Nuestra Obra Misional de Lima Norte

Playa Bahia Blanca

This report is for the week ending Feb 2, 2025. Some weeks feel busier than others. This was one of those weeks. We continued to do house inspections. Some of the inspections I did were of apartments that were closed. Houses are closed for one of 3 reasons, it’s unsafe or not well maintained, the area is not as productive and it’s better to use the missionary resources in other areas, or the landlord is unwilling to pay their legal taxes. We could dive deep into the last one, but the Church is very committed to obeying the law, We are even willing to pay the landlord the extra amount it takes for them to pay the taxes, but many will still not pay.

The houses that are closed because of disrepair can be pretty messy. The house gets run down and the missionaries seem to care less and less. Often those are the houses that missionaries have been in for a long time and they have accumulated a lot of junk (garbage). Anyway, not my favorite type of house inspection.

Something a little different this week is that we had 6-week and 12-week training. The first 12 weeks of a missionary’s life are fairly programmed. New Missionaries need to learn how to be good missionaries from good experienced missionaries. At the 6-week mark and the 12-week mark, missionaries come into the office and receive guidance and training from the Mission Leaders and the Assistants to the President. This week we got to teach them how to access and use EnglishConnect on their cellular phones. Since every missionary has their own phone it becomes very practical for non-native English speakers to use the amazing resources available through EnglishConnect for Missionaries. We did the presentation in English and picked one of the Latin missionaries to translate for us. He did it with very little warning. It was a great demonstration of how powerful it can be when a missionary works at learning English.

We continue to have opportunities to attend the Temple with new members for the first time. This week we attended with a few young single adults. One of them had already attended with us (2 weeks before). It was special to see how he guided his cousin (whom he baptized) like he was the experienced one. He had become comfortable with going to the Temple. This time was extra sweet because the Hermana missionary who taught all 3 new members went home the next day. Her last experience with her friends was serving in the Temple. She was baptized in the Temple by one of those new members.

I’ve grown up in the Church hearing wonderful stories of genealogy and how some lost person was found and was now able to have ordinances performed on their behalf. We experienced a new twist this week. We have been meeting with 2 new members who are lifelong friends with each other and both were taught at the same time and baptized on the same day. Of course, they are Young Single adults. We have been trying to help them find family names they can take to the Temple to do baptisms. It can be hard when you are 23 and your parents and grandparents are still alive. It was hard to find the names and dates of great-grandparents. After a couple of sessions at the Stake Family History Center and a lot of phone calls and texts, we were able to fill in names but no dates. It seems like we were stuck. After spending a lot of time searching public records they were each able to find a date. That one date allowed them to find great uncles, aunts and cousins. To make a long story short, I’m not sure how urgent it felt to those on the other side of the veil, but it felt urgent to us to have these 2 new members make their first Temple experience even more meaningful. It felt like ancestors pushing us on so that their descendants could benefit. One of the new members found some names of relatives that were put in family search and their Temple work was reserved. When we saw that, we were a little disappointed until we saw that the reservation (3 years) ended in just 2 days. She was able to reserve them 2 days later.

We continued to remind the missionaries to take their language exam. After 100’s of texts, we ended up with a very high rate of participation. Just a handful of missionaries were unable to take the test for various reasons. 18-year-old boys need reminders and sometimes 19-year-old hermanas do too. This is how we learn, isn’t it?

Other than finding an amazing Beach on P-day the big news for the week is that Hermana Borup shared her Testimony in Sacrament meeting in Spanish. She doesn’t even do it in English. She did a great job. I understood her (sometimes we can understand each other because we make up the same words) but even better the members told her how clear she was and how they understood everything she said. Our language is a funny thing. We believe in the gift of tongues. It’s usually a subtle thing, remembering a word that you have only heard once or being able to understand someone who doesn’t speak clearly. There is a very high chance of feeling the added help from the gift of tongues when we are teaching valuable gospel principles such as the importance of making and keeping covenants versus when we are making small talk. Sometimes when teaching the gospel message the language seems to be almost no barrier at all.

We know this is His work. Anything we can do to help someone make or keep sacred covenants, whether it is on this side of the veil or the other, is helping to gather Isreal. Now that is fun work!

Until next week,

Your friends,

Hermana Y Elder Borup