Elder Benjamin Michael Conover Mission Blog : Week 40: Just Keep Rolling With The Punches

Hey Everyone!

I hope that you all had an awesome week! This week definitely brought a lot of challenges, but it also brought a few miracles and tender mercies.

For pday, we met up with the zone, and we did a big asado with everyone, and I actually did this one! Me and my comp split a 41 ounce steak.....it was huge and sooooo good. And only like 8 dollars haha I love Argentina.

On Tuesday, we had the district meeting, which takes two hours to get to, and there is only one bus that goes through the area, and it only goes by once every hour and a half or so. Unfortunately, we missed the bus, so we just walked down the street trying to hitch hike, and it actually worked haha. We made it to the district meeting.

This week was crazy, and it definitely was difficult. We had another investigator text drop us, which was just oh-so-fun to receive, but it was alright.

Lately, it has been raining a TON and it is really cold. All that, with dirt roads makes for really slow riding through really really deep mud, and super dirty clothing. A lot of dropped appointments this week, but we got to teach one person, so that was good.

As the week went on, on Friday, I was stressed and just kind of felt nervous to leave the pension and just face all the rejection again, and I prayed and studied a lot. Then, we left to work. That day, we left like 15 mins late since we had all the dirty clothes and had to clean them, and when we left, there was a woman standing across the street waiting for the bus.

I looked back over to Elder Sorenson, who was closing the pension, and when I turned around, the woman was right behind me, and she asked me if we were going to the church. I told her we werent going there right now, and I was really confused.

She then explained her problems with her daughter, and asked us if we could offer a prayer for her. We then pulled out a seat and we gave her a blessing. At the end of the blessing, she was crying, and thanking us. She told us how much better she felt and that she felt empowered and like she could take on any of her challenges, and said that we can come back on Wednesday. It was such a miracle, especially since she said that she never is out at that time. She just felt like she should leave a little bit earlier so she did and ran into us.

Following that, I just ran into the pension and got on my knees and cried and prayed for a while. It was such an incredible tender mercy of the Lord.

Funny

We were riding down this side street that has a ton of dogs, and three surrounded me, coming at my heals. I shot my foot back at a bigger one, and clocked it in the head, which stunned it into giving up the chase. Then, a smaller one came after me, which I have no patience for haha. The dog made the mistake of coming into my kicking range, and I just gave it all my force. It was so perfect. My heel got its nose perfectly, with the front of my foot on its forehead. When I kicked it, it fell and just started rolling over and over again, just out of control yelping all the way. IT WAS AWESOME

We were at the church, and I saw two little 3 year old boys looking at each other awkwardly. One of them turned his back to the other, and the other came over and smacked him in the back of the head for no reason. Then, in the middle of the first boy´s cries, the other one grabbed his hair from behind and just slammed his head into the door. I felt so bad, but I just could not stop laughing because it was so crazy, and I had to cover my face so the mom didn't see me laughing haha

So because of the rain, my gloves got all wet and cold, so I'm not using them, which hurts a lot haha. My hands turn purple each day and I usually cant feel them after working. When we got back to the pension one day, I turned on the stove, and tried to heat them up. Then, I smelled something bad, and turned over my hands, and all the hair on the back was gone. I just burned the hair off and I had no idea cause I couldn't feel them hahahaha

Love You All!

Elder Conover