Alex Rodriguez

I though that you all my like to know that I am teaching an investigator named Alex Rodriguez (sorry, he´s not A-Rod the famous Yankee Baseball player).  Actually his name is "Alejandro", but he gos by "Alex".  He is actually going to get baptized this Saturday.

He told us Monday that he had been praying for a couple of weeks to know if the church is true and that he had had a dream that he thought might be his answer.  He told us that in that dream that he was reading the book of Mormon, when a group of teenagers came up to him and wanted to fight.  In his dream, he decided to pray for help.  He said that as he was praying that I and a group of other Elders that he didn´t recognize appeared and started to talk to the angry teenagers.  The group of teenagers dispersed and a few of them decided to enter a nearby church while others simply left from his sight.  Later when the teenagers left the church, Alex decided to give them his Book of Mormon.  They accepted, went on their way and the dream ended.

"Do you feel like that dream was an answer from God to your prayers?" I asked.
"Si"
"Do you think that the book of Mormon is true?"
"Si.  Sé que lo es."  (Yes I know that it is)

Sorry, I´m out of time, but I just wanted you to know that Alex is awesome and that he will be getting baptized this Saturday.  And that he decided to go on a 2 hour trip to Oran, Argentina, where his girlfriend was with her family for summer vacation, so that he could give her a Book of Mormon.

Elder Casdorph

Seguimos en Bermejo

The transfers came and I´m still in Bermejo! (which is what I was hoping for by the way)  My companion is still here in the same area too.  This is my companion´s last transfer cycle which means that I will get the chance to "kill" him (they say ´kill´ or ´die´ when someone finishes their mission and ´birth´ when someone arrives in their first area).  That also means that it´s pretty much a sure thing that I will stay in Bermejo for 2 more transfer cycles so that I can show my new companion the area after Elder Galarza leaves.  Right now, we´re in Santa Cruz for an important meeting, but our flight was many hours before the meeting, so my companion and I asked for permission to go to one of my old areas (Jardín del Sur) because my companion also served in the same area, and we want to go visit our converts.  The whole ´Noche Blanca´ thing has been working really well here in Bermejo, so we decided to program another one for January 25th.  Anyway, we want as much time as we can get to go visit our converts while we are in Santa Cruz, so I´ll have to write more next week.

Navidad en Bermejo

Christmas went pretty well here. Christmas Eve we went caroling in the central plaza.  My companion and I sang a solo in English, well actually I sang a solo, he sang a solo, and then we sang together.  To those of you who have heard the song, we sang the Sheep Song written by my sister, Andrea Fife.  If I can get the internet to cooperate, I will send a video.

[From the editor: Jack said the video was too big to email.  He had to convert it to audio.  It's not great quality (tons of background noise), but it was fun to listen to Jack's voice (Kirk says he's developing quite a vibrato) and to hear the second part sung with an accent.  I feel pretty honored that my song made it to another country.]


We spent Christmas morning carpiendo (doing a service Project of cutting the weeds in a member´s lot with a machete).  Then after an asado (delicious barbeque with grilled beef and arroz con queso [arroz con queso means rice with cheese, but it´s way tastier than it sounds]) we proselyted for a couple of hours and then got to talk to our families in Skype.  This week went pretty well for everybody.  Bermejo has now gone from being the zone that only had one baptism in 3 months to being the best zone in the mission for 2 months in a row.

The next exchanges are this Wednesday, and I hope that I can stay in Bermejo.  It´s awesome now, because Bermejo is a small town, so everywhere I go, I see investigators and recent converts from the other areas.  I have really grown to love that small town friendliness that exists between the members, the missionaries and the people in general.

Navidad Blanca

We had a conference in Tarija Friday (A city close to Bermejo that´s a lot bigger and has more than double the missionaries here).  On the windy 3 hour drive to Tarija, 2 elders threw up, and my companion and I were also just 1 step away from joining the club (probably because our inner child had told us the night before that it would be a good idea to eat a whole pizza the night before a 3 hour monte russo [roller coaster]).  We arrived and every zone sang Christmas songs that we had prepared.  After the other zones went and sang standard songs from the hymnbook, we blew them away with a Sally DeFord arrangement of Oh Holy Night (with a solo by Elder Casdorph).

We are excited for the noche blanca that we will have this Saturday, although this time, it will only be 14 people getting baptized because 10 of them had scheduling conflicts and had to get baptized a week early.  All the members are excited for what will soon be the Bermejo Stake (probably in May or June, the district here will become a stake).

All is going well here and I´ll let you know more next week.

Elder Casdorph

Cristian y la familia Gutierrez

We have an investigator that will be getting baptised this week, whose name is Vicente Rios, but I don´t feel like writing about him today (I´ll probably write some stuff about him next week) I would rather write about the Gutierrez familily.

The Gutierrez family is a large family of about 30 people (with all of the cousins, uncles, grandkits, etc.)  They are all members, but out of the 30ish people, there are only 2 that actually go to church regularly and 1 of those 2 is mentally handicapped.  We have been teaching to a couple members of this family to try to activate them.  Sunday we decided to plan a giant family home evening Saturday with the 30 of them plus their friends that they could invite, and the whole family was exited for the family home evening.  Wednesday, they called us with the news that Christian, a young 19 year old member of the family had been murdered.

That was devistating news obviosly for the whole family, and also left me pretty bummed out because I had taught Cristian like 5 or 6 times and considered him a good friend.  It also left, the community pretty worried because bermejo is a small town and things like this don´t normally happen here.

I´m not going to go very much into the details, but Cristian, although he was a good kid, he did have the reputation of being a mujeriego (player, or cheater).  What the police and the family think is what happened was that he was going out with someone´s girlfriend, and that that person got mad and drunk and killed him, especially because they found some threating text messages of that nature.

They asked us to go to the viewing as well as the funeral, and we went to comfort the family.  In the viewing, his aunt had a panic attack and we gave her a priesthood blessing of comfort.

We asked the grandma (who is the only active member and basically the head of the whole family) if she still wanted to do the family home evening.  She replied, "claro que sí, seguimos egual".  We did the family home evening with the whole family, which was a beatiful experience in the which we talked to them a TON do about temples and the need that they all had to go to the temple and the need that they had to do the work for themselves and for Christian..  Even more beatiful was that yesterday, the entire family of 30ish people came to church.  They took up like 4 rows in the chapel.  Afterward all of the adults in the family lined up outside of the branch president´s office because they wanted to be interviewed.  There were so many that the district president (who also happened to be there) had to help with the interviews.  The branch president later told us that pretty much all of them had the goal to go to the temple in January and they asked for interviews to ask how to prepare for the temple!

I´ll let you know more about them and Vicente next week,
Elder Casdorph

Consejo De Lideres

If you´re wondering why I didn´t write anything, it´s because my companion and I had to go to Santa Cruz Monday and Tuesday for a meeting with the all of the Zone leaders in the mission and President Willard.  I have very little to write, other that that thanks to our awesome noche blanca, we finished as the best zone in the whole mission for the month of November.  We only hope to be able to keep it up and have an even better month in December.

Elder Casdorph

Noche Blanca un éxito

As always I have very little time to write, but I just want to say that we pulled off the 20 baptisms in the noche blanca.  It was a beautiful experience for all involved.  It looked like we weren´t gonna be able to do it, but thanks to some last-minute miracles (probably due to the prayers of all of you) we were able to do it.  We are planning another one for the 21st of December.

In other news,my companion has been called as the new assistant to the President and is en route to Santa Cruz right now, and I am companion-less until the cambios this Wednesday.

Sorry, I want to write more, but I have to send 20 registros bautismales to the mission offices, and there´s no time

Elder Casdorph