2nd transfer!

Made it through my first transfer...phew ;) They say the beginning is kinda free climbing, but thought it went by super fast! I´m still in Lugano and will most likely stay here for 3 more months. Also, Hermana Carrasco will stay my companion for this transfer! Yay! I´m super glad, she´s super awesome and we have a blast. I´m super grateful for her.

At the beginning of the transfer, we had no ¨real¨ lessons with investigadors for weeks.....we would teach a ton of people in the streets throughout the week, and teach members, and inactives, but we never had a long lesson with a nonmember. Nobody has time here (I mean.....they have plenty of time to sleep in the day and sit outside and drink mate, but no time for us lol)., and nobody wanted anything to do with us. I always thought that missionaries would go from appointment to appointment and teach a ton of lessons in homes all day (like they do on The District). BUT lately we have had a lot more lessons and investagadors, woot! In the MTC they made it seem like we would be sitting around on a couch teaching (like they do in the movies), but it´s a lot different haha. We taught in dim, cockroach invested rooms, on someone´s bed (a lot of people dont have coaches), in a garage, and outside.
Around 8 one night we had a lesson in the dark, the lights went out so we gathered around a flashlight haha....total ghost story setting. But, it has been great :)

We have 2 people that really want to be baptized. One of them needs permission from her mom who doesnt like the church (she´s 17 so she might just wait until she´s 18......), but the other one is getting baptized at the end of April! Super excited :D

A lot of strangeness here...I´m definitely not in Utah anymore. Strange things happen everyday, and the more I´m understanding spanish, the more things I notice. Just want to mention Utah is a great place to live :) 

 

My mama was able to work something out to smuggle in an SD card reader into Argentina, because they don´t accept outside packages (she´s pretty sly that way ;)) ....So I will hopefully be able to send pictures next week.

Love you all!

Chau!

Jello.

This week was awesome! Great things happened every day :) I´m grateful to have an awesome companion and for the awesome members here. I´m laughing tons everyday! 

I went to a family´s house (members, inactives, and friends) and they asked if I knew how to play guitar....and they pulled one out! I got to play the guitar for the 1st time since I´ve been on the mission. I played a song Dad and I always played (wasnt as good without ya Daddy) and played Metallica riffs thinking they wouldnt know I what I was playing. But they did....ah well, missionary rockin out! I missed playing! 

The other day I was explaining to my companion how much I hate jello (the last time I had it I threw up...I really hate it). And the very next meal we had, we get the jello sponge lookin dessert...I asked my companion what it was and she turned to me in english and mumbled ¨If I tell you you´re going to throw up so eat it and pretend you like it!¨ AHhhh what?! Found out it was like this milky/egg jello...wahhh. If ya´ll remember....my email last week mentioned the lady pouring oil and vinegar on my food...well that meal kinda poisoned me! Ok not poison, but now I´m on a special diet haha. Which means......not more gross desserts! 

Every night we plan and do the things we need to do, and once I hit the bed, I´m out! We are soooo exhausted everyday. There are days when we literally walk the whole day without sitting down (because people won´t accept us...). Lately though, there´s been parties and people screaming and clapping at like 3 in the morning outside our pension. It´s SO loud, I would wake up thinking they were in our pension lol. So we´ve been more tired, but hopefully that will stop now that the weekend is over haha. We keep pushing ourselves though, and a lot of great things do happen!

We have transfers next Tuesday, so I will be writing on Tuesday instead of Monday next week, just a heads up so the Mission President doesnt get a call from ya Mama ;)

Just a random thought....D&C 88:40. Stealing my Dad´s wise words, but remember to be positive, because you will attract more positive things in your life :) This scripture is pretty great. I hope ya´ll have a great week, love you!!

Moms note ~ Nicole should be getting a camera cord next week when she gets to the mission home. I'm crossing my fingers for some pictures soon! :)

Divisions

What´s up! 

This was quite an interesting week, but good of course! I´ll start off with last Pday. Went to a buffet with the zone, had octopus and other good food, I am still really grossed out by the desserts...but the food was good! In the evening the lights went out in Lugano, we had an appointment at a member´s house that happened to have their lights still on in their street and when it was time to go home it was so dark! We had to walk a few miles in the dark to get home and were all turned around. When we got home we still didn´t have power so we had to plan by candlelight lol...it was blazing hot in our pension so the whole time we were planning by the candle we were sweatin pretty bad to say the least. Anyway...our broken fridge wasnt getting power so the icebox (our freezer) melted and started to flood our kitchen. It was so hot that we took the mattresses off our beds and slept on the floor in our study room. My companion and I kept waking up in the night because of the heat (no fan), and when I walked to the restroom, there were big puddles of water throughout most our pension! Crazy! 

On Tuesday night, the Hermana Trainer called and told me to pack a bag for the next 2 days to go live with her and do divisions! I was pretty nervous actually because my companion for those 2 days is from Hondurus and doesnt speak any English. We went in a few casa tomadas (taken houses) which was a little eye opener. A casa tomada is a building that isnt finished because they just stop working on it or an abandoned house. Many families take over the house and live in the individual rooms. There were a lot in that area. They are pretty rough lookin and usually missing parts of the house like walls, windows, doors, or part of the ceiling. Everytime we went into a casa tomada, I felt like I was in a maze! Lets just say most of the time I had no idea what we were doing...we were walking into these dim buildings, walking up super narrow stairs with no roof, walking into people kitchens, and clapping outside of peoples curtains. It is soooo hard to explain lol, but it was really different. 

The capital part of their area was crazy! There were people on both sides of the street with blankets out full of stuff they were selling or small businesses. A lot of people from Haiti were there selling things. Before we started walking down the street, my companion told me to hold my bag and to not pay attention to anyone, then she takes off making her way through the crowd. Apparently you have to be pushy to get anywhere here, shesh! That night she asked me to pray in english so she could see if she could understand any of it. I had such a hard time doing it! What in the world! It took me a solid minute to figure out how to start it and the rest of the prayer was very slow and I would pause to think of words, or I would accidently say it in spanish. I honestly didnt think that would ever happen to me, especially after only 2 months. I can speak in english just fine of course, but I COULDNT do a prayer! So weird.

I can tell I am not use to this food....but for the most part it is good. The other day at a lunch appointment a sweet lady made us steamed veggies and meat.  I thought it tasted super good (reminded me of Sunday dinners at home), and then she¨s like ¨oh you are missing something!¨ and she comes over with the oil and vinegar bottle and pours a TON all over my good food......so my lunch was swimming in oil and vinegar. Haha...ah well. 

The mission is lots of fun, I have an awesome companion and get to be with some awesome people. Which is good because I sure do miss you all! 

I hope you all have a great week! 

HOLA!

HOLA!

This week was great! :D

I can already see that the weeks go by fast and the days are long...time is so weird! I feel like I´m getting use to it, but still a newbie and I´m sure that it´s pretty noticeable hah. Last Pday we went shopping with our friend Augustina and took a bus out to a real busy city, it was crazy. The buses hear are so packed. I kept bumping into the bus driver and he was driving with one arm and his leg on the dash...seriously?! We all usually have to stand and I usually get distracted by the scenery and keep bumping into everyone. Shopping was quite the experience! Apparently shopping is done differently. I kept taking the clothes off the shelf to look at them (like you do in Utah) or pulling them off the clothes hangers to look at them (typical thing to do right?!)...and they kept saying something every time I did that, and of course I didn't understand so I kept doing it! Finally my companion realized what was happening and was like uhhh you can´t touch the clothes here, they have to get it for you! WHAT! And then a bunch of the stuff didnt have price tags so I would keep asking how much everything was, and they would all just look at me weird. I just thought maybe they couldn't hear me, so I would just say it again, but louder. I found out at the end of the day that I was saying the wrong thing every time. I guess I should probably realize that if people don´t understand me, then I´m probably saying it wrong, NOT that I need to speak up haha. Oh well!

We walk AT LEAST 8 miles a day with only breakfast and lunch...I feel like I´m going to wither away. We walk for hours and hours...because some days there´s not even a time we go and sit in someone´s house. Every day´s great, but definitely some better than others! I enjoy walking though, and there´s some interesting stuff that happens; get to see cool stuff, look at the purrddy trees, and talk to people :) We typically have to run to our pension every night because of time, which is good though because I don´t like walking through that area. We are exhausted when we get back each night to say the least!

I feel like I´m getting more use to the spanish, but I´m finding out it´s more and more different and diverse as well. I thought castellano was just the "sh" accent with the "y"s and
"ll"s, but apparently they use VOZ form which is something I´ve never learned or have even heard of! We didn't learn it in the MTC, because missionaries don't use that form because it´s informal, but everyone else uses it so I was super confused! Also, in Buenos Aires they use the Porteño accent, which sounds more like Italian. And then there´s all the other people from other countries that have their accents and so I can understand certain people better than others. I still feel like a lil kid when I talk because of how hard I have to think of the grammar, but I´m learning!

We have a cockroach and exotic bug problem in our pension, but we also have a cat that lives on our porch that kills the big ones! We can´t have pets....but he´s on the porch all day and night. We named him Toothless because he´s black and has green eyes like the dragon Toothless! He´s cute.

We went to Stake Conference yesterday, a lil girl sat next to me during it and stared at me like the whole time and copied everything I did for quite awhile...it was pretty cute. I loved talking with the members afterwards too...super fun, we have some good friends here! 

Some of the referrals we have been getting are for really creepy abandoned houses...which is super weird and we didnt understand it. So...we started asking their neighbors about them just to strike a conversation and now we have appointments with the neighbors, so things worked out that way for a reason! I´ve seen a lot of things happen like that...people are put in our path if we are patient.

It rained again and I absolutely loved it! It was still really humid outside, and the rain made it more humid, but it was soooo awesome!

Well hope ya´ll have a great week. Love you all lots! 

Okay I can send pics this week, I need to be better at taking pics, but it´s not good to be carrying around my camera, so I´ll try taking more on P days! I´ll have to send the pics in a couple of emails.

In the rain

buffet with most our zone

With the zone

At a members home for that little girl's birthday!

The fattest dog....poor thing.

And us with a recent convert named NICOLE (yay) from the other ward at a buffet with our zone.