March 10, 2014

wooo! Christian got baptized on saturday! and confirmed on sunday! his baptism went pretty swimmingly (heh), and the district leader and his companion had a baptism too. i believe i already mentioned this but the stake president (the brother of christian's girlfriend) baptized him and sister suarez brought cake and empanadas and soda and everything. derlis came to the baptism too and liked it; he was also able to meet the stake president there who personally invited him to stake conference this weekend (there's gonna be a special session for investigators and recent converts too)

but anyways we had three investigators in church yesterday which is the most we've had this transfer. juan and his kids came (he has three kids, but only two are older than 8). his oldest son, angel, wasnt very happy to come to church, so they ended up leaving after sacrament meeting, but juan said he liked it. we went to his house on monday i think and he apologized for not going to church and said he was sí o sí gonna come this sunday, which was pretty amazing. he had also read the assignment we left him (alma 32) and liked it a lot. we couldnt find him again until saturday night after the baptism. we got to his house at like 8 30, but he wasnt home. we clapped a few times and were about to leave when elder pacheco saw someone coming down the street on a motorcycle, and it was him. we didnt really teach much, just listened to a couple stories he had about how God has helped him in his life. at the end without even asking he started telling us what he liked about moroni 7 which we had left for him on monday, and that he had read the whole chapter. afterwards, when we got up to leave, he called all his kids and told them that they were going to go to church the next day with us, and made them all commit and shake our hands. angel did it quite reluctantly, but the other two were happy to come, and had even asked him the week before why they hadn't gone if they had committed to go, and we passed by sunday in the morning.

Derlis and lidia got back from caaguazu thursday, and we visited them saturday (lidia works in the afternoon and we had zone training on friday and weekly planning on thursday in the morning) and they said they dont want to get married til december, cus they have family working in argentina that won't be able to come up til december. they said they want to keep coming to church and meeting with us, but they didnt come to church yesterday. we're gonna visit them with the stake president next sunday, and if they go to stake conference they'll be able to meet president Agazzani too (the mission president). hopefully one of them can bring about a miracle, or derlis and lidia wont be progressing much for a good while.

besides that this week was a bit tough in terms of teaching investigators and finding new investigators. my first week here we found 25 new investigators (10 in one day) and this week we found 6. in zone training the zone leaders did a comparison between being elevator missionaries or escalator missionaries, and the elevator is pretty much what happened to us. the elevator gets a bunch of people, and takes them all up all at once, but some people get off before it gets to the top. we got a bunch of new investigators, and tried to take them all up at once but a lot got off so now we're left near the top with nothing to do. the escalator on the other hand doesnt take as much people all at once, but takes a lot of people all the way to the top over a period of time, and there's always people getting on and getting off. we're trying to be more like the escalator but it's a bit tough when elder pacheco has personally contacted the majority of the houses in our area.

but anyway transfers are this week, we find out tomorrow and change (possibly) wednesday.

pictures:

1.from left to right: President Suarez, Christian, Tamara, and sister suarez

2. picture 1 + me and elder pacheco