Elder Parker Spanbauer: Week 12 Vallenar

June 1, 2015

So..... yeah, this week has been kind of a rollercoaster. To start off, we have two investigators se llaman Julio Y Tamara. Ellos son dificiles para enseñar. Or, for you noobs out there. They are difficult to teach! Julio doesn’t read, go to church... nada! Tamara is kind of easy going and does her own thing. They pretty much just have us over to talk and have a conversation. This week, the unexpected happened... They have a 2-year-old boy named Ian that got sick and died all within the span of 1.5 days. They took him to the hospital and the doctor said there was nothing wrong so they took him home and he died the next morning. I was literally sitting in a room with all of them 2 days prior to this all taking place. I was not prepared for this... They had an open casket funeral type thing and we went. I cannot put into words how sad this was for me. I have never seen a dead child before. This struck me so hard. Julio went straight back to drugs to cope with the pain and Tamara is a mess. Now we are going to focus in the plan of salvation with them and teach how families are eternal. So apart from all of this, we had intercambios esta semana con los lideres de zona. This is basically when I go with the zone leaders for a day and someone goes with my companion. Elder Swett is one of our zone leaders and I spent the day with him in his sector. It was so awesome because he is a gringo! FINALMENTE! haha I was able to tell him what I wanted in English when I couldn’t in Spanish. He is such a good leader and his Spanish, even better. He told me to never touch my English scriptures again. He said that’s how I’m going to learn. I spent the night in there pension and they don’t have gas so I took a freezing cold shower. Overall, it was a great experience! We also had a lesson with one of our other investigators. His name is Lino. He is one of the hardest people to teach because the last time we taught him, we brought a member from the ward to help us and he is awesome. The member we brought is the coolest old man I’ve ever met. Anyway, we were teaching and Hermano Carriso (el miembro) was literally pouring out his soul to Lino, testifying of joseph smith and everything and at the end of it, Hermano Lino simply asks ´´Galletas?´´ while handing us a plate of cookies.... I’m not sure if he just doesn’t listen or what but man.... how? I felt the spirit soooo strong and none of it touched the heart of this man. ANYWAY, we taught him the other night again but just Elder Leon and I and it was amazing. We read 3 Nephi 11 with him and it was awesome. He asked really good questions, and we were able to teach it to him in an easy way so that he could understand. I bore my testimony after and I literally don’t even know what I said. I was literally led by the spirit and I felt invincible hahaha. The spirit is real, the gift of tongues is real! The mission is truly something else. Something incredible. Until next week! Love you all!

Elder Spanbauer