Hermana Jensen: Mission Updates

Bienvenida Hermana Stacey Jensen!

2009-11-27T13:38:00.037-07:00

There she is!!

Lots of tears to follow...

An emotional and thrilled Grandma Olson

daddy...

and mommy!

"Welcome Home" Tags

Proud parents of a mission well served!

Saying good-bye to Elder Hales (Stacey's travel companion)

The Hales family

Talking to Natalie (in fast Spanish!) on the drive home

A beautiful crisp November day for a glorious welcome home!

Home Sweet Home, Riverton Utah

The traditional yellow ribbon!

Filling in the last dot on her countdown chart

The 'Release Interview' with President Nielsen

(In this photo, Stacey is still wearing the name badge she

has faithfully attached and worn for the last 565 days.

President Nielsen said she could take it off at her own pace

and she did without too much overwrought emotion

once home...whew!!)

The Release Letter

The Release Certificate

Souvenir for dad!

The pre-requisite leather scriptures cases!

Unpacking.....

it was like Christmas-- 1 month early!

Great Argentine Souvenirs

Planning every 15 minutes of her life for 18 months meant a lot of planners!

The transfer card that hung in President Benton's office

The "Welcome Home" Dinner
Chicken Crescents, Stuffed Mushrooms,
Mormon Potatoes and Brownie Cheesecake!

~~~~~~~~~~~

1 COMMENTS:

Zimmerman-López Family said...
How absolutely fantastic!! Thank-you for sharing these amazing photos. We are so happy and grateful for you, your service, your example and look forward to the same magnificent day with our daughter. God bless you in all endeavors you pursue! With love, the Zimmerman-López Family
NOVEMBER 27, 2009 3:35 PM

~~~~~~~~~~~

Hermana Lopez's Mom said...
Bienvenida Hermana Jensen!

Nos ha gustado mucho ver esta página mientras que estabas en la misión, seguro que a tí también te gusta mucho ver en lo que tus padres se han estado entreteniendo en tu ausencia: mantener esta página web. Que el Señor te bendiga y busca oportunidades de continuar hablando español, si no lo usas se te olvidará.

La madre de la Hermana López!!!

November 27, 2009 10:07 PM

Final Baptisms!

2009-11-22T11:06:00.007-07:00

The famous twins from the RM; Elder's Chatwin

Roomies at the Las Heras pension

muddy, muddy shoes

Hermana Godfrey and Jensen with their Casi Companeras;

(almost companions) Hermana Pruner and Gurr

All packed-- for the 6th time!

Stacey with Elder Thompson

(Trent lived across the street from us in

South Jordan---small world!!)

Hermana Godfrey and Gurr with Stacey

Hermana Bulger y Jensen

Mission home backyard

The Bentons--an amazing couple

looking at the ocean one last time...

Pastores (finishing missionaries) tour

Saying good-bye to Rio Del Plata

Me gusta Argentina!

Making steady progress :)

Stacey and Elder Hales

Stacey traveled home on the same flight with Elder and Sister Bednar

(An Apostolic Blessing from Elder Bednar given to the

MTC and North, South and West Missions in Buenos Aires)

I bless you with an increase of faith in Jesus Christ so

that you can act with faith and learn by this faith.
That you ask with faith and seek knowledge by faith.
This faith will be a safeguard for you, for your companions,

and for your families. Be true to this gift and blessing.

In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

And with President and Sister Snow as well !

The "Y" Mountain view from the plane flying into Salt Lake

Sing It With Me Now!

2009-11-16T19:07:00.016-07:00

I´m leavin´on a jet plane, don´t know when I´ll be back again…

… On the boats and on the planes, we´re comin´to America!

Can you even believe it? I can´t.

Don´t worry about writing anymore. Next week after transfer meeting there is special stuff planned for us “pastores” until we head to the airport that night.

Put whatever your clever mind comes up with on my facebook status. Thanks so much for keeping it alive, a bunch of the Elders are worried sick that their facebook accounts closed automatically from not having enough use, but I don´t have to worry about that!

So unfortunately my allergies took an insane turn for the worse. I have been popping Allegra D like tic-tacs and combining it with whatever allergy drug I bought in the pharmacy here, I´m sure it´s not the best thing for my kidneys, but when you see the pictures of my swollen eyes, you will justify all of my mad pharmacist actions. I suffer so much that I have even stopped working… for like a half hour to wash my face in cold water and try to recover and then we go back out to work. Imagine how bad it must be if it takes me out of the street.

Yeah! I was pretty sad about my laptop. I did think that it was mine that had the virus and I spent those first 2 days saying “my laptop?” to my companion every half hour or so. She felt bad for me. But now there are no worries.

Mom – that is so cool that you got to meet Hilary Weeks. Isn´t she just the most? Remember when I thought that you listened to her CDs too much? How dumb was I? She is the best!

I´m taking Nata´s advice and leaving many things, but my long winter coat… I´m bringing home because I know that I will still use it. I´m leaving the rain coat to my companion and another coat I inherited in LA to someone, and most of my clothes to my companion. Towels, sheets, and sleeping bag are all up for grabs in the mission and I will give as much as I can to the people here.

That much said, packing is still stressing me out. Not so much because of getting it all in, because I´m quite confident that that won´t be a problem, but for the actual time to pack. In case you were wondering they don´t just say “oh, and take a few hours out of proselyting time to calmly gather all your stuff and get packed up.” NOPE. And p-day today was eaten up by zone activity and Internet and trains and a last minute shopping trip to Merlo. I bought the coolest stuff today! The Lord blessed me to find everything I wanted to find! It was super fun.

Scripture to read and remember (I hope I didn´t already send this one home.) Acts 5:41. It is so true!

I really hope to fly with Elder Bednar… we´ll see if I do, and if I get up the courage to say something to them. We´re all really excited for the conference. It´s going to be pretty powerful!

So Pabla Torres got baptized on Saturday and it went quite well other than the fact that she and her husband were an hour and a half late for it...but hey, it went well.

We had the first of the two baptisms and this Saturday we will have one more that we are pulling out of nowhere
. Marcos sat down in the lesson last Tuesday and asked me when I was leaving. He said “I want to be baptized, so arrange the date, and I´ll be baptized.” But what are the odds of that because he would only hit 11 days without smoking when the mission rule is 14. Well, the zone leader had a pre-interview with him and said it was ok if President Benton was ok with it. President Benton said he is okay with it, if the Branch President, is ok with it and he is, so Marcos will be baptized on Saturday… as long as he arrives without smoking a single cigarette. Keep him in your prayers. PLEASE! He is such a cute old man now that he´s not aggressive with withdrawal. I didn´t like it when he yelled at me, but now he just wants me to be in his baptism and make a covenant with Heavenly Father. He really came a long way. The best part is that Osvaldo is going to baptize him. He is Miguez's dad who was baptized on the 24th of October... it´s going to make me cry...I´m quite sure!

Being that this is my last email, it should be a little more spiritual eh? So I have compiled a list of blessings of serving a mission. Ready?
1. I have learned how to cook something with almost nothing in the pantry… wait until you try my tortas fritas!
2. I have learned a bit of simple plumbing – fixing toilets
3. You have a bajillion awesome experiences to tell
4. I have learned how to sing in front of large groups with next to no practice and no accompaniment
5. I can now navigate myself through Buenos Aires. In trains and buses – something I beforehand could never have done.
6. I learned how to plan every 15 minutes of your day
7. I am 100% dedicated to one sole purpose
8. I got to know all kinds of people
9. I gained a deep appreciation for the United States
10. I received my endowment beforehand
11. I learned to really understand the atonement
12. I see the importance and value of forever families
13. I have sincere desires to study the scriptures
14. I have gained a testimony of rules and obedience
15. I have been wisely counseled by great leaders
16. I have been protected and blessed by the power of the Priesthood
17. I learned how to be a great member missionary
18. I developed patience with everything and especially with meetings
19. I had the privilege of seeing miracles
20. I was given the words in the moment I needed them
21. I was befriended and supported by many great members
22. I saw changes in people and the birth of a testimony
23. I realized what things I want and don´t want in a future companion
24. I learned how to work together as a team in a companionship
25. I value and respect a faithful witness
26. I learned how to make do with a really dead pair of shoes
27. I learned how to make your money last until more comes.
28. I developed the valiance and courage to talk to everybody
29. I learned how to wash clothes by hand
30. I received my mission call from the Lord´s prophet
31. I value being an efficient worker
32. I see the value of time and want to use it wisely
33. I learned Castellano
34. I learned how much my parents taught me
35. I have been protected
36. I learned that great blessings come from living a higher law
37. I learned to forgive and be humble even when I was not in the wrong
38. I have gained knowledge and understanding of gospel principles
39. I learned how to make plans for the future
40. I learned the power of fasting and fervent prayer
41. I see the importance of being trusted by others
42. I developed charity
43. I learned how to sacrifice for others
44. I really didn´t miss my family so much that it made me sad
45. I got to see another world
46. I learned the importance of being a good example
47. I saw firsthand why you should always wear a helmet
48. I learned how much better things go when you are unified with your companion
49. There are loving members that fed me!
50. I grew spiritually more than I could ever explain
51. I learned that you can survive many a cold shower
52. I learned how to enjoy being soaked in an all of the sudden rainstorm
53. I was guided by the Spirit
54. I got over fear and anxiety
55. I learned how to recycle things that still serve for something
56. I learned how to share even the most precious commodities
57. I learned something from each companion
58. I learned how to teach things very simply
59. I learned the importance of being respectful in every moment
60. I have an unfailing conviction that I will never go inactive
61. I was given millions of tender mercies
62. I learned how to forget myself and go to work
63. I learned that you should live such a way that you leave without regrets
64. I learned that completing families is as beautiful as finding and baptizing complete families
65. I learned that rules protect you
66. I learned that baby powder has many uses
67. I learned that 4 little pizzas can feed many people if you bless them before you start eating
68. I learned that miracles are around the corner of the biggest trials
69. I learned that addictions are very powerful, but can be beaten
70. I learned that you just have to take a leap of faith
71. I learned that there are great people all over the world who do the right thing even when nobody is watching.

And now for a top ten list. These are 10 things that I WILL miss:
1. Getting caught in an Argentine rain storm without an umbrella
2. Being offered cake and juice when you´re fasting
3. Washing your garments by hand in your kitchen sink
4. Pesos – everything seems so dirt cheap!
5. Being whistled at a lot-- but back home, I´m plain Jane again.
6. The wicked tan line on my neck, arms, and feet
7. Being able to dedicate an hour to personal study
8. Having 150 Elders that know it´s their job to protect you and be a literal shield around you in the train and give you their seat when you walk in.
9. Sisters Conferences – those are the best!
10. Waking up each day and not knowing what´s going to happen, who you are going to meet, or how the Lord plans to use you, but knowing that He will.

I want to bear my testimony as a full-time Sister missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: I testify that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored and that there is a living prophet on the earth today. I know that the priesthood is real and that it is the power of God. I know that obedience always brings blessings and that disobedience always brings sadness. I testify that Jesus Christ lives and that He is our Savior. I know that the Book of Mormon is the most true book and that it was translated by the power of God by the Prophet Joseph Smith. He was called of God and restored the fullness of the gospel. I know that Heavenly Father loves us, that He sent His Son and that we can return to live with Him again. He is waiting for us, inviting us and calling us home. I know that we can obey all the commandments and endure to the end. I know that these things are true. I have seen miracles. I have been protected; I have felt my Father in Heaven at my side. I know that the Church is true. I will testify all my days. Jesus Christ lives. He leads this Church. In His name I testify. Amen.

Until we meet again… in the Salt Lake airport. Don´t worry about me. I pray for you. Stress over nothing… we don´t want to be wrinkly young. I will see you soon. I love you more than a million peanut butter M&Ms. I love you. I love you!

Wubba,
Hermana Stacey Lynn Jensen
Argentina, Buenos Aires West Mission
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

October 26, 2009
Mommy and Daddy,

Here it is...your last real snail mail letter from your sister missionary daughter serving in Argentina. Enjoy it!

I already told you all the funny stuff in today's email, so I'll just do what missionaries do best: Testify I know that Jesus Christ lives. He atoned for our sins and paid the price making it possible for us to return home again. I know what it is like to do nothing but love, serve, help and try to save, and be rejected and mocked and hated. I know what it feels like to do only good and be treated with bitterness. I have begun to understand His grief and pain. He came to love, heal and save and they rejected Him. But I have learned as a result how to overcome literally any trial. I know He knows me. I know He loves me. I know He called the Prophet Joseph Smith to restore the fulness of His Gospel. The keys of the priesthood have been restored and He will come again. He will return for His own and we must be ready. The way is perfect. If we follow Him - nothing can stop us.

The Book of Mormon is the most correct book on the face of the earth and teaches pure truth. It has the answers to every problem. We are led by a prophet. Thomas S. Monson is a Seer and a Revelator. I love the mission. I love His work. There is nothing better than this. I would not trade one day for anything. Every lesson and experience has shaped and refined me. You won't even recognize me when you see me again. I am a different person. A better person. I will never stray. I will never give up. I will never deny the truth. Come what may, I will be true all my days. I love my Savior. I am a daughter of a loving Heavenly Father. We can return home and be a forever family.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
3 COMMENTS:

Shaun Zimmerman said...
Absolutely beautiful! I am so going to miss reading Stacey's missionary experiences. Job extremely well done! I stand in awe of a true hero and the magnificent family that supported her through it all!
NOVEMBER 16, 2009 8:31 PM

Happy Gilmores said...
You have a wonderful daughter missionary! I know you are very proud of her. Enjoy the reunion! It's been fun keeping tabs on her experiences. I can't believe how fast it went. Happy Thanksgiving!

(Elder Gilmore's Dad)
NOVEMBER 16, 2009 9:57 PM

Karen Jensen - Stacey's Mom said...
Thanks for the great comments!

Through this blog I have been blessed with a great and much needed source of comfort and deeper connection. I have been grateful many times over that Stacey asked/and or "assigned" me the seemingly overwhelming task before she left. It was a tender mercy in disguise and made her absence much more bearable.

The last 18 months really have gone by fast, (I can say that now) and have been filled with immeasurable opportunities for personal stretching, learning and growth. We are beyond excited for her return and express great thanks to all of you who have supported our little Hermana as she fulfilled her mission.

Take Care,
Onward and Upward!

Dave & Karen Jensen
NOVEMBER 17, 2009 8:46 AM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It´s 3rd and 10 and We´re Runnin´It!

2009-11-10T10:10:00.011-07:00

Oh what a beautiful not p-day... but I´m writing you anyway! (with permission of course)

Isn´t it just super awesome that we can write each other through the Internet? What a blessing!

Mom, I wanted the bottoms to be shorts. Thanks so much!

Daddy - I only bought 1 key chain on the tour, but that does not mean that I hadn´t previously bought others... things are so cheap here, you´d do it too! :)

Mom - the song we sang in the Sisters Conference... went... pretty bad, the truth is that we never practiced together, and the accompanists was sight reading. It was funny, but hey. It was just in front of the other sisters.

I learned a VALUABLE lesson this past week. You should never, ever, ever, ever leave your knee-highs, little sockies, and gym socks all soaking in water for a week. They will literally ROT. Like they didn´t dissolve away, but they took on an inhumane smell - literally like a sewer. We scrubbed and scrubbed with boiling water and a ton of smoke.....but let´s just say that I won´t be packing them to take with me. The garbage will be full the night I pack! Much to Daddy´s pleasure!

The people here wear fanny packs with the bag over their head and one shoulder. Others use them around their waists but the funny thing is that it is not un-cool here. To me it still is. :)

We had our going home missionaries tour of Capitol Federal yesterday, which is why we couldn´t write. We tried to get out a heads up email, but all the locutorios were closed in the morning. I felt sad that you would worry again, and prayed that you wouldn´t stress too much.

Our tour was super fun. We went to the Casa Rosada (their White House) the Plaza de Mayo, the Obilisco, a huge Catholic Cathedral, the cemetery where Eva Peron is buried and La Boca Cancha, Caminito. We saw this giant flower that opens and closes every day. We went to the grove where the General Authorities said the dedicatory prayer to open South America for the preaching of the gospel and we went to the zoo, but it was closed. I think that´s about it, but the best part was feeding the pigeons in the park. They eat out of your hands and land on top of your head to eat the corn out of your hair (that we of course put there). I have great pictures and videos of that!

I had divisions in Mercedes and saw a bunch of 20 year old boys in suits leaving a military training camp and when they stood up to give their seats in the train to women, it about made me cry. I wanted each and every one of them to be a member and serve missions.

Sister Pruner and I spent our '18 months out' birthday together on divisions in Navarro. We ate lunch at a restaurant and took gorgeous pictures. I´m quite happy. It was a great day and our companions made us a cake and a giant "18" sign. I can´t believe that I have literally been a missionary for 18 months and then some. How weird is that? I really don´t feel like I have been away from home that long. I bet mom does.

Hermana Benton told me that you two were talking on the phone the other day and that she said they were really sad to see me go and that you were really quiet for a while and then said, "well, we´re going to be really happy to get her back!" How true that is.

Every day, all day long when things happen, or we’re squished in a train, or playing in the rain, or waiting for a bus, I think to myself "you´re gonna miss this." All day long I could sing it. I am going to miss the mission so much it is just sad! I love everything, even the really lame stuff. I will even miss weekly planning. Ok, well maybe I won´t miss weekly planning, but the rest of the stuff... yes!

Miracle story: on said division with Hermana Pruner we knocked a door and this giant dog came bounding out and went straight for our exposed ankles. Mine first, then Hermana Pruner´s but the thing is that he didn´t bite us. It was literally like Heavenly Father put a little shield around our ankles, because I felt the dog touch me, but he immediately backed away and then went for her. She also felt his teeth, but he didn´t bite her either. He charged us once more before we made our escape, but we were not harmed. There was an unseen shield protecting our ankles... this dog had a bark so big that even if his bite was less it could still kill. What a tender mercy!

In church when Elsa (wife of Osvaldo) testifies about how miracles come and prayers are answered, the Spirit is just so strong. She cries and says that after 18 years, her husband finally accepted the gospel, and you can´t deny that the Holy Ghost is in the room. It is such a powerful experience and every time she shares it, I about die to think that I was blessed to be part of it.

So Maria Ester is the old lady with cancer that Pabla lives with and takes care of, but she died on Sunday night. So sad. She was truly suffering and I had actually prayed that she could just pass away. I have never seen a body so unwell, but a spirit so determined. She has just over a year in the church and even though she didn´t understand everything, she had a great testimony. She endured to the bitter end and I have no doubt that she is preaching in Spirit Paradise right this minute. She suffers no more. Pabla will still be baptized on Saturday... thank heavens, but keep her in your prayers!

I have had some of the worst hay-fever attacks of my life. So bad that I went red-eyed and dying into the pharmacy and begged for a stronger drug. I was a sight to be seen, such that the security guard left her post to get the poor American a glass of water. The drug that works is of course Benedryl, but they sure knock me out and keep me druggy the next day. I don´t know what was flying around more than cotton here, but I about rubbed my eyes until they bled. I was miserable and trapped on a 3 hour train ride without a wash cloth or even napkin. It was bad.

Looks like Liliana will have a miracle and be able to attend church starting December, but that means that I won´t be there for her baptism. Bummer, but the Lord answered our fast and there will be a way for her to progress, all in due time.

Turns out that the other Liliana we baptized from Padua, who was the mom of Romina and Yamila passed away too. The Elders that were serving in Padua this past transfer said that she died and they don´t know exactly where Romina and Yamila are, but they are trying to find out. I was heartbroken. Poor Romina and Yamily that were baptized and confirmed and basically never made it back to church... and now their mom is dead and their dad is in prison. They need more fellowshipping from the church and I don´t even know how or where to find them. I can´t even give them the cards I had written them. I hope the Elders can track them down, but that is a lot easier said than done in this country. People can literally just disappear.

Please keep them in your prayers too. They have an uncle who is active in the church... I pray that he comes in from campo and takes them away and gets them back in the church. They must feel so alone. And Brian too - even though he was never baptized... now he needs help more than ever. My heart reaches out to them, but I can´t do a single thing more than pray.

Oh, remember the division that I had with Hermana Pruner on our 18 months birthday? Well this drunk guy in the street started hitting on us pretty bad and he put his arm around Hermana Pruner and I opened up a can... I was yelling at him and made him leave her alone and she was just in panic like a deer in the headlights. In no time the situation was taken care of, but luckily my dad teaching me to stand up for myself came in handy because I don't think poor Hermana Pruner would have been able to get him to stop. We joked afterwards saying that she is like a little bunny and I am like a raptor, but hey... I got the scary guy to leave us alone and that is what matters.

I have it on good authority that my red-eye back to Dallas is the same flight that Elder Bednar will be on. We´ll see if I even get to shake his hand or see him at all, but just imagine that... being able to talk to Elder Bednar and his wife before we board the plane! I am brainstorming all of my best miraculous stories in case he asks me something about the mission.

Hermana Benton said that you didn´t know what I want for my first dinner home... refer back to one of my snail mail letters from about 11 months ago. I want chicken croissants, stuffed mushrooms, and what else I don´t remember, but I know I had it all planned out. But whatever happens, happens. I´m really not picky.

This point of the mission is surreal. You have bittersweet 'realization minutes' constantly. Poor Hermana Pruner is not at all accepting it and slowly internalizing it like I am. She is probably going to make herself physically ill, which makes me sad and it makes me feel like maybe I´m in the wrong and that I should be sadder. Rest assured I am quite sad, but like I said before... I see the big picture and this is just a stage that I am now leaving behind for another.

I wonder what the Bishop will ask me to speak about in sacrament meeting. I imagine that it will be something like "what did you learn about the Savior in the mission?" or something like unto it. I´m excited to prepare my talk, it´ll be weird talking in English, but hopefully it will go well.

Things are all pretty unreal to me for now. It´s like this can´t possibly be my last train ride to Mariano Acosta for district meeting. This can´t possibly be the last time I eat lunch with Maxi and Paula. I don´t know how I´m going to be able to leave these people that I have grown to love so much. And above all it is going to be tough to leave all my Latin companions that I literally may not see again until the Spirit World. It´s just not all that likely that I make it to Chile or Nicaragua... those from Argentina... there is a tiny chance, but not very big because they are from San Martin de Los Andes Neuquen... another province, so even when (note that I said when... because I am already planning a trip back) I come back to Argentina I won´t be 100% going to Neuquen. I want to visit Rolando and Valeria in Cordoba and see the waterfalls at Iguazu, but beyond that and my own mission stuff, I don´t know what other provinces I´ll get around to. I want to bring you all back with me!

This is weird that I have like 10 minutes left and I have already told you all of the things that I had written on my list. I didn´t go into much detail about the tour, but that´s because all of the things will be much clearer with pictures and videos. I could tell you all about the giant flower, but without a picture... it´s just not the same.

We talked the zone leaders into changing the zone activity of our last p-day to be in the middle of the day so that Hermana Pruner and I can make a getaway to the center of Merlo and do some last minute shopping. There are a bunch of things that I still want to buy, like a pretty Argentine skirt and alpargatas that I just never got around to. And we were robbed of p-day 5, so p-day 6 is all we´ve got. Luckily they understood and even though the zone was against it as a whole... we won and the schedule was changed.

Nata - quiero que usted sepa que estoy tan agradecida por el ejemplo que me dio toda mi vida. Siempre recuerdo las últimas palabras que me dijo cuando me abrazó y me despedí en el ccm... que tengo una hermana mayor que me ama y que estaría conmigo si pudiera. Le amo con todo mi corazón y he orado por usted y su familia cada día. Nunca se afloje con las cosas pequeñas. Como dijo el Élder Bednar... son todo.

**translation**
Nata- I want you to know that I am so grateful for the example you have been for me throughout my life. I always think about the last thing you told me when we hugged goodbye at the MTC, that I have a big sister who loves me and would be right there by my side if she could. I love you with all of my heart and I've prayed for you and your family everyday. Remember, don't ever get lazy with the little things. Like Elder Bednar said, "They are everything."

Mom - I would not be even half the missionary that I am were it not for all that you taught me about the atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ. Your unfailing charity and faith have sustained me in the hardest of moments and I have been able to testify with power and authority that one can be healed of any heartache. I have been put in places to testify to many people about that and I know that were it not for my truly wise and Christ-like mother, I would not have been able to touch their hearts.

Daddy - Your words and advice have been very empowering to me in the mission field. I have striven to put them into practice and really personify the missionary I dreamt I could be. I have sought counsel from my three fathers and received it from each one. I look forward to our first hug at the airport reunion that will be so blissful in a few short days. I have grown a lot... we´ll see if you recognize me.

Jason - I am very excited to share missionary stories with you and have had the chance to share your advice with my new missionary companion, with respect to numbers and the accountability interview. She found it very helpful as did I and we rejoiced mutually as D & C says that both teacher and learner should.

Davy - how I long to hold you in my arms and give you little bites of alfajores. Davy I am your only aunt... Tía Stacey and you will see how much I love you very soon. I have thought about you just about every day for the last 18 months, you don´t remember me, but I will never forget you. You´ll remember me soon. I bought you your first BYU gear! And your first BOCA gear too.

Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins - I have a firm testimony that families can be together forever. What is required of us is that we make AND keep eternal covenants with our Heavenly Father in His temples. He is inviting us constantly to do so. May we all remember that and do our part to be a forever family!

With all the love that this sister missionary has,

p.s. heads up, next p-day I might write really early or really late, but I´ll get it in there!

Eating ice cream at the Mariano Acosta train station

The Espinilla family

Elder Fox's birthday

Playing in the woods, waiting to paint the fire station

Happy Halloween!

Outside Presidents office at the Mission Home

so so heavy!

Happy 18 months out celebration

a random but gorgeous peacock

Stacey and Spring's companeras made them a cake!

They began and ended their missions together--how perfect!

The bus ride to Capitol Federal

Palermo - Floralis Generica

A huge metal flower that opens and closes with the sun

The tree where the dedicatory prayer was said to open

the country for the preading of the gospel.

The oldest tree in Buenos Aires

The Casa Rosada

The birds at the Plaza de Mayo

Bird feeding at its best!

The Torres family

A nice and windy car ride

So, so dizzy... (they definitely regretted that!)

The famous "standing by a cow" photo

Getting ready for a zone activity

Sister's Conference!

2009-11-03T16:01:00.009-07:00

Hola familia! I am just so happy, let´s just make sure that that is clear! There is such a powerful calm that has washed over me in the last few days. Literally come what may and love it! Mom, did you ever get pictures sent to you by someone you don´t know of me changing the tire on a car? I also had her send them to my gmail account... did you ever see them? Let me know, if not, I´ll bug the person to do it again. That was a great day... changing a tire in the rain! The signs you asked me to translate were these: Acts 18:9-10 "Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city. It was left on the door of the pench in Padua by the Elders before. “Jesus sees you in this moment” – I left that note for Mario's neighbors who kept dumping rotten fruit and vegetables in front of his house. Mom – I wanted you to research Argentine stores not restaurants... I want to know what kind of Alfajores they sell there and how much they cost. There are supposed to be some stores there. I´ll try to send the spider picture soon. It´s hard to send picture attachments because it eats up our time, but I´m on it. Thanks for getting me a dentist appointment... set it for whenever you want! Thanks so much! I´m sick with like this eternal runny nose that is unbelievable, but don´t worry, it´s probably just a combination of allergies and stuff that is getting stirred up with the spring Argentine rain. I´ll survive. Hermana Pruner´s flight goes to Miami. Mine goes to Dallas. Bummer.

Daddy, nice try, but you know I am going to buy a bunch of stuff that says “Argentina” on it. Especially key chains... it´s how you prove you´re an RM. Don´t try to take that away from me. Hehe.

Nata – I´m so excited to hear little Davy say “i-kay!” That made me literally go “ahhhh” out loud as I read it. Can he say my name? I hope he likes me.

Mom – I LOVE the brunch food idea. It should be easy to prep the day before and as stress free as one can hope. I love the idea and will help you do all the work, so don´t worry!

My Granuloma Ammulary came back. I don´t know why or really when, but the other day it dawned on me that it´s totally just as present as it ever was. Go figure.

It´s hot here in Las Heras... which must answer your question that no, I was not flashed. It was another Elder...mysteries. I wear sun screen in my makeup and occasionally on my arms just so that the members don´t yell at me saying that I´m going to die of cancer. I´m hoping to get a nice tan! My nails are a big fat disaster, I might even ask Tiffany to give me a fake manicure to hide my shame. The hangnails prevail and I just can´t get my body to sustain healthy nails.

I literally am a little nervous about coming home. I don´t know what to do or expect or even what to say to ya’ll. We´ll see how it all goes down. For example, what happens that first day when I get in? I know at some point I need to be released, but other than that all I can picture is wanting to take a bath and a nap. Imagine the jet lag I´m going to have... and I´m going to be super cold with the climate shock. Do you know what is going to happen that first day?

Guess what I did this week that probably wasn´t all that smart? Well, I wanted to take my picture under the train station sign of this certain part of our area that we almost never go to. The train stops there for 20 seconds so I got Hermana Pruner to jump off with me, take the picture and then get back on before the train pulled away. Just for kicks I decided to hop off before the train had come to a complete stop. Don´t worry, I didn´t get hurt. I tried to follow the Elders advice of jumping into the direction of motion, but it is harder than you think. My landing was less than graceful, but all on my feet. I´d like to give it another try some day and see if I can get really good at it, but I don´t want to twist my ankle, so at least that will not be an experiment I repeat in the field. Rest assured.

_______ is understanding more and more. She can almost pray by herself and remembers the rules about Sundays. We are quite content with her progress. Keep her in your prayers.

The other night there was this lightening storm like you can´t even believe. Remember the scene from the Testaments when Christ has died and the sky just goes crazy with lightening? That was nothing compared to this. I took a video of it to prove to you later... it was lightening every 2 seconds with no thunder. It was fun and we made it back to the pench completely dry before the rain started. What a blessing!

The family we were working with isn't progressing at all. They recognize that their church isn´t true, but let their kids go anyway. They love our doctrine about forever families, but don't want to be baptized and don´t keep any of their commitments, so it´s basically time to say Chausazo “big GOODBYE” it makes me sad--a complete family that just doesn´t progress. But the kids are golden. They want to come to church and said they felt an answer to their prayers, but without the support of their parents it would be tough for them to stay active...it makes me sad.

The other day we stopped to talk with a bunch of 12 year old boys who were fishing something out of the ditches and one of them showed us this giant eel like creature he had in his hands. It was like a snake, but with the mouth of an eel and the skin of ... how could I describe it? I touched it as I made the boys promise not to try anything smart (like throwing it at me). They were all really cool about it. I think they were just tickled pink to have 2 American girls all talking to them and telling them how brave they were. It will probably be one of their fondest memories and one day lead to their baptism!

We were supposed to paint the fire station in Villars on Saturday, but we got there in remis – which cost $25 pesos and it had been cancelled. We were so not amused. But we made the best of the day and hey, it was an adventure.

Did you know that there is a huge lack of cemetery space here? They don´t sell plots they just rent them and you have to re-rent them or move the deceased person somewhere else. Last I heard Las Heras only has room for 5 more dead people and then there is just no plan B. I don´t understand such confusion. And the worst part is that the living have to keep paying the rent for the dead. So the more generations down the road, the more you have to pay for all your dead.

The other day we were talking to this guy and he said “you guys do things differently in the states, like you celebrate Christmas in winter.” And before I could stop myself, I said “yeah, but that just has to do with how the planet rotates,” it´s not like we just do the opposite of you guys for kicks. I had to bite my tongue not to laugh after I said it. I´m not even kidding.

So yeah, yesterday we had Sisters Conference in the mission home and Sister Pruner and I were assigned to teach a workshop.

We did this activity as part of it where everyone had a little heart handout and everybody was supposed to write an attribute about that missionary and pass it around in a circle until everyone had written on everybody´s. Sounds simple, right? What could possible go wrong... we were in a circle and we´re all at least 21 years old. Oh how wrong we were. Somehow, which I will never know how... the hearts got messed up and there were hearts that nobody had gotten and other hearts that people had gotten twice and it took 3 times longer than we budgeted for and in the end it was like a joke. I was sure that there would be a candid camera somewhere, but there wasn´t. So hence, don´t be so sure that 21 year olds can pass a piece of paper in a circle without getting seriously confused. What a joke. But President liked the activity, even though it seemed to blow up in our faces.

Oh, and we were heading to the mission home to stay the night before the Monday Sister’s Conference and we were in a remis. The driver got off the freeway one exit too soon and when it dawned on him a good 50 meters down the ramp – yes declining ramp – he just stopped, put it in reverse and went UP the hill in the DARK with the other cars coming DOWN the hill and swerving around us and honking. I literally looked behind me, saw what we were doing, and turned back around, closed my eyes and said “if I die, it´s OK.” We weren´t hit, which was literally a miracle and we got back on the freeway and kept on our way. ONLY IN ARGENTINA.

During said conference Heavenly Father blessed me with great closure with respect to the end of the mission. It hit me little by little all day, that it was literally going to end and I was totally OK with it. I wrote in my journal that night how I felt like I felt when I was graduating from BHS and then BYU. You are dead sure you´re going to miss it like crazy and you loved the experience, but you´re ready for something else.... something more. I feel quite at peace. Believe it or not.

We tried to buy ice cream on Saturday night to eat on the long train ride on Sunday night heading to the mission home, but we don´t have a freezer and it melted in the fridge... so we ate milkshakes in the train. It was still fun, but not quite the image that Sister Godfrey and I had in mind. But we will never forget it!

We had interviews this week too and President has me just about convinced that I need to get a Masters. In what, I have yet to decide, but the more he talks to me about it, the more I start to see his point. He said, “Well, I´m going to just start crying now” as I entered – referring to the fact that I´m leaving the mission in 3 weeks. He told me that I need to do something every day to find my future companion. He says I´m so young that I really should keep studying. In my interview he told me that I have had an incredible mission and that I should be very pleased and that the Lord is pleased with my mission. He told me that I need to pray and get a confirmation of that. It´s hard. I keep asking, but I don´t really feel the “ah-ha” moment of being like “oh, yeah, Heavenly Father is like totally pleased with my mission.” We´ll see if it comes with time.

I have under 3 weeks left and the energy comes and goes. I fight with the guilt at not doing more contacts because I´m just simply tired. But President didn´t even touch on numbers in our interview, he told me to just enjoy this and be happy.

Osvaldo received the Priesthood on Sunday. He is now a priest. If we can just get _______to get baptized we are going to have Osvaldo baptize him! Speaking of him, he has almost 3 weeks without smoking, but so far hasn't accepted a baptismal date. It is like a roller coaster. One day he wants to get baptized, one day maybe, one day no. It´s really frustrating, but in our last lesson we had a good talk and helped him see a few new things. Tonight we are going to watch the Restoration DVD at the church with the Branch President present and hopefully that´ll be the trick to him gaining a testimony of Joseph Smith and the key to his accepting a date.

President Benton assigned Hermana Pruner to say the opening prayer in the special conference with Elder Bednar! Imagine that. I would be so nervous, but she´ll do great.

We have been practicing our song – it will be Hna. Pruner, Hna. Godfrey, and myself singing “All my Days” in Castellano with a gorgeous 3 part harmony. I can´t wait to see how it all turns out, don´t worry I´ll video it for ya!

I love the mission so much. I love that as I see all of the pictures it will be more of a surprise for me than for you because I just take them, burn them on CDs and send them home. It´s going to be the first time that I actually see my own mission pictures! I´m pumped.

OK, that´s just weird that I´m going to be an “RM” in like a matter of weeks. How weird is that.

I am super excited to see you all again. Tell all the grandparents that I have a ton of stories for them, so to just hang tight a little bit longer.

Daddy – I hope that BYU has a good basketball season, after all-- I care a lot more about basketball than I do about football.

Nata – you make sure that Davy can say my name before I see him, i-kay?

Mommy – sorry to not have informed you better about the Sisters Conference and as a result the email delay. I don´t mean to put your nerves under that kind of worry of thinking I had been flashed…. “No one knows what I suffer with my nerves. And yet I never complain!” (one of my favorite Pride and Prejudice Quotes)

I know with all of my heart that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that He lives. I know that the Book of Mormon is totally true. I know this is His work. I know that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet. I know that we really will see Christ again, He will come back. We need to be ready. I know that the small things are what counts and consistency is the key. Every single day we have to read and pray and every Sunday we need to renew our covenants. I love the gospel and know it is true!

Gotta go, there are many souls to save this day!

You´re all in my prayers!

Be Still And Know That He Is God

2009-10-26T14:07:00.029-06:00

Hola Familia,

Go and get a ruler...do you have it ready? Now just hold on to it... we´ll get to that part later!

About the homecoming solution... HALELUJA! I love the idea about having a before the block brunch--I am all on board! We can visit, get to our meetings and have no regrets. And as for that... I hope you´re not stressing about food or anything. I say that it just be oh so simple. Like instead of a million options... three things. Could be a veggie tray, little sandwiches, and chocolate chip cookies. Done. Just my suggestion. I´m sure you´ve got great ideas about how to get it all done without being too stressful. I´m a fan of that. Nata – wonderful idea. I´m so grateful for your support and concern in helping me resolve such an inner dilemma. It is so great to have other people find the answers! Yehaw!

Random stuff that you can help me with:

Daddy – do you have plans of putting me back on car insurance? I will be needing that right away, or a ride to job interviews. Whatever you think is perfect with me.

Mommy – I´ve heard that on State Street there is an Argentine store that sells Alfajores and stuff. Could you make a trip and take meticulous notes about the brands and prices and flavors of all the goods. I want to know if I need to bring home cases of Alfajores or if it´ll be just as easy to buy them when I get home. So yeah, it would be great if you could tell me what is available there. If you want to send pictures of what they sell that works too. Thanks... it´ll help me pack.

Mom – how did that Cyprus cheer go that I always made you do? I want to do it for Hermana Pruner because she is a cheerleader, but I can´t remember it for my life.

We did super trunky service last week hot gluing ribbons to wedding cake pedestals... I decided that I would have done it sooner than the day before the wedding, but whatever, it was fun!

Great news! Osvaldo Miguez was baptized on Saturday and his

joy was incredible! It was a wonderful service and we had a great time. I´ll send pictures soon. He had such a change of heart. He thanked us immensely and another family has been completed. Looks like that is what I do rather than find, teach, and baptize families. I just help complete them.

There was this super sad old man that had had too much to drink and he kept falling off of his bike the other day and crashing to the ground. We tried to help him, but he just kept getting on it and then falling again. He was almost run over by a car too. It made me so sad.

For Zone Conference we had a picnic... it was super fun and President Benton and Sister Benton let Hermana Pruner and me design the Sister’s Conference soccer jerseys for our last meeting-- in honor of us. They are going to be so cool!

I was super sick on Friday and was given a 3rd priesthood blessing in the last month – and before the third train stop on the ride home I already felt 80% cured. I was so impressed with the power of the priesthood that I started to pray and give thanks. But suddenly it all came back, all the pain and sinus pressure and I wanted to cry. I tried to tell myself that my body was being healed by the power of God, but I was suffering terribly. We got off the train and I took an Airborne, 2 Ibuprofen and 2 Allegra D and we went out in the rain because I was not about to miss an appointment with a complete family that I was so sure we were going to baptize (sadly it didn't work out) but that´s beside the point... we went out, taught them and prayed with them. It was incredible and I felt better and better. We practically swam through the street puddle

and my companion fell in the mud, but it was the best afternoon of the mission. We did 3 contacts, taught one lesson and returned soaking wet but full of the Spirit and hope and faith. The next day I was 90% healed and I know the Priesthood is real.

I am sad that Sister Pruner and I aren´t on the same red-eye. We had planned to keep each other happy instead of crying on our flight home, but I am going to be a solo sister with Elders on a 10 1/2 hour red-eye.

We went to an abandoned theater and found 4 families living there. We taught 2 of them and haven´t been able to find them again, but it was fun. It is like one of those things you can only do as a missionary... walk into an abandoned theatre and find various families living there and teach them the gospel. I liked that day.

Ok, do you all still have your rulers? Good, get it in your hand and take a good look at just how big 3 inches is. Did you all look? That is the diameter of the spider that I found in the corner of our ceiling last night as I sat

brushing my teeth and talking to the other sisters. I looked up and started screaming and pointing like a terrified girl. We grabbed my camera and recorded the entire process of trapping it (the brave soul was Hermana Pruner) and taking it outside where she released it to... LIVE. I was afraid to let it go and have it just come back, but nobody had the courage because it was literally SO BIG. When I first saw it I didn´t scream because I thought it was just too big to be true. I though it had to be a prank... it couldn´t possibly be real, but when I realized it was I began to scream. Hermana Gurr hid and it was up to Hermana Pruner and Hermana Godfrey to catch it and get it out of our pench. I was panicked and couldn´t calm down to sleep after that. My heart didn´t slow down for about 20 minutes. I thought I had overcome my fear of spiders, but that one was literally as big as the palm of my hand... and it wasn´t just a skinny legged daddy long leg with a tiny squish-it- body... it was like HUGE. The legs were almost as thick as a sucker stick – and his body was so big you could see teeth and pinchers. I will send a picture of that too if I can soon. I was literally losing it. We watched the video of it this morning and laughed and laughed at our screams and comments, but I´m telling you it was terrifying--but awesome. I love the mission!

So basically we had nobody in church yesterday and we lost _______ because she is getting pressure to not listen. We are working as hard as my strength permits us, but once in a while I just fall asleep... not in lessons, but in Sacrament Meeting yesterday... it was sad... one just lacks physical stamina at this point. The sad thing is that I prayed to finish the mission huge and baptize at least 6 or 7 people during my last transfer and it looks like the miracle of miracles that we could even remotely possibly reach would be 4: Osvaldo (one already down) and then Pabla, Marcos, and Liliana. So much for my dream of going out strong, but I guess the Lord has another lesson He wants me to learn through it all. It´s ok, I accept it, but I sure did want to baptize a family...but I will remain faithful and work as hard as I can because it does no good to lose faith over something that you simply just don´t understand yet.
I love the mission with all of my heart and cannot wait to share every joy, trial, success, failure, and moment with you. I have the pictures and the journal accounts to keep us talking for the next 7 years. So get ready to have me talk your ears off!

I know that Christ lives and that this is His church. I know that this is His work and that He is in charge. He has a plan and it is perfect. I trust in it, even when I can´t see all the parts of it or my role in it. I pray that we all may lean on Him through every change in our lives.

The faithful will remain! Be still and know that He is God.

¡Wubba, muchísima!

The happiest sister missionary in all the world!

Hey Fantastic Family,

2009-10-19T20:23:00.008-06:00

Well, this is the THIRD time I have written this email. The first 2 times the computer froze. So, as you can totally understand I am beyond even wanting to write this all a third time. Nevertheless, I know that you deserve to hear from me, so instead of giving in and saying forget it I am here, still writing, the same thing that I have already written you twice before!

Last week I didn´t have a mini, nor was I training. I´m still with Hermana Godfrey until the end. Hermana Pruner (who yes, does, go home with me in November) and Hermana Gurr (who goes home one transfer after us) moved in and they are heading up the work in Navarro. They are working with ______ towards her baptismal date set for the 14th of November and with her daughter. They were able to set the same date for both and bring them to church yesterday.

Nata – I loved what you said about finding a rock and so I will make it my special quest these last 5 weeks to seek out a truly stellar rock to cherish forevermore.

Fun stuff:
I was reading in a Liahona and found out that Joseph F. Smith was so meticulous that he ironed his money. Hmmm...who have we seen do that? Oh yeah, the Sister missionary that is writing you!

Did you all hear that they are changing our flights and sending us home a day earlier? I bet you´re excited as all get out, but that Mom will fight with the blog counter to make it accurate again. He he. It seems like it will make the experience much smoother for all of us involved. After transfer meeting we will go to the mission home and that night they will take us to the airport. I can´t believe that my mind is really starting to accept that I will be leaving this country. It seems too crazy.

I have been assigned one last time to do divisions with the Sisters of Navarro, and the Sisters of Mercedes. I don´t know why in my last transfer I will be spending so much time in trains and buses… it feels so much like precious time lost in travel.

Last Sunday in Navarro I forgot to tell you that there were 8 of us in the kitchen making pizza and everyone gathered around to watch Mariso light the burners… she didn´t have to light a match to do so. It was like a stove top in the states, but it caused such awe and joy that they all came over to watch her do it again and again. It reminded me again that I´m not in Kansas anymore. And the other day this woman talked about not coveting and she said that she doesn´t live all day thinking, “I´d sure like to have a new bike.” It was like “bike? Don´t you mean car?” Not in Kansas anymore…

We recently stopped to talk with 4 young people and one of them extended his hand to offer me some marijuana. He said, “do you smoke marijuana?” Ready to find out how your oh so polite daughter responded? I said with a confused look on my face “no… but thanks.” Yep, I was a little clueless in the moment...obviously it is not necessary to express gratitude for an invitation to do that....but hey, I´m polite.

Yesterday we street contacted an 80 year old lady who had in her hands a loaded sling. She was shooting the dogs. We asked her if she was a good shot and she said something like, “you better believe it.” I couldn´t stop from smiling… this 80 year old woman was cloaked like the young David from the Bible ready to attack the foe of her day and age… stray dogs!

Yesterday was Mother´s Day in Argentina and we were blessed to be able to attend the Miguez Family's ASADO. My companion tried morsillo – it´s made with hog's blood, raisins, pine nuts, oregano, and mint and put together in a giant hot dog form. She even liked it. I can tolerate it, but in small portions and with great effort to not think about what I´m eating. She took it really well too, just like I did when I first tried it in Castelar.

In the ditches here there are mosquito fish. It makes me very giddy. There are also tons of tiny, tiny polliwogs. I think about my Daddy when I see them.

The other day we went to Navarro to the house where we have church to lay ceramic tiles. It was super fun, with the grout, smoothing tools and all that jazz. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Well had I not lost 35 minutes writing the first 2 failed emails, I would have told you a wonderfully spiritual experience about how yesterday I really learned more about what the Atonement is like, but it will have to wait until we are together again. Just know that this last transfer has literally been the key to my testimony being what it is. I see with new eyes and understand with a new heart and mind. What our Savior did… we can never grasp completely, but as we come to capture a glimpse here and there, it is truly a beautiful experience. To love as He loved. I am learning it!

I know with all of my heart and soul that Christ really loves us. He gave all because He wants us to return. He is the way, the truth and the life. I will serve Him all my days. I will soon be with you again, but until then, may we all do more and more to thank Him for His infinite sacrifice and atonement. He lives. Find someone who doesn´t know, or isn´t sure, or has forgotten… and testify!

Love Always,

your polite daughter... "no, but thanks." :)

I Survived... Rejoice With Me!

2009-10-13T13:34:00.016-06:00

Hey awesome family. I´m just curious if you all had a tough week too, because I had a doozie! But as you read this letter, you should all rest well-assured that I am now filled with peace, light, joy, excitement, and energy. I´m a daughter of God and I re-learned that truth this week. The road to the Celestial Kingdom has to pass by Gethsemane.

Little stuff... think about this… how many people do you try to save? Why do people want to be a doctor... to save lives. Saving lives... I have so much I would love to write but so little time. Read Mosiah 28:3 and Alma through the twenty verses where it talks about Amulek... he was the best member missionary.

Mom – to explain, those are the Elders from Lobos. They are our designated train bodyguards, so we were pretending to be all clueless in that photo while they keep us safe.

I do have one more CD of pictures, but I don´t see a point in sending it to you, when I´ll be home before we know it.

I´m so excited to see this blog... I have heard amazing reviews about it. Did I mention that a few weeks ago I found out one Tuesday that Megan Glauser, (friend from Bingham High), Emily McKee (roommate from BYU) and Christina Willey (neighbor from BYU) are all getting married? It was like the day of getting letters saying that everyone is engaged!

It was a long, tough week. In fact, I´m not going to lie... it was the worst week of the mission, but rejoice with me... I survived and it´s behind me. Let´s just say that things went very wrong and I was very attacked (not physically, just verbally) by someone. Luckily your comp is your witness that can back you up in all things. Through this trial I learned how to ask for help, receive it, and just plain keep going. I was brought to the very depths of sorrow, but that doesn´t matter because I have already climbed back out and hiked to the top of a mountain. I´m fine, I´m more than happy, I have peace, and I know that all experiences teach a lesson. My Father in Heaven knows the truth, so that is all that matters.

To finish off such a lovely week full of growing and prayers, one of our investigators decided Saturday afternoon that she wasn´t going to be baptized. Shot though the heart! We returned to the pench and started prepping the place for the new sisters who are coming in to help us handle the work here with 3 branches. We eventually finished up and went out to work and got caught in a rain storm like you have never seen before. The funny thing is that all that day I didn´t shed a single tear. Not even when the baptism slipped right through our fingertips. I felt totally numb and past feeling as the scriptures say. Later that night after we dried off from the rain it dawned on me that you never know... maybe it didn´t go through for some reason we can´t see. Like one of those, “what if we would have had an accident in the train? Or What if someone would have been robbed on the trip?” For all we know the Lord was mercilessly protecting us from something much worse. I felt such a calm stillness as that thought dawned on me and I was totally at peace with it all.

That was part of the news that Elder Woodmansee gave us when he called to see how I was doing and find out just what had happened. He said that the President was entrusting me with the responsibility to lead and divide the work and handle all the details and plans and that they were sending us two sisters... another companionship to be primarily Navarro missionaries. I was thrilled and we spent hours working hard to receive revelation and figure out how to divide it all and do what is best for the work without trying to keep all the good investigators and future baptisms. We finally got it all on paper and today in the transfer meeting my mission-long dream basically came true... They sent Sister Pruner!!! and Sister Gurr to come help us out. I´m going to get to be almost companions with Sister Pruner – my first comp in the MTC for the next 6 precious weeks! I´m so excited, but I cried when it all came to light because I feel like I don´t deserve to have that dream come true.

As a mission we had 188 converts this transfer. It is just so tough to not hit the 200 mark again... we are so close and giving all we have, but the adversary is also fighting with his armies and all he has. Let me just tell you that this past weekend 41 people that were supposed to get baptized... didn´t make it. He is fighting too. During that chaotic week, we also had divisions with the sisters in Mercedes so to start and end it each companionship had to invest about 4 hours in trains. It is hard to lose so much time, but I got to see Mercedes and was reminded just how much I love Las Heras... I was so ready to be back on my own turf.

I was in the branch in Navarro yesterday with a member from another ward that did divisions with us and I was so touched in the fast and testimony meeting (with 8 other people) that I was crying. Micaela – my temporary companion - said that she had prayed and prayed for the rain to stop so that she could get to Las Heras to help us out because she had committed to come and wasn´t going to let anything stop her. The sun came out and shone through the windows of the living room aka chapel of Navarro and we saw the power of God made manifest. I also cried when a new convert stood and said that they were going to the temple the other day and it was a long way getting there, but they couldn´t bail or turn back because it was like, “Heavenly Father was waiting for us.” I heard that and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Our Heavenly Father literally is waiting for us. He wants us to come home. He wants us to make it back safely. He is worried and looking out the front window to see if we´re about to pull in the driveway. He is waiting for me, He is watching to see me come home. He is waiting for me to finish the mission strong. This morning in my personal prayer I promised the Lord that with these precious 6 weeks I wanted to become and be and serve and work, and give and love each day. I wanted to do all with no regrets and I have tons of ideas about how I am going to keep my word on the promises I made Him. It is all up to me. I am responsible for all I do. I have 6 more weeks to serve, and the rest of my life and the eternities to think about it. What am I going to do? I am going to give all that I have and do the very best I can. I´m going to be so totally lost in the work that they have to send out a search party to find me and pack my bags and take me to the airport. It is all up to me.

I testify with all of my heart that I know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored and is here upon the earth. His church is led by a living prophet and the keys of the Priesthood are not found anywhere else. I know that Christ lives. He literally lives. He is the way. Heavenly Father is waiting for us. He is watching us. He cries when we fall and rejoices when we get back up. I testify that this is His work. I am a humble servant and a faithful witness of the truthfulness of the Gospel. The Book of Mormon is true. It is perfect and teaches pure doctrine.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

With love and unfailing trust in His plan... until next week!

Be Thou Consistent!

2009-10-05T14:37:00.015-06:00

Wasn´t conference just celestial! We had nobody as far as investigators go on Saturday, so we peacefully enjoyed watching it in English. But on Sunday we fought tooth and nail to get 3 there (and Miguel brought his mom whom we taught in between sessions… so 4 )and then we watched 5 children for a bit of it until we went back to watch it in English again. We had to make the trek to Loma Grande - a good 7 train stations away, but it was awesome!

Here are the things that most got my attention:

Elder Holland´s intensely powerful declaration of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. There was nothing like the Spirit as he spoke and bore witness of it.
Elder Oaks saying that God´s love does not excuse us from obeying His laws.
Elder Bednar admonishes all to be consistent!
Elder Scott saying the Lord will not force you to learn.
Brother Osguthorpe saying when a call comes you always accept it, no matter how inadequate you might feel.
Elder Uchtdorf saying that love should be our walk and our talk.
Brother Watson talking about temperance… that word we always just read over, but not anymore!
Brother Burton and the attributes and virtues that end in –"ity."
Sister Debb inviting us all to get a grip on the iron rod and not let go.
President Monson reminding us that unless we lose our lives in the service of others there is little purpose in it.
Brother Nielson saying that with the mission efforts we have only scratched the surface.
Elder Christofferson – the intelligent use of agency requires knowledge of truth.
Just a few of the tidbits I loved!

It is crazy to think I am about to start my last transfer. Like this will be my last week 1, my last Zone Conference, my last, “what might happen to me” transfer meeting. It´s weird, but one´s mind starts to accept it. My mind is already little by little accepting the truth that I will finish and fly home. I think it is a healthy way for me to get over it. Maybe it´s just the exhaustion sinking in that helps you be OK with it.

So much to your chagrin and mine – I am battling a spring allergy cold. I was just dealing with it, but when I developed a cough I quickly got a Priesthood blessing from the first pair of available Elders. The next day my cough was noticeably better and today almost completely gone. My runny nose is improving, but as long as I´m not coughing, I´m in little danger of a relapse and “living in the mission home” excursion.

So one of my mission goals was to “walk through a pair of shoes” and I have done that. My 'Born' shoes now have holes in the soles that let water and dirt in. If you hold them up to the light, the light shines through the shoes. How about that, but such bad timing if you ask me. 7 weeks more and I can´t believe I have to buy another pair of shoes. I´d just try to let it go and tape them, but the left shoe has the wiring springing out and cuts my heal. I am going to try once more to mend the hole in the right one and cover the wire in the left one, but if it doesn´t work I will just get another pair. I can´t use the old Sketchers I was saving to show you the wear and tear because they are so uneven it hurts your hips and back and makes you trip and fall because your balance is all out of whack.

Guess what else… I woke up this morning to the sound of a good downpour and thought to myself “I´m so lucky to have such a great pair of rain boots… and I won´t get cut today by the wire because I have no choice but to wear the rain boots. Life is good.” Then when I was eating breakfast in the dark (because we woke up to no power in the apartment) my companion opened the kitchen window and guessed what we remembered? My boots were OUTSIDE on the patio and totally SOAKED. As she tipped them over about 6 ounces of water spilled out of each boot. No worries, I can wear the “it´s kind of raining today” ankle boots made of leather I brought and I still won´t get cut. But wait, they were outside too! Lame. But it was probably one of the funniest things that has happened to me in Las Heras. I laughed and laughed. I made do today with a pair of my companion´s shoes that are too big and I was falling all over the place. I mention that the power was out, because that eliminated the option of blow drying them. Wouldn´t you know it? My rain boots were outside in the rain. That is a lesson I think I will only have to learn once!

We spend a lot of time in a train or in a bus and it´s getting hot outside. That drains your energy at the speed of light. I love it though.

I prayed a ton for Trevor. How is he doing?

I love you all so much. I testify that I know that Jesus is the Christ and that He lives. I have not seen Him, but when I do I will not know any more then, than I know now that He is my Savior.
I know this is His restored church and that it is led by His prophet. I will work until I collapse and preach until my voice fails. This is the truth.

Wubba!

For Time and All Eternity!

2009-09-28T17:12:00.013-06:00

Hola Familia!

First of all I need to know when we have Sacrament Meeting back home. Is it the first or third hour?

Yes, Elder Bednar is coming to speak to us and we are all super excited. We´re also pumped for General Conference. It´s going to be a challenge getting investigators there because it´s like an

hour long train ride away, but we´re renting a big bus as a Branch and the Branch President has his meat truck and we´ll pile in the back of that too. It´ll be worth it and those that make the sacrifice will be richly blessed. Enjoy your traditional Swedish pancakes that morning and the in between Conference afternoon walk!

We went with President Miguez in his car to visit the only family in the branch that lives in the town of Hornos. It was out in the sticks, and I hope we never have to walk there.We had this incredible Family Home Evening with Osvaldo Miguez and ALL of his posterity (minus the one son that isn´t a member and lives in Hurlingham… a good ways away). We talked about taking upon us the yoke of Christ and then each person read aloud their testimony from the book we had made for him. He was crying, my companion and I were crying, his wife was crying, some o

f the kids and in-laws were crying because the spirit was so strong. We went back yesterday and had another lesson. Thanks to the help of his recently returned son… who helped us put the date… he accepted the goal and will prepare to be baptized on the 24th of October. It was another amazing experience.

Nata – remember your “happy ring” that you wore in the hospital before Davy was born? I bought myself a happy ring “anillo de felicidad” on Saturday in Moron after the sealing. It is a flower made of a bunch of little tiny green stones. I absolutely love it. And yes, it makes me happy.
I´m sorry this email is going to be shorter because I am only typing about 32 words a minute because my fingers are so cold they are almost numb. We were in a line for the ATM machine for about 15 minutes and that about sealed it. Now I can barely type and the keyboard is too sticky.

Mom – I highly doubt that anyone from the mission will be taking the trip to go to the temple in Uruguay. I think it is just so out of the question. It´s a great sadness for the saints here too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Buenos Aires temple to close in November
LDS Church News

Sunday, Sep. 13, 2009

Beginning November 1, 2009, the Buenos Aires Argentina Temple will close for approximately 18 months to accommodate a renovation of the temple. This is necessary to upgrade the temple's mechanical systems and bring the temple up to current standards. Following the renovation, the temple will be rededicated. Specific rededication information will be provided to church members in the Buenos Aires Argentina Temple District as the renovation project nears completion.The presidencies of the Montevideo Uruguay and Asuncion Paraguay Temples are pleased to accommodate members from the Buenos Aires Argentina Temple District during the closure, including those desiring to receive their own ordinances. Members should contact the Asuncion Paraguay Temple presidency at (595) 21-230-035, or the Montevideo Uruguay Temple presidency at (598) 2-604-2212 to make any special arrangements.
We are grateful for the dedicated temple service given by the members in the Buenos Aires Argentina Temple District and, with you, rejoice in the blessings extended to them by our Heavenly Father in His holy houses.

Signed,

The First Presidency

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was so grateful for my last temple trip as a missionary, and the sealing of Rolando and Valeria was absolutely wonderful! I cried and felt the Spirit so strongly. It was such a cool feeling to see two people so in love and so faithful and so wonderful able to be sealed for all eternity. I was so happy for them and felt this feeling that, "this is the plan… this is what the Father wants.” It was beautiful. I can´t even express the joy that I felt all day. We took 2 buses to get there and spent the entire day on traveling and attending the actual wonderful sealing… but it was so worth it. As a matter of fact we skipped a Stake Service Activity in which they painted the hospital in Navarro and the Elders from Lobos that went in our stead were interviewed by the television crew that came. It so would have been us, but I didn't mind because… I saw Rolando and Valeria be sealed in the temple! That is something that you cannot miss for anything. I waited all mission long for that day and will never forget it!

I have no idea how we made it the whole month without running out of money – we have spent almost 200 pesos in buses this month (in Padua we spent about 65 a month). And yet we had enough money to buy really expensive yummy ice cream in Moron to celebrate the sealing on Saturday – and we will even have enough to buy groceries today! It is literally a miracle. We don´t have tithing to pay, so instead of calling it a tithing blessing I´ll call it a fast offering blessing!

I had a much better week as far as contacts go. It is just so different in a smaller city with so many fewer people. I prayed and prayed and it really helped. I did more this week than last week and found a little more joy in them again. I´m still far from what I was in the beginning of the mission, but at the same time, I feel like I´m better because I´m doing things with a different feeling now.Thanks for your prayers, I´m sure that had a lot to do with it.

Daddy – we keep getting hit with rain, which stops so many people from going to church. I´m just ready for heat, because no one skips church because of that!

One of our investigators didn't come to church yesterday because she had to work. We are really working hard with her, but I tell you Satan wins so easily. All he has to do is keep people fighting poverty and totally dependent upon every peso that they can earn on Sundays… and he wins.

We´re going to try again and see if we can baptize her on the 24th with Osvaldo – that is also the day that we really want to baptize Marcos. It´s crazy to be planning what could be my last baptismal service.

Daiana is doing just fine. We have to get concrete permission from her mom to baptize her this week. She said that her mom said yes, but we need it in writing.

I have been here a month and we are swimming against the tide with a bunch of things that just seem impossible. There are 3 branches having meetings every Sunday. We should have investigators in each of them-- but 2 of them are at the same time and 38 km apart. It is hard to divide ourselves because everybody has callings and kids and let me just say that we have not found the solution yet. Our investigators aren't progressing very well in Navarro because we can only get there twice a week, 3 at BEST and so far we have only made it there on one Sunday – and it was before we had found them.

Well, my time is up. I love you all so much!

Remember that every single challenge is an opportunity to succeed.
Be happy – Families are Forever.
We have a living prophet!

Please try to understand that I am not trunky. Even if it seems like it on paper. I just have this urgency to get all these investigators made into members and I have 8 weeks to do it.
I´m busy, I´m stressed, but I´m doing my best!

Wubba,

Rolando and Valeria's temple sealing

A great day!!

The church in Villars

A little lamb named Milo

A little shoe maintenance

They're still good!

17 months out!

Tile laying in Navarro

Decorating the cake stand for Isias and Estefenia's wedding

Picnic at zone conference

A rainy, soggy day!

Osvaldo's baptism

Study on the swings

Goin' To The Temple And They´re, Gonna Get Sealed

2009-09-21T17:26:00.024-06:00

Hey so I absolutely love hearing from you guys! Thanks for being such faithful writers. It´s great! This week I caught a cute little toad one night. I held him for a little while and, of course took pictures. It made me remember that when I was a wee little one, I caught toads with my big sis. My comp didn´t think it was all that fun and special, but I sure did. But now I´m afraid of accidentally stepping on little toads all night long in the dark, muddy, swamp streets. I would hate to smash one. Mom – every night our district leader calls to make sure we got in and more importantly... ask for our numbers of the day. Gotta love it! Random stories: our apartment here in Las Heras is RIGHT in front of the train station. I love ear plugs and sleep just great, but get this... every time one of the bigger trains starts up and “takes off” it literally sounds like a 747 is leaving the airport. Our entire apartment shakes – no lie – and the sound is uncanny. We often pretend to lift off our chairs and giggle to ourselves that we are flying away. Yes – Lara was baptized in Marcos Paz on Saturday. Her mom came with her friend, one of our new investigators Daiana Gomez---who has a baptismal date... we committed her to be baptized (in the street) not 3 hours before the baptismal service. SCORE! It was my first date I set in the street. Hehe. We all piled into the back of a meat truck of the branch president and headed to the church. The Elders had the font all filled and ready with hot water. We took pictures, and had the best baptismal service I´ve had in the mission. I was 100% calm. Everything went down perfectly, we sang, there were witnesses, people supporting her... it was picture perfect. I had a goal to actually enjoy one of my baptismal services without running around like a chicken with its head cut off and now I can say that I reached that goal!

(Photos from the Benton's Mission blog)

In the back of the truck on the way back we basically just said to Liliana – the mom – are you going to get baptized on the 10th of October with Daiana and she said “yes” – the members in the truck with us started clapping and it was a very happy moment. SCORE! First date I set in the back of a meat truck! That very day we had we also put a baptismal date (that fell the very next day when she didn´t come to church) with a wonderful young single mom of 24 years with 5 kids (4 alive, 1 lost during pregnancy). She is so great and feels the Spirit and loves the visits, lessons, and the power she feels as she reads the BOM, but didn´t come to church, even when we sent a member to bring her and her kids in their car! So we´ll have to put it to another date and she´ll be baptized next transfer, because we are already past crunch Sunday for baptisms of this transfer.

We ate cow tongue this week. It was fine, I tried it not knowing what it was and it didn´t bother me. So then she told us what it was. I had already spooned more onto my roll to make a sandwich and thought, “hey, if it didn´t bother me before, it shouldn´t bother me now.” But after the first bite I looked down and saw for the first time – all the little taste buds on the piece of tongue. That was the first strike. So I turned the sandwich so I couldn´t see and took another bite. I kept rotating, but when I had gone all the way around, I had to just mind over matter it and finish the sandwich. The truth is the taste and texture were totally tolerable (wow, check out that alliteration! – my 7th grade English teacher Ms. Russell would be so impressed) but when you see the taste buds... it´s just tough. But I´ve now tried cow tongue!

Get this... I´m so into the work that I dreamt that I street contacted Brad Pitt in LA and that he let me use his bathroom and then I started to ask him if he had ever heard of the church. I was about to teach him the first lesson, but I woke up. How about that?

Last week we spent literally all day getting to and from the temple after our last session, and we´re doing it again this Saturday for Rolando´s sealing! I don´t even mind that it´ll eat away a bunch of proselyting hours, because this is a once in a lifetime chance and I´m not going to miss it or even feel bad.

My comp and I compete to see whose name the cute little kids of the members can say first. Every time we eat with them or visit we speak over each other saying “Hermana Jensen!” “Hermana Godfrey” “Hermana Jensen” “Hermana Godfrey” - I usually win because my last name is easier for them to say. Wahoo. Thanks dad! It´s fun, we´re like a mom and a dad trying to make the kid say “mama” or “dada” first. We get a kick out of it. I´m going to film the next competition and you´ll see the fun in it.

The other day I was standing up in a crowded bus going the 38 kilometers to Navarro and all the sudden I was falling. I guess I had drifted off because when I opened my eyes, my knees were buckling to stop as they had already started to collapse and fall to the ground. I caught myself in plenty of time to not fall to the ground and sat down in the next available seat, but felt quite aware of the fact that I had just about fallen to the floor on a bus--and it was only 12:30 in the day. We had only just begun.

I had my almost last interview with President Benton and was afraid he was going to call me on having such lame numbers – specifically with contacts, but he has the Spirit and could tell that I wasn´t just slacking off. He understood when I said I´m doing things with the Spirit instead of doing a thousand fake contacts with people that have already been contacted because the town is so small. He said I was doing just fine and not to worry, so I´m going on that. He trusts me. That is good, but I have to be careful to not slack off because he released me from stressing out about contacts. I know, I know.... now you are all going to tell me that I will never slack off and that I am fine but I can't lie. I am getting really tired. So, if you could, pray for me to have more energy it would be great. I have 9 weeks left and I will finish a bit of a failure if I can´t keep my contact stats up. I will regret it I know, but I only see and feel the 'right now.' The regret is in the future and I can´t quite grasp it. Help me to have more energy. I´m just exhausted. Moroni 9:6 It scares me... I know the consequences. :)

I gave a 20 minute talk in church yesterday about “diligence” and it was great. The Spirit really helped me with the scriptures and examples and testimonies that I found and shared.

Speaking of interviews.... I taught President my 'charity' lesson and finished my little book of goals and will be awarded the “Brilliance of the Master” next transfer. He said it was very well done. He is so good to me. He has me setting a billion goals about what I am going to do with my future and what kind of husband I want. As I have been doing that homework, I have come to see that I am looking for a pretty perfect man. How do you lower your expectations without lowering your standards?

I love you all so much. Don´t let my struggle depress you. It´s mine and my battle that the Lord will help me win, but all your prayers are welcome. I gotta run. Be safe, I will see you soon... !

Chau,

Update from the Benton's Blog

2009-09-18T08:29:00.012-06:00

Our Internet was down for about a month and a half, so we haven´t been able to do blog posts (or email either). We´re so HAPPY to be back online!

The latest news: My hero, President Evrett Benton, had his car stolen one week ago today, by 3 men who were posing as policemen, and pulled guns on him. He was "kidnapped " by these men and driven around for 45 minutes in their car, while they "hid" our car, and disabled the car´s security system.

We´re all very happy that Evrett is OK, and we are thankful to the Church for giving us huge amounts of support on all levels during this trial in our lives. We´re "up and running" again, and hardly "missed a beat" in our work due to the excellent, efficient, loving support of the Church Organization in our area. Thanks you sooooo much President Bowen and staff!

We´re also deeply grateful to all our friends and loved ones. Your love and prayers continue to be a centerpiece of our strength here in Argentina. As President Hinckley once said, simply, "Prayer works!" We so much appreciate your continued prayers, and we all know how very important love is in our lives, especially in OUR lives right now.

Yesterday was Evrett´s birthday, and I posted a photo of him blowing out candles on his two large "Texas Fudge Cakes" at a zone conference. My birthday was September 11, and the sweet office missionaries gave me a surprise "heart attack" on a wall in the Mission Home. They wrote some thoughtful notes on some of the hearts too. I´m campaigning for the hearts to stay up on the wall for at least another year. The top photo is of President and Sister Bowen singing "Happy Birthday" to me on my birthday. They are sweethearts.

We love you all; friends, family, missionaries, and anyone else who gives us love and support. We couldn´t do it without you!

Love,

Presidente y Cheryl Benton

~~~~~~~~~~~~

1 COMMENTS:

Mike Gilmore said...
Finally our son got on her blog. haha. He is the Elder on the right in President Bentons birthday picture. Sean also helped with the hearts. I also got a kick out of reading Hermana Jensen's email this week when she mentions Elder Gilmore..... Glad she is happy out in campo!
SEPTEMBER 18, 2009 9:16 PM

So Today Is P-Day... Surprise!

2009-09-16T07:21:00.012-06:00

9.15.09

Holy cow your letters were super awesome this week!

I have so many little things to say, so we´ll start with the random answers to all your comments and questions part.

Mom – thanks for the John Travolta pictures... They are great!

This is way late, but... thanks for sending me the birthday shout outs. I really enjoyed reading them. Thanks for being so kind and rounding them up.

Nata – Davy says my name??? YES! Does he say “Stacey” or “Sister Jensen?” lol!

Daddy – we actually did get off the bus at the right stop... we found out a week too late. The bus driver had told us the truth... it was the men in the mill that told us we were in the wrong place. Anyway, there is a purpose for all things and tomorrow we are going to teach all the non-members of the new convert that lives there in the middle of nowhere. We have great plans to baptize his wife and 2 sons ASAP. Please include them in your prayers... the family Almeyra! Gracias!

Mom - Sister Benton said that my second set of tests came back good, but that the doctor recommends I get it checked periodically throughout my life because of my history. For now... no worries!

What was in the box? 40 Book of Mormons... and they´re bigger in Castellano. Bigger pages and about 63 more of them. I was dying and when I got back to the pench I literally collapsed!

Random stories from the week:

We went for a second appointment with this woman who lost her only baby about 3 months ago and she couldn´t let us in to teach her because she explained that her family had come and they were having some kind of family meeting about something. It was easy for me to infer that it was either some kind of intervention with someone or some economic crisis. So I respectfully said, “no problem” and offered my hope that all would resolve itself and we set another appointment. The funny part of this story is that my companion still doesn´t understand more than about 40% of what is going on around us. She heard and understood the words “family” and “meeting” and thought they were having some kind of a party. As I was offering encouragement and saying that it will all work out and be ok... she was jumping in the conversation saying “how cool!” It was like. Oooh... she doesn´t understand, but I can´t just stop right here and tell her that the family is in crisis... what do I do? Maybe she´ll just say it once and let it go. NOPE. She kept saying it like 3 times, every time I tried to change the subject and get out of there. As we turned the corner I explained to poor Sister Godfrey what the woman was saying and we had a good laugh about it. Ah, the joys of the language gap. You think you´re doing fine, and then you realize you´re a total idiot (I´m referring to myself back in the day... not to my companion). Gotta love it!

The thing about serving in campo is that it teaches you PATIENCE. I had already developed a great deal of patience, but I have some room to grow still. We spend a TON of time on trains going to meetings. District Development meeting every Tuesday, Zone conference and Interviews with the president once a transfer. Our last trip to the temple today (which is why our p-day is today and not yesterday... sorry for not letting you in on that... I bet you were all anxious and confused yesterday when I didn´t write. Shorry!) Anyway, we spend a ton of time in a train with a pair of body guard Elders. I try to use the time to make English cards for our little English students, but it´s a bumpy ride. So there is lots of lost time in travel, but such is life, and that´s all there is, so you just learn to accept it and get over it. I think it is pretty interesting that I am dying in an area where you inevitably lose so much time. Just when I´m all urgent with time running out and feel like “I have to baptize the whole world before I go home”....and I´m in a train or a bus – all day long! There is a lesson to be learned in every daily experience. Remember that.

In Zone Conference the Zone Leaders played “Whose Line Is It Anyway,” teaching us how to teach better on our feet according to the situation and how to ask better questions. I was up against Elder Gilmore playing the “you can only ask questions game” about the temple and eternal families and it was so fun.

This week as a giant family and missionaries, we did a special fast for the dad of the Miguez family who isn´t a member yet. The wife and 6 of the 7 children and all their spouses and grandchildren are members, but he isn´t yet. We fasted together and made a book and had all the family members write their testimonies in it. We committed him to come to church and we prepared all week long to sing a special musical number to really help him feel the spirit. We sang in Acappella – the first verse of ‘Families Can Be Together Forever’ in English, second verse in Castellano then we went straight into ‘This is the Christ’ in Spanish with a gorgeous harmony. The Spirit was super strong and I think it´s still working on him to help him see. It was a big project and we are waiting to see the fruits. I prayed with a lot of faith that this miracle will really happen... I´m not just hoping for it, I´m counting on it.

So _____ is going to be baptized this Saturday and for a minute there her mom was going to be baptized with her, but something got in the way. Then during the lesson when she told us about what had happened she said, “on September 19th, my daughter will be baptized, and so will I.” Talk about someone not letting obstacles slow them down. She said that she felt the Spirit so strong in church and she is going to be baptized too. So we got permission to baptize her with just 2 attendances and then she didn´t show up on Sunday (for the 2nd one). We went to go and get her, but she didn´t answer the door. She was too embarrassed and didn´t want to be seen in church, so her date fell. We are still working hard with her about the Sabbath Day, but we will be seeing progress soon. Anyway, even with all that happened it didn´t stop her from wanting to be baptized. With patience, she will make it.

Daddy – in the ward in Utah does the bishopric take note of every person that bears their testimony on Fast Sunday? They do here and it seemed like a new thing to me. I´m curious if we do that there too.

So brace yourself... President Benton was robbed at gun point last week. This group of men stopped him, forced him out of the $55,000 mission car and robbed him of his cell phone, his mission folders and other stuff, his GPS, and his watch. They let him keep his wallet and his life and we are very grateful. The story made me feel so woken up again that we are in a very bad world. He was fine, and he even told the thieves about the gospel in the 45 minute drive with them as he was being held at gun point. He is such a great man. I tell you... if he had been hurt... it would be really tough for me. But the Lord protected him and I prayed with such gratitude that night for still having a mission president.

On Sunday it looked like we weren´t going to have anyone in church because all the investigators went AWOL on their commitments and I was devastated. We had been preparing this song and praying and fasting and we were going to have to sing it for only the ward members, but the Lord showed me that this is His work and that if He wants investigators in church, He will put them there. Two husbands of sisters that are members showed up -Osvaldo Miguez, I already talked about him, and Marcos whose wife is a new convert – who has SO MUCH POTENTIAL and then Lara, of course, and then the son of Carlos Almeyra came. I was reminded Who is in charge. Even though we had tons more that didn´t show up, we had 4 and they felt the Spirit. It was a really stretching experience for me.

I think we just might have found a family in Villars. The thing is the night before we planned to visit a former investigator named Fernanda. There was just a little flag on the map with her name on it. We had no clue who she was. The next morning I was reading former investigator teaching records and read about some woman who was named Fernanda (but it didn´t occur to me that it was the same woman) and I thought, “wow, we have got to go for her!” So we were in Villars and I looked over to the next house and through a bunch of tall weeds I saw a mom, dad, and son sitting in their backyard. We crossed the little field to go and contact them, and they let us sit down and teach them. At the very end of the lesson it dawned on me that she was Fernanda – the same one. I was like, “wow, the Lord sent us to this family in 3 different ways today... they have got to be the family I´m here to baptize.” They have 4 sons – 3 of which are over 8 years old. I really hope that they progress. I just felt so sure that the Lord had totally put us there to teach them.

Well, the hour is almost gone already.

I´m not trunky, but I am emotionally tired...and for the first time in my mission we didn´t hit our 140 contacts. Things are just different in campo... there aren´t that many people to talk to, and we have already talked to most of them--and they don´t like being contacted twice. So I made a new promise with the Lord, that I won't worry about all the numbers anymore, but that I would teach with my heart. All I can say is that I will do this work to the very best of my ability and the way the Spirit tells me to do it.

I have to run. We are off to the temple for my last session as a missionary. I have a lot of revelation to receive!

Love you so much!

Be happy, read your scriptures, say your prayers, have FHE and share the gospel with someone who doesn´t know it this week.

Las Heras rocks! I am living each day and seeing miracles and being incredibly blessed!

Love ya,

After a 3 hour drive to Las Heras they couldn't get in because the A.P. forgot the key :(

but a good attitude nonetheless!

All the sister missionaries at the transfer meeting

Just like "The lamb and the lion"

Stacey's reply to an area book WITH DUST ON IT!!

Walking with the hot sun beating down upon them!

Drying very wet shoes...

"Sweet 16" months out!

Which way do we go?

Stacey and Hermana Godfrey

Flying at at the Buenos Aires Temple

Pumping water to wash an investigator's clothes

cutting wood

Lara's baptism

Riding to church in the back of a meat truck-- headed to Marcos Paz

A baby frog--so cute!

...I had a pony!

Stacey reports she is even going to miss the muddy streets!

The Word On The Street...

2009-09-14T17:57:00.043-06:00

H1-N1 Precautions

If you don't already know.....don't ask! =)

Stacey Humor

2009-09-08T13:51:00.012-06:00

I'm guessing that whatever is in this box...

must have been super heavy!

We later found out it was Book of Mormons :)

Hermana Jensen y DiStefano - Haedo 1 - 4.27.09

2009-09-07T20:43:00.015-06:00

Happy Birthday Hermana DiStefano

a lighter moment....

Service day

Sweet 16!

2009-09-07T16:25:00.005-06:00

Hey awesome family,

Well I have no idea if my blood work was normal, but I´ll give Sister Benton a call tonight.

I´m thinking I´d prefer speaking on the 13th so Nata can be there. I´m glad you liked the photos... I have been taking a bunch!

So Las Heras is a handful, and training to boot. It´s a branch that is centered in Las Heras, but then we are also in charge of three little villages: Navarro which is 30 km away, Villars which is 18 km away, and Hornos which is like 10 km away. The bus that gets us to each of those is way expensive for our poor budget and it only passes like once every 3 hours, so you have to plan things really carefully and sometimes sacrifice lunch to make it all work (we eat something, but it´s not like a sit-down and enjoy it meal). There is church in Las Heras in a house that is like a mini church. In Navarro they have Sacrament Meeting and Sunday School in someone´s home and the same thing in Villars in the garage of a member. We cannot possibly be in all 3 each Sunday because 2 take place at the same time (about 52 km apart from each other). This week we went to Las Heras which is 3 blocks from the apartment and it was the most spiritual Sacrament Meeting I have ever attended in my entire life. I´m not one to cry much, but the tears just kept falling down my face every time someone shared their testimony. It was so strong and powerful that I looked over my shoulder absolutely certain that I would see my Savior standing in the back of the room.

Lara - a 10 year old girl that was a referral of the branch president whom we challenged to be baptized in the first lesson (and she more than accepted) was there with her mom. We are hoping to baptize both of them on the 19th of September. It was great they were both there and Lara shared her testimony about how she had prayed and felt a fire in her heart and knew the church is true. Her mom just let the tears fall and fall the whole meeting long and I know that we can help her too, her challenge will be Sabbath Day, because she usually works. But we will win.

We also had the neighbor of the branch president (His name is Lionel Miguez) in church. She was also a referral and she also loved church and stood to share her testimony saying that when she walked in she felt like she had been there before.

My comp and I sing a lovely harmony and we are converting through music. Lara and her mom Liliana love it when we sing them hymns and I think it´s the trick to touch a lot of country folk here in campo.

We bravely took a bus and went to Navarro, but accidentally got off 8 km early. OUCH. We took a remis the rest of the way and started teaching. We went around trying to find the investigators and discovered that in campo most of the houses don´t have numbers. They just say I live on the 24 in between the 31 and the 33 (that leaves you with about 8 houses on each side of the street that it could be. You just ask the neighbors and usually it´s not too tough to find them, but it´s just a bother and you can´t help but think "there´s gotta be a better system... oh yeah, there is!"

When we got off 8 km early we were in the middle of NOWHERE. It was incredible. Just farms and mills and a house every km or so. We laughed instead of freaking out. And hey, it all worked out fine.

In Villars the next day we were careful not to get off early and found the members waiting for us with open arms to receive us and share their table so that we could eat the picnic lunch we packed in a rush to catch the only bus for 4 hours. There are 3 active families and 1 less active family in all of Villars. It´s like walking into Smallville or something.

In campo my rain boots come in very handy. After a rain storm I keep wearing them and get them all muddied up. Hermana Godfrey was surprisingly well prepared (reminded me of myself) and she also has a wonderful huge umbrella much like the one I once had. (sigh...)

What´s tough about having such a huge area and all is the inability to be in 4 places at once. The bus schedule we cannot control and the work is spread out. It´s hard to progress someone to baptism when you can only visit them once (a big maybe twice) a week. You just have to have more frequent contact with them. How do you pick where to invest your time? Obviously you follow the Spirit and the counsel of your leaders. President told us to spend the bulk of the time in Las Heras and Navarro, but the members are big on us working in Villars. I am going to try and not worry about Hornos right now. I wish I could divide myself in half or something... especially for Sundays.

So I hit 16 months today and we rearranged the furniture in the apartment and it´s much more homey now. I´m remarkably not that tired physically, but I´m exhausted mentally and at times emotionally (I know, I know what you´re going to say, but hey... you raised someone that doesn´t accept the status quo... I´m going and working for something better). I am not supposed to talk to my comp in Castellano, but when I don't she doesn't understand me. If I break rules and talk to her in English I get dumber and she doesn´t get any better. So I´m doing the first one and quite impressed with my patience. It´s only been 6 days, but I´m very willing to repeat things a billion times until she gets it. She works very hard to learn new words and is progressing a ton.
\
Yeah, I forgot to mention that p-day is Monday now. Same deal as before, read and write in an hour.

Family Miguez is basically the branch. They are so incredible and welcomed us with more love and happiness than I thought was humanly possible. They take super good care of us and are willing to help us in anything. It makes me want to have a big family out in the country and have my own branch. hehe

President Miguez looks like John Travolta. Trust me. But they don´t believe me, so I need you to send me some pictures as attachments of John Travolta - preferably the "Look Who´s Talking" era so that I can show them that he IS John Travolta. It´s uncanny.

Hermana Godfrey is very diligent, eager to obey, well-prepared and just overall a pure spirited person. We get along great. I wish I could talk fast Castellano with her, because even after 6 days I feel like my Castellano is slipping a little bit.

The assistants made another mission CD and it has some of the coolest songs EVER! I actually feel guilty for liking it so much. Big surprise. You are going to die when you hear the soul that comes out in this Evangelist girl singing I know my Redeemer lives. It´s actually quite inspiring. We´ll get her baptized and then it´s all good.

All in all this should come as no shock to you that I get nervous and tense when it dawns on me that the mission will actually end someday. I was sitting in the Branch Sacrament Meeting and about died thinking that I would go back to some family ward and sit and listen without a name tag and investigators at my side.

The other day I was sitting down studying or something and I about started crying as I thought of how much I am going to miss this. I´m just certain in my last interview that I will bawl and tell President Benton that he should let me stay on as Sister Benton´s assistant. (After flying home and sharing the holidays with my family of course. :)

The mission is a whole new ball game in campo... you have to work things in a new way. Timing, planning, contacting... everything. And if you don´t wave at someone they just might get a little upset. This happened to us the other day, and the lady was not amused that we hadn´t waved at her. Beware!

I love you all so much and hope that you can sense that even though at times I´m all nervous and tense and a psycho perfectionist... that it´s because my spirit knows how important this life is. There is not a moment to waste. There is not a day that we should let go by without making a difference.

I think that my big challenge of coming home will be having to take off the name tag and let that part go. I´m already practicing to think "don´t cry because it´s over, smile because it happened." It will be ok. I will be in good hands.

I really like this area. People almost always stop to let you contact them, they all say, "sure come by some other day and I´ll listen to you." but that actually just makes you have to really be able to perceive if it´s worth it to write down their name and address, because 85% of the town says, "sure, some other day." Where are the elect? Unfortunately there are probably a bunch of them in one of the far away towns that I´m still a little afraid of. In some small house on some farm... waiting for us.

Mom - do you want to investigate Buscapina Compuesta it´s supposedly a pill you can take to avoid kidney stones. I don´t know if it´s necessary, but I thought you might enjoy a research project. :) But most important is sending me pictures of John Travolta.

I´m glad it wasn´t Nata´s leg. I would have died. I almost did. Poor Brock.

I´m almost sleeping till 6:30 again. It´s helpful personally. I love the mission so much and feel really blessed and privileged to be able to finish the mission in Las Heras because the members are just such good people. They would literally give you the coat off their backs. It´s the exact opposite of my last area.

I´m doing my very best to let my missionary fly and grow. I don´t know how often I should correct her Castellano because I don´t want her to get discouraged, but at the same time I don´t want her to form habits saying things that are wrong. I was ticked when at 1 year I found out I was saying "me recuerdo" when it´s either "me acuerdo" or "recuerdo" so I don´t want her to resent me down the road for letting her same things wrong.

The new apartment is great. It´s huge and has a shower that is way better than Padua. I´m quite content. I have almost no time at night because I have to do all the calls, help her a ton with the area book and plan - which is great because the only few minutes free I have I grab to write in my journal and I haven´t eaten at night for a while.

We might be able to use bikes in Villars! I´m super excited. I´m going to take an AWESOME photo of something and send you a surprise soon. Just wait!

I´m glad to hear the cougs won their game. Hope they keep doing it.

Pray for Lara and her mom Liliana and the other neighbor who is also called Liliana.
There are so many prepared people here. The Lord really does send His missionaries where there is work to be done.

I know the Church is true with all of my heart. I know my Redeemer lives. I know the BOM is the word of God and that Thomas S. Monson is a living prophet.

I have never felt such joy as I have felt here in the last 6 days. The first chance I get I´m catching a red-eye flight back to visit the wonderful people of Las Heras! The Miguez Family is already my family.

Don´t worry about me. This is the Lord´s work! And we´re winning!

----Sweet 16!

Brittany's Homecoming!

2009-09-04T20:54:00.025-06:00

Hermana Johns (Stacey's 7th Companion) arrived home today and it was a very exciting time at the Salt Lake Airport for family and friends alike.
Barbara, (Brittany's mom) watched the monitor board vigilantly and anxiously until Flight 395 from Dallas clicked over from reading On Time to that magical word....Arrived!

As you can see there were hugs and tears galore... along with

the sweet and very laryngitis strained voice

of one hard working, totally committed

sister missionary fresh from Argentine soil!

Bienvenido Brittany, we are so grateful for your service

and congratulate you for

RETURNING WITH HONOR!!

Surprise...I Am Going To Die In CAMPO!

2009-09-02T15:19:00.007-06:00

He-e-ey!
Can I just say that it is so hard to have so much stuff to say to y’all and to have to say it in some order knowing that you want to hear it in another order and..... anyways, here we go again!

Last week we learned that someone had thrown boiling water on the poor dog that follows us everywhere and burned him really badly. The locutorio on the corner was kind of healing and taking care of him, but Alejo 2 decided to accompany all of the members to church on Saturday when we had a leadership meeting. I don´t know how he got in, but hey, he was inside the church and inside the meeting--in the chapel and all. If that isn´t enough, he showed up and made his way into SACRAMENT meeting on Sunday. We just let him enjoy the meeting and the Bishop announced for everyone to just leave him alone because he was hurt. After church we had to coax him out of the chapel and into the car of a member who decided to really adopt and heal him...and they kept the name we had given him! It was a joke getting him in the car. You can´t even imagine.

So on my birthday our lunch called that morning at 9 and said not to come because it would just be too inconvenient for her. But she said, “happy birthday.” I´m not going to lie, I was bummed. We made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and brought oranges and begged a table from a member and ate our little picnic in her house. It turned out fine, but it was no birthday feast. I decided to think that the Lord had made that sister cancel on us, because if not we might have been badly burned in a grease fire helping her fry the milanesas and we wouldn´t have been able to work. So it was really a blessing in disguise… who knows. I choose to see it that way.

Right after that phone call, Presdient Benton called and he and all of the office elders sang to me. It was special...how sweet! He then proceeded to tell me that he had prayed a lot and had decided to CLOSE San Antonio de Padua because they aren't ready for the work. Instead of just taking me out, he rescued us both. I knew he had been inspired to do it—and another lovely event that went down on Sunday only confirmed it. Instead of taking it hard, I just thought to myself… I´m getting out of here tomorrow, so say all you want. I asked President Benton if we had done well with the white wash and all, or if it had been a failure and he assured me that we had done well. We had baptized 4 when there had only been 1 in the last 12 month period. We had to leave the wonderfully located apartment and say goodbye. It took forever to make sure everything was crystal clear in the area book for the next companionship that will eventually get white washed into Padua and we did our very best to give them a good head start. We shared our testimonies in church, packed up, had a goodbye FHE with Santiago and the family and the next morning we were gone.

The transfer meeting was awesome, but we didn´t hit our goal of 200. We came super close though. 192. I couldn´t help but feel bad because I had committed to get 3 and then only got 1. The number would have been 194 if I hadn´t missed my goal, but I can´t let it get me down. When the transfers came up on the screen I could hardly believe it. I´m training the new missionary… in Las Heras – an area that had been closed for a month when we went short on sister missionaries. So I am resurrecting an area and training. It´s called a a resurrect an area/white wash/ train. They only way it could be harder is if we were opening an area for the first time. Now that would be a trip. But even still, this is enough of a load for me. Any extra prayers you want to offer in our behalf will be well invested. Not only do I not know where I am, who the members are, or how to help the investigators… but it´s an area that consists in 2 other villages that you have to take buses to get to. I don´t know how to get there, but I do know that the bus to get there is expensive. I bet we will eat very little this transfer because we will spend about 200 pesos or more in train and bus fares. Great diet though.

My new missionary is named Brittany Michelle Godfrey. She´s 21 from Pennsylvania and a music major at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. She´s amazing and speaks the best of all the new missionaries. I am so proud of her. She is very positive, a lovely person and very diligent and we are going to get along great. She is going to be a lifelong friend of mine and I am striving every moment to be the best trainer I can be.

We had a trainer and the reinforcement meeting and then around 7:15 at night we headed out to the mission van with the assistants to drive the hour and a half to Las Heras – campo de campo! (the middle of nowhere) When we got there she and I went up the stairs to find the pench locked – which it should be, but the bad part is that the keys we had were one key short. You guessed it, the key that opens the pench door. Elder Woodmansee and Elder Fox were really cool about it all and we eventually got the landlord to come, who called a locksmith, who changed the lock and we got in--about 10:20. The poor Elders had a good hour and a half drive ahead of them and I felt sad, but it wasn´t our fault about the key thing. We took pictures of it all. My poor new missionary was exhausted and we gave in and all spoke English so that she didn't feel totally isolated. I felt bad not speaking in Castellano because it´s a rule, but I think that there is the spirit of the law that said not to make her first night miserable and lonely.

Being the trainer and having so little to work with on the map and all, we still haven´t even finished unpacking and I am behind in my journal (gasp!) The sacrifices have only just begun, like today when I ate nothing for breakfast and gave her all that we had… a little bit of cereal and a pear. My stomach growled and growled during study, but I felt good inside knowing that I could go hungry and let her eat.

The funny thing about all this resurrect white wash training stuff is that I´m super stressed out, but at the same time the Spirit is so strong that 95% of the time I don´t feel it. It´s like Joseph Smith said – I feel as calm as a summer morning. I am aware of the numbers we don´t have and the distance that separates us from baptizing in 3 weeks. It would be really great to do that, but I am forcing my mind to just not internalize it. Each moment is like, “I´m just going to worry about right now… about finding this street and walking on it until I find this house and knock this door. After that I´ll worry about....” and then when that moment comes I start over, “I´m just going to think about finding a grocery store and then I´ll worry about something else.” It´s like this all day long, but the Lord is really helping me.

One of the little problems I have is that my body has stopped letting me sleep past 5:45 in the morning – even with the herbs that are about to run out (but don´t worry) I use that time to pray and tell my Father that I am in over my head, but He can keep me afloat. And He does. I may be lost, have no food and accidentally street contact the branch president, but I am not alone! (PS I haven´t accidentally street contacted the branch president… not yet anyways!)

But yeah, the weight of the assignment has about taken care of my appetite and I´m fine with that. It gives me 12 minutes more at night to try and get some things in order. The map was not as well kept as I would have expected being as there were sisters here before, but it´s all good.

Mom – I sent home an envelope of letters and 3 CD's of pictures with Sister Johns. When you see her at the airport or later in Church… will you please get them from her? I figured it would get to you much safer and faster than through the mail. Enjoy!

PS – Elder Thompson and I met in the meeting with all the trainers and new missionaries. His trainer is a really good Elder-- Elder Evans. Apparently Elder Thompson had only really good things to say about me to his district – they all knew beforehand that we were neighbors and I think he painted me to be some kind of a hero or something. He seems like a sincere Elder and my companion said that he has a strong testimony. His Castellano is good. I pray that he gets off to a great start!

Nata – yes I got your postcard and loved it. Thanks a bunch!

Jason – thanks for your advice on training – I am reviewing it and putting it all into practice.

Daddy – yeah, it was a tough situation, but we got out, actually we were delivered out.

Now for some random stuff:

It was super hot for a week (like on my birthday) and now it´s cold and rainy again. When it´s hot outside all of the young boys, men and old men decide to walk around shirtless and it just makes me uncomfortable. Who wants to stop and street contact a guy that has no shirt on? Exactly. I wish they would all just keep their clothes on… and the poor Elders I don´t know how they do it… the girls walk around here in next to nothing. I tell ya, the return to virtue is way important. Bring it on!

I have this HUGE sense of urgency like never before. I almost started crying today as it hit me that this is one day less that I have as a missionary. Knowing that I am in my last area, with my last companion, searching for my last converts… it about brings tears to my eyes just to type it. I know you all miss me and are anxious for me to come home, and I am too, but I just die when I think about not being able to wear this name tag anymore. I don´t know how I´m going to take it. I don´t want to lose a single minute and that makes this a little complicated with the details of our new area. We barely started working the week on Wednesday and it isn´t even a full day of work because we´re writing email (with permission) and had to buy food and stuff. I feel like I need to stop time and do all the missionary work and then start it again and let the day end itself. This hurry feeling that I have makes you want to win the lottery and not invest (you want to find those totally ready for the harvest investigators… you don´t want to find those that are waiting for a divorce because you know you´re not going to see it come to fruition. It is weird to feel so much pressure to get it done, and get it done NOW. And it´s all internal, the President hasn´t even mentioned a word to me about needing to step it up, push on the gas and floor it to the finish… it just comes naturally. I don´t know how you could get trunky at this stage… it´s like the last few games of the football season… you´re SAD to see them go, you´re not counting down. This is why it´s hard for me to invest time in doing missionary things instead of missionary work. Missionary things are like meetings, cleaning the apartment, weekly planning, eating, sleeping… stuff that you´ve just gotta do because you´re alive and you´re a missionary. But missionary work is the teaching and baptizing part. That´s what I want to do all day long. If I had my way, I would tell my body to not need lunch and work through it. Sometimes I feel bad when I enjoy missionary things because I see that it´s not missionary work. Like last night when we were talking with the assistants about all the areas we had served in and stuff that happens in the mission… it was fine to do it because there´s no one to teach in the van, but I felt bad because it´s like, “wait, I´m a missionary… I shouldn´t find joy in anything but teaching and baptizing.” But that´s not true. We should find joy in everything… in the road trip to the new area, in the wasted time trying to get the door open… in everything. In buying groceries when you want to proselyte… We must find joy. But I feel like there is so little time left.

My big goal this transfer is to purify myself. I have selected 3 things to eliminate completely. 1. Worldly music. You hear it and it gets stuck in your head, but I´ve got to push it out. 2. Complaining and gossiping. It gets you nowhere and is a poor use of words. And 3. Comparing myself to others. I want SO BADLY to be like the Elders of Rafael Castillo 2 that baptized 13 last transfer, but I just can´t compare myself to them. I just can´t. I need to remember that my Heavenly Father compares me to no one. We are doing this whole purifying ourselves thing as a mission and I know that if we work hard, it will bring us a ton of miracles this transfer. I need all the miracles I can get here in Las Heras.

I love you all so much and feel like in the blink of an eye I will see you all again. Please pray for my missionary. She speaks quite well, but I remember what a struggle it was. Pray for me to give her room to grow. It is so much easier to just do our 20 contacts each day, but I´ve got to let her fly. Let her try. Let her get rejected, even though I don´t want to see her get rejected. I wanted to take all the bad and carry it for her, but I can´t do that. This must be what parenting is like.

Pray for the mission… we are very far out of the bubble where most of us grew up.

Love you all so much,

~~~~~~~~~~~
1 COMMENTS:

ajohns37 said...
You wonderful, amazing friend and fellow missionary mom. Thank you so much for capuring such a special and memorable time for us. Thank you for your super support and love. We will be there for you. Te amo mucho! The familia Johns
SEPTEMBER 5, 2009 9:50 AM

From Hermana Benton

2009-08-28T15:12:00.004-06:00

Thanks Karen. That´s a beautiful article (on the Oquirrh Temple) and the photos are great too.

Your daughter is doing fine. I worked with her all day last Wednesday, walking rocky dirt roads in the heat. Hermana Jensen is a trooper, and a powerful missionary to boot!

When I had used up all my energy and was ready to go home to dinner and bed, she and her companion, Hermana Carrasco were still going strong, heading out the door to walk to a home to do a family home evening, looking real cute and fresh with new perms in their hair that they had done together on their last p-day.

I love those strong, spiritual, hard working girls!

Love,

Hermana Benton

Your Baby Is Getting Old - 23 Years Old!

2009-08-25T19:08:00.009-06:00

Thanks for the awesome birthday wishes! It made me quite happy.

Grandma Olson - I loved hearing that you are a temple worker in the Oquirrh temple. Way to go Grandma! You make me so proud. You are a great example for your posterity.

Grandparents Jensen – thanks for keeping me in your thoughts and prayers. I really feel the power of the prayers offered on my behalf and am grateful for them. I can´t wait to see you all again!

Nata – I´m so pumped to see you all in December. It will be here before we know it. I hope Davy takes to me quickly. I´m so anxious to hold him in my arms and teach him Spanish nursery rhymes. I know some pretty cute ones!

Speaking of things I have learned. Allow me to teach you all how to play “hay un perro muerto” (there is a dead dog)

You are all in a circle and the one who has “it” starts singing

“debajo de mi cama hay un perro muerto y el que diga ____ y _____ se lo comerá”

THERE´S A DEAD DOG UNDER MY BED AND WHOMEVER SAYS --- OR --- HAS TO EAT IT!

In this example I will use “even numbers or multiples of 3”

Then you start counting number by number around the circle. And if you mess up, you´re out and the game starts over with a new set of requirements.

Here w ego “debajo de mi cama, hay un perro muerto, y el que diga números par o multiples de 3, se lo comerá”

1,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,25,29,31,37,41,43,47,49,53

Do you get it? I hope so. We´ll have to play it when I get home.

There´s also this game you play with pennies. You let them roll off your nose and make them bounce into a cake dish. The team that gets the most pennies in while the other team is trying to find the key scripture wins. You go back and forth and it´s fun. I learned it in a “workshop” taught by my district leader. PS my team won!

Remember that way elect family with the 6 year old son that cried in the first lesson? We lost them after the second. It was an awesome lesson with the three of them and the husband and we had a member accompany us that bore testimony after we watched "The Restoration" DVD, but it didn´t take. They are Catholic and they don´t want their kids to be confused. It was tough to lose them. I tried to convince her to pray and think it over, but I hope they get another chance and that they take advantage of it. They would be a lovely family in the gospel.

We had this awesome lesson with ________ - a reference from the family Elder Pollock baptized and he said that he wanted to go to church that Sunday and that he had prayed, but couldn´t understand the answer. He is so sincere during the lessons, but come Sunday morning he is tired and doesn´t come. He will never gain a testimony until he can produce the actions that reflect his faith. We´re going to keep working and find a better way. The problem is that he just switched jobs and now he is almost never available for us to teach him. But we´ll find a way.

I realized how much I had been missing Hermana Benton when she came for interviews (she doesn´t attend those) and I walked into the church and saw her and screamed for joy and ran to give her a big hug. It´s the closest you can come to seeing your real mom, so you take advantage of it! I miss her and that must clue you in on how much I too miss you all!

My interview with the president was a special one. He taught me how to develop charity. He said these things:

The foundation of the atonement is love.

Never let anyone else dictate how you act. How you think or act should not be dictated by someone else´s actions.

Keep your focus on where you´re going on a daily basis (to not get trunky)

Charity is a muscle – exercise it and it will grow.

And my favorite:

You´re better than you think you are. Remember that.

He is so good and is such a great teacher. In my next interview I will teach him for 10 minutes about charity and then I will have finished my study program for the whole mission. I will be presented a pin in front of the mission and it´s a big deal for us.

Thanks to hundreds and hundreds of prayers and tons of ours… Santiago was baptized on Sunday! It was technically my best bautismal service yet because almost nothing went wrong. There was hot water in the font, the witnesses and baptizer showed up, he didn´t have to be baptized twice… it was great.

There has got to be a way to cure my nails. The hangnails are killing me. I perform my own surgery cutting them out every few months and then can´t wash my hair or really use my hands for a few days because of the pain. There has got to be some vitamin I can take to fix this.

Mom - can you do me a favor and send an email to the CLAM (LA mission) and say this:

Sister Jensen mentioned that when she was serving there in a zone conference her picture was taken so that she would be a part of a mission directory that was being made. Is there any way to get a copy of that mission directory?

They said they were going to give me one, but they never did and I want to be able to look up mission buddies from that mission. Thanks!

I hear Hermana Johns about being just worn out. I´m not trunky, trunky, but tired yes. I have days where I´m just like, “do we really have to go out and walk all day again?” Yep! Once you get out in the street, it´s not that bad, but at times I really have to push myself out the door in the morning--that´s where Satan tries to get you. “Just stay home during the morning and go out after lunch…” NO!

We saw Alejo 2 today and he is all injured and has a huge open wound on his side. It´s sad. I wish he could just be put out of his misery, but I don´t know how to get it done. I don´t know if he got in a fight or what, but he´s pretty beaten up.

Don't worry about me....things will get better, every trial makes us stronger. I´m tough and I will accept whatever comes on Monday in transfer meeting. The most important thing is that I can testify that Heavenly Father answers prayers.

I love you all so much and will think of you on Saturday as I am working hard in the heat that is already upon us.

I know the gospel is true. It sustains me. Let it sustain you now and forever!

PS – I get to go to Rolando´s temple sealing! WAHOO!

Wubba,

Hermana Jensen, Pruner, Carrasco, Roy

They even chose the same "I am going to serve a mission" scripture!

Spring's page...

and Stacey's

Great fun and good times!

Special Divisions

Hermana Carrasco, Jensen y Maria Teresa

Deal with it (or toughen up) Padua!

23 years old!

Translation: I am armed!

Trying to get them to open the door...

The pension in Padua

The Medina/Rivera family

Hot, Cold, Humid, and Changing!

2009-08-20T10:08:00.008-06:00

Mom and Dad - Happy 27th anniversary – I´m afraid I´ll forget to say it later, so I´ll say it now.

Hey awesome family. How are you all? I absolutely loved the division in Castelar, even though it was tough to visit some of my converts and see them struggling with their testimonies. Raul is doing great though and was very happy to see me again. A lot of the others weren't home so we couldn't visit them. I tried to visit Azucena, Haydee, and Florencia, but could only leave post-its on the doors. Rolando is in Cordoba and there is a tiny tiny chance that I will get to attend his sealing in the temple in September. That would be a mission dream of mine come true.

Hermana Pruner and I are going to rock the house when we sing in our last transfer meeting, and yes, I will find a way to record it! I´m going to put it on my mission video as a background track.

When we were in divisions I went with her to their district meeting and it was cool to be in the Castelar Zone again. They did something in their district meeting that made me laugh. They set goals-- each companionship for how many lessons they would teach that day with and without a member present and as each said their goal I chuckled to myself as it seemed like they were playing poker. “I´ll see your two “with a member,” and I´ll raise you 3 “others.”(other lessons means without a member present). I laughed.

It was a joy to work with my dear Hermana Pruner – she is like walking charity, but isn´t as bold as me. Somewhere in between she and I is the PERFECT missionary. I would love to be able to serve with her because we would balance each other out so well, but the chances of that are like one in a thousand now.

I was talking to Hermana Di Stéfano the other day and she said that Paula – a woman in Haedo 1 that I worked like crazy with to get her to quit smoking has a baptismal date! She also said that Silvia – the woman that had a baptismal date when I left that later fell through – has another one. So if those 2 get baptized the fruits of my labors will be harvested! It made me really happy to hear it.

Have ya’ll heard of “the plan of destruction” google it. It´s like a little poem about how Satan just tells us there is no hurry. I think I already wrote home about it once, either way, I love it.

I learned to never let Argentine mud dry on your shoes. It will take you about 15 minutes to scrape it all off in the shower afterwards. The mud reminded me of that time when I was helping Daddy put in the sprinkler system at Salinas and I was convinced that if we added a little bit of water it would make it easier to dig the trenches-- then I learned that it just makes things worse. Mud is just a mess no matter what you do.

I was super, super sad when I returned home from living in the mission mansion to find that my companion had lost my awesome giant umbrella. It´s one of the few things I was actually going to bring back to the states with me because it is so awesome. She feels bad, but I feel worse. I had taken such good care of it and it had served me so well. I need it for these last 3 months. Ugh.

Speaking of that time when I lived with the Benton´s… I told the President that I wanted so badly to baptize a family and he said, “You will baptize a family, you just don´t know it yet.” What do you think that means? Sometimes I think the only family I will baptize will be the one I form myself. It´s not that I lack faith, it´s just that it isn´t something that comes easily. I´m going to work as hard as I can to baptize a family, but if it doesn´t happen, I will accept that at least I have been a tool in His hands to bring many individuals and incomplete families to the waters of baptism. I figure I would rather baptize some twenty odd individuals than just one complete family of 4 or 6. Because as I have seen with Dora and Gerardo that followed in Gera´s footsteps and were baptized after him… where an individual is baptized, a door is opened for further missionary work as we work to complete the family.

It was so cold and then it was so hot that I was walking around in my socks and my short dresses and then it was so cold and raining that I froze to death and now it´s just cold in the morning and night, but hot in the afternoon. You cannot win. You have to either carry a jacket and it's heavy and be hot all day, or be super cold at night and have everyone get mad at you for not dressing warmly.

We are so low on mission money this transfer… we don´t know what happened or where it went, but we had like 100 pesos and we were waiting for reimbursements from my blood tests and a heater we bought when my companion prayed for us to be able to make do with the money situation. That very day we got an envelope with 100 pesos from Hermana Pruner that we had left over with her from the division. It was so cool to see how the Lord answers our prayers. The worst of it is that when she prayed for that I thought to myself, “why pray for that?… what can He do to get us more Money?” Oh how wrong I was. The thing is that we shouldn´t have received that envelope for another week, but the office elders were super on top of things and got it to us the day they sent it in. What a miracle!

I finished finding all the footnotes to my patriarchal blessing and it was one of the best activities I have ever done in my personal study. You should all do it. It is amazing to see how our personal scripture is supported by the Standard Works and the examples of those from the scriptures. Do it!

What is going to happen this transfer? Will I train the only new sister missionary we are going to receive or will someone else? Her name is Hermana Godfrey… we saw her picture in the estandarte – along with Elder Thompson´s! He looks more grown up than I imagined he would and I have faith that he will be an asset to the mission. I think I will start to pray for his trainer – whoever it will be.

Speaking of that do you receive the estandarte? Or did you ever? I bet you didn´t for a while because I stopped being an overachiever, but I´m in this one because we were in the top 20. If you get a copy will you let me know? Just curious if the mission is still sending them out to the parents.

Nata – I don´t remember what you were asking about but we use pollera instead of falda. Were we talking about polleras? I´m lost. But I´m super excited to see the present you bought me. Thanks a bunch. I loved the pix you sent me… you are so dang skinny it kills me!

Where do we need your prayers? I will tell you. Santiago is going to be baptized this Sunday, but he is super nervous. He´s totally prepared and all, but he would do it in like 3 months if he had the choice. But we are helping him go forward with faith to reach this date. Please pray for him to not let anything stop him.

Also Brian finally warmed up to us again and he comes to listen to parts of the lessons and says hi to us in the streets again! We want so badly to baptize him on the 30th. He even came to church this past Sunday with Liliana his mom. It was her first time and a true miracle for us. We did have to bring them ourselves, but that is to be expected. Almost nobody comes their first time on their own. Just Raul in Castelar! Anyways… Liliana needs prayers too because she is going to a doctor tomorrow and she has more health problems than we do. That is all the more reason that she needs the gospel – and besides that… we need her to be a support to get her kids in the routine of coming every week to church.

Our motto this week is “all that shines isn´t necessarily gold” – I don´t know if that is translated perfectly, but you get the idea. We have had that happen to us so much this past week. We have people who want blessing...and they shine, but they have no desire whatsoever to be baptized. They just want their child to be healed and don't care about joining the church. _____ – we lost contact with her because she stood us up 3 times. She sincerely wants to know if the church is true, but doesn´t want to make commitments or come to church. We have others that have so much potential, but the trial that I am facing a ton lately is that these need to be 3 week baptisms. Every missionary wants to find, teach, and baptize them--- the 3 weekers. They´re already married, they quit smoking one day to the next, they come to church 3 weeks in a row and you baptize them like that. It's just not the way it seems to fall for me. I have to accept that I may have to work and work with someone for 4 months (or years) and then they will get baptize. It´s still a soul saved, but it requires a ton more time… and when you measure your life in 6 week periods – it´s harder to have the drive to work and work and work for the long term baptisms. The patience that I thought I had mastered is still a struggle of mine. Why can´t everyone be a 3week convert? Oh yeah, 2 Nephi 2 says that there´s just gotta be opposition in all things!

Pray for President Benton – I think he´s still sick. Poor shing.

We went to the temple today and it was lovely, but p-day is gone!

Mom – way to go on girls camp. I am so proud of you.
Dad – I am so excited to hug you again too!
Nata – Are you reading the Liahona in Spanish – if not, I hope you will start.
Jason – I´m really struggling to put my thoughts into lyrics for the song I want you to write. I´ve got writer's block. Any suggestions?
Grandparents - Thanks for all your love, support and prayers.

Gotta run.

I love you more than words can express.
Tell everyone I love them.

A Super Division in Castelar!

2009-08-14T12:42:00.005-06:00

Transfers are on August 31st and the word on the mission street is that I´m training a new missionary in Padua. We´ll see.

Dad – WAY TO GO get that referral sent in! I am so proud of you and hope that you all take advantage of each and every opportunity you have to be missionaries. In fact, everyone should go and buy a paperback Book of Mormon and put it in their car and then when the Lord puts someone in their path, dedicate it and give it away.

Mom – the paper was torn more or less. Not terrible, but not lovely....but what matters is that all the treasures inside were just fine!

The cough is almost gone. Every once in a while I have to let myself cough, but it sure hurts to do it! Sleeping is more painful because my body never did learn how to sleep on my back, sleeping on my stomach is bad for my spine, and on my sides puts weird pressure on the ribs so I can´t quite get into a good position to sleep. I went in this past week and had blood and urine work done because Dr. Garcia wants to check on my kidney functions and other things because of all the weird problems I have had lately. I figured it was best to just go ahead and do it to get rid of the doubt. I sent the results in and we´ll see what he thinks about it all--but my feet are cured.

Dad – my comp and I both discovered the other day that our fathers told us very few stories about their missions and we want to hear some. I cannot wait to hear A TON of mission stories, but until then, I want you to send me a few. Por favor!

Nata – I hope you had a blast in Madrid
NATA JASON – don´t hate me because I forgot to wish you a happy anniversary. Wow – 5 years! How awesome is that!

In Argentina you can buy chips loose - like by 100 grams. 200 grams of potato chips is too much for 2 sister missionaries. I learned that this week.

One of my zone leaders told me to start praying for my street contacts right there in the street after they reject me (in my head, obviously) and I started putting it in practice. I found that I was less frustrated with the rejection because I would think something like “Heavenly Father, the next time some of Thy missionaries tries to save the soul of that person, please bless them to listen.” And then I don´t feel so bad (in the words of that famous girl from the Sound of Music – can´t remember her name).

Can you even believe that I hit 15 months this past week? That is like a super long time. Did I already tell you that makes me “viejita” translated little old, but it means like little old lady, not little old, it´s like A LOT old. The language is weird. 15-18 months is the viejita stage. And I am now in it! I bought a pretty blue glittery number 15 candle and we put it on top of the calzones we bought because our lunch appointment stood us up for no good reason.

Mom – Sister Benton told me a little bit about that feeling you had that I would be home in July, but I didn´t catch that you had it twice and I didn´t catch that it was clear back in March. Wise choice not telling me, I would have gone ballistic. I totally see that it was referring to the mission home. It is the closest to home that there is and like your friend said – I was with my mission parents in their home. We knelt together for family prayer every night and everything. And as I already said I was able to get a “Father´s blessing” from my mission Dad. I felt totally at home and well-taken care of.

In Argentina in the windows of the clothing stores there are plus- sized mannequins. The other day we walked past one and it stopped me in my tracks because I had never seen one before. Do we do that in the states too?

Remember the mangy dog 'Alejo 2' that follows us around a bunch? This past week he was following us around for over 6 hours from appointment to appointment and he got in some pretty vicious fights with the other stray dogs of the neighborhood. I thought he might not make it out of one of them. I wish he would just leave us alone.

Sunday was Child Day “día del niño” and it meant that it was even tougher than normal to get investigators (and members) to come to church. I tell you, if there is one thing that makes the work difficult it is holidays.

Remember Mauro and Adriana – or did I not tell you about them? Nope I didn´t because we found them on Wednesday. Here is what happened. It was late and we were short on contacts. My comp needed more than me, so I told her to do the next one and there was a family – parents and 3 year old daughter – walking towards us in the dark. She let them pass by, so I stopped them and backed up a little to contact them. I immediately realized why my comp had let them go. The mom was crying. I said, “We´re missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ and it looks like we´ve found you in a tough minute – is there anything we can do to help?” The dad then went on to tell us that they had just found out that their 11 month old baby is really sick and the doctors don´t think he is going to make it. Right then and there we started explaining the Plan of Salvation. We left them a pamphlet, said a prayer, and set an appointment to come back when they could really receive us. After the prayer, which my comp said, I felt the need to testify about Davy and how Heavenly Father is a God of miracles. I got about half-way through the story and we were all 4 of us crying and there was a very strong feeling of faith and hope. We left and it was one of those incredible missionary moments where you feel like you are really doing the work. Really doing what you came to do. And the miraculous part is that we had walked that last block by accident. We were supposed to turn one block earlier. We wouldn´t have found them.

We came back and watched Together Forever with them and they felt the Spirit a lot. We committed them to come to church on Sunday – even though it´s the Child Day and are you ready for this… they came! They showed up just after the sacrament was passed, but who cares?! I saw them come in, grabbed a Young woman to go out with me, left my comp with our investigator and brought them back to sit with us. They were both mesmerized and paying attention and the speakers spoke about death and resurrection and faith and it was a great meeting for them to be in.

They weren´t able to keep the appointment last night, but we have another one for this Friday with members to accompany us!

Unfortunately they aren´t married, but there are no divorces pending that we know of. Their baby Agustin is weak. His muscles just don´t seem to work, but he grows normally. No doctor can find the cause or treat it.

The investigator who was with my comp is named Marta. She is from Bolivia and we found her last Monday. We are trying to find her husband to teach him, but so far we have just found some other family member (like distant cousin) who lives there named Lydia. I plan to baptize the whole house of Bolivians next transfer! Marta stayed almost all 3 hours in church and it was really great.

You know what people here hate? Particularly women… skirts. They refuse to come to church because they don´t wear skirts. They just don´t. We tell them they don´t have to, and then they say, “but I would feel bad and out of place if everyone else is in a skirt and I´m not.” It is sad because they aren't going to try coming to church because they don´t like skirts and so that´s it. It´s a battle that you just can´t win.

Today we received special permission from President Benton to have lunch with the sisters from Castelar – Hermanas Roy and Pruner-- and then I get to go with Sister Pruner to CASTELAR until Thursday! That is a super division and we´re not even in the same zone… it´s like totally something that only the President can OK and he did! I´m going to get to go and see all of my converts except Rolando who is in Cordoba with his fiancé. I´m so excited you don´t even know! We practiced "All My Days" (but in Castellano) and we are going to sing it in the last transfer meeting. That was the main reason that we got permission to do such a super (more than 24 hours) division. President Benton is so great!

Your question about if I have that unconditional love for the people… almost. It´s not something I automatically have for ALL people--yet...but I do love the people, and I want them to have the gospel, but I understand that it is not free, nor is it cheap. You gotta want it and you gotta earn it. But I´ve been studying charity all week and I´m getting better and better. What I can say is that there are MANY, MANY people that I do love instantly and unconditionally. Like the new family we found yesterday. Sandra and her two sons Elias and Diego. We had contacted them in the street one day a week or 2 ago and set up an appointment to teach them, but when we went we ended up at the wrong Bertole 1184. We later found out there are 2 houses with the same number, on different blocks, so we went to the other one the next time we were in that area and found her. We taught the three of them and in the middle of the lesson her 6 year old son Diego started crying and she took him in her lap and asked him what was wrong. He said nothing. She asked if he was sad and he shook his head no. At this point my mind was racing and I began to think, “maybe he feels the Spirit – we are teaching them about the Restoration – that is what we would hope is happening – that the Spirit would testify to their hearts that is is true as they hear this message.” And then she asked him, “do you like what they are saying?” My heart stopped because I knew that if he said no, that was pretty much chausaso (means like BIG Goodbye) to the family because she is never going to let us back in her house and really never going to come to church if her son doesn´t like our message and it makes him cry, and then he nodded his head YES! Relieved like you can´t imagine I took advantage of it and said that children being so pure can really feel the Spirit. She said that he is really sensitive and I told her a little bit about how I was like that when I was a kid and we saved the lesson. We went back to the first vision and it was a great lesson. The downer is that her husband works a lot. With the mission schedule we will pretty much never meet him and he works 24 hours straight on Sunday. Ouch. It´s tough to baptize a complete family if the dad is NEVER home. But we prayed that he can be able to quit the second job (which is the weekend one) and be in the home more. They are a Catholic family, but seemed quite open. They knew members from the neighborhood that moved to the states and it looks really good for the next appointment and we softly talked about church this Sunday, but we´re going to commit them to come on Friday when we go back.

______ didn´t come to church because she doesn´t want to be rushed. I try to understand that, but it´s just so hard to be patient in the work. You just naturally want everyone to get baptized in 3 weeks and go to the temple in a year. She said she doesn´t want to come until she´s sure, but we explained that she´ll actually get her answer by going and seeing how she feels in the meetings. We used the ever-famous Buenos Aires Oeste example of how you can´t know that a cake is yummy until you try it, but it didn´t win her over. She stood us up yesterday, so we lost contact, but we´re going to find her again and work on her some more.

Wow, the hour is gone.

I love you tons!

I miss ya.

Don´t worry about me!

But pray for our investigators!

This Is The Lord´s Work And There Is Nothing Better In The Whole World!

2009-08-05T09:02:00.019-06:00

Dear Familia,

It was an eye opening experience to return to the “mission field” alter almost 10 days in the mission mansion. I literally felt the mantle fall on me for a second time. All of the sudden I felt the weight, the pressure, and the stress realizing that the salvation of the people in Padua is directly related to what we do there. I felt it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was kind of like those first few days in Heritage Halls – Rogers 97 when I moved to BYU as a scared 17 year old freshman. Except this time I knew EXACTLY what I was getting back in to and how to handle it all. Sure, the first few days were kind of like, “wow, I forgot how heavy this load can be.” But after that, I got right back into my bold “repent, ye, repent ye” preaching missionary self. I have been able to maintain and even expand the new vision I developed for the work and yesterday was one of the best days I have ever had in the mission.

It started in district meeting. The APs randomly showed up to talk to all of us in Merlo and they taught us about how we need to really believe that our area (whatever it is) is the BEST area in the mission and in the whole world. I didn´t know quite how to do that at first, but luckily the Lord had a wonderful plan for the rest of our day. I learned yesterday that San Antonio de Padua really is the best area in the world.

We taught a new investigator they found last week (with her next door neighbor member) and it was an incredible lesson. ______ has 3 kids, is MARRIED and her oldest son turned 8 on Thursday WAHOO! Her husband is nice. We haven´t taught him yet, but when he answered the door he treated us so well. He was leaving for work, but was very, very welcoming. She is Catholic, but doesn´t agree with baptizing babies and her eyes are opened to see that she needs to find the true church. She sincerely wants to know if this is it and it was an incredible lesson. She committed to come to church with us this Sunday.

Before that lesson we were knocking doors and found a Bolivian woman who is also MARRIED and was short on time, but listened for a quick lesson and also agreed to come to church on Sunday… we´ll see, but it was awesome.

Later in the afternoon we sat down in the front yard with a family and taught them. They are great parents and have 4 children and they are sincerely looking for a way to keep them from falling into utter destruction with the wickedness of the world. They aren´t married and may have Word of Wisdom issues but I was super bold with them and challenged them to come to church with us this Sunday and see how it will change their lives and bless their family-- and they accepted! It wouldn´t be a 3 week baptism (because marriage takes at least a month), but it is a family with a ton of potential and they sincerely want to find security.

If those 3 lessons weren´t enough, then we went to _____ (the investigator who was going to be baptized from 2 months ago) and set another date for her. She accepted August 23. Attendance and tithing will be the struggles, please pray for her – she is super poor and too ill to work for now.

Then we went to ______ and he accepted the same date! He had come to church with us this past Sunday and we finally got him to accept the date. We tried a few days ago and he just wouldn´t say yes, but this time we got him to say yes.

Talk about a good day. We caught the bus, did our last contacts and prepared for p-day!
Oh, and I forgot to tell you that ______ also accepted that date. We will have 3 baptisms! (provided that all make it, but that is why we have faith… they will make it). He hasn´t smoked in 4 days and even though it is super hard for him, I know that the Lord can help him quit. I was dumbfounded when he smoked again after drinking the nicotine tea because according to Elder folklore it is fool proof.

Now that I´ve told you about the best day I´ve had in the mission, allow me to tell you some random funny things. The other day we passed 2 teenage boys sitting on a ledge in the street and one of them crossed himself as he saw us. He must have been a little confused… we are not Catholic, nor are we the Virgin Mary, but I got a kick out of it. And then a man in the street said I sounded Ukrainian (I get that a lot) and asked how long I´d been here. When I told him 14 months he was all disappointed and said I should speak better – especially being American. I can´t lie I was pretty insulted. Fortunately I have been told by many that I speak better than most non-natives--but to make the insult worse, just as we left he said with a chuckle “que le salga mejor el Castellano.” Which means “hope Castellano leaves your mouth better.” In the famous words of Stephanie from Full House “HOW RUDE!”

So I got a letter the other day and Petree´s wife is due in November and Dewey´s wife had a baby in June. Crazy!

Today we took a train to Merlo for p-day and went shopping. I bought the most beautiful hand- made scarf that you have ever seen. Literally. It is like 3 different blues and too gorgeous to wear. It was $30 pesos – like 7 dollars US and I am so in love with it. I also bought Jason a souvenir it took 15 months to find something PERFECT for him, but I´ve got it now! I´m not telling, so quit trying to get it out of me!

Nata – I hope you had a great time in Spain. I can´t believe you ran into Aaron McBride… what a small world! Literally. How cool was it to do a temple session in Madrid! I know how you feel… it´s hard to get it all right. Did you buy me something nice?

Mom- enjoy girls camp… you are so lucky to have such a great calling!

Daddy – sleep in a wet t-shirt. It won´t ruin the bed and it will change your life--it did ours without air conditioning in sweltering heat--you will love it!

Oh – and there is no job working in the mission home as a secretary or anything… I was inventing that because I thought– how cool would it be to be able to stay on the staff, but with more privileges and less rules? It doesn´t exist, but it would be really fun.

Mom- they did open my package, but Sister Pollock put everything back in. How do I take the natural sleeping tablets… it doesn´t say how many? I´m super excited to eat the Reeses Pieces… I´m saving them for a special occasion.

We had a Gira Misional meeting – I don´t know what it is in English, but my companion and I volunteered (because Pres. Really wanted us to – he told me beforehand) to commit a pretend investigator (Hermana Johns) to come to church in front of 4 zones (approx. 70 missionaries) and a General Authority, Elder Zivic from the Seventy. It went well and President was content with our volunteering to do it. I had a heads up, because he told me the day before what the topic would be, but my companion and I had been separated for 10 days and couldn´t practice at all before going up to do it. Luckily we taught with great unity and fluidity because we are such a great, close companionship to begin with! I missed Hermana Carrasco so much and we are so happy to be together again.

Three days before returning to the field the cough and muscle pain came back and the doctor put me on nebulization for a week. I finished and sent the machine back. The cough is gone, but the muscle pain remains. It´s just life. My loose floating ribs stab me and ache. That is my current battle. Not to mention the raging athletes foot I got from all the antibiotics they put me on. A few of my toes are totally purple with problems. They burned and itched and didn't respond well to any medicine – even prescriptions. It´s just about healed, but that was a hassle that only added to my discomfort for almost 2 weeks.

On Sunday in testimony meeting nobody went up for a couple of minutes and I was contemplating getting up to break the silence, but a part of me wanted to see how long silence would fill the room. I was about to let the experiment continue when this thought came to my mind. “Can you imagine if the Savior walked in right now and saw that nobody was testifying?” He might say, “is there no one here who can bear testimony of me?” and of course we would all jump to our feet and run to the pulpit and say “I can, I can!” So what did I do? I jumped up faster than you can imagine and went straight to the pulpit to testify of my Savior. I couldn´t bear the thought of Him walking in and seeing NOBODY standing there.

I love the mission. I not only love the work… now I am living for it! Please pray for our investigators – the adversary tries so hard to get in the way and stop their progress. We go to the temple on the 18th and I am super excited!

If my intuition is right, I´m staying in Padua until I finish the mission and I´m training a new missionary next transfer.

How is the family? I found an awesome puzzle of the waterfalls at Iguazu, but it was 58 pesos and I just couldn´t do it. I´ll try to find another less-expensive one before November. I want to write Cameron and Tyler if I can just find the time, but I am behind on letters because I spent ALL last p-day finishing the Book of Mormon (I read it in one week!) and all the p-day before getting the mini from Catan so that I could go back to the mission home.....so I haven´t written and I owe letters to Megan, Kristen, Jecca… I´ve got work to do.

I pray for you so much and hope that the states can withstand the corruption. Oh, another random story… you have got to see the way people give directions here. It´s a trip. They use their hands and make funny across the street motions and never, ever use north, east, south, or west. They just use one hand and say “on this side of the street.” Hello – that doesn´t help if you are facing one way and go to that side of the street or if you are facing the other way it´s the other way. It kills me. The worst part is that now I am doing it too!

I can´t even believe how many plans and goals I have for my life. I want to do so many things it´s almost funny. I´ve never been so happy, even though I´m still in pain and it´s cold and hot in the same day so you have to take off your coat and carry it around. This is the Lord´s work and there is nothing better in the whole world.

Once last week I accidentally let my eyes wander in the home and saw a clip of a basketball game and this guy went for the 3 and swished it and I confess… my heart skipped a beat. For a second I was back in the Marriott Center dressed in blue and screaming for the cougs. I felt bad afterwards, but for a second I remembered all that fun!

Gotta go. I love you so much and hope that you all have a splendid week.
Take care, take luck, HAVE JOY!

Chilling with Señorita Evita

2009-07-29T05:48:00.012-06:00

Señorita Evita is the Benton's cat and I have been resting and hanging out with her a lot lately!

When I got here and was sleeping in a comfy bed with sheets and thought about the hot water shower and the food that I would be offered, at first I thought that I would turn it all down and not take advantage of it. I thought I was going to be like Uriah who said that he couldn´t possible go home to visit his wife, knowing full well that his men were out fighting in the battles, but then I remembered that it was that kind of attitude that got him killed. So from the get go I said yes to every time they offered me anything special. Peanut butter, ranch, bacon! steak, ice cream, sleeping in, taking naps… I said yes to it all! But I still was very helpful to them in every single little detail. I cleaned, I served, I cooked, I washed… I was like Annie. I told them I had to earn my keep. They laughed. :)

FYI : So when I was in the hospital, my companion was usually at my side or right outside the door just waiting around and trying not to be worried about me. The assistants were outside on the phone dealing with endless problems.
In this adventure I have been treated to McDonald's on the mission twice! Talk about spoiled, and the Benton´s took me out to eat at this American restaurant called Kansas near the mission home. There was valet parking and I ordered salmon with yummy potatoes and a salad. The appetizer we shared was cheese covered potato wedges and it was divine. We went back to the mission mansion for dessert and ordered Freddo´s ice cream. YUM.
The Benton´s are so much fun and absolutely hilarious. You are going to be the best of friends and they are very anxious to meet you. I tried to explain 'Rage' to them and Phase 10, I think they´ll pick up on them quick. President Benton LOVES having people over for fancy dinners. On Sunday he invited the 6 office Elders and we had steak, baked potatoes, corn on the cop, rolls, salad, ice cream and oreos. We all kinda miss American food… can ya tell? It was like a scene from Pride and Prejudice because he gave us all a topic to research (examples from the scriptures of people using their agency wisely and unwisely) which we later used as the after dinner spiritual discussion. I kind of felt like we were being evaluated to see what we would all contribute to the conversation and being the only sister I was even more nervous to make sure to hold my own. He seemed happy with my contribution with Jonah as the bad example and Ruth as the good one… he likes people who are loyal! Then those who can play the piano were invited to select a hymn and everyone else stood around the Steinway and Sons grand piano and we sang hymns. I played Be still my soul flawlessly as I had been practicing it all week long.

This part will shock you: I have loved this week in the mission home. I finally got to take advantage of some long needed R&R and solitude to really just think and be myself. I was completely blessed to just be calm and not stress about the fact that I wasn´t working because I knew that 2 others were. The Lord answered my prayers and helped us get the mini and I have been keeping in touch with the work and all, but I have been able to just let myself BE here and know that I will soon BE there. I have been having thousands of conversations with President and Sister Benton and have received so much counsel on just about every subject. Not just about the mission and the work, but about how much President thinks I should get an advanced degree and be a lawyer-- as to what kind of man I will find and marry and how I will win him. President says that I need to wait for the one who deserves me and that I´ll probably find him in law school. Sister Benton taught me about how I don´t need to downplay my strengths, I just need to use them to support instead of compete. They are both so wise and so interested in me and my life. They sincerely care about me and want me to have the best of the best. They are just like my real parents. They are very spiritual of course, they don´t play mind games and they don´t make you feel dumb. They relate everything to the gospel and are strictly obedient.

One night the pain was really severe and I asked President for a blessing and he gave me one that reminded me of my Daddy´s blessings… clear, sure, and inspired. There is nothing like a Father´s blessing – be it your real father, or your mission father… they are just amazing! I feel so blessed to have been raised in a home where I always could count on a Father´s blessing when I needed it.

To answer your question… the hardest thing to leave will be them. President and Sister Benton are so important to me. I will miss them dearly, but in under 2 years they will be finishing their mission and I will be able to see them again.

The dislodged ribs were quite painful, but they have settled back into place and now I just have a residual cough that may last a month more. Lame.Mom – would you be so kind as to make President and Sister Benton one of your beautiful cards and send it to them for having taken care of me this week? Thanks!

This week I have been a mini assistant helping them with details and translation and stuff. They really appreciate me and keep telling me how great I am and how I would make a great assistant. I decided that my dream would be to return to the mission field in the next day or two, finish my mission and then just move into the mission home and be their personal assistant until they finish and then we can all come home together. I bet you don´t think that´s the best idea because I´d still be here and not there, but I´d have the freedom to write and call and text and all that jazz, so we would be as close as we were when I was in college. And of course I would come and visit for a little while first. I think what dawned on me is that I want to do some kind of work like this… taking care of all the little details for people who are too busy with more important things. I can be a good personal assistant.
I have been reading the Book of Mormon and highlighting some 25 odd key words in various colors to see just where each topic is discussed in it. It is so cool to do that! I have never read it so fast and never had such a great experience doing it. I can´t wait to show you how beautiful it is! I´m going to finish it today.

Conditions here: a Villa Miseria is a dangerous part of town where the really poor people just build little shacks that sometimes have electricity, sometimes not that are usually like 4 walls and a roof of that bumpy tin material – my English is failing me. One is right up next to the other so they share that wall. They sometimes have brick walls too. They are so humble and so small and very dangerous at night. We drove by one the other day and I was pretty floored as it occurred to me that people live there.
In my area there are many humble homes that are just built of giant bricks and uneven mortar. They don´t have real walls or ceilings, but they all have electricity. Cement floors that are uneven and breaking, if you are lucky you have a heater to plug in, if not, you bundle up and all sleep together on one bed. Poor people have dirt, normal people have cement, rich people have grass, wealthy people have live green grass. Dirt roads, stray dogs, little food. The family we are working with lives on under $300 US a month and has 4 children and needs a ton of medication each month. Other homes could pass for the states, it all comes down to what street you live on and how much money you have. The mission mansion for example… you don´t even realize you´re in Argentina except for the fact that all the appliances are in Castellano, but we are also in Acasusso which is a really rich town. Padua is not considered “campo” but it is not really city either. It has parts of city and parts of ghetto. One thing that is pretty common is for people to just move into an abandoned house and make it their own until someone comes to kick them out. It´s not legal, but that is what many needy people do, like this family we´re working with. They just found this empty house and moved in.

Guess what?!! President Benton said that I would be able to go on a division with Sister Pruner before we both finish the mission! I was so excited. He treats me like a princess sometimes.

I ran a few errands with Maria who cooks and cleans here and I was coughing almost the entire time. The cold air seems to get to me, but I can´t just hide away until winter is over. I´m going to go back to work tomorrow or the next day and find a way to just not cough. Supposedly it was Bronchitis and not Pleural Effusion or Pneumonia, but all I know is that I was sick and the Lord put me in the mission home to teach me a lot of things.

From what I have been told ________ started smoking again, but is quitting again and he even went to all 3 hours of church on Sunday. Romina was confirmed! ______ returned from Lobos or Chacabuco or wherever he was and is giving us trouble, but we will get him baptized. Lisbeth and Julio decided to get married, they just have to go and do it! And there is a lot of hope with Santiago because Beatriz (his wife, the mom of Nico) is really coming back strong to the church. I know that we can have a ton of success this transfer and I am just about ready to get back out and cough all day long in the street if I have to!

I love the mission so much and have a new vision of how I want to serve. I see things a different way now and I am ready to put in practice a bunch of things I have learned here. But one thing is for sure… I am so patient… imagine a high-strung sister missionary like me just chilling with Señorita Evita in the mission mansion for a week… the Lord has refined me and opened my eyes and I am ready to show the whole world how better a person and missionary I can be. I have just over 4 months left in His full-time service and I am ready to work every single day I have.

I pray for you a ton and hope that everyone is healing from their surgeries. I know that the Lord hears prayers. I have never felt to privileged. This time has been priceless to me because I have learned so much. I do not regret for one second that I am here “resting” in the mission home. The Lord put me here for a reason and I learned that I am not dispensable. The work will always go forward.

I love you so much and hope that the heat doesn´t get to you. I will drink lemon water and as far as meat goes… we get little, so don´t stress about it.

I am so happy, I only see the good. I love you tons!

If The Lord Loves You And You Know It Clap Your Hands!

2009-07-22T16:49:00.020-06:00

CLAP CLAP!

So much to tell, where do I start? How about with random stories like I usually do:

A few weeks back we stopped and talked to this young guy on his patio and street contacted him. He then told us that he was actually a member that hadn´t gone to church in years. Those are always awkward, but the even more awkward part of the situation came as his girlfriend sitting on a lawn chair about 10 feet away starting throwing rocks at us. None of them hit us, but it was really funny because we were literally being attacked and stoned! I got a kick out of it. Then this past week we stopped an older woman to contact her and she told us that the dogs are better than humans because they have life and I said, “so do I” and she said yeah and something that really floored us because we couldn´t understand it. Then she started speaking in tongues! Or at least not the Spanish tongue. She was blessing us and then in the end you could tell she had said something like, “away with you now.” We wondered if she was being serious but you never can tell.

On Sunday Romina, Yamila, and Nicolas were baptized, but unfortunately on Sunday only Yamila and Nicolas were confirmed… and we barely managed that. The details are exhausting and all have to do with people keeping commitments. The crazy part is that Romina finally came around to being baptized because one night she was waiting for her mom to come out of a store and she was really cold and she started to pray that her mom would come out quickly and then about 5 minutes later the mom came out and she told her she felt the spirit so strongly that she had decided to be baptized. I´ll take it… whatever works. She has nothing against being confirmed, it´s just that she said she could do it next Sunday and it´s all the same… she will be confirmed this Sunday, but the bishop would have rather it been that day.

We got electricity on Friday and we were very, very happy to be so blessed. The mission

didn´t think that it would go down that way, but the light company wasn't truthful and said we would have electricity in 48 hours--we didn't.

My trunky papers only ask me for the stake president, the name of the stake, and the name of the airport where I want to arrive. Are we in the Copperview stake? Since I never really lived there I don´t even know my own ward or stake…

Did you guys get some letter from a Seventy discouraging you from picking me up? Another missionary said that her parents were going to come get her, but then they got this letter saying that it is best to not. Just curious. I´m super looking forward to the airport reunion in my own hometown.

The transfer was quite successful even with all the obstacles that we faced… 126 converts as a mission! I was pleasantly surprised to see San Antonio de Padua appear on the jumbo screen as number 13 in overall efficiency and then I was pretty

content to win the scarf for the zone of Merlo… and with a white wash too! Take that Satan… you cannot stop this work!

The pictures; one is of the map we made for Padua to be able to plan better each night, one is of my companion and I during the move, and one is of the Botta family.... Yamila is next to me and Romina is the older daughter, and one is of the zone Merlo.

Ok, then I guess it´s time to ´fess up and tell you that I have pneumonia, and pleurisy. On Tuesday Hermana Benton told me to start taking Amoxicillin and on Wednesday I was given a blessing and we decided we had to go to a clinic. On Saturday and Sunday we worked less than normal because of me and it made me feel quite guilty. On Monday I was coughing and all the sudden something inside started stabbing me, (or that´s how I described it) and we went with the APs to the hospital. A bunch of x rays and tomagraphs showed that I was recovering from pneumonia and that the infection was minor. They put me on more amoxicillin and other meds and sent me home for 5 days of rest. Hermana Benton had us sleep in the mission home last night after the whole hospital run.Try starting off a transfer with nobody working… it doesn´t go well. I pled with the Lord in my prayer that night that He would help us find someone to work with my companion in Padua for 5 days and I started calling people. My old mini couldn´t, but she recommended a ward missionary from her ward in Catan 3 who could! We made plans to have her meet us in Padua, but it rained and rained all day and the streets in Catan flooded and it took her over 3 hours to get a remis that could get her here. The worst of it is that we were waiting and waiting for her and I finally called to see how long ago she had left and they hadn´t left at all. She finally got a remis and now we are waiting an hour and a half for her to get here, then I go to the mission offices and then the President or somebody will get me to the mission home – which is a good 45 minutes away.

DON'T WORRY about me… it´s just a little pneumonia – nothing that meds and rest can´t fix. I am going to start the Book Of Mormon over again and try to enjoy a little solitude. I am going to try not to worry about Padua, but you can´t even imagine how much it destroys me to not be able to work these 7 days (counting Monday and today). I feel terrible and want nothing more than to be well and able to work in the cold, muddy, rainy streets of Argentina. It is not fun at all to be a missionary that can´t work.

I got my package and LOVED it! Thank you so much. Didn´t you say you were going to send me a picture of Daddy wearing a funny shirt? Whatever happened to that? Thanks for all the fun things you sent me. The Ranch powder is probably my favorite. I met the Pollock family and they were very nice!

Thanks for everything. Don´t worry about me. Don´t even begin to worry about me. Hermana and President Benton are taking good care of me.Talk about putting a little more slack in the chain… after this I´ll have to put some chain in the slack!

I love you!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ajohns37 said...
We didn't realize she was so sick. Our computer has also been sick. Our prayers and thoughts are with her. They have a wonderful mission mom and dad (the Benton's) and will be taken care of. Hope all else is well. Love, the Johns Family
JULY 28, 2009 9:58 AM

Out Of Nowhere A Dog Ran Right Into The Back Of My Legs!!!

2009-07-16T11:31:00.015-06:00

Querida familia,

Yes, yes. It is important to relax.

Relaxing mentally is something that I crave more than you know. I long for a moment of true solitude. I have been with a companion for so long that I don´t remember what it´s like to just be alone for a second. I think about that a lot… about how much I would just like to sit down for a second all alone in a silent room and think about what I´m doing and what I want to do and all that jazz. I´m trying to find a way to relax mentally a little bit each day. I agree that it is important.

I also long for a little R&R physically. I don´t know what I´ve got, or how long until it runs its course, but I¨m telling you that my cough has mutated several times. At first it was just a dry itchy one, then for a little while it was sharp, then it went deep to the lungs, then it went dry again, and now I spontaneously get coughing attacks from breathing. Hermana Benton says that I´ve just got to let it heal itself. I finished all the day and NyQuil that I brought with me and have since converted to Argentine cough syrup. It is a one tsp. dosage and not that terrible, but I notice no relief whatsoever. FYI- child Proof lids do not exist here. They all think it´s pretty cool and that they should copy us and I would have to agree. It´s one of those things that you just take for granted in the states.

Cough drops… no help either. I am weak and just want to stop time and sleep it off. I could say “we´re stayin´in the pench this morning” but that would not help me mentally because I would just feel overwhelmed and stressed about the numbers and the weekly minutia of catching up for the lost time. So far kidney stones are the only thing strong enough to keep me in the pench. But if I could stop time from passing I would treat myself to a good long nap to get over this cold and not feel guilty about losing proselyting time.

Mom – I´m going to do my best to find a way to try and do “chalk”. Sounds like fun. Thanks for sending it to me.

On Monday I get my trunky papers, so I´ll need to know the name of our stake president. Thanks.

We have been living in the new pench without electricity for 7 days now and it´s cold. That´s not entirely true. Our neighbor is sharing his electricity with us, which means that we can turn lights on, but we can´t run a fridge or a heater. I only learned on day 5 that it can handle a blow dryer. Learning curve. If the light people don´t come today, I´m going to be super bummed. The sleeping bag is my best friend, but it´s still cold at night. The apartment has no heating system and it´s winter. Full on winter.

It gets better. We actually had no water, gas, or electricity for like 2 days. Then we got gas, then we got shared lights and water. I will have to explain that all to you some other day. But having your own water is really important. All things are spiritual… when we finally got shared electricity… it occurred to me how lights (the Light of Christ) really is EVERYTHING. You can´t live without it. You can survive, but it is not a life well-lived.

Random “that only happens in Argentina” store: the other day I was walking with my comp on the sidewalk and this dog OUT OF NOWHERE ran right into the back of my legs I´m saying it charged right into me going full-speed. Imagine the shock that that would send you as you are hit by a dog. I don´t know if it was blind or what, but I sure yelled at it and then I threw a rock at it when it wouldn´t leave us alone. That´s what you have to do here… throw rocks at the dogs that give you a hard time. Sad but true.

Another dog story: there is an Alejo 2 that now follows us around our new apartment. I don´t know if we missionaries have a scent or what, but the dogs know us. It´s lame.

Last dog story. The other day there was this mommy dog and her 3 puppies drinking her milk and she all of the sudden decided that she had to head for the fence to check something out, so she got up and started for the fence. Her unsuspecting puppies were totally confused and were still drinking as she started to run for it. One of the poor puppies was dragged a good foot and a half before he fell to the ground. I was so mad at her that I yelled at her and told her she was a terrible mom. I wanted to go and pick the puppy up and coddle it, but I learned long ago not to touch dogs… ever.

Stuff you learn in Argentina: how to manipulate the way you pay for things to obligate them to give you change back. Instead of paying for something that costs 3 with a 5, you give them 2 2s so that they have to give you a coin 1 peso back. They know it too, so sometimes you have to lie and say that you don´t have it the other way. It´s something that still takes me a while to figure out. In line I carefully think about which way I want to pay, using which number bills to best rig what change they have to give me back. It is something that they just know. Oh, pay with this and then they have to give you this…. I´m very slow at it, but starting to get the hang of it.

Remember on the Alaskan cruise that night show when the woman changed her clothes/dress like 14 times really fast? Well, one of the songs that played during that show is the background for an ad that plays all the time here and so every time I hear it I think about the illusions of the girl that changed dresses super fast. I´m going to match it again when I get home… there has to be a way to figure out their secrets!

Quick story. In the beginning of my mission I bought oranges one day and was tricked into buying juicing oranges – that are no fun to eat. I was so mad that I rebelled and for about 9 months didn´t buy or eat a single orange (though I ate a TON of mandarin oranges). Then the other day we were given oranges in a take home lunch and I was hungry. My eyes were opened as I remembered how sweet and wonderful oranges are. So ever since then we have been eating oranges! I love them so much, even though I hate peeling them because my nails are short and weak. But I love oranges again… and mandarin oranges are dumb.

We are working hard with ______ to help him quit smoking, but he stood us up for the mini sacrament lesson on Sunday and we don´t know why. We are going to visit him tonight and find out. I really want him to progress because he wants to be baptized so badly. Those who want to be baptized always have a ton of obstacles and those who have fewer obstacles don´t care to be baptized. Lame.

Mom – President wants you to find and send me a talk by Elder Oaks called “doing and becoming.” He says it will help me. I´m sure if it will help me, it will also help you! Let´s read it!

The other day we went to the church to do our morning studies in the kitchen where we lit the burners to heat the room (a common heating practice in Argentina) and I was still cold, so I put a chair on top of the counter and sat on the table with my feet flying over the burner. Yep, you guessed it, I burned my nylons! I didn´t burn my feet or the socks I was wearing under them, but I have a giant hole in my nylons.. the price I pay to try and defrost my ETERNALLY frozen feet. The best warmest socks I brought still don´t even begin to keep you warm and toasty. I think that after the mission I will become obsessed with buying warm socks. Oh wait, I already was.

Mommy – what is the mission blog site? Hermana Carrasco wants to send it to her mom. Thanks.

Nata – I hope that you are all well. I look forward to seeing you in 4 and a half months!

Funny story: remember the TV show “Touched By An Angel”? Every time we street contact someone who then says they are atheist, we pull out this famous “we just want to testify to you that God is our Heavenly Father and He loves you” line. All of us do it. It sounds less corny in Castellano… at least I think. But every time that I say it, I feel like that English brunette-- and I always chuckle to myself as I remember the light that shone on her face as the music changed and she said “God loves you.” I´m like one of them!

We had divisions with Hna. Torres and Hna. Cole in Hurlingham. I went to Hurlingham with Hna. Cole and loved it. It was so blissful to walk around for 24 hours being the junior comp in some other area where they aren´t your less active members or your unmarried investigators. You teach with your heart and carry almost no stress because, hey, you´re getting on a train in the morning and leaving it all behind. You feel free and unstressed. I miss the days of being the junior comp. I enjoyed that break for a brief 24 hours. And it was even better to return to my area and be told by my companion that she and Hna. Torres had taught 6 lessons and found 4 new investigators. Our weekly numbers sky-rocketed and I just showed up to reap the benefits. It was great!

Now for the unfortunate truth of the week… No one was baptized on Sunday… I thought I already told you we had to reschedule everybody for the 19th… maybe I forgot and only told the Pres. Anyways. We have Nicolas (son of reactivating mom) who WILL be baptized without problems this weekend. But, that is the only guarantee we have. Brian (12 years old) randomly went with his uncle to campo for 2 weeks and is just gone. He still wants to be baptized and all, and it´s for the best because this uncle is an active sealed in the temple convert who will hopefully bring him to church and help him really understand and develop a testimony so that when he gets back we can baptize him and he´ll be better for it. _______ (14 years old) decided that she doesn´t want to be baptized because she is afraid of the obligations of the promise. She wants to just be close to God without being baptized. We are trying desperately to win her again, but she has totally closed and frozen her heart. In the beginning she was so great. She read, she prayed, she said she felt that she needed to be baptized… she was the strong one, and now she is almost not even an investigator. We are totally sad and lost with it all. Yamily (10 years old) is now the strongest of the Botta family she is determined to get baptized even if it´s just her and Nicolas, but the thing is that it is kinda of sticky business to baptize a 10 year old who will then be the only member of her family. She can´t get herself to church. It´s tough. We can do it, if the mom signs the paper, but it´s tough… the bishop doesn't like it because she is a high risk to go promptly inactive. We don´t know what to do, if we baptize her and lose the bishop´s confidence, the work is frustrated. We can´t be eternally responsible for bring her to church and the members aren´t that willing to help bringing her. It´s tricky stuff.

We are still trying to work to win ________. If she comes back, we could baptize her and Yamily and Brian this weekend, and then Brian when he gets back and pray that the 3 of them can develop habits in coming to church with the help of the members.

We need your prayers.

The swine flu is rising. Some 200 deaths in Buenos Aires. I can´t lie. It is seeming to frustrate the work. Even though I know that the Lord´s work is not frustrated… but it seems to be frustrated, at times.

In my interview with the Pres. he told he that I´m a great missionary and that I need to put a little more “slack in the chain.” Hmmm. Now where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, my wise family! I´m working on it. This week I even went to bed past 10:30 once! And I brushed my teeth with tap water! Walking on the wild side in my rebellion! I hope I don´t let it go too far.

Daddy – I look forward SO MUCH for you to meet Pres. Benton some day because you are both so wise and so influential. I know you two will be great friends!

Gotta run. I love you. I miss you. I know the Lord hears our prayers!

Take luck and have joy!

14 Months Old Today!

2009-07-07T08:13:00.015-06:00

Dear Familia,

There is so much to say, I absolutely refuse to try and make this email ebb and flow. I am just going to go from point to point. It´s exhausting to try and make it all come together! :)

There are some odd 60 deaths in Buenos Aires from the swine flu. As a result the stake president decided to cancel church. Imagine what that does to the work… yeah, the members will survive, it´s probably even a little bit fun for them to have a break from preparing lessons and taking a bus to get there in the cold, but it makes it hard for the missionaries who are trying to find, teach, and bring people to CHURCH on Sunday so that they can have spiritual experiences, be fellowshipped, and prepare to be baptized. It´s hard to commit people to a baptismal date when for now baptisms have been more or less suspended. Unfortunately we had to lose the date for the 4 kids we had ready, and now we have a "weak, maybe” date of the 19th (the last day of the transfer) and we are just hoping that the stake president lets us baptize. Imagine having to finish the transfer (another transfer) without baptisms… but this time having 4 people that could have been baptized. It hurts. You work and work and work and have no control over the results of anything you do. Who has all the control? That´s easy… Heavenly Father. It´s His work and His plan, and we trust perfectly in it, but there are moments of frustration. President Benton and the stake presidents and bishops allowed us to have a few small meetings with two hymns, a prayer, and the sacrament in the homes of a few members so that we could bring our investigators…. In this way they still progress with their attendance requirements, and don´t lose contact with the church and the Sabbath day thing. But it isn't the same because we are forbidden from sharing or testifying of anything in this meeting because we are not allowed to have a mini-sacrament meeting. It is not my favorite thing--it´s easier because we can pick the time (and we don´t pick 9 am) but harder because you have to explain so much about why we are doing this. We are at least grateful that they can gain a testimony of how important it is as they see us go to such measures to partake of it each week. Just trust me that this twist in the work is throwing us all for a loop.

All of the schools have closed until August 4th. The kids have tons of homework to do on their own--I hope they all complete it. The Evangelical church had their meetings on Sunday as normal and I was actually jealous. We work all week long to have game day (Sunday) and then it was like we never had the game… and had to start another week of training. It´s like having a bye / bye in sports… it messes up the groove of things. I´ll try and see it as being a great thing, mind over matter, right?

There are signs all over the place that say Alcohol en gel (hand sanitizer). We bought 300 mg for $15 pesos and the next day found a liter for $15 pesos. So we bought that too. We wash our hands and checks at least 30 to 4o times a day from the saludo--which we aren't supposed to do anymore.

I´m 14 months old today… and we are moving today. But it is not the funnest way to spend my 14 month p-day. I could go into the details, but it would take my remaining 30 minutes and then I´d just have to admit that there are worse things in life.

It is true… this is not the end of the world, but let me tell you that there is just so much that one can handle at a given time and I reached that point 12 days ago. This week I had a morning when I couldn´t take it anymore and found myself crying on the floor in prayer. My companion came and listened to me explain why I just couldn´t handle it anymore and then she helped me feel better. The night before we had had a really rough moment with the mom of the 3 kids who will be baptized and it looked like we were about to lose them. I couldn´t handle the loss, we had been treated quite brutally that day by the world in general and the Elders said that we were going to move on the fifth of never. I fell to my knees and sobbed. I tell you this not to make you sad, but to testify that the Lord hears our prayers. I don´t remember how I was able to get up and go out and work that day, but I remember that we did. And I remember that the day wasn´t all that bad. The point of the story is that you should take comfort because we are not alone. He carries us when we cannot go one step more.

Long story short, we regained the confidence of the mom and things looked good, then _______ the 14 year old decided she didn´t want to be baptized because she didn´t want to give up tea. We almost lost her but we are pretty sure we have won her again. We finally got a brother to give _______ a blessing – she is terminally ill… has an ulcer and unfortunately HIV. We pray for her and know the gospel can help her, but she is not totally well but has moments that are so wonderful that we keep fighting-- determined to at least give her and her children the chance for a hope of a better future.

My companion was downright shocked when I told her the other day that Coca Cola has caffeine. She vowed to drink no more and eagerly told her family so that they could learn too. She is very funny sometimes… Nata – one of those people who says, “you know what I hate… red lights.” lol! Last night when Alejo was following us and taking care of every tree in the 16 blocks on the way home she said, “do you know why they do that?” and I said, “to mark their territory” and she said, “yeah, like wow…” as though she found out yesterday. I about died laughing. She also says things like, “you know what is so bad in the Church… pride, it destroys us.” If it´s a good moment it makes me laugh, if I´m stressed, it makes me think, “did you really just say that?” But good times! Just writing about it makes me laugh!

Brian – the 12 year old thought that I was 36 years old. OUCH! That´s 1 year older than his own mother. Does he really think I am older than his mother? Let me just say that it was not the best comment he could have made.

The other day we saw a dead dog in the street and his tongue really was completely hanging outside of his mouth--just like in the comics. I don´t know why his tongue is out of his mouth… did he die that way? I accept suggestions and answers to this question.

In the chinos supermarket the other day I saw the meat man sawing the meat with a tooth saw… it caught my attention and I stared mesmerized almost sure that he was going to cut himself because he did it all so fast-- and with his hand an inch from the blade… but wouldn´t you know it, he didn´t cut himself.

Every day we contact someone and I walk away thinking, “now THAT is the person most lost and confused in all the world.” And then an hour later we stop someone else who is even more misled. And I repeat it, and the next day the same thing happens. Each day we find someone who is even more lost than the one we met yesterday… unfortunately they are the ones who almost never let us give them the answers and bring them out of confusion. I wish I could make them listen, but they have their agency.

Nata, Dad, mom, everybody… I do all I can to relax, but our life is programmed for us and there is literally no free time to be had. I would love to make shakes and stuff, but it is pretty much impossible. I try to relax in the morning before study and as I drift off to sleep. I´ll do my best to complete the assignment.

Jason – I am trying to write a poem and I want you to write the song… I am going to have it playing in the background of the video I am going to make with all of the pictures from my mission. When I have the poem / lyrics… I will send them to you! That is my way of asking if you will write the song! :)

Norene – Happy birthday! I hope you eat lots of cake and get a fun new puzzle! If I see a puzzle here in Argentina… I will buy you one, but so far I have seen none. Feliz Cumpleaños!

Grandma – I hope you are recovering well. I am constantly praying for you. I hope that you are able to use this time to really study the Book of Mormon… it will help you heal because it answers all the questions of the soul. It will bring you peace.

Mom –I´m excited for the package.

I love you all. I pray for you. I have a cough, but I´m surviving! I love the mission, even though this week was frustrating and trying. I am happy, I am well, I am protected, I am safe. I am blessed. I love you all.

Gotta run!

I don´t yike packing... or moving… at all.

The Gospel Is So True I Can´t Even Believe It!

2009-06-30T15:49:00.018-06:00

Heal the world, make it a better place... I´m trying and the saga continues!

Mom, I´m super excited for the package! The day after it was too late, it dawned on me that I should have asked for one of those cute little bricks of Velveeta cheese to make scrambled eggs. I was kicking myself all afternoon long saying that that would have been so clever because it doesn´t perish until you open it, but oh well. I thanked Elder Pollock for being a pastor (going home missionary) because that means his family is bringing me a package. I had to explain that you were friends with his mom through missionarymoms.com and it was kind of funny and threw him off at first, but in the end he smiled and said, “that´s what I´m here for.” He´s a good Elder.

To help people quit smoking I suggest that you review Preach My Gospel chapter 10 pages 187-190. That is the approved doctrine for quitting and you are bound to see why. It just makes sense.

Dad, just for the record, I am not afraid that you guys will go inactive, it is just this kind of motto we have developed in the mission. Every time we get together and talk about the work we promise that we will never, ever, ever go inactive, so naturally it spills over into my emails too.

Only in ARGENTINA: the other day we contacted this elderly lady in the street. She was sweeping up leaves and putting them in bags. We offered to help and of course she refused. We chatted with her for a minute and I asked her how old she was… ready for this 96! And she was sweeping her own leaves and bending over and grabbing them and putting them in bags. She REFUSED to let us help her. 96. Wow, when I´m 96 I hope I can still sweep up my own leaves, but I will let the missionaries serve me because I will remember that they have to report their service hours!

The Lord really does detain us and put us where He wants us to be and where we will be safe. For example, we had lunch with the bishop and his wife and after they were chatting away – either unaware, or not concerned by the fact that we are only allowed to be at lunch for an hour. After about an hour and a half I was feeling quite guilty and desperately trying to tactfully get out of there. We finally grabbed a 2 second pause and made our way out. We walked a few blocks and stopped some people on the corner. They were all very upset and it turns out that 5 minutes before this man on a motorcycle had robbed the purse of a woman standing at the corner. Had the bishop not been wisely detaining us with his pictures and stories… we might have been on that street corner. Tender mercies!

Hey – somebody should tell Cameron to write me. I want to write him, but this p-day was filled up with redoing the map of Merlo. I´ll explain someday with pictures.

The four young investigators are all still a go for their baptism on the 12 of July. We had a tough time getting them to church on Sunday because it was the day they vote. Here they are assigned to vote in specific places, but it is not always close, nor are families kept together. The dad may have to vote in one city and the mom has to vote in another that is like 6 train stations away. And it´s not like they can just hop in their car and go from one to the next. It was really frustrating and we had to really work to have a successful Sunday with them in church. I promised them blessings and said that it was really, really important and they did make it there.

Ready for an interesting trial of my faith story? One morning during personal study I suddenly had this impression that instead of watching “Finding Faith in Christ” with the 4 kids that afternoon we needed to watch “The Testaments.” I tried to override the feeling because “The Testaments is 65 minutes long and the other is only 25. 65 minutes is a HUGE sacrifice for one lesson – even if it is with 4 that will soon be baptized. But I knew it was because the Spirit was telling me that it was what they needed to develop a testimony of the atonement of Christ. So I presented the feeling and idea to my companion and we decided to go with it, even though it would really complicate our afternoon plans. We got to the appointment, put in the DVD and the machine wouldn't read it. DVD players in Argentina frequently refuse to read church DVDs – ORIGINALS…. man if them will read bootlegged movies, but originals – forget it. We put it in again, cleaned it, blew in the machine, prayed a TON and nope. No go. Not on your life. I couldn´t understand for a million dollars why I had had that impression so distinctly if then the machine wouldn´t let us watch the movie. And even weirder is that it read Finding faith in Christ, so we ended up watching that. And weirdly enough it was perfect… I even cried I felt the Spirit so strong. I rarely cry. Almost never. It was so incredible. But I couldn´t understand why I had felt that we needed to watch the other. I asked my companion that evening what she thought about it and she is so wise that she instantly replied that she had been pondering it too and thinks that it is like the Lord trying the faith of Abraham to see if he was willing to sacrifice Isaac, but then he didn´t have to go through with it in the end. The Lord tried me to see if I was willing to sacrifice so much time, but then didn´t make me go through with it. I loved the comparison and felt that it really strengthened my testimony and I was humbly proud to have been as willing as Abraham was to do what I was asked. And then the Lord said, “well done, you would have done it, so don´t worry about it, I´ll take it from here.” Talk about cool!

Don´t worry about me, I´m all better and my coat doesn’t even smell like throw up. I´m too much of a cheapskate to dry clean it for now because it´s $40 pesos. And not just that… I´d have to go without it for 2 or maybe 3, 4, or 5 days. It´s winter. Hello, how could I do that? I´m quite content and one day, I will dry clean it – before I come home I promise!

Hermana Benton called me and said that you wanted to make sure I wasn't running a fever. I assured her that I didn´t and she said she´d let you know. You got to talk to the President too? Isn´t he so awesome! I love him. He mentioned the Thanksgiving thing (coming home the day before it) to us too, I hope it doesn´t mean that our end of the mission tour of Buenos Aires doesn´t get cut short a day because I have been looking forward to it all mission long. That is what the pastores (leaving missionaries) do right before they go to the airport – they go on a tour with the APs and the President. I don´t want to get gypped out of it. But I obviously want to be home for Thanksgiving. Ummmm. Mashed potatoes and gravy!

I cut my hair, no, just trimmed it to get rid of the split ends and remind it to grow again. I promise not to cut it again until I come home. I have gotten quite fond of having long hair again.

This transfer my motto is one that the President has been teaching us for a while.

“Circumstances do not determine results” Allow me to apply it to our situation. White wash, Father´s Day (Sunday – investigators that can´t come), Voting (Sunday, investigators that can´t come and members that can´t pick them up), moving to another pension, passing a kidney stone, and losing about an hour and a half of proselyting time a day walking to and from the bus station in your area… and all of that doesn´t determine the results of the transfer because we are going to have 4 baptisms! I am going forward with faith and don´t even let a single doubt or fear enter my brain. I just say that we will find a way to make it happen… because the Lord is on our side.

Grandma Olson – did I ever tell you that in my last area I bought this giant can of Nesquik and every time I make myself some super chocolaty chocolate milk I think of you and remember how much I love you. I hope that you know that I pray for you each and every day and am so grateful for all that you have done for me. The other day I bought you a really cool souvenir and I´m looking forward to giving it to you!

Grandma and Grandpa Jensen – I feel so happy to know that I am a Jensen. We have such a great legacy of faithful members of the church and I love being able to tell people that all my family are members of the church and they are active. So many missionaries, so many lives affected and blessed all because 2 people fell in love! I stole that from a country song, but it´s true. When you think about your posterity you should be incredibly proud. I hope to have such a faithful posterity as you do!

We hadn´t heard a thing about Farrah Fawcett, but I found out on Saturday about Michael Jackson. I was truly sad because his early stuff is great.

I finally got my leather scripture cases yesterday. They turned out so well and she does each drawing by hand in the leather. This morning as I studied the scriptures in their new cases – my study was literally funner. It´s like the first time you use the Venus razor and Skintimate you received for Christmas and the first time you use the new pens and write in a new notebook – it´s just funner.

Today my companion stopped to contact this couple and at the end of the 10 minute conversation they were attacking me and the states for being the cause of swine fever. It was a difficult moment for me because I have a ton of USA pride. But I let it go. My companion was mortified and embarrassed at the behavior of a fellow Argentine and she admitted that he was totally in the wrong. That made me feel a little better.

About the move – it is dragging on because the Elder in charge of the pensiones is super busy. We begged the President and there´s not much he can do. We begged the Elder and he´s doing the best he can, but it´s still a good while away and we have no clue who will help us realize it. I shudder to think. The place is definitely not furnished.

Uncle Ron said I should be a writer… I just might do that. I love to write.

I love Padua. It is such a great area and I feel like if I die here (finish the mission) it´s fine. We´ll see what the Lord has in store. For all we know we´ll stay together this one and the next and then the President will white wash me again to train – because we will be getting a bunch of new sisters that transfer. We´ll see. I´d like to stay here I think.

Romina, Brian, Yamila, and Nico are very great because they accept tithing and the Word of Wisdom, but it is super hard getting them to church especially when their parents don´t want to or cannot come. Romina, Brian, and Yamila are all brothers and sisters, and Nico is the son of a less active member we are trying to reactivate, we are also teaching the Dad. There is a lot of potential with others, but many of them need to get married and many need to get divorced before they can get married. That always complicates things.

Nata – I hope you had a stellar birthday. I thought about you a bunch that day.

Jason – have a wonderful birthday and eat lots of cake.

I love you all and am happier than you can imagine. I miss you tons and pray for you constantly.

Could you all add Liliana, Beatriz and Santiago to your prayers? We need all the help we can get… and so do they!

Wubba more than the move that will someday take place!

Hermana Jensen

p.s The gospel is so true I can't even believe it!

I Love Everything...Even Kidney Stones!

2009-06-24T15:04:00.017-06:00

Hola,

I am super excited to get one last package! In it you could add: stuffing, chicken in a biscuit, Cheese Whiz, Reese's Pieces, packages of instant hot cocoa, good Q-tips that actually have some cotton, makeup remover and candy (other than Snickers which I can get here). Oh, and a hole puncher we can use to make holes for our binders. Thanks so much!

Tell the new missionary to bring a pair of garden gloves for service projects, but to put her name in them because it is highly probable they will be stolen.

Happy birthday to Nata and Jason! I sent home treats for your birthdays in the package you got like 3 months ago… I over plan.

So we found a great apartment and the papers are already signed. The office elders have to arrange for light and gas to work and install some kitchen cabinets. It looks like we´ll be getting in the new place in the end of the month. Which to us feels super far away. The new place is a block from the church and a block from the train station! It was literally handed to us on a silver platter by the Lord. The move is overwhelming and won't be easy. We have no boxes, no truck, and no time. Moving will come out of p-day and proselyting time and I don´t have much desire to sacrifice either of them. :)

I made Brown Sugar Chicken and sent it home with President and Sister Benton after Zone Conference. All she had to do was bake it and serve with rice. I hope they liked it.

In Zone Conference President Benton talked about how we should all study our Patriarchal Blessings and put them in scripture form and add foot notes. I about died because I had already decided that I was going to do that the next time I have access to a computer. He read my mind.

We have 4 kids that have baptismal dates and 3 of them were in church with us last Sunday – the other was sick. Nicolas – age 11, Brian – age 12, Yamila – age 10, and Romina – age 14. It is usually easier to baptize kids because they don´t work on Sundays, smoke, drink, or have problems with the Law of Chastity…nor are they waiting for a divorce!

We had to really pull some teeth to get them in church with us, but in the end, it was worth all the money we spent in remises (taxis). If all goes according to plan, the 4 of them will be baptized together on the 12 of July! Pray for them, please… they are our hope for the transfer!

FYI- we learned not to trust local kiosk type joints on the street corner to do our photocopies. They will try to totally pull one on ya. They will do the photocopies and send you out the door and then when you look at the photos you realize that there was next to no toner in the machine. I of course returned and made them do it again, but it totally astounds me how they would do that to the customer. Hello – imagine going to a copy store and having them try to send you away with crummy copies…

My companion and I won the prize (for having good numbers) and were allowed to pick a companionship of Elders and have them come work in our area for 3 hours. We chose the other companionship of Elders that had the best numbers from their District. Maybe they will find us a family we can baptize!

There is this dog that we named Alejo and his 2 followers that terrorize us all 15 blocks from where we get off the bus to the front door of our apartment. They just bug us the whole way home. Alejo barks and barks and acts like he´s going to bite you, but so far hasn´t. He just lives on that street and for some reason picks us every night to follow home. It´s really annoying. I´m glad we´re moving, we won´t pass Alejo and his gang anymore! He is so filthy that I shudder to think of what he carries in his fur. I´m not going to miss Alejo.

Before I forget… I was totally mistaken when I said we were the first sisters ever to walk the streets of San Antonio de Padua. It is not true. It made me feel cool for a while to think I was the pioneering sister missionary in the big bad world of Elder town, but then I was informed that sisters have been here before. So anyways, it was fun while it lasted.

It all depends on how much room I have in my suitcases if I will bring the sleeping bag home. My Argentine companion also sleeps in one, but it is not a thing they all do. If I don´t have room, I´ll leave it with some missionary that will be very grateful.

I would like to take advantage of this time to thank you Mom and Dad for never going inactive. When I think about how many times throughout our lives we have the chance to say “no more!” and quit… there are a lot of times. But you two never gave up. You never said “I´m just too offended to go back to church” or anything of the sort. Were it not for your faith and testimonies – I would not be a missionary in Argentina in this moment. I am eternally grateful for the commitment that you have shown to honor and keep your covenants. I owe you a great deal for giving me such an example of faith and dedication to the truth. Here in Padau there are a ton of people that are super offended and say, “I will never come back” and I am so glad that that was not something that entered our home. I mean it. You should be very proud to be active in the church. So many are not.

This past week I almost fell on my back in the street when I stepped on a banana peel. Yeah, that really happens, and it really is slippery! I about died laughing that I had done it. In my defense… It was dark and I didn´t see it on the sidewalk, but boy did I laugh. Thank heavens I caught myself and didn´t fall!

My back still hurts, but this time I know why. It is because my great winter coat is pretty heavy and even more so when I have my scripture bag crossing my chest--it just makes it feel even heavier. It can´t go under my coat or the coat won´t close. I even took out my Triple and now I am just walking around with pamphlets but it still really hurts. That is just part of life in winter. I am pretty sure the only solution is pray for spring.

So on Sunday afternoon we did something that I have wanted to do all mission long. We took a 2 hour nap! The heater running, the shutters closed so it is pitch black in the room, we set the cell phone and slept for 2 blissful hours. Before you panic and call the President to beg for forgiveness for my sin… allow me to explain just why we did so. It just so happens that kidney stone number 4 decided to pass. Hehe. (2 at BYU and 2 in Argentina!) I woke up Sunday morning and knew I was in for a party. I carefully read the packages of drugs you sent so as to not overdose and kill myself and took the necessary medication – determined to take it in stride. Unfortunately the Promethazine didn´t take care of the nausea and I was already throwing up before we left for church. We took a remis (taxi) to go and get one of our investigators. I was very ill. We picked her up and went to the church. I got out of the car and walked for the chapel door. I had 2 options: try to run to the bathroom and throw up the last 6 feet before I made it to the bathroom OR try to walk to the bathroom and throw up pretty much the whole way there. What would you choose? I walked 6 steps and made a break for it. Companion or no companion I had to get to a restroom! I put my hand over my mouth to try to contain what was already coming out, but my hand only held a tiny bit. Then the vomit escaped my hand and started to fill the right sleeve of my dry clean only winter coat. I am not even kidding. It reached clear up to my elbows inside my long sleeved blouse and coat. It was one of the most disgusting feelings I have ever had. I finished throwing up in the toilet, but the mess I left on the bathroom door and the floor around the stall was quite pathetic. It got in my hair, on my scarf, on my coat, in my coat, on my skirt and I had nothing to change into. My companion and the investigator came strolling into the bathroom and we tried to play cool and make it seem like nothing. We said things like “oh, I´ll just clean this right up and we´ll be fine.” Hello – it was a joke! The poor woman probably thought to herself “these crazy Mormons go to church even when they´re dead sick.” Anyways… I sent my comp with the investigator to Relief Society and finished cleaning up. I had to take off my shirt, and coat and wore my comp´s coat the rest of the 3 hours of church. I took off my skirt, washed it, and put it back on – cold and wet. I tried to wash my hair, but missed some spots. I felt better and we went to go get our other investigators and finish out the meetings. After church we had to send them off in a remis and it took like 20 minutes for it to get there. By then my pain had come back and I was pacing and fighting back tears and no one besides my companion knew why. We finally walked to the station, took a taxi, went home, ate our sack lunch and decided to go to bed. She was also pretty sick with a nasty cold, so we took 2 hours to try to get well and at 4:00 we went back out to work and finish the week – we did our contacts and taught 2 lessons! The pain hasn´t returned, so I either passed one, or it was just moving around and didn´t really drop. Either way I am proud to say that I didn´t shed a single tear. I know the Lord helped me and that all in all, it wasn´t that bad. That was my Father´s day… I´m SURE yours was better. But we had 4 investigators in church – 3 of whom have baptismal dates!

I decided this week that for us to have true success and see miracles this transfer I have to believe that we will receive them… that´s all. My own lack of faith and doubtful thoughts were like poison that I was drinking drop by drop. Now instead of thinking, “what if we don´t baptize this transfer… I´ll just die!” I think “how cool is it that we are going to have 4 baptisms with a white wash transfer!” I decided that I have to believe and have more faith. My own doubts were wearing me down. So now I believe perfectly that we will have miracles and we will. It is that simple. Choose to win. Choose to succeed, choose to receive blessings and you will. Try it with me!

Jason – everyone knows I´m all business. Your advice has proven helpful.
Nata – have a great time in Spain – buy me a scarf of something, k?
Mommy – thanks in advance for the awesome package you will send me. As you can tell I am hungry for the states! I have this transfer and 3 more. I am so pumped! Prepare to see some serious changes in me in these last few months.
Daddy - I bought you a cool present today. You are going to love it!

I love you so much. Study the scriptures every day. Have FHE every week. Never go inactive!

All the love and joy that I possess,
Hermana Stacey Jensen

Sights From Argentina

2009-06-19T07:33:00.008-06:00

Carving of the Buenos Aires Temple

...fishers of men

Celebrating 10 months out (taken 3 months ago)

Week 2 Has Now Begun In Padua!

2009-06-16T18:38:00.007-06:00

Well, there is so much to say.

First of all I love San Antonio de Padua, but it sure comes with its challenges. White washing an area is difficult-- if you can imagine. This first week we were able to find most of the investigators the elders left us, and we committed 3 to be baptized. The thing is that these are very fragile dates… it´s FAR from certain that they will happen, but the only way is to start somewhere and work with them to make it to the day. One is the 11 year old son of a less active member. His name is -----. He is good, but it is hard to get him to church because we can´t bring him alone and his mom works in a fruit store. But we have plans. He is the most sure that we have. And the others are a mother and daughter, but there are obstacles to overcome, she smokes and both were sick this last week, so couldn´t come to church. They are ----- and -----. They might not be so happy with some of the changes they need to make, but we have our faith and are going to give it our best shot.

The Elders left us a bunch of teaching records in the area book. We have been working a ton with member referrals here. They just might be the ticket to success!

About the storm… pretty cool, you can imagine that storms here are a lot like that. Instantly there is a mud flood and it comes down so hard you think it might bruise your skin. I´m thrilled to hear that we did not have any flooding. I am truly sorry to hear that the garden was destroyed, that is a bummer. We can be thankful that our garden is not our only source of food as it was for the farmers of old. Imagine what a storm like that would have done to their faith.

What do you mean to Davy everything is a phone? How cool is that about web calls. Did you know that my laptop has a webcam? It does. I don´t remember if I ever really got it to work, but I know it has one.

About Sarah… you could try calling the LA Mission and asking for a forwarding address. That is the only solution I have if she´s not on facebook. The only address I have is in Alaska, but I bet she´s studying somewhere else. Let me know if you want me to send you the Alaska address.
Thanks for being diligent with all that. I really appreciate it.

As for stuff that you can send with the Pollock family (who FYI is the senior AP right now… and the one who served where I am right now in Papua) You could send me some of those powder packets of Ranch that you add to sour cream, also another bottle of Ranch Dressing, a thing of Peanut Butter and um… let me think. There has got to be something I really need. I´ll let you know what else comes to mind next week. Thanks for the heads up.

We want to move because we live way out of our area and it´s a huge hassle. The quickest route from the bus stop to the pench every night (and every morning for that matter) is 15 blocks – 22 minutes walking quickly and not stopping to street contact anybody… which is obviously not good because street contacting is what we do. The pench in itself is great, but the electricity is a disaster. The power failed and we have been limited to only use the heater on low. We were forced to study with our coats and scarves on in the morning-- it is so cold. There is someone who supposedly came to fix it today, but I haven´t been there yet.

Today we had Sisters Conference and even though it is proselyting time already, we are doing Internet… with President´s permission of course. Anyways, we have got to move because we lose about an hour and a half of proselyting time each day just going to and from home. Nobody we are teaching lives where we live. They all live clear on the other side of the area. I want to move over there, but it is more dangerous, but still, for time and convenience and stuff… I´m willing to be like Simba from the Lion King and say “I laugh in the face of danger!” I don´t want to spend my last 6 months or whatever I have left wasting such time every day… and at night when people are actually home to be taught and members can accompany us. That is just not the recipe to have success here and I promised the Lord that I would do all in my power to give Him success.

Not only is it a waste of time and a big expense, but it is exhausting to have to start each and every day walking a mile… hear me out, when the day is coming to a close, you don´t want to think “ok, time for the last mile of rushed walking” – it´s more than one can take, and after just 7 days of doing it, I´m already sick of it. So the President authorized us to look for a new apartment, but that´s easier said than done, especially when you can´t just hop on the Internet or spend a bunch of time looking.

So the Sisters Conference: I spent a ton of time planning this 45 minute workshop on contacts to present and then wouldn´t you know it… they put me last and we were so far behind that when we finally were up, it was like, what do we do? The food was to arrive at 1 and so we kind of shortened it, kind of rushed it, and I was a little less than pleased with how it turned out. I tried not to let the time thing ruin it, everyone said it was great and the President was super impressed with it all, but I felt like we could have done MUCH better had we not been so time restrained. But if everyone else said it went well, I have to just accept it. But I tell you – I know it could have been better.

Being in the zone of Merlo is like starting a new semester in college. You´re lost, you´re confused, you´re stressed, you set all these incredibly high goals and you start with what you have, but every night you fall on your knees and beg your Father in Heaven to carry you through one more day. It is just mentally demanding. All day long you are lost, as you learn, you grow, as you are stretched, you learn to rely on your Savior, but it is hard. I am not going to tell you it´s not.

But one of the biggest tender mercies that the Lord has given me to be able to handle it is my companion. She is so capable. She took upon herself the responsibility of learning all the bus routes and thus making it possible for us to do what we do each day. She faithfully searches each bus that we see all day long and looks up their routes (which I don´t understand in the book I bought – but she does) and that is the only way that I personally have been able to cope. Because she is native she does colectivos and basically navigates us all day long. I on the other hand am in charge of all the little details, like remembering the keys to the church, having pamphlets, keeping us on schedule, and other stuff that seems very trivial compared to what she does, but without the little things we would fail. So we are a perfect team. We complete one another in this challenge we chose to see as an opportunity.

On Sunday we had a Stake Conference broadcasted from Salt Lake and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Unfortunately we went in a taxi that we got to accommodate all of our investigators and not one ended up in the taxi with us. 26 pesos later we showed up all alone. Lame. 2 were sick, ---- couldn´t come with us without his mother… and 3 others stood us up completely. Lame.

FYI – we tried to laminate little hand outs we made for our work shop and they tried to charge me 3 pesos (almost a dollar) for each of the 2x3 cards. AS IF! We bough contact paper and did it ourselves for less than 7 pesos total!

As for that Hermana that is coming, I thought of more advice: ankle socks to wear under nylons are great in the winter. Buy shoes with thicker soles because the uneven sidewalks and dirt roads rip up the soles pretty quickly. Bring Ziploc bags – lots of them and in various sizes. You can find them here, but they are EXPENSIVE. You will need them for random things. At least I did. Oh and the most important one of all… If she is struggling with space or going over the weight limit with her luggage, bring a big suitcase and a carry on that is formed, but for the middle sized one, just buy a giant shoulder bag that is sofá – it weighs much less and you can stow a ton more in it. It´s a hassle in the airport, but you only do that twice (or four times if you are me and serve in 2 missions. :)

Mommy – I love you so, when I see Hermana Benton I remember you and how much I look forward to a hug from you and miss you. The truth is that each day I am more and more thankful that I was raised in the church, and even more – by ACTIVE members of the church. That is something that I took for granted all my life, but no more. I am so blessed. So blessed.

Daddy – Happy Father´s day on Sunday! I love you so. The other night I had a dream that I got a hug from you. When I woke up I almost cried because I want one so much.

It is weird that you are getting information about when I go home. I still don´t understand clearly if I have 3 transfers left including this one or 4 including this one. If you say that I am due home around Thanksgiving that would mean that I have four more. I don´t know if I will “die” here or not. I would like to go to campo, (the country) but more importantly I want to be where the Lord wants me to be. If I never get to serve in the outskirts or the ghetto, life goes on. Argentina is different enough for me – even if I am in the “city.”

Nata – I hope that you go forth with faith and courage in your callings. Davy is such a little stud. I can´t wait to give him a high five and teach him Argentine hand gestures.

I love you so. If you wouldn´t mind this week – I want you to pray for me to quit comparing myself to others. I need to just let things happen a little more. I need to just relax a little. But I´m afraid that if I relax – I will fall apart. Pray for me to adapt and be at peace. Thanks. I know you are always praying for me.

I have to go. I´m sorry you had to wait all day long for this.

Wubba,
Hermana Jensen!
~~~~~~~~~~~
1 COMMENTS:

ajohns37 said...
We can hardly believe the experiences and things our young Hermanas are going through. It is so humbling of what they are seeing and doing, yet their tremendous faith and example to go forth doing what they know is true and have been called to do. We love you and have great familyhood (?word) kinship, felt with you knowing we both have daughters doing the same thing. All our love, the Familia Johns
JUNE 16, 2009 9:45 PM

Dear Brother and Sister Jensen,

2009-06-15T20:03:00.012-06:00

We are pleased to inform you that Hermana Stacey Lynn Jensen is completing an honorable full-time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Argentina Buenos Aires West Mission. Your missionary's release date will be November 26, 2009!!!!!!! (exclamations added by the mom)

We are so excited to have a date...and yes she opted to stay 3 weeks longer instead of coming home 1 week early due to the transfer dates-- but if you know Stacey that won't surprise you a bit. Now we get to watch the mail for the flight plans to find out what time she will be arriving on Thanksgiving Day. Wahoo--we couldn't be happier! :)

A 'White Wash' In Merlo!

2009-06-09T19:18:00.018-06:00

In Castellano the word for transferred and the word for translated is the same, so I can honestly and sarcastically say that I have been TRANSLATED! I get a kick out of that every time I think about it because even though I loved spending 6 months in Haedo-- I needed a change so I truly feel like I have been translated.

So the transfer ended and on Monday morning we went to the misión offices in Ramos Mejia and awaited the inevitable. As we were shaking hands with the President and Hermna Benton before the meeting began (as we always do row by row, every missionary) my future started to reveal itself. When I shook the Presidents hand he said, “you ready for some fun stuff?” I said, “sí” and just looked at him. My heart started to beat a thousand times a minute and during the whole meeting I was racking my brain trying to figure out just what was ahead for me. Eventually the moment arrived. I was right about replacing Elders and totally wrong about where. The thing is that during the part of the meeting when the APs showed all the numbers and success and stuff it became quite clear that the zone that had the most baptisms was Merlo. I then started to covet the areas in Merlo and desire to go there.....but I thought there was no chance because President had mentioned that he just might send me to Aldo Bonzo to open it to Sisters there. Anyway, they showed us that as a misión we had 172 converts! It is a very high number (the record is 179) and I felt so happy!

They began showing all the transfers and when they passed the zone of Aldo Bonzo I began wondering what the President had meant. But then to my great surprise and joy, I was shown with Sister Carrasco replacing two Elders in the area of San Antonio de Padua in MERLO! When that happens it´s called a “white wash.” In L.A. we called it “flushing the area” but whatever you call it, you can imagine what it means-- a lot of work for those who show up not knowing the members... the buses, where the church is, where to do Internet, where to take your dirty clothes, where to buy fruit, where to photocopy your map and so on. You know nothing more than what you can learn by reading the area book and the letter the Elders leave you.

Turns out that this area has been the home of two Elders that later served as APs. The current senior AP Elder Pollock served here about a year ago, so he told us a little bit about the area and how great it is. If I am not mistaken we are the first sister missionaries EVER to serve in Merlo. It is a little bit dangerous – the President told us to be careful at night. I think I am going to start strapping my camera to my skirt with a belt and hide it under my coat instead of putting it in my bag, so that just in case I get robbed… I lose my scriptures and pamphlets and nothing more.

Before I forget… do you remember some years ago when you gave that Spanish mom with her 3 boys a ride and the baby Paco had some eye problems…? Well, the other day they popped into my mind and it dawned on me that if you still know where they live, you need to send the missionaries to contact them. It would be a great referral for them. So, would you mind looking into that? They totally need the gospel!

Is it true that they are opening a mission in China? We heard a rumor and I want confirmation. I hope it´s true… the second comino might happen soon!

Here people eat hamburgers empty… just the bun, the patty, and ketchup, but no lettuce, no cheese, no pickles, no onions, no mushrooms… just the patty and something to spread on the bread. It is very boring!

I´m a little Christmas hungry… walking around all bundled up at night and thinking that soon the day will be here....but it´s ok, when I come home and Christmas really is on its way… that will be a horse of a different color!

Mom- do you remember like a month ago I sent pictures of the baptism of Antonio and Andrea? Could you forward those pictures to Hermano Achinelli at this address: ------- He baptized them and wants pictures and I don't have time to look for them. Thanks!

Guess what… the other night this guy in the store pulled an awesome pick-up line on my companion – Hermana Di Stéfano… he said, “does it hurt” and when she said, “what” he said “being that beautiful” she had to explain it all to me afterwards, but we died laughing! The funnier part is how quick on her feet she is because she responded, “I don´t know, ask my companion!”

She and I also taught a workshop in the district meeting a week ago. We were assigned to teach ánimo – which doesn´t translate really well, but it means like energy or I don´t know… there isn´t a word. Anyways, it was fun to do, I felt like a leader for a minute finally giving one of the workshops and not just listening to it. I enjoyed it!

For the first time in my life I am so tired that I fell asleep saying my prayers before bed. The thing is that I started being more descriptive expressing my gratitude and so when you are that specific naming stuff, it takes more time and then makes it a lot more likely to fall asleep before you finish. I feel guilty… I need to find some way to give thanks, but not fall asleep while I pray. Don´t worry, I´ll come up with something!

My new address is -------- in the area of San Antonio de Padua in the zone of Merlo. It is a cool apartment and we spent a while getting all settled in and now I feel a little bit better. I hate not being unpacked, so once we got unpacked and stuff I was able to calm down a little bit.

My new companion has almost 9 months and is from Neuquén too. Just like Hermana Di Stéfano. It´s in the South part of Argentina and she is very timid and speaks softly, but I like her. I know that we are going to get along well and we are going to work super hard. I rededicated myself to be 100% obedient and work “15 minutes more” each day—President talked about that in the meeting. I woke up early Monday morning (the day of the transfer) and Tuesday morning and couldn´t go back to sleep so I took the extra 40 minutes each morning to talk with my Heavenly Father. I told Him that I know I need to be better and that my faith is weaker than I want it to be. I told Him that I want to be led to find the people He has prepared. I promised that I would work until I bleed and give until I fall. I want to finish the mission working so hard that there isn´t even time to eat at night because we are so busy confirming appointments.

When I saw my picture going to Merlo… everyone was so surprised and like gasped at the drastic change of sending sisters to Merlo. I saw my picture and thought to myself… I hope the mission never ends. I don´t want to go home… I need to do this! It was super empowering and really hit me hard.... the President received revelation and has sent us here to San Antonio de Padua....Merlo because this is where we need to be. I am ready to work and change and sacrifice and give and testify and do it until I can´t speak one more syllable. I am going to ask for miracles and be worthy and have enough faith to receive them!

FYI – I left Haedo 1 with 2 investigators-- each with baptismal dates. One is Lucia who will finally be 18 years old and will be baptized and the other is a woman who last week stopped US in the street and asked if we were going to visit her. We took her name and address and taught her, brought her to church and she is progressing great. She has to quit smoking and everything else with the Word of wisdom, but she is truly prepared and I am confident that she will make it. We were also were stopped in the street Saturday night by a man who had been taught before I was sent there. He told us that he had moved, gave us his new address and we invited him to church the next day. He showed up and Hermana Di Stéfano with her mini will begin teaching him. I am sure that he´ll be baptized too. So maybe the “explosion of baptisms” will take place after I leave, but hey… that´s ok.

Random story – Antonio and Andrea give us a ride home after FHE every Monday and Antonio always speeds up pretending he is going to run over the stray dogs in the street and Andrea always screams and panics. It makes me laugh. I remember that I was once like her and Antonio reminds me of you daddy. It is great fun!

This letter is very poorly written because I am telling everything out of order-- but when Hermana Carrasco and I finally got to our pension in Padua and walked in, it was weird because you could almost feel that Elders had been there. They were kind enough to leave us milk in the fridge and 2 rolls of T.P., along with clean dishes and some cleaning supplies. The place hasn´t been dusted or swept in quite a while, but I am quite confident that they made a sincere effort to leave it in good condition for us.

Nata and Jason – your son is so dang cute! I want to eat him. I hope you are doing very well and that you are having FHE every week.

I hope you are doing that too, Mom and Dad! I love you so much!

Gotta go, I beg you to pray for us. We don´t know where we are, who anyone is, but we know the direction of the church. Please pray for us to find people that want to listen. We need tender mercies and we need lots of them. I´m scared, but I have faith!

I love you so much and I have faith that I am where the Lord wants me to be!

Thanks for the music… thanks for everything!

Hermana Jensen!
San Antonio de Padua - MERLO!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1 comments:
ajohns37 said...
Love you Famila Jensen. She'll do well in Merlo. It hit us that our little Hermana just probably hit her last transfer in Mercedes. Wow, what a ride, but as President Monson says, "Enjoy the journey." and we have with you! All our love, The Familia Johns.

June 10, 2009 1:26 PM

Happy Birthday To You!

2009-06-02T18:29:00.014-06:00

Even though I forgot to mention it in last weeks email, I did wish you a happy birthday. I was the first one to do it because when I said my morning prayer at 6:30 here (3:30 there) I prayed for you to have a good birthday. I hope it was great and full of everything good!

About the high school reunion... have they sent around questionnaires or anything? If they do will you respond in my behalf? Thanks!

Davy... I bought him a t shirt and sent it home in that suitcase... I don´t exactly want you to go digging for it because that would ruin all the surprises, but I´m afraid he might grow out of it. I say we just wait and see and if it doesn´t fit him, then oops, we can put it on a teddy bear or something. What do you shink?

Nata – your last letter said just the right things and made me feel happy! Have a ton of fun in Spain with Marta! Tell her hello for me and buy me something nice!

Advice for the sister missionary – buy a good sleeping bag. It will be your best friend. But tight spandex pants to wear under your skirts. Invest in good water boots. The ones we found me are perfect! A giant two-person umbrella is convenient being that we are always with a companion. Fabrics... it´s obvious – go light in the summer, layer up in the winter. Buy a good outlet converter. Bring a dropper to purify your water, or you can buy one in a pharmacy here. You´ll want to double up on socks and bring a good pair of gloves.

Daddy – We got a record high of 7 referrals this past week, but it was not quite as amazing as it sounds because 4 of them were repeat referrals and the people rejected us for a second time. But hey. They try. We don´t knock doors that much because it doesn´t work. We street contact... all day long. We go from street contact to street contact. When you stop them in the street you try to get their address and then we go and visit them a few days later to teach them. It´s called an appointment to return – and it is what we do a ton. I LOVED the advice you gave me and it is just what I have been worrying about. Today in the celestial room I was praying and I told my Heavenly Father that I had so much I still wanted to do and that the time is flying by. The answer I felt was “be still” and I decided to just keep doing what I´m doing and try not to have a “cram it all in attitude.” How perfect that you advised me to do the same. I value this counsel more than you know.

Mommy – could you do me a favor and try to find the sheet music to the CDs you sent me of Spanish songs. Especifically the song “all my days” – “toda mi vida” I would like to sing it in my last transfer meeting and will need to start practicing asap.

About the sponge foam fight... we were filling plastic bags with the little foam pieces and then they make pillows with them. So of course as you fill the bags you have to fight a little bit. In the video – you can´t tell, but I was almost throwing up at the end with my back turned because I accidentally swallowed one and was quite unwell as it went down. But it was super fun! It is service we do for the family that sells the pillows.
Quote that I love: the intelligent learn from their mistakes; the wise learn from the mistakes of everybody else. “Los inteligentes aprenden de sus errores, los sabios, de los demás.” Pretty deep isn´t it!

Nata – Could you write to Hermana Barrera and tell her I sent her a bag of stuff with the mission mail and to bug the Elders for it. And could you ask her to send you the recipe with the measurements of all the ingredients needed to make milanesa? Thanks!

This week we did service weeding a small, I mean small garden of an 84 year old woman. I felt just like Mommy using a giant kitchen knife to make the dirt all pretty where it hits the cement. It was super fun and made me decide to have a SMALL garden of my own some day. We took cool pictures like that old farmer couple with the shovel and pitch fork! My back hurts. Low back. I can´t make it go away. I stretch, I do everything. I need my daddy to pop my back. Oh where oh where could he be?

Have you been receiving real letters from me lately? I have sent 2 home lately and I want to know if they are getting to you.

We are in week 6 of my first transfer without baptisms since I arrived to Argentina. Let me just say that a transfer without baptisms drags by like 2 transfers. It is so frustrating to work and work and work and have “nothing” to show for it. (Yes, seeds planted...) but it is depressing and makes me feel like a crummy missionary. The President wasn´t too hard on me in my interview, he just said to try and baptize one of the people we had... but none of them are ready.

Well, I am surprised at how well I am taking the news of Matt's death. That goes to show just how protected I am by the Lord. It was Tuesday at 9 pm Argentina time when the closure finally just came to me. I knew that it had a lot to do with the “closure vibes” my mommy was surely sending me from the memorial service. I felt very blessed to know that you were thinking of me and the feelings of peace that I received have stayed with me. I couldn´t see the words very well on the scanned program, but the pictures were crystal clear. I am super glad you found the donut falls pictures and feel glad that they were able to use them.

On other notes...

The other day I had this deeper realization as we walked in the street that we are all children of God. I stopped dumbfounded as I tried to think that He literally knows me personally, and my companion, and every single person in the street. He knows their names, their fears, their sins, their thoughts, everything. It is literally mind boggling. Ponder it for a second and you too will be literally confused at the grandness of the simple statement “I am a child of God.”

I had this one day last week that I actually didn´t want to go out in the street to proselyte after lunch. It was freezing and raining and even with my umbrella and gloves and coat and scarf and everything... I just looked outside and thought to myself, “do we really have to go out in that?” I felt ashamed at my lack of desire. Obviously we went out in it anyways because we´re obedient, but for the first time in the mission I was tempted to just say “nah, we´ll just chill here in the chapel for a bit.” Rest assured that we did not.

Story about today... for some unknown reason I lost the hot water in my morning shower. I stood their freezing and soapy and pled with the Lord to give me just 30 seconds of hot water to rinse off and get out. He said no. I admit that I actually shed tears as I freezingly rinsed off and got out. Then I cried to my companion telling her how much I hate the shower (and this is in the dream apartment...) She made me feel all better telling me that I should throw my flip-flop at it ... which made me feel much better. Then she had me say things like “I didn´t want to take a hot shower, hot showers are for wimps!” It is powerful what that can do because I felt all better afterwards. But the tears that fell from my eyes were warmer than the water that washed away the suds from my shivering body this morning. Wahoo! Gotta love the mission!

When somebody comes to the door with their keys to open the gate and let us in I get all excited like a dog that hears the keys or his chain and knows he´s going to go for a walk. The reason for this is that lessons taught on the inside of the gate count for our numbers... lessons taught where they don´t let us in the gate don´t count for jack squat. So the sound of keys is super happy. I feel so much like a dog. Does that make you laugh?

Story of the week: We were finishing a lesson with this woman and her busy, busy grandson
threw a teddy bear at her just as she started to say the prayer. Luckily I had delayed just a second closing my eyes and saw the little stuffed dog flying straight for her head. I stretched out my hand and grabbed the dog about 3 inches before it struck the praying grandmother. It was like this awesome superman moment and I saved the day... or prayer! I felt so glad that my Daddy had invested his time teaching me to play catch because it came in handy!

The miracle and the failure of the week was this sweet old widowed man (84) that we found, taught, and committed to be baptized. We lost him 3 days later because his family prohibited him from receiving us ever again. So sad....he just wanted to be with his wife again... The other cool part of the story was that after the lesson we taught him he took us around for an hour and we contacted 13 referrals from his neighbors and family that live nearby. Everyone we passed by he stopped and said, “Listen to these girls, they brought me a message of peace!” It was amazing and then it about broke our poor hearts when he told us on the phone he couldn´t receive us anymore. He was almost crying. I hope he passes away soon so Grandpa Olson can teach him the gospel for me in the Spirit World.

FYI : lessons taught to less active members depress me and scare me because no one is safe from personal apostasy. Ex- bishops, ex- missionaries, anybody and everybody can just up and decide not to go to church anymore. I just die a little bit every time I teach someone that they need to endure to the end. I swear I will NEVER quit going to church. NEVER. And I absolutely refuse to let anyone of you do it either! I will drag you kicking and screaming to church before I ever just give up and let you throw away your exaltation.

There are twins in my ward that had their little farewell to go on their missions and there was this movie of their big brother on his mission. It was shown to get them excited and show them all of the fun they are going to have. As I watched the video with pictures set to music – you can only imagine the plans that I was making in my mind for the video I am going to make of my mission. It is going to be so cool! I have tons of pictures I still need to take to realize this dream. Yes Dad, more pictures to take!

So then. I am super excited to be transferred. In case you couldn´t tell. I hope to go to campo, but I´m not sure what the Lord has in store for me. Actually I think it would be really cool to replace Elders, but at the same time that scares me because you´d have to figure everything out yourself without being taught the area....but I just have to wait until the meeting on Monday to find out what my fate is.

Gotta go!

Love you, thanks for sending me closure... I really felt like it just came S.W.A.K. too!

The church is true!
Hermana Jensen

Pictures From Haedo 1

2009-06-02T13:49:00.019-06:00

Rain and flooding streets- yay!