Life of a Uruguayan Missionary

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!