12.19.11

Hello over there!

Merry Christmas!!! Its hard to believe that it is already christmas huh? Man does time fly. First of all I would like to express my feelings right now about an email that I received. YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ahhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am seriously soooooooo excited right now! and I think you know why!! Heather is going to Jerusalem!!!!! I couldn't be more happy and excited for her!! Just following in her favorite sister footsteps ehhh? haha Man do I wish that I could experience Jerusalem again. What an incredible experience. I was literally jumping for joy over here when I read the email. Im sure everyone was looking at me like a freak. esta bien I am a freak right? haha.

Well this week was better. Thanks for all of your love and support and prayers. They have def been felt. I am doing better. That doesn't mean that it is easy but I have really been turning to my heavenly father and the sciptures all lot for comfort and help in this time. I realize that this isn't going to last forever and there is something I have to learn from it. Like dad told me, I am hear to help her learn the gospel and she is here to help me with the spanish. I totally agree. I got a call from our mission president on Saturday and he was asking how we were doing and how I was doing with the mini and all he said was that it is my responsibility to be an example to her by being happy and sharing my testimony. She is so new in the gospel I am always so scared that I might say something or do something wrong.

Well we are still visiting with this inactive family a lot. They are wanting there son to get baptized so this past week we had an awesome lesson asking them why they want him to be baptized and the importance of being examples as parents for their children and how the gospel is for the family. Well at the end of the lesson they told us to were going to come to church and guess what they showed up!! The whole family!! This might not seem like something special but for me this was huge. It has been several years since they have been to church and they showed up yesterday with the whole family and stayed for classes after. Man was I smiling so big all during church. there are so many people that say they are going to come and then dont show up so when they actually do show up it is the best thing in the world!! SOme of their neighbors showed up to. Yesterday was a good week with attendence in church. we had 5 investigators! yay!

Well here comes another new challenge in my path pretty soon. When president called me on saturday he said that they have been talking a little bit with our branch president about the area here and they feel like they need to make some changes and they are going to be changing our areas. In our branch there is my comp and I and a pair of elders. Well beginning of this next transfer we will be working in the elders area and they will now be in our area. It is basically like doing another whitewash because we dont know anything about their area. oooh
how fun ehh? and it stinks because we have all the awesome members in our area right now. but whatever there is always a good reason right? I am doing good. Just taking it one day at a time and really relying on my savior more than anything and the scripture man do I love the scriptures so much. They provide so much comfort and help me so much. What a blessing it is so have scriptures. I feel blessed to have this opportunity to share my testimony of our Savior Jesus Christ at this time because he is the reason for the season. It is so great to be able to really focus on that this christmas. We really dont have any plans for Christmas. I am hoping that someone will invite us over for something. haha we will see. and if not i guess we will have to figure something out with us two. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and always remember the reason for the season. love you lots and I am constantly praying for you. I still havent recieved the Christmas package but hopefully sometime this week it will show up. I am crossing my fingers.

love,
Hermana Van Wagenen

p.s. Thanks sis Greenlaw for the letter. I seriously was so excited to read it. I dont have time right now to right back but dont you worry a letter will be coming back. I am so excited because I know that you literally understand everything that I am going through. haha

12.12.11

Hey there!

It sounds like everyone is busy right now taking finals/ getting ready for Christmas! haha I loved the pic of Grandma and Grandpa on Santas lap. I almost died. How funny. I loved it!!!!

Well as I sit here and try to think about my week not a lot of exciting stories come to mind. So it looks like this weeks letter is going to be a boring one. haha Last monday after writing home we went to a members house to hang out and make Chipas!!! have you ever heard of chipas? They are these small balls of cheese bread! mmmm so yummy! i was really wanting to learn how to make them so when I am home I will be able to make them. They are delicious but who knows if I will be able to re make them.

Recently we have been working on going through the list of members. Our branch here is obera has over 1,000 members but only about 50 that are active. Sad huh? so the president gave us the responsibility of finding these people and find out what happened basically. so this week was a week of finding some of these people. but man is it a lot harder to find address here than in the states. some of the address literally say the house next to the blue store. hahaha. ridiculous!! but we did find a few members. We found this sweet young family who have 3 kids and they actually have a son who is 9 who they want him to get baptized! the only problem is that they dont want to go to church! uhhh PROBLEM!!! apparently the dad got offended several years ago when they were rebuilding the church building and they didnt ask him (who is a construction worker) to help with building it. so basically he got offended and stopped going. It is ridiculous who many people/members there are here who dont go to church because they got offended by some crazy thing. the thing that I always says is ¨"we go to church for God, not for the members!" so we are trying to work with this family to get them active and baptize their son!!!! pray for us they we can know how to help them!

Sadly we were not able to watch the christmas devotional because they couldnt get it to work! how was it? I want to hear about it. Man the sun here is just getting stronger and stronger each and every day! I just keep thinking about you guys enjoy nice cold winter and i am kind of jealous! I seriously used to love summer before my mission and now in this moment it is on my hate list. haha but everyone keeps telling me that here is this area the heat isnt that bad compared to other areas in the mission. so i guess i just have to be grateful to be here during summer. I am not one to ask for help much but I am needing your prayers more than every right now! This situation is a lot harder than I was thinking. I literally feel like I am here doing the work alone and since I am a missionary I need a companion and she is just hear to be with me. Last night we didnt have appts or anything so we ended up having to knock doors/talk to people outside and she wouldnt talk to anyone. She was literally in silence the whole night!! I am trying to be strong but man is missionary work difficult to do alone. There is a reason that we have companions to support each other and switch off doing contacts. She keeps telling me that I seem mad or sad. haha but its more that I am stressed and I need her help. She just doesnt seem to understand and the whole language thing doesnt help. ya I understand the language but people have to be patient with me and speak a little slower and at time repeat words or explain words that i dont know. Well she just speaks super fast always and get annoyed when I dont understand what she is saying. She just expects that I know the whole spanish language but man is there a ton to learn! I dont want to sound like I am complaining because it isnt that it is just a very hard time right now! but there is a reason for it right? There is always something to learn from every hard situation.

Well I love you lots thanks for all of your support and letters. It is very much appreciated!!!!!! Have a wonderful week! Love you all lots!!!!

Love,
Hna Van Wag

photo 1: random pic of Hna Green and I.

Photo 2: not a super great pic but its Hna Green and I with our awesome hats for summer. haha

Christmas letters.

Don't forget to send Kara some Christmas love!! I'm sure she would absolutely LOVE to get Christmas cards and letters from everyone!!

The mission home address is:

Misio'n Argentina Resistencia

Entre Rios 435

3500 Resistencia, Chaco

Argentina

Also, dearelder.com still works. It's free and will be printed out for her, like a letter.

Feliz Navidad!

12.5.11

Hi Family!

Well I have to start my email by giving a big huge shout out to the coolest/smartest brother in law in the whole world!! CONGRATULATIONS BRYAN!!!!!! you are such an inspiration and I am so happy for you guys! I am so happy that you guys are going to be in San Fran. You will be close!!! yay!!!

Man does it seem like right as things seem to be comfortable and good in the mission some big huge change comes in the way. Well we are going to back track a little bit to last tuesday.

Tuesday: was our p-day. It was a normal day. We wrote home and then had district meeting and chilled the rest of the day. Then at night we had a branch mission activity that we planned. We just played some fun unity games and gave a short spiritual message at the end. It turned out way good. Well as we were cleaning up from the activity (us and the elders) our district leader recieved the awaited call around 930 from the zone leaders about tranfers. Well we found out that my wonderful comp Hermana Green was headed to Posadas (about 2 hours from here, which is close!) and that I was going to be recieving a mini missionary but they had no idea who it was yet or when she would get here. They basically told me that I need to call a member that night (it was already 1030) to ask them if I could hang out with them/stay with them until I had a comp. well i called a member a luckily she was super awesome and said it wasnt a problem and that I could hang out with here.

Wed: we went to the bus station at 9 in the morning where I dropped hermana green off to head to her new area and Dora (the member) met up with us. I then went with Dora and hung out with her and her family all day on wednesday. It was actually really strange to just sit in the house of a member all day because we dont do that! haha Well it was starting to get late. It was around 830 when I still hadnt heard any information so i asked Dora if she could go with me to my apt so I could get stuff to sleep in because it was looking like I was going to be sleeping in her house. So we went to my apt and as we were on our way back to her house 930ish I got a call from my district leader saying that my companion was at the bus station waiting for me! (ummm why didnt you tell me forever ago that you knew who my comp was and that she was on her way!?!?!?!) so we then went straight to the bus to pick her up and finally got back to our apt at 11ish. Man what a day!

Well the rest of the week has been a pretty normal week. My new comp is Hermana Vera. She is from Formosa (which is one of the ¨states¨that is a part of our mission. She was baptized 2 weeks ago!!!! yes 2 weeks! So basically she doesnt know anything!! I think she knows who joseph smith is. haha I am not going to lie this is worse than training. At least when you train you are with someone that went to the mtc and knows what it is like to be a missionary. She knows that we visit with people and thats about it. This morning I woke up and she told me that around 1 in the morning she called home on our cell phone and talked to her family for a while! ahhhh!!!!! Just as things seem to be going good in the mission God puts another challenge in our way. huh? I just hope that I can be a good example and teach her correctly what the mission is and have it be a good experience for her. I am not going to lie I am feeling super solo right now because basically it is my responsibility every single thing we do and I dont have a lot of support as far as a companion. Man am I realizing how great it is to have a real companion to help in the work. But I guess there is a reason for this right? God put this challenge in my way for a reason and there is always something that he wants us to learn from them. There is so much that I still have to learn here in the mission but its a good thing I still have a lot of time huh?

so I celebrated the 9 months in the mission and with that I basically had a child huh? I basically consider this like training. even though this is going to be a challenging 6 weeks I know that the lord put this is my path for a reason and that he will provide a way to help me do this. I am so grateful for this gospel and I truly am grateful for the things he puts in my path because I know that the will help me grow in so many ways. Bring them on! Thanks for all of your support because it is def appreciated and very needed as a missionary. haha I thank my heavenly father every day for the amazing family that he has given me because I know without you guys this wouldnt be possible. I love you guys a lot! I hope you have a wonderful week. I am hear in Argentina to call people to repentance. What a great opportunity! :)

love you lots,

Hna Van Wag