Box of Chocolates

The mission teaches you so many life lessons, sometimes it feels like you can do the same thing 1 week and not find success, then you keep going the next week and find success, i am officially a firm believer in "life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get"

This week was an amazing week of finding, all February we have been struggling to find new people and progress them, but this week the people of argentina decided to listen and accept the gospel of Jesus Christ, we had the blessing of having 6 people at church and all of them are preparing to get baptized in March!

One of our miracles this week was Noah, we were passing by a family of members that had been recently becoming active again, when we passed by we discovered that one of the kids just turned 9 and never had been baptized, his mom was the only one in the family that hadn't come back yet, but we found Noah, he accepted to be baptized and got his mom to come to church for the first time in over 10 years! It was such a miracle!

I'm not gonna lie last week was a while ago and I can't remember too much, but if we can keep progressing our friends we should have 4 baptisms this sunday! We are currently heading to the temple hence my pday is today

But i cant think of any funny stories which is lame, I mean I was on a comp exchange the other day and my comp fell off his bike and in the mud, i thought it was kinda funny (hes okay dont worry) but love yall! 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/WvF1yDF9QnZbX6KA7

Life Lessons

 The mission really just prepares a man for the rest of his life, teaches him to work hard, be humble, be obedient, find joy in the hard times, gain a testimony of Jesus Christ and his restored gospel, serve others, etc

On the mission and I think just in life in general there's just some weeks that are harder than others. Sometimes it feels like you work extra hard one week and see less results but I guess that's just the way life works. I wouldn't say this week being more difficult made it so I found less joy, but sometimes it is a little dissappointing to work really hard and not see the results you want

We have been having a hard time finding recently, we decided to fast on Wednesday to find 3 people to help get baptized before the end of the month, i'm not gonna lie we saw some crazy miracles, we found some of the Lord's elect, but none of them made it to church, we found an inactive member who wanted to go back to church so bad and was set on going and bringing his 4 kids ages 20, 14, 13, and 9🫨, but they didn't make it

But hey we keep going, the Lord answers prayers/fasts in his timing, I still had a good week don't even worry, the mission is awesome

But on the good news I think i've officially figured out what I want to do for the rest of my life, for all my district 1H mtc buddies, you guys know I am quite the commentator, especially when I pull out the british accent, every time I get on my bike I just can't help but commentate like i'm on the Tour in France, but hey who knows, maybe I just found my future job

My comp gave me a good analogy the other day I thought i'd share, he goes "if you've already seen the final score to a football game before watching it, do you stress out about who's gonna win? No, its the same thing about life, we know which team is gonna win (God's team), so why stress?" Elder harper spittin bars, future president right there

Love yall!

Trusting>Stressing

 At zone conference last friday something that our mission president's wife talked a lot about was love, she said missionary work without love becomes robotic. It was just something that hit me pretty hard, I love the way the church invites us to Love, share, and invite, and I think a lot of times as missionaries we find ourselves sharing and inviting before loving. It completely changed the way i saw missionary work, i realized that when I try harder to love the people, I feel more of the savior's love for them and also for me, and it helped me see the people of Argentina the way the savior sees them 

Now that I got the spiritual part out the way early let me tell you this week, more like last weekend, was pretty stressful. So we had 2 people preparing to get baptized, Naldo and Gustavo, straight cap, everything was good we got their interviews done, and then on Saturday we just could not find them, not gonna lie I was kinda stressin out, I thought we had another Maria situation from last week ya know, well Sunday morning we found and woke up Naldo everything was good, then 5 minutes before church his motorcycle got a flat tire, so we flew over to his house and picked him up and threw him on the back of the bicicle to bring him to church it was epic, then Gustavo finally answered us at 10 am saying he was at church we were like bruh what is happening, but they both got baptized safe and sound don't even worry

This experience taught me a lot about Trust, sometimes I feel like we stress out as missionaries and it may be because we are lacking trust in the lord. Sometimes I find myself stressing a lot over our friends when I know i've really tried/done everything I can, so this week ima try to work on trusting more in the Lord, doing everything I possible can and leaving the rest in his hands, trusting that his plan is perfect and that his plan will always be better than my plan

Also I was riding friday afternoon on my bike everything was great, really was feeling the spirit a ton, trying to love everyone then bam out of nowhere this bug came flyin into my eye way over the speed limit, not gonna lie almost lost my eye, the rest of the day people just thought I was an emotional guy because my eye just wouldn't stop crying, for all I know that bug is still in my eye, one of the most painful experiences of my life, but who knows maybe God was trying to teach me a lesson, maybe I was judging too much, its like Christ says "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam (bug) that is in thine own eye?"

Amen.

"Nevertheless My Work Shall Go Forth"

 I had probably one of the craziest experiences of my life this week

So we had our friend Maria come to church last week, she's CRAZY elect, she had been reading the book of mormon everyday and said she knows its true, well she was gonna get baptized on Sunday and saturday morning she sends us a text and just says "i dont want to get baptized", it happens quite a lot you'd be suprised

So we flew to her house and she started telling us all these doubts she had, how she wasn't ready, she told us she prayed about her baptism and felt like a darkness around her, she had been going to a lot of different churches and wanted to know what was the truth and what God's will for her was, like she is literally Joseph Smith 2.0, so we read her the joseph smith story, shared a ton of scriptures and the spirit was super strong and she still wasn't sure, so we said, "we're gonna pray right now, and God is gonna answer us right here right now whether you should get baptized tomorrow"

So I said a prayer asking God to help Maria know what his will on the situation was, after the prayer we sat in silence and the spirit was so strong, and then we just look at her and she just mutters "I can't speak, there's something stopping me", and we were like what in the joseph smith, and finally we were like just pray harder and then starts like crumblimg in a ball, and then out of nowhere she just stops, smiles, and starts jumping for joy it was crazy, like a complete 180 attitude change, and she said God answered her, she said she saw like the evil presence leave and told she said she saw a picture of Christ getting baptized and she said she knew this was true

It was such a crazy experience, she is literally Joseph Smith, and after ALL that, later that afternoon she decided to go to ANOTHER church and at night she sent us a text and goes i'm not getting baptized and then ghosted us , pretty sure i can figure out what happened at that church

This experience has made me reflect a lot on my life, never in my life have I seen someone recieve like an answer to their prayer so clearly and then doubt it so quickly, it made me reflect on my own testimony. I have recieved tons of witnesses that the book of mormon is true, that Christ loves me, that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and sometimes I find myself doubting. This experience helped me learn that Satan will use anything he can to get you to doubt spiritual experinces you have had, whether that be friends, family, other churches, but I just love D&C 3 "For, behold, you should not have feared man more than God", doubt you doubts not your testimony!

This experience also strengthened my testimony that this is the true church! I am 100% positive that in ANY other church, doubts about getting baptized would not come up like that, Satan knows that Christ's church has the authority and he will do everything he can to prevent people from recieving those blessings

So a sad ending to this week, but we still keep going, our sunday school class read D&C 3 last week and it really changed my perspective, like it says in D&C 3:16 "nevertheless, my work shall go worth"