Hey!
I hope that your week was good. Life
is moving [along] here. I have been learning a lot this last week, from a spiritual
sense. I’m still bored out of my mind and don’t know how I am going to endure
two years of this. But I have been learning a lot and focusing on perfecting my
Spanish and staying positive. Still we have less here now than ever. What I
think you guys don’t understand is that the lessons that we teach are not sit
down good lessons. We count lessons if we talk to someone and teach a couple
points and then leave a commitment like pray or read this pamphlet or book. So
we teach a lot of those, and it is a rare occasion that we are able to sit down
and actually teach a good lesson. Also, I really am not allowed to talk to
people or investigators about much more than the church because it wastes a lot
of time. So it’s not like I’m not connecting with people it’s like we don’t
have anyone who wants to progress to be baptized in this area. We have a lot of
people that we can teach, but none of them want to progress so it is a waste of
time to teach them. We spend most of our time looking for new people here. This
last week we didn’t find anyone worthy of mentioning, and we stopped working
with all of the others because they aren’t progressing (coming to church and
reading scriptures). So right now we have nobody who is progressing for a baptism
in three weeks.
If I was having success I would feel
like I wasn’t wasting my time. If people
progressed, and were converted or even if we had a good investigator to teach
[that would make it better]. Progressing is someone who does all of the
commitments that we leave. Like if we invite someone to read there scriptures,
pray, and attend church and there not doing it than there not progressing. We don’t have anyone that has any real interest
in progressing. Nobody wants to hear our
message. More people want to talk to me
in English than want to hear our message. 
This area is one of the hardest
areas in the mission. We didn’t have any
success with Elder Hansen and he got really depressed in this area. Elder Martinez is trying hard and is always positive,
but he gets to go home in two weeks so I think he is looking forward to that
more than anything. I’m frustrated because I spend my days walking
around a town in Argentina getting rejected all day, and I am going to be here
until the 24 of March. So that’s why I’m frustrated. I keep praying that we find someone but I haven’t
received any answers to my prayers. Dad - you went to church, but I could be in
Colorado and get you to church. I came
to Argentina to get others to church.
I talked to the Mission President
about this in my last interview. He said that if I can make it through this
time in the mission I can make it through anything. He said his mission was
still the hardest time in his life.
So, I have also learned that we only grow when we do things outside our
comfort zone.
I learned a lot this week about
commandments. I learned that every commandment that we get is for our benefit.
There isn’t a commandment that has been given that is bad for us. The second
thing I learned is that when we keep the commandments we are showing are love
for God. I like to read Matt 22:36-40 and then after that one read john 14:22.
We learn from these scriptures that when we follow commandments we do it for
our love for God, no more, no less. If we aren’t following the commandments
than we really love sinning more than we love God. That’s what I learned this
week.
Love you.
I got to Go! Hasta Proximo Lunes!
Matt
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