Argentina: Week 4

This week! Well if I had written a few days ago I would have been more excited to tell you about what happened but because no one came to church besides 1 person who is not an investigator (I will explain in a second) I´m a little upset. We found three families last week, two of which were more promising than the other about coming to church, but we were still excited to teach them and see them grow. First, the guy who came to church is the boyfriend of one of the members. I would be more excited about him coming if he wasn't an 18 year old dating a 13 year old. Correction: she is 14 as of Sunday, but it doesn't really redeem anything in my eyes because I would band all of my sisters together to scare off any creeper that old who tried to date my 13 year old sister. The entire time I just thought of Ashtyn, and while I realize 4 or 5 years is not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, it feels like a big deal when they aren't over 18 with that significant of a difference. Anyway, moving on to less disturbing news: one of the families we found was actually a contact. We taught her last Tuesday with her boyfriend (we thought they were married but no :C ). She turned out to be a less active member who was baptized when she was 13, fell away, and is now excited and ready for her family to come to church. She has a 16 year old, 14 year old, 8 year old, and a 1 year. She is 31 and has been with her boyfriend for 11 years. He is also super prepared and doesn't particularly realize it yet. He had a dream that he was baptized by immersion just like Christ and we were like YEAH! We haven't taught her 16 year old because he is always in a rush and it is actually kind of awkward because we haven't had the chance to tell him that he cant kiss us on the cheek like custom because he just kind of abruptly goes through the room to leave and does it. We haven't met her 14 year old, but her eight year old was with us in our lesson yesterday.

Natalia dropped us last week. I´m not sure how to be more tactful than that because it still hurts to talk about. She is having legal issues with the father of her kids and she has things that she doesn't want to leave behind yet. We found this out after a pretty busy and exciting day, so that made it a little more bitter than sweet.

My Spanish is coming along. I can speak a lot more than I used to be able to, but I have days where I struggle so much when the day before it went awesome. By this I mean that I will have days where I understand so much and can talk pretty well, then I will have other days where I don't really understand anything or anyone and I cant get my point across for the life of me. It is so frustrating and I´m not sure what Heavenly Father wants me to learn besides patience, which is not something I particularly want to learn. Haha. I know.

So I wanted to share something that I thought was pretty significant but before I do I just wanted to say that Gangam Style just came on the radio in the internet cafe where I am which is kind of upsetting because I thought for some reason I would be safe from listening to that dumb song. Anyway, what I wanted to share is a quote from a talk that I have read multiple times. It says "Your world is in your head. Get your head right and your heart will follow, and you will be right." So much of our successes and failures are actually in our head. When we see every action with the thought of it´s eternal significance, all will be well. We can see what things we need to change and do better because we can see where we are in our eternal progression. It makes me sad to think about the time that I wasted before my mission with meaningless activities.

Now a little more about Argentina. We shop at a place called the Anonima which is kind of like a Walmart but not really. They have a meat station and a bakery station, and you can buy shampoo and conditioner there, along with all other groceries, but you cant buy things like eyeliner or anything electronic. They don't really have a one-stop-shop place which is frustrating sometimes. We ride the bus a lot because our second area (which is significantly smaller than the area closest to where we live) is a couple miles away. This area is actually where we spend more of our time because it is the ghetto part and many many people are prepared. Many of our appointments are there and it is awesome. Anyway, I love you all very very much! Thank you for all your support!

Hermana Allen