Hello all! Not much is going on here really. the last transfer left on tuesday morning so there were only ten of us here for a few days. all the people of the new transfer just got here and it may be an interesting next few weeks.
this last saturday we went about our usual proselyting business and it was really dead in the streets. Hermana Grow and i ran into some really amazing people though and actually have three appointments for this next saturday which is amazing. we are really excited. one of the women that we are going to teach we ran into as she was going into her gate, as we started to talk to her she just became really overwhelmed because i think she was in alot of pain from arthritis, so we offered to help her and she said that she didnt need it then but we could come back this saturday and help her out at her home and teach her. she was amazing and we are so excited to go back and hopefully we will be able to understand her a bit more this time. we were able to talk to alot of people and it gets better every week, even though we can hardly understand a thing they say. but it will all work out for the best in the future as our spanish comes along.
hmmmm well what else what else..... days are pretty much the same haha. oh ya. one of the elders had a seizure and had to be hospitalized for a few days. guess they diagnosed him with epilepsy and said that the seizures come from getting too stressed out from studying which will probably be a problem since that is everyday. we are all hoping that he is able to overcome it but we arent quite sure what is going to happen there. he is back right now but started to go into another episode last night so we will see.
during class this week we were doing somewhat of a scripture chase and i came across one in Isaiah 49:16. give it a read if you get a chance. it really made me think about something i had in my farewell talk about how Christ will never forget us because we are His scars, He is with us through our trials and afflictions no matter how big or small they may be, i know that is is true with all my heart. love-jess
Friday, June 25, 2010
Sunday, June 20, 2010
June 17, 2010
Well as for a little MTC update there has actually been alot this week!! Argentina played in the world cup on Saturday so we werent allowed to go out and do our usual going out that day. People close down every shop in the entire city to watch the games, this country revolves around soccer, so we pretty much wouldnt have had anyone to talk to. But... we go to go out on Friday instead!! About an hour into our day we ran into the sister missionaries that are serving in the area and we ended up going around with them for a couple of hours. That made me SOOOO excited to get to uruguay. it was so amazing. we actually go to an appointment with a man named Luciano. Oh i wish i could have teleported you here to experience it, it was awesome!! This man lives an extremely humble life, in basically a shack with celophane windows and cement floors. his whole house was no bigger than the size of our old living room. he was the stinkin cutest old man, we sat down with him on these old chairs and the sisters just started talking away. one of the sisters, sister daniels, went to alta high and we actually know alot of the same people. anyway we were able to sit in on the lesson and then got to bare our testimonies at the end. it was such a cool opportunity. i was excited because i actually understood the whole lesson. what we didnt understand sister daniels would translate. she told us how much luciano loved having us there and that we brought a wonderful feeling to his home, which was really exciting to hear. ah i am just so excited to get out there and be able to have my own lucianos that i get to grow to love and teach gospel to.
It really has been a big week! as i told you last week, Elder Andersen came to speak on Tuesday. I think this may have been one of the coolest experiences ever. We were all able to personally meet him and introduce ourselves. He came and shook my hand and the area president was behind him ready to shake my hand, but i was so in awe that i kept looking at Elder Anderson until i heard ´´uh hermana,´´ embarrassing. i totally forgot that he was right behind him and was just staring at Elder Anderson.... oops. Anyway it was really amazing because he was able to just speak on missionary work and i felt like every word he had to say was directed at me. he talked about the hard times we will encounter on our missions but of how much a blessing these times will be because we will turn to God for peace and comfort more than ever. Gosh i am so excited! Anyway i wish you could just experience this all with me but no worries i will talk your ear off when i get home.
Anyway so i told the cook earlier this week that my birthday was on the 29th and he is just the best, he made me a HUGE cake and everyone sang happy birthday.... i think he thought i was leaving with the group that leaves tuesday.... haha oh well.... that just means more cake! His postres that he makes are seriously to die for... SO good. i could eat them all day... so anyway after that i was fixing my hair and found a gray hair... Happy Birthday to me, im gettin old. I know that gray hair would have been pulled out a long time ago if Beth was around, she seems to always find them for me and then attacks them.
So as of this coming tuesday we will be the oldest group at the MTC with three weeks left!! yahoo! i am going to miss it here though thats for sure. i love being around these people everyday and have gotten really comfortable with them.
Well that´s about it. One of my favorite scriptures of the week is John 16:33. Read it if you get a chance, i love it. It has such simplicity to it but is so powerful. Love-Jess
It really has been a big week! as i told you last week, Elder Andersen came to speak on Tuesday. I think this may have been one of the coolest experiences ever. We were all able to personally meet him and introduce ourselves. He came and shook my hand and the area president was behind him ready to shake my hand, but i was so in awe that i kept looking at Elder Anderson until i heard ´´uh hermana,´´ embarrassing. i totally forgot that he was right behind him and was just staring at Elder Anderson.... oops. Anyway it was really amazing because he was able to just speak on missionary work and i felt like every word he had to say was directed at me. he talked about the hard times we will encounter on our missions but of how much a blessing these times will be because we will turn to God for peace and comfort more than ever. Gosh i am so excited! Anyway i wish you could just experience this all with me but no worries i will talk your ear off when i get home.
Anyway so i told the cook earlier this week that my birthday was on the 29th and he is just the best, he made me a HUGE cake and everyone sang happy birthday.... i think he thought i was leaving with the group that leaves tuesday.... haha oh well.... that just means more cake! His postres that he makes are seriously to die for... SO good. i could eat them all day... so anyway after that i was fixing my hair and found a gray hair... Happy Birthday to me, im gettin old. I know that gray hair would have been pulled out a long time ago if Beth was around, she seems to always find them for me and then attacks them.
So as of this coming tuesday we will be the oldest group at the MTC with three weeks left!! yahoo! i am going to miss it here though thats for sure. i love being around these people everyday and have gotten really comfortable with them.
Well that´s about it. One of my favorite scriptures of the week is John 16:33. Read it if you get a chance, i love it. It has such simplicity to it but is so powerful. Love-Jess
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Update from June 4
Hola!! Sorry this is coming a day late, the internet was out yesterday so we were unable to do our emailing. I am hoping everything is going good at home.
Its official it has been three weeks!!! My newest food of the week was pig intestine, sad to say but it actually was really good haha. Oh and they eat halls cough drops here as candy... yuck. I have been told that i look a bit like a chia pet here, you know those ceramic animals that grow plants out of them, my curly hair is outta control and the plugs here are not the same as the states so i am all natural, yehaw. This week the first group of latinos and two of the Americans left the CCM so there were only sixteen of us here for 2 and a half days. Hermana Bowers and Hermana Quartino who were mine and my companions room mates left. It was really sad saying goodbye to them!! We miss them already but Hermana Bowers is serving in Montevideo too so we will be seeing her in six weeks! While Hermana Quartino was here she found out that her dad´s health complications from his stroke had gotten out of control so they were going to take him off life support. The way she took the news was incredible, she had a hard time for a bit, just being here helped her so much.
My companion and I had a mock lesson called an IPE with our teacher last week and it was really exciting because we got really positive feedback! We went out proselyting again on Saturday. Wow, we thought that is was going to get easier but we were both having a really hard time getting out of our shells at first not to mention it was dumping, and i mean DUMPING rain. We had a pretty amazing experience that helped us to get going, after that we talked to everyone that we saw... pretty much whether they wanted to hear what we had to say or not. People here either want nothing to do with you or are quite sweet and understanding, its all a matter of sticking your hand out half way down the block and yelling hola- then hopíng they dont run away. We ran into a guy that thought we spoke german as our primary language, he was a bit disappointed when he found out we didnt. But we were just really excited that we are gaining the confidence to talk to random people, we know we couldnt do it alone though. I am so happy that we get this experience every week, not many missionaries get this opportunity this early on in their missions. I hope it will help me once i get to Uruguay.
Sundays here are the best, I have never enjoyed church so much, especially since i can relate every talk that is given to something i need to work on and my relationship with Heavenly Father. Plus it is so nice to have a little break from classes of course, haha. Our relief society class is taught by the presidents wife, with just my companion and i so it is so fun, she loves to talk, this last week our class went over by a half an hour, but she is amazing and it is so fun to just soak in everything she says.
you to pieces- Jess
Its official it has been three weeks!!! My newest food of the week was pig intestine, sad to say but it actually was really good haha. Oh and they eat halls cough drops here as candy... yuck. I have been told that i look a bit like a chia pet here, you know those ceramic animals that grow plants out of them, my curly hair is outta control and the plugs here are not the same as the states so i am all natural, yehaw. This week the first group of latinos and two of the Americans left the CCM so there were only sixteen of us here for 2 and a half days. Hermana Bowers and Hermana Quartino who were mine and my companions room mates left. It was really sad saying goodbye to them!! We miss them already but Hermana Bowers is serving in Montevideo too so we will be seeing her in six weeks! While Hermana Quartino was here she found out that her dad´s health complications from his stroke had gotten out of control so they were going to take him off life support. The way she took the news was incredible, she had a hard time for a bit, just being here helped her so much.
My companion and I had a mock lesson called an IPE with our teacher last week and it was really exciting because we got really positive feedback! We went out proselyting again on Saturday. Wow, we thought that is was going to get easier but we were both having a really hard time getting out of our shells at first not to mention it was dumping, and i mean DUMPING rain. We had a pretty amazing experience that helped us to get going, after that we talked to everyone that we saw... pretty much whether they wanted to hear what we had to say or not. People here either want nothing to do with you or are quite sweet and understanding, its all a matter of sticking your hand out half way down the block and yelling hola- then hopíng they dont run away. We ran into a guy that thought we spoke german as our primary language, he was a bit disappointed when he found out we didnt. But we were just really excited that we are gaining the confidence to talk to random people, we know we couldnt do it alone though. I am so happy that we get this experience every week, not many missionaries get this opportunity this early on in their missions. I hope it will help me once i get to Uruguay.
Sundays here are the best, I have never enjoyed church so much, especially since i can relate every talk that is given to something i need to work on and my relationship with Heavenly Father. Plus it is so nice to have a little break from classes of course, haha. Our relief society class is taught by the presidents wife, with just my companion and i so it is so fun, she loves to talk, this last week our class went over by a half an hour, but she is amazing and it is so fun to just soak in everything she says.
you to pieces- Jess
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Update from may 27
hello!!!! yehaw!!! im so sorry when i respond i am not really answering any questions or responding to anything you have written, i cant read my emails until i am done emailing... odd system. but no worries fam, i wrote you personal letters through the mail so you should be getting them this week. but here it goes again!! another week at the mtc!! i really love it here!!!
So i will start you off with this past saturday. i dont know if i told you but we went out and did proselitismo... like when you see missionaries walking around talking to people. the day before we were told we were going to go out for a brief two hour session so we planned the night before when we got our maps. 20 minutes before we left they told us they would be sending us our for 7 hours that day. oh boy. i was so excited and so nervous at the same time. we were driven to our area about thirty mins away from the mtc. it was crazy even just driving outside the mtc, drivers are nuts. as soon as we got off the bus elder mcclellan stepped off the bus and what do you know... he stepped in dog poo... welcome to buenos aires. that is no suprise though because there are stray dogs everywhere and dog poo everywhere. i stepped in it several times... i was prepared with my rain boots though since it has been raining like mad. my companion and i went off and started walking through our area. i was pumped. talking to people about their lives and the gospel just made me so excited. i think i kind of forgot there was a language barrier. one by one, i would say hola como te va!! and one by one we were rejected. most people wouldnt even say hi back. it was a very humbling experience to say the least. we did not have our first contact for about the first 30 minutes. we talked to him for a while in really broken spanish, i really cant even re tell what was said because i dont know if it even made sense. since i have to keep this short i will tell you about my most favorite contact of the day. there was a homeless man that approaced us and asked us for food and work. my companion and i always share our food anyways so we gave him one of our sack lunches, he broke down and started to cry, we felt like we needed to leave him with more than just the lunch so we tried to talk to him a bit. about the only thing i could spit out is that i knew he was loved by our Heavenly Father and that he cares about him. he started to cry to us and ask us more but we could not quite understand. we gave him a set of scriptures and asked him to read them, he agreed, kissed us on the cheek and we were off. he was amazing and i hope we were able to help him. at about one everyone goes inside to take a siesta or nap... everyday.... what a life. so the work was pretty sparse after that.
so monday was argentinas celebration of 300 years of independence from spain, with some odd traditions. as my companion and i picked up our lunches that day the kitchen reeked. we sat down and began to pick through the soup we were given and noticed some odd looking stuff. i asked presidente what it was and he just said, hermana kubly, it may be better if you just eat it and dont know. i told him that was a dead giveaway that i needed to know. after a little battle the whole section of teachers eating lunch was betting on when i would throw up. presidente finally told me it was cow stomach. yes i tried it... yes i swallowed it... no i didnt throw up... yes i will avoid ever eating it again if i can. cow stomach is not one of those weird foods that just tastes like chicken, it tastes like it smells, which is one of the worst smells ever. the texture may be the worst part. what a cool experience though, i was way excited to eat something weird. we also ate cow tongue but i couldnt even choke that one down. all the teachers told us to enjoy this while we can because it will only get ten times worse in uruguay haha.
so guess what!! every sunday everyone has to have a talk planned for sacrament meeting on the topic given. somehow once we were done with the prayer i knew it was going to be me, and sure enough, presidente called me up. it was only 5 minutes but it was entirely in spanish!!! luckily i had it all written out but i was happy to have that to practice. after sacrament hermana george, presidentes wife came up and spoke on the topic as well, which was on love. i loved her explanation, she said the things in life that take us to our knees in prayer are the ones that make us learn the most. i know that is true and i am so greatful to have that communication with my heavenly father.
wish i could write more but i am out of time.
thank you for your support and letters!
So i will start you off with this past saturday. i dont know if i told you but we went out and did proselitismo... like when you see missionaries walking around talking to people. the day before we were told we were going to go out for a brief two hour session so we planned the night before when we got our maps. 20 minutes before we left they told us they would be sending us our for 7 hours that day. oh boy. i was so excited and so nervous at the same time. we were driven to our area about thirty mins away from the mtc. it was crazy even just driving outside the mtc, drivers are nuts. as soon as we got off the bus elder mcclellan stepped off the bus and what do you know... he stepped in dog poo... welcome to buenos aires. that is no suprise though because there are stray dogs everywhere and dog poo everywhere. i stepped in it several times... i was prepared with my rain boots though since it has been raining like mad. my companion and i went off and started walking through our area. i was pumped. talking to people about their lives and the gospel just made me so excited. i think i kind of forgot there was a language barrier. one by one, i would say hola como te va!! and one by one we were rejected. most people wouldnt even say hi back. it was a very humbling experience to say the least. we did not have our first contact for about the first 30 minutes. we talked to him for a while in really broken spanish, i really cant even re tell what was said because i dont know if it even made sense. since i have to keep this short i will tell you about my most favorite contact of the day. there was a homeless man that approaced us and asked us for food and work. my companion and i always share our food anyways so we gave him one of our sack lunches, he broke down and started to cry, we felt like we needed to leave him with more than just the lunch so we tried to talk to him a bit. about the only thing i could spit out is that i knew he was loved by our Heavenly Father and that he cares about him. he started to cry to us and ask us more but we could not quite understand. we gave him a set of scriptures and asked him to read them, he agreed, kissed us on the cheek and we were off. he was amazing and i hope we were able to help him. at about one everyone goes inside to take a siesta or nap... everyday.... what a life. so the work was pretty sparse after that.
so monday was argentinas celebration of 300 years of independence from spain, with some odd traditions. as my companion and i picked up our lunches that day the kitchen reeked. we sat down and began to pick through the soup we were given and noticed some odd looking stuff. i asked presidente what it was and he just said, hermana kubly, it may be better if you just eat it and dont know. i told him that was a dead giveaway that i needed to know. after a little battle the whole section of teachers eating lunch was betting on when i would throw up. presidente finally told me it was cow stomach. yes i tried it... yes i swallowed it... no i didnt throw up... yes i will avoid ever eating it again if i can. cow stomach is not one of those weird foods that just tastes like chicken, it tastes like it smells, which is one of the worst smells ever. the texture may be the worst part. what a cool experience though, i was way excited to eat something weird. we also ate cow tongue but i couldnt even choke that one down. all the teachers told us to enjoy this while we can because it will only get ten times worse in uruguay haha.
so guess what!! every sunday everyone has to have a talk planned for sacrament meeting on the topic given. somehow once we were done with the prayer i knew it was going to be me, and sure enough, presidente called me up. it was only 5 minutes but it was entirely in spanish!!! luckily i had it all written out but i was happy to have that to practice. after sacrament hermana george, presidentes wife came up and spoke on the topic as well, which was on love. i loved her explanation, she said the things in life that take us to our knees in prayer are the ones that make us learn the most. i know that is true and i am so greatful to have that communication with my heavenly father.
wish i could write more but i am out of time.
thank you for your support and letters!
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