Prosilitismo

 May 23, 2013

Hola Everyone!

Things are continuing to go so great here! I love every bit of the mission so far. It's to always know what to write, cause as of now our days are all pretty similar while we're still in the CCM. But so I'll tell you about the one day the week that definitely different-

Saturday, like I said we get to go out into Buenos Aires and do Prosilitismo. Honestly, best thing about being in the Argentina CCM! So this Saturday we went out for our second time and it was definitely a different experience than the last week.

It was kinda gloomy weather on Saturday and was suppoe to rain later in the evening according to what our teachers told us they looked up online, but as we got to our area (my compañera and I were able to drive with everyone else this time which was nice haha) nobody was outside. Now siesta goes on here from like 12/1-4/5 o'clock, which still baffles me that people just close up shop and go home to sleep... but last week there had still been a fair amount of people out that were workers or just walking around. This week the weather was keeping everyone inside, even though it wasn't that cold, the Latinos usually get freezing if it's anywhere aroun 50 degrees outside haha.

We went to a park though to eat our lunch and then we started looking for Agustine's house that we had met last week while he was cutting trees. My compañera was holding the map this time, and lets just say we got a bit lost....or a lot haha. She somehow managed to get us over 3 blocks oustide of our area, it was super funny! So after that she made me be in charge of directing us and using the map. I guess watching dad navigate us all those times paid off at least a bit, cause I was able to keep us from getting lost anymore haha. We walked around looking for Agustine's address and talked with about 3 people that we saw outside, but never for too long. After awhile, we came to the conclusion that his address was outside of our area, so we would just have to give it to the real missionaries to find. That was a bit of a bummer, but we continued to walk around trying to find anyone that could be outside.

And then I had to go pee... like sooo bad!! And we're in the middle of neigborhoods and it's siesta, so any small shop there might be is closed down already! So we start 'clapping' at every door hoping that some one will see the desperation in my eyes and let us in to shar a message and let me use their bathroom. I think desperation must be shown by a different facial expression here, cause I was giving it all I had, and it totally didn't work. Most people to answer their doors, and the ones that did obviously weren't reading my face, otherwise they would have let me in in a heartbeat. By this point now, I was dying and was totally going to pee my pants! We walked up to a small medicine shop and the lady put her head out the window and by this point I can't even think so all my spanish had left me, so when I said something to her (thinking I was asking if she had a bathroom I could use) she came back with laxatives asking me if I needed to buy them.... hahaha definitely not what I needed. She finially understood us, just to say that no she didn't have a bathroom. It was over for me... Untill a glimps of hope came in the form of a hotel! It was a small little hotel, and was totally gated off, but I just walked right up to the huge gate that cars drive through and stood there in desperation. And what do you know, some angle opened the gate after what felt like forever waiting haha.

Anyways, after that adventure I was ready to find everyone we could! We left the hotel and it started raining, even though it was only a bit after 1... but I was just so happy and we went around knocking on evey single door! With still just as little success though haha. After an hour or so we finally met a girl names Maria that was about 16 years old. we talked to her for quite a long time and the let us all the way up to under her porch which was more than anyone else had done haha. She was so sweet and we shared a few messages with her and then gave her a Book of Mormon and she sincerely said to us that she wanted to pray about it. Best thing ever to hear someone say those words!

After we left her house, it was raining a bit more, but we just kept walking through all the streets, knocking on doors. we finally started to make our way back to Karina's house, who we had met last week and told we would come back. We got there about 3:40 and we'd said we wouldn't come till 4 so my compañera wanted to wait, but I just felt like we should go try and see if she was home. We had to be back at the bus stop on the other end of our area by 4:45. So I go up and ring her doorbell (her house was a bit nicer) and over the little intercom comes a man´s voice. Now we always usually start with 'somos misioneras', but something stoped me mid-word and I said 'so...es Karina aca?' Asking if karina was there instead. He said something we couldn't understand and then hung up. So we just waited, hoping Karina would come out. after honestly about 2-3 minutes (which is a way long time to just stand outside waiting) Karina opened the door with a big smile on her face and came and invited us in!! We talked for a bit and she said her little boy was sleeping and her husband was upstairs working or something. And then we just talked for a bit more and then we got into our lesson. We started with a prayer and I don't know how we did it other then by some serious help from the spirt, but we taught her the whole first lession in Preach my Gosple, and we were able to do it in a way that made it meaningful to her! I recited Joseph Smith's first vision (which I was amazed I could remember since I's only started memorizing it the day before). We explained the atonment which she had never heard of before. Talked all about the restoration and taught her about prayer and how much God love's her and knows everything she goes through. She asked us why if the book of mormon was written by many ancient prophets, was it called the book of 'mormon' and on this one we had to use the help of some hand signals haha, but we were able to explain that mormon was the one that abridged all the books into one. Honestly, there's no way I could say the Lord wasn't with us, cause our ability to comunicate was way beyond what our level usually permits. We challened her to read some certain sections out of the book of mormon and then to pray about it all. She asked us for the address of the church which we gave her and then we asked if she would say the closing prayer. She got a little teary eyed and explained that she nearly craied when we offered the first prayer and didn't know if she could do it. So we simply explained how we pray again and said that whatever she said the Lord would be listening. So she agreed and gave such a sincerere prayer. She had tears all down her face when she finished but was beaming at the same time. I just lvoed every bit of it and it made me so excited to share this gosple with everyone!! She offered us some coffee before we left and we just kinda chucked and said no thanks.. not quite time for the Word of Wisdom lesson haha. When we got outside it was already 4:30!! We had taught Karina for over 45 minutes! So it was a good thing we had gotten there 20 minutes early! We ran all the way to the bus stop in the rain and I stepped in so many puddles getting myself drenched, but I just couldn't stop smiling! I honestly am still just so happy about all of it, and I pray for Karina every night now that the real missionaries of the area will take the information we gave them and be able to teach her how she needs to be taught. (we explained to Karina that we wouldn't be able to come back since that was our last week in that area, but that we would send other people to her to teach her more, and she seemed a bit sad that we couldn't come back, but said that of corse some more missionaries could come)

So that was my wonderful experience for the week. Every time I think about it I can't help but think of how much the Lord helped and guided us. I'm convinced that had we told her husband we were missionaried he would have just hung up and we wouldn't have been able to meet with Karina again. And I know that we were given help with the language!

I hope everything is going so great for all of you! I miss everyone and I think of all my friends and family at home eveytime I tell stories with my compañera or district. It's funny hearing about people's lives before the mission!

I still absolutely love my compañera and we get along so well! She's willing to run, so I get her to run about 2 miles with me at actividad fisica and then we usually play futból or vollyball with all the other missionaries. Also, I went through the temple last week compltely in Spanish, which was super neat!! The language gets eaisier and easier every day, but I still have so much to learn and remember! And Argentines are definitely harder for me to understand than the other Latinos haha so I'll have to get use to their accent.

Love you all lots and hope to hear more from you!

Hermana Ashcroft

PS- I finally got your guys's Dear Elders last week!! Thanks so much!!

PSS-tell grandma thank you so much for the e-mail and that I loved it!!