Running Away to Uruguay

Happy New Year.... I have lice. That´s how my New Year started. On new years eve we were visiting the Furtados and Hermana Furtado noticed I was itching my head a lot so she sent us home with a comb to check for lice. We I combed my hair in the morning, sure enough! .... I had lice. :( Luckily, for everyone reading this you all are probably on a different continent and it won´t effect you. As for my companion.....She has it too. After our discovery we spent 2 hours at the Furtados as most of the family helped pick out all the ¨piojos¨ (lice) and eggs from our hair. Following that we spent the day santizing our house and cleaning our bedding. Hermana Furtado also forbade us from giving the kids kisses and demanded that we come to her house everyday this week for her to continue cleaning our hair.






This was disgusting and got in the way of our work, but It´s all apart of the mission experience right? It ended up being a blessing too though! The Furtado´s are a less active family and their son left for his mission the day after. He is the first missionary in his family. Due to the lice we were able to spend the day visiting with him before he left as they clean our hair. It was great to hear his testimony and visit with him ( BTW he loves teasing and LOVED the fact that we had lice). We also extended a New Year goal for the Furtados to read the Book of Mormon everyday as a family. Everyday we go to get our hair clean we read the Book of Mormon with their family. Hopefully, by the time we no longer need her to check our hair everyday they will start reading on their own.






Another thing that happened this week is we got a dog and a pool! The neighbors decided the dog was too annoying to keep near their house so they chained it in front of my window. :) It´s......great. As for the pool. I guess in front of our house was the perfect place for them to put their kiddie pool. It´s not even like we have a big front yard for all these things but somehow it all fits. It´s so tempting to jump in the pool on hot days. Oh, Uruguayans! Gotta love them!






The days are still pretty hot but we have a freezer full of ice cream thanks to one of the families in our ward. They sell ice cream from their house and they ALWAYS make sure we go home with tons of it. And if that isn´t enough they always drop by and give us some. The only problem is we don´t have a freezer! haha We go over to the elders house every other day to store ice cream in their freezer. We literally have a whole freezer full of ice cream.






Times flying here in Uruguay! Every night I always think to myself ¨ I can´t believe it´s already time for bed.¨ I have so many experiences I wish I could write, but as I said time FLIES and I only have so much time on the computer. Here is one of my favorite experiences I had this week though.






Hermano Martinez is a less active member in our ward. The week before Christmas we visited his family and found out that him and his wife were getting a divorce. We thought about the family a lot after that, but with the holidays it made it hard to visit him. Although, he never slipped our minds. Hermana Lopez and I always thought about him and how he must be going through a hard time this Christmas.






On Saturday night we were planning for the next day. We decided that Sunday would be a great day to try to visit him and we would need to invite the Bishop to come with us. I was scepticle our plan wouldn´t work because the bishop is ALWAYS busy. Although when we asked him after church to meet us at his house for our last lesson of the day he told us he would be able to make it. If there was anyone we needed, it was him. He holds the keys to help this ward. Especially, Hermano Martinez.






Our plans were set for the lesson that night and we went out to work right after church. Unfortunatley, the day wasn´t very successful. It was hot, we were fasting and hungry, and all of our lessons fell through EVEN the backup plans. Dissappointed and tired we decided to head to our 5:00 dinner appointment and hour early. Good thing we did because they wouldn´t have been anywhere ready at 5 if we didn´t show up. As they got dinner ready we talked about what we were going to teach to Hermano Martinez and practiced. We had dinner and we were able to leave the house early enough to get to our lesson on time as planned.






We arrived at 6:01 leaving no time to talk to the Bishop about our lesson plan. All we had told him was we were going to talk about the Atonement. We also knew what we were going to say, because just that morning I had studied in 3 Nephi 9 and the last few verses of this chapter were exactly what I felt Hermano Martinez needed to hear. I was grateful we had planned while we waited for dinner instead of wasting time visiting with the family. Even though we were unable to talk to the bishop, I felt confident in our lesson plans.






The lesson started with a hymn and Hermano Martinez instantly offered to give the opening prayer. We all bowed our heads and.....SILENCE. A good solid 10 seconds of silence as the spirit fell upon us. All of us could feel it. After the prayer Hermano Martinez said he knew the Bishop and sister missionaries came to his house as a message from Heavenly Father.






Hermana Lopez taught her portion and then it was my turn. I talked about the atonment and how it´s apart of our plan. We read 3 Nephi 9 21-22 and I shared my thought on what I had learned that morning from these verses. Then, it was the bishops turn. Every word he said was PERFECT. With all of us teaching in sync the spirit felt so strong. It was hard to fight tears. I was doing great until the bishop said our favorite phrase in the mission ¨Hoy Es El Dia¨. He talked about how today is the day for him to change. I couldn´t understand everything that was being said as I tried to follow their spanish, but what I could understand was the spirit.






Our whole day was guided by the spirit. Every event that day lead up to that moment. The spirit lead us to add Hermano Martinez into our plans, the spirit lead me to study what Hermano Martinez needed that morning, the spirit lead us to go early to dinner, the spirit lead us to spend time preparing the lesson, and the spirit lead us during the lesson. I felt like the day was going so bad. What it taught me though is that as much as I want to think this is my work It´s not. It´s the Lords work and he´ll do it on HIS time and in HIS way. All I have to do is be obidient and do what I´m suppose to be doing no matter what. As I follow his guidence he´ll lead me and I´ll be an instrument in his hands.






HOY ES EL DIA! The Savior will come again and this is Heavenly Fathers work to gather his sheep before the second coming.






Love, Hermana Baca