July 07, 2014

This week will be a week that I will never forget! It was full of blessings, changes, and crazy storms. haha. I can say that it has probably been one of my favorite weeks in the mission. 

It started out with an awesome zone capacitación on Tuesday. We talked a lot about the purposes of each lesson. And then we learned about something called "EL UNO." El uno is a concept that we are implementing in the mission. It is the person that we will focus on during the month to help come unto Christ by making the baptismal covenant. Then there is "el uno" from the menos activos that we are going to focus on to help them reactivate. We have thought and prayed a lot about our "uno" for the month and we are really excited to work even harder to help these people. 

On Tuesday night I started divisions. I went out to pintadito again but this time I went out with Elder Segura. It was a great day a pesar de todo. haha. It started out awesome. We woke up at 5:45 to go play soccer with all the other elders in the zone. Then came back, had a great study, and then headed out to pintadito. Everything was going great until I broke elder merinos bike....I was peddling up this hill and snapped off the pedal arm. We had a good laugh and taught a lesson and then went to go look for a way to fix the bike. It just so happens that the day before I got a reference for pintadito from a family we are teaching of a guy who owns a welding shop. What a coincidence...;) so we went to go talk to him. He was a really nice guy and it will be awesome for Elder Segura and Elder Merino to keep going by. And he also welded our bike for free! whoop whoop! Blessings. And everything went awesome. We got back on our bikes and headed back down to ayui for lunch. As we had to pedal up another hill, SNAP!, there goes the pedal. haha. So we decided to drop the bikes in a shop and went after it on foot. It took a little bit longer but it was great. It was awesome being with Elder Segura because he was trained by Elder Bedke. So we had some good stories to tell. haha. But we both leaned a lot working together. Elder Segura is such a stud. He and Elder Merino are working extremely hard out in pintadito and they are changing everything out there. 

On Thursday I was changing a light bulb for a sister in the ward and it separated itself from its casing and she had forgotten to turn off the switch and it blew up in my hand. That was fun. haha. But no harm done. I don’t know how but it was nothing more than just a scare haha. 

Friday night was INSANE!!! So Uruguay basically has the best storms I have ever seen. Friday it was basically pouring all day but then let up as the night came. After we got home from the ward activity Friday night, we finished planning, and saw all of this crazy lightning start up. Shooting all across the sky and lighting up the whole town. So we decided to make up some noodles and take our chairs outside to watch a little bit. It was pretty awesome. Then it started striking the ground and started pouring rain so we headed inside to go to bed. A few minutes after getting into bed, we heard something like a rock hit our roof. And we thought "what the heck? What is that" then crack! Another one. Then all of a sudden, more and more. We jumped up from bed, and went to go look outside when we realized it was a giant hail storm. The street in front of our house was flooded and all you could see was could see hail the size of chicken eggs blowing up in the water. They would hit the concrete on our porch and hit all the windows and stuff. It was way cool. It lasted about 10 minutes. And then it went back to just rain. But I don’t think I have ever seen anything like that. I have been in hail storms before but they were just the size of bb´s or maybe a little bigger. But these were golf balls and bigger. The next day during all of our visits, our investigators and members were showing us the holes that it made in their roof. In Jose y marianas house, it broke through in their bathroom and kitchen. In the familia mora, it broke through in the kitchen, and one hermana in our ward it broke through in so many places she had to leave her house for the rest of the storm because her house was getting flooded. Everyone called it the "rock storm." it was a cool experience. We were lucky that nothing happened to our house. 

Saturday was a crazy windy stormy day. We walked out of our house to go teach and the rain was going sideways. It was pretty cool. We felt like Spartan warriors or something with all four of us leaving at the same time with wall of paraguas in front of us. It is kind of hard to describe. But basically we did what we did in mr wolfpack my senior year with the umbrellas. 

But with all the rain, that means that nobody leaves their houses except the missionaries. So everyone was in their houses!!! whoop whoop! I love storms because they are always the most effective teaching days depending if they are sleeping or no. but we took advantage of all the rain and visited everyone! aah it was great. I love teaching in storms. It makes it not as bad being soaking wet all day if you get to teach. haha. 

Everyone is progressing great! I am really excited for everyone that we are teaching. We have been truly blessed with some amazing people to teach. 

So yesterday will probably one of the most memorable days of my mission. A few weeks ago, a less active sister in our ward had a baby boy. And 2 weeks ago she asked if I could bless him and give him his name. whoa. I never thought that I would do that until I had my own kid and I gladly agreed. And yesterday we blessed him during testimony meeting. I don’t think I could ever describe the spirit that we felt. It was so special. I have never felt anything like it. Kind of like Heavenly Father just lets you feel for a moment how much he really loves His children. And in that moment, I got a little taste of how much He loves Hernan. His name is Hernan Rodrigo Lopez Muniz. That blessing was one of the greatest privileges that I have ever had in Priesthood service. 

I love being in the service of the Lord. I love Uruguay. I LOVE these people. I love this gospel. I know that true happiness is found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that He lives. I testify of His love for each and every one of us. We are so blessed to have the knowledge of the plan of happiness. I know that we have the chance to be better every day. I know that it matters not how many times we fall, rather how many times we get up. I know of the cleansing power of the Atonement. Repentance is a gift that was paid at a very high price to be given unto us freely by our Savior. I know that there are people out there that are waiting for us to share this with them. 

Let’s all try a little bit harder to be a little bit better this week. Get out there and share your testimony. You never know whose life could be blessed. 

I love you all so much. Thank you for all of your support and prayers.

Have a great week! 

Un abrazo grande, 

Elder Staffieri