"Full Quarantine" / "This is His Work, Not Mine"

Excited to finally get a Smartphone to share among the 4 of us!

March 23, 2020

Thursday we had a mission wide call with President and he announced a full quarantine. The only reason we were allowed to leave the pension was if we needed to buy food and that’s it. All baptismal services were canceled... 

Thankfully we are with the Pilar 1 Elders, Johnson and Parker, so we have gotten to play a lot of scum (haha) and we also invented a ping pong game that is really fun. 



Sunday we blessed and partook of the sacrament in our pension. It was super awesome, we felt the spirit. Then the assistants came by the pension (apartment) and gave us our smartphone! It is actually a super nice phone.

We received a message from the APs that we were to have a conference call with all the mission. He told us that the prophet had announced that all missionaries would be returning to their home countries due to the spreading of the coronavirus. Within a 2 to 3 week period, all of us will be boarding a plane.

Those who are already close to finishing their missions will be honorably released and all others will be reassigned to a mission in their home country. All will have to do a 14 day quarantine in their houses.

Will I be assigned to a new mission in the US? I don’t know. President said that those whose release date is in April, May, June and MAYBE July will not receive reassignments. 

It’s kind a sucky spending the last three weeks of your mission stuck in the apartment all day not doing anything. I always imagined working super crazy hard my last few weeks and doing everything I could not to think about going home, then finishing on Sunday night and thinking “wow I did it.” But, I have been called of God, this is His work, not mine, and I’ll finish it the way He sees right.

After the call with President, I knelt down to say my prayer and I just felt like the Savior was close. I just felt His love, and that if I just gave all my will to him, everything would work out.

Love you all, see ya probably in a couple of weeks

"Attack Of The Coronavirus!"

In Escobar with Elder Gomes

Mar 16, 2020

Hello Family! I am in ... ESCOBAR! I got transferred to Pilar with Elder Gomes as my companion. I am SO EXCITED!! It is so awesome out here in Provencia. Pilar reminds me a little bit of Jose C. Paz, but it is prettier here. It is such a crazy difference from being in the Villa. There is so much more space and more green. The few members I have met so far seem awesome, and our ward mission leader went out with us for the entire afternoon. It is great out here in Escobar, we have a lot of work to do; we need to find people to teach. Please pray that we will be able to find new people that are prepared to receive the gospel here in Pilar! (that is the name of my area) 

Elder Gomez is from Brazil. He seems like a great guy and has lots of desires to baptize. He only has 11 months in the mission, he makes me feel SO OLD. Escobar has 13 companionships so we need to be baptizing like crazy! This zone didn’t do too hot the last couple of months and it is one of the zones with the biggest potential. So I feel a lot of responsibility in helping the zone raise up.

I am pretty excited because I want to learn Portuguese with Elder Gomes' help, so we are trying to talk in Portuguese a little, and we put a goal to talk only Portuguese in the pension (apartment) for the last two weeks of the transfer. Já posso falar y  entender un poquito, mais quero aprender muito mais. I just tried to talk to Gomes' family and I said something in Portuguese and they didn't understand me… hahahaha but I’ll get there. The good thing is I can actually understand a lot of what they are saying.

Attack of the coronavirus! Wow it’s been pretty crazy here so far.

There is a hermano here that got baptized on Wednesday. After that, on Jueves (Thurs), we received instructions to use personal or emergency money to buy food for a three week food storage kit “Almacén de emergency.” So, we had to go to the church, print out the list of stuff we had to buy and buy it. They are going to send us a reimbursement this Monday. So that was kind of crazy, now every missionary in the mission has their own three week emergency food storage. Then we figured out that all church meetings have been canceled, even sacrament meeting, for the coronavirus... WHAT!? We had various conference calls with President Zúñiga and the other zone leaders. We received permission to take the sacrament into the houses of members of worthy priesthood holders.  We don’t know for how long the Sunday meetings will be canceled, so we received permission to baptize and confirm the same day! Hahaha!

So Sunday we took the sacrament in the home of a family that are recent converts, and we had a nonmember friend with us. It was honestly a really cool experience. The family we were with were baptized only like two months ago, and they were kind of nervous to do the sacrament and have the meeting in their house. I honestly felt a really special spirit as I took the sacrament. It is such a huge blessing to be able to partake of the sacrament even though we don’t have a formal meeting in the church building. The atonement of Jesus Christ is so amazing.

Even though it’s sad that there is a deadly virus being spread around the world, it was an amazing experience being able to meet in a small humble home and take the sacrament this week :)

 

No handshaking... Just elbow bumping

These are pics from my last two weeks in Liners Zone:

"Christ Healed All That Had Faith"

Mar 2, 2020

Last week we had interviews with President. He is so funny. Thankfully he only interviewed our zone so he wasn’t as rushed as last time, but we still finished pretty fast.

In my interview he told me that he was worried because almost all of his zone leaders and both his assistants go home in June and July. So he said he’s gonna have to start putting in some newer missionaries as leaders. He also told me that my time in my area is coming to an end and he needs me “en otro lado” (somewhere else). So, I will most likely be leaving Parque Brown next transfer and who knows where I’ll go. But I’m excited for whatever comes! I love the mission! Now I just got to stay focused and work the heck out of these last two weeks of the transfer!

Last night we had the opportunity to give L. a blessing. Her eyes were really puffed up and red and she had a really bad fever. The doctor said that they weren’t sure what was wrong with her and that they should wait a few days to see what happened.

Christ healed all that had faith. I blessed her that her sickness would leave and that there would be no need to go to the doctor again. After the blessing I looked into her eyes and they weren’t red at all, and a little punkish smile crossed her face.

I’ve learned that if Heavenly Father doesn’t want us to give a certain blessing, He will never manifest it through fear. If I feel fear before giving a blessing it is Satan trying to get me to not pronounce the blessing.

I'm out of time. Talk to ya next week! Love you all!