Our ¨Sister´s Conference¨ yesterday was a resounding success! The theme was: "Mujeres de Dios¨ - "Women of God" It was a clear, sunny day, and we started out the day by attending an 8 a.m. session at the Buenos Aires Temple together. President Benton, our Assistants, Elder Kelly and Elder Pollock, and our Senior Missionary, Elder Henderson were there too.When we came out of the temple, we were all amazed at the beauty of the grounds. All the plants were perfectly manicured all around it with many types of beautiful flowers blooming everywhere. As the sun shined on us as we walked around the grounds, it all looked so perfect that we thought it looked like the ¨Celestial Kingdom¨ must look. We then posed for photos, taken by Elder Kelly and Elder Pollock at a few spots around the Temple. One of the photos was of us holding our ¨Mission Banner¨.
We then boarded a small bus together and rode to the ¨Casa de la Mision¨. On the way, we all took ¨The Color Code Test¨, which was not only a fun game, but it helped us understand ourselves and other people better. While we were on the bus, we gave each Sister a special, spiral bound book we had put together for the Conference. It contained inspiring quotes and speeches by Church leaders that we thought would help the Sisters with their missionary work. The book was printed in both Spanish and English. Our Assistants, Elder Kelly and Elder Pollock did a beautiful job of putting together the physical part of the book for us, including the use of pink paper and flowers on the cover. Elder Kelly and Elder Pollock also made sure that each Sister had her name printed in a nice ¨script¨ font on the front of her individual book. I especially liked how the Elders had included on the cover, Sister Margaret Nadauld´s quote about ¨Women of God¨, which I wrote on the blog several days ago. Elder Kelly and Elder Pollock did an excellent job, along with President Benton and our Senior Missionary, Elder Henderson, of serving as our ¨Priesthood Support¨ for the conference. We can´t thank all of these great men enough for all they did for us! After we arrived at the ¨Casa de la Mision¨, we held ¨opening exercises¨, where we sang a church hymn and had an opening prayer. Then, President Benton and I each delivered a speech. After the speech, we all walked out on the patio, where our dear friend and helper, Maria, had set a beautiful table for us, and she served us a delicious lunch she had made, which included her ¨famous¨ homemade chocolate covered cakes with fresh strawberries on top, for dessert.
After lunch the Senior Sister Missionary, Sister Rawson, taught us some stress reduction exercises, where I found myself on the floor with the Sisters, ¨de- stressing.¨ Sister Rawson´s lesson was very helpful to us, since we women tend to get more stressed than men do. After the de- stressing lesson, Sister Pruner and Sister Di Stefano sang a beautiful song for us accompanied by Sister Cole at the piano Then we held a meeting where each of us had the opportunity to ¨Bear Our Testimony.¨ A ¨Testimony Meeting¨ is a time where we share our feelings of love for our Savior, Jesus Christ, and for the Gospel He brought us. We also express our knowledge that the Gospel is true and we talk about how living the Gospel commandments and values helps us to grow spiritually and brings us happiness, security, joy and peace.
It was then time to board the bus for a short visit to the "Rio de la Plata", where we did a little walking together, and took a few more photos before President Benton and I bid a "farewell" to the Sister Missionaries as they boarded the bus to return to their missionary apartments and to get back to doing the "Work of the Lord".The Sister Missionaries were all happy and relaxed by this point. Several of them told us that they felt spiritually re-charged and re-energized to be better missionaries when they returned to their areas.We included above a few random photos of the great memories we made at our very successful "Sister's Conference." We are forever grateful to the Lord for all our blessings, including our "Sister's Conference, and we also extend our "thanks" to all those who helped us create this wonderful day of spiritual experiences, growth and knowledge!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1.26.2009
Finishing the transfer!
He-e-ey!
I love the Draper temple pictures... it´s super gorgeous!
About the prank… it was a no go because mad cow disease broke out and so all the carnecerías stopped vending brains for a while. We were bummed, but it was a blessing in disguise because in the end a different companionship of sisters stayed the night with us and they wouldn´t have thought it was all that funny.
Cool story about the hero pilot – I´m thrilled to be informed of such things.
Sofia did not need to get special permission… anyone who wants to be baptized face first can.
About photocopying my baptism picture and mailing it as a pouch letter-- that is totally kosher and will get to me without problems… in fact anything that is printed directly on the paper can come… you just can´t tape or glue anything on. Thanks!
Everybody wants to stop me and talk politics… the Argentines all seem to have a great deal of faith in Obama. They are all so relieved that he won. I am excited to see how America changes – if it does.
My companion is scabies –free and me too! The cream she took eventually cured her and I was ever protected from getting it!
The Sister's Conference was a giant tender mercy! As you can see in the photos, we were treated like princesses and truly spoiled! It made me remember that we are each special and that we are truly well taken care of. They will be taking place probably every other transfer, but of course, we´re pushing for every transfer! The President looked at me in the eye and asked, “every transfer?” and I of course said yes… so just maybe they will happen every transfer. I hope so. It would really give me a lift every transfer, but if not, every other transfer is still an incredible blessing!
Hermana Johns told me all about how one of the people we found together and taught the first lesson in Castelar has progressed a ton and has a baptisimal date and everything!
She also told me that Gera´s mom (another person we found and began teaching together in Castelar) has progressed and has a baptismal date. And the cool part is her son Gera is going to baptize her because he already has the Aaronic priesthood. I wish I could be there, but it´s completely out of the question – mission policy, but she promised to send me pictures… seeds we planted in Castelar are being baptized! YEEHAW!
I went to the pharmacy and paid $37 pesos for a cream to treat my stye and it is just about gone! Yea for medicine… however, on Saturday I was incredibly sick, we were all but convinced that I have a parasite because I had diarrhea, nausea, muscle pain, neck pain the whole works. But we had an appointment with a great investigator first thing in the morning and knowing me, you can imagine that we left to work just like normal, and worked the entire day, even though I was feeling pretty lousy. The Lord blessed me and I was able to cope in the 40 degree heat (about 102) that felt like 45 (about 112) all day long! The next day I was almost back to normal.
It´s hard to sleep at night because the air is 31 degrees (about 87 degrees) in our apartment, and even with the windows open and the fan at full speed… it´s pretty ineffective. I will be trying the wet shirt trick the next time I wake up and can´t sleep. But I don´t like the idea of doing it, because I feel wet in my clothes all day long and don´t want to suffer it at night too. Can you blame me? We try to abate the heat at night by opening the windows, but that means that in the middle of the night when the punks teenagers ride past our street on their motorcycles it wakes us up because they have mufflers or whatever that screech so loud that it seems to penetrate the atmosphere or something like that. This usually happens twice a night. For fun!
FYI – this transfer ends on Feb. first and then I just have 6 more… so few! So sad!
There are good Samaritans in Argentina, but you still can´t trust them. Explanation; we accidentally left our keys in the door (the outside of the door) one night and when we got up in the next morning they weren´t there. We knocked the doors of our 3 neighbors in our gated apartment complex and nobody answered, the landlord came and changed the lock and we went out to work. The next morning we were able to contact Fernando on the third floor and he said that when he came home that night at 2 am he saw the keys and took them so that the workers that come in the morning didn´t see them and take them. He didn´t want to knock the door at 2 am because he knew we´d freak out. Then when he left that morning he put them more discretely at the foot of our door so that we would find them. They were there waiting for us when we got back for lunch! But our landlord is making us pay to change the lock anyways because you never know if the good Samaritan made a duplicate of the key (you know at 2 am … NOT!) I want to trust him and use the same lock, but know that it´s 40 pesos and it could save our lives, so I´ll try not to complain. But the real miracle is that our wonderful neighbor returned the keys because they were also the keys to the chapel, and the baptismal font! The bishop would have just about killed us if we had lost them. So at least my prayers to find the keys were answered in a way that prevented that disaster--and the bishop never had to hear about it. Yea, for Fernando the good Samaritan!
About the investigators; we were finally able to convince people to let us pass by and bring them to church with us. One is Miguel Benites – 79 years old and it is going to be a battle getting him to recognize that the Church is true, but he let us pick him up, stayed all 3 hours, and is willing to do his part. The problem is he wants a book that proves that Joseph Smith was a prophet… you know like the Book of Mormon! But he is basically blind so we will be reading it to him out loud… and helping him gain a testimony of it in a much slower way than if he were able to read it and do it all over night, but he will progress… I really hope so!
The other is Faustino Arce, he is 64 and is very wise and hard… he accepts that Joseph Smith was a prophet, but this next appointment we are going to try to take out a baptismal date, and he just might reject it… he wants to 'know' not feel things. But he too, let us pick him up, was dressed in a suit, stayed all 3 hours and said he´d be back the next Sunday.
Cool thing about serving in a ward wherein resides a Seventy… you can present him to all your investigators and I´ll bet you can imagine he is a stellar fellowshipper! He talked to them both for like 15 minutes after church! I wanted to stop them and say – you are being fellowshipped by a General Authority, but they don´t quite know what that is yet. But anyways, both are progressing! We will be challenging both of them to be baptized… Miguel today and Faustino on Saturday! Pray for them to accept a date. Thanks!
The miracle was that another couple and their grandchild showed up 45 minutes late for Sacrament Meeting, and could only stay till the end of that first meeting, but it was really, really cool to see people show up on their own doing! We had taught the husband – Francisco, about 70 the first lesson earlier that week. We forgot to call and remind him about Church because of how sick I was Saturday night, but he came all by himself and brought his wife (in a skirt!) and his 4 year old grandson. We went back the next day and taught his daughter Maribel who said everything a missionary wants to hear: How can I come to believe and know about this Joseph Smith? (You have to pray!) She was so excited to read the pamphlet and the Book of Mormon and we are going back tomorrow with a member. I hope that she gets an answer when she prays and that she progresses. She seems so golden!
Faustino says that I walk wrong and that I should check my shoes… he was right, I have worn a good 4 mm off of one of the corners of my left sole and the other is completely normal. I don´t know what to do to correct it, but I´ll just keep walking and when the shoes are totally bad I´ll take a picture to show the difference in one sole to the next. It´s pretty cool, actually.
Then we started off this week and just might have found a FAMILY! They are not that golden, but there is a spark of hope. Other than the fact that they are leaving for vacation in a week. But we think they´re married – the husband was at work, but the mom (Veronica) had listened to the missionaries a tiny bit years ago and her 9 year old daughter Pamela is a sweet girl. The other kid Franco is almost 5. How cool would it be to help a family… a real family get baptized!
Nata – every time I see cute baby clothes here I want to buy them for Davy, but then I realize, that it is nothing more or less cool than all the clothes they have in the states, and with less chance of being robbed in the mail, but know that I always want to buy him things and send them. I´ll probably cave eventually, but we´ll see.
Jason – are you re-compiling your training advice for me? I want your wisdom.
Well then, that is just about all the time I have for today. The next time I write I could have a new companion, and who knows, I could be in a different area. You never know. I doubt it, but you never know. I hope that you have a lovely week and that you enjoy the chilly weather while I sweat all day long!
I love you so much and am especially thankful for telling me some of the things you pray for… it helped me a ton.
Never forget how blessed we are to know the gospel. It is something that so few people have and everyone needs.
As always, you are in my prayers,
Hermana Jensen! Go, fight, win!
He-e-ey!
I love the Draper temple pictures... it´s super gorgeous!
About the prank… it was a no go because mad cow disease broke out and so all the carnecerías stopped vending brains for a while. We were bummed, but it was a blessing in disguise because in the end a different companionship of sisters stayed the night with us and they wouldn´t have thought it was all that funny.
Cool story about the hero pilot – I´m thrilled to be informed of such things.
Sofia did not need to get special permission… anyone who wants to be baptized face first can.
About photocopying my baptism picture and mailing it as a pouch letter-- that is totally kosher and will get to me without problems… in fact anything that is printed directly on the paper can come… you just can´t tape or glue anything on. Thanks!
Everybody wants to stop me and talk politics… the Argentines all seem to have a great deal of faith in Obama. They are all so relieved that he won. I am excited to see how America changes – if it does.
My companion is scabies –free and me too! The cream she took eventually cured her and I was ever protected from getting it!
The Sister's Conference was a giant tender mercy! As you can see in the photos, we were treated like princesses and truly spoiled! It made me remember that we are each special and that we are truly well taken care of. They will be taking place probably every other transfer, but of course, we´re pushing for every transfer! The President looked at me in the eye and asked, “every transfer?” and I of course said yes… so just maybe they will happen every transfer. I hope so. It would really give me a lift every transfer, but if not, every other transfer is still an incredible blessing!
Hermana Johns told me all about how one of the people we found together and taught the first lesson in Castelar has progressed a ton and has a baptisimal date and everything!
She also told me that Gera´s mom (another person we found and began teaching together in Castelar) has progressed and has a baptismal date. And the cool part is her son Gera is going to baptize her because he already has the Aaronic priesthood. I wish I could be there, but it´s completely out of the question – mission policy, but she promised to send me pictures… seeds we planted in Castelar are being baptized! YEEHAW!
I went to the pharmacy and paid $37 pesos for a cream to treat my stye and it is just about gone! Yea for medicine… however, on Saturday I was incredibly sick, we were all but convinced that I have a parasite because I had diarrhea, nausea, muscle pain, neck pain the whole works. But we had an appointment with a great investigator first thing in the morning and knowing me, you can imagine that we left to work just like normal, and worked the entire day, even though I was feeling pretty lousy. The Lord blessed me and I was able to cope in the 40 degree heat (about 102) that felt like 45 (about 112) all day long! The next day I was almost back to normal.
It´s hard to sleep at night because the air is 31 degrees (about 87 degrees) in our apartment, and even with the windows open and the fan at full speed… it´s pretty ineffective. I will be trying the wet shirt trick the next time I wake up and can´t sleep. But I don´t like the idea of doing it, because I feel wet in my clothes all day long and don´t want to suffer it at night too. Can you blame me? We try to abate the heat at night by opening the windows, but that means that in the middle of the night when the punks teenagers ride past our street on their motorcycles it wakes us up because they have mufflers or whatever that screech so loud that it seems to penetrate the atmosphere or something like that. This usually happens twice a night. For fun!
FYI – this transfer ends on Feb. first and then I just have 6 more… so few! So sad!
There are good Samaritans in Argentina, but you still can´t trust them. Explanation; we accidentally left our keys in the door (the outside of the door) one night and when we got up in the next morning they weren´t there. We knocked the doors of our 3 neighbors in our gated apartment complex and nobody answered, the landlord came and changed the lock and we went out to work. The next morning we were able to contact Fernando on the third floor and he said that when he came home that night at 2 am he saw the keys and took them so that the workers that come in the morning didn´t see them and take them. He didn´t want to knock the door at 2 am because he knew we´d freak out. Then when he left that morning he put them more discretely at the foot of our door so that we would find them. They were there waiting for us when we got back for lunch! But our landlord is making us pay to change the lock anyways because you never know if the good Samaritan made a duplicate of the key (you know at 2 am … NOT!) I want to trust him and use the same lock, but know that it´s 40 pesos and it could save our lives, so I´ll try not to complain. But the real miracle is that our wonderful neighbor returned the keys because they were also the keys to the chapel, and the baptismal font! The bishop would have just about killed us if we had lost them. So at least my prayers to find the keys were answered in a way that prevented that disaster--and the bishop never had to hear about it. Yea, for Fernando the good Samaritan!
About the investigators; we were finally able to convince people to let us pass by and bring them to church with us. One is Miguel Benites – 79 years old and it is going to be a battle getting him to recognize that the Church is true, but he let us pick him up, stayed all 3 hours, and is willing to do his part. The problem is he wants a book that proves that Joseph Smith was a prophet… you know like the Book of Mormon! But he is basically blind so we will be reading it to him out loud… and helping him gain a testimony of it in a much slower way than if he were able to read it and do it all over night, but he will progress… I really hope so!
The other is Faustino Arce, he is 64 and is very wise and hard… he accepts that Joseph Smith was a prophet, but this next appointment we are going to try to take out a baptismal date, and he just might reject it… he wants to 'know' not feel things. But he too, let us pick him up, was dressed in a suit, stayed all 3 hours and said he´d be back the next Sunday.
Cool thing about serving in a ward wherein resides a Seventy… you can present him to all your investigators and I´ll bet you can imagine he is a stellar fellowshipper! He talked to them both for like 15 minutes after church! I wanted to stop them and say – you are being fellowshipped by a General Authority, but they don´t quite know what that is yet. But anyways, both are progressing! We will be challenging both of them to be baptized… Miguel today and Faustino on Saturday! Pray for them to accept a date. Thanks!
The miracle was that another couple and their grandchild showed up 45 minutes late for Sacrament Meeting, and could only stay till the end of that first meeting, but it was really, really cool to see people show up on their own doing! We had taught the husband – Francisco, about 70 the first lesson earlier that week. We forgot to call and remind him about Church because of how sick I was Saturday night, but he came all by himself and brought his wife (in a skirt!) and his 4 year old grandson. We went back the next day and taught his daughter Maribel who said everything a missionary wants to hear: How can I come to believe and know about this Joseph Smith? (You have to pray!) She was so excited to read the pamphlet and the Book of Mormon and we are going back tomorrow with a member. I hope that she gets an answer when she prays and that she progresses. She seems so golden!
Faustino says that I walk wrong and that I should check my shoes… he was right, I have worn a good 4 mm off of one of the corners of my left sole and the other is completely normal. I don´t know what to do to correct it, but I´ll just keep walking and when the shoes are totally bad I´ll take a picture to show the difference in one sole to the next. It´s pretty cool, actually.
Then we started off this week and just might have found a FAMILY! They are not that golden, but there is a spark of hope. Other than the fact that they are leaving for vacation in a week. But we think they´re married – the husband was at work, but the mom (Veronica) had listened to the missionaries a tiny bit years ago and her 9 year old daughter Pamela is a sweet girl. The other kid Franco is almost 5. How cool would it be to help a family… a real family get baptized!
Nata – every time I see cute baby clothes here I want to buy them for Davy, but then I realize, that it is nothing more or less cool than all the clothes they have in the states, and with less chance of being robbed in the mail, but know that I always want to buy him things and send them. I´ll probably cave eventually, but we´ll see.
Jason – are you re-compiling your training advice for me? I want your wisdom.
Well then, that is just about all the time I have for today. The next time I write I could have a new companion, and who knows, I could be in a different area. You never know. I doubt it, but you never know. I hope that you have a lovely week and that you enjoy the chilly weather while I sweat all day long!
I love you so much and am especially thankful for telling me some of the things you pray for… it helped me a ton.
Never forget how blessed we are to know the gospel. It is something that so few people have and everyone needs.
As always, you are in my prayers,
Hermana Jensen! Go, fight, win!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1 COMMENTS:
Beth Cole said...
My name is Sister Beth Cole from Melba, Idaho and I am the mother of Sister Ashley Cole who is a missionary in the Buenos Aires West Mission. I love reading your blog and looking at the pictures (especially the ones with my daughter in them). I'm sure you understand that Mom's are thirsty for any information about things that are going on in Argentina. It sounds like the "Sister's Conference" was a great spiritual and physical lift.
I can feel the missionary spirit in the beautiful letters and think the people of Argentina are lucky to have such a righteous sister to teach them. Thanks for sharing your missionary experiences.
FEBRUARY 22, 2009 10:49 PM
My name is Sister Beth Cole from Melba, Idaho and I am the mother of Sister Ashley Cole who is a missionary in the Buenos Aires West Mission. I love reading your blog and looking at the pictures (especially the ones with my daughter in them). I'm sure you understand that Mom's are thirsty for any information about things that are going on in Argentina. It sounds like the "Sister's Conference" was a great spiritual and physical lift.
ReplyDeleteI can feel the missionary spirit in the beautiful letters and think the people of Argentina are lucky to have such a righteous sister to teach them. Thanks for sharing your missionary experiences.