January 16, 2023
**Note from Ricky's Mom: Sometimes, you'll get Elder
Mergenthaler's emails on days other than Mondays. That's because he's typing
them on a tiny phone and sending them to me to check quickly for major
spelling errors, add some pictures, and send them along through his gmail
account. So when he says it's early, it really is! Sometimes I get his emails
at 6:00 a.m., but I don't get them sent out to everybody else until a couple of
days later. Thanks for reading and writing back to him. He loves your messages.
Let me start you off with where I left you last week. This Tuesday, I'm still down in the dumps because when we went out in the morning and no one wanted to talk to us, so that really put me off in a bad mood, but during lunch, I had a feeling to ask my companion for a comfort blessing. I didn't think too much of it--just that it would be a good thing to do because I'd been having a hard time. Well, I'm chilling for the first half and then all of a sudden these things called tears start to fall out of my eyes and the spirit was super strong!! It was probably one of the coolest experiences I've had with a blessing. Well in that blessing he said that it would all be OK and that we would be able to find and teach people here in my new area. I'm still kind of in the dumps after the blessing but have the feeling we should go to the fields and teach out there. It's about an hour-long walk. Well once out there, I'm like, "Let's go talk to this girl named Marga." I think that was her name. One of the old missionaries told me about her. So, we start to walk over and there's this lady in the street, so obviously we stop and start to talk to her. Well, guess who she was? SHE WAS THE GIRL WE WERE LOOKING FOR!!! And then she proceeded to tell us that she's been reading the Book of Mormon, but really doesn't want to come to church or become a member because she is old and is stuck in her ways, but she said she would keep reading the Book of Mormon. I'm like, "Shoot, OK. Would you like to learn English? We have a class on Fridays." She's like, "Ya, I would love to come." I was excited about that. Sadly, she didn't show up to English class, but little does she know, I know her address so I'll go check up on her sometime because I feel like there's something there, haha. Anyway, after that, my comp and I were feeling pretty good and decided to knock on some doors. We do some turns and stuff and come up on this house and we look at the map and find out that it's the house of one of the people that's close to baptism!! So that was a miracle in itself, but I'm like wow OK umm let's go hit these other houses. Well, my comp goes, "Man, I have a feeling we should knock," and I'm like, "OK," so we knock. Actually, we clap, but still, hahaha, we clap again and again, and nothing happens, so we just leave and hop back on the bus back home. Well, at home, my comp is like, "Let's go hit these points. We go to a couple of places, and I'm ready to go home, and my comp says, "I think we need to go to this house." I go along, and on the way, we run into our bishop. He goes, "Hey Elders. We have a ward meeting." Of course, we had no idea. We didn't end up going to that house, but we did run into the bishop so he could tell us about the meeting. That was a miracle-packed Tuesday.
Well here goes Wednesday. We don't find anyone in the morning. I mean, we did, but she wasn't interested, soo ya, but anyways, we walk in the morning, then eat lunch, and go to a member's house. His name is Oscar. Let me tell you about Oscar. He's freaking cool. This man has done all sorts of stuff in his life, and that includes living in the USA. We sit and talk with him for a while, but then we need to get on with our work. It's pouring rain outside, so I'm like, "Shoot. Let's go to the church, do some Facebook contacting, and then make some phone calls. Nothing happens with that except we made a really cool scripture video. We kept on with the phone calls and got two new people to talk to. That was pretty great.
On Thursday, I want to get out early and start contacting people. There's this girl on the street. I stop her to talk. She listens and wants to learn more about our message!! So we get her phone number and we set up a day to call her! After that, our day was kind of lame, but we got to do some service cleaning the church and getting to know some members better, so that was fun.
Friday, in the morning, we get out really early again
because it worked Thursday. We don't find anyone but I don't lose hope. We do
our studies in the afternoon and go out again at like 4. For a while, no one
answered, but we were able to find a family who are members except for the dad.
We get his info because he seems interested, so we will see. Each time God puts
a person in our path, I think of it as a miracle!! I trust Him!
On Saturday morning, I stop this lady who is named
Gabriella, and she's like, "Hey, can we speak in English?" I'm like,
"Sure! Why the heck not?" So, we talked with her about our purpose as
missionaries and what we believe in. At the end, she's like, "Well,
I'm not really into religion, but I'll listen to you guys because there's
something different, and we can speak English," hahaha. We go home, eat
lunch, study, and are back out again by 4. At a lesson with one of our friends,
we notice she's really closed off and shy. My companion handled it really well
because he's kind of quiet too. I'm glad he was there because I'm generally a
kind of loud person, haha. My comp takes the reins, and let me tell you,
the Spirit in that lesson was so crazy powerful! The way we were able to teach
felt so cool! Anyways, after that we had another afternoon of rejection, but,
hey, what can you do? haha.
Sunday was crazy. We had a great experience at church in the
morning, had lunch at a member's house, and got done pretty late which meant we
started personal study at like 3, so we didn't get out of the house teaching
again until around 4:30 p.m. We called this guy, Hermano Uber, because he
drives us everywhere, but he couldn't that day, so we strapped our shoes on and
began to walk and talk. We went out to the really far field area. As we're
walking a guy yells out to us. My comp asks, "Are you Christian?" to
the guy and he's like, "Ya, ya, I love God." And I'm like wow!! And
he's like, "You guys are missionaries for the Mormons, no?" and I'm
like "Ya we're missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ and he's like,
"Wow, I'm friends with a member and it's super cool!" He then
proceeded to say that we have the Spirit which isn't wrong, but when my comp
testify of eternal families this guy's face lit right up!! And now we have a
call with him on Friday. It couldn't be earlier because I'm going to Bahia
Blanca for a couple of days because I'm technically illegal here in Argentina,
haha, but ya that's that!
Anyways, love you all, and just remember, trust in the Lord
because He can change your life! As you can see, He changed my week, and gave
me a wake-up call, so He can for you too!!
I love you all so, so much and miss you tons.
Much love
Elder Mergenthaler
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