Apartment shopping and prosciliting

Querido familia,                           29 de Abril 2013

Last Monday we were looking for a new apartment and we ended up finding a small office where a guy works that owns three and rents them out. We found him because we just happened to stumble across one of his apartments and the neighbor told us where his office was. Well, the apartment that we saw was pretty bad, but it had internet and cable for free, so we'll have to think about that one.

When we found this guy, Julio Schefer, he started telling us about his apartments and what they're like, but didn't really have anything that would work for us. Well then he asked what it is that we teach and so we got started on a discussion about that. We should have known better than to start talking about it with him because it became apparent that he only wanted to argue; even though he was wrong. 

We didn't really get a chance to say much because he would always cut us off or just start talking louder if we keep talking. So what ended up happening was we would share a little bit of doctrine and he would rant for ten minutes about something that he didn't understand. The only thing that he really understood was that faith is necessary. At one point he asked when we honored the Sabbath Day and when we said Sunday he said that Sabbath on Sunday is apostasy created by the Catholic church (he bashed the Catholic church quite a bit during our discussion). When I explained to him that the Sabbath Day was changed from Saturday to Sunday in honor of Christ's ascension into heaven and that, starting in Acts, the Apostles took the Sacrament on Sunday he told me that, "that is blasphemy before the Holy Ghost!" Some of the other things he said that were kind of unbelievable include: "You can't be happy in this life," "God does not desire that we are happy," and "Satan has love for all men." 

We didn't bother Bible bashing with him because that doesn't help at all, it just makes him look dumb and proves us right, but rather we just tried sharing some simple doctrines with him. After a time, we were ready to go and when we left we thanked him for his time and help with the apartment search and he then said, "Don't worry about it; it was all for you. You're young and on the right path. Just don't follow after any man."

On Tuesday, we had a zone meeting with all the Elders from Paso de Los Libres, Curuzú Cuatiá, and Mercedes and after it was over I went on splits with Elder Medrano, from Buenos Aires, and I stayed in Paso de Los Libres with him for a couple days.

There is a lady that we've been teaching, or more accurately, that we've been trying to teach named Nelida. She is always traveling to Corrientes to visit her daughter who has been sick, so it's really hard to get together with her. We're going to give her a Liahona to read during the bus rides because the Liahona always has good messages. So the other day we went to teach her and two of of her daughters, Alejandra and Noemi, that live here in Mercedes were there with her. So we sat down with them, but mostly just with Noemi because Alejandra kept chasing after her baby. SO Noemi started to ask some questions about The United States and then started talking about how she wants to go there, so I started asking her even more questions about what were teaching to try to change her focus. Elder Rivera wanted to try another route however and said, "If you want to go to the Unite States, you would need to marry an American so that you can stay there." Afterwards he said that his purpose was to make her want to have us over more often so that we could teach her and get her baptized.

On Sunday, the Sunday school teacher, Omar, was teaching from the talk President Uchtdorf gave titled, "Of Regrets and Resolutions." During his lesson I was surprised and impressed to see him work a quote from a Batman movie that actually worked well with the lesson. The quote was when Bruce fell in the well in Batman Begins and when he gets pulled out his dad asks him, "Do you know why we fall down? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up."

Last night we found ourselves with these two brothers, Antonio and Agustin.  We started talking to Agustin because he was in the front yard and then his brother came out and told us that he doesn't believe in God because their mom died eight months ago and their dad died three months ago. So we started talking about the Plan of Salvation and they invited us in to talk some more. Neither one of them had much education in the Bible or anything about God really, so we started off by teaching them the basics: God is our loving Father in Heaven and He sent us His Son Jesus Christ and if we follow His Son we can live together with our families forever, even after death. Agustin was very receptive to what we said, but Antonio is still a little hardened, or maybe just a little bitter. Agustin said that he would be baptized on the eighteenth of May, so we left him with the assignment to pray to be prepared for his baptism and to help his brother. Antonio still isn't sure, so we left him with the task of praying just to gain a knowledge of his Creator.

Saturday night was our branch night for the members, but only the youth came out this time; which is good because they were in charge of the activity. It all turned out well though; we talked, played games, and ate store bought cookies. Three of the youth put on a video called Pollito Pio, supposedly a very popular video in Italian, and did a dance to go with it. We filmed it, but I don't think I'll be able to send it; the Internet is just too slow here.

But that was our week, so now I'll be starting the second half of my mission. My only fear is that it is going to feel very cold there when I get back.

os amo,

Elder Burt

-- 

Elder Joshua Burt

Argentina Resistencia Mission
Entre Rios 435
HP3500AKE Resistencia
Resistencia
Chaco
Argentina

[Mission Office]