Thanks for the message! It´s always great to hear from everyone and hear how things are going. Thank you for sharing that scripture Mom! The line that ¨they had Christ for their shepherd¨is very beautiful! There´s a picture of Christ holding a sheep on the front of our pamphlet that we use for teaching the Restoration that is very helpful!
That´s crazy that Dad´s off to Moldova again! It´s super cool that he has such an incredible opportunity to travel and serve each year! It´s also crazy that Bryan just got married! I´m very excited for him! I guess this means I´ll probably for sure be flying solo when I return from the mission! jaja. It´s not like that would be a big surprise.
As for the past week, Cynthia was baptized Saturday!!! It was awesome! Her boyfriend Marcelo attended along with her kids Ezequiel and Lola! What a cool experience! I was extremely blessed that she asked me to perform the ordinance! I still can´t understand everything she says in Castellano, but I´m so blessed that in spite of this, she has been able to feel the truthfulness of the gospel as we have taught her and has acted to develop her own faith in Jesus Christ! She is an incredible example to her family. I really hope that Marcelo will choose to commit himself to the family, marry Cynthia in October and be baptized for himself! He is a really good guy, and we are excited to work with him in the coming weeks.
As for working with Elder Benitez- it has been fabulous! It turns out that he was born in Paraguay, grew up in Argentina, and then was back in Paraguay for 5 years before coming on his mission! He doesn´t speak much English, or at least, doesn´t try to speak much in English jaja. We have been communicating exclusively in Castellano. It has been great practice. Some of the other Elders were teasing him before this transfer that he was going to have to learn English because I´m a refuerzo (you are trained by your companion for the first two transfers of the mission). However, there really hasn´t been much of an issue. We are communicating just fine. Realistically, I´m still unsure about how to say alot of things, or what exactly is the correct grammar all the time, but I´ve been really blessed that I have improved rapidly as I have set good goals, tried to take advantage of each opportunity to learn, and listened closely to what other people are saying!
As for the rest of the week- things have been great! We worked with Cynthia to prepare her for her baptism, and have been working with Micaela and Daniel to have them ready for the coming Satuday. Unfortunately, we are facing some interesting challenges. Daniel is not going to be prepared for Saturday because he has been struggling to give up cigarrettes. Micaela is prepared, but her parents don´t want her to be baptized. She was baptized into the Catholic church as a child, and they don´t think she should need to be baptized again. She´s 19 years old, and can choose for herself realistically, but of course we are here to invite all people to come unto Christ! We are working with her parents in hopes that they will understand why she wants to be baptized and will be happy to allow her to do so!
We have also been finding several new investigators through our efforts this past week. I´m very excited to continue teaching Cysela. Cysela has six kids (franco, oriodna, dante, soy, yago, and sebastian). She believes in God and the family attended an Evangelical demonination for awhile but have stopped attending. We taught the restoration and they are preparing to be baptized in October! (Cysela, oriodna, dante, and soy). They have been reading in the Book of Mormon and we are excited to return today to see how they are doing and how we can continue to support them and teach them as the learn about the gospel of Jesus Christ!
In other news: we had trainings with Pte Robertson this past week and interviews! It was very good to meet with him again and learn; we helped paint a school building for service Saturday; I finally tried the ice cream here in Argentina!
I know that Christ lives! Baptism is a symbol of rebirth! Through baptism we become sons and daughters of Jesus Christ because we are born again! We are able to renew ourselves spiritually and have the opportunity to one day return to live with our father in heaven! Thank you for all of your examples and continue to renew your faith and seek out Jesus Christ!
-Elder Lambert
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