11.23.2010

Dear Everyone,

Well, here I am. Sorry that I didn’t write yesterday. The President of Argentina declared a holiday. No one knows what the holiday was, but that’s okay.

This last week was rather hectic. Elder Robles left for a city near Resistencia. My new companion is Elder Taylor. He's from a tiny town in Illinois where his family were the only members. He is 6’4”, making him about average for my companions. He is the fifth of nine children, and likes to play basketball and to pitch.

The first couple of days this week we had little success, and then had to push really hard to teach the lessons that we needed to in order to finish the week strong. It all worked out in one of the Lord’s infinite mercies and we had 10 investigators in church!! It was really exciting. This week we had the primary presentation. I honestly thought it was a disaster, but everyone else seemed to think that it was very spiritual. I think that is was a really good thing for the investigators to see.

A 20 year old kid named Orlando who is going to get baptized on Saturday came with his whole family for the first time. We also had Aurora, the mom of one of the teenagers that got baptized last transfer, and two of her other sons that came. Aurora wants to get baptized next week. I wasn’t really too sure about how much actual desire she had, but I looked over at her during the meeting and there were tears running down her cheeks. It made me feel really grateful to my Father in Heaven that we have so many people to teach.

I’m glad that the new stake president is focusing on the youth and on missionary work. Sometimes, people think way to much when they have to give a reference to the missionaries. Finding new investigators is your responsibility. It is not that of the missionaries. Members are entitled to receive revelation when they give references. Let me explain with a story.

Last week, we got a reference from a member in our ward that he thought was really good. He said that the lady was literally looking for a new church. She lived really far away from where we usually work, so we had to wait a few days to be able to stop by. When we went to contact her, she flat-out turned us down and said that she belonged to ‘Dios es Amor,’ a local congregation.

My comp and I knew that if the Spirit had told that member to send us to that neighborhood, it had to be for a reason. We started knocking the doors on her block. Two houses down, we ran into Mili, a woman who six months ago had read the book of Mormon and been converted to the restored gospel. She’d attended church with her husband, but in the end had fallen away when her husband changed work and it became difficult to attend church on Sundays. We had a very pleasant lesson, and she committed to be baptized in December.

The person to whom our member friend had sent us was not prepared for our message, but the spirit had inspired him to send us to the closest person that he knew. Do not be afraid to give the names of your friends to the missionaries. When you begin to do so, the Spirit will take over and the ward will begin to have much more success.

Oh, Thanksgiving. I feel more grateful now than I ever have in my life, but it’s kind of hard to express why. I’m thankful that despite my own shortcomings, the Lord has seen fit to bless me with my calling, shape me into something so much more desirable than what I was, show me that I am nothing, and how with His help I can do anything. I’m gratefully for the incredible people that the Lord has given me to teach, and for the best family in the entire world. I’m also really grateful that someone blinded Melissa to of all of my weaknesses and tricked her into sticking with me. I feel like my entire life is perfect and I have everything that I ever wanted.

Thanks so much for everything.

Love,

Elder Rasband