Heyyy guysss! Guess what? Only one more P day after this and then I get to see your beautiful faces!!! wow. I can´t believe Christmas is so soon. I´m so excited:)
So this week has been quite exhausting. Both Physically and emotionally. AND SPIRITUALLY. We´ve been so busy with all sorts of activities and other stuff and lots of different things for singing so we´ve had to practice a lot. It´s funny I swear nobody here knows how to sing so they think that my companion and I have voices of angels. It´s like.. for real? are you high? haha but it`s a good confidence booster! We had our ward Christmas dinner this week and us missionaries in the ward sang silent night and everyone died they were super impressed. So they asked us to do another song in sacrament this next sunday haha. And then there was a baptism of a little girl in our ward so my comp and I sang a children´s hymn for that and everyone cried... again. That´s what´s up lol.
But yeah, we had lots of activities. We had that Christmas dinner, a baptism, and a Missionary Family Home Evening Night where the members could bring friends that aren´t members and have a fun night of games and a good message and all that. So we had to plan that and it ended up being really really fun! Oh and the other day, we had lunch at a member´s house and he had a guitar and he let me play it for awhile and it made me miss my guitar sooo bad. It was so much fun to play again! Unfortunately nobody really has guitars here so that was like my only chance... but it was awesome!
And then here´s something interesting... My comp and I were talking the other day about how weird it is that this mission has so many "mission specific" rules that are really strict and I asked my comp why.. and she told me that at one conference they had the president was talking about the rules and everything and he told the missionaries that here in Uruguay is one of thee hardest missions in the world because there is so much iniquity here. (I HAD NO IDEA) But now I see it... there´s lots of problems that keep the people from getting baptized that they can´t overcome. But anyways, because of that, that is why they have so many strict rules here. Because they need the most obedient missionaries here in this missionary. I thought that was interesting... I´m just glad that obedience has never been an issue for me! I´m too big of a wuss to break rules lol.
And now... Here´s the hard part of the week. So like I said last week, we were planning on the baptism of Adriana! She was so excited and totally ready. We had a family home evening night on Thursday with her at a members house and she couldn´t stop talking about her baptism, and then she had her baptismal interview on friday and passed it and everything, and then Saturday morning we went to the church to start filling the font and setting everything up, and spent all morning preparing everything, and then after we finished lunch we received a text from her saying she couldn´t do it today. She didn´t feel ready and she felt depressed and couldn´t get out of bed. We sat there in shock for a few minutes and then decided to pray. Then we went straight over to her house to talked to her. We did everything that we possibly could to bare testimony of the importance of that and to cheer her up and make her feel ready for the baptism, but at the same time, we knew that she has her own agency and we can´t mess with that. So after talking to her for awhile we told her we would still come to pick her up at the same time and if she was ready we could still do it. So we went back to her house that night and nothing had changed. She didn´t want to do it. So we spent a long day with a lot of tears and praying. It was reeeaaallly really hard. Definitely the hardest day of the mission so far because it broke my heart because SHE KNOWS THE TRUTH. We still had the other baptism to go to though so we did that. And although the whole day was really hard, we realized that it was a big test for us and I think I grew more and learned more in that day than I have in the whole mission so far. We spent the whole day asking each other, if Jesus were in our shoes, what would he do? So we were comforted to know that we did everything that we possibly could. And now looking back, it makes me think of that "footprints in the sand" poem. How the man looked back at his life and saw only one pair of footprints at the hardest times in his life, but then the Lord told him that´s when he carried him. I know that to be true and that the Lord carried me and helped me through that day. After the baptism on saturday, the two counselors from the bishopric were there and they asked us if we wanted a priesthood blessing. So we got that, and even though it made me miss my papa like craaaazy, it was really comforting. And reassurance that the Lord is pleased with my work. And then on the bright side, we went to visit Adriana yesterday and she is all excited and promising that she will get baptized this coming saturday. With her emotional issues, who knows... but if she ends up actually feeling well and prepared for it this Saturday then it will be a miracle! I have faith for sure!
Anyways, like I seem to always be saying, if we are patient through our trials the lord WILL give us success and the blessings that we need! I love you guys so much. Thanks for your constant support and prayers and examples.
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