Week 22 ~ Jorge the Catholic Man

Hola Familias y Amigos!!

This week went by so fast!! I can hardly believe that we are coming up on 2020, and I will spend the whole next year in Argentina. I may be a little biased, but I think it's the best way to spend 2020 haha!

A few weeks back I wrote about a Catholic man that we found in divisions. Well, after that division I came back to my area and the other sister was emergency transferred. I thought for sure that his address would be lost, but I got a call this week from my sister training leader that he went to church last Sunday and he is going to be BAPTIZED!!! Wahoo!! I think I was the happiest I have been my whole mission haha. This is the first time I have found someone and they have gone to church, without us visiting them more than once. I think my other missionary friends will know how rare this is haha!  I will keep you all updated on him in the weeks to come :)

My companion and I spent Christmas with our bishop ́s family and they made us some awesome Argentinian asado and we got to watch the movie, COCO! Afterwards we went caroling in some hereticos, and to some less active members. It was a really good Christmas, one that I won't forget.

Funny experiences:

On Christmas Eve we got hugged by a drunk, homeless, clown in the middle of the street.

A member asked us to do a service project for her and she put us to WORK. We cleaned out an entire backyard, used a leaf blower to get rid of spider webs, scraped paint off the pavement and raked out a ton of dead grass. In the middle of the grass we found their dead CAT hahahah. They had been looking for it for over a year.

I hope you all have a wonderful New Year!! This past month I have been reading ̈Jesus The Christ ̈ and have felt so much closer to him. My goal for this upcoming year is to focus my life around Him, and do all that I can to bring my will more in line with His. If you haven't made goals/resolutions yet for this year - I would invite you to make one of your goals to become closer to Him. It will change your life.

Love,

Hermana Spackman

Week 21 ~ Merry Christmas!

Hola Todos!!

Feliz Navidad or Merry Christmas!! I can't believe Christmas is already here, the time seems to go by so fast.

This week was a lot of walking and praying. Our mission president always tells us to "work for Sunday" and so that's what we did this week. We passed out probably over 60 invitations to church, visited our amigos and recent converts, called a million less active members both Saturday night and Sunday morning and prayed each day to have people in church for our special meeting.

Then, we went to church on Sunday and not one of them showed up, and our meeting was a bit of a disaster.

When my companion and I got home we both cried and felt pretty sad. We are working so hard to get these people to come to church, but they still don't! It's frustrating at times because we feel like we are putting in all our efforts and giving our faith to God, and we don't have success. I felt a little bit like a failure! I knelt down on my bed and prayed hard for comfort and peace. 

I opened my scriptures to Enos 1 and started reading and it was like the answer hit me in the face!! Enos talks about how they put all their faith in God, prayed to Him with all that they had and went out and preached the gospel. Yet, the people still rejected them. They did everything they could, but people still have their agency.

I have realized in my mission that things are not always going to be perfect. I am not always going to have 120 contacts, 15 new friends, 10 people in church each Sunday and a big smile on my face. Some days will be hard, people will make choices that I don't like, but that's part of life!! It's okay for me to struggle sometimes, because it will make the good times all the more worth it. We can't know joy without a little bit of pain first.

So with that, we are happy!! The work is hard here in Dorrego and we don't have a lot of people to teach, but we are happy. We have good members and I am learning a lot. I know that Christ lives and He is my focus this holiday season.

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and enjoy this time of year. I am praying and thinking of each one of you!

Love,

Hermana Spackman

pictures:

a little yoga in the countryside

We went to McDonalds!! First time in my mission!!

a church selfie :)

Week 20 ~ Christmas Conference

Hello Everyone!

This week was awesome! On Tuesday we were able to have our zone Christmas Conference with about 40 missionaries. We had meetings with our mission president, ate lots of good food, decorated sugar cookies, played tons of games and had a big soccer match! We even got to watch The Lion King with Beyonce hahaha. It was the best.

After the conference I was able to do divisions with Hermana Smith and stay in her area in Punta Alta. She and I have the same amount of time in the mission, so we were really nervous about our Spanish speaking abilities, hahah. But, we were able to understand literally everyone we talked to and they were able to understand us. We taught a lot of lessons and it was fun to be able to talk with her about the MTC and other fun experiences from our training.

On Saturday we had a ward activity and we had a lot of people come! We played soccer with all the young men and members of the bishopric and it was a blast haha. Afterwards all the primary kids did a cute little nativity!

Spiritual experience:

About halfway through divisions Hermana Smith contacted a man that was standing in the street. He looked at us and asked us to come sit down by him on a bench outside. He shared with us a little about his life and told us that he is Catholic, but he is frustrated because many Catholic people say one thing but do another. He told us that he has always noticed that members of our church are good people and he has a friend who is a member. I shared with him a little of the first vision and restoration and Hermana Smith gave him a Book of Mormon. We asked him to pray and read about it and he said he would. We gave him an invitation for the special meeting on December 22nd and he looked at us surprised and asked if he could really come! Haha! We laughed and said, of course! As we were leaving, he looked at us with tears in his eyes and told us that he had been experiencing a lot of trials in his life and depression, and that he was grateful for us and for lifting him up. I told him that it was no coincidence we crossed paths with him and he agreed that it wasn ́t. He invited Hermana Smith and Hermana Olivera to come back and visit him again in the next week. It's amazing to me to see how personally the Lord knows his children and is putting us missionaries in the path of others to help them.

Funny experience:

We did a service project with our bishop ́s wife and when I asked her how she met her husband she said he was her district leader in the mission. We were dying laughing because that is so stereotypical here and she tried to justify it, but we told her it wasn't possible haha.

This week I got a cute Christmas package from my Mom so just wanted to give her a quick s/o here! She is the best and sent me mac´n´cheese which means I ́m going to have a feast for Christmas dinner!! Also big s/o to my girl Beth, who got married this weekend!!! 

Love and miss you all!

Hermana Spackman

Week 19 ~ Saved from Walking

Hello Everyone!!

This week we had transfers! I am serving in Coronel Dorrego, it is a little town about 2 hours outside of Bahia Blanca. It's a very cute little town, it's about half city and half countryside haha! There are horses tied to poles on literally every single corner and tons of cowboys. It's pretty awesome. My companion is Hermana Ramos from Brazil! She is super sweet and has 8 months in the mission. She is super excited to work and we spend the entire day talking.

This week was a little hard! The first three days I was here we had no one to teach and we walked literally the entire day. We got more rejected than I have my entire mission, people wouldn't even listen to us. I am leaving my training, which means we proselyte for an hour and a half longer as well. On Saturday I was literally at my wit's end. I was so sore and tired from walking all day and literally felt like I couldn't do it anymore. I knelt down by my bed and pleaded for Heavenly Father to send us people to teach and help us. We went out to proselyte and the first person we visited opened her door!!! No one had let us in all week. Then we went to another house, and they let us in too!! The whole day proceeded in the same way, everyone let us in. It was such a tender mercy to me and I saw exactly how my prayer was answered. I'm so grateful for a Heavenly Father who listens and hears me and helps me when he knows I can't do more.

Funny experiences:

We contacted a teenager in the street and handed him a card with our phone number and told him we were missionaries. He pointed at the number and asked if it was ours together and we said yes. He got the biggest smile on his face and said "I have a friend too, if you want." We laughed so hard hahaha

That's all I have for this week!! I hope each one of you are enjoying the Christmas season and staying warm! 

Love,

Hermana Spackman

pictures:

Hermana Cox from T-ville!!

the cute little fam I was teaching in Santa Rosa, I miss them!!

Week 18 ~ Fernando's Baptism

Hello Everyone!

This week was awesome!! We had the baptism of our friend, Fernando! Fernando is our investigator who got married a couple of weeks ago in order to be able to live the law of chastity. He has been taking the discussions for three years now and has literally been waiting so long for this day!! He was able to be baptized by our stake mission leader, who is blind. Everyone felt the Spirit and it was such a sweet experience. It's people like him that make my mission feel worth it. To see his conversion has been so cool and I know that the other missionaries and the Lord have been preparing him for a long time for this moment. I feel so lucky that I was the missionary there to see him finally be baptized and share with him in these moments!

Spiritual experience:

This week we met with a cute little girl we've been teaching. She has had a really hard life and her mom committed suicide a little over two years ago. As we were teaching her and her dad, she shared with us all these experiences that she had had with prayer and seeing her prayers answered. She told us that she wanted to follow the example of the Savior and be baptized! I felt so impressed by this 10 year old girls example for me and her desire to do good. She is awesome.

Funny experience:

For Fernando's baptism we turned on the water pipin' hot because we thought it would cool down by the time of the baptism. We were dead wrong and ended up having to put ice cubes in the water hahahah

This week it has poured rain and my companion and I have felt a little bit like Moses parting the Red Sea. The water got up to our shins last Tuesday and we literally looked like two drowned rats out in the middle of Argentina.

I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving this past week!! It is crazy to think that Christmas season is upon us and it's snowing back home in Utah. I hope you all enjoy this season!

Love,
Hermana Spackman