Hola a mi maravillosa Familia!!
Wow, time flies! I already have a lot of time out here, almost four months. Time continues on it's pace while it seems like everything is speeding up. I guess it's because of how busy we get.
Something in relation to time was pointed out to me that I finally understood, or at least I understood it in a different way, this week. In 2 Nephi, where it says the days of the children of men were prolonged, I thought about how God's days were like a thousand years to us. In this is the change. We used to be on God's time. But time here on the Earth was slowed way down to give us a chance to learn and grow away from the presence and time of God. I always used to think that that phrase meant that men just lived to older ages. Now I understand that it means that regardless of our age, the time of Earth was slowed to allow us to experience things on a frame and plane of time that we could understand as mortals, especially since we cannot understand the concept of eternity, which is the time zone in which God lives.
Sorry for that philosophical side track. Things here in the Lòpez Camelo area are moving rather quickly I think. We're teaching several people and have four people with baptismal dates for either this Saturday or this Sunday. And we have one more for the following week. The only thing that keeps people from really being baptized in this area is their lack of commitment to the challenges we leave them, especially that of coming to church. All of the people were going to be baptized on Saturday this week, but one of them didn't come to church. In our mission it is a requirement that investigators come to church at least three times before they can be baptized, so that the ward has a chance to get to know them as well as for them to really understand what it is that they are going to have the priviledge of being a part of. Yesterday was going to be her third attendence, which would mean that she could be baptized any time between the end of the meetings through the next Saturday, but now she's going to be baptized after the meetings next Sunday. We prefer having baptizms on Saturdays so that the smallest amount of time passes between baptism and receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost, because in every mission the requirement is that the confirmation must take place in the sacrament meeting following the date of baptism. Anyway, so we have five people who want to and can be baptized this month! Hopefully I'll have pictures for all of you next week of that.
Yesterday, I had to speak in Sacrament meeting. At first, it was just a "bear-your-testimony-so-the-ward-sees-your-face" type of thing, but one of the planned speakers didn't show up, so I spoke a little longer. o.O After a quick a fervent prayer for help, I felt like I needed to speak about Faith, so when my name was announced in the program, I got up and talked for about 10 minutes in Spanish about Faith. After the meeting several people came up to me and proclaimed their amazement that I could speak so well (perfectly, some said) for only having been in Argentina for about 7 weeks... Things just flew out of my mouth. I shared with them about Alma 32, where it says in the end that our tree will grow through faith, diligence, and patience. I also talked about how faith is required to do everything in this life, meaning we have to have a desire or a belief in something before it happens, including with things temporal. We have to believe we'll get a job before it happens, or at least hope for one. God works the same way, requiring that we try things by faith.
We also participated in a baptism yesterday in another area in the district, since Elder Tidei is the District Leader and we had to go there to do the interview. It was a neat experience! I also gave the talk on Baptism at the service.
One of the area presidency, Elder Foster of the Seventy, is touring the mission this week. That means that we'll have a conference with him and he'll be inspecting certain of the apartments of the missionaries. o.O So we still ahve a little bit of cleaning to do, though not much, and I'm looking forward to hearing from him. I'll let you know how it goes!
Anyway, My companion is already done and we only have about two hours left to P-Day to take care of the rest of the chores and cleaning things we have to do, so I need to say goodbye. I love you all and hope to hear from you all soon!
With love and the desire to splash you with Felix Felicis,
Elder Matthew Hyrum Dewsnup
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