Hola!

This week I discovered I can eat a lot of rice. I mean so much rice that I’m pretty sure my stomach ripped. I love eating with members and I appreciate the sacrifice they make, but I still eat very fast and they must think I’m really hungry so they give me more and more. I’m trying to learn to eat slower so they’ll stop shoving rice and other food down my throat.

Being with my Latino companion, I feel like I’m in a world that I can say what ever I want in English and no one will know what I’m saying. It’s a strange feeling to have, sure there are some people who know English, but the majority of people don’t.  In the streets I can pretty much yell anything and no one will know. “Stop living your sinful lives and be baptized!” for example. Oh, wait…I’m saying that in Spanish…

We had a fun little event in our daily lives, if you can call it fun, so to begin my story… I take you to the apartment of Elders Glanzer and Serrano.  A building of nine floors and we live on the 6th and our door has an Argentine lock.

One beautiful morning, after a good study sesión and really feeling the excitement to go out and baptize, we were leaving and Elder Serrano…yes the blame game…locked the door and broke it. The door was locked and the lock wouldn’t move. Locked out of our apartment!  We tried to open it, but nothing. My companion wanted to kick it open, he’s a Taekwando fighter and likes to kick things, but I used my better judgment and wouldn’t let him break the door. So that sucks, we called the Pentionero (elder in charge of this stuff) and he called his man to come fix it, but he was out of town until tomorrow.

We went about our day and came back at night to check it out again. No go, so we called the Zone Leaders to see what to do. They told us to come to their pention for the night and that’s all fine and dandy, but all of our cash is inside of the pention. We’re broke. Not even four pesos for cospeles (bus tokens) so we walked. Walked about an hour in the night to our Zone Leaders’ and spent the night there.

It was a fun night. Elder Grange is a new-ish elder and way legit. I can tell him it gets better and he can trust me, I was in his spot three months ago. We talked how amazing the MTC was. Maybe we stayed up a little too late, but who really knows. We slept on the roof in the cool night air and didn’t get eaten to death by dengue (mosquitoes).

Ok, so the next morning, the guy was going to come to our apartment around 12 noon, so we were there waiting for him. He didn’t get there until 2:30 pm! Image the punctuality of an LDS member and an Argentine, lethal mix eh?  Finally he got there and opened the door and all is fine again. So that was our fun little experience.

As we were working, we were going through the Ward directory and passing by everyone. We came across this one family, La Familia Benegas — less active members. They were on our list to pass, but they kept getting pushed back, so finally we stopped by their house.

A few days before, they were having a conversation and the question to the daughter came up, she’s 7 years old, “Who do you want to baptize you?” Now is there any other person to baptize anyone then their dad? So she said dad. Now we hadn’t stopped by yet, this was a few days before. When we got there, they let us right in. We had an amazing conversation with the father and mother, they really want to be active and they said they were having trouble with how to do it and were looking for the answer, and then we came. We committed them to come to church and they did! The next day!  The dad had an interview with the bishop. And then the next Sunday, guess what? I found out they had been to the temple! We win! They’re on their way and he is going to baptize his daughter soon. I love what I do, because I not only find new people to come unto Christ, but I strengthen and re-activate families — eternal families. 

Fun Fact: So you know how in Nacho Libre, his name is Ignacio? Well the nickname for Ignacio is “Nacho”.

When I dream in Spanish I have no idea what anyone is saying, I’m so lost and confused and just want to wake up. Then the funny part is, when I wake up…my dream is still going. My dreams are my real life.  Nevertheless, my dreams aren’t so bad anymore. 

I love you all and thank you for your prayers and support.

Les amo,
Elder Glanzer
Chao