We Have a Homecoming Date: March 15ish

thanks to sis. mangum, gee, renee, jamg, rachel, pa, and ma for your emails this week!  and waltons, got your package!  you are the greatest!!  can´t wait for christmas!  was fun to see the pics from the ut/id excursion.  we didn´t do anything to celebrate thanksgiving--too hard without family and good food.  there´s really nothing else to do to celebrate.  but today i pulled out all the christmas activities i´ve pulled and saved from old church magazines all year long, and listened to christmas music while i mopped the floor.  so christmas will be celebrated for sure.

this week was pretty blah.  got called to salta to finish visa paperwork (for the last time, thank goodness).  that wiped out 1 1/2 days.  had to go down tuesday afternoon/evening, got in late that night, slept in 3 cerritos with the other hnas that also came in from out of town.  was fun to catch up with hna andrus and hna mortensen.  did paperwork wednesday morning, hung around the mission office afterwards waiting for everyone else to finish up.  pres. came in and i asked him about how things would be changing with the announcement from pres. monson.  he said that everyone´s time in the mtc will be shorter--those not learning a language will only be there for 2 weeks (instead of 3), and those learning a language will be there for less time (6 wks and 9 wks, instead of 9 and 12).  when i was there, i met someone who was there for a shorter time, as part of a pilot program.  goes to show that this was in the works for a long time.  anyway, to compensate for less time, materials and books will be sent to all foreign-going missionaries to prepare at home before entering the mtc.  innnneresting, eh?  and also that all church curriculum for youth (seminary, institute, gospel doctrine, yw/ym) has been revamped and rewritten to parallel better preach my gospel, also to aid with mission-prep since missionaries will be leaving straight out of high school.

wouldn´t it be so cool to work in the curriculum department of the church right now?  dream job.  also with the influx of sisters, pres. will have enough missionaries to put an extra companionship in many areas.  that would be awesome.  our area is huge.

other side effect of all the changes in the time spent at the mtc: our transfer that ends in march will be 7 weeks instead of 6.  TRANSLATION:  i´ll be coming home a week later than planned.  like around march 15ish.  that will make it almost exactly 19 months to the day that i left.  but who´s counting?

thursday night got a little sickie so we spent all day at home on friday.  my comp wasn´t feeling good either so that was convenient.  but i was fine by saturday so we went back to work!

the primary program was this sunday.  holy moly, brought me back to my spanish branch days--handmade crepe paper bows in the primary colors that decorated the chapel, the girls all wore these matching headband thingies, etc.  i played the piano for them.  that was fun.  i think all primary programs are the same.  funny.

analia ("are you the girls that sing?" from last week) wanted to go to the baptism that the other rama had, and was getting ready to go with us when her dad came home.  he told her she absolutely could not go.  she almost starting crying.  reminded me of when leandra wanted to go to church with ma.  i wanted to cry too.  but her mom whispered to us, "her dad won´t be home tomorrow, so we can go to church with you."  score.  they came.  sat through "in our lovely deseret" as the opening song in sac mtng and the law of chastity lesson in gospel principles (remember, they´re NEW investigators).  wonder what they thought.  heh.

not much else to say.  we´re in a different-than-usual cyber today and it´s SUPER loud (explosive computer games, little kids crying, people watching movies good and loud).  i have a headache.  and i can´t send photos.  so stay tuned next week.

the church is true!
hermana magnusson

Heaven Bless Girls that Sing

thanks to pa, gee, rachel, ma, jmag sam, y los branchini for your emails this week!  and to sis. terrill for your dear elder and sis. vaughn for your card!  and jen urena, you rock my socks off!  thanks for the goodies!

hard to believe that this week is thanksgiving.  it´s definitely a "just USA" holiday.  we´ll see what hna wills and i can come up with to celebrate good and hard.

ORÁN FUN FACTS:
there are lightening bugs here!  we see them when we visit with mariluz and her family.  they like to hang out in the sugar cane fields.    the first lightening bug i saw in real life was in winter quarters last summer.  and now i live with them.

we always pass an heladeria (ice cream shop) in our comings and goings, and there is always the same old man out front and we always share pleasant exchanges with him.  the other night he invited us to have ice cream for free!  he is the owner.  super nice.  and now our best friend.

THIS WEEK:
on tuesday, we were running to an appt, and a little girl saw us from across the street and waved and waved like we knew her.  we didn´t.   she crossed the street with her mom and asked us, "are you the girls that sing??"  "uhhhhhhh...sure, i mean, YES!  we sing!"  turns out that sometime in the past, sister missionaries, a gringa and a latina like us, had contacted them and had sung in the lesson.  and so we asked if we could sing for them quickly, which we turned into a mini-lesson and two baptismal dates.  heaven bless the missionaries that sang for them in the past.

on friday, we passed by for victoria right before lunch.  we found her crying because her son was being a punk and wasn´t helping her with a home-improvement project.  so we did.  and i will forever kick myself for not having my camera.  it was so great.  everyone here has "chapas" for their roof--corrugated sheet metal that they lay overlapped over the framework of wood for their ceiling.  uhhhhh, can´t really explain it, so just imagine, k?   crippled little victoria climbed up on her roof and heaved her heavy chapas down to us below and we cleaned them with a hose and brooms in preparation for patching the holes in them.  it was super hot that day, we got good and sweaty, but she lent us old clothes (an apron for me and a dress/smock for my comp) and hats to use to protect us from the mud and sun.  being a missionary is so great.  we already had a lunch appt, but victoria invited us to eat with her, so we had 2 lunches!  good thing i have a heavy-duty digestive system.

fredy, franco and emanuel got confirmed on sunday.  it was an emotionally draining weekend for their family--their dad started drinking saturday morning and was good and schnokered when we passed by at noon.  we found mariluz, the mom, crying--she was afraid of a confrontation like a few weeks past.  she didn´t want to be home that night with him, but had no place to go.  so we left, prayed good and hard to be inspired to find members that could help us, and were led to the flia saban.  they live nearby, agreed to let mariluz and kids sleep in their house that night, if needed, then offered them their second house--where their married daughter had been living but currently is not and now is vacant.  heavenly father knows his children and how they can be helped.  mariluz ended up staying in her own house that night, but her husband and other relatives kept drinking all day/night and so she couldn´t go to church.  we have a lesson with them tonight.  ahhhhhhhh.  fredy, the 12 yr old, will get the priesthood next sunday.  happy!

the church is true!
hermana magnusson

Discovery of Heaven on Earth

baptism of fredy, franco and emanuel!

 julio and mariluz and family

 the boys with daniel, our 19-yr old young men´s pres.

thanks to mark o, the waltons, ma, rachel, gee, jmag, and sam for your emails this week!

can´t believe i forgot wish pa a happy birthday last week.  happy birthday, pa!  we celebrated here by having a really successful, happy day.  i told a few people it was my dad´s birthday.  entonces, algunas personas aquí mandaron saludos a mi papá.  ¡Feliz cumple!

the week ended happy:
fredy and his brother franco and their cousin emanuel all got baptized yesterday!  their baptism was on a sunday because we had district (stake) conference and there was a leadership meeting saturday night.  and since they weren´t going to be confirmed this week anyway, why not on sunday night?  their dad was the drunk/abusive dad of last week´s letter, and miracle of miracles, we had a lesson with him on saturday afternoon, invited him to conference and to his sons´ baptism, and HE CAME TO BOTH!!!  and because he came, mariluz was able to come too.  we are so happy.  we had good ward support at the baptism, and so hopefully that made a good impact.

district conference was really good.  and we had a record 15 investigators that showed up...our best church attendance ever!  the speakers talked about making good decisions, baptism, staying true and firm to what we know is right, and they all taught from the scriptures--perfect for all our little sheepies that were there.  pres. levrino presided--didn´t realize that although we have a district president, he works under the leadership of the mission pres.  interesting.  we had interviews with pres. levrino afterwards.  he is a wise leader.

we spent all morning sunday rounding up all our little sheepies to come to conference.  it was super stressful.  we passed by once to wake them all up, then made a second, and then a third go-round to the key players to get them going and out the door.  have you ever tried to herd a bunch of baby chicks?  just try to imagine it.  but 15 came!!  and that made it all worth it.  soledad and daniel were two of our key players that showed up.  miracle.  the RSP came to one of our lessons with soledad this week.  that was so good.  afterward she told us that she might be able to help her with some clothes and medicine for her girls.  that would be awesome.

we taught monica, a friend of natalia.  she told us that the night before she had made the decision to change her life.  and then we stopped by the next morning.  it´s nice to hear things like that because i don´t often feel guided by the spirit.  but obviously we are being helped.  anyway, super receptive.  AND SHE´S MARRIED!  i think she is the first non-mormon married lady-with-kids that i have met here.  crazy, eh?

gabriel and natalia had their very own noche de hogar (fhe) all by themselves!  we had talked about ndh briefly during our gospel principles class last sunday, and they decided to give it a whirl.  natalia says she can feel a difference in her home.  we weren´t able to teach them as often as we wanted this week, and gabriel was the only one that came to church on sunday.  bah.

i have discovered heaven on earth: vanilla yogurt mixed with mixted-fruit necter, then frozen.  the ultimate frozen-treat.

the church is true!
hermana magnusson

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly...

 

with kids in soledad´s neighborhood.  soledad´s daughter, emilse (red pants) is savannah´s age.  she calls me tia. (and i didn´t even teach her that!)  she likes to toe dance (that i did teach) and my stickers.  and her nose is always running.

 walking to gabriel and natalia´s house.

thanks to sis. stetson, rachel, gee, sam, renee, jmag, ma and pa for your emails this week!  loved hearing about halloween/elections/hurricanes/school/work/basket ball practice, etc.

halloween is low key here.  saw a few kids in costumes running around downtown the night of halloween.  i think they were trick or treating at the businesses downtown??  a little different than back home, eh?  other than that, nada.  nov 1st (or 2nd?) is the day that everyone goes to the cemetary to pray for their passed-away relatives.  had some people ask us our stand on that.  THAT day was a huge deal.  the bus we take to our farthest-away-area passes by the cemetary and it was super packed.

this week:

THE GOOD
gabriela is our investigator de oro!  30ish years old, mom of three.  she reads from the book of mormon and prays every single day.  her questions are super bunea.  i loved our plan of salvation lesson with her...she GETS IT!!!  wants to repent of some pretty serious transgressions in the past  and she is excited that our message gives her hope for the future.  FINALLY accepted a baptism date, but has school all day on saturday and sunday which means she can never come to church, so we´ll probably have to keep moving it back...blah.  her husband is never home when we teach her--sounds like many husbands of the women we teach: drinks, smokes, uses coca, known to be abusive.  we want to teach him too to help the whole family.  that´s the goal for this week.

gabriel and natalia are progressing too!  gabriel is the innactive man that found us (see letter from last week).  his wife natalia (really, the live-in girlfriend) is super receptive, met her three kids from a previous relationship, and she and two of the kids accepted baptism dates.  and all of them came to church on sunday!  gabriel´s teenaged sister was suprised to see him at church--she bore a sweet and powerful testimony about the power of prayer.  said that she prays all the time that her brother would come back to church and bring his family with him--his attendance that day with them all was the answer she was waiting for.  gabriel and his family were emotional.  happy happy day.  the ward is being great about fellowshipping them--inviting to seminary, mutual activities, fhe´s, etc.

had a combined branch talent show.  had some investigators show up and they had a great time.  was fun to watch the little kids perform.  lots of guitars/singing and traditional dances.  hna wills (other gringa in the pench) and i did a little piano duet (the one we learned i think from aunt karen cousins...like heart and soul, but more jazzy/blues-y).  simple and a crowd pleaser.  great.

THE BAD
had our reading class and only silvia showed up.  i was bummed because i was way stoked to teach the whole neighborhood.  blah.  i was especially excited about the little white board i made (scrap cardboard covered in contact paper--use a dry erase marker--TA DAH!  i am brilliant!)  silvia´s sobrinos liked my whiteboard.

it´s still hot.  will only get hotter.

abril, our little 8-yr old planned baptism didn´t show up.  told her mom that she didn´t want to get baptized because she wanted to do the catholic communion.  dah.  her grandma is a member but doesn´t live with her, so she has no family support, church-wise, at home.  maybe it´s better that she didn´t show up...i have a hard time baptizing kids that i know will go innactive in 2 weeks.  but hna wills was one of those and now she´s a missionary.  so i guess they´re not all bad.

THE UGLY
soledad (sobrina of silvia, one of our up-next baptisms) had a date set to get married to daniel so she could get baptized.  then at the end of last week, she caught him cheating on her. they separated, she was way depressed.  we had a hard time finding her this week--never was home, maybe was avoiding us, etc.  found out the other day that she began drinking again.  she thought she lost her chance to get baptized because she wasn´t married.  we re-explained the requirements for living the law of chastity (marriage or living seperately).  yesterday she told us that daniel came back (silvia told us that soledad, drunk, went to go get him and invite him back) and that they want to get married so she can get baptized.  oh man.  her situation really is awful.  we´re fasting/praying to know what to do with her.

mariluz (in the group foto from last week) couldn´t come to church on sunday because her husband was way drunk saturday night, they began fighting, he got violent, and the police got involved.  early sunday morning, they hauled him off to jail to cool off.  but she´s so great that she sent her three oldest kids to church with silvia.  her son fredy is scheduled to get baptized this weekend with his cousin emmanuel.  well, mariluz signed the form authorizing his baptism.  now we´re afraid the dad will be opposed to it all.  hopefully we can talk to him tonight.

bad idea to end on a sad note.  ummm...the church is true!  that is happy!
hermana magnusson