Life of a Uruguayan Missionary

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!!!