Monday, August 10, 2015

August 10th

Hola everyone!! :)


Well I have experienced my first really big rain storm in Argentina! Yesterday! :) it hasnt rained here for about 6 months and so everything flooded!!!!! We were about midcalf in water walking in some streets and just soaked! haha but the worst part is here everyone is home but no one wants to let you in!!! haha Its terrible! In about 2 hours we ran out of our plans for the day! Everyone was home but they didnt want to let us in! haha so we decided to go to a members house that we know they would let us in! haha and they did! but they just started yelling at us! why? because we were soaked and dirty and they told us that we shouldnt be out here when its raining like this! haha the hermano was really really close to calling Presidente Perez to tell him that he shouldnt let us out when its raining like it did yesterday! haha Our appartment didnt flood but we were preparing for it! haha but they let us in and made us switch skirts with la hermana and coats and they drove us (they are one of the 3 families in our branch that have a car) to our appointment (our last appointment of the day) and then once our appointment was over they told us to call them and they were going to drive us home! it was quite an experience!! It continued to rain until midnight and so by morning the water was gone! (mostly) haha 

we found a really great family this week that we are really excited about Rita and Oscar! They are contacts and it turns out that they are really good friends with some less actives that we have here! Its been really great to know this family! They actually remembered our appointment and were waiting with food for us! This is a big deal! A lot of people dont remember our appointments! but they have a big family and are really close! We have a lot of hope for them! 

Our other investigators are still progressing and it is so cool to see!! :)

Im so gratful to be here and am so excited to be a missionary!

I love you all and hope you have a great week! :)

Love,
Hermana Armstrong

unfortunatly i didnt get a picture of the rain but we went to santa fe this week and got to see the new offices of the mission!! :)

this is our wonderful oven that we use! The front is slit in half and we are in the process of getting it fixed but its really funny!! haha 

--
The Church is True!! 
DSC00482.JPGDSC00484.JPGDSC00485.JPG

August 3rd

Hola!!! :)

I hope that everyone is doing well!!! and that this week was good to everyone!! 

our week was really great! We had a lot of miracles that happened this week! The past couple of weeks we have had problems with communication with our leaders in the branch here but this week everything has changed!! Its been really great to see this change and it helps us to know that we have their support and that all is well! 

great well we have a few miracles this week and our first one was at the beginning of the week! So we have a less active member whose name is Juan,and  well he is missing a foot! yeah and lives like super far from the church! so he usually has a ride to church but then he has been feeling like he is more of a burden than anything else and so he tries to be independant but cant. He doesnt have the means to do so and he physically cant! and so one day he had just had a really bad day and has just been really hard on himself like we all do one day or another and called us and told us he wasnt coming to church anymore and that he was going to donate all his books back to the church, etc... and so we went to go meet with him and frankly told him that he cant deny what he knows to be true. He finally came around and told us that once he gets his money (like a retirement fund) he will come back to church! but he doesnt want anyone to come and pick him up and doesnt want anyone to help out with the taxi. He was expecting that the time to get his money would be like in two or three months. Well the very next day he gets a call from the bank and they told him to come in and that they have his money for his retirement!!! It was fantastic!!!

another miracle, our investigators la familia Barrios the boyfriend is finally thinking about getting married!!! This is a miracle for us because before he didnt want anything to do with marriage but now he has plans to save money so they can go to Paraguay to get married(they are originally from there) so that his brother and her dad can be there when the get married!!! :) We are really excited for them!!! :)

last miracle that happened this week! Another less active member, whose name is Anita, this lady is awesome!!!!!! She is really fantastic!! She has had the hardest life I have known! She met the missionaries and was baptized but her husband wanted nothing to do with it! well he finally had a change of heart and was baptized in january, well october of the same year he passed away of cancer! It was super sudden and was like one month they found the cancer and the next he passed away! Its been really hard for her to find closure! But anyway she finally came to church!!!!!!!! :D the second time she has come to church since ive been here!!! But what is really crazy is that the missionary that baptized her is a relative of the mission president here!!!! And so when he came for the other branch that shares our building he got her address and went and saw her!!! I think that was a game changer for her! And also, because both us and the elders from the other branch went and saw her throughout this week unplanned and was just spur of the moment! We all told her how much she is needed here! She knows like EVERYONE!!! Which is great she can help us with all our less active members!!

Well i hope everyone has a great week!!! I want to share that I know miracles happen!!! It may be hard to see but miracles really do happen! Big and small!!! :) 

I love you all!! 

Love,
Hermana Armstrong
 
Our activity that we had this past week! (Im standing next to our investigator la hermana Victoria (soon-to-be) Barrios!) 

Ummm free living spider when you purchase q-tips! Grrrrrreeeeeeaaaattttttt.... 

One of the prettiest plazas that is in our area!!! There are a lot here!!! :)
DSC00459.JPGDSC00473.JPGDSC00475.JPG

July 28th

Well this week not too much has happened I found out that Hermana Thornton and i get to stay in Rafaela!!!!! YAY!!!! I was so excited! haha our new mission president didnt make a whole lt of changes....yet... haha but he is really great!!

We have been really working hard on our investigators la familia Barrios (Victoria from my last email) they are both so ready for baptism they just have to get married and he doesnt want to!! haha but she told us that she decided that she wants to get baptized!! So we are really excited for them!! SO all is going good with them!! :) 

we are working with our less actives and our members and are seeing a lot of success in our area with this and looking for new investigators through our members!! 

Not much has really happened this week haha but we did have a contact that came up to us and asked us about the church! that was a lot of fun!! we were in the store and he was just hanging out and came up and started asking about the church and what we believed! that was great!! 

Well sorry for such a short email but i cant really think of anything else that happened this week!! But im doing great! Im loving Argentina! It really just feels like home! haha

I love you all and hope that you have a great week! :)

Love,
Hermana Armstrong

SOMOS RAFAELA!!! WHOOOO I get to stay!!!!!!!! :)

This is a plate of food in argentina!! ;) JK our family that we were eating with made a pizza and once the pizza was all gone this was round 2 and they didnt want to dirty another plate! haha

This was also while we were eating with our investigators and their oven doesnt work the best and this is how they keep the oven on! haha 

--
The Church is True!! 
DSC00432.JPGDSC00433.JPGDSC00436.JPG

July 20th

Okay to start off with the subject line! The District is basically a tutorial on how to be a missionary but its like a picture perfect scenerios. But this week we had a investigator who told us,¨So when can i get baptized? It was the best!!!!!! :D We were so excited!! There are a few problems though! She´s living with her boyfriend and they have a kid together and want to have more kids but they dont actually love each other! yeah you read that right! haha but she is really great and so is her family!! They are so much fun they are originally from Paraguay! And during our lesson they started talking in guatanee(??? Spelling? its like a tribal language of Paraguay) when they couldnt explain it in spanish! That was pretty fun! haha but they really are so much fun to work with and she loves the gospel!! 
 
This week we went to Jesica and Rauls house for lunch and their daughter is a little sassy but sooooo cute! So my companion askes Jesica how she made the fruit salad (because everyone here makes their salads different) and Pauli (the daughter she´s 5) answers, with fruits no más! haha 
 
This week is transfers and so we will get to find out if we are staying or if there is going to be a change!!!! So my pday will be on tuesday next week! but time really has gone by so fast!!!! It is crazy!! 
 
Well, i hope everyone has a great week and know that I love you all!!! :) 
 
Love,
La Hermana Armstrong
 
The first picture is of a great friend se llama Magali Rohrmann! The baby isnt hers and everyone calls the baby chanchi which means pig in spanish! Its so funny the terms of endearment here are definitly something that you need to have a tough skin for! hahaha 
 
The second is Pauli! She is just the best!!
 
 the last one is Raul and Jesica when we did a family home evening with them about diligence and enduring to the end! The game where you start with the oreo on your forhead and try to get it to your mouth without your hands its so much fun!! :)

-- 
The Church is True!! 
DSC00395.JPGDSC00397.JPGDSC00408.JPG

July 6th

Hola!! :)

We havent met with our mission president yet, but we have a meeting with him tomorrow!! :) he sounds really interesting! haha he was military and was a prision guard sort of thing so its going to be interesting to see what changes he makes! Presidente Zanni was pretty strict as well and made a lot of changes but its going to be fun! :) 

Our weather is really cold! Sometimes! It really depends on the day but mostly its cold! And its humid so it makes it worse and the rapid changes is making a lot of people sick here! But its always really hard to get out of bed because its so cold in our pensión! haha i feel like im in a totally different time period that everyone else because emails that i get from you all are about how hot it is and all these wildfires! Yikes and here its freezing!! haha its really weird! 

This week was..... wellll i dont want to say terrible but really it was! it was a week of not very many citas! :( and the american cup championship happened this week and so there was literally NO ONE! It was Argentina VS. Chile, and so no one wanted to talk to us first of all and then Argentina lost! So after no one really wanted to talk to us! *Background information* Argentina and chile have a huge beef with eachother there was a war in the past and things didnt end well. So to have argentina lose to Chile was the worst! haha and then no one came to church! usually we are a strong 45! That was last week! We were so excited because our investigators came last sunday and inactive members came and so we had hopes for this week but we had only 28 people in the church this week! That can tell you that this week has been rough not only for us but for our members and investigators as well! But it is a new week and have high hopes for this coming week! We are in the process of trying to find new investigators because our investigators now are hitting walls and some no longer want to take the lessons! So we will be clapping at a lot of doors/gates! (In Argentina you dont knock but you clap outside gates) 

But this week had its ups! We ate at two different Asados this week!!! It was fantastic!! Ugh i love it when members want to feed us!! haha we also got to paint a house this week! That helped our spirits a lot this week plus we got fed really well this week! haha 

But I hope that you all have a SAFE and a great week! Im sorry to hear about all the fires again! Stay safe!! I love you all!

Chao,
Hermana Armstrong
--
The Church is True!! 


Our two different asados

Our street during the futbol game!! There was no one!!! the streets were empty! hahaha


DSC00382.JPGDSC00369.JPGDSC00381.JPG

June 29th

Well Wednesday is the day! I will become a missionary of the grand mission of Santa Fe Argentina!!! Whoooooo So exciting!!! 

Our week was really good! especially sunday!! We had a lot of inactives that decided to come back to church this week and we had some of our investigators come! It was great!! We had an attendance of 45!!! :) We were really excited!!

We have an Investigator right now and she is so great!! Her name is Natalie! She is 35 and has a little boy of 4 months! She is looking for a place to belong! The babys dad left right after he was born and so she has just been kind of hurting after that, she has just wanted to look for a place where her family could be together and then here we came!!! Its been really great! She couldnt come to church this sunday because its been really really humid (As you can tell from the foto!) and here baby has been having problems and so he was up all night sick and so she didnt want to take him out in the humidity! But we have taught the first couple lessons and she wants to get baptized! :) The people here are ready we just have to go find them!!! :)

Funny story of the week: We had a lesson with two of our investigators, Julieta (shes 10) and Javier (hes 8) they are kids of an inactive family and so we are working to get both the family reactivated and they both wanted to get baptized and so we are teaching them as well! The mom really wants to come back and she has come to church the past two weeks and has really liked the feeling of coming back! So we are really hopeful for them!! anyway, since both the kids are pretty young we decided to watch the restoration, its about 20 min long. Anyway, to make sure it worked we played it during our comp study and just made sure that it would play etc... anyway to have some fun we decieded to switch the language to Tagalog with english subtitles. we played it a little and laughed at how hard that language is! then took out the dvd and went to work. Well we get to their house and we put the dvd in and then it starts playing in Tagalog with english subtitles and they dont have an option to go to the menu and change the language! GREATTTTTTTTT........ So me and my companion start and attempt to translate from the english subtitles! haha Oh my goodness it was a train wreck! But their older brother came in to the rescue and pulled out their new dvd player hooked it all up and we were able to get the language switched back to spanish and such! But its a great memory to look back on a laugh about! hahahaha

Welll I hope you all have a great week!! Today i read in Alma Chapter 7 and my favorite verses from this chapter are 11-13 they say, 11 And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.

 12 And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.

 13 Now the Spirit knoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance; and now behold, this is the testimony which is in me. 

These are some of my favorite scriptures i love knowing that no matter what i go through in this life i always have someone who knows exactly how i feel and knows how to comfort me exactly how i need it!

I know our Savior and our Heavenly Father know exactly how to comfort us and how to help us overcome our trials and problems in this life! :)

Love,
Hermana Armstrong

--
The Church is True!! 

DSC00358.JPGDSC00363.JPGDSC00323.JPG