HEY GUYS!

12/14/15

Hey everyone! 

I want to let everyone know that I had full intentions of writing a big email last week but I got a little distracted from some bad news. The Burnham family is in my prayers and Sister Burnham will be deeply missed. That was a welcome home hug that I looked forward to. Now the wait will be a little longer, but it will be so much sweeter in our real home. 

I am still in Senillosa, I didn’t get transferred. My whole district is staying in Senillosa, which means that I will be here for at least 6 months by the time this transfer is over. 

This is the longest I will have been in an area. It’s a bitter sweet kind of thing but it’s going to be a good six weeks. It’s also the longest that I will be with the same companion and no one will beat that because there isn’t enough time left to beat it haha.

Well, these have been some interesting weeks. We have been really focusing on meeting new people. We put the goal two weeks back to contact 100 people. Now, let me just say that that may not seem like a lot to some, but in Senillosa, that is like half the population haha. It was hard to accomplish but we did it. And that did help us out this past week because it gave us the opportunities to be able to visit different people. It also helped in unseen ways. Pushing ourselves that much let us receive other blessings that our Heavenly Father had in store for us. 

The work itself is going fairly well. We have several people we are teaching and they are excited but it’s been a struggle getting them all to church. That is one of the biggest struggles we have in the mission: getting people up at 8am to go to church with us. It makes it hard. R, who I talked about a few weeks back, has been struggling to come to church. He is still very accepting and happy but there is just something missing and we aren’t quite sure what yet but he'll come around.

On a side note, I want to say something. I want to encourage everyone (whether or not you are a member of the Church) to ponder on what obligations you have with your Heavenly Father. It is vital that we can do our best to fulfill every request and commandment that He has given us. Will that be hard? Of course but it will be so worth it. Magnify your callings; do your home teaching/visiting teaching; HELP THE MISSIONARIES; do it all and spend every second you can doing the Lords work. There is nothing more gratifying. This Church is set up to succeed. And if it doesn’t, it is partially, if not fully, because we aren’t doing our jobs. Allow God to make us instruments in His hands. He wants to but we have to ALLOW Him to do that. Just do it!!! It will make you happier and bless that lives of others!!

I love you all and thank you for your support. I hope you have a fantastic week!!!

Elder Clifford

What a week....

11/30/15

Ok. Well I’m still really bad at this whole blog post thing. I’m sorry but here is another rousing entry of Elder Clifford in Argentina....

Ok well this week was pretty normal but we had some good highlights. One of our Investigators, R, had a cool experience. So he just moved here from Córdoba which is like 12+ hours away. His "wife" (they aren’t married but have been together for 10 years) still lives there. When he came here, one of the members who lives near him invited him to church. He came and loves it and without a doubt knows this is the true church and is reading the Book of Mormon daily; the whole nine yards. BUT! He didn’t want to get baptized without talking with his wife and he wanted to talk to her face to face and she is coming to visit in the middle of December. But he decided to message her instead and see what she thought. Then the miracle! Turns out, she is already a member of the church!! How cool is that! Granted she is probably inactive but that’s ok!!! We can work with that!!! So that got R pretty excited and he decided to get baptized ASAP. Unfortunately he didn’t come to church yesterday so we have to wait another week but the 12th of December, he should be getting baptized. God will always provide the way to get done what we want to do as long as it done with righteous desires. 

We also had a REALLY cool ward activity. It had to do with the temple and the plan of salvation. So the missionaries all got pday clothes on (normal people clothes) and we sat in a dark room. A different missionary acted as a guide and guided the members into the dark room to talk to us. We told the stories of how we had "died". We were in Spirit Prison. After we finished the stories, 2 elders dressed in all white entered in to teach us. They taught us about baptism and that we could still be saved but we didn’t have bodies. SO we had to ask the members to be baptized for us. Then the members went to another room where they talked about the temple. In the meantime, the missionaries who were in spirit prison, ran to the bathroom and changed into all white. Then the members are guided into the chapel where we were standing all in white. We sang Families can be Together Forever and bore our testimonies as those that had been saved from spirit prison, thanking those that had been baptized for us. I hope you guys got the idea of how it works. If not, trust me: It’s a beautiful activity and we are doing it in our ward when I get home so prepare yourselves.

You guys, this mission is wonderful. It’s hard sometimes but it’s so worth it. I only have a few 5 months left, which is crazy. It has gone by so fast. This truly is the Lords work and He is present in every step of it if we let Him. But we also have to let Him be there. I love you all and thank you for all you have done for me.

Elder Clifford