Week #48 - The 4 Biggies

Hello family! Wow oh wow oh wow. That´s how I´ll start this letter I guess. It was quite the week. Very, very challenging, yet so very insightful for me. I learned so much as I struggled through the day to day challenges of mission life here in Argentina. Can I just say how much I love Argentina? It´s so great! And everytime my companion talks bad about this country (which is quite often), I quickly jump to defend these people and their customs. Gotta have love! That´s the key!

Speaking of love, I´d just like to quickly thank those of you who have sent me packages these last few weeks. Everytime that the office secretary calls me up and tells me I have a package I am filled with love and appreciation for my friends and family. So thank you so much to the Oakley Nilsens, Brother Donaldson, the Marquez family, and Lyss! You are all so wonderful, so great, and I thank you and love you so much! Guess what I did this morning? Well, the water isn´t working in our apartment right now so we had to fill up a couple of buckets with water from some faucet outside and then use that water to shower. So yes, I showered this morning with cold water from a bucket. Argentina! I love it! It´s getting ridiculously hot and humid here so that cold water felt so great. Finding the good in all things, finding the good...

Hey guess what? We´re going to have a baptism this Saturday! What up? Fabian´s (convert) son, Lautaro, is set to get baptized this Saturday. Fabian just got the priesthood yesterday, so we´re gonna try to have him baptize his son. How sweet would that be? Lautaro is a good little pibe (pee-bay. means ´kid´ here in Argentina) and has always enjoyed listening to us. He started to go to church with his dad a few weeks ago and then told us he wants to get baptized! Well, we can help you out with that now can´t we? Of the four sons in the family, the Carrizo family, Lautaro´s the youngest (12) and is the least rebellious. The other three (ages 14, 15, and 18) are already a little rebellious and they´re pretty punky. Hey, we got Lautaro though! Alejandra, Fabian´s wife, is a little hard hearted and doesn´t want to go to church or get baptized still. We go to their house every night and she always listens to us, reads the Book of Mormon, prays, but refuses to go to church. Ugh, she kills me. I´m doing my best to just love her unconditionally and to try to help her (even if she ticks me off and calls me a lying false prophet and tells me that I don´t teach very well). Gotta love it :)

Best part of my week, you want to know what is was? When Derek told me that he quit his job because they wanted him to work on Sunday. THEN, the next day he told us that he´s going to go on a mission! WOO!!! He talked to Obispo Antionetti on Sunday and he´s starting to fill out his papers already. Only one month after his baptism. He´s such a capo (stud). He came out and did some visits with us yesterday and I´m sure he´ll be a great missionary. Yesterday I gave him a copy of Preach My Gospel and a copy of Predicad Mi Evangelio and he loves them so much. He´s gonna be so great. He´s such a great example to me of acting by faith. He´s so young in the gospel, but he knows it´s true and he´s going forward with so much faith! This week, like I said was ridiculously hard. 4 days in a row we got next to nothing done as far as our key indicators go. We walked around in the humid heat with nothing but rejection after rejection. Fallen appointment after fallen appointment. It wasn´t too very fun. My companion still doesn´t talk all that much to me and whenever I try to create conversation with simple questions like ´what is your favorite color?´ he just shrugs his shoulders and gives me that ´you´re stupid´ look. It´s quite difficult, but I´m learning so much. Around day 2 or 3 of the 4 days in a row without any success I came to the realization that I was working without very much faith or hope. As I made that connection I realized that I hadn´t had all that much confidence the last few days either. My teaching (in the few lessons we had) wasn´t very clear and I wasn´t able to understand castellano too well. I made the important connection between faith and confidence. I came to realize that faith IS confidence and that without the 2, missionary work will be very slow and difficult. Faith, hope, charity, and love. There´s a reason why those 4 things are what qualify someone for this work (DC 4). Faith and hope go hand and hand and they give confidence to the missionary as he goes about doing the Lord´s work. Charity and love and the driving forces that keep the missionary going even when things get rough. They give the missionary the desire. They are the motivation. The 4 biggies that you gotta have as you do this incredible work. Without em´, you have weeks like the one I had last week. With them, however, the work is fun, rewarding, and exciting. Man, the Lord sure knows His stuff doesn´t He? :)

Well my wonderful family, my time is up for this week. I hope you all know how much I love and care about you! I miss you all especially this time of the year, but I know there´s not other place on this earth that I should be for this Christmas. I love you all so much! Developing the 4 biggies of missionary work, Elder Nilsen P.S. Found out today that on the 24th the whole mission gets to do a session at the temple! YES!