In January when we visited the communities of the Nivacle, President Evans issued a challenge for the families of Mistolar, Camp Am'pu, Neuland, and Abundancia to prepare to attend the temple. For the youth this may mean to do baptisms, for families it may mean to be sealed and for those that had been endowed before to return and remember the covenants made. Missionaries have been working constantly to help these people prepare to enter. Each person not only had to be prepared to recieve a temple recommend but they all needed to pay something for the trip as well. This is huge challenge in and of itself.
I can not adequately describe the amount of effort that has gone into this. First we have had Elder Singer and Elder Hermansen literally camping with the saints in Mistolar and Campo Am'pu for 2-3 weeks at a time every change since January. They have been instrumental in getting couples legally married and spending endless hours tracking down records of ordinations and entering it into the computer. Elder Hill and Elder Casteñeda have worked in Neuland teaching and preparing and Elder Whipple and Elder Brower in Abundancia. Hours and hours spent by these excellent missionaries.
We have been blessed to have two senior couples assigned to the temple that the Lord put into place exactly for this event. Elder and Sister Hansen upon hearing about this immediately contacted their famiy and friends for donations for food and for garments for this saints. They recieved an amazing response that paid for all garments and food for 5 meals. Not only that, they bought balls for the children to play with while they were waiting which was as big of hit as the food. The Schultz's organized this experience in precision detail so that in the end everything went off incredibly smoothly. It is no small task to have 175 attend the temple along with the other normal patrons. Add to that the problem that most had never been to the temple and those that had been before had maybe only been once. You can top it off with a language barrier for many of the women, one more thing to note is that this temple is really only qualified to have 40 in a session. They did not even have enough clothing to accomadate all those of the Nivacle. Again a donation was given of 30 packets of clothing that made all possible.
All this paid off on July 28. The 175 that had prepared sufficiently to attend started 4 days in advance from Mistolar riding on the back of a flatbed trailer pulled by a tractor. This trip takes 18 hours. They arrive in Abundancia where we have 4 colectivos waiting for them. One breaks down on the way so one bus has to divide to two others. Finally they arrive and we are so happy and ready to recieve them and prepared!
In the end 20 families were sealed 21 were able to be a part of baptisms and 56 were able to attend a session. I will try and capture some of the wonderful moments but the feeling can not be captured. Our Elders were expressing their gratitude for the things they had learned and felt has they had been a part of this. The blessings of the gospel always go two ways.
Arriving
Feeding this many is no simple task and then there is the down time when you are not in the temple.
The children loved playing with the balls in the parking lot of the Hostel. This is where all the women and children stayed. The men slept of the floor of the cultural hall in Campo Grande Capilla
