2.28.12

(Sorry for slacking...two posts added...so read them both!)

Hi!

First of all I just want to say that I have the cutest nephew in the whole world. Seriously man the little bust is just adorable. Well I dont even know where to start with this week. I was so convinced that I was going to stay in my area for one more transfer but the lord knew that it was time for a change. Mom you were right. haha I dont know how you knew. I am now serving in Formosa. Formosa is what all of the missionarys in the mission call "Los Cielos de la Mision" (the heavens of the mission) because everyone says that the people here in Formosa are very humble and very prepared to accept the gospel. I have wanted to be in Formosa and now I am here. The only bad part about Formosa is that it is also the hottest part of the whole mission but luckily we do have air conditioning in the apartment so I sleep good at least! :) My companions name is Hermana Pack she is from Vegas and is pretty much amazing!!! This is her 3 transfer so she just finished her time with her trainer and now I am with her but I am very lucky because she speaks very well and she isnt scared to speak even if she says something wrong. It is awesome. We have made a goal to not speak english at all so we are constantly speaking in castellano (espanol) and it is really good because it is the only way we are going to learn and get better.

This week has been super crazy because I got here in my new area and unpacked my stuff and then was told that we were going to be moving houses so then i had to repack all of my stuff and with the help of the elders we had to move into a new house and now we are living with the other sisters. It is very interesting because I have never lived with another pair of sisters in the mission so it will be interesting. The thing that is awesome about my new area is that there are a lot of missionarys here because in my other area it was just us and a set of elders in a little city. So we are around a lot of other missionarys. ( haha mom you always said that it would be good to be around other people) Things are seriously amazing. I am so happy and I love my new area. I know that I am here for a reason. Really i was ready for a change and i already love my new area. The thing that is a little bit different about here is that the members here actually love the missionarys. Today we went to central to but food to go and as we were waiting a man came up to us and introduced himself and her is a member in a different branch and bought our food for us. WOW how nice. The people here are so humble. There dont have a lot of money but they are always wanting to help. It is def very different from my other area which had a little bit more money and werent very loving with the missionarys. I feel so grateful to be here. Our area is VERY VERY VERY SMALL: It is like 6 blocks one way and 6 blocks the other way. EVERYONE knows who we are and EVERYONE has prety much already talked to the missionarys. It is a little bit hard but I know without a doubt that there are people here and are ready and being prepared to accept the gospel. I am still new and getting to know everything but things are good. I love missionary work and I am truly to grateful to have this opportunity to be a missionary. The mission def has its difficult moments but it is so amazing to feel the spirit everyday and be able to share this happiness and joy I have with these people. It is amazing!! Thanks for everything truly. I am grateful for your letters and love. I hope you have an incredible week. UNtil next week....

Hna Van Wagenen

ps i wanted to send you pics and me with my new comp but i forgot my camera. next week i will try and remember

2.20.12

HOLA!

Well this week has been an interesting week. Man do we live the life as missionarys. haha. So on monday night I was sleeping and in the middle of the night my fan totally stopped working. Basically it is imposible to sleep without a because if you dont have a fan you are in your bed literally sweating your face off all night. It is miserable. Well the past few weeks my comp has been sleeping on the floor with her mattress because our other fan broke off its stand and is basically 1 ft tall so i have decided to join her on the floor and i have been sleeping on the floor all week. Super fun! Also yesterday (Sunday) we were in the apt in the afternoon studying and the fuse blew up and we were without electricity so when we got back to the apt at 930 we pretty much couldnt do anything and we ended up taking our matresses outside and were about to camp outside last night because we coudlnt stand the heat of the apt but luckily at like 1230 in the night the electricity came back and we were able to go inside and sleep with our fan. man is it crazy the things that happen in the mission. haha we def dont life the LIFE but it has made me super grateful for little things that we do have. maybe we dont have air conditioning but at least we have a fan because there are so many people that dont have a fan in their house. I really dont know how they live but ya.

This past week was an ok week. Really nothing super exciting. On tuesday we had zone conference we had to travel 2 hours to a city named Posadas and that we fun. I really enjoy zone conferences because it always gets me super pumped to keep working and to be a better missionary. The mission is really focusing at this time on working hard with the members because really missinary work isnt successfull if we are not working with the members. So they invited a bunch of members from the area and we did practices with them and learned how to better recieve references from the members. It was a great conference.

On sunday our investigator Ricardo came to church FINALLY!! ahhhh we have been teaching him for several weeks now and he has had a baptism date but he lacks going to church. He is a 15 yr old kid and his dad is a member but he always seems to go out on saturday nights and is out super late with his friends which causes him to not be able to wake up to go to church on sunday. ughhhh how can we help them to not leave saturday night. hahaha This past week our investigators who we have been teaching for several weeks who have baptism dates told us that he was still married because they never did the divorce. ughhh after 3 weeks of talking about marriage and now he tells us that he has to get divorced and he knows nothing about his ex wife because it has been like 30 yrs since they were together and we have no idea how to find out about her. ughhh super frustrating. I hope we can figure it all out because they love church and really want to get baptized. why isnt anyone married here!!!!!! ahhhhhhh

Well i am doing great I am out of time man does the time go by super fast. but i love you all lots!! hope you have a wonderful week. Missionary work is just the best. We have transfers on wednesday. I was pretty convinced that I was staying here but now people are telling me that they think i am leaving. I really have no idea. I would be happy to stay one more transfer but we will see what the lord has in store for me. Well until next week.

Love,
Hermana Van Wagenen

Pics
1: Hermana Cepeda and I after Zone Conference
2: My zone with our matching t-shirts
3: ARGENTINA

2.13.12

HOLA!

How is everyone? oh how I love mondays to be able to hear from you guys. We truly are blessed to have internet because I couldnt imagine only being able to send letters. What a blessing. Well things are going great here in Obera. I am not going to lie we kind of had a bad week this week. After working hard all week to help our investigators we had 5 secure investigators who said they were going to go to church on Sunday and when sunday came none of them showed up. Man is it a bummer when that happens. It makes everything we did during the week feel pointless. but I try to not let it affect me because i know we have to move forward and work harder this week. I know have a little more than 5 months here in this branch and it has been such an amazing experience to see the change in the branch in this short time. Since I have been here they have called a new branch president and basically reorganized the whole branch we also only had 4 missionarys here and now we have 6 missionarys. It has been so cool to see how much the branch has grown in this time. The attendance in church has grown and lots of the less actives are starting to come back to church. . I told you how there are 1500 members here so there is still a ton of work to do but I have been super grateful to have the opportunity to be apart of this and to see changes. We have transfers next week and I am really hoping that I stay here for at least one more transfer. I am super happy with my comp and my area right how and I am really not ready to leave my area yet. We will see what happens. We never know...

Last night we were waiting for the bus to pass to take us back to our apartment and as we were waiting I looked up at the sky and was watching the stars and it just got me thinking about the creation. How amazing is God. Everything we have here is from God and it is incredible. It is just one more reason to know that God exists. It is so crazy when we talk to people and they say that they dont believe in God. I just truly dont understand because if you just look around for a minute you can know that God exists without a doubt. I feel blessed to have grown up in this gospel and knowing this because there are so many people in the world so lost. I just wish that i could help all of them but most of them are closed off and just dont want to listen. I pray everyday that I can find those people who are waiting and prepared at this time to recieve the gospel in their lives at this time. I truly love this gospel so much! It truly does bless familys and helps us to be better people and to be prepared to return to the presence of our heavenly father. I love you all so much and I am so grateful for your support and your letters. You rock. have an amazing week!

love,
Hermana Van Wagenen

2.6.12

Hey there!

Well this week was an interesting week. So I told you last week about that family that came to church last week right? We had been teaching them for like 4 weeks and for 3 sundays we had called them and passed for their house in the morning to go to church but they were always sleep and didnt want to go so honestly we were about ready to drop them because they didnt seem to have interest. One night we were working and we didnt have plans to visit them we had other plans but my comp felt like we should go and i agreed that yes we should go see them. So we went to visit them and had a great lesson with the mom and she told us that they were going to go to church on sunday like they always told us so when we past on sunday morning they were all up and getting ready for church. It really was a happy moment for us so show up to church with a family of 9. ya a big family! We then past by their house the tuesday after church and had an amazing lesson with them. THey said that they loved church and without a doubt would be going the next sunday. We didnt even ask them but they both told us that they have desires to quit smoking and follow this path and they also told us that they want to go married. We were pretty stoked after tuesday. We then set up an appt for thurs and when we went they werent there :( so we went by on friday and the mom told us that her "husband" doesnt want to go to church until he stops smoking but she told us that she is going to make him take her because she wanted to go. we then past on sat and it is like he doesnt want to talk to us. We are super said. We then went by on sunday morning to go to church and they wouldnt get out of bed and wouldnt talk to us. they made their kids tell us that they didnt want to go. It is super sad. I swear that when things are going super great satan steps right in and does his work. I am super sad because I truly saw so much success with this family. I guess we still have no idea so I am truly hoping and praying that there is still hope with them. we need your prayers!!!!

A funny thing happened this week so the past sunday we only thought that we had this family that went to church but on tuesday when we went to visit one of our investigators they told us that they really enjoyed church on sunday. My companion and I looked at each other and asked them. Oh what church did you go to on sunday? the catholic church? they responded and said no we went to your church. luckily we were with a member with us that backed them up and said ya they were in church on sunday. what??? how did we not see that they were there? hahahahaha that never happens. I think that we were so occupied with helping the family on 9 that we didnt even have a chance to look around and see that other people that we invited showed up. Honestly we had only taught this couple one time and they went to church by themselves. WOW! as a missionary i can say that this doenst not happen often. honestly that is the first time that I have ever had that happen in my mission. ALmost always the first time an investigator goes to church we have to go by their house in the morning to go with them. Ya it was a miracle. We were pretty happy about that. haha

This past sunday we also witnesses another miracle. We have been working for several weeks now with this less active family to help them. They have a son that is 20 and isnt a member. So we have started teaching him and he has never visited the church before but he is very receptive and listens and really likes to listen to the lessons. He told us that he would like to go to church but his goal would be that all of his family went to church together. Wow wouldnt that be incredible we thought. But this past sunday we walked into church and looked and saw the whole Romanuik family sitting together. Wow it was seriously an incredible experience to see.

I guess the thing that I am learning is that is truly is amazing how much love I gain for the people I am teaching. Its not just because I want to see numbers for the work we have done for the week. More than ever I want them to go to church so that they can go to the temple and be sealed as a family so that they can see the blessing I have seen in my life from the gospel. This gospel truly is amazing and I know without a doubt that it is true and this is the work of the lord. We just have to endure to the end. That is def the hardest part but it is possibe with the help of the gospel, scriptures, family, and friends to help us. The lord has promised us that if we endure for the end we will have eternal life. I have always loved the scripture in 2 Nephi 31:20. Things are good. I am happy. I hope you all have an amazing week1! love you lots!!!

Love,
Hna Van Wag

pic 1: my district

pic 2: A NUN! :)

1.30.12

Hola!

Man do the weeks seem to be passing fast.. Yesterday I was telling my comp I swear that I just wrote home to my family yesterday but it is already time to write again. Dont get me wrong I LOVE writing home and hearing from all of you!!!! Hear I am again to tell you about another week in the life of a missionary in Argentina.

Well this past week we had interviews with our mission President and we had to travel almost 3 hours to another area for interviews. It was actually kind of fun to see other missionarys because here in my area we are a group of 6 and are isolated from everyone else. Other than interviews this week was great! We are teaching this family and have been trying and trying for 3 weeks now to get them to come to church and finally yesterday they all came to church all 9 of them!! You bet I was pretty stocked. Can I just tell you that the mission is def an experience where you have to learn patience because it can be super frustrating to work all week teaching and helping your investigators go to church on sunday and then when none of them show up it is so sad and frustrating. but then when they finally show up it is a very happy moment and it is worth all of the struggles that we went through. I swear getting investigators to go to church is one of the hardest parts. For some reason they always seem to have visitors sunday in the morning. I will just tell you that I am really working to develop more patience. :)

I am truly happy in my area and with my comp right now. We still have a couple more weeks of transfers but I am really hoping that I dont get transfered. I feel like the change of area was a form of transfer and it was nice to have something new and fresh. The one thing that I am really enjoying about being in an area for a good amount of time is seeing how the branch here is growing. It seems like every week there are a few more people in church. and I have already seen a huge difference from when I got here in September. I am truly hoping to be here for a little bit longer because there are a few people that we are teaching who I can see success in the near future and I dont want to miss out on it.

The work is great. THe mission is awesome. I know I say this probably like every week but I am truly grateful and feel blessed to be here. I just always think about how before in my life I never really had a strong desire to serve a mission but I can just tell you that the lord knows me and knew that I was suppose to be serving a mission in this moment. I am happy and I love sharing my testimony everyday and sharing this amazing message with the poeple here. I feel so blessed to have the gospel in my life and I wouldnt want to be anywhere else right now than here sharing this happiness with the people here. Love you all lots!!! Thanks for your support and love! Have a wonderful week!!!!!

Love,
Hermana Van Wagenen

Pic 1: Baptism of Facundo!!! He is the 9 year old son of the less active family I was teaching and was baptized this past saturday. The elders were now teaching him these past 3 weeks but I still consider him my investigator! This is my new comp Hermana Cepeda

Pic 2: Me and my mini comp Hermana Vera when I sent her home.

Pic 3: My investigator Patricia the first time she came to church