Libertador General San Martin (Ledesma), Salta - March 3, 2014

Hello Family!
Happy Carnaval! Still not quite entirely sure why it´s okay to worship
Satan here as a national holiday, but more of that later. As a
consequence of carnaval, all the good cyber cafes are closed, so we´re
in this place. Might be a little shorter than usual.
Anyway, this week was a little different in the sense that Elder
Ballard challenged every missionary to contact ten people every day.
It´s not easy. You find a lot more people that just want to reject
you, but for every person that does that, there´s another really great
person close by! We found a ton of great people this week! Including a
family that lives around the corner from us. They listened to the
missionaries a LONG time ago (you can tell because they talk about the
sisters and there haven´t been sisters here for 20 years). Even so,
they´re always super excited to listen to us and all focus in when we
talk. It´s pretty great.
Faith has been an interesting concept lately. It´s something we´re
trying to improve in the district. Faith to get into doors, faith to
find people, faith to reach goals. It´s interesting, but when you
really believe that you can do something and put in all the effort you
can, insisting and bearing testimony a few times more even though they
say NO very firmly, it´s great to see how many places you can get
into!
Something that hit me in our branch council this week was the urgency
of this work. We´ve been hearing a lot about that lately, but our
branch president helped us realize, why is it so urgent? No one knows
when the second coming will be, but what other reason could there be
that this work is so urgent. It was one of the first times in my life
when I considered just how close the return of the Savior could be,
and, as a consequence, just how important it is to share the gospel
NOW. We´ve talked to a couple families to challenge them to have a
family missionary council. That was another fun Elder Ballard idea.
We watched Legacy during one of the lunches this week. Kinda
interesting to see the part where the dad´s doing missionarywork.
Little bit different. Nowadays we can give out copies of the Book of
Mormon for free, we have cell phones to call and invite people to
whatever, we can e-mail our families, we can travel in planes. Not to
mention that the filmography in today´s world is much better than when
Legacy was filmed. The Lord is hastening his work!
We knocked on a super rich person´s house. Their doorbell had a
protective case. There was a winding stone path leading from the gate
to the door. A very cute golden retriever was the only one to answer.
He came walking in a type of zig-zag way on the path, not wanting to
walk on the grass. It made me laugh. Dogs like that are very rare in
Argentina. Just figured that was worth sharing.
One of the highlights of my week was talking to a gothic lookin´ guy.
We went to contact an investigator and his roommate(?) answered. I was
kinda just thinking that we´d move on to the next plan, but we decided
to make the contact. As we asked about his religious beliefs, he told
us that he believed in God, but was more a worshipper of "his Lord" -
Saint Death. I always see those shrines in the street, but I´ve never
talked to a follower. Saint Death is basically the Grim Reaper and
some Argentines have decided that he should be worshipped like a
catholic saint, like any other virgin or crazy dead saint. He talked
about how he made pacts with Saint Death to get good grades, have
friends, avoid robbers, etc. All he had to do was pray to him, take
flowers to the shrine, and light candles near the statues. It was
kinda creepy, but we used it as a way to talk about covenants and set
a return appointment.
Families are just really cool. We found a few this week. One kid named
Lazarus contacted US in the street. That was fun. He invited us to
talk to his family, but they were busy. We went back the next day to
find out that Lazarus wasn´t even their kid and didn´t live in the
house he had told us. He was just a friend of their son. They were a
little reluctantin the beginning, but we got in and wrangled up all
the family. Lessons are so much more powerful when all the family is
there! I know that God´s plan is centered on them, and that as we
strive to live the gospel in our families and share it with other
families around us, we´ll have more joy than by doing any other thing.
Anyway, I love all you guys and I hope you have a great week!
Landon