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!