January 23, 2012

Wonderful family...

I have being 20. I feel weird. It´s the first time in 7 years that I haven´t had to say "een" when I say my age... Que Raro!!!! It´s so different, and I don´t want to grow up!

É. Agazzani and I are doing wonderful. He´s awesome, he wants to work hard and push it till the end, and I´m more than willing to help him help as many sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father that is possible. We´re having a great time, we work well together. So for my birthday, we bought a big thing of icecream and went to Flia. Rama´s house to make it and everything. We didn´t have a lot of time, and so it really... Didn´t work out... HAHAHA!!! We baked the cake all at once... I was going to make two discs separately, but we didn´t have the time! So we made the cake, then cut it in half. Threw it in the freezer for the longest time possible, then we threw the icecream on and back in the freezer! When we took it out, there was icecream EVERYWHERE!!! I said... "Ni importa. Comamos!!!" We ate it all, it was still delicious. I love that family. They made us empanadas to go with the cake. It was an awesome night.

So we were eating lunch with a member and her family, and she told us that there was an inactive family that had two daughters that have been questioning baptism and what it is and everything. We BOLTED over to the house as soon as we heard that. We met the inactive mom and her two daughters, we set an appointment for the Thursday. When we went over Thursday, they were all ready, waiting and DYING to listen about baptism. We explained it to them, taught them about some things and then asked them if they wanted to be baptized. They said, YES!!! We´ve been working with them this week and they will be baptized the 4th of February... 4th of February... One month from my year mark... WHA???!!! Anyway, we took them to a baptism of the other Elders in San Martín, and then to church yesterday. They loved everything! Their names are Daniza y Saira. Daniza, after church asked us: "When are you guys coming to our house? When are you guys coming to our house?? When? When? When???!!!" Hahaha, it was hilarious. Very good family.

Another lady named Fabiana, we found on Tuesday, is progressing rapidly also. She has NO faith in religions, because of what she´s heard them say, but later, what she´s seen them DO, which is far more important than what you say. She has a wonderful family, and we have gotten to know her through a member who is her friend. She has had every question answered that she has asked us, and we are really excited for her. She has her baptismal date for the 11th of February. I love finding investigators that WANT to learn. That WANT to progress. They´re very few... But when you find them, there is no other joy that fills your heart more than that of watching one of your Brothers or Sisters accepting and receiving the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. I love it. I love it. Thank you to everyone who emailed me for my birthday. I love you all, and am so grateful for all the support you've given me in my 20 years of existence here as a Son of God. Pray for me, please.

I love you.

E. Cuthbert

January 16, 2012

Twenty years? NOOOOO!!! I´m not that old! I feel like I´m still 12, not a care in the world, running Hershey track and having a blast. But.. I can´t stop time. As much as I would like to stop time and stay young forever... I can´t. I´m turning twenty in a couple days... Blegh. I have to tell you the truth, I just want to stay your little Jordie. But, I know for right now, I can´t. Life has gone on, the years have past, and I am now an authorized servant of God. The time has flown...

So much has happened. E. Calvache left later on Monday, leaving E. Campos, Arenas and me here in San Martín to do whatever we wanted... So what did we do? We walked around to every chocolate store in San Martín and ate their samples... ;) And there´s LOTS of chocolate stores. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!! If there´s one thing that age won´t change, it´s my love for delicious, scrumptious, smooth, luscious chocolate... HMMMMM. That night we began packing the other Elders´ stuff up. They were going to move to a different apartment in San Martín, so I helped clean and organize. That night we sat and spoke about our lives, and it was a pretty deep conversation. We spoke about things that I haven´t told many people, but we as Elders in the Gospel were strengthened by the testimonies of each other. At midnight, pouring with rain, we ran to the terminal to pick up E. Agazzani, my new companion. When he got there, we left the other two Elders for our own apartment, once there, we spoke for a little bit, then got to bed at 2am. Next morning... DEAD. We were so tired. Ever since then, I´ve been showing him around San Martín, we´ve been teaching, talking and loving life as missionaries. E. Agazzani is from Cordoba, Argentina. He´s got an accent that I´ve never heard before, a little hard to understand, he´s ending the mission in April, and he´s pretty shy around people he doesn´t know. But we´ll fix that.

The recent converts are doing very well. Mirta and Dana were sick, so Ramón and Claudia came to church by themselves! I was so proud of their effort. Yenifer and Karen came alone, without their mom. Her mom has been having a very hard time right now. She has a HUGE desire to be baptized, but she´s got a boyfriend, a daughter between the two of them, and she doesn´t want to separate the family again... HARD situation. They fasted with us on Saturday-Sunday to find a way to make the situation better. It´s brought a lot of tears on the part of Miriam, she doesn´t know what to do. I have been praying a lot for her and for her family. We have a lot of families now that are new. Everyone we had either got baptized, or said they don´t want to hear anything more. So when E. Agazzani got here, we are once again, almost starting from zero. We´ve found a lot of new people, had a lot of weird conversations, met a lot of dedicated catholics and evangelicals... What a week. We got into a pretty big bible bash the other day, and I had to repent for it on Sunday. I felt terrible for diverting from my cause as a missionary and only relying on scriptures from a half translated correctly Bible... Instead of using the power of the Holy Ghost and the Book of Mormon. I love the Bible, but only confusion comes from it because people interpret its sayings so differently. The Book of Mormon is NECESSARY. Without it, we are lost, in the dark. Anyway, I repented a lot for what I did, we also met a catholic yesterday that said "If you guys come to the Mass on Sunday at 10:30 this Sunday, I guarantee you I will come to you church too, but I already know you guys will never come." Hard decisions.... I don´t think we´ll be going, but it would be very interesting. He´s a hard core catholic that is SO SURE that the church that Constantine made permanent is the church of Christ. Wrong. Even by that time, the church was already in Apostasy... Ooops! I´m beginning to teach here... Sorry. Heh! I´ve been doing a lot of studying with the Apostasy and what happened... It´s a sketchy situation.

Anyway, for my birthday we´re going to Mirta and Ramóns house to have a bunch of Empanadas... I´m going to use one of the chocolate devils food cakes that you gave me and make a chocolate icecream-dulce de leche icecream cake!!!!! Hahaha! Wish me luck with that! I love this work. I love you all so much. SEND PICTURES! They make me HAPPY. Give me more HOPE. Make me work HARDER.

I love you all with all my heart. Jared, I WANT that hat. Mom, you´re la mejor mamá que hay en este mundo. Nunca te cambie. Eres mi angel. Melyn, sigues con el español. Te amo mucho. Papá. Te amo. Gracias por llevar a Jared y Simon al Show de Autos. Gracias por todo. No puedo esperar para hablar con ti.

Amor,

E. Cuthbert