Today is Transfers

thanks to gee, jen w, carrie, rachel and ma for writing this week!  can´t believe things are happening without me back home...it really does feel like time has frozen and i´ll come back to the way things were.

today is transfers.  hna torres was transfered to oran (northern salta).  i am staying in güemes and will be training a brand new greenie.  she doesn´t come until tomorrow or wednesday, so i´ll be working with hna buchanan and her new comp (hna doxey, my comp in tres cerritos) until then.  i´m super sad that hna torres left.  like, super super sad.  we really worked well together.  and she was my little buddy.  i don´t know anything about my new comp, other than that she is latina.  i´m glad.  my spanish needs a native comp.  though now there are three gringas in our pensh, so we´ll see if that makes any difference.  i didn´t sleep very good last night thinking of the upcoming changes.  i´m only a little terrified because i still don´t feel like i know some of our investigators really well.  and hna torres was so good at connecting with people and i know they´ll be just as sad as me that she´s gone.  and what in the world am i going to do with a NEW missionary????  i have been thinking a lot of my trainer, hna rojas.  she only had 4 months in the mish when i came, and we whitewashed an area.  hard.  and i´m sure i was a bit of a punk.  and i didn´t speak spanish and she didn´t speak english.  so basically, my experience can´t be any harder than hers.

but enough about that.  hno capetta got baptized this weekend!!!  the opposition continued up til the end...he almost couldn´t make it to his own baptism because he was working and got stuck in horrifically abnormal traffic coming back into town and his son got in a car accident right before, and we almost didn´t have any clothes for him (everything we had was too small).  but with opposition also comes the opportunity to see miracles happen:  he was able to arrive (only an hour late), and his son´s accident wasn´t too bad, and we were able to find the perfect pants at a swap meet an hour before-hand that cost $20 and we had $21.50 with us.  they are a great family--even brought us all to salta today to drop off hna torres and castro at the bus terminal.  we know that his wife was able to feel something special, and we hope that she won´t be long before she joins him.  they´re forever-family potential.  i´m excited.

rut (we thought she was an investigator, but then later found out she joined the church as a teenager) moved last week and we weren´t able to visit her before she moved to find out her new address.  she said that the new house was in front of this plaza, so every day we would pray to be able to find her and then walk around the plaza looking for her and asking for her in nearby shops.  but no luck.  until thursday.  we decided to knock doors looking for her, and the first door we talked to said to ask the lady at the cyber nearby, and that lady knew exactly where she lived!  miracle!  and she came to church with us again with her son.  we were hoping that she would bring her nonmember family, but that didn´t happen.  next week.

 last district meeting together

with the flia capetta after sunday dinner

waiting at the bus terminal today for hna castro´s new comp.  we´re eating hotdogs with typical argentine toppings: garlic sauce, salsa golf (fry sauce), corn, and hash browns.  YUM!

hno capetta´s baptism!!!  por fin!!!

i´m out of time.  love you all! the church is true! hermana magnusson

Feliz Dia, Pa!

 i make father´s day cards too!  this is for hno. capetta, because their family is always helping us.  we ate lunch with them yesterday.  L-R: hna buchanan, castro, me, torres

 yesterday was a holiday and as we were leaving church all the festivities/parades in the plaza nearby were just wrapping up.  this girl let me take a picture with her.

the next two photos were taken by hna buchanan from our balcony:

 hna torres and i leaving to work after lunch.

our district leader, elder mason, (far right) and his comp stayed after our last district meeting to help us with a particularly tricky lesson.  we met across the street from the pensh to plan our attack.

from the conference for the hermanas

 i´m in charge of making birthday cards for our investigators.  

our outfits are from the day of the hermana conference.

places i´ve been: guemes, argentina!  

we´ve run into quite a few random skulls in the streets.

random cute kiddies we passed today.  

i told them i thought they were so pretty and could i please take a picture of them? 

 and then i gave them stickers.  :)

yo, sam.  this is for you.  graffiti is a little different here.  this is outside of a school.

oh, hi, weesa!

¡FELIZ DÍA, PA!  pa, estaba pensando de tu todo el día ayer.  espero que hayas tenido un buen día.  ¡gracias por tu ejemplo!

thanks to betsy for your letter (loved the artwork!!) and to sam, jen w, jmag, renee, ma, sis. patiño, rachel and natasha for your emails!

hna torres got her test results back from the nuerologist--nothing is wrong.  good and relieving, but a little frustrating because the head aches are still there, but no one can explain them.  she was off bed rest, so we got to work together again.  i had missed working with her. 

the special conference for the hermanas was REALLy good.  the district and zone leaders had a training session at the same time in a different room--it was funny to see the differences between the two groups: we had tableclothes and cutie framed pictures of jesus.  the elders had bottles of soda on their tables.  hna levrino shared a talk of sis. holland--how to not get discouraged, etc.  as part of her discussion, beforehand she had asked a few of us to prepare mini-talks--she asked me to talk about revelation.  it was a good experience to prepare for it, and then to learn also from the other hnas and their talks.  pres. levrino talked at the very end--very powerful.  i don´t even really remember what was all said (i mean, you can only write notes so fast), but i remember the spirit was very strong.  converts have said that they don´t remember anything they learned in the lessons before their baptisms, but they can remember how they felt.  it´s true. 

hno. capetta was supposed to be baptized this weekend, but didn´t because he had to go to bolivia for work (or something?  i didn´t really get it.)  hna capetta is still having dudas, thanks to some junk someone showed her online.  our district leader offered to join us in a lesson with them and i was so glad he did.  he´s a good teacher, a good listener, and was able to reach her in ways that we couldn´t.  sometimes people just need a fresh perspective, i think.  she was able to realize, on her own, that she really does NEED to read the book of mormon to gain a testimony.  her progress is slow because she hasn´t really been super serious in her studies.  hno. capetta better get baptized this weekend because i don´t know if i can handle any more of the adversary!

yesterday was my 10 month anniversary.  time flies when you´re having fun!!

the church is true!

hermana magnusson

"We had some good experiences this week"

thanks to gee, rachel, ma and jmag for your emails this week!  good news from everyone!  i´m glad that heavenly father answers prayers!

we have a special conference for just the hermanas tomorrow.  we´ll be meeting up with the hnas in the other zone in salta.  i´m excited.  it´ll be nice to have a little something out of the norm.

hna. torres´ headaches have continued so she went to a nuerologist in salta last week.  (she gets her test results tomorrow....)  she has been on bed rest all week with hna castro, so hna buchanan and i have worked together again.  i am more tired at night, having walked ALL OVER güemes instead of just half of it.  we had some good experiences this week:

--contacted a family of baptists (i think the first i´ve met here in argentina).  the dad is preacher or some bigwig in his congregation because he sure knows his stuff.  good thing we do too.  after we started with one of our hymns (i am a child of god), they pulled out their hymn book and we sang one of theirs.  good thing the tune was familiar (same as "israel, israel god is calling").  he was "familiar" with the book of mormon and joseph smith.  but they had a hard time accepting the fact that god would give us a second witness (??) and that during our little charla, we only talked about the book of mormon ("things that joseph smith said"), and not about god´s word.  obviously, there are still some things we need to clear up.  but that´s what a second lección is for.

--had a lesson with romina, an investigator of the other hnas.  she really wants to get baptized, but needs to get married first.  we had a good talk with the boyfriend/husband (they´ve been together for 20 yrs and have 5 kids).  he is supportive--yea!  he even watched the kids sunday morning so she could come to church.  (it would have been better if they all came together, but whatev´s.  a lot of men don´t let their wives come because they need to stay home and cook their big lunch.)

--hna capetta found/heard a bunch of garbage about joseph smith, so we cleared that all up.  i love the new-ish joseph smith movie. (Click here to see the movie)  it ALWAYS gets a good response out of the people that watch it.  hno capetta gets baptized this saturday!

--we found out that one of the promising people we found last week (Rut, from bolivia) is actually already a member.  she was baptized as a teenager and went innactive about 5 yrs later.  she is really receptive about coming back and went to church with us this sunday.  it was only a little scary when we couldn´t find her 5 yr old son after primary (classes are first, sac mtng is last), but soon found him with his teacher on the front row in the chapel (we didn´t see him at first).  her mom and brother aren´t members and we had a good lesson with the brother.  can´t wait to meet the husband.

--barbara, a new investigador "broke up" with us on saturday.  she´s 17 and got married about a month ago.  her husband doesn´t want her to change religions.  we want to talk to the husband and win him over because she has a load of potential.

--we eat lunch with the flia velarde every friday.  they are less-active and the dad has been totally innactive for years.  the hnas before me were teaching their 10 yr old nephew that lives with them, but his parents didn´t want him to get baptized.  i think that situation may be improved, so we´re going to try to work with him again.  friday we had a really good talk with hno. velarde, sang a few of his favorite hymns and he got emotional when he bore his testimony to us.  afterwards, (i know it was revelation!) i was thinking that we need to get him activated so he can baptize his nephew.  i´m excited!

the church is true!

hermana magnusson

These Shoes Are Made for Walking

after a long day.  i was wiped.

(editors note:  check out their shoes)

our district.  i really like our district.  good missionaries. 

 the elders came to help us tract for the ysa activity in our area. 

 nice decorations in the church, eh?

zone conference from forever ago

thanks to jecia, jen w, ma, rachel, jmag, sam and gee for your emails!  glad to here everyone is doing well.

FUN FACT: it seems like everyone has a poinsetta bush in their yard--like the potted plants that people have at christmas, but i´ve never seen them so big.  i guess it´s never occurred to me that you could plant one in your yard.  they get to be huge.  and every time i see one, i think of renee. :)

due to the lack of good, juicy stories this week you get bullet points:

-hna capetta told us yesterday she doesn´t want to get baptized right now.  still isn´t sure about everything.  wants to wait for The Answer.  that´s actually a good thing--it means she wants to be converted before she gets baptized.  she will read the book of mormon every day.  and so i´m not worried because i know her answer will come.

-we had 8 investigators at church yesterday.  that´s awesome!

-one of our investigators at church was hector (i think i wrote about him last week).  he arrived early the week before, so when sacrament meeting started and he still wasn´t there, i was a little sad.  he TOLD us he would come!  (he has told us before that he would come and then never showed up, but i think things are different now.  so now i believe him.)  and then when he snuck in and slid in the bench behind us during testimonies i was so happy!  it made me think of D&C 18/Luke 15 of how happy Heavenly Father is when we repent and keep the commandments and do what we´ve committed to do.

-we found a few good investigators with potential this week, thanks to some referencias: two teenaged girls (one with a baby) and a mom/daughter from bolivia.  the latter had neighbors/friends that were members there and the daughter listened to the missionaries when she was a kid.  i´m excited to get to know them better.

-hna torres is learning lots of english, thanks to her fantastic teacher (moi).  she´s learning all the most important phrases for a missionary: "HURRY UP!"  "GET OUT OF HERE!"  and "I stepped in poop."  she also understands the difference between "creepy" and "awkward" and can use them correctly to describe people/lessons/situations. 

-hna torres and hna castro (the other chilean in our pench) were sick this week.  hna castro is cronically sick and hna torres has had a yucky headache that has progressively gotten worse, so hna buchanan and i worked a lot together.  we split our time between our two areas and hopefully saw the people that needed us the most.  it´s a little tricky having a sick comp.  i hope i never have health problems here.  hna castro went to the hospital for some tests and hna buchanan came back traumatized ("they wouldn´t let US in the room where they were processing her blood test, but they let the stray dog in!!").  apparently there were dogs roaming around all over the place....fun. 

-saturday was a gorgeous day.  and today is a cold and cloudy day.  i´m even wearing my fleece-lined leggings that i bought in salta.  i think winter is coming to stay.

the church is true!

hermana magnusson