Lots of Construction!

Con 

Si! Constructión!

Elder Albrethsen

Colonia, Uruguay

Comp:  Elder Heaps

Tuesday, 31 Jan 2012

Another change come and gone... o seá 6 more weeks has passed by here in Colonia.  It really seems like just yesterday I got here; time is passing by faster than I thought it would. Some crazy news with changes!!! It’s absolutely not what we were expecting!!!  News for the week first, tho, as always, haha.

Exciting weather in Colonia. Hurricane explosions of greatness happened this week as it usually does this time of year, but it was great either way!  It is getting hot again. But it’s completely bearable compared to how Rivera was last year.

I will be able to build my own house pretty easily when I get home.  We logged a lot of service time this last week and this week while helping a couple members build their houses haha.  One’s name is Adan—this guy is awesome!  He has been our best bud since I got here, haha. He is a member recently reactivated when his son, 13, got baptized a few months back.  He has been great in helping us out by going to lessons with us and every Saturday giving us lunch which consists of an asado or a quick grilled meat and cheese sandwich!!!! Oh, man, I look forward to lunch every Saturday!  Haven’t had a bad meal yet!  

Since I’ve been here, we have raised the great wall of Berlin at his place to seclude him from his neighbors, hahaha, long story. We are building a shed out back for his tools (he has almost more than my dad and that’s saying something) and other things of grave importance! Haha.   

Amazing lessons with family. We had a long week of work with our now decent pool of investigators, compared to the ones we had when I got here.  One family we found while out knocking with a member is half Chilean—the wife, who is from Chile, is super cool.  So is the husband! They are about 30 years old.  She has a son in Chile and she is going this week to pick him up or to visit.  We had some amazing lessons with them. They were super pumped to come to church. The ONLY thing was that Marcelo is a project manager over a hotel that opened up this last Sunday and he had to work. So they didn’t make it! Ahh, but they are a great family! They will get baptized! They are awesome!!!!!!!

Disappointment turns to surprise! Another family, Vilma and her son Gorge, are super cool! We invited them to church and Gorge was super excited to come. His mom had been before.  We went to go pick them up and they weren’t at home, unfortunately! Ah, so we went to church kinda bummed ‘cause we had no investigators there.  I was scheduled to give a Sacrament talk for 15 minutes, but they left me 40 minutes to speak, haha. The two previous speakers gave a quick 2-minute scripture and then finished. Fun time… But right after the Sacrament was passed, in walked Vilma and Gorge!!!!!. So it was great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In Sacrament meeting they announced that our ward council meeting was right after church.  So me and Olsen went to the meeting . . . and were the only ones who showed up, haha. Guayan.

Changes—to stay or not to stay . . . Well, clean cut and straight to the facts, I’m staying and my comp, Elder Olsen, is going to Salto.  Ah.... we are super bummed. We had a great change and we figured he would “kill” me (be my last comp until I leave for home.)  

My new comp is Elder Heaps from Idaho. He sounds like a stud! (No picture yet) But, yeah, I’m finishing here in Colonia!!!!! Woot!  So, we have some early morning buses to catch tomorrow to get everything set up. So, yeah, gots to go!

Hang in there!

Love you!  

Elder Albrethsen   

Reach Out and Share

“The message of the gospel of Jesus Christ is unlike anything else you will share with others.”  Elder L. Tom Perry     (lds.org)

Hurricane weather!  

Elder Albrethsen

Colonia, Uruguay

Comp:  Elder Olsen

Monday, 23 Jan 2012

Wild weather! My goodness, I don’t know if you guys heard, but we had half a hurricane down here over the weekend.  It was intense!! I’m trying to see if I can send the video. It was quite the adventure! I have a series of 3 videos of what happened to us this week.  They are all too big to fit in an email.  Sorry about that.  More about the weather later . . .

We found out that a family we’d made a couple visits to were actually members. They omitted that information in their introduction. We now understand why they were really hesitant towards our message;  they  knew about the church already.  Sources say that the mom was a Relief Society president and her ex-husband was a District President, but that’s not confirmed. Either way, we found out that she was a member and she outright refuses to come back to church.  We left her with a powerful testimony and invited her to church, but more to pray and come back into contact with Heavenly Father.  She, normally full of words and things to say, stayed pretty quiet and accepted the commitment to read that night and pray afterward.

About our preacher friend, Omar . . . “He went to Brazil.”  That’s what his kids told us, but he really went to San Jose, which is just another department here in the Guay, and was gone the whole week. We had quite the adventure to get out to his house on Saturday.

Escaping falling trees and confused motorists!  Haha We had been having the worst day (Saturday) and it was looking like it was going to rain.  While doing some contacts, it did start to rain. So we ran for shelter under a bus stop, hoping to find a bit of refuge.  While we were waiting for the bus, the rain kicked up and became a full-on hurricane force windstorm. I have the video. haha One day I will put it onto Facebook, I’m sure. We got soaked completely. Ditching the bus stop, we made our way out to the church.  In the 2 minutes we were out running, we almost got hit by falling trees and by passing, confused motorists who couldn’t see anything.  We finally made it to the church, tired and completely wet. Long story short, we, still soaked, took the bus out to Omar’s.  He was home this time.

Baptism, a sacred ordinance performed by the authority of the priesthood. Omar hasn’t changed. He feels like he doesn’t need to be baptized again, despite our testimonies and the numerous scriptures that we showed him that prove that baptism must be done by one having priesthood authority.  He still wasn’t convinced. Super disheartening. He promised us that he would come to church.  He didn’t make it.

The other great story is that we found a Chilean family last week.  We have only had 2 lessons with them, but they are super legit!!! We also found a lady that lives right next to where the Branch President lives. She is progressing nicely, but she works Sundays.  Ah!  We also had some run-ins with a few drunk people and, well  . . .  that’s a story for after the mish.  Don’t worry, Mom. All is well. hahaha    

As for today, our p-day, we booked it up to the bus stop and had to literally run to catch the bus.  It was like grade school all over again!  Fun times!  We played fronton, which is kinda like racquetball.  It’s super fun, but now I’m totally burnt and pretty beaten up (some hard collisions into cement walls haha) Don’t ask.

The church is true!!! That’s never going to change and although people may reject the truth now, one day all will be revealed unto everyone.  As it says in the scriptures, there will be great gnashing of teeth (Matt. 13:42. 50) . . . we are doing our best to help as few people as possible have that kind of regret for never receiving the Savior into their lives. 

I love you!!! Stay awesome!

 

            

Elder Jonny Albrethsen

 

Living the Abundant Life

“I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly “          lds.org

Palm trees and rain

Elder Albrethsen

Colonia, Uruguay

Comp:  Elder Olsen

Monday, 16 January 2012

Note:  We asked Jon to write some essays for his applications to BYUI and LDS Business College.  He spent most of his time today typing them into an email and didn’t have time to write about his week.  But he did send pictures with brief explanations.

We are running behind again... I’m sorry, Mom, the app thing kinda took up time, but don’t worry I’m writing about the week to you in a letter.

I went on divisions with Elder Wilson again. He came to my area.

We found a lady out in Miami as you can tell by the palms. haha We walked a long way for that one.

It rained on us this week . . . a lot! (My comp, Elder Olsen)

We were soaked to the bone and our umbrellas broke haha

We did some service for some members.  Brief moment of pure exhaustion haha

Here’s a member family with whom we did an activity. They introduced us to Manuel.  We should be baptizing him in a few weeks! He is a stud!

I love you guys! Have a great week!

Elder Jonathan Albrethsen

Study the Book of Mormon

“Prayerful study of the Book of Mormon will build faith in God the Father, in His Beloved Son, and in His gospel.”  —President Henry B. Eyring                                                lds.org

The Book is True!  

Elder Albrethsen

Colonia, Uruguay

Comp:  Elder Olsen

Monday, 9 January 2012

I’ll explain the subject line in a minute.

Good story there!

A couple great and amazingly funny adventures this week!   I’ll introduce a couple of our new investigators, Omar and Christian.    Omar is a pastor of his own church here. It consists mostly of his own family of around 30 people living in the house.  Yeah, good times. The other is a guy named Christian, whom we found when we were knocking doors in a new vivienda, an apartment complex near our home. This guy is awesome! Haha

First, I’ll start with Christian.  He is a stud.  We knocked his door and his wife rejected us right away, but he said, “No, let them in.  I have a few questions.” The first was, “Would you like a beer?” and the second, “How about a cigarette?”  haha We, of course, said no to them both. He somewhat already knowing about some of our standards in the church said, “Well, you don’t mind if I do, right?” haha, not really waiting for an answer. He started into a liter of beer and lit a cigarette and told us that he didn’t believe anything about us.

My comp, Elder Olsen

While he drank, we taught him about the restoration of the church, which is plenty for one to take in at a time, but he knew a lot about it.  Some of the details he knew were a little . . . fuzzy :D  As we were about to finish and commit him to read and pray about the Book of Mormon, he asked if this really was what God wanted for us during this life or if life was just a big event to have and then die and that’s it.  So we continued into the plan of salvation.  Having polished off half a liter of beer and on to his 2nd cigarette, he still was asking remarkably great questions about the plan and afterlife and was always one step ahead of what we were trying to explain. 

Once we finished almost the whole lesson, he asked the next golden question, “So what is our purpose here in life?” That led into us sharing about lesson 3, the gospel of Christ.  Haha We didn’t go much into detail, but gave him the basics and he humbled a little, became very open . . . (maybe a little drunk haha) but he continued to ask intelligent questions that most sober people don’t ever get to. We answered with scriptures from the Book of Mormon and the Bible.  In the end he committed to coming to church and said, “I work on Sundays, but if I come to know that this is true, I will quit my job if I have to in order to go. Needless to say, we were super happy about his newfound commitment. He was extremely generous, too. He had us each drink a liter of soda since we didn’t drink alcohol and a bunch of bizcochos...pastres....bread things haha  which he ended up stuffing into my backpack to take with us. It was great.  (Unfortunately he didn’t show up to church yesterday.)

Omar: The Book is true! Omar . . . Omar . . . Omar . . . Well, we have had some interesting lessons with our preacher friend and he is great in understanding everything, but he just doesn’t want to commit to baptism for many reasons . . . mostly because of his wife. He started us off on his trail of false excuses that he doesn’t believe in baptism in a tub (font) that it needs to be a river.  Next, he told us that the Book of Mormon was true!!!!! The book as it exists! that it was true!!!! but the doctrine was a whole other thing. We have a visit with him Tuesday . . . tomorrow, with a member who found him and taught him 20 years ago—super crazy coincidence.  So we are excited . . .

Today we did a little touristing around the city. The email my mom sent out last week with the cool crazy gate of old school fortifications—we were there haha and at one of the light houses too. We had lunch at a restaurant on the beach.  It was sweet!  medio caro....but really, really worth it!!!   

The branch is reorganizing leadership due to the president moving to another city.  So we are super excited to work with a new perspective. Before he leaves, we are taking the president out to knock doors on divisions with us this week! Something he hasn’t done in years! It will be great!!!

I love you all.  Keep doing the right thing every day—I know you will!

Elder Jonathan J. Albrethsen

A Book of Mormon Story

A young bishop in England describes how the Book of Mormon came to life for him and changed his perspective forever.

http://lds.org/pages/mormon-messages-gallery?lang=eng