Dear Family and Friends,
I am writing this email at the last possible moment of P Day because our usual cyber (argentine word for internet cafe) was FULL of preteen boys playing first person shooter games and every time we checked back to see if one of the computers had freed up, they were still all full. So, then we walked a few blocks down the road to our back-up cyber and it was closed. Then we wandered around these apartment buildings in our neighborhood until we located one that had this sign outside we always half-noticed but had never investigated that says CIBER ZEUS. We asked the first person we saw where this mysterious "Cyber Zeus" was located and they informed us it had closed years ago and no one ever took down the sign. Then this little shirtless kid wearing little orange shorts named Nico told us he would show us where another Cyber was and he walked with us for about 10 minutes through back streets and little random roads until we got HERE. But I have to say this is one of the best cybers I have been in yet. Life is always an adventure!
A similar thing happened the other day when we were out tracting. It was a kind of cloudy, gray day and nothing particularly inspiring or amazing had happened yet (lots of walking and knocking and waiting) and it was nearing lunch and we were starving. Hermana Hobbs said that all she wanted was a single empanada. Just one hot empanada and her day would be all better. We thought about that talk last conference about the man who only wanted a piece of chicken and he prayed that he could find a nickel to buy a piece of chicken and he found it! We decided it couldn´t hurt to try it out and said a little prayer that we could find a place that sold empanadas. Then we started walking, we were in a very residential zone, just dirt roads and houses but I asked a woman at a little corner kiosk (people run these little kiosks that sell gum and cigarettes and candy and stuff out of their houses) and she said "go talk to those kids over there" and she gestured to a gaggle of kids sitting in the walkway on the second floor of an apartment building. We shrugged and decided to try it, so we walked over and I yelled up to them "hey do you sell empanadas?" they nodded and 10 minutes later we had 6 hot empanadas in our hands (turned out they only sold them by the half dozen, so we got more than we bargained for). These are just the types of things I love about being in Argentina. This would never happen back home.
Anyways I have a little story for you this week. Lately, as a zone, we have been trying harder to get our church attendance up because we have been greatly lacking lately. So, Hermana Hobbs and I worked really hard especially Friday and Saturday to do everything we could to get our investigators to church. We taught lessons on the importance of Sabbath day observance and church attendance, we promised specific and individualized blessings, we arranged for members to pass by, we wrote letters and little notes reminding people and inviting them just in case we didn´t catch them in their house. We made reminder phone calls. We took a mother and several of her kids to go meet one of our investigators and her kids so they would feel more comfortable coming to church. We even had a special companionship fast because we realized that church attendance this week would effect whether or not several baptism would come through later on in the month and whether or not many of our investigators would progress.
Saturday night we went to bed feeling really good. We felt like we had really done our part this week and we told our district leader excitedly on the phone that we were expecting at the very least 5 in the chapel the next day. Sunday morning we woke up early and went to pass by for several investigators and less-actives to get them up and to walk with some of them to the chapel. We did everything we possibly knew how and...
In the end, not one person we passed by for came. So, we kept up our hopes that someone else had made it to church with a member or even by themselves and we raced to the chapel to see.
We finally walked into the chapel, sweating and tired and hungry, and we sat down on our bench and glanced around. No one. I am not going to pretend we weren´t a little discouraged in that moment. I almost felt like crying.
But, we picked up our hymn books and sang. A few minutes later Hermana Hobbs caught my attention and gestured a few rows back. "Ramona´s here with Jimena!" she whispered. We finally noticed that a mother and her 9 year old daughter who hadn´t been to church in years and who we had invited to come back that week were there. And then Marcela, a recent convert who quickly slipped into inactivity after her baptism, came through the doors holding her toddler son and sat next to us! She was another one we had visited and invited back to church the day before.
It wasn´t what we expected. But I can´t even describe how happy we felt when, after thinking that not one person arrived despite all our best efforts, we saw these two women in the chapel. We still had to answer with ZERO when our district leader asked how many investigators we had in church that day but we tried not to let that get us too discouraged. Sometimes in the mission it is a bit of a ridiculous numbers game but I know and God knows that these women count too.
Anyways I´ll admit it was a blow at first to have done everything we did and for hardly anything to come of it. At first I wasn´t sure how to think about what happened and it caused me to ponder a lot about faith and doubt and disappointment. Sometimes it is easier to doubt and to only put in 75% and never expect too much, then you won´t feel as devastated as we did this Sunday. But as we have had a few days to process it we have had some great conversations and moments in personal and companionship study.
Hermana Hobbs pointed out that we had been praying and fasting specifically that we could have more faith. More faith that there are people who are prepared to hear the gospel. More faith that the Lord would provide. More faith that baptisms are possible here in Barrio 4. And in some unexpected ways what happened on Sunday was an answer to our prayers. I know that, like it says in Ether, miracles happen only after the trial of our faith. "I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith." It would have hardly been a trial of our faith if things worked out immediately like we expected them to. I was reminded also of the scripture in Isaiah which reads: "Then I said, I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for naught, and in vain: yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God."
The plan now is to continue working as hard as we can to improve our church attendance and we know that eventually the blessings will come.
I hope all is well at home. The heat should let up here in about a month. I have never been so excited about winter.
All my love,
Hermana Brooke Parker
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