Date
March 12, 2015
Area
CCM Argentina
Companion
Hermana Bringhurst
This Week
This week was great, but the crowning moments - Saturday and Sunday. By. Far.
Saturday we proselyted, and it was just hard. Really hot, really empty-everyone was sleeping. After about 3 hours we both started getting pretty nauseous and tired, so we decided to head for this park and got lost. When we started to turn around, we *literally* just about ran into this head sticking out a window. So what did we do? We started talking. And we taught her for an hour, her name was Ethelvina and she was SO prepared to hear our message. She had questions, her own experiences to share about how God has answered her prayers, about how she knew she would see her son who died again. Oh so great!! We bore testimony, taught the Plan of Salvation and the Restoration, gave her a BoM. And as she grabbed the BoM, she said "This is the word of God" and I just wanted to shout. YES. YES IT IS. But anyway. We had to run catch our bus, so we finished, got her reference and gave it to the missionaries in the area. I hope she keeps taking the lessons! We had one more experience like that one, and it was so great!
And then Sunday. We're sitting in a fireside with this guy Gustavo Mernies, he's giving a great devotional - (half in Spanish half in English, just like all my thoughts now a days), and at one point he says "I grew up in Uruguay" and a little thought came to mind "Huh, I wonder if he knew Dad" and he kept talking and the timeline of when he was investigating the Church and when Dad was serving his mission kept lining up perfectly.
So after the fireside (we did our musical number) I went up and shook his hand, and said that my dad had served in Uruguay, and he told me a little bit, and I asked "Do you know Julio Piccardo?" and he said "Yeah, he lives here in BA" and I said "Yes, he's a friend of our family" and Hno Mernies double took, looked at my nametag and about started to cry, just so excited. And he didn't get many words out, but all he got was "I know your dad!"
And so we took a picture, he said he'd Facebook it to Dad, and I'm crying, missionaries in the room are in shock, and he just said some really great things about Dad as a missionary - really great to hear. From Dad's email it looks like you baptized his dad? Oh so cool. The world is really so small in the Church. Such a tender mercy. Also there's a new North American sister who's name is Anderson, so all the Latinos think we're sisters. Not quite...So yeah, that's it for all the cool things of this week!
In my Spanish BoM study I read Alma 32 this morning (and 5 other chapters, but this one really stuck out to me) and I love how it talks about the poor and humble of heart. I really saw that this week, and how that had prepared Ethelvina and this girl Alejandra we taught-they lived in very poor circumstances, but the Lord had used those to prepare them to hear the message! It's so beautiful, and I'm so excited to continue to teach His people here and in Paraguay!
Love you all!
Hermana Andreasen