First off I wanted to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my wonderful mom!! I hope you have a wonderful birthday. I love you lots!! Also a nice Happy Aniversary to my wonderful sister and brother-in-law! A wonderful 3 years a marriage. 3 years right? wow how time flys! and A happy first week of school to everyone starting school! :) YOu are probably wondering why I didnt write yesterday well yesterday was another holiday in Argentina. What holiday you may ask? i have literally no idea. they always have random holidays. i think it might have been the day that some saint that they worship died or something. So since it was a holiday our pres wanted us to work yesterday since families should be home. So we have p-day today instead!
Well I had my first baptism this past saturday of Jorge Ramirez. I think I mentioned him last week in my email. Jorge was a reference of our zone leaders. He works near their apartment as security during the night. one day they started talking to him and gave him a pamphlet to read. Well it turns out that he would read the pamphlets during the night at work and that his girlfriend was baptized when she was 15 and she is 26 now but she hasnt gone to church for a long long time. Well we started teaching him and they got married this past friday and he was baptized on saturday. It is such an awesome experience to witness the change in a person as they learn of the truthfulness of the gospel. On saturday and we were getting things ready for the baptism we went to the church to start filling up the baptism font and for some reason the water wasnt working. We couldnt figure out how to do it. AHh!! so we ended up getting a hose from outside and putting it through the window and filling up the font with the hose. Yes you can imagine the water was freezing and the weather here is still coldish. We were just glad that it was a man being baptized and not a girl because if it were a girl she would probably kill us. well someone took out the hose super early so the font wasnt filled up all the way. so when it was time for Jorge to be baptized he had to be dunked 3 times because he didnt make it under all the way. My comp and I were scared that after he was going to be super annoyed. But after the baptism we talked to him and he had a huge smile on his face and said that he was super happy. He shared his testimony at the baptism and it was super simple but so sweet to hear the testimony of a recently baptized convert! It is so sweet because we recieve text messages from either him or his wife everyday just to say hi. and yesterday he went out with us for lessons and to introduce us to some of his friends and neighbors and he would share his testimony. How sweet huh? I think the converts are the best members to bring to lessons with us! I feel so happy to have finally witnessed my first baptism. I finally can see some success in the work we are doing! I think that sometimes that is the hardest part about missionary work is that we are working hard everyday talking to people and sharing the gospel and most of the time the things we are doing we never see the success of it. or nothing happens till way farther in the future. You have to weed through A LOT a people to find those people who are chosen at this time to accept the gospel. We are still working with Francisco who I talked about before. He was suppose to get baptized this saturday but due to some pills that he is taking to recover from his addiction/illness he always seems to feel dissy (sp?) and hasnt gone to church these past 2 sundays so he cant be baptized this saturday. We are hoping the next week. but we will see. We are praying for him that he can get better and truly have a desire to be baptized and not just because of his family who are already members.
Things are well. My spanish continues to improve more and more everyday... i think... haha. sometimes i get super down and frustrated with the spanish but then i just have to sit back and realize how much i have learned and how much i do understand when before my mission i didnt know anything! Hope you all have a wonderful week!! until next week... :) love you lots!
-Hermana Van Wag
-picture from the baptism!! for some reason my stupid camera that i bought here takes super blurry pictures. i dont know how to change it! how frustrating!!
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