February 18, 2013 Man I had a pretty good week. I am exhausted, but it was really good. I got a couple hours less sleep because on wednesday, we had to wake up at like 4:00 am to get Elder Toledo to the terminal in Mendoza so he could go to Alvear, which is really far away. So I hung out with Elder Dowdle there in the terminal for a few hours until our companions came. My comp Elder Moscoso is a new zone leader and so I will be training him kind of how to do that, except for he has 6 weeks more than me in the mission, and he is 27 haha. Super old, but its been really great so far because he has a lot of life experience and knows how to talk to people. We have been guided a lot this week. Like we were given a referral, and we went to go contact it, but the dirrection was bad. We were looking for block H, and we were on block D, but the description of the house on block D matched what the member told us to look for. So we knock, find out its not the right person but we end up teaching them anyways and it turns out to be a really cool 20 year old man. Then after that, we ask him if he knows the people we were looking for before and he told us to go across the street because José knows everyone in the neighborhood. So the next day we go to talk to José but he isn´t home. We talk to his son, Jonathan instead and as we start to teach him he interupts and says, you guys probably came to talk to my dad because my mom killed herself a couple months ago, and he has a ton of questions and is in a pretty bad state. So we are going back today to help him out. We just felt really guided this week and I had one of the best experiences of my mission. We were teaching this woman who only let us in because she LOVES her 5 year old son nick-named "baby" (like in english). He came up and asked me why I was so big one day and why my comp was so shrimp-like. We kind of joked with him a little bit but he followed us all over the neighborhood giving us referrals haha. But we went to his house to finish and met one of his sisters and his mom (Marisa).She couldn´t be with us right then, so we came back another day and she was waiting for us. We taught her the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Lately I have been making a lot bigger deal about the first principle of that lesson that God is our loving Heavenly Father. When I taught her about that, she looked at me kind of shocked and said, I never thought of Him like that. I asked her how that made her feel, and she paused and looked down and then back at us and said, "very fortunate" I think that was one of the most spiritual parts of my mission because when people suddenly come to know exactly who is their Father in Heaven, they can start to actually believe in Him, and the power that comes into their lives gives them strength to live in a way that is harmonious to the Gospel, in a way that will lead them back to the presence of the Lord. You´re right- Faith is a gift that we recieve only by asking, seeking, and knocking. Be happy, healthy, safe and full of faith. Elder DAYBELL