Email 12/07/09

This was another amazing week. Zone conference and interviews were Thursday. It was probably the most spiritual day I´ve ever had. It started off really cool. For each of the Area´s in the mission (I´m in South America South which is Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina) the church has a doctor. It´s a full time missionary couple that´s called to do that. Elder Peterson is ours. He was a Mission President in Argentina for a while. I actually talked to him a bit when I had chicken pox. He gave some health advice to all of us: don´t play with rabid animals, don´t drink from puddles, don´t eat anything rotten, but then he ended with an amazing testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel and of our work. Then Hermana Callen gave a wonderful talk about the Savior and about this time of the year and the wonderful opportunity that we have to serve the Lord during the Christmas season. It was beautiful. President Callen then talked about an experience the Apostles Elder Cook and Elder Holland shared. They were companions when they were missionaries in England and their mission president gave every missionary a brand new copy of the Book of Mormon and challenged them to read it and to mark in different colors: all the names of the Savior, His words and His attributes. President Callen then told us that he and his wife were thinking what the best thing they could give us for Christmas. They then pulled out a box of Books of Mormon and brought that around. He went to every missionary and asked us if we would accept the challenge. Then he gave us the book. It was amazing. I´ve never felt the power that strong in the Book of Mormon before. It was beautiful.
I had my interview afterwords. He asked how Elder Evans was doing. I said great. He asked me if Elder Evans was ready to train. I said I wasn´t sure. "Then it´s your job to make sure he´s ready in 2 weeks to train. The Lord has let me know that Elder Evans will be training and it´s your job to make sure that he´ll be able to do that." Then I asked him if I´d be leaving. He said, "The Lord only puts us in our areas for a short amount of time so we run the whole time we´re there." But then he didn´t say anything else. He said the closing prayer and asked the Lord to help me finish up in my area strong so I´d be able to leave it without a problem. I guess that was my answer. I still won´t know anything until the fat lady sings but she won´t sing until next Tuesday.
I had a lot of fun teaching Pentecostals this week. Our buddy Reynaldo has been avoiding us a bit so I believe that´s how he liked it. His pastor afterwords couldn´t even look at us. The people that we´re teaching from their congregation are really nice people but it´s moving a bit slow. They cannot deny that they felt the spirit from us but their religion twisted them enough to think that anyone can have the spirit, regardless of authority. It´s taken a LOT to get any of them to pray and ask God if it´s true. I feel really good about all of them though.
Last week´s wedding went really good. Our ward helps out with the actual carrying out of the baptism and marriage but it´s pretty hard to get anyone to do any of the preparatory stuff. Having the wedding and baptism on the same day works out REALLY good because we just have to do everything once. We just about always try to do it back to back to make it work easier for us.
This week had a bit of an interesting twist. Our stake conference was this week so President Callen asked us to avoid baptisms on this week so it´d be easier to do the confirmation on the following Sunday. Which worked out for us because, again, we didn´t have one planned. The stake conference was actually REALLY nice. The funny part is that they tried to do it like General Conference where the choir does most of the singing. One thing is for sure: that sure as shooting was no Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Luckily no one but the missionaries noticed how off they were so the spirit was still there. There is this family that we´ve been reactivating, Familía Cubilla. Amazing family. One of the older daughters has been dating this guy for a while and had been dragging him to church. His name is Rodrigo. He´s not a member. His girlfriend, named Aida, has been trying to get him baptized. A month ago they broke up and so we figured that we could kiss that one goodbye. They showed up to Stake Conference, together, with VERY large smiles. "Hey Elder Wills, We´re getting married." "Wonderful," I told them. I wasn´t that impressed. How could she stay active if this guy didn´t want to get baptized? Then I realized that I hadn´t asked him yet if he wanted to. So I asked him. He said, "Well duh Elder, she wouldn´t marry me otherwise." GREAT!!!!! I was excited that one will happen this Saturday and I don´t even have to run around for it. I´m excited.
It´s been a wonderful week and I´m so excited for this one. Please tell everyone at the Cousin´s Party that I love them.
I love you all so much.
Elder Frank Wills