Working Like Dogs

What a week. In the words of Elder Gibbs, "we´re working like dogs." Life in the offices is tranquilo, but sometimes it gets stressful. Especially when I consider that I´m going to be taking on the secretary job almost full time next transfer. And the transfer after that training Sister Jones. Right now with two people on the job, we´re managing to get everything done, but in a few weeks it´s going to be all up to me. We are usually able to leave the offices at four or five to go work in the area. Usually the two jobs don´t interfere with each other, but with transfers coming up next week, things are going to be interesting. If anyone wants to ask specific questions about my drab life in the offices, I´m more than open to answer them, but I think you would rather hear a bit about the adventurous proselyting. Slightly more interesting than Elder Jensen: And the Crooked Three Hole Punch, or Molten Death: Elder Jensen Vs. the Laminator both of which were coincidentally failed title prospects for this email. Out of respect for my readers I chose instead La Villa Vida or, literally translated, the village life.

Villa (pronounced here veesha) is anything but a village. It´s where the majority of the work happens here in Buenos Aires South. The poverty stricken centers of urbanization scattering the central of Buenos Aires. After so many months of writing to you, I don´t think I´ve ever adequately described what proselyting here is like. Things I see every day and will never forget. One minute you’re walking down a beautiful street of cobblestone roads and classical Argentine suburbs, houses every bit as beautiful as the best I´ve ever seen, and literally the next block you are surrounded by destroyed shacks scrapped together out of metal and chapa. Tall and eerie, built one on top of the other like a jungle of shrapnel gnarled and foreboding. Lining the pale dirt roads cluttered with garbage filled ditches and Sanjas. The contrast is disturbing. People who have nothing should never live so close to people who have everything.

As I walk these streets, as I stare down the face of poverty and depression, I realize, sometimes, that the light has been taken from this people. The loss of innocence. The hungry child. The way the garbage burns and smolders as we slip and slide through rivers of mud at the night. The smoke from the filth and the dust in the air and all the coke a cola and McDonalds littering the grassy fields that stretch on for miles and miles. The way the moon shines through the leaves in the autumn air and pierces the thick smog and branches spilling the luz across our faces and illuminating our paths. As we wonder, the silhouettes of the chorros and borachos like aimless shadows to our sides come and go, some faster, some slower. They buy lot´s of alcohol, to ease the pain, to find a light in the darkness that isn´t fake. Something, anything, to numb the reality of circumstance. But the sun rises again, and the nomads return home with hangovers and raw mouths from too much mate and cigarettes. Looking for something to hope for, to break the cruel cycle of the real world. A world without walls.

There is sadness so profound, that only on the still nights, just between the rustled and falling autumn leaves, can be heard and seen. There is an emptiness here that gapes open like the unhinged jaws of a rattlesnake, unnatural, encompassing. There is a pain here that nobody talks about. Splitting hairs between river and boca, and the Fútbol match of the year. Talking about the Simpsons and MTV.

We walk these streets, as angels of light. Stark white shirts glowing in the darkness. Radiant, and striking against the destroyed walls of the villa. We carry a message of hope, the only hope many of these people have. Hope that Moroni described in Ether as "a better world." A well of water that if these people draw from they will never thirst again. This drive of humanity to find happiness, this yearning in the emptiness in the darkness, will never be satisfied by material means. There is only one hope these people have.

I have seen this message start to change the lives of many. As we knock on the doors, a light comes into these barren shacks, a warmth that hasn´t been felt before, a craving of a starving soul that is at least partially satisfied. And while this world may sometimes seem like a dark and terrible place, it is never too distraught to open its proverbial doors, and let the light in again. Our circumstances are only as terrible as we make them. The only hope for the world may just be our only hope as well. And the brave young men walking the spiritual villa of this world can´t fight this battle alone. And we aren´t.

This week we were privileged enough to find many investigators. The man who we found in the wheelchair has had three return appointments now. He is progressing at an alarming rate. Unfortunately, neither Elder Gibbs nor I have been able to understand his name both times when he has told us. So he remains the man in the wheelchair. He had an accident some years back that has left him paralyzed, but he is starting to feel the spirit of the restored gospel. In a lesson with him and his four children, he told us about his life as a hard worker, about a depressing childhood without a father, and his goals to make a better life for his kids. This led him to work an unreasonable amount with multiple careers, basically working 24/7 until his accident in an auto collision. He expressed to us that he didn´t doubt God´s existence, but he just wanted to know why. Why did God let this happen to him? Why did life have to be so hard?

We started reading in 3 Nephi 11 and took turns reading about the Savior´s ministry to the Americas. When it was the father´s turn, he barely finished reading where Christ declares "I am the light and the life of the world; and I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me and have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world," when suddenly he paused profoundly, and began to weep. I couldn´t say for sure. Maybe it was the reflection of his own personal experience, or maybe it was the holy spirit, but something in what Christ declared to the Nephites thousands of years ago, reached deeply into this man´s being and made him feel loved again.

I think it´s a universal truth, that our understanding of the atonement is very limited. But on some small level, we can understand. Because we know what we have suffered, and we know that Christ suffered the same for us. Thus this man who had lived through so many hardships, tired, exhausted, beaten down by the proverbial storms of mortal existence, suddenly understood that his bitter cup had been drank a long time ago, and hope for the first time in a long time entered his home once more. That spirit of Christ illuminated that destroyed house so strong that so help me, the shadows were cast away with the doubts and fears, and there was nothing but pure and beautiful light present.

May we all remember in our times of darkness the words of the Savior Himself. "I am the light and the life of the world." May we remember the bitter cups in our own lives, and help the weaker drink the bitter cups of their own. That we may fill another declaration of Christ in different place. "Ye are the light of the world," and bring this beautiful spirit to places where, if we are diligent, shadows will never roam again. This light of the world, even the light of the only begotten of the father, Jesus Christ.