11-21-2011

Hola familia!

Dang! I am so sad the email from last week didn´t work! I spent FOREVER typing it out and it was filled with awesome stories! I don´t have a whole lot of time to write today so I´m gonna make it short:

Stories from last week:

• waking up at 3am with a cockroach on my face. not. kidding.
• having a rat enter into our pension from underneath our closed door (don´t forget we´re in Argentina).  We spent an hour trying to chase it out.  It was in our oven and then ran into our room and climbed up our curtain and hid on the top of our window (it´s really ghetto and is covered by this wood thing so we couldn´t see it).  So we spent forreveerrrr searching our room for it, standing on our beds and hitting things with our broom and mop waiting for it to jump out hahah.  Finally we moved everything out of the room and built a barricade in the kitchen so it couldn´t go in the oven again.  I finally hit the wood slab about the window and it jumped down and of course we freaked out and were screaming and jumping and it ran in the kitchen, through the barricade, and into the oven again!  Finally we got it out and got it to run outside.  It was quite the adventure!
• we were in relief society and the counselor was talking and she was looking right at me and then she stopped and just looked at me so I thought she asked me a question.  I heard the word ´visitantes´ so I went on to introduce our visitors for that week... Mabel and Ramona, both of which have been in RS like 5 times before.  She looked really confused and my companion starts laughing and there was an awkward pause, and she went on talking.   Turns out she was asking who did their visiting teaching this month..... bahaha.  It´s ok, someday I will learn to understand Spanish....
• the baptism de Lorena!! So awesome. My first baptism!  She is 16 and it was a miracle that her ¨dad¨ was there... he has been pretty cold with us and doesn´t want to get married to her mom, but we had a family night with him for the first time and he just broke down and started crying and told us that he knew he needed to change but he felt so low.  He told us he just couldn´t enter into a church.  Anyway... we invited him to the baptism but he had to work and was going to try and get off early.  It was 7 and we were all waiting around and then at 7:30 he walked in!  It was so awesome and the baptism was great.  We have 3 more this week but we´re waiting on marriage documents so we´re hoping and praying they will happen!

This week

AWKWARDS, INCOMODOS, Y CHISTOSOS

• people trying to pronounce my last name. Hahaha. NO ONE can say it.  Sometimes it´s oont, art, hart, haunt, aun, haun, and who knows what else! 
• all of the names they call people here... all of the sweet ladies use ´mi reina, mi cielo, mi amor´ etc. (my queen, my heaven, my love) and the best is the husbands and wives when they yell to each other ´gordita!´ or ´viejo!´ which means fat and old... hahahah. People are just so darn honest here.

AWESOMES

• the 3 people we have getting baptized this week are awesome!  Miguel has been smoking for 12 years I think and has known the church for 13 and has been through many sets of missionaries, and now he feels like he is finally ready to change and be baptized.  Within a couple of weeks he went from smoking 40 cigarettes a day to smoking none!  Mabel and Augustina are also getting baptized this week.  I got to take pictures of their family the other day and they are adorable! I´ll try and send a few
• Just a thought for the week!  We´re always using different stories and analogies and such to help people understand the principals of the gospel.  One we have been using lately is how living the gospel is like having kids (not that either of us have experience or anything!).  But yes it´s a big decision, and it´s hard.  It´s constant work and lots of ups and downs, but it is always worth it.  I am learning so much that anything in life that is worth anything takes work.  It is work... but that´s what we´re here to do, is work and change ourselves to be like Christ.  And it´s hard, it´s not easy... but the joy and deep happiness that we recieve from it is ALWAYS worth it, because it´s everlasting.

That´s all for this week!  My companion goes home in a week and I will get a new companion and most likely stay in my same area.  Too bad you didn´t get my email from last week because my stories were so much better :) you would have all been laughing your heads off if you knew all of the little details hahah but hopefully the ones I wrote today will explain enough the pictures I sent last week.  They don´t celebrate Thanksgiving here but my comp. and I will probably do something small for it since she´s from Utah.  We almost forgot it was this week!  But have a great week and a fabulous thanksgiving!! :) besitos! ciao!

--Hermana Hunt

Cockroach on my face when I woke up!

1st Baptism

MTC Districk

Mauro, Facundo, Fernanda

11-07-2011

Yes, we wear these hats!

Sleeping on the floor before conference

Hola todos!

Wow... what an awesome week!  We got to travel to Resistencia over the weekend to hear Elder Christofferson speak along with Elder Foster and Elder Jensen from the 70.  It was super awesome!  Not to mention we are working with some great people that are very near baptism... one of which will be baptized this week!  My first one! :)  Exciting.  Here are a few things from the week...

AWKWARDS INCOMODOS Y CHISTOSOS

• walking in the street and having a lady call out from her house to tell me that my skirt was tucked up underneath my backpack.  Yeah.... that wasn´t embarrassing at all. 
• 12 hermanas, tons of heat/humidity, 1 apartment, 2 beds, and 1 fan.  What a night! Haha.  We had 6 companionships sleeping in the same pension Friday night before the conference.  Most of us slept in the tile floor with a blanket beneath us.  It really was tons of fun!  We all got up early in the morning to get ready (since there was one bathroom we wanted to make sure we all had time) and then it rained on us and we ended up taking a bus and walking through the rain to the conference.  So much for doing our hair and shining our shoes! Haha
• the culture here is so funny sometimes... we called for 3 remis´ (taxis) the night before the conference to pick us up the next morning since the church was far.  They never arrived so one of the hermanas called them and they said that they didn´t have very many workers that morning because of the rain.   Sometimes transportation here is so unreliable. Well, really all the time. It´s so great.

AWESOMES

• first of all... investigators.  Lorena is 16 she is getting baptized this Saturday.  She is super awesome!  We were having a charla (¨chat¨) with her and her mom Ramona and their neighbor Natalia who is 14 the other day and we were talking about Lorena´s baptism, and Natalia who is super sweet and quiet just blurts out ¨yo quiero bautizarme tambian!¨ (I want to get baptized too!) so we are planning for her too but we have to talk to her parents first.  Ramona also will be baptized but she has to get married first so she´s working with her marido on that one... with time, with time!  We are also working with a guy named Miguel, he is the marido of a member.  He is very addicted to cigarrettes but he is so awesome and we are working with him to get baptized the 26th so we´re trying to help him quit smoking.  He is really on board and is willing to break through any walls that he needs to.  They have to get married first and last night he told us he was born in Buenos Aires, which means someone has to take out his papers there and send them here which could either take weeks or which will cost a ton to send overnight.  He was like ´lets do it! I´m calling my mom tomorrow to go get my papers´ haha.  He is so great and we have had a lot of fun working with them and their family!  We had a family night with them the other night, I will try and send pictures from it next week if I have time
• 2nd... the conference this week!  There were so many good things that I learned but I don´t have time to write them all.  One thing that I really liked though was Elder Jensen talked about covenants and how we follow the rules and are precise because we have made covenants with God, not because they are rules.  It´s really cool to think of it that way and recognize the responsibility we have because of the covenants we have chosen to make, like baptismal for example.  Not because they are silly rules, but because we really are doing our best and trying hard to follow Christ and live a higher law

Ok I don´t have time to write more but I hope all is well there in the states and you are all enjoying the cold while we are enjoying the heat! (too bad you can´t hear the sarcasm when I say that haha)

Besitos! CIAO! Cuidense!

--Hermana Hunt

10-31-2011

Hola todos!
Bueno... not a ton has happened this week and I seriously can´t believe it´s already Monday again, this week FLEW by!  I heard time only gets faster as the mission goes on.  Scary!!  I don´t really have lists for this week (sorry!) but just a few items of bussssinesssssss!

• So I keep forgetting to tell everyone this, but this weekend we have a conference with the whole mission in Resistencia.  Aaaaand Elder Cristofferson from the 12 just may or may not be coming!! :) Along with I think 4 others from the 70.  How awesome right?!! This is the first time in 12 years that someone from the 12 has come to our mission, and will for sure be the only time we have a meeting with the whole mission.  So we are all pretty excited about that!  We will be travelling to Resistencia Friday and the conference is Saturday
• I don´t know if I said this before but my companion goes home in a month!  So we only have about 4 weeks left together.. so crazy!  I am both excited and nervous for the change..  but asi es! Vamos a ver! I´m sure everything will be great!
• My companion´s dad just opened a restuarant in Provo by the mall (south provo) called Big Al´s BBQ so you all have to go there!  Just sayin´...
• So there are a lot of icky men here in Argentina and we always get hit on while walking in the streets.  Just a few funny little experiences.. it´s funny because they try to use the one or 2 phrases they know in english haha, the other day one of them was like ´do you speak english?´and my companion said ´nope, sorry!´ as we walked away.  Wait a minute... pretty sure that just gave away that we spoke english, hahah.  Also a neighbor of one of our investigators asked us if someone joined our church if they could marry us... hahah.  Oh the guys here..... so subtle, so smooth, so great...
• Another thing that is funny about the city I´m in is the gitanos! (gypsies) they are all over and they are legit!  We have asked a bunch of people about them because we kept seeing them and they all dress in long skirts and dresses and they really do rob people.  They don´t have jobs but they buy and sell cars and con people, and then con people into giving them money for things.  We always make sure we stear clear of them, haha
• This week we started focusing in baptisms more.  We have a good 5 or 6 people that want to be baptized and could definitely get baptized soon, besides the fact that all of them have to get married first haha.  So we are working with that right now, but we had 8 people at church yesterday and everyone is progressing really well!  So we are hoping to help a few get prepared and baptized before my companion goes home

I think that´s about it!  This week seriously flew by, it is so crazy!  I almost have 4 months in the mission.  I feel like I just got here!!  Pero asi es!  La vida de la mision.  No pictures this week but I´ll send more next week if we take some.  Thanks everyone for your support! Les quiero y les amo mucho.  Besos! Ciao-cito!

--Hermanita Hunt