I´m excited to email you all today and give you the report for the past ten days! To get up to date, after my last email I still had four and a part of a day remaining in the CCM in Argentina. The last four days were very cool, but a little difficult in some ways as well. The biggest difficult was that as the time to leave was approaching, the missionaries in my district got less interested in studying and more interested in just hanging around. Chalk one up for human nature- I did my best to help us stay focused, and did my own study but naturally people were concerned with getting each other´s contact info, etc. before they left for the mission field.
Our last Saturday proselyting was another joy! Working with Elder Ludlow was very fun, and I was glad we had the chance to work together. We went back to our two appointments and were able to talk with Nicolas briefly. Unfortunately, he didn´t want to talk very much, and I wasn´t able to understand enough of his castellano to be able to understand why. Our other appointment Juan wasn´t there either but we were able to talk with his cuñado again, and contact their neighbor! Overall, it was a great experience! We placed both of our Book of Mormon´s again, and received 5 more references for the area!
Fast forward to the following Tuesday and it was campo day! In the morning we had breakfast and then had to make sure all of our stuff was ready to go before 8 AM! We took some time and did some service, because our mission president didn´t make it to pick us up until around 11 AM.
We headed out, had several short meetings over our finances, staying safe, caring for our apartments (pensiones), etc. Then we got our assignments and headed out to work! My companion is...(drum roll please)...Elder Wendt! Elder Wendt is 22 years old and is from Germany! His mother is argentine so he already spoke Castellano before coming to the mission in addition to German! He is the district leader for our district, and is training me right now! Lots to do!
Our area is called Atalya! The area is fairly poor, but there are some nicer houses interspersed between some of the more worn down areas. Our ward is very nice. We had probably 100 people in attendance this past Sunday, and we have been trying to really work with the members here!
Our area is being reopened for the Elders after a short time being closed so both Elder Wendt and I were starting from ground zero basically. There are also some Hermanas in the ward who were here before though, so we have certainly had some help in getting things going!
We have had some cool experiences including having my first lesson with an old contact in the area, Yonatan! We stopped by and caught him Wednesday night. He invited us in and we taught the first lesson. I had the opportunity to extend the baptismal invitation to him and he accepted! It was pretty awesome! The spirit was definitely strong in the lesson. We have a lot of work to do with Yonatan for an August 27th baptismal date, but I plan on helping him in any and every way I can! He is a very good guy, 27 years old, and lives with his father. He smokes, and has had problems with drug use that we are hoping to help him with.
We also had our first baptism! Haha. We kind of had it handed to us, because we picked up some of the investigators that the Hermanas hear had been teaching previously. It was still a privelege though to meet Antonia for a couple of lessons, and help her with her baptism and confirmation! She is awesome- a mother of 4 girls and a boy. She has been attending church for 4 years now! She chose to separate from her boyfriend she had lived with for 17 years to be baptized! She is demonstrating incredible faith and I am so glad I get to see a part of her conversion!
Besides that things are stellar! Had an awesome lunch with a less active family yesterday! I´m having to adjust to my budget here because I don´t know how much things will cost, and at home it was very easy for me to manage my money knowing my income and my expenses.
I love you all! Yo sè que mi Señor vive, estoy agradecido por la misericordia, el merito, y la gracia de Jesucristo. Le doy gracias para siempre.
-Elder Lambert
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