A warm hug to Bro and Sis Riding... Thank you for your letter and message!!! I truly believe that what you shared with me is true, and it is happening to me.
I will go ahead and answer your question really quick about what Argentines do for Christmas. First of all, it´s blazing hot down here... So what they do to celebrate is they light off fireworkds. A lot of fireworks. All the celebrating is on the 24th, the 25th is a chill day where no one does anything. About presents? I have no idea, I will tell you when I find out how they do that part! There are hardly any lights in the city, on the roofs, in the pine trees... It makes me a little sad. Haha, I never thought the Christmas lights would affect my feelings... Sniff, Sniff. If I were to walk around the city right now, I would hardly recognize that it´s Christmas time, it´s way different than in the U.S. But almost every one has... Da Da Da... Asado!!!!!!! WHOOO!!! I love Asado!!! Hahahahahahahahaha! MEAT! CARNIVORE!!! DINOSAUR!!! Ahem... Excuse me for the outburst.
Now about the life of the missionary...
First of all, I´ve been learning lesson after lesson here as a missionary and as a person. I can´t even tell you the amount of things that I learn as a missionary. It is incredible. The life of a missionary is so jam-packed with lessons that if I wasn´t a missionary, I´d be all lessoned out!!! But I love it. I have learned so much about what I want my life to be like after the mission. How I want to work afterwards, who I want to spend my time with, what I will NOT do with my life. How I can best treat my family, friends, acquaintences. Things like that. I could write all day about the lessons I´ve learned, but I don´t want to. Ha.
I´m going to talk about Mirta, Ramón, Claudia and Dana first... They´re wonderful. They are such a chosen, special family. I can´t even express the feeling of love I have for this family. We go by them every Sunday, Tuesday and Friday night. A week ago we had them read 1 Nephi 18 and switch "ship" for "family". Do it. We were with a member couple while we talked about the chapter, and then we put the goal for them to be married on the 23rd! And they accepted wholeheartedly!!! We were so happy! Now comes the sketchy part. We have to get the birth certificate of Ramón from Buenos Aires before the 23rd of December. If he doesn´t have that, he can´t be married, a.k.a can´t be baptized the 24th, a.k.a. No White Christmas. I am now calling Operation PRAY HARD. I need you all to dedicate your prayers to this family. Think of the blessings that you and your family have received by the Gospel and the Church... Now think of the need that this family has to share these blessings... How better to celebrate the birth of Christ than with a covenant that we will always follow Him? I can´t think of anything better. And so I call Operation PRAY HARD, also Operation FAST LONGER, and I´m going to throw in a little bit of Operation PRAY AGAIN AFTER PRAYING. Get the hint? This family deserves it. We then went by their house on Friday and spoke about the Word of Wisdom. They had a little bit of beer and wine for meals occasionaly, but they quickly gave it all up and said, we are ready, willing and able to follow this commandment! Mirta was LOVING the commandment! She LOVES THE CHURCH! We went away that night, so happy. Content... feeling so blessed. Sunday we waited for them in the chapel, but they never came. Family from Bariloche had come in the morning, and they couldn´t make it. Sigh........ Oh well. They still know the church is true. We went by yesterday night to check up on them and we found them. We decided to watch with them a little segment of the movie Special Witnesses of Christ. A movie by the church that has the testimony of all the apostles and prophet. When we stopped it, we asked them to share their feelings, they loved it. Ramón and Mirta both exclaimed... You can FEEL that they´re men of God. I just... KNOW they´re men of God. We then testified a little more about them, then when Ramón said they last prayer, he exclaimed to Heavenly Father... "I want to testify to you, Heavenly Father, that I know that this is true... " I silently smiled to myself during the prayer, almost breaking out into tears for the joy that came to me for hearing that one sentence in that heart felt prayer. I need to send you pictures of them. We will probably spend Christmas night with them and bake some United States brownies or something, so I´ll have pictures... Remember the Operations!!! PRAY HARD, FAST LONGER and PRAY AGAIN AFTER PRAYING.
The weather is a nice 100 degrees here right now. Grandma and Grandpa would love it here, why don´t you two come down here and spend a few months in San Martín? Heh! You´d love it.
I want you to know that I love you all so much. We have found a lot of new people this week, Licandro and Miguerina... We haven´t found them. That´s the only problem I have with missionary work... Is that I´m working with things that have a thing called a brain. It´s pretty frustrating sometimes. Marta Carmona is fighting with her faith. She has finally found work and it doesn´t let her come to church on Sunday. We have testified, read scriptures, prayed and tried to help her see that she needs to find out what her HF wants her to do.
Remember these names in your prayers, I feel the prayers every single day, because we are having wonderful success here in Argentina. I can´t wait to talk to my family!!! Enjoy this Christmas with your family. They are the greatest gift God has given us. XOXO
E. Cuthbert
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