April 30, 2012

Hola!

Trying to think of what to write this week was hard...how is the possible on the mission? Either I´m getting used to the craziness of the mission and not recognizing it as crazy anymore, or this week nothing super interesting happened.

Well, my birthday was awesome! We went to the Holocaust Museum and then to this famous shopping street. Everything was really expensive so we window shopped, and then finally found a store we could afford and I treated myself to a new sweater.

Speaking of sweaters...ITS SO COLD HERE. I swear it changed overnight. And everyone keeps telling me this is just the start and it gets WAYYY colder. Oh well, the more cold I am the more blessings I receive, right?!

We got a new Hermana in our apartment yesterday. Her companion was visa waiting here for her mission in Venezuela, and after 9 months of waiting she finally got it and left. So now we have the Hermana Renteria in our apartment too. Switching between us and the other hermanas as a trio. Yeah, you know what that means. 5 girls, one tiny ghetto bathroom, 6:30 am. Ha-ha but no she´s awesome and we all have a lot of fun. 

Thinking about the mission, I think one if the hardest things is that you are constantly being lied to. And no matter how bad you know/think that someone is lying to you, you have to correct yourself and have perfect faith. You have to. Your successes, baptisms, happiness, trust in others, and relationships all depend on it. Were struggling with quantity of investigators right now, but the quality is really good. We have a few really awesome ones. Pedro...the empanadas guy is on the verge of being dropped. He is so sweet and has a lot of interest but he´s not really progressing. We´ll make a decision in a day or so. We have to meet with him one more time.

I´ve decided the two best members in all of Argentina live in this ward. Hermana Curia, and Hermano Cortez. Hermana Curia is like my second mom here, she is so sweet and gave me one of her rings ´´so that I never forget her´´ for my birthday. She is so sweet (she wrote you a message on facebook dad you should check!) and Hermano Cortez is awesome. He is older, about 60 or 65ish but talks about his mission like it was yesterday! It was so cute, the other day we were at his house and his cute wife made us hot chocolate and he talked to us about his mission. He reached literally in arms length and found this folder that had all his mission things in it. It was not even hidden in some box somewhere. He remembers so much and talks about it as the best time of his life. He is so awesome. I hope I can be like that about my mission too!

Well its confusing for Christmas not to be soon with this cold weather, but were listening to Christmas music anyway, how weird its spring where you all are. Well I love you all and hope this week is amazing. You should all read 2 Nephi 33. It's a short chapter and awesome. It's pretty much all a testimony, that's why it's so powerful. Keep sending me your missionary experiences!

Besos,

Hermana Marchant

April 23, 2012

Hello!

Happy Graduation Alex! Congrats on the many, many long years spent there in Provo. I´m sure you will be missed! Sounds like it was a crazy trip! Glad everyone made it and it all worked out! 

Well today is MY BIRTHDAY!!! You're going to laugh when I tell you what were going to do to celebrate! Luckily it's P-day! Were going with all the Elders to a Holocaust Museum...and then...a Gun Museum hahaha. Obviously the elders had P-day planned and then found out it was my birthday and now we're all going! But I hear they have realllllly good shopping where we're going to be so maybe we´ll split off. Anyway I'm really happy and feel really blessed to be on a mission right now. 

Guess what? I got robed this week. It was on the subway. It was funny because on our way to District meeting I was talking to this lady and she told me that Subways are really dangerous for getting robbed because they are PACKED full of people. And it was on our way back that it happened to me. I have ridden the subway a million times before and nothing like that happened. I feel dumb for not watching better. I had my bag up close to me and I felt a hand but I thought it was just because there were thousands of people all around me...then we got off and were running after a Bus and I was looking for my little wallet and realized it was gone! Luckily, it was only my money that was taken not my camera or anything else. Money is replaceable. The thing I didn't like is that it was in this secret pocket on the back of the bag which means someone was watching me for a while (put my wallet away) and followed us on the same subway and was standing there the whole time without my knowing. Oh well...I learned my lesson.

Well, we made a break through yesterday with one of our investigators (Pedro...with the good empanadas that feeds us because he thought we couldn't afford anything). He told us that he needed some time and wasn´t really progressing so we dropped him for a little.  But he called us back yesterday and we had a lesson with him. The whole lesson was fine but he was still super doubtful...and then, I realized he was wearing all while (it's his uniform for his Pizzeria) and I said something like ´´perfect, let's go baptize you right now your all ready in all white´´! He said ´´Whoa, each time you guys talk about baptism my heart starts pounding and I can feel something´´ .  We asked what is the something that he feels and he said ´´I don't know, but I want to feel it more´´ (obviously it's the Spirit).  He is learning the language of the Spirit so we tried to help him understand what it is. He is so logical that it's hard for him to just accept and believe. But we have a ton of faith in him! I´m so excited.

 Well I have some celebrating/crying at how sad the holocaust museum is to do, so I´ll end this! I Love you all so much. THANKS FOR ALL THE BIRTHDAY WISHES!!

No I haven´t gotten your packages mom and sherry, they might be at the mission home. I will probably get them next time I get mail which will be in about a month-maximum.

Love, Hermana Marchant...the 22 year old. (no puedo creer)

April 16,2012

Hello!
            Wow, ok can you believe I´ve been in the mission for over 5 months now? And even crazier can you believe I turn 22 next week? I can´t.

            This week ended awesome, but before last night at 8:00 pm it was the hardest week ever! We were rejected and rejected and rejected, and lost all of our investigators even the really strong ones. It was crazy how thing after thing went wrong. We tried to laugh it off, but it was really hard. Everyone (before my mission) told me that Argentina is super receptive and we were going to baptize a ton. But then I got here and I heard a few people say that the city used to be really receptive years ago.  Now it's more European than anything. It's so true, the people here think they have everything.  It's so sad! But we went through our book of old investigators from years and years ago, and made a list of everyone that has 3 asistencia (occurrences of attendance at church) or more and started contacting them. We finally, at 8:00 last night got to one door and this girl, Macarena (like the Macarena dance...best name ever) answered and within literally 1 minute she was committed to get baptized this Wednesday. It was literally like she was just waiting for us to knock her door. She said she was preparing for her baptism and then the missionaries just stopped coming to her door. How awesome!

            Besides Macarena, I think my favorite thing that happened this week was the random guy asking Hna. Sperry if she is the Virgin Mary! Ha-ha speaking of the Virgin Mary, every single person here claims to have seen her in a vision! We hear that at least 4 or 5 times a week! It's so interesting, i.e. the difference in culture. Even if you have seen something crazy in a vision in the US you don't usually talk about it but here everyone is really open.
            We had a weird experience this week! We were contacting some people in this really quite little neighborhood and we saw this Special Needs boy sitting outside his house, so we started talking to him. He couldn't really respond but he had a good sense of humor, and could respond with hand signals. So we were talking and telling him jokes when his brother came out. We started talking to him about the gospel and he invited us in to say a prayer. We had a member with us so we decided to do that. So, we go in and are just about the say the prayer when the special needs boy runs in...Come to find out he is literally almost 7 feet tall. HE WAS HUGE. And he slammed the door and started to get really mad for some reason and hitting the wall and punching the door. Hna Sperry, and the member and I all looked at each other and said VAMOS. We pretty much ran out of there. I have never been so scared in my life! News travels fast in the ward and we got a lecture from about every single ward member to be more careful!

Well thanks for the early birthday wishes, I love you all and you´re in my prayers! Keep sharing the gospel and loving life! xoxo

Hermana Marchant

Annie, Tommy, and Steven: Thanks so much for the pictures they are awesome! I brag about my cute cousins to everyone and show them all your drawings! You guys are little artists! Love you!

Sherry, No I have not gotten the package yet, ill probably get it in about a month because we only get mail about once or twice a transfer! I'll let you know when I get it! Thanks for your letters and packages. You're so thoughtful!

April 9, 2012

Hola, Friends and family!
I know you're all expecting me to say it since I say it each time...but I CAN´T BELIEVE ANOTHER WEEK HAS PASSED! This week was interesting on the topic of what I ate...no that's not true for the whole week, just Saturday was interesting. We have lunch with the Contrerez Family each Saturday. The food always tastes good, but it's always a little sketchy...usually there is at least one bug or hair or something in it. Well anyway, I´ve gotten really good at just shoving bugs to the side and still eating (yeah I know...can you believe it? me either.) but this time I found one tiny hair and thought, ´´wow, success...the food tastes really good only one tiny hair´´ well just when I finished the thought my companion looked at me with wide eyes and pointed to the chicken she pushed to the side of her plate, I looked at it closer and realized they were CHICKEN FEET. And not only chicken feet in the shape of chicken feet, they had 3 inch white hairs on them....all throughout the pasta. We´ll I forgot about it for the day and we went on with our day. I was excited all day because we were have Family home evening with a recent convert in the ward and they wanted us to make tacos because they don't have that kind of food here. So when we got there we all went to Wal-Mart (that's the first sign the meat would be weird...it's from Wal-Mart...) to get the ingredients. Well long story short we cooked them and the meat was the grossest meat I've ever eaten in my life. We were describing it to the other Hermana´s that we live with in our apartment that are Latin and they gave us a list of gross weird body parts it probably was. Well anyway we were going to be late back to our apartment, so we had to run for about a mile. By the time I got home I felt horrible. Chicken feet, Mystery body part with tacos and running... yeah I threw up. It was probably one of the worst taco´s I've ever eaten in my whole life. Well the whole ward found out we made taco´s, and now everyone wants to do Family home evening with us. Each time I think of tacos my stomach hurts and I got nauseous...I don't know what I'm going to do this week with 3 taco nights...
Well remember Riley? He´s the one that walked up to us a few weeks ago and said ´´I'm a member and I'm inactive and I want to be active again´´ We´ll he works at this pizzeria with the best pizza and empanadas that I've tried in Argentina so far. His friend Pedro is one of our investigators and they work together at the pizzeria. Each time we go, Pedro gives us a ton of free food, so last time we told him we don't need it and we feel bad and were going to start buying it. Well come to find out, when we were telling him to assist church with a question in your mind and it will be answered Hermana Sperry gave a example of when she did that and her question was ´´how can I save money for my mission´´ (obviously this was before her mission) but he thought that was recently so he thought we had no money. He is half blind and can´t really see very well, but he said ´´No I can see you are both losing weight each day and it's because you don't have money or food, so whenever you need it just come here´´ hahaha we told him we have money and were taken care of and that we are actually gaining weight each day! Hahah were laughing so hard! They people here are so nice!
We taught Priesthood class on how to be a miembro justo (I'm not sure what it is in English... like a member that is a best friend to an investigator) and on missionary work in your personal life. It went really really well, lots of people are really excited about the missionary work now!!  I've never taught a class before so I was super proud. My public speaking fears are hardly fears anymore. So blessed! Love you all so much, keep sending your missionary experiences, I love to read them! xoxox

Hermana Marchant!

these are from after conference with romina and a less active memeber roxana and her son (the cutest little boy in the world Bruno)

that wall of toms shoes is the brand that toms makes for argentina to sell here, its called something else and they are soooooooo much cooler then toms! they are have designs. they are cheap too...in dollars they are only about 25!

that sign is some public park with hundreds of cats because people just drop off their cats there hahah so they put up a sign asking people not to just drop them off! how funny. we met two people from oregon there and talked for a long time they didnt speak one word of spanish haha!

April 2, 2012

Hello everyone!

How was conference for everyone? So awesome for me!  

I loved all the questions I´ve been getting; ´´Do you have cell phones?´´  ´´Did you get to watch conference, or at least listen to it by radio?´´  Ha-ha.  YES technology has hit Argentina, especially here in the city! We have cell phones, and I got to watch conference...in English! It was fun, at the stake center they had a whole room for English so all the missionaries and some members that speak English all sat together and ate lots of treats and watched! (All sessions too).  It was so awesome, I´ve been trying to decide on a favorite talk to write about but I couldn´t, a lot of them were so good! Seemed like a recurring theme I took away from it was the patterns of the gospel and patterns of God, it seemed like most talked about God having a pattern for all things. I loved it because it's just another reminder that The Gospel and the way of God doesn´t change with the constantly changing of the world, but of course Satan would be changing things and updating his ways to appeal to more people. The easy way always was Satan's way. I loved the talk on Forgiveness too. My favorite quote from the whole Conference was ´´there´s always someone to love, someone to forgive, and someone to serve´´. 

Today is the start of a new transfer, and luckily Hermana Sperry and I are still companions! Yay! We have set some achievable, but awesome goals for this transfer and were excited! I´ve realized that every day on the mission I experience heart break, laughs, interesting conversations, and extremely spiritual experiences. It's such an interesting time of life. Conference talked a lot about missionary work and how each and every member is called to it, wheather you're a missionary or not. I hope you are all praying for opportunities, and talking to those people Heavenly Father is preparing and setting in your path! 

We have a new investigator, her name is Romina and she's absolutely adorable. I don´t know why I've been so drawn to the kids on my mission but I really feel the strongest connected to them. She is 11 years old and already has been to church a few times earlier this year with other missionaries. We found her in that awesome building that looks like a haunted house (I think I told you all about that a few weeks ago).  She is so awesome the first time we talked to her she told us she wants to be President of the world to eliminate all the evil and bad things. And yesterday, her mom bailed on coming to conferences so Romina came with us and spend the whole day helping us teach other investigators in-between sessions of conference. We had her pray for the food at lunch and she prayed that there wouldn't be transfers today! How cute! Then she said she was going to call Pres Monson and tell him she would like it if he let us stay here ha-ha. I bet her prayer is what kept me and Hna Sperry together this transfer! Well anyway at the end of the day we were on the bus coming home and she asked us when she could be baptized, before we even got the chance to ask her! How awesome. We talked to her mom when we got back and she's supper supportive too. We taught her what April fools is and she went around to all the elders at conference playing little pranks on them and saying APRIL FOOLS ha-ha, she´s so awesome! I'll send pictures next week. Well I love you all so much! Have a good week!

Xoxo