6.21.11

Hey family!
sorry i didnt write yesterday. Yesterday was a holiday here in Argentina something like the holiday celebrating their flag i think so since it was a holiday and people were going to be home with their families the president wanted us to work yesterday and today (tuesday) was our p-day. so yes I am alive! no need to worry. its sounds like you had a fun weekend in oregon for the wedding. I wasnt able to open the pics mom sent but i could kind of see them really small it looked really pretty! how fun! Congrats Tyler and Sarah! oh i recieved the 2nd package that you guys sent last week with all of the candy! yay I am so happy to know that these little packages are working so well. it seems like that is really the way to go because no one opens them and goes through them and i love the big fat catholic picture of jesus you put on them. All of the other missionaries were laughing at that. oh and I absolutely love that you sent me that calender. It is fun to have that, someone will have to make one for 2012 and send it to me! :) oh and I had the candy from the package you send and I shared some of the mike n ikes with a member in my branch and oh man you should have seen her face. she was so excited and was like ahh candy from the united states!!! this is so delicious!!! (but in spanish of course) haha oh and dad I recieved your card that you send me for easter it looks like you had sent it to the mtc and they forwarded it to me! but thanks! :) and random but I was looking at the liahona from this month and Sister Kris Smith is in it! there is a section talking about service that the church does and there is a little picture of here talking about the grape vineyard. kinda crazy!
   Well we had tranfers here, its kind of crazy that I have already been here for 1 transfer its kind of hard to explain but it was a mixture of being really long but short at the same time. My trainer is still here with me, everyone though for sure she was going to leave because she has been here for 6 months but nope she is still here which is probably good because there is still a lot I need to learn here about the area before I have a new comp come and I need to explain everything to her and who knows I could have a native comp next so everything will have to be in spanish. I am grateful to have a comp that can speak english but I think sometimes it is bad because we just end up speaking english all the time when I need to be practicing my spanish. We had a better week this week. I think I told you but we have been having a difficult time finding people who really want to listen to our message. We talk to so many people everyday and are rejected by many and some talk to us and agree to set up an appt but are never there when we return. ohh the life of a misionary huh? ahhh patience is def a quality that needs to be learned on a mission. so funny story last sunday at the end of the night my comp and I were walking back to our apt and we ran into this lady and started talking to her. She was super friendly and wanted to talk to us so we set up an apt so return the next night. Well monday night we returned and she was sitting outside of her house all ready and waiting for us. We were so excited! we finally found an investigator that likes us and wants to listen to us!! so we sat down and started talking to her and getting to know her she seemed so sweet so then my comp started talking to her about our purpose as missionaries and how our purpose is to teach people about the restored gospel and help them to be baptized in the true church with the authority and my comp was about to invite her to be baptized (because we are told that we have to invite people to be baptized in the first lesson) and right when she starts to invite her the lady says... oh I am a member of your church!! my comp and I just looked at each other and just about died. That was seriously one of my biggest fears that we would teach someone a whole lesson and find out at the end that they were a member. yep it happened to us!! I left her house busting up. hmm ya thats why she was so welcoming to us! she was baptized when she was like 12 and she is 28 now and i dont know if she was ever really active so we are going to try to work with her to help her go to church and teach her 58 yr old husband about the church.  (yes they really have the big of an age difference... :) haha so ya that was an interesting story for the week. ohh  and remember how when I talked to you on mothers day and told you how I had like 50 bug bites ya I have started to realize that I think it is going to be 1 and a half years of bugs bits I dont think i have gone a day with out getting them. It is miserable but i am sort of getting use to my legs just itching all the time. ahhhh
   Most exciting news from the week... our investigator Valeria finally accepted to be baptized!! ohh man that was not easy. She is a 14 yr old girl and her mom and sister are members but arent active. My comp started teaching her a week before I got here and when I got here we brought her to a baptism my first week and she loved it and kept talking about how next it was going to be her baptism well after that everytime we tried to talk about baptism she would say that maybe in a year or she couldnt be baptized now and one time we set up a lesson to talk to her about baptism and when we showed up at her house for the lesson she told us she couldnt talk to us and then later told the president of the branch that she lied to us because she didnt want to talk about baptism with us. we have been struggling so much to know what to do to help her. She is going to church every week by herself walking, she reads the book of mormon everyday and prays all the time. She is the most perfect investigator ever and we just didnt know what to do to help her after much fasting and prayer we finally brought it up last thursday and asked her what was holding her back and then asked her to pray about it and then see her again on saturday. Saturday when we met up with her at the church she was there and very happy she said she prays and she wants to be baptized next week. my comp and i just looked at each other and were so happy. prayer and fasting works!!! :) we are so excited July 2 is her baptism. pray that everything will work out and she will be baptized!!
   Things are going well i am still lacking mucho espanol but i am trying. I am realizing that misions are def not easy but I am learning to rely on the lord and I know that he will help me out. the weather her is the most bipolar thing in the world. one day it is freezing and i am wearing tights, my pea coat and gloves and the next day i am dying of heat. i am realizing though that i would much rather have it be cold here. the humidity is horrible!! all the candy that you send is stuck together because of the dumb humidity but i just continue to work and am happy. your support is really what keeps me going. I absolutely love hearing from everyone every week. after checking my email every week i am always to pumped and ready to keep working. i love you all so much. i hope the girls and mom are having a great time and camp and i hope work is going well for everyone else!! have a wonderful week!
 
mucho amor!
hermana vanwagenen