Elder Morley Haley Santa Fe Argentina Mission: Holy fantastic week! WooHoo!

Yeah. This week was a good one. It was full of blessings and good experiences. I’ll try to get all the juicy info in this weeks letter. The good news is that we found out that the word processor that Elder Duval left behind actually works, so this next weeks email is going to be a good one too.

So yeah.

Tuesday.

Sadly, in the morning, we were stuck running around trying to get things figured out for the Old and New Penches. We had to drop the keys of the old pench off, but we still didn’t get energy (power) for our new pench. Luckily, the ZLs have been taking good care of us. Then, in the afternoon, we had a lot of really good plans all set up. We were walking all over the place, but we are pretty well used to that by now. But we shared a little bit of time with a guy named Cristian Santa Cruz, a member who needs some help get back to the church. Other than that, we were just talking to people in the streets and finding new people to teach. We ended up finding quite a few good contacts and hope to meet with them in the future.

Wednesday.

In the morning, not too much happened for us, but we were able to find and talk with a family that has been less active for a while now. They are a family of 5, the Mom and Dad, a son who is 13, a daughter who has 7, about to turn 8(!!) and a new baby boy of 4 months. They are really funny and are also trying to reactivate themselves to the church. We had a really fun time sharing stories, I was able to share pictures of my family, and in the end, ended with a scripture and prayer. We hope to stay in contact with them and have more times like that. In the afternoon, we worked in one of the areas that we haven’t worked too much in in the past, but after the choque de fuerza last week, we have a lot of good contacts and other people to visit. We also made contact with a menos activo guy who used to be a really great and active member, but, after moving, went inactive for a few years. But, now, he wants to come back, and we are more than ready to help him do that. His name is Juan Diaz, and even though he hasn’t attended church for a while, he told us that he has read the Book of Mormon 2 times and the book of Principle of the Gospel book 3 times. So really, the only problem that he has is just coming to church. He was also divorced from his wife and is now married to a lady who isn’t a member, but has interest in the church and they want to meet with us to get the things all figured out on Sunday, and maybe baptism for her.

Thursday.

On Thursday, we were on divisions with the ZLs and I was with Elder Peña in his area. We had a really good day, lots of walking and talking in the streets, but ended up teaching a really good lesson to a kid named Ariel who has a lot of potential. We also found a really cool family that has a lot of interest, or at least they liked talking to a good looking American and an even better looking Mexican for a little bit. But, while with Elder Peña, I was able to learn a lot about how missionary work gets done. A lot of times, we just have to open our mouths. This week, I learned that normally, when poeple don’t want to talk to the wierd Mormon missionaries, it’s just because they haven’t talked to us before, but have heard from a lot of other people about us. But when we talk to them and just have a normal conversation, they really seem to open up when they find out that we are actually not that different from everyone else. So yeah, just opening my mouth and having a normal conversation with people before trying to say anything about God or being Missionaries, because if you open the conversation with that, everyone is going to run away or slam the door shut. We had all sorts of people to talk to. Most of whom were contacts and future investigators. We were able to talk to almost all of them and set up citas for the next two nights. We also taught the first lesson to a guy named Facundo right outside his home and he was really interested. Also, talked to one lady, who at first didn’t want anything to do with us, but when we started talking to her about our message, she was really interested and wanted us to come back later. We will be happy to do so!!

Friday.

Yeah. Friday was a freaking bomb day. We had plans to meet with the Juan Diaz guy, but he had to cancel last minute. So we talked to a lady that Elder Robinson and Elder Sandler had talked to the day before. Her name is Graciela, but she told us that we can call her Natacha, because everyone else does. She is a really sweet old lady who has a lot to say, but was also very interested in listening to us and what we had to say. We taught her the First Lesson and had a really good discussion. She understood a lot about it, especially about the Book of Mormon. Actually, when we offered to give her one and invited her to read it, she told us that her son had one packed away somewhere in her home. But, she took the one we had until she found the other one, and was more than happy to commit to reading it. WooHoo! We also invited her to pray and ask if what we taught was true and asked her that if she received an answer and knew that what we taught was true, if she would be baptized on the 4th of August. She was surprised but said that the 4th is her mothers birthday. She didn’t exactly agree to ba baptized yet, but did say that she would pray. But how cool would that be?? We also found a really good family named the family Suarez. They are a pretty big family, but we were only able to talk to the Mom, Adrea, and two of her sons that are living with her. Rodrigo has 15 years, and Belen has 13 years. They are all really cool and we had a good time talking with them and setting another lesson up with them. Rodrigo also promised to come to church with us, so we made plans to go and look for him before chruch.

Saturday.

In the morning, we had to run some errands like going to the doctor because Elder Robinson was bit by Facundos dog. It turns out that he was fine, mostly because the dog was the size of his foot, but it is mission rules to get it checked out, just in case. So we were running all over the place trying to take some money out for a few bills that needed to be paid. But, we ended up having a really great lunch with Gabe and had a good time with him. He has been praying to know if God really exists, but was honest when he told us that he hasn’t received an answer yet because he hasn’t been praying enough or with enough effort. It’s a good lesson for me to see that prayer is more than just saying words. It’s meant to be heartfelt and more than just saying things to say them. We had all sorts of plans, but just about all of them fell through, but we still were able to talk to a lot of people and set more citas up for the future.

Sunday was a really good way to end the week. Rodrigo came to church with us and Gabe came on his own. We were glad to hear that they ended up having a really good time. Rodrigo is really interested and we have plans this week to go back and teach all of their family and talking to them about their baptisms. They are a realy good family that will be blessed a lot by the gospel. In the afternoon, we were all over our area and ended visiting a lot of members and setting up some noches de hogar.

So yeah. Basically, this week was really good. I know that I don’t really get a lot of good spiritual experiences in these emails, but I’m trying to share some of the biggest things that happened. I will work on more spiritual content too!

Oh! We finally got light today!! After two weeks in our pench, we finally got some electricity running. But now, we have to get our water heater fixed. But, as long as we are working hard, everything will work out well.

Love you all

Ciao

Elder Haley