Im not even sure how to describe this week

April 25, 2016

Holy cow.....

-chased by a herd of cows down a flooding road between two rain created lakes,

-got a cool picture holding a baby cow;D

-Our Branch president couldnt come to church because he works and has a house in the plains of Uruguay, all the which are extremely flooded. In his house there is water up to his knees and all buses have been canceled not allowing him to return. 

-Helicopters have begun leaving to try and save all the stranded farmers that live in the plains

- A path that we always take to part of our area is at least 3 feet underwater.

- we saw cowboys trying to lasso cows to keep them from the water:D

-It started raining again this morning;) this could be fun

-A tornado hit A Town on the other side of Uruguay (IT's really far away and we are in a place really safe on top of a hill, but that has never happened in Uruguay so a lot of people are worried)

- haha We only spent 2 and a half days in our area this entire week due to the storms and meetings. We were trapped in Chuy for 2 days due to a red alert that came out, but then caught, what ended up being, the only returning bus to Lascano. The bus itself took 2 and a half hours to make an hour and a half trip due to it having to wade in a foot and a half of water on the elevated road, then took another bus that night to go to Trenta tres For the zone conferance and interviews with president Cook. The trip is normaly an hour and a half, but we had to take the LONG way around (4 hours) showing up late in the night. Flooding worsened (literally turning roads into rivers/lakes. It was kind of crazy watching giant garbage bins floating down the road/river. All buses were canceled the next day leaving us trapped in 33 (the name of the city)  for the day. We finally caught the only returning bus Saturday morning at 5 AM to come back. It's been an adventure here.

-Let's just say its been a fun time:D

AMAZING LESSONS THIS WEEK:

so we've lost track of Luis, but please keep praying for him.

Jessica, Erica, Jaquelin, and Jorge:

I love this family so much. They are amazing:D

We were able to have a really good charla with The first two Wednesday with the little time we were there on the Law of Chastity.

On Saturday we went back and found only their somewhat unreceptive mom there. Jorge, their 22 year old brother, was in the back sleeping, so we asked if we could just come in and talk a bit. IT was really cool. She at first kept saying, I have my church (Dios es Amor) and I already prayed about the Book of Mormon and didn't receive an answer, so we just continued talking. Due to the crazy weather that has been going on the conversation easily turned to that and she made the comment of how in these last days, people are scared. I got this cool impression that we should show her the video "the hearts of men shall fail them" by Russel M Nelson. Using her phone, we looked it up on youtube, and were about to show the video when a notice that she was out of internet service popped up. The video was half laoded, so I hit play. Im not sure how, but the entire video played (Nice little miracles). At the end of it, she looked at us in surprise and asked "What is this that I feel?" Can I just say that apostolic words carry the spirit really strongly. We began talking about the spirit, she mentioned that she feels when words reach her heart, that the bible does that, but none of the pastors in her church can make that happen. We testified of many things and were able to help her set up a plan to stop smoking and draw nearer unto God. It was really interesting. You could tell by the end of the lesson that she still had a tiny bit of the voice that said "You have your church. Don't listen" trying to shout in the background, but it was being easily dominated by the spirit in the room. IT was as if she was a tiny bit skeptical to allow us to continue, but didn't want us to stop. Such a cool experience. We left with a prayer (she didn't let us begin with one).

Sunday we went back to make nobake cookies and read the book of mormon with them. Jessica, Erica, and Jorge were home and were stoked to see us. We were a bit curious to see how Jaqueline would react.  When she came into the room though, she was way more welcoming than she had ever been before. Not only that, but Erica had been grounded the day before, and, on her own, grabbed the Book of Mormon, read the Joseph Smith testimony and the first 8 chapters of 1Nefi. 

This has been a long letter.

We also found this really cool new investigator named Carla who now has a baptisimal date for the 21 of May. We're pretty excited about that.

I love yall so much and hope yall have a good week,

Elder Eliason 

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