This was written by Elder and Sister Asbell about the time they served in Trevelin. We are so grateful to them for their hard work and for their love of the gospel. There truly have been many miracles in Trevelin and the Asbell are one of them!
When we received our mission call to the Argentina, Neuquen
mission we were excited because we were hoping to be sent “out to the sticks.”
We went through the typical “five-day MTC experience” for
senior couples (in Provo, Utah) where they familiarize you with the first
missionary lesson about the Restoration, feed you more food than you have eaten
since you were a teenager, and then wish you luck as you are whisked off to the
airport wondering if you are really prepared for what lies ahead.
We now know that senior missionaries have spent a lifetime
preparing and that a strong testimony and a desire to serve and love those you
serve is the best preparation of all.
We arrived in Argentina after a very long flight and managed
to hook-up with a group of younger Elders and Sisters who were also on their way
to their assigned missions in the country.
Finally we arrived at the Neuquén airport where we were greeted by
President & Sister Lovell and the assistants. During our drive to the mission home,
President Lovell announced that after much consideration and prayer he had
decided that we were going to be assigned to the small town of Trevelin for our
entire mission and that I was to be the branch president.
We were told that a car had been miraculously approved to
assist us in our labors and that it would arrive shortly. We had to wait a few extra days for the car
but it eventually arrived and we were immediately on our way.
We made the eleven-hour drive from Neuquén to Esquel and were
met by two wonderful missionaries (Elder Arenas & Elder Slavens) who had
already selected an apartment for us in Trevelin. Over the next few days we purchased
everything needed to set up a new apartment, and before long we were up and
running.
The branch in Trevelin was full of many wonderful and loving
members but only a few of them were active.
At the time we arrived, there were only two active Melchizedek
Priesthood holders (Eugenio Ganga & Rafael Niklitschek) and a total of
thirteen members who attended that first Sunday. Trevelin had not had missionaries assigned to
it for over three months and had not had a convert baptism in well over a year.
We set out immediately to gain a clear understanding of the
layout of the town with a map and a list of members’ names and addresses. Some of the addresses were as detailed as “on
the west hill” which may not seem like a big deal, but the town had around
five-thousand citizens and one-third of them lived on “the west hill.”
We made friends quickly and made visits to less-active
members’ homes to invite them back to church.
The first day we arrived in town we were greeted by a non-member
woman in the Anonima (the local grocery store).
She ran up to us and hugged us with great enthusiasm and explained that
her two young sons, Irving and Ignacio - ages twelve and nine, were members but
had become less active. She begged us to
come visit their home and help reactivate her sons because one day she wanted
them to be missionaries just like the ones she had known and respected so
much. We made a visit to meet the boys
and in the process determined that their little sister (Ambar) would be turning
eight in just a few months. She
expressed a desire to be baptized so we spoke with her parents and set up a schedule
to teach her the missionary lessons. She
was baptized on her birthday on July 4th (the first baptism the
branch had seen in over a year and a half) and less than six months later both parents
were baptized.
We soon realized that the potential in Trevelin was enormous
and that we needed a set of young missionaries as quickly as we could get
them. We spoke with President Lovell and
requested a set of Sister missionaries and within a few weeks he sent us Sister
Obando and Sister Santiago. These were two
of the most obedient and hard-working missionaries we have ever known. They kept the rules with exactness and they
were bold in their testimonies. Little
by little, these Sisters were led to some of the most prepared investigators
who were subsequently baptized and became a great strength to the branch.
Our greatest challenge was a lack of worthy or active
Priesthood brethren. There were Sundays
where I would conduct the meeting, lead the music, bless the Sacrament, and be
the main speaker. We knew that for the
Branch to survive and flourish it would require active Melchizedek Priesthood
holders, so our focus became threefold. First, we worked to reactivate
Priesthood holders who had become less active.
Second we, and the Sister missionaries focused on finding and teaching
families where fathers could be converted and ordained to the Priesthood. And third, we specifically prayed for the
Lord to send us active Priesthood brethren from other cities who would move to
our city and help strengthen our Branch. It was a miraculous process to watch unfold as
all three focuses gained traction and started to bear fruit.
The members started to feel the excitement of missionary
work again and together we all worked to find and reactivate numerous
less-active members. In particular, one
day the Sister missionaries were approached on the street by a woman and her
eight-year old daughter and invited to visit them in their home. They went and taught a lesson to the family
(including the father) and when they left, the father revealed to his wife that
he was a baptized member of the Church.
He had never said a word about it to her during their twelve years of
being together because his Church membership had caused many problems in his
first marriage and he didn’t want to repeat that story. We were very involved with this family and
eventually, after many months (due to legal red tape), we were able to get them
married so that the wife and daughter could be baptized. The Mario Jara family became a pillar of strength
to the Branch. They all served
tirelessly and were very instrumental in the growth of the Branch. Brother Jara was eventually called to be a
counselor in the Branch presidency.
Among the first new members to be baptized was a bright
young man named Gustavo Painenao who was introduced to the sister missionaries
by an active member named Delfina Beroiza.
Gustavo accepted the Book of Mormon and started to read but shortly
thereafter gave it back to the sisters in a subsequent visit. Sister Obando was not about to take the book
back and she bore a strong testimony and challenged him again to finish the
book. He took the challenge to heart and
completed the book and never looked back.
Gustavo was baptized and also became a great strength to the branch. He was a sober, hard working, twenty-four
year old young man who loved and trusted everyone. He was called to serve as an advisor to the
young men. I personally met with Gustavo weekly for additional gospel teaching
and discussions. Each week he came to
the chapel with a list of questions generated from his personal scripture study
during that week. We dug deep into the
Gospel and planted seeds for the possibility of serving a mission. Gustavo was eventually ordained an Elder in
the Melchizedek Priesthood and was called to serve a full-time mission. By the
time we completed our mission he had read the Book of Mormon eight times.
Our prayers were heard and answered as the Lord prepared
families from other cities far away to move to our little town of
Trevelin. Within one-hundred days of our
arrival, Gabriel Vera and his wife Lorena and their three children moved from
the coast at the encouragement of Margarita Barrionuevo, our Relief Society
President. What a miracle it was to have
another active Melchizedek Priesthood holder. He was immediately called as my
counselor and finally there was someone other than myself at the Sunday morning
presidency meeting. I was relieved to
have someone else to assist with conducting meetings and to help run the
branch. Brother Vera went right to work
in recruiting his brother-in-law, Walter Estrella and his wife Teresa and their
two daughters to move to Trevelin from Buenos Aires. The Spirit moved upon them and in a matter of
months they were telling us that they didn’t know why, but they felt prompted
to move to Trevelin. We all knew why –
it was because we prayed them there, and the Lord loved the people of Trevelin
and wanted them to have the Gospel in their lives with a functioning branch of
the Church. A few months before our
mission ended, Brother Estrella was called as the Branch President with me and
Brother Jara as his counselors and Brother Vera as Executive Secretary – it was
a miracle to see where we were from where we had been.
In addition to the sister missionaries we were also blessed
with a companionship of Elders. Sunday
attendance swelled with an average close to fifty with periodic attendance that
even reached into the sixties on a few occasions.
During our fourteen-month
assignment in Trevelin there were eighteen baptisms – seventeen converts and
one child of record.
We also took six
members to Bariloche to receive their patriarchal blessings. When we left Trevelin, there were twelve
active Priesthood holders and we knew the Lord had worked a miracle. All of this we attributed to the hard work of
the members and the missionaries. We
know that numbers are not what is important and we do not make mention of the
numbers to draw attention to any of the missionaries’ efforts but rather as a
testimony of the greatness of the Lord and the miracles He brought to pass
during this time – we were all truly blessed beyond measure. The “Hastening of the Work” made all of this
possible – without the increase in Elders and Sisters we would not have had the
man-power or the support to accomplish what was accomplished in Trevelin.
The work was truly exhausting. Because of the culture and the schedule that
the Argentine people keep, we were required to adjust our teaching schedule to
adapt for effectiveness. Most people
went to work around 9:00 am and then came home around 12:30 for lunch and
siesta. They then went back to work around 4:00 in the afternoon and worked
until 7:00 pm. Dinner was typically
served around 10:00 pm. As a senior
missionary couple we were given the flexibility to adapt, so we did. We attempted to maintain the 6:30 am
regular-missionary schedule at first, but soon found we were only getting five
or six hours of sleep each night. We
determined that if the Lord was willing to give the young Elders and Sisters
eight hours of sleep each night, he would allow us the same. A typical day for us was spent working on
branch business in the mornings and afternoons, and the evenings were spent
visiting members and investigators. The Elders
and Sisters were required to be in their pensions around 9:00, while we were
just getting revved up around that time.
We usually had appointments every hour on the hour from 7:00 pm to 11:00
pm and that allowed us to get into four to five homes each night to meet with
people including some that would not accommodate the younger missionaries’
schedule. Once in a while we would eat
dinner at some of those 10:00 appointments, but most of the time we staggered
into our apartment around midnight, drummed up whatever we could find to eat,
and then crashed on the bed. Over and
over we looked at each other and laughed while asking, “How do old people do
this at age 65? We are young and tough
and we can barely keep up with this pace!”
Trevelin is woven into our hearts – members and non-members
alike. We served and we loved, and we
were changed. We made so many non-member
friends in the community – in the various stores and businesses – that we
honestly have more friends in that city that are not members of our Church than
those that are. People’s lives have been
changed. Some have found the true Gospel
of Jesus Christ, others have come back to what they left and are feasting at
the Table of the Lord again, and others have now been to the temple – a goal
that seemed impossible since the temple was a thirty-hour bus ride away from
our little city. The ripples will go on
through the eternities and all of us have been blessed – those who have served
and those who have been served. In the
end, we have determined that a mission is more for the missionary than for
those he or she may serve while on that mission. As hard as it was, we needed this mission –
it blessed our marriage, our children, our parents and siblings, and it brought
us closer to the Lord and taught us to trust Him. The Lord is kind and we fully recognize that
kindness in allowing us to miraculously step into a space in time where we
could forget about ourselves and completely focus on others and in the process
of doing so find ourselves. We will be
eternally grateful for our mission experience and the friendships we created. Our hearts are drawn out daily towards the
people we love and miss in Argentina. We
know the Lord loves them too and that he will show them great mercy and
compassion upon them as they strive to live the Gospel and keep their
covenants.
Elder & Sister Asbell
