Happy Mothers Day:)

Hello everybody!

Happy mothers day to all the moms out there. And we can go ahead and celebrate it again in october, like here.

It was so good to skype! woohoo! I just hope that by Christmas I will know Spanish so well that it will be awkward to talk in English. That´s the goal. The wolfleys made cinnamon rolls (one of my favorite foods in the world) so it was a good night:)

I have been in Argentina 1 month. We had one day that was quite the day. A day that required some tody and alfajores. A day that required us to use our emergency money fund to eat food to feel better. (I´m not sure what else they would consider an emergency...)

You pretty much heard about everything yesterday.....
Here´s a miracle from the week. One night all our plans had fallen through, we were to like plan X, and literally didn´t know what else to do. It´s not effective to contact at this hour, and our veryyy last resort was to visit a menos activo, 80something year old. We had walked around, and happened to end up by his house, so we went to visit him, just because we didn´t know what else to do. He lives by himself, but we were there, and his nieta (grand daughter) showed up....his nieta that weeks ago he gave us as a reference, but we could never find anyone at the address. We had just given up on contacting the reference, but this night we went to visit him and she was there! He is in her 20s, and has never really talked to the missionaries about the gospel, although she has met the hermanas who used to be in this area lots of times. She asked us for a copy of the Book of Mormon.....that day we had given out all of our copies, and had none. But this man, her grandfather, had 3 copies! So it was a miracle that we met her this night, at this house. God doesn´t always tell you where to go, but if you plan, and do all that you have planned, God will help you be in the right place. This happened the day after we fasted, so that couldn´t have hurt either:) 

Things are going here. It´s a little discouraging to see all the problems,  but we are working.

I will try to have more updates for you next time. (We made an ´I love argentina wall´, so i am working to find the good things here. It´s true, i know i know...attitude makes a difference)

Thanks for all your prayers, letters, and examples.

love you!

hermana andrews

p.s. everyone who is going on a mission should read "opportunity of a lifetime", a conference talk from a while ago. So good.

May 6, 2013

Yep, we celebrated cinco de mayo, with tacos and all.

Another week in argentina.....Dad, everytime i hear someone say it takes that long for the language, i want to cry! haha. I realize it is a process, but I have just never been so frustrated in my life. I can usually understand most of what is said, but I am just praying I come home fluent. 

 

This week has been another week of trying to find people. We contacted into a man, 73 years old, who is actually a member of the church. He got baptized like 40 years ago in Uruguay, but went inactive, his ´wife´ passed away 3 months ago, and now want to return to church. He is so sweet, and is actually pretty sharp. We have also been working with some menos activos. One family has 4 boys, 3 haven´t been baptized. SO we are working with the mom to reactive her, and teaching her adorable kids, she has twin boys .

Ok here´s some random things about argentina from this week....their haircut places are all closed every Monday.  There are also so many holidays here....and every holiday there is no school and everything is closed. They teach english in schools, so kids always want to practice it. The people LOVE their novelas...like day time soap operas. haha. We went shopping and I was looking for just ground hamburger, but all they had was cow tongue and intestine...i guess that´s common here! We had lunch with some members, and I tried intestine! So nasty and chewy...there was also cow stomache, my comp didn´t know it because it looked just like some yummy fresh salad...haha she almost barfed. There are also little kiosks everywhere, kind of like we have gas stations everywhere, they have little stores connected to houses. (This is where to buy alfajores and everything yummy). Luckily there is lots of fresh fruit here, they always have fruit after the meal as the dessert.

Daniel, they have chippas (?) here, those little bread balls with cheese like in brazil! I´m actually eating them right now....

And we also had empanadas....sooo yummy here. I am going to learn how to make them:) My comp also makes dulce empanadas, it´s like filled with a nobake cookie filling and fried. Pinterest worthy.

We always bring treats to district meeting, and even handouts this week. We represent the relief society, so nothing but the best. And the elders never knew all they were missing out on.

This week it was raiiiinnny

. There was a day that it was so humid and misty, you would be drenched walking around outside, even though it wasn´t raining. 

 

Ok I don´t have much time, but I will be talking to you this week! yay!

Basically all i have right now to talk about is food and the dogs here, so hopefully some things happen before then.

love and miss you all!

Fall in Argentina; April 29, 2013

Hola familia y amigos!

It is so weird to hear about all the summer things and end of school!...because it is just starting to get cool here i just see everyone raking their leaves. I literally do live in a totally different world.

Ok, first of all I have survived another week in Argentina! Let´s just say...good thing I have a year to love the people and country. I feel like I am in Italy. Or Germany. Or some old person nursing home full of grouchy people. Let´s just say...I haven´t met the nicest people here. One day we were contacting (we have to knock a ton of doors, because we started out with no investigators. And we need to find lots of people) It was my turn to talk, and the lady said,  "if you are going to be in this country you better learn the language. Where did you even come from?"  Haha, can you say rude?! (there goes your salvation!.......kidding) Thing is, her neighbor said about the same thing. Good grief we are just really trying to find nice people, who can at least give us 60 seconds to listen. For how much people sleep here, they sure should be nicer! (Santa Fe providence, specifically this city, is known for having very private, cold people. Even the members who live here say that! lucky us!)

Good thing there are some nice members!  We had lunch with an American family. I just love Americans:) Also, their is a great Argentine family.  But this is the best family, they feed us twice a week, and love the missionaries. 

 

Basically if something could go wrong this week, it could. Let´s just say I am learning the lesson of enduring patiently. But really. One day everrrry single appointment and plan fell through. Like we were to plan Z. And the next day, everything fell through. No one was home, members didn´t show up, etc etc. Oh, and I can´t speak stinkin Castillano. We have eaten a lot of alfajores and ice cream this week. Oh and they love their oreos here, which is good! One day we walked at least 115 cuadros (blocks), which is 7.14 miles. Ok ok....I know the pioneers walked more. haha. We just need some miracles to find people who want to go to the celestial kingdom:)

We have a few investigators that are progressing, but of course there are always difficulties like them going out of town for long periods of time, or one who always is working, or they don´t show up for church.

Other things this week include braving a ride in a remis (taxi...I literally do not understand how more people do not die in these streets!), going to a birthday party (they lit the candle, which was actually like firework thing that exploded sparks everywhere, I thought the entire table was going to catch on fire...it was hilarious, everyone was freaking out), we went to a baptism for some elders (yep, they needed me to play the piano), me and my companion made china food! (seasoning packet from america, i love flavor!).

Yesterday Elder Walter Gonzalez came to our sacrament! It was so good, he talked about centering everything we teach in our family on Christ, and being converted. There are 2 ramas(branches) in our building, so it was combined. This district is going to be made a stake, not sure when, but i think he is making the rounds before that happens. (He is area president). The classes were combined too, it felt like Utah to be in a Sunday school class so big! haha. And in RS there were even handouts and pics taped all over and quotes! haha.

We also had intrevistas with president Guiliani, which were really good. It´s only the second time I have really talked to him...but he is such a good man.

.

Thanks for all the updates.

2 weeks until mothers day!!

love you all!

hermana andrews

p.s. Mom, the pastries are better than what we tried. mmmmmmmm. Guess you will just have to come here to try one.

p.p.s. We ate the last of the peanut butter that was in our apartment...it´s hard to find here. But they LOVE their dulce de leche. Like the grocery stores seem to have a lot less variety here...but there´s a whole aisle for dulce de leche. (and of course one for mayo, one for matte, and one for pasta)