Mormon Temples: A Conversation with a Church Leader

This is one of the messages that Lisa is sharing with the people in Argentina.  

Click on the arrow to watch it.  

Read About the Piano Pratice Payoff

thanks to ma, carrie, gee, renee, rachel, jmag, sam and the waltons for your emails this week!  so great to hear from you all.  i loved the photos.

working hard over here in orán.  (funny...oran means "they pray".  just fyi.)  here is a taste of orán:
*it´s super easy to have lessons here.  everyone lets you in.  everyone accepts baptismal dates.  (yay!)  not everyone progresses.  (boo!)
*the accent is different here.  maybe more like bolivian?  not sure.  but definately not so argentine.
*i was getting eaten alive, but not by mosquitos.  not sure what they are but they look like gnats, they bite something fierce, and then the bites itch like crazy.  i finally bought better repellent and haven´t really had a problem since.  thank goodness.  a lot of our area is surrounded by sugar cane fields, and the bugs are worse in those parts.  but how can you be neighbors with alma and amulek and peter and paul in heaven without having some sort of affliction on the mish?
*i definitely have seen my poorest homes here--open to the elements, flies everywhere, humble furnishings, dirt floors (or mud, if it is under the water spigot).  we are very blessed.
*and this is my first area where i have seen houses built with wood.  everywhere else have been brick/cement.
*everyone in the branch was excited to have me play for sac mtng.  they haven´t had a piano player since the last missionary that could play, which was months and months ago.  thanks ma, for making me learn.

my comp hna villegas is a convert of 2 years.  only member in her family.  she writes to her home ward bishop every week because her mom doesn´t know how to use a computer.  hna torres is still sick (remember she had a ton of problems when we were comps) so she has been in salta getting more tests done.  her comp, hna wills (arrived with me) is working with a "mini-missionary"--a local member that was set apart by the branch pres to be a missionary for as long as we need her.  we use minis a lot in the mission--basically for when the gringos can´t get here because they are waiting for visas and there are not enough comps to go around.

we found victoria this week (was a referencia from someone in the other branch).  she is 50-60, a little crippled and stinkin´ hilarious.  she is learning how to read.  she reads our pamphlets until the wee hours of the morning.  she also is hard-core addicted to coca--a leaf that people chew here, like chewing tobacco, i guess.  but it´s from the same plant that they use to make cocain, so it´s super addictive.  she starting using coca when she was 9, working in the campo with her family.  she REALLY wants to get baptized, so we taught word of wisdom right away--she told us, "i know i can´t quit this by myself.  but with god´s help, i can do it!"  we bought her a ton of gum.  but every day when we pass by, she´s coqueando (coca-ing).  she came to church this week and loved it.  she has a banana tree and gives us a ton of fruit every time we pass by.  she is great.  and she will get baptized.  i just know it.

we baptized a 11 yr old daughter, erika, of a menos activo this weekend.  erika walked 40 min to church by herself so she could receive the holy ghost.  what 11-yr old in the states that you know would do that?

another girl, daiana, was baptized 2 months ago, but arrived to church late the next day and never got confirmed.  her stepdad didn´t know that she had gotten baptized and got mad when he found out and has since forbidden her to come to church.  now that it´s been 2 months without the holy ghost she has to be baptized again.  we stopped by to talk to her and her mom.  daiana wants to get baptized again, wants to come to church, but won´t because she´s scared of her stepdad.  her mom asked us to never come back because her husband is violent.  so so so so sad.  hopefully some day, daiana will find the church again.  

hopefully photos next week.  the church is true!
hermana magnusson

Tomatoes and Missionary Work

 These are pictures from Lisa's email last week that she didn't get to upload to the computer until today.

playing futbol with our little buddies on the windiest day of my entire life.  i even made a goal!

  making churros with Rut....a smashing success!!!

Warning:  Look at this next photo only if you aren't faint of heart.  

Like Lisa said, pobrecito (which means poor little dog in Spanish)

there are a lot of ugly dogs here.  

this is one of them.  pobrecito.

thanks to the whole fam for all the emails!  sam, pa, rachel, ma, renee, gee, and jmag.  LOVED all the videos and photos!  you all are the best ever.  good luck gee with your finger. 

big news:  got transfered today.  i was super bummed to get the news last night.  was seriously thinking i´d have at least one more transfer in guemes.  and just this week, we started going teaching FOUR families with a TON of potential!!!!!   i feel like i´m going on vacation just when all my green tomatoes are ripening.  but, i´m sure i just walked into another garden with ripening tomatoes too.  it just is still really sad.  guemes was the first area where i felt like i connected with people-- converts, members and investigators.  the weirdest part of the transfer is that my comp hna mortensen is staying in guemes, but got transfered to the other side (there are 2 areas here) to be comps with hna buchanan.  another hna is coming from salta to train a newbie, so they´ll be whitewashing our area.  last night was crazy--frantically packing, writing notes, searching through my agendas for the contact info of contacts, referencias, etc.  can i just say that it is so worth not accumulating stuff.  makings transfers a lot easier.

so now, i am in oran, still in the province of salta, but wayyyyyy north.  was a 5 hour bus ride.  only got a little carsick.  haven´t seen hardly any of my area yet (like, nada), but looks like it´s surrounded by country, appears bigger.  we are in a branch (my first).  it´s hotter here (and it was 110+ in guemes last week) and there are more mosquitos.  no fun.  my comp is hna villegas, from peru but her family is currently living in buenos aires.  she arrived with my last comp, hna mortensen.  we share a pench with two other hnas--one is hna torres, my first guemes comp.  her comp will also be new this transfer.  glad to be living with latinas again.  hna torres was poking fun at my spanish. sheesh.  i didn´t realize that living with a greenie gringa had rubbed off so much. :)  the pench has a lot of left-over junk from past missionaries.  i can´t stand clutter.  and there´s lot of buggies in our kitchen garbage.  that is something that will have to change pronto.  but there are TWO bathrooms and TWO fridges, so it´s basically the best ever.  i only have a few transfers left (?!?!?!) so i´ll probably end my mission here.  weird to think about.

had some really good experiences last week where it was obvious that the spirit was guiding the lesson:

helping sonia, a former investigator, recognize that she felt really good when she was going to church because she was feeling the spirit.  it was a huge ah-ha moment for her and i really think she´ll come this week.

helping our cute little beehive friend that just got a nasty lip piercing recognize that maybe that wasn´t a good idea.  her younger sisters are recent converts and she will sometimes accompany us with lessons with YW aged girls, but hasn´t been to church since she got pierced a few weeks ago.  i hate confrontations and at first she was kinda defensive, but the spirit really put the words in our mouths and by the end she herself said she would take it out.  i really hope she does.  she is one of my favorite girls in the ward.  she would walk 1/2 hour to church by herself with her younger siblings because her mom is super innactive.

olga (10 yrs old) and her siblings are reading from the book of mormon!  her previously-indifferent 12 yr old brother even recapped everything for us--had all the details about laman and lemuel, tree of life vision, building the boat--so we know he legitly read.  so great!  and they all came to church!  definitely a ripening tomato!  

out of time.  dah.  but good to know the church is true in salt lake, duarte, the bahamas, guemes and even in oran, eh?

hermana magnusson

News About the Buenos Aires Temple Rededication

with hector.  he´s angel´s buddy and we hope to get him baptized really soon.  he likes to draw/paint, so he drew pictures of us.  so great.

we visited the united states this week!

(Click onto the picture to see that the sign says, Estados Unidos.
Translated it means:  United States)

thanks to ma, ruth, gee, rachel, jmag, and pa for your emails this week!  and to jen u and sis. terrill for your dear elders!  loved all the photos and newsy-news from the home front.

FUN FACT: saw a kid with a rose bowl t-shirt on today.  i had to tell him that his shirt was from my home town (only a slight stretch, i was born there, after all).  sad i didn´t get a photo with him.

definite highlight of the week was the temple rededication yesterday.  we had a super BAD week lessons-wise (no one was home, all the lessons fell through, none of the referencias we contacted turned into investigators, no one is really progressing blah blah BLAH) and in president´s weekly email to us, he said that mission-wide our numbers were a lot lower.  maybe a sign that as we were working hard to get people prepared for the temple, satan was working too?  and, SUPER BUMMER!, our ward building has a satelite, because the stake center is almost an hour away in bus/taxi and most people don´t have the means to get there.  so we really pushed to get everyone (recent converts, etc) recommends to see the dedication.  well, sometime between the cultural celebration saturday night (which we could watch) and early sunday morning, a part of the satelite snapped in half.  this happened without any storms, strong winds, rain, NADA!  so so so sad.  so, only a handful of members were able to make the trek last second to the stake center in salta in time to catch the last session.  thank goodness we missionaries were able to go.  it was so powerful.  president eyring presided, and elder cristofferson (conducted) and ballard were also there, along with a bunch of area 70s.  the people that spoke in the session we saw were a councilor in the temple presidency and his wife, a councilor in the area presidency, elder christofferson and pres. eyring.  only elder eyring needed a translator.  it was better than general conference, super powerful, and so great to hear everything in spanish.  i thought it would be distracting to hear the translator during pres. eyring´s talk, but it was so seamless and natural, and it was nice to not have a different voice dubbed over.  i like hearing the emotion in people´s voices, especially pres. eyring.  he talked about being witnesses of God, and how to be a witness, one needs to know more than what has been written or said.  one really has to personally KNOW.  we can come to know Heavenly Father through the covenants and ordinances of the temple.  was good food for thought of how good of a witness i am for the people here. 

the cultural celebration the night before was neat.  took place in some stadium in buenos aires.  was a little different than what i expected.  i think i was expecting something more along the lines of the opening show of the salt lake olympics, and it was more like several thousand YM/YW and primary kids dancing.  but still really cool.  i liked the native dances and the clothing.  there was this really cool guy-foot-stomping dance that was incredible.  and they sang called to serve and all the missionaries marched out into the field and that was cool.

kind of a slow week for good stories.  played some soccer with some kiddos one day.  got some good pictures, but this computer is being dumb and i can´t send any more.  i´ll answer rachel and pa´s questions:

You´re in a district, right, not a stake?

in guemes, we are a ward, and we are in a stake.  there are two stakes in downtown salta (salta and salta oeste).  my whole entire mission, i have only been within the boundaries of these two stakes.

Do you ever hear anything about the presidential elections?

members know that there is a mormon running for president and they´ll ask about him.  mitt´s nephew was serving in this mission when i got here.  i think he went home a few transfers ago.

When you dream, do you dream in espanol? 

i never remember any of my dreams.  but one time with hna vega, she told me i had a conversation with her in the middle of the night in spanish.  (i didn´t remember any of it)

Do you ever dream that you’re back in the US? 

uh, no

What do you like to snack on? 

they sell some pretty awesome processed cheese stuff (think handisnaks) but it is salame flavored.  i like to eat that with crackers.  or i like to eat mandarine oranges.  i made myself a lot of smoothies last week.  we eat such big lunches that i never really need to snack. 

When does it start warming up for “summer?” 

uh, yeah, it´s been hot already and we haven´t hit spring yet.  two weeks ago was 100+. this last week was windy and cooler.

Does anyone have carpet?

the only carpet i have ever seen is in the chapel of a FEW ward buildings.  tile, cement or dirt is what everyone else has.  never see rugs either.  i have only seen a few ratty couches.  tres cerritos had more couches, but hey, they were ritzy.

the church is true!

hermana magnusson

Light of the Gospel in Guemes

¡gracias a pa, mark olsen, jen w, gee, ma, sam, jmag y rachel por sus emails!  y diez puntos por cada persona que puede entender esta oración (y por no juzgarla si está escrita mal) :)

ok, so this week in a nutshell:

thursday was the super big festival for güemes´ virgin.  there was a huge mass in the cathedral facing the main plaza and then there was a huge virgin procession and then there was a big parade.  we were in the pench all morning because it was our day of weekly planning, but lucky for us, we got to hear it all anyway.  our pench was along the parade route, and for the day they installed huge megaphones along all the streets downtown.  so we heard it all.  from 9 am to about 3 pm.  blah.  and then that afternoon/night and all the next day there were activities and music and swap meet-type booths downtown.  thursday afternoon when we left to work/teach, there was NO ONE in the streets.  like, it was worse than during the siesta.  i felt like a jehova witness knocking doors in salt lake during a session of general conference.  thank goodness not every person in güemes is catholic and we were able to get some good lessons in.

had an interesting lesson with two excommunicated members yesterday.  the husband just got rebaptized 2 weeks ago, but his wife didn´t.  the bishop asked us to reteach them the charlas, just to help them remember stuff.  not sure what the issue was (and it isn´t our business), but the wife is pretty bitter/anti the church right now.  the husband is awesome--just like a new member, on fire.  he bore a super powerful testimony in sac mtng about how easy it should be to live the gospel--all we have to do is be obedient.  we taught them the first lesson (apostacía, restauración) and it struck me very powerfully how people can experience personal periods of apostasy.  any time people reject the counsel of the propehts, they experience darkness in their lives.  usually when we teach about the first vision, we start with "vi una columna de luz, más brillante que el sol..." but during this lesson, we read directly from JS-H about his experience with satan beforehand.  and i thought about all the people experiencing personal apostacy, and how satan tries to stop their progression.  it´s SUPER real.  but apostasy always ends with light.  and the light is the light of the gospel that comes when we accept the counsel of the Lord´s authorized servants.  i asked the wife to say the closing prayer at the end of the lesson and it was really powerful.  she was very emotional.  i hope she comes back for our next lesson.  she still has a testimony, so hopefully we can help her remember it.

found a really good potential investigator--jose.  he´s friends with erika´s siblings and is always at their house.  but he is always drinking so i always ignore him.  but this last time i felt like we should talk to him (even though he was sharing a beer with another guy).  i did ask him to not drink while we talked but he didn´t like that idea.  he´s 19, has kind of a i-know-it-all-so-i-can-be-rebellious-if-i-want-to attitude, but has some really good questions that no one can answer for him.  listened to the missionaries once before, but "got tired of listening to them" after a bit.  it was a little bit hard because towards the end he wasn´t making much sense and was becoming a little fired up.  i really want to have another lesson with him when he isn´t drinking so he can actually feel the spirit and become a progressing investigator because he has a ton of potential. 

we made homemade churros with rut last night.  so tasty!

tuesday, we went to salta and sat around in the stake center all day for our interviews with president.  he is a very nice man.  i think it would be super hard to be president of a mission.  there is a reason they all get called to be general authorities when they get home.

will send photos next week (hopefully!)

the church is true!

hermana magnusson