:D Feliz Junio! 06.01.2009 (Email)

Mi Familia,Hola! ¿Cómo están? Espero que estén bien. Todo está bien acá. What a week! Well, where to start off...

Monday was interesting because there were a large amount of people in the street for the 25th of May. We originally thought it would be perfect for contacts, but there was also lots of loud music. Not so effective when the people need to hear a still small voice.

We ended up trying to visit a family, who to our surprise, were actually home. We met them a while back - Calletano and Ana María. They have three grown kids. Anyway, they basically said that they are Catholic, and have no intentions of changing. Yet, we felt like we should give it another shot the other day. So we went, and they were home. So we decided to try and get their attention a little bit, that we´d watch ¨The Restoration¨to see what they would think. It was funny, because they admitted that they had no idea how to work the DVD player because their daughter always does it. That made me giggle. It turns out it´s the same in Argentina and the US in that regard. :o)

However, it turns out that Hna. Hedquist and I don´t know how to hook it up either. So we were going to do something else, when they offered to call their daughter to come over and hook it up. So she came over, and we all watched ¨The Restoration¨together. :D Interesting, because Gabriela, who´s 29, has interest. I guess after the first time we went over, she looked up info. about the church on the internet, even though we didn´t even talk to her. Just to her parents. So long story short, we have an appt. with them tomorrow night. The elder´s quorum leader is going to go with us to the appt. :D

To our dismay, I think a couple of our investigators are avoiding us. :0( We´re not so sure if Adriano has interest anymore, so we´ll see if we can visit him with the Ormeño family. We can hope so.

We continue meeting with Monica Carrasco. I think slow but sure progress. She really needs a testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Tough.

Did I mention last week that we´re starting to teach Santiage Peñalver? He´s 10, and his whole family are member of the church, but he still hasn´t been baptized. We´re starting all the lessons with him, and hopefully we´ll have a baptismal date for him soon. I´m thinking the end of June or beginning of July would be a good time for him to get baptized.

We still love visiting Irene Lucek Sigampa, the lady from the US. Her testimony is so strong. We went with the ¨branch president¨Hno. Mansilla the other day so he could give her a temple recommend interview. Yay! I´m glad the ward is really helping her. They are taking her the sacrament and everything. So great.

We went and visited Carla Barría the other day with a member. We taught her and her husband, and the lesson went really well. Nilda, the member, really shared her testimony about all the blessings of the Gospel. Sadly, Carla really doesn´t feel the need to learn more for now. She thinks she´s fine the way she is. It´s hard when this happens, because you can´t force anyone to learn. So I don´t think we´ll be passing by for now...

Tuesday morning we went to visit Hna. Eloisa Panero to see how her ¨husband¨was doing. She filled us in with all the details. At this moment the doctors had said that if he lived, he wouldn´t live a normal life. Then on Wednesday morning we were ¨knocking¨and we talked to a lady who said she couldn´t talk, because her father-in-law had just passed away. We were shocked when she said the name... Hna. Panero´s husband.

So it turns out the culture is a little different here. We had a member fill us in on how it works. Almost immediately after the person passes away, they carry them to a funeral home. Basically it´s a funeral home. And the family of the person stays there for 24 hours straight so people can go by and support them. And when the 24 hours is up they go straight to the cemetary. There´s no waiting, or funeral as we know them at home. I thought it was all very interesting. It made me grateful for the LDS way at home.

Hna. Panero, Victor, and María (grand-daughter that lives with them) seem to be doing very well, considering everything. We´ll see how it goes from here.

We found a couple yesterday. Well, we met Paula about a week and a half ago as we were looking for another house. But we stopped by yesterday, and taught her and her husband, Luciano. It went really well. They have lots of questions, but are eager to learn. :D Luciano has a friend who served the mission in Chile, so he knows a little bit. Very interesting.

Oh, and we weren´t able to teach Sergio and Patricia this week. Sad.

So things here are going well. Hna. Hedquist has a cold and isn´t feeling so good. It´s hard to be sick in the mission.

Oh, we were able to teach Andrea and her husband Carlos yesterday as well. Very good. We taught part of the Plan of Salvation.

I read in an article the other day a quote by Joseph Smith. He said that he´s like a big rough bolder, and the only way he can become smooth and refined is by hitting off all the rough edges. It said that you need to hit off the rough edges by hitting with a strong force. I really feel like it´s true. Some days in the mission I feel like I´m ¨hitting hard¨against edges in order to break off my rough edges. Only in this way can I become more refined. A better representative of Jesus Christ. I hope that made sense. We all need to be refined, and sometimes we´re ¨refined by fire¨.

I´m very grateful to be a missionary for the true church of Jesus Christ. He guides one church, and He does it through His prophets and apostles. I´m so grateful for temples, and the knowledge that I can live with my family forever. What more can I ask for? I´m grateful for my older brother, Jesus Christ, and I know that He died for me. And He died for you. So that we can repent, and thus become more like Him. We can be happy.

I love you!
Love always,Hermana Jana Pincock