Genealogy and Evil Spirits

9/23/13 

Hello everybody!

Well, I got my first bit of sun this week!  I was stoked cause it wasn’t just completely freezing the whole time.  We had intercambios this week and biked and helped a guy reroof his house.  I had broke the bike the week before and so we got the pedals replaced but when they got the new pedals they were for a child’s bike so I felt like a clown as my feet went around hundreds of times before my wheel went around once.  But it wasn’t that bad and I got a good workout from it, right?  My bike seat still has a mind of its own so I’m getting some ripped legs standing the whole time while we are biking.  We helped him pull off all this tar and wood and then we sat on the last patch of open area on the roof and taught him a quick lesson.  After that we went to this way cute 99-year-old grandmas and talked to her and her daughter wanted help with what else but Genealogy!  Haha My class with Sarah helped a little bit, but it is like explaining the newest IPhone to a 100 year old.  They don’t really get how to use it and so you have to explain it a bunch, and then I didn’t REALLY know what I was doing, kinda guesswork, and then to make it more complicated it was all in Spanish.  So it wasn’t that successful but we did do a bit of work there.  After that she made us the dankiest chocolate milk with croissants and Dulce de Leche (Kinda like Caramel)  

After that we had Zone Conference and he had to give a presentation in Spanish that we didn’t practice for.  It ended up not being a presentation but a practice investigator with the President as our investigator in front of everyone.  We went up there and my comp shared his story and bore his testimony and then I did the exact same thing and then after that I was feeling it so I invited him to be baptized and then he asked me "what’s baptism?" and then I didn’t know what to say and I thought to myself "well... there goes this lesson..." but then my comp recovered it pretty good and we kept on going.  When I sat down everybody was giving me thumbs up and saying good job to me and all that stuff and when the APs asked for critics of the lesson and nobody said anything and then on top of that the President got up and said that he thought that we were working with the Spirit and that I asked the right question at the right time and that he was feeling it too.  And then after that we were doing some more practices and I described to a girl how we know that God loves our families and us and then after she told everyone in the review that she loved it and was blown away. Haha some much needed confidence booster cause 99 percent of the time I feel like I am not saying the right thing at all.  So after that I made more of an effort to talk to the members and the families that we visit and I finally felt like I can kinda start to be myself and talk to people again.  I’m stoked for when I can finally talk to people and make real relationships.

On Saturday we had a pretty relaxed day.  We helped one of our investigator families with work.  We helped them make these sweet women’s dress jackets and then we went to lunch, which was some real good meat, bread, and potatoes.  And then over to the church for the first baptism in the field! Woo!  It was an older woman by the name of Maribel.  She was an investigator for like 4 months but I think that it is kinda better that way, instead of them getting baptized and not be fully dedicated, ya know?  But her family is super awesome and nice and everything went perfect.  Neyra baptized her and I just sat next to some of our investigators. She looked super happy and I was stoked about the whole thing...

... Until my companion told me after that I had to confirm her the next day, during sacrament, in Spanish.  I would have been all right with it but we also had another baptism the next day and for some reason they have the world’s longest most complicated names. We showed up to church and I was dang nervous and then the Bishop asked me if I could bless the bread too.  But everything turned out great. And I was stoked about it.  I had my first baptism this week!  She was a little 10-year-old girl named Sol Cena.  I was worried that it would be hard to lift her up with only one arm but she was light as a feather haha.  It was just overall a great Sunday.

Crazy experience of the week.  We were at a member’s house and I knew that we were going to give a house blessing but I didn’t know why.  So we were eating and talking and having a normal conversation but I was kind of zoning in and out cause I couldn’t really understand all of it and then I heard something about Satan, and the devil, and evil spirits so my ears perked up and they had us come over to bless their house because they just moved in and they think that there are some evil spirits hanging out in their house.  They had 3 experiences from what I understood.  1.) They were sitting in the kitchen and their curtains started moving.  2.) The grandma was ironing and then she turned around and the cord was unplugged and way far away from the wall and 3.) They have a shelf and everything started flying off.  So they kept on talking and we found out that their neighbor underneath them sacrifices animals in her religion. So we went to go give a house blessing and my companion made me give it.  When I asked if I could give it in English he told me I need to in Spanish.  Hopefully I didn’t make the situation worse, right?

Also no crazy dog stories this week.  Just the usual stuff. 

Here is some crazy stuff about Argentina.  The buses will leave you if you aren’t fast enough pulling out your card to get on. haha It’s pretty sad but a little bit funny to see the look on the other Elder’s faces when the bus shuts the doors and leaves them.   Also the more I watch, the more I see 3 people on bikes.  Whether street bikes or motorcycles the Argentines are loving squeezing 3 people on a bike and going for it.

I love you guys. Best of luck out there.

Love

Andy