July 4th

So this past week was great! Well I guess the beginning of the week wasn’t amazing; a lot of our lessons fell through, but the ending was amazing!

On Tuesday we visited with Milena and Claudia, family Pereyra. When we first got there, Claudia and Rogerio, her husband, were fighting, yelling really loud, and Milena was crying. She hugged me and cried and told me that she wanted to run away from home because her parents are always fighting.

She just hugged me. I tried to comfort her the best I could. We talked and she explained things. It was so sad and I just wanted to keep on hugging her. Claudia then came and we had a lesson. As soon as we said the opening prayer there was a feeling of peace that came into the room. We taught about God’s love, and the Book of Mormon. We basically just went by the spirit, cause that’s what they needed. It was an amazing lesson; the spirit was so strong and we left with a feeling of happiness in the casa. God truly does love his Children! 

At the zone meeting Elder Prince was leaving the next day 

so one of the other Elders, Elder Prado, made him Chipa, and wrote his name 

with the Chipa. Chipa is a bread here 

that has cheese in the middle. It’s super good!

On Friday we had a couple of lessons and Hermana Rodriguez accompanied us to the lessons. She is an elderly woman in the branch. It was good but Hermana Rodriguez started talking about something she read in the Liahona (Claudia had no idea what the Liahona was or is… it’s the official Church magazine for international youth and adults). She then started talking about how once they get baptized that can go to the temple and be sealed for time and all eternity with Claudia’s father who died.

That brought up a whole other subject that Claudia didn’t understand, and was super confused. You could see it in her face, it was a look of horror. Then she started talking about how the parents treat each other is how their children will learn to treat their spouses. (And Claudia and Rogerio are having a lot of problems right now.) So that was super awkward as well... it was a really strange lesson!

After that we then visited Roxana and we don’t know what happened between them but apparently Hermana Rodriguez and Roxana had met before and you could definitely tell that Roxana didn’t really like the Hermana, and the whole lesson was tense! 

That was an interesting day!

So for the Fourth of July this was the best that I could do 

to have red white and blue, haha. But we made bracelets as well, 

and gave Crunch bars to the Elders with the ribbons! 

On Saturday it was the Fourth of July! We got to meet the new Elder as well: Elder Madder, from Gilbert, Arizona. This is his first area so he is just learning Spanish. It’s going well!

On Sunday we had a lesson with Leo Sosa. We talked about the Evangelio de Jesucristo. He accepted to be baptized on the 25 of July!!!!(: It was an amazing lesson and there was a huge presence of the spirit. When Leo accepted he almost started crying and his girlfriend Adriana burst into tears. It was amazing. Hermana Maya and I wanted to cry as well. He said that he wanted to make it a surprise for Adriana and be baptized on the second of August because that is his one year anniversary of dating with Adriana, but that the 25th was good enough.

Last night, Sunday night, we also had a Noche de Hogar with Vanesa in the house of familia Menez. Vanesa is like 25 but has had a life that none of us would desire. She opened up and told us her whole life story. She was bawling and we were all bawling… we´re girls, okay? She said that she didn’t know why but she is usually super closed off about her life but with us she feels like she can say anything.

We taught about God´s love for her and the need for repentance; we taught about the atonement of Jesus Christ and showed Mormon Messages. We then showed the ¨He Lives¨ video, which makes my cry every time. It was amazing and she really felt the spirit. 

Today for P-day, an Hermana from the other ward taught us and the Elders how to make Alfajores, an Argentine cookie type thing with dulce de leche in the middle. They are super popular here and very good! Very sweet so I can’t eat many but very good!

These past cambios [changes] they made it so that there are only three zones of the mission in Argentina, so tomorrow we have the weekly zone meeting but there are going to be 24 missionaries now!! This will be weird but exciting (:

San Pedro-San Pablo (both?), cathedral here in Apostoles. I really want to go inside and see it because, as my family knows, I used to go into every church with my mom. But I think it might be a little weird going in with my missionary plaque

Everything is going really well here, except for that it is like 0 degrees C [32 F.], so I’m freezing!

Wish us luck this week!