Pruebas (Trials)

Hello family and friends!

Wow I can’t believe it’s March already. Elementary School started here in Argentina today, so most of the tourists have already left for their houses and Santa Teresita is a much different place! News about the earthquake in Chile here is huge. I didn’t feel anything here (I think it happened in the middle of the night), but Elder Adair said he woke up at 3 in the morning when it supposedly happened because he felt like someone was shaking his bed. Our Branch President is in Chile right now, and we got the news Sunday that everything is ok with him. Several missionaries in my zone are from Chile and some of them still haven’t heard from their families. There are definitely a lot of people who are in need of our prayers and faith right now.

It has been a pretty trying week for Elder Adair and I. This Wednesday we had our Zone conference in La Plata. We woke up at 2:45 in the morning to go wait out on the highway for the Convoy that was going to take all of us missionaries from the coast on the 4 hour ride to La Plata. The Convoy was very crowded, and I felt sick the whole ride. We had a great conference and got to listen to the testimonies of several recent converts and hear from Pres. y Sis. Asay, and the Assistants. That night on the way home, Elder Adair and I split up to do an intercambio with our District Leader so he could do our baptism interview with Natividad. I stayed in Dolores with Elder Soto and had my first opportunity acting as a Senor companion... because he is a mini missionary and has only been in the mission for 2 weeks, and is a recent convert of about 15 months. He hardly knows the area and we were very blessed to find the pension and get some sleep after a VERY long day.

The next day, Elder Adair and Elder Montalvo were planning to do the baptism interview and come back to Dolores. Luckily Elder Soto and I had a service project in the morning followed by lunch with a member, very easy. To make a long story short our companions missed the bus and they told us the next bus they could take wouldn’t get to Dolores until 10:30. Elder Soto and I spent the rest of the day wandering around trying to find their teaching appointments (it doesn’t help when almost all the streets change names 3 different times throughout the city.) We did have some success and were able to find a 20 year old girl in the house of one of their investigators who seemed really interested! Our companions finally got to Dolores at around 11 o clock to find out the Baptism interview never happened because Natividad had a talk with her boyfriend and said she couldn’t get baptized anymore. On top of that, Elder Adair and I were lucky enough to get to sleep on the hard tile floor in their pension that night.

The next day Elder Adair and I took the 2 and a half hour bus ride back to our area to find out that our bikes had been stolen from the Bus Terminal. (Perfect timing when I had JUST received the bike pump in your package) Apparently he and Elder Montalvo were in a hurry the night before and decided it would be ok to lock up the bikes to a light post right next to the bus terminal. We had a long walk back to the pension and it has been a little different working the last couple days without bikes because it takes a LOT longer to walk to all our citas. I think we will be doing some bike shopping later today and hopefully we can find something for around 200 pesos. Also, we talked with Natividad again and she has decided that it is more important to do what God wants than what her boyfriend wants, so we took out a fecha for her to be baptized in 2 weeks to make sure she is really ready for it.

We’ve spent the last couple days talking a lot about the importance of trials and what we can learn from these experiences. We are trying to keep a positive attitude and having faith that the blessings will come after the tribulations. (DyC 58:2-5) That’s all for now! Thank you all for your prayers and your support!

Les Amo!

Elder Wheelhouse