looking up significantly after our "Feliz Dia De La Marmota De Las Americas!"
The next day we were out tracting. A few of our plans fell through and we were sitting outside the chapel trying to re-group. We said a prayer together and afterwards we both felt impressed that we should go back to visit Carina (we had stopped by earlier that day and she was not home). Before I move on with this story I have to tell you about Carina. She has an amazing backstory.
When I first arrived in this area Hermana Griffeth told me a little about Carina. She told me she had been meeting with the sister missionaries for years and that she had read the book of mormon 3 times and that she had a testimony of the church and her oldest daughter had even begun to do personal progress on her own. The big problem was that the father of her four children (with whom she didn't have the best relationship to begin with) was entirely opposed to his family's involvement with the church. He would NOT give his permission for his children to be baptized and he and Carina fought and there was just generally a lot of strife and hard feelings about the topic. So, eventually, to keep the peace, Carina had kind of dropped the idea and even stopped pursuing it herself.
This is what I knew about Carina when I got a letter from my trainer Hermana Da Silva. She served in this same area at the very beginning of her mission. While she was here she also met with and taught Carina (like I said, she has been taking the missionary lessons for a long time). In the letter Hermana Da Silva told me that she had been thinking about me here in Resistencia, and she had been looking through her planners from her time in this area and that she had felt impressed to send me several names and addresses that I should look up. More than anything though, she said, I HAD to go find Carina. "FIND HER HERMANA" she told me seriously, "She needs you to visit her. She is prepared."
Well, from what I knew Carina was somewhat of a "dead end" but I figured it couldn't hurt to at least go and meet her. Hermana Griffeth and I passed by several times and met her, introduced ourselves briefly, but she was always busy or on her way out or something. Finally about two weeks later we found ourselves sitting in her living room for the first time. She began to talk to us and to tell us what had happened lately. "I am not sure if I told you yet that the father of my children died. About two weeks ago."
We were shocked. We had NO idea. He was older and had been sick in the past, but it was still a bit of a shock even to the family. I was impressed that Hermana Da Silva had received revelation to visit Carina on almost the exact same day that the family was passing through this tragedy. Carina was very thankful for our visit and over the following weeks we tried to offer words of comfort and to help her and the kids in whatever ways we could. We also, slowly, started teaching them the gospel again. I changed companions and Hermana Hobbs and I started focusing even more on Carina. Hermana Hobbs, especially, has been inspired as we have prayed and planned for how we can help Carina and her family and how we can invite them to grow closer to Jesus Christ and heal from their heartache and grief.
These past few weeks we have made some great progress, and last Thursday as we sat outside the chapel we felt inspired to go visit her for the second time that day. When we went to the house we found her at home with her 4 children. We asked if we could share a message and her and the older two girls listened as we shared about the Plan of Salvation. It was a beautiful lesson. Everyone participated. Hermana Hobbs shared a sweet testimony about the resurrection and how we can all be healed and renewed through the atonement of Jesus Christ. At a moment in the middle of the lesson when we felt the spirit was especially strong we paused and invited them all to be baptised and....THEY ACCEPTED! We were ecstatic. It has been a long road for this family towards joining the church and I feel so blessed and privileged to be the one here to witness them take this important step.
I also wanted to mention how great the members are here in Barrio 4. I haven{t said enough about them yet as I have been writing home. Seriously, my companions and I are consistently impressed and feel overwhelmingly blessed by many of the amazing memebers in this ward who do so much for us. Earlier this week we invited one sister, Sandra, to come to us to one of our lessons. She works full time taking care of an elderly woman but she said she could try to rearrange her schedule so she could come. We thanked her and told her the time of our appointment and she said she had a dentist appointment but quickly decided she could postpone or reschedule it. We told her not to worry about it but she insisted. So we thanked her. Then, to our disappointment, we walked all the way to the investigator's house with Sandra that day and she wasn't there (this was during our discouraging half of the week). Sandra was so sweet about it though, she insisted it was no problem and even said she would love to come out with us again. So, this Sunday we decided we would invite her to our FHE with Carina. She said yes and then realized this meant she would have to postpone the dentist AGAIN but quickly decided she would do it. We told her not to worry about it and she just looked at us and said very earnestly "No, Hermanas, the things of the Lord are ALWAYS first for me. I can cancel the dentist. I am going with you." We couldn't argue with that.
Another member, Luis, is the Stake Mission Leader. He is, in an expression, the SALT OF THE EARTH. He comes with us to appointments at least 4 times a week and also spends a considerable amount of time out tracting with us. He lives in a very small house with a very large family and they don't have much but they are always so giving. Yesterday when we met Luis at the chapel to go out to visit one of our investigators he surprised Hermana Hobbs with a birthday cake! Today is Hermana Hobb's birthday and at what must have been considerable sacrifice for him he bought her that cake. We were so grateful. We are going to share it tomorrow in district meeting because we can't eat it all ourselves.
Anyways, today we have just been celebrating up a storm once again but this time for Hermana Hobb's birthday.... but I will have to write more about it next week because we are out of time, as usual. Just as a preview, we decided that the best way to celebrate 22 years of life would be to put it all in perspective and ponder the meaning of life and death as we visited the local cemetery. Maybe a strange choice but there is this HUGE BEAUTIFUL cemetery in our area and I have always wanted to go inside and we actually had an amazing morning walking around and looking at all the graves and talking.
More next week. I love you all!
Love,
Hermana Brooke Parker
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