"This week was kinda crazy."

thanks to jen w, ma, sam, renee, jmag, gee and rachel for the emails! loved the photos of my sobrinos favoritos and of sam´s dance!

this week was kinda crazy.  last monday night i got called to go to güemes again.  the hermana in the other companionship was way sick and could i pack a bag real quick and be ready to leave in un ratito (a little bit) to go for an unspecified amount of time??  SURE THING!  i love guemes.  this time i was working with hna buchanan.  she´s fairly new in the mish--about a month--though she was in north carolina for a month waiting for her visa.  i was in guemes with her from monday late late (i got in just before midnight) to late saturday night.  we had so much fun!!  she has a fun personality and has zero fear of talking to people and is fresh out so she wants to change everyone´s life and has a ton of good ideas and goals.  and her comp has been sick for a while, so she was so grateful to have someone to work with.  she´s been going solo with members for a long time.  SO HARD when you´re still so new.  she´s a champ.  the weather was super crummy the whole time (cold and rainy) and i had a nasty sore throat on monday which turned into bad congestion/cough-of-the-devil, but thank goodness the holy ghost told me to bring my medicine with me, so i was faithful about taking it all week and now i´m on the mend.

had some interesting experiences in guemes.....like.....

had the hardest lesson of my entire life.  it was with luz, a young single mom.  the hnas had recently begun teaching her and she has a ton of potential.  when we stopped by for a lesson with her, her uncle was also there--and he was SOOOOOO drunk.  like, super duper drunk. and he wouldn´t shut up and he wouldn´t leave.  kept talking about how he believed in jesucristo todopoderoso (all powerful) and were we catholics??  we tried to ignore him, but it was way too distracting. plus, luz´s super cute but super active little boys were running around all over the place.  i tried to distract the older one with stickers, but then he kept trying to sneak into my backpack to get more.  we kept the lesson super short--just tried to share a scripture--but she didn´t understand it (or didn´t understand us??) and we made a quick getaway.  aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.....

had interesting lessons with 12 yr old brenda.  she lives with her grandma and a few other relatives, who are all inactive.  not sure if her parents are members.  she is a little bit of a stinker, (ie: the hnas have been teaching her for a long time, with little progression). she is finally to the point of baptism, but she is still lacking...something.  our first lesson with her was hard.  pretended like she didn´t understand us any time we talked about church stuff (but understood just fine when we talked about anything else). wouldn´t answer our questions.  wouldn´t participate.  it was a little bit manipulative/attention-getting-behavior.  she has a hard family life, so i´m sure this is how she gets attention.  this lesson also went nowhere.  at the end, hna buchanan was inspired and asked her what she liked to do and she said draw.  so for our next lesson, we brought drawing stuff and tried to teach while we were drawing.  she kept changing the subject anytime we talked about church stuff.  and then at the end she gave us all these random presents: a jewelry box, a little journal, a mother´s day wall-hanging.  SO RANDOM.  and then on friday, the zone leader and district leader came to guemes to help out with some lessons and they met with her.  she was totally intimidated and said nothing.  the poor elders were so frustrated. 

working with brenda was interesting for me.  i think the answer with her is to stop pushing and to help her get active in the young womens and then it will be something she wants.  she came to our english class on saturday and was super helpful in setting up for a baptism. so interesting.

we did fun things too.  like, one of the families they are teaching owns a panaderia (and their bread is sooooooooo good!) and we got to help out in the back one afternoon.  totally something that would NEVER happen in the states.  like, we just waltzed in and rinsed our hands off (there was no soap) in their scummy sink (you just can´t think about it too much.  that and the flies that were flying around...) and then i got to brush some facturas with some shiny glaze.  and two kids that they are teaching were in a running competition for their school.  so we went down to the main plaza early in the morning to see them start their race.  and hna buchanan teaches an english class that people actually go to.  and one day, we were looking for the address of a referral, but we couldn´t find it, so we clapped at a house to ask for help and it turns out that the girl that answered "used to be a member of our church".  it was so inspired that we were able to find her.  she was baptized as a teenager a couple years ago, but then had a baby last year, so she stopped going.  the spirit was strong in the lesson, and it was so obvious that heavenly father is aware of her and wants her to come back.

and now i´m back in tres cerritos.  it´s the same old, same old here. the ward had an activity today--tomorrow is labor day and so today is a holiday too.  and it´s tradition to eat locro for this holiday--a random soup-ish dish with corn, zapallo (a squash), random chunks of fatty meat/animal insides, and not sure what else.  so for the ward activity, it was a kind of locro potluck.  we didn´t stay for the eating part.  ah, no thanks.  but i kept myself busy by taking photos of everyone.  hopefully we can print them up and post them on the ward bulletin board to build some enthusiasm for attending ward activities. the bishop told me he was glad i didn´t stay in guemes because i "play the piano so well and what would they do without me?"  so glad they love me for my talent.  :)

the church is true!

hermana magnusson

"The Church is True!"...This Week and Every Week.

many thanks to jmag, gee, ma, pa, renee, rachel and sis. patino for the emails and to jacob for thinking of me in washington dc.

instead of a trivia question, this week i have a FUN FACT.  entonces...

FUN FACT for my duarte readers: the son-in-law of my current bishop served in buenos aires with evan finlay.  evan was his last zone leader.  jose torres, from salta, if you want to pass that along to him.

FUN FACT for my henderson/foothills ward readers: the bishop´s daughter was missionary companions with heidi pappenfuss in chile. small world, eh?

this week was a really good week.  we were able to get some good work done.  it was a little discouraging when i first got here, because we only a few lessons--and with people that were obviously not interested.  but this week we had a goal to do more street contacting, which turned out to be fruitful.  hna vargas talked to a lady, maria, that was waiting for the bus.  she gave us her address and we passed by like three times and she was never home.  but the same girl, claudia, answered the door each time we passed by, so i finally had a duh moment and asked if we could teach her instead.  she agreed.  the appointment we had with her was SO GOOD and it was so obvious that hna varga made contact with maria so we would actually meet claudia instead.  claudia is a young, unmmarried mom.  she told us that when she was a little girl, her mom almost got baptized in bolivia, where they´re from.  she remembers reading from the book of mormon and feeling so good when she read.  and she remembered feeling so good with the missionaries.  the only problem is, now she´s on house arrest because she was in a car when the police found cocaine inside.  man oh man.  but the spirit was really strong in the lesson and it was so obvious that she wants good things in her life.  when we started passing by looking for maria, she remembered about the church and began looking for her book of mormon so she could start reading again. she said the most amazing prayer at the end of the lesson.  i am excited to teach her, even if she can´t go to church and get baptized now.

also, this week we made more of an effort to teach people in the doorway when they came to answer the door--even if it wasn´t the person we originally came to visit--like claudia.  this was helpful too, and we were able to get in a few extra ¨lessons¨ to people that were ¨too busy¨ for a lesson.  everyone is too busy for a lesson, but everyone has 15 minutes to stand outside and tell us why they´re too busy.  funny.

and we started combing through the ward directory, looking for everyone that hna doxey didn´t know.  we discovered that most had moved, but met a few people with potential.  one is nicolas.  we were originally looking for his brother, but he moved years ago, so we started talking to nicolas instead.  his three older brothers all got baptized, and although he also listened to the lessons, didn´t get baptized.  and neither did his parents.  potential, no?

it´s getting easier to work in a trio.  i think it stressed hna doxey out at first, but then we had a dtr and i think she felt better after that.  she is from nibley, ut--cache valley--though was raised in texas.  is going to utah state, majoring in eled.  never lived awayfrom home before the mish.  has been here for more than a year.  is your typical 22 yr old sister missionary.  speaks spanish well.  hna vargas is 28 yrs old like me.  she is from san juan, argentina.  is able to contribute more than i thought, though sometimes the personal experiences she shares are in lessons are unrelated or totally random. i stopped worrying that people wouldn´t get what she was saying, because really, i´m sure they don´t understand me either.  and if the spirit is present it really doesn´t matter what you say.  i am contributing more in this companionship than i have in my others, and i´m having more fun.  i am finally feeling like i can say more, especially about everyday stuff.  i like talking to members during lunch.

out of time.  the church is true!

hermana magnusson

Tres Cerritos

many thanks to carrie, betsy, gee, sam, ma, jmag, rachel and sis. patino for your emails this week! loved them all. loved all the photos. i have a few to send myself, but haven´t had a computer that can download them for a while....grr...... congrats to gee! loved the photos of your graduation.

trivia answer for two weeks ago: chip flavors that you´ll never see in the states: ketchup, pizza, and roast beef (just to name a few). i have tried the roast beef (but only because someone else bought them. so so so so weird.)

i´m back in tres cerritos. i came back on friday. was a little sad to leave guemes...i really really really liked the area. some funny stories that happened that i forgot to write last week: we were teaching a lady in her front room (which is really the "everything room") with the front door open. we were in the middle of a great lesson when two guys clap her door. they were testigos de jehova (JWs), which look very similar to us missionaries because they dress in ties/skirts/etc. anyway, the lady looks at us and asks, "are they from YOUR church??" uh, no...it was only mildly awkward, and very funny because no one wanted to tell them to go away. so i turn around so they have full view of my name tag and politely tell them that we´re busy teaching them right now and too busy to come to the door. when they passed by the open window, we saw they were laughing too.

sunday, easter, we were busy busy busy trying to shepherd people to church. we went to pick up rosa, a 12 yr old girl with an upcoming baptism date. no one answered our clapping, so hna villena marched up and peaked in the house (no door, just a sheet hanging in the doorway). the mom´s boyfriend was sleeping on the floor, but woke up and told hna villena that she could come in a get rosa, she was just sleeping in the next room. hna villena walked over and pulled the blanket off the first sleeping body she found...only to discover that it wasn´t rosa, but the teenaged son of the boyfriend. oops! after apologizing, she invited him to church with us. he declined. we found rosa, helped her get ready and left. funny.

friday we had a zone conference. president levrino talked a lot about diligence and consecation--how many people are honorable missionaries and do many good things, but are satisfied with just doing what is expected and not doing more. the difference between being honorable and diligent is in not committing sins of omission and really consecrating all your time and efforts. everything he taught was really really good and i learned a lot. we also did a lot of practicing--figuring out the needs of the individual and then teaching that the book of mormon can help them in their life--all in a short lesson. president first called up a companionship to pracice on another elder in front of the whole group. easy. then, after some good feedback, called up another companionship to do another practice, but said this one would be more "real". he gave them 10 minutes to go out to the street, make a contact, and convince the person to come back with them into the church to receive a lesson. whoa. in 7 minutes, the elders came back with an older man, who it turns out, liked to talk a lot. like pres said, it was definately more real!! the elders had only 10 mintues to teach the man about the book of mormon, but it was going long with no real progress so pres stepped in and helped them. it was good to see him in action. he´s a good teacher and the man left with a book of mormon, having committed to read it, and his address with the elders to follow up. later, pres levrino talked about this exercise with other zones. one companionship found a married couple that was passing by the church. JUST before the elders contacted them, the wife commented to her husband that she sure would like to know more about the church that met in that building, but had been told that only people with blonde hair and blue eyes could enter. and then up walked elder salazar (from guatemala!) and invited them in to learn more. inspired, eh? after our zone conference, as we were leaving, it was neat to see all the missionaries making contacts with people in the sidewalks and bus stops. we talked to our taxi driver, who turns out has a member ex-girlfriend and had lots of questions. too bad he doesn´t live in our area, but we passed his info to the missionaries in his neighborhood.

friday night i returned back to tres cerritos. it´s a little tricky in a trio, tyring to make sure that no one feels like the third wheel on a double date. the dynamics are definitely different. the area is definitely different too--no real progressing investigators, a small ward (because everyone gets offended by the bishop), not many recent converts, and a whole lot of innactives that have NO interest in returning (because they were offended by the bishop). but, i feel like there is a lot of potential, and that i´ll learn a lot of things that will prove helpful in other stages in life.

thanks for all the prayers! the church is true!

hermana magnusson

New area

special thanks to the waltons, hna. patino, jen w, carrie, sam, ma, pa, rachel, jmag, gee and hna mangum for the emails this week! and happy birthday to gma harris this wednesday! and feliz pascua a todo!

this has been a pretty crazy week. hna vega´s new comp didn´t get here until wed, so thank goodness i was being transfered into a trio because i could stay with her until then (normally transfers are on monday). wednesday morning i moved to my new area, tres cerritos. it´s pretty "cheta" ("wealthy"--think pasadena. and my area before was more like covina/azusa), but i was pretty glad to see some "normal" homes. most of our citas that day fell through, so i didn´t get to meet very many of our investigators. the next day (thurs, during our long weekly planning session), hna levrino called and said that another hermana in another area was way sick and would be staying at their house while she got some tests done, so could i be ready in 20 minutes to go to her area to work with her comp for an undefinite amount of time? i threw a bunch of stuff in my carry-on bag and now i´m in guemes. guemes is about an hour north of downtown salta--and i love it! it´s more in the country. we passed fields of sugar cane and tobacco on our way here. it´s not a pueblo, but has a small-town feel to it. people are more friendly, relaxed. they treat me like i´ve known them my whole life. lots more homemade pan (bread), baked in an horno de barro (adobe oven in the backyard). mmmmm, que rico! lots more dirt streets, lots more dogs and roosters running around. the ward is a bit bigger than tribuno´s. the bishopric spoke. i played the piano. the area is smaller than tribuno (and a lot smaller than 3 cerritos) because there´s another companionship of hnas that works here. they all live together in an apartment above a doctor´s office. i have never lived with another companionship--athough i´m a bit of a solitary creature, it is kinda nice to have human contact with someone else other than the comp you´ve been with all day long. hna castro (chile) and hna buchanan (sandy, ut--and no relation to our buchanans) are the other two hnas. hna buchanan is brand new. my "comp" is hna villena, born in chile, currently from san luis, argentina. she is a really hard worker, a great missionary, and is everything that i am not--fast thinking on her feet, can quote scriptures from memory, speaks/teaches passionately and with conviction, is always laughing, hugs everyone--so i´m glad i can be learning from her. all her investigators love her because it´s obvious that she loves them.

it´s good to be here, but a little tricky too. i feel like a substitute teacher--just filling in for someone else. it´s hard to invest emotionally in the people here when i´m not sure how long i´ll be staying. and i feel a bit like i´m camping--i don´t have a pillow, took a cold, dribbly shower this morning (but after 7 months, i guess it was due...), i forgot all my makeup (and just ran out of mousse) so i´m going all-natural, only grabbed one skirt and a few shirts, so i´m wearing the same three outfits...but life is good. the investigators here are more into the church--they have harder lives, so the message means more to them.

i would tell you more about my "real" new area, but i don´t know really anything about it. but i did find out why we´re in a trio--hna varga has learning disabilities and can´t really function as a contributing companion, so that´s why there´s 3 of us. should be an adventure when i get back.... in tres cerritos, we live in a little apartment behind someone´s swanky house--the only way to get to our place is to walk through their home--a little weird, but they´re fine with it. they´re not members and very definitely not interested, but they love the missionaries because they´ve rented there for a long time.

out of time. the church is true!

hermana magnusson

Water for Sale!

many thanks to ma, betsy, rachel, jmag, gee, renee, carrie and sis pierce for your emails! and jen u and sis mangum for your letters!! i do love hearing from home.

trivia answer: a jug/bottle of water on the roof of a car means that it is for sale. clearly.

trivia question for this week: what are some popular chip flavors that you don´t see in the states? (and fyi, tortilla chips are nonexistant. have seen doritos only a few times. chips here are always potato chips.)

conference was great! i love love love general conference. was super bummed that i was 6 months too late for singing in the mtc choir. they sounded awesome, no? i loved the choir director. so great. loved elder holland and elder uchtdorf´s talks...and a lot more, but i don´t have my notes with me, so i can´t remember which ones they were. we watched conference at our stake center. we always take a remis (taxi) to get there, but inasmuch as it was the end of the month, we were down to our last pennies. so we took the bus, expecting it to take about 20 minutes (per una hermana in the ward). an HOUR later, we showed up. we missed the first half hour of the first session. bummer. and double bummer...when we got there, veronica, one of our investigators that is SO hard to get to come to church, was outside the chapel, playing with her toddler son (and NOT inside listening to conference). her little boy was being a little boy (busily and happily entertaining himself inside the chapel while vero was watching conference) and a sister that was sitting in front of them turned around and not-very-kindly told vero that she needed to control her kid. thus, veronica promptly left. we wanted to die. so so sad, because so many of the talks in that session were perfect for her. dah. i watched that session in spanish, but for the other three, watched in english in another room with the other gringo missionaries in the zone. (it just isn´t the same in another language.) we watched it live, but for us, it was at 1:00 and 5:00. so excited to hear about sis. reeves. can´t wait to watch the next general relief society broadcast.

today is the first day of a new transfer. i have a new area and two new comps (a trio). hermana vega will be training a newbie that arrives tomorrow, so i am still in my area tribuno until then. my new area is called tres cerritos--still in salta. it´s more downtown than where i am now (the suburbs)--about 40 minutes from here by bus. the mission office is in my new area. all i know is that it is a very affluent area...has a reputation of being difficult. and that makes me nervous. don´t know much about my other comps--hna doxey (gringa, has about a year here) and hna varga (latina, just finished being trained, i think). stay tuned..... i feel like gee...it´s a little sad to leave an area that has been home and to leave people that you have come to love. i am kicking myself now for not taking more pictures with people (investigators/members...in their homes, eating lunch, having noches de hogar...) guess i´ll just have to come back to visit. :)

today is a feriado (holiday). not sure why, but it made for some long lines at the grocery store. everyone was buying meat for asado (BBQ).

we have two noches de hogar scheduled for tonight...with the familia orue (juana, who was baptized in january) and the familia michel (part-member family). my games are always a hit (dice rolling/write to 100 and the sentence/drawing/folding game are the most popular. easy. i can explain them. hardly any materials required.) a good way to end the transfer. :)

the church is true!

hermana magnusson