So "atáte a la vida" was on a sign I saw for seatbelts. It basically means like "buckle yourself to life" or something like that. I was entertained. So it was actually a pretty good week. We found four new investigators. The problem is that people here like to move in with each other instead of getting married so they can´t get baptized. And if they got married and never got divorced, it really takes forever because divorces here take like two years. It´s pretty ridiculous. We do have this one investigator, Alfredo, who is living with a member of the church and waiting for his divorce to go through so they can get married and he can get baptized. He was at church on Sunday and he is basically the cutest man I´ve ever met. He´s so excited for his baptism and loves going to church and reading the scriptures and kept talking about how he needs to get better. He´s been going to church for like 2 years and his divorce is finally going to go through in February and then he´ll be able to get baptized. I´m excited for him because he´s so excited. The other two members of our Gospel Principles class this week were Celia, the grandma of some members who is 84 and just got baptized like 2 months ago who is so cute and calls us her angels, and Mary, a younger grandma who just got baptized like 4 months ago and is getting ready to go to the temple this month. They are all so cute and love the gospel so much. It makes me remember why I love the gospel so much and helps remind me how much people really are changed (even if they´re over 80) by baptism. It is a miracle. Mary actually really reminds me of Grandma Moser...the way she looks and talks and her personality. She gave her first talk this Sunday and she was so nervous, but it actually went really well. I was watching her give her talk and Hna. Wilding told me that Grandma is probably on the other side doing the same thing. :)
A less active man in our ward passed away this week and on Thursday, I went to my first funeral on the mission. It was Hna. Wilding´s first funeral ever. It was really sad because he has six kids and he´s only like 45. He had a heart attack and didn´t recover though. There were a bunch of hermanos that spoke at his funeral and it was so powerful because you could really tell that every single one of them had no doubt that they were going to see him again. They all have such a powerful testimony of the Plan of Salvation and they know that they´ll see Hno. Falcón again. Hna. Falcón knows that too, but it´s still really hard for her and her family. She decided to go back to church though and she has now come two Sundays in a row, is giving us lunch on Saturday, and we´re having a Family Home Evening with them on Wednesday night. She´s pretty impressive because she knows what she needs to do and even though she´s going through a really hard time, she is doing it. Another impressive family here is our ward mission leader and his family - Familia Ferrando. His kidneys are failing and he has to go in to get dialysis every 2 or 3 days and he has heart problems and a hernia in his back. He´s been on dialysis for like six years, waiting for a transplant, but the Argentine health system is not coming through for him. His wife has been fighting cancer for like 20 years and they are both only like 40 years old. And even though they have all these problems, they always come to church, visit families, and do everything they can to help other people. Hno. Ferrando told us that he thinks it´s good that they have these problems because then other people see them and can´t believe that they are still going to church and then they realize that they don´t really have an excuse not to go. His perspective is just so impressive to me and he is really excited for the resurrection when he will have a perfect body.
Basically the people in Tandil are amazing and I am already learning a lot from them. And from Hna. Wilding. She´s also really impressive. I hope I can rise to the level of everyone around me and be as cool as they all are. Thanks for all the support. We are going to be working hard this week and finding people to baptize! Don´t forget us in your prayers. Love you all!
Hna. Seegmiller
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