Week 21: Heribierto And Some Other Stuff...

Op! 

Love you guys! It has been a week of Miracles!!

The quick, not so quick rundown: 

--> Tuesday, me and Elder Stringam spent the whole morning getting papers ready for the wedding on Friday. This included a ¨I know a guy type of situation¨ (which we think got us permission to get some offical documents signed without the required authentiction. However, don´t ask me because I don´t know a lick of Legal gibberish in Spanish.), and us going to and waiting in the wrong office for nearly an hour for a guy to go grab his phone.
Miraculously though, we got all the papers safely delivered to the judge and all the plans for the Wedding set. And believe me it was two quite exahusted Elders that pulled up to District Counsel at 10am that morning.

--> Thursday, we had a lesson with the Gonzalez family whose wedding and baptisms we had planned for that weekend. There, we found out about Heribiertos son Nestor, who at the time was currently on charges for attempted murder of his girlfriend (although we think he was innocent because basically he pushed her off the bike to save her from a motorcycle accident and she called it attempted murder) and Nestor was now facing 40 million guaranies in charges, or 2 to 5 years in prision. There faith to live the law of tithing, to pay for their wedding, to buy wedding rings (which we will get to in a second) is remarkable with all this financial strain that they were facing!

--> Friday, we went ring shopping. Yes, ring shopping. Heribierto was anxious about the fact he did'nt have a ring and so he asked us, the obvious answer haha, to go Friday Morning before the wedding to accompany him ring shopping. SOO we did just that, he bought a beautiful ring and bought us even more beautiful breakfast afterwards. Then, we had Heribiertos wedding! We were at the office of the judge for no longer then 30-45 minutes, but it was so fancy to sit in the chair and sign official documents and such haha (us 4 missionaries were the witnesses). But by Friday Morning they were legally married. Friday Night, the ward hosted the wedding reception and me and Elder Stringam acted as essentially wedding planners, but it was super sweet about 30 people from the ward showed up and supported and celebrated with them. I was estatic. After the celebration, Heribierto came up to me with a picture of the temple the Bishop had given him and told me ¨ There, thats where I want to go.¨ And my heart was full!!

--> Saturday we had there baptismal interviews. And Sunday after church we baptized Heribierto, Ciela, Juan and Dante. I baptized Heribierto and Ciela and Elder Stringam the two kids. It was a remarkable and unforgettable experience. And to top it off, when we went to there house afterwards, we taught a lesson about the temple and I invited them to plan to go to the temple as soon as possible to do baptisms for the dead and on the spot mid lesson Heribierto started making preperations for a trip to the temple with his family. 

Sorry this is a longer email, but I want to share a thought I had from my studies this week in 3 Nephi. 

"10 For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee. 
11 O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted! Behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and lay thy foundations with sapphires." (3rd Nephi 22:10-11) 

What struck me from this passage was how these two verses are invariably linked together. Primarily we have this undeniable symbol of God's love. As Karl D. Hirst put it: "the idea that God has stopped loving should be so far down the list of possible explanations in life that we don’t get to it until after the mountains have left and the hills are gone!¨ and then to me it is very fascinating that right after that we hear of a tossed and afflicted soul, and to me what we learn is that life is gonna hurt. We are going to get thrown around, and bashed and brusied, but that does NOT mean that the Lord has stopped loving us, in fact it is his perfect demonstration of love to allow us to get thrown around, bruised and injured, ¨for behold I will lay thy stones with fair colors and lay thy foundations with sapphires,¨ he is in the process of construction, never doubt, press forward with faith, hold onto the Iron Rod!! Chirst Lives and The Book of Mormon is the most powerful testator on planet earth that he does. In the name of the Savior and Reedemer of the world, even Jesus Christ. Amen. 

BUT THATS ALL I PROMISE!! 

God's Favourite- Karl D. Hirst (it's British how cool right?

Élder Ralphs 

Pics
1: Waiting in the NOT judges office ( bro left to get his phone and didn't come back)
2: Post Ring Shopping/Wedding Preparing
3: Wedding!!!
4-5: Reception at the Church
6: We ran to the River Parána one morning
7-8: Waves
9: Wedding Invitation (if ya want to pull up casually)
10: Vistas de Parána 
11: The Gongfrence 










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