Thursday, June 28, 2012

6/25/2012




Hey Everyone! Sounds like all is well! Sawyer, I like your hair! And that´s good all the animals are getting sold and things! I hope all is doing well! It will be fun to work together when I get home.  That´s cool that you all went to the temple like that. I miss the Temple, it really does help us so much.  

This last week has been really awesome for us!  Last week as we were walking back from the computer place, a lady stopped us and asked if we could teach her english, turns out she´s a member! And she came to church last week! So yesterday at church, we had 10 of our investigadors come!! And to top it off 10 of our less actives  that we are reactivating came too! 20 poeple that we were working with this week came!!! It has been such an awesome week!

To try to give it justice, this week has been super eventful, but i´m not going to go in order of when they happened, so that it´s a little easier to get the full emotional effect. haha.  But anyways, on Saturday, we ate with one of the recent converts of the other Elders, and it was the first time they´d given lunch to the Missionaries, so we show up, and they´re really poor, so we weren´t expecting much, however, we get there and they had boughten all new silverware to feed us, and make us feel comfortable, and they basically treated us like kings. It was so humbling for me to see how much that we meant to them.  Some days I really wish I could just give everything I have to these amazing people. 

After we ate with that family, we went to go contact a reference that another family gave us, and it was some really exaggerated evangelist guy, that was basically preaching to us, trying to fight, but I don´t fight with people. I don´t allow people to start fighting with us, because I start to get angry that they are saying things about our church, and it happened early on in my mission one time with Elder Taylor, and it´s a good thing I didn´t know really really good castellano yet because I was going to kill him. So I decided early on in my mission I´m not going to fight with poeple. From here on in the story I would really like everyone to try to picture this! It´s so much better, and I promise I´m not lying, this really happened two days ago! We are sitting outside in the street, with kids walking around and playing, and people playing with their kids and all that stuff, Anyways we had a pretty good lesson after he realized we weren´t going to be arguing with him, and towards the end he starts to preach to us, yelling and "Praising Jesus the almighty Lord!!!" And I start to laugh, and i´m trying so hard to not bust up, so I just asked him if he´d offer a prayer so we could leave. Anyways, he says that he´d love to. So we bow our heads, and he starts chanting really loud. All the people in the street are staring at us, i´m starting to laugh pretty uncontrolably plugging my nose with all my might so I don´t show it. But the best part was, that I opened my eyes, and with my head bowed, I start to see his legs coming towards us, and then I feel his hand start to rest upon my head, and he begins to "bless us" and i´ll give you a few of the quotes he said: (As he´s yelling very loudly) "Bless these two young preachers. Bless their blood that they might walk strong and preach your word, Bless their tongues that the things they say will touch the hearts of many. Give them strenght to keep going strong" And just a ton of things like that. He went on for like 4 minutes chanting like that! And I look over at my companion and he´s plugging his nose as hard as I am to try not to laugh. Ah it was the coolest experience ever! It was so hilarious. We had to stop walking because we couldn´t stop laughing! I´m laughing as i´m typing this it was so much fun. Ah, anyways.

To start the week off, on wednesday one of our lessons fell through, so we felt like we needed to go do a little exploring, and we found the coolest family ever. The family Almeida, and they are 5, The mom is a member less active, and she told us she´s been praying for a long time now to find the truth, and to find her way back, and here come us, just exploring and having fun! She has been waiting for so long, and just the releiving look on her face was so worth it to see. The coolest thing, was we clapped the door, they´re super poor, and the little girl came out, and said, What do you need? Kinda snotty, and we were like, oh great, another pissed off person. Because when we go to contact people during like 2-4 in the afternoon, everyone is sleeping during that time, but anyways we told her we really needed to talk with her mom, because we had felt to go to that house, she comes out, and we sit down and start talking and it was just like someone had just lifted 30 pounds off her back. It was so cool. They came to church yesterday too, and they LOVED it. All the members were so nice to each of them, and all of them started making friends instantly, and it was just such a great experience for them.  Anyways since wednesday we´ve had like 4 lessons with them already, and last night was the coolest, we had a lesson with them a few hours after church, and we watched the movie, Finding Faith in Christ, in their really really poor, dirt floor, wooden slate house, with chickens and rabbits crawling all over the floor, and the volume wasn´t super loud, so I was worried they´d get all bored and not pay attention, but before I knew it, almost all of them were tearing up, and the spirit was so strong. One of hte strongest in my mission so far, because we NEVER teach inside of houses. This was like the 5th time total, but it was so awesome. I could literally feel my testimony of Jesus Christ growing. I have never felt so much love from him in that moment, looking around at that family that had been waiting for us for so long. But anyways the movie finished, and she has a really bad asthma problem, which almost made her go to the hospital yesterday, so we offered her a blessing, and she asked that I gave her the blessing, which made me a little nervous, tiny tiny bit because I usually do the annointing of the oil, I haven´t given more than 2 or 3 actually blessing parts in Castellano, but anyways during the blessing, I could really feel the power of the priesthood. It was a really cool experience to be able to exercise my faith, and preisthood power, and It was so awesome.  It was the first true time in my mission, other than the time I gave all of you blessings, that I could really feel the power of the priesthood work through me to bless someone else that was truly in need. The spirit was extremely powerful, and when I finished the blessing, she looked up at me, bawling, and just gave me one of the most sincere thank you´s i´ve ever seen in my life.  I wish I could type better so that everyone could understand how amazing it was to see that, and how yesterday changed my life. It really changed my view of so many things, and strengthened my testimony of our Savior so much, that It really gave me so much excitement for the rest of my mission. It made me understand my true purpose as a missionary. The sad thing is that I might not be here to see them get baptized. We have transfers again tomorrow, so tomorrow night i´ll find out if i´m staying or if i´m going to another area. It´s pretty probable that I leave, because I´ve been here since January 9th, and to tell you the truth it´ll be really fun to see another area, but at the same time really difficult to leave these people. We ate lunch with Mauricio and Sergio and their whoel famiily yesterday, and it really felt like a regular sunday, eating with my own family. I can´t wait to return here and have you meet all of them. They´re so awesome.

Thanks for all the support, and all the emails, sounds like everyone is doing great! Thanks mom for all the spiritual insight, it really helps a lot.

Dad- Espero que haya leido mi email la semana pasada, porque estoy muy agradecido por lo que usted ha hecho por mi en mi vida. Acá todos hablan en Vos, pero los misioneros siempre hablan en Usted, en todo el mundo. Me imagino que ya sabía eso, pero está bien. No puedo esperar hasta que podamos venir acá con toda la familia, para que ustedes puedan conocer a las personas que enseño yo.  Ese dia será muy importante para mi. Espero que usted pueda hablar bastante! Jaja na chiste no mas, pero los Argentinos son muy locos, en serio, hablan muy raros, especialmente porque estamos muy cerca de Paraguay, y hay muchísimas personas que hablan Guatane´e y Portuguese, así que el idioma es un poco de todos!

THanks for all I love you!  

-- Elder Quynton Allsup

Posadas, Misiones

Argentina Resistencia Mission


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