Elder Sluder's Mission Blog: Having Success in Bella Italia Montevideo

September 6, 2010

Dear Family,

I can’t believe its Labor Day once again! It’s so crazy to think that. And what a week we’ve had. This week was super dificil. We had rain every flippin’ day. I couldn’t believe it! All of my clothes are still soaked. Finally yesterday the sun came out and warmed things up. It made for a great Sunday afternoon to work. I have seen progress already in Bella Italia since I got here a few weeks ago. This Saturday, I will be baptizing a young woman who is 17 years old. We found her on my first day that I got to the area. Her name is Alexandra and she lives here with her grandmother. She’s originally from a place called Artigas, which is a city on the border of Brazil and Uruguay so she speaks Portuguese. I had to get written permission from her parents to baptize her so I called up President DaSilva to see what he could do for me. When I called him back on Wednesday night, he told me that he sent the sister missionaries from the other mission to go visit her family. They did visit and then got the written permission and now her father in Artigas is now listening to the missionaries. The hope is to see a grand change in the lives of this family. It’s super exciting! Pres. DaSilva seems to be happy with the work that’s going on here and so far we have baptisms planned for every Saturday for the rest of the month of September.

My companion Elder Young is super awesome and I have absolutely no complaints! The other elders in my district also seem to be outstanding and have so far been super obedient and hard working. No complaints. There was one nice thing about the rain and that is we didn’t have to worry about getting robbed all week. The ladrones are too lazy to come out when it rains and so I think that in that aspect we were blessed. :)

Well Dad, your Spanish was pretty good, but I definitely could tell a difference in the messages that Virginia wrote compared to yours. When you get here, I guess I’ll be your Google translator. Spanish is really starting to become second nature. I don’t struggle much at all any more. The weird thing is, I can’t really remember what it’s like to not be able to speak it.

Last night we had an awesome meeting with our Bishop. He’s super young, only 26 years old and it’s great to be able to work with him. He told us that he’s so happy to finally see the missionary work function as it should. It made us feel super good. So in all those aspects, I’m doing great! I’ll be sure to take some pictures of the baptism next week and send them to you.

Well, Vamos Arriba. Our house is on Torremolinos and Luis C. Caviglia. Punta de Rieles is a little northeast of where we live, but it is included in our area.