Feliz Navidad

Hello! 

I hope that everyone had a super Feliz Navidad! 

Hermana Gimenez and I started off our Christmas weekend on Friday with President and Hermana Cifuentes as well as 2 other zones for our Christmas Conference. We had a huge scavenger hunt in Centro, watched finding Dory (in Spanish, I'm going to be real it was not the same without Ellen Degeneres) and made some sugar cookies. The next day we went on divisions with some of the youth in our ward. They made cookies and cards for all of the less active members as well as all of our investigators and then walked around our whole area with us in the sun to deliver them. They are the greatest. 

Afterwards we headed to our lunch with the Hermana Moreyra. She made us about six thousand empanadas, I was sooo full I thought I'd die. 

Then we headed out with the hermana Ortiz to visit some of her less active kids where we were fed EVEN MORE. From there we headed to our Dinner with the Bishops family. MORE FOOD. The real Christmas miracle is that I could smile politely and eat everything that was on my plate that night without crying.

When we got home I was so stoked to watch the fireworks but I was so full and so tired I couldn't make it until midnight. 

Sunday we ate lunch with Hermana Frizzera and the Moreyra clan again. I was still so full from the day before. The Argentines love love love to eat! 

Skyping with my cute fam was definitley the highlight of the whole weekend! 

Enjoy the snow! Have a good week! 

Sunday, Christmas and Companion

Our baby Christmas.  We made the trees out of paper.

Two o the kids that have been going on divisions with us

Christmas Lunch selfie

Christmas Diner with the Bishop's fam

Hermana Ortiz and her son Santiago

Waiting for fireworks... I ended up falling asleep before I could watch them

Draper Buddies, Elder Tree and Elder Bakker.  We graduated together and I got to see them at our Christmas Conference

Christmas Pageant with Maria

Hi!

This week was really good! We have been having a few house problems which has been an adventure. We were without electricity for 3 days and everything in our fridge went bad! Then our window broke, so our Mission leader and his wife came over to help us try and fix it. The Windows here are weird and hard to explain but basically to fix the part that we broke you have to open up the ceiling. When we opened up the ceiling about 10 years of dust fell onto us. Our floor was COVERED, and so were we. Hermano Mansilla drew this nice little picture in our dirt pile with one of the few english words he's learned over the years. 

Natalia has been super excited during all of the lessons that we've had with her and has a baptismal date for the 14th of January as well! 

A couple of weeks ago I gave a talk in Sacrament meeting about developing Christ like attributes. I have been studying ´Jesús the Christ¨ and have been learning so much. I made it a goal when I started reading to apply one specific Christ like attribute a day and it has helped me grow and learn about my Savior in so many new ways. This Christmas season I am especially grateful for my Savior. For his life and for the perfect example he has set for me. I am so grateful for this opportunity that I have to wear His name everyday and teach people about the blessings that come when we follow His example. 

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday Season! 

Also this Saturday our Ward put on a Little Christmas show and Natalias daughter Maria volunteered to be Mary! We were like 2 proud moms watching her. 

Hermano Mansilla drawing in the dust from the ceiling when fixing the window

Cutting holes in the ceiling to fix the window, Sam, as you can see, is the General overseeing the job

River near were we live

Our Ward put on a Little Christmas show and Natalias daughter Maria volunteered to be Mary! We were like 2 proud moms watching her.

These two ladies are like my Argentine moms. They are so great and are such huge examples to me! 

Teaching Teaching, Hermosa!

Hello! I hope everyone has had a good week! 

Villa Floresta has been keeping Hermana Gimenez and I really busy this week. 

We had our first English class together and we had a pretty good turn out. Higher hopes this time around haha. We also have been teaching Axel quite a bit and he has a baptismal date for the 14th of January! He is really excited about all of the things we have been teaching him.

We also have had a couple of really good lessons with Natalia. She walked with her whole family to church on Sunday and also came to our english class. She's already friends with all the ward members and says that everything about our religion is ¨hermosa¨. We are excited to keep teaching her too. 

The 8th of December is the day of the Virgin and everyone here celebrates it by putting up their Christmas trees and decorations. Everyone seems to be happier and more open to hearing what we have to say during the christmas season! 

I hope all is well! Have a great week! 

Today we had a water fight and at the very end, when we were all soaked, the elders came out with bags of flour. I think I will be spending the rest of my P Day trying to get it all out of my hair.

Axel and Natalia

Hi!

I hope everyone has had a good week! Hermana Gimenez and I were anxiuosly waiting transfer calls all week but we are excited to finally know that we will be able to spend Christmas together in Villa Floresta! 

This week we were able to have a couple of really great lessons with Axel. He is the son of one of our less active members and is about 23. He has taken the missionary lessons before and ended up dropping them but now he feels like he needs to start thinking more about his future and about his family, he has accepted baptism and is progressing really well! 

We also were able to start teaching a single mom named Natalia this week. She has 3 kids and just moved here in Villa Floresta. She is friends with one of our super cool ward members. We started teaching here and she already believes and is accepting to everything we have taught, the only problem is that she is a nurse and almost always works on Sundays. We have been praying for her and her cute fam, she's been through some hard times lately but is super strong, and knows that the gospel will help her family. 

Other than that Hermana G and I are just trying not to melt into the sidewalk! I hope I can make it through this summer! 

Happy Holidays! Chow

Noche de Hogar

Hello Friends and Fam! 

I hope that everyone had a fun holiday week. To celebrate Dia de Accion de Gracias I caved and Hermana Gimenez and I bought some ice cream!  We talked about all of the things that we are grateful for.  Because of the heat last week the first thing on my list that I am grateful for has been air conditioning.  It has been in the high 90s, and fact that air conditioning doesn't exist here has just about killed me.

After seeing pictures of Mom's Thanksgiving family, Hermana Gimenez said that our family is larger than her whole ward back home in Paraguay!

Awhile back we met an English teacher named Vanessa who is super sweet and also super enthusiastic about the fact that I am Yankee (she hasn't´t ever had the chance to speak with a native). So she invited us to come and teach her english class about who we are and why we are here. It was super fun, but when I first started I had a really hard time introducing myself in English. The class could see that I was struggling and I the middle of my spanglish disaster, one of the students asked me if I needed to take a few English classes from him. Agh, que verguenza!  But all in all it went really well and there were a few who seemed pretty interested! 

We also had a really fun Noche de Hogar with a less active Family in our ward called the familia Oviedo. We read in Alma 46 and each of the kids made their own flags like Moroni. 

Our investigator Erkia and her family came to church this Sunday to see the Primary program. Her husband is super against organized religion because of some things that happened to him in the past, but they stayed for the first 2 hours before they had to go and he was full of questions!  We are excited to start teaching him as well. 

I hope everyone has a great week! Chow!

FHE with the Oviedo Family, Flags of Moroni

Map of their area.  It will not stay up.

Thanksgiving and Bridger

Hello! 

This week Hermana Gimenez and I spent a lot of time in the hospital. Hermana G has been really sick for the last couple of weeks and finally we have come to the conclusion that the water that the members have been serving us during our lunch appointments is sometimes from the tap. The doctor told us that the water here, especially right now is really bad. Oops. Hopefully we can get Hermana Gimenez feeling better soon and it looks like we´ll be using water bottles from now on. 

We also had our Zone Conference with President and Hermana Cifuentes this week. I love the way that President Cifuentes teaches us, I always leave feeling like I have learned so much. Hermana Gimenez and I are excited to start applying the new things we learned in our lessons this week! 

I hope everyone is enjoying fall break and has a Happy Thanksgiving! Chow!

   

The weather in Bahia this time of year changes about every hour, sometimes it will be blazing hot in the morning and then by the time it hits 6 its pouring rain. Hence the super cute rain boots combo 

This week Hermana G hasnt been able to eat more than White rice, crackers, parmesean cheese and 7 up. Poor kid. 

Note to Bridger after his friends deaths

Hey dude, 

I heard about your friends. Wow. Im sure that was a very surreal moment for you. I cant imagine what it would be like. I am sure everyone has already given you the ´¨live is soo short¨ talk, you know that to be true now more than ever. Something that I have been learning a lot out here is that life is also really freaking hard. The good news is that we are the lucky ones. We dont have to deal with all of these hardships in the dark. We are so lucky to have the knowledge that we do Pal. To know that during this time we have prophets, called of God to tell us exactly what we need to do to be able to stay afloat. We have scriptures, completed with a fullness of the gospel to be able to learn from the mistakes of others, to be able to learn about Christ so that we, as imperfect as we are, have an example to follow. We have someone we can mimick exactly, while still getting to be ourselves. And we also know about what we get to become when we die, as long as we are doing all we can now. Those two kids are just on to the next step of becoming. I love you Pal and I wish that I could give you a hug and take you for a drive like the good ol days. Keep your head up, you are one of the lucky ones. 

Painting and Hot

This week we had the Servicio Mundial activity in our stake painting a park! we had a really great turn out from our ward. Weather is getting so HOT.  The work has been hard, I have learned there are results, I just have to really look for them.

Sister Pants

Happy Halloween! 

Its super weird to me that halloween is here and fall is in full swing. In Bahia its just now starting to heat up. All of the ward members have made sure to warn me that I will burn to death without sunscreen and that the summers here are terrible, lots of good things to look forward too haha. 

Also this week we started wearing pants. Thats been an interesting experience. Its kind of hard to feel like a missionary without a skirt on but we are getting used to it. On the up side the wind storms are a lot easier to handle in pants. No more Maralyn Monroe experiences. Also this week Hermana Gimenez made me Chipas de Paraguay. You have to use a special kind of flour or something to make them but they were really good! I hope everyone is enjoying pretty fall in Utah! 

People you could pray for are the famila Lucero. The moms name is Yanina and her family is working on being sealed in the next year. She's doing really well and has lots of goals but sometimes her husband is lazy

Have a great week! 

Cute Ward

Transfers! Nos quedamos aqui! 

We had transfers this week and Hermana Gimenez and I are really excited to start a new transfer together here in Bahia! This last week we met some really great people that we are excited to start teaching! This last week we also have received so much help from our cute little ward. The people here continue to be so impressive to me. The regular attendance every Sunday usually isn't above 65 but all of them are working so hard and they care so much about helping their ward grow. These last couple of weeks we have reached around 80 people and although it might not sound like a lot, the ward has been really happy that some of the work we have all been putting in together to help reactivate their friends is starting to really show. 

Hermana Gimenez and I have talked about what we can do to really help our area and to find success, and something that I feel like we are learning together is how to have faith in our obedience. Everyone knows that rules are huge for missionaries, we got a lot of them. We had been talking about the reasons why we follow so many rules, and why we have so many rules to follow. There is no point in being obedient if we are just blindly obeying. We found that when we consciously make the decision to obey, having faith that the outcome of our obedience will help us, we have a lot more enthusiasm throughout the day. Sometimes we don't get to see the direct results of our obedience, but we know that the results are there.  Even though this area and this transfer has been a little hard on the both of us, we know that we are here for a reason and that when we do our part the Lord will do the rest. 

On a side note Hermana Gimenez turned 23 yesterday! Hence the return of the birthday princess crowns! It was a fun day and the ward members made sure to make her feel special :)

Que tengan una linda semana! Chow!

Hermana Gimenez turns 23

Eating with Members Now

Hermana Moreyra Fam Bam - Super good Raviolies

Hot Raviolies

This is the street Cuyo that we walk about 600 times every day

Playing UNO at a mission conference

June Package & Peanut Butter

We have been teaching this little girl Lara. Technically she isn't an investigator because her mom is a member but I guess the bishop wanted us to teach her because her dad isn't a member. So we have been and she is the cutest girl ever. She got baptized this Saturday by her older brother Valentino.

Lara Baptism

Evelin and Lara

The other little girl is named Evelin. She is one of our new investigators. She is 11 and her dad has already had all of the lessons and believes that what we teach is true, but his wife left him with 8 kids and he has to work on Sundays. We are still working with him but for now, we walk to their house to pick up Evelin for church Sunday mornings! 

I ams so happy to hear about Megan! She will never ever regret this decision. Being a missionary is the weirdest thing ever sometimes. I am so tired, and not having any success is so discouraging. Sometimes I don't even know what I am doing here. I miss my family, and my friends, and living a normal life. But I am so happy. The feeling of knowing that I am doing what Heavenly Father wants me to be doing is so rewarding. Its been really hard form to trust in Him sometimes. I don't understand why no one that we have taught has made it past the 3rd lesson, and I don't understand what the point is of planning every single night is when that day that we spent an hour planning for almost never works out. Its hard for me to not feel like I am doing something wrong. But I have learned a lot about trust. I trust that Heavenly Father knows more than I do, and he can see the things that I can't. Dad it is so hard sometimes. But I still get so sad and so scared when I think about returning to a normal life. I love putting on my name tag everyday, with my ugly clothes and frizzy hair. Its great. It's how I can be happy every day. Tell Megan that she is going to love being a missionary! There really isn't anything like it. 

I am glad to hear that Brent is still hanging in there okay. He's a tough guy. 

June Package Came

I have been eating peanut butter with everything this last week!

Hermana Gimenez first time eating Manteca de Mani

Follow the Prophet

Mba`eichapa! Hello!

This week my companion and I got to know our area better. The ward members here are so great, they come to our little apartment with bags full of fruits and veggies, they offer to drive us around places and they are always willing to help us out when we get lost. Yesterday we decided to venture out into the Campo of Argentina to visit a less active member. We just kept walking and walking down this same pathway and about an hour and a half down this road we figured we were lost AGAIN. So we called a member and he said we weren't anywhere close so we headed back home and decided we would try again next week. I have started to realize that the words my comp learns in english reflect a lot on how our day goes. For example yesterday she learned two word "wilderness", and "SOS". 

We also have learned what the phrase "Bahia wind" really means here. Oh my gosh I have never experienced wind like this before in my whole life. The windiest day this week hit us in the middle of the day, and I was wearing a skirt that did not cooperate well with the wind at all to say the least. That day my companion learned phrases like "are you kidding me", "over it" and also a little bit about Marilyn Monroe. That night we came home covered in sand with our hair knotted in a crazy mess and thats when my companion learned about comfort food and how to make pancakes. In other news, we have hot water now! NO MORE BUCKET SHOWERS FOR US!!!

The church in Argentina apparently hasn't progressed in 85 years and in our area in particular there hasn't been a baptism for the last 2 years. And almost every single baptism for the last 10 years is now on the less active list. We have our hands full teaching a lot of them and trying to bring them back to church.

I am also learning more than just Spanish from her. There is a language in Paraguay called Guarani, its a requirement to learn it in the schools there so she has been teaching me a little bit of that as well. 

We are having fun and learning a lot in our new area! We also were able to watch the Women's Conference and Elder Uchtdorf's talk really helped me and my comp to have a little more faith. We were contacting yesterday and hadn't had any luck, but remembering Elder Uchtdorf story we decided to keep going any way. We had about 2 mins before we should be at our appt. and my comp wanted to knock on one last door. A man answered (the only person who had even come to his door in the last 2 hours) we introduced ourselves and he asked us to teach him. "Now?" I said. And he told us that he didn't know much about our religion and wanted us to teach him right then. So we taught him the restoration right there on his doorstep and set a time to visit him next week. I don't know what will come out of that visit but it helped me a lot. It gave me the boost that I think my comp and I both needed after a long hard week of no success. I loved Elder Uctdorfs talk and my comp and I are both excited for conference this weekend! Enjoy it in English for me! 

Jajoecha peve! Chow! 

The Diggs

Singing Companion - Hermana Gimenez

Hola! 

Well we finished our first week together in Bahía and we are soooo tired! I have never walked around in circles more in my life. I so did not appreciate the blessing of having Utah mountains all around me before.  Yes, we still have no idea where we are going, but I am just learning to not stress. That is one thing that has really started to change in my personality. I just can't do everything perfectly and our day almost never goes the way that I planned but its okay, because the next day we just wake up and try again.

Hermana Gimenez is really quite, but I am learning how to break her out of her shell. She really wants to learn English so i have been teaching her some of her favorite songs. This week we started with some Justin Bieber. She had been practicing the song all week and was doing super good so this week when we were with some people from our zone I told her that she should sing it for them, AND SHE DID. It had to be the cutest thing I have ever seen. We have also been learning how to pray and it literally melts my heart, she is so dang cute. I have also been able to learn a lot more Spanish, a lot faster. On top of Spanish and English studies, my comp is teaching me the second language of Paraguay its called Guarani I am sure I butchered the spelling on that but its super cool.  

Another thing, we will be headed in the wrong direction or something and Ill say Dang! or Oh my freking heck and then later she'll say ¨´Hermana Ahlmer, what does heck mean? SO then I had to explain to her how in Utah we have Mormon phrases that we say when we get mad. So now she says them too. Someone will call and cancel on us and she'll hang up and say, oh my dang, or freaking heck. Its cute she always gets them mixed up. Don't worry I we are also learning how to pray in English which also melts my heart, her cute accent just kills me. 

As far as success goes we are going to be struggling for a while it looks like. The missionaries in this area really just haven't had much success in years. Bahía is just a rough place. But its okay, after Sunday and talking with some of the Ward members I feel a lot better.

One thing that I do love about being on a mission is that we have an hour a day set aside just to study what we want. There are SO MANY things I want to read. Its kind of overwhelming. Right now I am reading Our Search for Happiness and the BoM in Spanish. Then I want to Read Jesus the Christ and the Bible, and then there is also D&C and JS History...never going to run out of things to study thats for sure. We do have zone meetings every week here and I really like my zone. I am confident that my comp and I can find the people that need us, its just going to take a lot of patience.

This week our zone was chosen to help with a Capilla Abierta in the Bahía Blanca Stake. We gave brief overviews of all of the things that we do here in the church and it went really well. Our church really is the same all over the world, and that is pretty neat. 

Well there isn't too much else to tell but I hope everyone is having a good week! 

Los Vemos!

Hermana Gimenez and I at Church

Doing Yoga with our instructor

Herman Bart and new comp came on Tuesday to Bahia

LEARNING - Bahia, the new area

Hi!

This week has been pretty nuts! I left at 2am on Monday morning to pick up my new comp. She was just in Neccochea and now is in Bahia Blanca, Hermana Villa Florets left on the bus with me.  We both got here in the mission together and have no idea what we are doing but its been fun!

The new Comp is Hermana Gimenez and she is from Paraguay.  We are both new to the area and I am supposed to be in charge.  Can you say LEARNING really FAST.  She is a super hard worker, which is good because we have a looooot to do. The area has little written about what was done and I do not know where any thing is yet.  I feel so lost!  I feel like I might die in this country. I don't have hot water, I washed my hair with a bucket this morning. I am going to have a good attitude but it's really hard.

I didn't want to leave Olavarria, I was only there for like 5 minutes. I was just starting to make really good relationships with the people there. I finally felt like I wasn't just wandering around following Hermana Bart everywhere. Literally this last week we had so many good things happen. Angelica is getting Baptized,  We found a 17 year old girl named Barbera who is one of the chosen ones. Like a for real golden Investigator. Carina, a mom of three brought her family to church this last Sunday and one of her Menos Activos daughters Laura, who has been taking the missionary discussions forever came to church and has started reading the BOM and really listening to us. And now just when I was finally starting to see the fruits of our labor, all of the hours and hours of contacting, and I am transferred to Bahia, all new starting from scratch!  Good thing this missionary life isn't about what I want.  Can you say LEARNING.

I don't have much time but I hope everyone has a good week! 

Adios!

Teaching English at the Church

Alberto and Angelica - Angelica told us she wants to do everything she can to be able to get baptized!

Herman LaPlace from the ward - Tini tiny little lady, so sweet

1:30 am on Monday, I am transferring to Bahia, Hermana Bart is the Best!

Changing Comps

Hola! 

Well this week has been cold. Come to find out, Argentine weather is more Bi-polar than Utah. So its back to coats and rain boots. Its also hard when its cold because no one wants to talk to us. Everyone just yells through the door haha.  But Im not really looking forward the heat either because that means we have to start wearing pants. I have heard all about the Argentine sun and I think I'd prefer wearing 6 layers and rain boots everyday! 

We have a couple of new investigators that are really great. We met Luan last week contacting. He is 19 and a super nice kid. We taught him the Restoration and he came to church on Sunday. The good news is that he's not living with his girlfriend so he is our only investigator that doesn't have to get married first! YAY. 

We also had one of our ward members named Deborah come to our English class. She's super cool and ended up helping my Spanish a lot at the same time! 

Also it was Hermana Barts birthday! We celebrated it all week long. it was great! Her parents and friends sent her lots of fun stuff to decorate with...we still have balloons covering our floor. Cute Jujan had us over to her house and made pizza especially for her. Lujan also got in contact with her old comps and her family to send her birthday videos. They were so cute!

Hermana Bart and I are planning spending our last P Day today at the zoo with our zone! Hopefully it doesn't pour on us! 

I hope everyone is having a happy Labor day! 

In the local paper for their chalk talk

Melisa (Lujan and Joaquin's sister in law also member and our neighbor) and Lujan - Argentine and US Cake

Last Week As Companions - Sister Bart turns 20

District Elders Eating Cake

Happy Birthday Sister, OLD Lady

At the Zoo