What it is. What’s up?
So hey, I’m totally jealous of you guys. Another year of
missing Tahoe is kind of lame. but whatever, I’m serving the lord in Argentina,
and how lucky am I to have a dad that gets to visit the country of my mission
every once in a while.
Your package totally showed up when you said it was going
to come, because it just so happened that some lady missionaries from my
district where heading to Santa Fe the same day and were able to bring the
package the same day it arrived. Packages are really some of the greatest temporal gifts of
the mission. People here do not like anything spicy or sour at all, really spicy
or sour doesn’t exist here, but it’s fun to pull out a family size bag of sour
patch kids and share them with the homies here in Argentina, and watch their
reactions. The spinners were a great touch as well.
Well, we just had transfers and I’m still here with Elder Hopkins,
he’ll be the first companion I’ve had for more than 2 transfers. Luckily we are
getting along great.
I did get to take my own road trip the other day, I told you
before that there was a family moving to Rafaela into our branch. Well they
moved to the branch boundaries but they live in another little town an hour
away. And we took a cab with the branch president over to go find them. Road
trips are great with President Acosta because in mid conversation with this
guy, he gets distracted with whatever type of animal he sees out the window.
" Wow! Check out those cows." It kind of reminded me of that scene in 'Oh Brother Where Art Thou' when the bank robber is being chased by
the cops and gets distracted by the cows because he hates cows more than
coppers. I swear though that most of animals that he pointed out weren’t even
the correct animal due to his lack of vision, because he really liked the cute
and furry pigs that we passed as well.
We eventually found this family and turns out the father and
son are baptized members and the missionaries in Santa Fe were teaching the mom
and the rest of the family of 8. They are incredible, they read the scriptures
and pray as a family every night and every Monday have family home evenings. And
apparently they moved here in February and didn’t know how to get to church for
the past 4 months. So they have been doing everything on their own, as well as
inviting their neighbors over to read the scriptures with them. The only reason
the mom was never baptized was because they never got married but have a date
to be married this next month. But it was incredible how excited this family
was to see us, but not only so that we can teach them, but that we can teach
their neighbors. The mom told us that she has many neighbors who all have
personal issues going on in their life, that need to hear the restored gospel,
but she felt that she could not teach as well as the missionaries could. So I was
very impressed by her desire for her personal family’s salvation, and their
desire to help others receive the gospel.
And personally I got very emotional, and I have a hard time
sharing some of my personal feelings, but I really do feel bad a times due to my
lack of motivation to really put all of my strength into the work. I feel like
I don’t have the same strength and energy that I used to have, due to letting
my anger take over myself. And I’m not saying that I have anger issues, but I get
tired of the constant excuses of why people can’t follow Christ sometimes. And
it got to me for some time, and has caused me to go into some kind of
missionary routine, where I’m obedient to the mission rules, to just be obedient, and not for a purpose. But when I showed up at this family's home, I was really
touched and reminded of how things really work, how service works, how love
works. when we arrived at this town. It’s called Cluccejas, and we had to get
out of the car because there are no roads that lead to their home, and I was in
my suit because it was right after church, and I was kind of getting tired and
sweating in the heat, and from the distance we see their home and it’s very
small, made of metal and whatever materials. They are very poor, but showed
such a love and respect for us when we showed up at their home. They have maybe
four chairs in their home, and gave us all three because there were three of us.
What a respect and love they showed for us. Everyone sat around on the ground
outside to listen to what we had to say. I saw the appreciation and gratitude
this family had and all my selfish thoughts went away and I thought wow, how
lame am I to get tired of this. And I was reminded of my personal testimony and
regained that energy to work hard and with purpose, and I thank god this family
for reminding me.
I love you guys, I really do and hope you have the greatest
of weeks.
Elder Greene
Found this pic on a missionary blog for Santa Fe.
There’s always homeless people that just sell random crap in
the street and I’m kind of a soft one so I bought some crappy incense candles
for studies
My companion offered to cut onions up in an investigators
home
These spikey trees are everywhere and I’m always scared I’m going
to accidently run into one day
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