i have photos. i just wasted a ton of time trying to get them to download from my camera. dah. it´s not working, sorry.
we had stake conference this sunday. it was a lot like something you would see in arcadia. all stake conferences are the same, i guess. oh, but here the stake president receives The White Envelope for the person going on a mission--the stk pres had two mission calls and called the young men out of the congregation and had them open and read it in front of everyone. that was pretty exciting. one is going to brazil, the other to colombia. pres. and sister levrino spoke and both were very good talks. one of the councilors in our bishopbric got called to the high council--he is 26 years old and served his mission in cordova the same time as cousin alan. he is 99% sure he went on divisions with him. maybe alan remembers him? (tony casares, from salta). anyway, kinda funny that he´s younger than me and is married, with a kid, has served in the bishopbric and is now on the high council. one of the councilors in the stake presidency also is pretty young (in his 30s) and a convert. he was called to the stk presidency 5 years after his baptism. his talk was really good too.
ma, this is for you: we ate lunch with a girl my age the other day (dalila). she´s a returned missionary and is now the seminary teacher of our ward. she said that during her high school years her parents separated and it was an ugly time for her. she said that seminary saved her life during that time. and when she was on her mission, sometimes she got asked really hard questions that she didn´t know the answers to, but then in her mind, she would remember specific lessons from seminary. she was emotional as she was telling us these stories. so, sometimes it may not seem like you are making a difference, but you never know....they may not all be asleep. there may be dalila´s in your class!
this week was kinda discouraging--we had two whole days that we didn´t teach a single lesson. that´s bad, folks. we get members to come and accompany us, and we walk all over creation, and we plan and practice and prepare, and we have set appointments...and then people aren´t home. or they are just walking out the door and can we please come back at another time that is more convenient? also, the people we are teaching aren´t keeping their committments (read B of M, pray, word of wisdom, etc) so they´re not progressing. dah. we are trying to increase our teaching pool by finding new people to teach, but that is slow work and hasn´t borne any fruit yet. as discouraging and hard as the teaching aspect has been this week, i feel like hna rojas and i are finally clicking in our preparing and practicing for lessons during comp study. i feel like we have been using our time better and that we are focusing on specific needs now, instead of preparing a script for the lesson. this is good.
we have a baptism planned for the 17th of december--dulce, 12 yr old granddaughter of tesi, who has been inactive for years. dulce lives with tesi, and both are pretty fantastic. tesi is hilarious. we ate lunch with them the other day and she was telling jokes, which i didn´t get, but i laughed my head off anyway because tesi was laughing her head off. she will participate in lessons and will attend church with dulce, which is great. double whammy: baptism and reactivation.
there is another family that we´re working with--the orue´s. i think i talked about them in my last email--they have two kids that were baptized a few years ago (ages 15 and 19) but are now innactive. the mom wanted to get baptized, but can´t marry the dad because he can´t get divorced from his first wife. messy and complicated, BUT daughter veronica and boyfriend matias have potential. we just haven´t been able to teach them this week (see paragraph above). and hna rojas had the brillant idea (inspiration?) to have melani (innactive daughter) accompany us in our lessons with two sisters we´re teaching that are her age. unfortunately, the two girls haven´t been home when we´ve brought melani with us. but we´re hoping that having melani hear the lessons again and have girls her age at church will help her.
haven´t heard any news about how calling home for christmas works. i´ll let you know when i find out (hopefully soon!!!)
hermana magnusson
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