last exchange in Merlo

exchange in Merlo

Hola todos! Espero que hayan tenido una buena semana!
[Hello everybody! I hope you had a good week!]

This week was good. A little crazy, but good. Monday night, we got all ready to travel to Merlo to do our last exchange, but the bus was full. So we had to change everything and go on Tuesday night. All day Tuesday, we were writing reports on the hermanas and how they are doing. It takes quite a while. So we left on Tuesday night and got to Merlo the next morning. We had our last exchange of the transfer. It was really good. I like being a Sister Training Leader and being able to help the sisters out.

Thursday was pretty amazing. Okay, at first it was a bit crazy. Our bus to Carlos Paz was supposed to leave at 2 in the morning. But when we got to the terminal, they told us that the bus broke down and that we were going to have another one at 6:30. So, we got there at 6:40 freaking out thinking that we had missed it. But thank goodness it was late. We got back to Carlos Paz at 11 a.m. finally. We finished our reports on the hermanas (that we have to send to Presidente) when we got back.

At the Bishop's house

At night, we got a text from the elders telling us that Macarena (a recent convert we hadn't seen for a few weeks) was not doing so hot. We went immediately and found her at her house. She let us in and started to cry. She told us that she was smoking again. We got talking and she told us about her new boyfriend. She'd told me about him before telling me that she wanted to share the Gospel with him. She told us that now they were together and she was smoking and doing other things that she knew she shouldn't be doing. She also told us that he had looked up stuff about Joseph Smith on the Internet and that now she had doubts about the Gospel. We asked her if she was praying and reading the Book of Mormon and she said no. We talked a lot and finally she decided to start praying and reading again. It was amazing. We acted on that message and if we had gone one day later, it might have been too late. It was amazing. In the lesson, we all were crying. There came a point where I literally felt that what I was saying to Macarena weren't my words, but God's. I couldn't even tell you what I said. I do remember at one point begging her to stop doing the things that she knew she didn't have to do and to start reading and praying again. The Spirit was so strong. It reminded me of a talk by Brad Wilcox called His Grace is Sufficient. If you haven't read it, do it. Anyway, it was a beautiful experience. On Sunday she went to church and said that she was doing a lot better. :)

Pellegri Family

Tomi

Okay. So this part was hard. Antonella, Damian y Eliana. We went to go visit them and they weren't doing too great. We started talking to Antonella and she didn't want anything to do with us. She didn't even want to look us in the eyes. She told us that she didn't want to go to church ever again and that she was going to give us back her Book of Mormon. We talked to her for a while and she just didn't want it. We were talking with Damián and he also said he never wanted to go back. We asked him why and he told us that he didn't like that we were pressuring him so much to get married and baptized. He said that he was trying to do it, he just couldn't make ends meet fast enough. We felt horrible. He didn't want to because of us. Because we pushed him too far. We talked for a while and he said that it's not that he doesn't want to see us again, it's just that he wanted us to back off a bit. I understand. I wouldn't have liked that either. Eliana was just dandy. While all this was going down Antonella wrote a note to Hermana Obregón saying that she wanted to talk to her. They went off to the side to talk. After they talked, Antonella was doing better. She just has some problems that we'll just have to work through. It was kind of an emotional wreck, though.

Macarena's dad's baptism

So yeah. Also, this is Hermana Dennis' last week in the mission and the minis are leaving too. So basically I'm left alone with a new companion to try and figure life out again. I'm kind of stressed.

Anyway, I hope you all have a great week! Make every day count! I love you all!!!

Love from,

Hermana Micaela Wilson