Another post! I found these pictures on the mission's facebook page tonight
and thought I'd post them for your viewing pleasure.
 |
| These are the missionaries that are leaving to go home. |
 |
| We'll see you soon, Lisa! |
Monday, March 11, 2013
Just kidding. THIS is the last email from Argentina.
After 19 months of looking at this missionary board as we eat our family meals, we will have Lisa sitting at our kitchen table eating our meal together in person on Wednesday. We look forward to picking her up.
.JPG)
You are all invited to attend our Sunday service on March 17 to hear her speak about her expereinces of bringing her brothers and sisters from Argentina to Christ. The services will be at the Duarte Building at 1452 Royal Oaks Drive, Duarte, CA. The services start at 10:00 am.
thanks to jecia, hna parkinson, jmag, ma, nea, and gee for the emails!
javier got baptized on saturday! i was glad to squeeze
one more baptism in. kevin brought him to church a few weeks ago and
that was how we met him. kevin´s older sister (nonmember) and a few of
his buddies from the neighborhood also came to the baptism. it was a
bit of a rush job because his dad signed the ficha at the last second.
i would have liked to be able to invite more members, but it was good
that he invited his friends.
see you in a bit!
the church is true!
hermana magnusson
Monday, March 4, 2013
THE LAST EMAIL from Argentina!
workn' hard
This statue is called "ode to the sister missionary that can eat a dozen empanadas all by herself"
picking up mirta for church on sunday(behind the water tank)--in a pile of garbage, we found this page from a pamphlet we left with another family. (don't worry--i sanitized my hands afterwards...)
thanks to hna nelson, sis. stetson, the waltons, hna patiño, sam, ma, rachel, gee, jmag and pa for your emails!!!
can´t believe this is THE LAST EMAIL from argentina! can´t believe this is my last week here. i celebrated by not doing my hair today. and by buying all my favorite things in the grocery store. namely, dulce de batata. can´t really describe what it is--batata is sweet potato. it´s basically sweet potato with chocolate in a custard-jello consistency. it´s good. and i will miss it in the states.
this week:
a while ago, we passed a teenage girl sitting in the sidewalk in front of her house. i felt like we should talk to her, so i turned around, went back, and tried to strike up a conversation. she acted like she was too cool to understand my accent but let us set up an appt with her family and went to get her mom (simona) like we told her to so we could meet her. and when we passed by for our cita, simona was waiting for us, all excited and rounded up all her kids and invited all her kid´s friends that were also there. and miracle of miracles, simona is married! she is only the 2nd nonmember that i´ve met in oran that is married. basically we are super stoked because her chances of getting baptized just increased by like 5 million percent. we´ve had 2 citas with the family (minus the dad) and they have a ton of potential. i am grateful that i listened to the prompting to talk to tamara (the teenage daughter).
mirta--we passed by for her early in the week, in the exact moment that she and her husband were fighting and talking about separating. i was praying so hard to have the right words for them, because what kind of marriage experience do i have???? but we felt inspired to talk about the proclamation, which we had recently given to mirta. we read from parts of it and talked about our personal families (ma and pa, thanks for being righteous examples of good parents and spouses!). we challenged them to talk about their problems together, beginning with a prayer. they were visably touched, especially ruben (the husband). when we passed by a few days later, mirta said that they did what we told them to. and ruben prayed humbly and expressed his desires to change. and he said that he wanted to come to church with the family. and that they have goals to get married. this is what we call a huge miracle. he wasn´t able to come to church because he had to work, but mirta came with her four kids. they are awesome.
we are hoping to have a baptism this week--i hope we can pull it off. it´ll be kevin´s friend, javier. we just need to talk to his dad, which is why it is iffie.
see you next week!!!!!
the church is true!
hermana magnusson
can´t believe this is THE LAST EMAIL from argentina! can´t believe this is my last week here. i celebrated by not doing my hair today. and by buying all my favorite things in the grocery store. namely, dulce de batata. can´t really describe what it is--batata is sweet potato. it´s basically sweet potato with chocolate in a custard-jello consistency. it´s good. and i will miss it in the states.
this week:
a while ago, we passed a teenage girl sitting in the sidewalk in front of her house. i felt like we should talk to her, so i turned around, went back, and tried to strike up a conversation. she acted like she was too cool to understand my accent but let us set up an appt with her family and went to get her mom (simona) like we told her to so we could meet her. and when we passed by for our cita, simona was waiting for us, all excited and rounded up all her kids and invited all her kid´s friends that were also there. and miracle of miracles, simona is married! she is only the 2nd nonmember that i´ve met in oran that is married. basically we are super stoked because her chances of getting baptized just increased by like 5 million percent. we´ve had 2 citas with the family (minus the dad) and they have a ton of potential. i am grateful that i listened to the prompting to talk to tamara (the teenage daughter).
mirta--we passed by for her early in the week, in the exact moment that she and her husband were fighting and talking about separating. i was praying so hard to have the right words for them, because what kind of marriage experience do i have???? but we felt inspired to talk about the proclamation, which we had recently given to mirta. we read from parts of it and talked about our personal families (ma and pa, thanks for being righteous examples of good parents and spouses!). we challenged them to talk about their problems together, beginning with a prayer. they were visably touched, especially ruben (the husband). when we passed by a few days later, mirta said that they did what we told them to. and ruben prayed humbly and expressed his desires to change. and he said that he wanted to come to church with the family. and that they have goals to get married. this is what we call a huge miracle. he wasn´t able to come to church because he had to work, but mirta came with her four kids. they are awesome.
we are hoping to have a baptism this week--i hope we can pull it off. it´ll be kevin´s friend, javier. we just need to talk to his dad, which is why it is iffie.
see you next week!!!!!
the church is true!
hermana magnusson
Monday, February 25, 2013
The Chruch is True Once Again
Editor's note: Follow the hyperlinks throughout her letter to learn what Lisa has been teaching this week. (and to see what cookies she was craving!) Also, mark your calendar for March 17th when Hermana Magnusson will have the opportunity to speak at church here in Duarte about her service in Argentina. The meeting starts at 10:00 am and is located at 1452 Royal Oaks Drive in Duarte, CA 91010
thanks to gee, renee, ashlee!, jmag, sam, ma, and rachel for the emails this week! glad sam had a good day yesterday. i thought of you all day long.
today is the first day of school after summer vacation. weird, eh? it´s bringing back all sorts of back-to-school memories. and a huge craving for homemade chocolate chip cookies.
mirta is a super gem. but i think i already told you that? one day we forgot about our appt with her in the morning. so we stopped by in the afternoon. she was reading the book of mormon by herself in that exact moment. said she didn´t have anything else to do and was sad that we didn´t stop by. she´s already in 1 nephi 8. my comp and i finally realized that we need to drop some people that aren´t really progressing and focus more on her because she´s awesome! we taught about the law of chastity (ugh)--she wants to get married, but her "husband" doesn´t. we´ll see what happens.
kevin received the aaronic priesthood a few weeks ago but never can get to church early so he can pass the sacrament. until this sunday! i felt like a proud momma. he´s one of my favorites. i hope his innactive brothers will one day be active. kevin said that he is always trying to get them to come to church with him. when we passed by to wake him up for church yesterday, he was already up and outside his neighbor/friend´s house, waiting for him to get dressed to go to church with him. what a good little missionary.
wednesday we had to do divisiones with the other hnas in orán. our district leader is hard to work with and it was his idea--it put me in a foul mood, especially since i missed lessons with all my favorite investigators. but it was interesting to see the other half of orán--completely different.
we met marina and maria--a mom/daughter combo. marina (the mom) was crying through the whole lesson--she wants to stop drinking so bad. she reeked of wine, but they both said the last time she drank was two days ago. it made me think about how she fought alongside me in the preexistence to be able to come to earth and enjoy her agency--and now because of the choices she´s made, she can´t enjoy it one bit. it was interesting because marina said that she wanted so badly to start over again, but when we taught about baptism, she very vehemently declined. basically, she´s willing to do anything that doesn´t require much effort. sad, eh? her daughter was more receptive.
met lots of new people this week. looks like quite a few with potential. but we couldn´t have a second lesson with any of them yet, so you´ll have to wait till next week to hear about them.
the church is true!
hermana magnusson
thanks to gee, renee, ashlee!, jmag, sam, ma, and rachel for the emails this week! glad sam had a good day yesterday. i thought of you all day long.
 |
| happy birthday, sam! thanks for being a good example and for being my brother! |
today is the first day of school after summer vacation. weird, eh? it´s bringing back all sorts of back-to-school memories. and a huge craving for homemade chocolate chip cookies.
mirta is a super gem. but i think i already told you that? one day we forgot about our appt with her in the morning. so we stopped by in the afternoon. she was reading the book of mormon by herself in that exact moment. said she didn´t have anything else to do and was sad that we didn´t stop by. she´s already in 1 nephi 8. my comp and i finally realized that we need to drop some people that aren´t really progressing and focus more on her because she´s awesome! we taught about the law of chastity (ugh)--she wants to get married, but her "husband" doesn´t. we´ll see what happens.
kevin received the aaronic priesthood a few weeks ago but never can get to church early so he can pass the sacrament. until this sunday! i felt like a proud momma. he´s one of my favorites. i hope his innactive brothers will one day be active. kevin said that he is always trying to get them to come to church with him. when we passed by to wake him up for church yesterday, he was already up and outside his neighbor/friend´s house, waiting for him to get dressed to go to church with him. what a good little missionary.
wednesday we had to do divisiones with the other hnas in orán. our district leader is hard to work with and it was his idea--it put me in a foul mood, especially since i missed lessons with all my favorite investigators. but it was interesting to see the other half of orán--completely different.
we met marina and maria--a mom/daughter combo. marina (the mom) was crying through the whole lesson--she wants to stop drinking so bad. she reeked of wine, but they both said the last time she drank was two days ago. it made me think about how she fought alongside me in the preexistence to be able to come to earth and enjoy her agency--and now because of the choices she´s made, she can´t enjoy it one bit. it was interesting because marina said that she wanted so badly to start over again, but when we taught about baptism, she very vehemently declined. basically, she´s willing to do anything that doesn´t require much effort. sad, eh? her daughter was more receptive.
met lots of new people this week. looks like quite a few with potential. but we couldn´t have a second lesson with any of them yet, so you´ll have to wait till next week to hear about them.
the church is true!
hermana magnusson
Monday, February 18, 2013
"I teach about Jesus. When can we stop by your house?"
fhe with agustina and her siblings.
me, benjamin, facundo, sofia. agustina didn´t want to be in any photos.
they loved the fhe manual we gave them.
te amo! i love you!
this computer is super super slow. and i´m sending photos so this will have to be a quickie letter.
this week´s highlights:
yesterday was my 18 month mark. 3 mondays from today will be my last in argentina. sad!
mirta is a gem! a few weeks ago we were looking for a referencia and ramdomly found a secret passage behind this huge tank of water and discovered a cluster of houses. we began making contacts/clapping doors and mirta was a door that we clapped. was receptive. had a hard time consistently teaching her at first. she wasn´t home, we had to bail on her, we stopped by and her husband had just been arrested that morning, etc. (that was a sad day!) but then, we randomly passed her in the street and then randomly met her mother in law while we were both waiting for the bus. and so we stopped by again. she was so happy to see us. "i thought you weren´t ever going to pass by again!" she had read our pamphlet completely. has been praying to find "THE true church". and she asked if it would be okay if she came to church with us one day, because that would really help her know if it´s the church of jesus christ or not. WOW! and she came to church by herself (like, without us dragging her out of bed) with her baby and her 10 yr old daughter. she had to leave after the 2nd hour, but her daughter came back like 7 min after they left because she wanted to stay for all of primary. i am so so so sad that i prob won´t be able to see her baptized. we gotta act fast.
luis and mariela (the gems from last week) were unfindable. we talked with his cousin-thats-a-member and he said that luis was baptized as a kid with his family. what??! there went our golden baptism. we can still teach his wife, eh?
carla and anabela, our latest conversos, want to help us with our citas. they´re too young to do divisions, but they can accompany us! the day that anabela was with us (yesterday) was so incredibly hot. during one lesson, i looked down to see the page of my scriptures wet from the sweat that was dripping off my nose. no joke.
like a week or two ago we found 10 pesos in the street. it was a pretty sweet find. no one was around so we kept it. we bought some tamales from sonia and yanet (investigators).
A couple days ago, a group of kids stopped us because they wanted to know if i spoke english (yes, i do!) and if i taught english (no, i teach about jesus. when can we stop by your house?).
the church is true!
hermana magnusson
Monday, February 11, 2013
Once again, "the church is true!"
thanks to jen u ma, sam, nea, rachel, gee and jmag for your emails! loved the videos, even though my computer didn´t have sound. maybe next week.
our investigators/week in a nutshell:
kevin--started laughing while we were reading from the book of mormon with him and his younger brother, angel. me: "kevin, what´s so funny?" him: "i just remembered that angel can wiggle his ears!" okay. and what can nephi do????
mirta and micaela--mother-in-law, daughter-in-law that are super receptive. they never bail on us. this week they started to. have become super hard to find and are very illusive when we do find them. didn´t come to church. it´s super mysterious.
gabriela--was a referrel around christmas time from her sister-serving-a-mission in uruguay. also disappeared. can´t ever find her. her mom said she started working? dah. she was progressing quite nicely.
sonia and marcelo--we were way pumped after our lesson last week. but things are back to the same. they´re discouraged that they can´t get married and are discouraged thinking that they have to separate to keep the commandments (they figured that out before we even taught about law of chastity). they´re too wrapped up in their problem to pay attention to this awesome restored gospel that we keep trying to teach them. we invited another member with us, hno figueroa from the branch presidency. he stole the show and talked for most of the lesson. but he was teaching about the apostacy and they were listening and so we didn´t cut him off. not sure if he helped or hurt our cause. we´ll find out in our next lesson, i guess.
carolina--is the sister of one of kevin´s friends. we just started teaching her. said she read the pamphlet we left (but everyone says that, even if they didn´t). so we taught her like she hadn´t read anything. and then at the end when i mentioned something about God calling a prophet again, she remembered that it was joseph smith. and i was like, whoa! you read! and she said she prayed about what she learned and got an answer that it was true! wow! she´s super pregnant with baby #3.
agustina--remember the fhe that we planned to have with her whole family last monday because her mom said she would be home? she wasn´t. got "called in to work." dah. we helped them pick up all their garbage in their front yard on thursday. their mom refused to come out to talk to us. we will teach agustina about fasting tonight. i think a special fast is in order.
i was talking to a lady in her front yard when my comp saw the daughter of one of our investigators get hit by a car backing out of the drive way. the girl got up like nothing happened and ran over to us to ask when we would be coming to their house. if that happened in the states, it´d be an instant law suit. argentina is awesome.
luis and mariela--we had a fhe planned with an innactive family but no one was home when we showed up. doesn´t matter. i love clapping doors. hah. the first couple doors no one was home...i was getting discouaged. then luis came out of his house to talk to us. said that when he saw us outside he felt like he should talk to us. his cousin is a member and so he knows a little about the church (like, where the chapel is. it´s a start, eh?) was in a terrible motocycle accident last year and miraculously is okay. is planning to marry his girlfriend in a few months. (what?!) they have a cutie baby boy. they were super receptive. we are hopeful.
the church is true!
hermana magnusson
our investigators/week in a nutshell:
kevin--started laughing while we were reading from the book of mormon with him and his younger brother, angel. me: "kevin, what´s so funny?" him: "i just remembered that angel can wiggle his ears!" okay. and what can nephi do????
mirta and micaela--mother-in-law, daughter-in-law that are super receptive. they never bail on us. this week they started to. have become super hard to find and are very illusive when we do find them. didn´t come to church. it´s super mysterious.
gabriela--was a referrel around christmas time from her sister-serving-a-mission in uruguay. also disappeared. can´t ever find her. her mom said she started working? dah. she was progressing quite nicely.
sonia and marcelo--we were way pumped after our lesson last week. but things are back to the same. they´re discouraged that they can´t get married and are discouraged thinking that they have to separate to keep the commandments (they figured that out before we even taught about law of chastity). they´re too wrapped up in their problem to pay attention to this awesome restored gospel that we keep trying to teach them. we invited another member with us, hno figueroa from the branch presidency. he stole the show and talked for most of the lesson. but he was teaching about the apostacy and they were listening and so we didn´t cut him off. not sure if he helped or hurt our cause. we´ll find out in our next lesson, i guess.
carolina--is the sister of one of kevin´s friends. we just started teaching her. said she read the pamphlet we left (but everyone says that, even if they didn´t). so we taught her like she hadn´t read anything. and then at the end when i mentioned something about God calling a prophet again, she remembered that it was joseph smith. and i was like, whoa! you read! and she said she prayed about what she learned and got an answer that it was true! wow! she´s super pregnant with baby #3.
agustina--remember the fhe that we planned to have with her whole family last monday because her mom said she would be home? she wasn´t. got "called in to work." dah. we helped them pick up all their garbage in their front yard on thursday. their mom refused to come out to talk to us. we will teach agustina about fasting tonight. i think a special fast is in order.
i was talking to a lady in her front yard when my comp saw the daughter of one of our investigators get hit by a car backing out of the drive way. the girl got up like nothing happened and ran over to us to ask when we would be coming to their house. if that happened in the states, it´d be an instant law suit. argentina is awesome.
luis and mariela--we had a fhe planned with an innactive family but no one was home when we showed up. doesn´t matter. i love clapping doors. hah. the first couple doors no one was home...i was getting discouaged. then luis came out of his house to talk to us. said that when he saw us outside he felt like he should talk to us. his cousin is a member and so he knows a little about the church (like, where the chapel is. it´s a start, eh?) was in a terrible motocycle accident last year and miraculously is okay. is planning to marry his girlfriend in a few months. (what?!) they have a cutie baby boy. they were super receptive. we are hopeful.
the church is true!
hermana magnusson
Monday, February 4, 2013
Join Lisa next year for her birthday. I think she'll be eating......
.....EMPANADAS! Read on to find out why.
fhe with kevin and his family two weeks ago
sam, you rock! loved the card!
we bought empanadas from a street vendor for lunch because our
lunch appt fell through.
last year i ate empanadas for my birthday.
what am i going to do next year?????
birthday morning.
hna wills made breakfast and we ate outside on our front patio.
in the
pan is my birthday banana, courtesy of my comp
thanks to ruth!! (loved the photo!), jmag, sam, pa, rachel, ma, sis. patino, dave, gee and sis. stetson for your emails this week!
had a good birthday. it´s not every day that you can turn 29 in a foreign country. ate breakfast, courtesy of hna wills, outside with all the other hnas in the pench. earlier in the week i finally got my christmas package, and my birthday package too! that was a tender mercy. i seriously loved loved loved the photos. it was the best present ever. we worked all morning long in the heat. it was super hot. jealous, jmag? don´t be. it was miserable. the best part about the morning was that we finally found a referencia (referral) we´ve been passing by for ages. he´s a 19-yr old, and has potential. he was telling us that he carves stuff out of stone, then ran into his house to show us a sample of his work. he brought out a kinda ugly owl, i appropriately oohed and ahed and then he said, "like it? you can keep it!" best argentine birthday present ever. our lunch appt fell through. we bought empanadas from a street vender. they were awesome. my comp told everyone it was my birthday so everyone was really nice.
the second best birthday present (and the highlight of the week) was the lesson we had with sonia. not sure if i´ve talked about sonia and marcelo. they´re a couple we´ve been teaching for a bit. they are so perfect--will make a great bishop/rs pres. only problems are that they are pretty evangelical. (ie: you girls are so great and it´s so nice that we can have gospel discussions because we just love to talk about the word of God, but we just never have any time to read from the book you gave us). they´re not married, but are different than everyone else here because they feel really bad about living together. sonia is working on divorce papers which is why they can´t get married, but divorce is a long and messy process here. it´s even more complicated because she was married in bolivia. dah. anyway, we´ve been talking/praying about dropping them for a while and friday was the day that we were going to pull the plug. but really, it was an answer to our prayers, sonia had great questions about the book of mormon and it was obvious that they just didn´t really get it all. we were able to explain and testify and teach and it was awesome. sonia kept saying, "i wish marcelo was here to hear all this!" it was obvious that a huge CLICK happened. we had a member with us and it was inspired that we had invited her too. i really felt the spirit while she bore her testimony about her conversion. and afterwards she was super pumped--she thanked us for inviting her and letting her participate. hna vaamonde and i both knew that we couldn´t drop them just yet--i really do think that we´ll see some progression soon.
agustina didn´t get baptized this week. we´re all super bummed. when we stopped by to talk to the mom, she refused to come out of the house. sheesh. we stopped by a couple days later and found her and had a good chat with her. i think she felt good when we left. and we did too. another answer to prayers. we are going to have an fhe with her family today and i hope that we can soften the mom´s heart even more.
the church is true!
hermana magnusson
had a good birthday. it´s not every day that you can turn 29 in a foreign country. ate breakfast, courtesy of hna wills, outside with all the other hnas in the pench. earlier in the week i finally got my christmas package, and my birthday package too! that was a tender mercy. i seriously loved loved loved the photos. it was the best present ever. we worked all morning long in the heat. it was super hot. jealous, jmag? don´t be. it was miserable. the best part about the morning was that we finally found a referencia (referral) we´ve been passing by for ages. he´s a 19-yr old, and has potential. he was telling us that he carves stuff out of stone, then ran into his house to show us a sample of his work. he brought out a kinda ugly owl, i appropriately oohed and ahed and then he said, "like it? you can keep it!" best argentine birthday present ever. our lunch appt fell through. we bought empanadas from a street vender. they were awesome. my comp told everyone it was my birthday so everyone was really nice.
the second best birthday present (and the highlight of the week) was the lesson we had with sonia. not sure if i´ve talked about sonia and marcelo. they´re a couple we´ve been teaching for a bit. they are so perfect--will make a great bishop/rs pres. only problems are that they are pretty evangelical. (ie: you girls are so great and it´s so nice that we can have gospel discussions because we just love to talk about the word of God, but we just never have any time to read from the book you gave us). they´re not married, but are different than everyone else here because they feel really bad about living together. sonia is working on divorce papers which is why they can´t get married, but divorce is a long and messy process here. it´s even more complicated because she was married in bolivia. dah. anyway, we´ve been talking/praying about dropping them for a while and friday was the day that we were going to pull the plug. but really, it was an answer to our prayers, sonia had great questions about the book of mormon and it was obvious that they just didn´t really get it all. we were able to explain and testify and teach and it was awesome. sonia kept saying, "i wish marcelo was here to hear all this!" it was obvious that a huge CLICK happened. we had a member with us and it was inspired that we had invited her too. i really felt the spirit while she bore her testimony about her conversion. and afterwards she was super pumped--she thanked us for inviting her and letting her participate. hna vaamonde and i both knew that we couldn´t drop them just yet--i really do think that we´ll see some progression soon.
agustina didn´t get baptized this week. we´re all super bummed. when we stopped by to talk to the mom, she refused to come out of the house. sheesh. we stopped by a couple days later and found her and had a good chat with her. i think she felt good when we left. and we did too. another answer to prayers. we are going to have an fhe with her family today and i hope that we can soften the mom´s heart even more.
the church is true!
hermana magnusson
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)