Thanks for all your stories and emails this week. Ryan, I can´t believe what a freaking stud you and your friends are. You´re such great examples of how the Gospel of Jesus Christ can be applied to every single aspect of our lives, even in High School.
So I´m still here in la Villa Poderosa, trying to get my mind out of Spanglish mode (or ¨Casteyanqui¨ as Elder Zollinger calls it), and losing miserably in the war for our apartment against the cucarachas. (If we get money for the month today, we´re going to buy Raid and just go nuts in there. It ends today.)
Oh, so I got robbed. The other day, I bought these really cheap cookies because I was starving, and I left my scripture bag open by accident. When we got to the Villa, I saw that they were gone, and I had only eaten two cookies. How. Dare. They.
But the same day, when boarded the Colectivo, the driver immediately started asking us questions about the Church, and trying to site biblical references to the Trinity and Saints, (they never really make any sense, and are always widely taken out of context, but he tried to anyway.) We simply tried to testify of truthfulness, and invite him to pray about it. He slowly became more persistent, and then accidentally cut off a taxi. There was no accident or anything, but as Argentine drivers do when nothing really serious happens, both drivers errupted in anger, and began yelling all kinds of profane things and threatening each other. The taxi driver got out of his car, and the bus driver kept yelling at him ¨Do you wanna fight? Get on the bus, and we´ll do this right here!¨ It was all talk, and no action, and finally all of the annoyed passengers talked (or screamed) some sense into them, and they got back in their driver seats and we continued on. Then he seemed to realize that he lost all credibility in his knowledge about the Gospel of Peace, and awkwardly said ¨sorry, some people are just idiots.¨ We chuckled, and gave him a mormon.org card if he had any more questions when we wasn´t in traffic. Haha, oh porteños.
This week has been pretty incredible with following promptings of the Spirit. For example, yesterday. Our area is in the middle of the Villa, which is literally miles long, so we have to walk like 15 minutes from the entrance to even reach the beginning of our section. While walking, I was thinking about the plans that we had, and kept thinking about passing by a certain family. It was weird, because they are perfectly active, and we had other plans to pass by for investigators and other people who would seem to bepriority, but I finally mentioned it to Elder Adamson. So we went by, and the Hermana, holding a baby that wasn´t hers, said ¨Oh Elders! Just now I was talking to my friend about the Church!¨ After talking for a few minutes about an incredibly inspired mix of the Restoration, Plan of Salvation, and baptism, we invited her to be baptized. She humbly accepted. It was incredible. It´s been quite a long time that we´ve found an eligido (someone who doesn´t have anything impeding being baptized other than learning the doctrine and attending church), so we were a bit stunned, and Elder Adamson whispered, ¨we just found an eligida.¨ Then we fist bumped.
I love you guys so much. And I love my mission so much. Please don´t get offended when I say that I never want to leave here. Of course I want to talk to you guys, see your faces, and be there for you when you struggle. I´m here for anyone of you every P-day if you need to talk- and if there are special situations we can arrange something on another day. But I´ve grown such a love for the work of the Lord, and I´m enjoying immersing myself in it with all my might. I´ll keep praying for you every night, and please know how much I love you and how happy I am to be a full-time servant of the God.
Hasta la próxima semana.
¡Hurrah por Israel!
-Élder Goff
P.S. I was a little bad at taking pictures this week. Sorry, I´ll try to get some more. But I saw this in the book Las enseñanzas de los Presidentes de la Iglesia: José Smith. One of the mob members looks exactly like Josh Brothers. :)
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