June 17, 2014

¡¡¡ESTA SEMANA HA SIDO BUENAZA!!!!

But first! Happy fathers day dad! I hope you had the best day! Thank you for being such a great example of what a father and husband should be and for honoring your priesthood the way you do! You are the best example to me of what a man should be. I love you!  

This past week has been one of the best weeks of my entire mission! aaahhh! I feel so blessed to have had this past week! So here we go! 

Tuesday was the last district meeting of the change and it was sweet! We talked about the atonement and the obra misional. It was super powerful and we all left amped up to go out and work and find all those who are looking for truth. I went out on divisions with elder Bulloch in his area. It was pretty good. Learned a ton. Then Tuesday night, we got on a bus for Montevideo. My comp had to go back down to go over the test he had done last week. We got in at 830 in the morning and headed over to the mission home to talk to president and help out with getting things ready for the conference. After we went to the hospital, and...EVERYTHING WAS GOOD! Whoop whoop! We are pumped to get everything behind us and just focus on the work now. Wednesday night we spent with the secretaries and the assistants running around Montevideo looking for enough tables for the conference we were going to have on Thursday. It was kind of nuts. We finally finished setting everything up at about 130 am. 

Thursday was so awesome! We had a conference with the entire mission in cerro! Ah it was soo great. It was the first time that they had done something like it in years. It was great. pte y hermana smith spoke and then we had testimonies from missionaries about certain things. We got a new mission motto. And we got an announcement that make some people cry...out of joy!!! WE ARE ALLOWED TO WATCH THE MUNDIAL!!!!!! aaahhhh!! Everyone was going nuts. It was something we were worried about because futbol is basically like a religion down here. And it was going to be really hard to work during those hours because the entire country shuts down. Then after that conference, we headed over, as a mission, to malvin to have another conference. But this conference was together with the entire other mission! aaahhh! It was so great. There we were all the missionaries in all of Uruguay in a giant conference with Elder Robbins, from the presidency of the 70. Wow. That conference blew my mind. We learned so much and he opened it up for questions at the end and we got a ton of answers that are going to help make us better as missionaries and bring others unto Christ! Such an awesome conference. I will never forget it. And it was cool too because we got to see all our friends from the ccm that are in the other mission. Then we got on our bus to go back to Artigas. We got into Artigas at 3 am. Took a nap and got out working Friday. We had a great weekend working in Artigas! 

Sunday! Oh Sunday! The best day of the week! Mariana and her kids came to church for the first time!!! aaahhh! It was so great! She is already a member but hasn’t gone to church in years. We are also teaching her husband, José. José couldn’t come because he had work but Mariana going was such a HUGE STEP!! And.......PABLO MACHADO CAME TO CHURCH TOO!!! Pablo is the dad in the familia machado. We have been teaching them for months and they have never gone to church. We have been talking a lot about dropping them but we felt like we needed to keep working with them a little more. And he finally came!!! The whole family committed to come but the mom was sick that morning and didn’t have the strength to get out of bed and her daughter had to stay with her. But Pablo went! Oh my gosh. I don’t have words to describe how happy I was when I saw him walk in! I thought I was going to go through the roof I was so excited! He said that he loved the meetings and that every Sunday he would be there!!! :) 

Then something amazing happened last night. We went to his house to go and teach his family, and we had a great lesson about Adam and eve and about the fall and why it was necessary and stuff. It was really good. And then at the end, we asked them if they had any questions, and Claudia said she did and then she goes "so this whole thing with baptism, are we going to do it or what? I feel ready!" WWWWHHHHHHHAAATTTTTT??!!!! WE WERE SHOCKED!  We then started talking about it with them and what they needed to do to llegar al bautismo. and the family (pablo, claudia, y victoria) all have fecha for the 12th of July!! aaahhhh!!!

This week has been such a testimony builder of the prayer. We have been praying to find families to work with because our investigators weren’t progressing and instead, the Lord blesses us with progress with the families we had already found! It has been such a blessing to see this happen. I feel so happy por haber sido parte de eso. PRAYERS ARE ANSWERED!! 

Well that’s all the time I have for this week! I am sorry but thank you so much for all of your support and love that you always show towards me. Have a great week! Get out there and share your testimony! 

Try a little bit harder to be a little bit better!

Con mucho cariño, 

Elder Staffieri