November 24, 2014

Hello family! Yesterday we were in Córdoba all day because we had a zone conference and there were so many missionaries there! I met one of Hermana Rivera’s old companions. She's hilarious!  I saw Hermana Wooley and she is doing really good.   At the conference there were about 20 to 30 missionaries who were going to leave this transfer and they all gave their testimonies. One elder said, I remember when I had six months and my mission and I was listening to all the missionaries who were leaving and I sat there and thought, the day when I give my goodbye testimony is never going to come but here I am. The time goes by so fast I was sitting there thinking, that's exactly what I am thinking that time is never going to come. But I know it will. It's Thursday already! Can you believe it?! Yesterday we had a really neat experience and opportunity I told you last week about the English Institute. Yesterday night at 8:30 we went to it again, but this time it was with adults from ages 21 to 59. There were about eight students there. It was really fun! They asked us questions about what we do and things about our countries, what we like to do,what are families are like, it was a lot of fun to be able to talk in English! It was cool too because the students were able to feel a little bit how I do not being able to speak perfect Spanish! There was a 21-year-old name Ishmael and whenever he asked questions he would always relate it to California. He asked us if we were able to have a boyfriend here in Argentina and it was really funny. After Hermana Gonzales said "I think Ishmael is now an expert on California y la vida Hna Romeril!" After the class that English teacher gave us a thank you gift and it was perfume! I was like what! It was really nice. It's really neat having opportunities like that. I really love Argentina <3.

Today was up-and-down. Really reflective today. In the beginning of the day we did all of our studies and I was feeling really discouraged – I was feeling stressed out because all of the people we had is investigators are not wanting us to come back anymore and it's sad… I felt pretty down this morning. I was reading in my book of Mormon study third Nephi and I read the part where Jesus Christ came to the earth and he was talking to the people staying in 3 nephi 17 "I perceive that ye are week, that you cannot understand all of my words which I am commanded of the father to speak unto you at this time. Therefore, go unto your homes and ponder upon the things which I have said, and ask the father, in the name, that you may understand, and prepare your minds for the morrow and I coming to you again"  I read that and I felt like heavenly father was giving me counsel. He already knows of my imperfections and my weaknesses, he just needs me to be humble so I can learn and be the missionary he needs of me. After that I felt like we could follow with the rest of the day. We then had weekly planning with Elder Toledo and Blotter and then I got really bad diarrhea (sorry so graphic haha)and came home and I took my medicine and we planned and now I'm writing in my journal! My companion told the elders I got sick… Changa.. I didn't want them to know. So the elders called us tonight and asked us if they needed to go to the pharmacy? Soup? Something? My companion yelled Gatorade so they're bringing me Gatorade ha ha. It's a little embarrassing that they know but it's okay. It is what it is. It happens all the time with me. The diarrhea part. :) I feel very happy to be with my companion Gonzalez. We work really well together. She's really hilarious too. I can really count on her and I feel so grateful to have her at this point of my mission.

I hope you all have a wonderful week off.  Please tell me everything that you do this week.  I love and miss you all!

Love, Hermana Romeril

Thanks for the new top Mom!

 I got one of the packages!  All of the American missionaries ate the Swedish Fish with me :)

November 17, 2014

Hola! Today is going to be cool – we're going to do English academy because one of the members here has her kids in this English Academy and they told the Prof. there's a missionary(me) who's from the US and the professors wanted to meet with me and talk in English with me! I think it's a pretty neat opportunity. Hola! So the English Academy went really well. We didn't talk with the adults this week, we talked with some Chillens:) chiquillos. We are going to go back next Wednesday to talk with the adults in English. I'm really excited it's such an awesome opportunity we have. 

Today is Saturday the 15th. Today we are going to white out our area which means, start out from nothing. There's a whole huge slab of our area that we haven't worked on since I've been out here. So yes, we're going to tract all day. The weather is already super hot and very humid and to be really honest, I'm scared to start all over. Last night we were planning and I was trying to think of names to visit and I got so stressed looking at our huge list and thinking and realizing that we have nobody who is really progressing on the list. I told my companion that and I just felt like a horrible missionary. She gave the idea of going contacting all day and we talked and agreed on it and she said Hermana, I know we are going to find a family of four at least to be baptized this month. Do you want to put a last name to this family? I told her she could and she said how does Alvarez sound? I agreed and she said, tomorrow we are going to find her family Alvarez. This morning during studies we sang the song I'll go where you want me to go and then we planned out which neighborhoods we were going to go visit – today we are going to be working and giving everything we have to find this family. We are going to pack our lunches and we are going to go with our Books of Mormon, invitations, and our name plaques and we are going to go out and give everything we have today and we are going to represent our families and Jesus Christ. Even if we don't find anyone today – not one person, we will be able to return home with honor tonight at 9:00 PM I'm going to bring honor to the two names I wear on my plaque – Romeril and Jesus Christ.

So we did it today! We found our family Alvarez even though the two families we found didn't have that last name ha ha :-) I'll tell you about the two families. We were walking to the farthest neighborhood in our area and we were walking around and we saw a mom with her two little kids. We started talking to her, just giving her an invitation, and she asked where we were from and then she asked why we would be here in Argentina so far away from our families.  We got the chance to tell her about what we do and then she asked us if we could visit her this upcoming week and we were like yes! She told us she's an alcoholic and she's trying to get off of alcohol, but that she can't do it alone and that she said she thinks we are her answers to her prayers! I think she and her husband are in the process of splitting up and I think that's why she started drinking.she was really looking forward to us coming this week. We invited her to church but she is going to be traveling tomorrow but she said after the trip :-) we're visiting her on Wednesday!

After that we were walking home and we have been walking for three hours already not finding anyone in the siesta and we walked in the street and we felt like we should walk back and go to this particular house. When we walked by the house a motorcycle pulled up and we talk to this lady name Carolina and she gave us the day we could visit her too. She's a single mom as well. I feel really good with what we did today we walked so much and our lunch appointment canceled on us and we didn't eat all day except the oatmeal I had in the morning. It was so hot… Some of the time I caught myself thinking I wanted to go back to the house because of how tired I was. But every time I thought that stuff I imagined Jesus Christ walking along my side and help me to keep going the whole way.

I'm still having my stomach problems but Hermana silva, the mission nurse, has me on a special diet and I'm already feeling better. I have a list of foods that I can eat and the list isn't very big… but it's making me healthier and slowly it's helping me feel better, too. I feel healthier for sure and my weight has been dropping with me running every day and eating healthy. One of the jackets that I got from Tillys before I left was too tight for me at the MTC and in catamarca. It now fits my arms and I can button it up!

I don't know what my plans are for Thanksgiving yet but I think we're going to be doing something with elder Toledo and elder blotter ..we are like family out here… We've got to stick together. 

I love seeing daddy with his golf girls, they really do love him and he can lighten up quite a bit when he is with them :-) it's really cute... that's the best! I still remember golf with him and he would drive the golf cart so crazily fast and you felt like you were going to fall out of the cart ha ha Ha

I love you guys so much and I think about you on the daily. The distance doesn't change the love I have for you guys, if anything my love grows for you each day. You're amazing. Have the best week ever, okay. I love you.

Kelbs

Me on P-Day

In my pension :)

The medicine I have to take for my stomach :/

Elder Blotter and Hermana Gonzalez!

Daddy I thought of you on your mission when I saw this sign!

Don't ask me how, but the key broke off in the lock when my comp was trying to unlock them!

Hermana Romeril's Update 10/13 & 10/20

Hola! Today is going to be a busy day. Hopefully a good one too. We're sitting in the chapel, eating lunch that Hermana Fino, A member in the ward made. It's this rice, with herbs and lemon and some chicken! She is such a good cook, we've only had lunch with her one other time and last time we had grilled chicken with grilled onions. I didn't eat the onions though – surprised?

Hola! Today was a good one. We started off with our district meeting and then we had lunch with the Roldan family--The daughter of President Perusia. They are seriously so awesome. We had the salad stuff for lunch with green olives and I ate everything except the green olives and Hermana Perusia said "you don't like olives?" I said to be honest I don't… And she said… I remember you told me you're trying to grow your hair out – this helps it grow. So I ate all of the olives and afterword they were talking about how it wasn't really real. They just wanted to see if I would eat olives. So… I did!

Yesterday night was really good we had a fireside with all the youth – we actually had a fire pit! The four missionary shared our conversion story and after we sing a song that was in Spanish. elder Toledo and Hermana Amaya did great! Elder blotter and I were just trying to figure out how to pronounce all the words! Ha. Plus other blotter was sick so he sounded a little bit like he was hitting the highest point of puberty! But the whole night was really good. Spiritual. With mosquitoes. A lot of them!

So two days ago we went to contact a reference and the reference wasn't there, but his dad pulled up to visit him and he started talking to us and asked us where we were from. Hermana Amaya told him she was from Mexico and they started talking about Mexico and how cool it was and what not. And then he asked me where I was from and I set the United States and he said why don't you go back to your own country and serve? Why do you think we want someone from your country here preaching God's word? And then he continued for a while and said, do you think we are that much more inferior you can come here and preach? Yeah, I don't think he liked me too much. It's sad that people have to be like that but what can you do? We are having little success in finding people. A lot of people want to listen but not let us come visit them again.

Every day I learn more about who God is and the value this church has. People ask me why am on my mission and I told him because I've been blessed to have my family for eternity and I want other people to have there's forever too. The mission is crazy, the events you have in your life don't just go away… They are more emphasized. I don't even know if that makes sense. But to answer your questions no I haven't been sick lately! We run every single morning except Sundays.  And yeah! I'm getting faster! In my ward it's actually a branch… But an average of 60 people come every week. My favorite part of my day is the evening when we visit people and teach them and get to know them. I love my calling! I haven't gotten your package… I will one day :-)i'm so excited to get it.

I want to give a shout out to Jessica for the email! And grandma Romeril for the card! I love you both so much. My family is my motivation to keep going :) thank you all for everything you do… Have the best week ever! Seriously :-)

You were all in my heart, Hermana Romeril 

First Week in San Fancisco!

Well, I’m in San Francisco!  My companion is Hermana Amaya and she’s from Mexico.  She has 11 months in the mission.  She runs every morning, gets up exactlyat 630am, turns off the lights exactly at 1030 pm, starts studying exactly at 800am.  She is super disciplined and I am so grateful for that!  Seriously.  It makes me feel so happy and productive and exactly obedient!  I really like her.  I have a feeling we are going to have a really good transfer!  Yesterday we visited our ward mission leader.  Hermano Lorenzo, to figure out lunches for October.  In our ward the missionaries are me and my companion and then our district leader, Elder Blotter and Elder Toledo.  We have lunch every single day!  Our mission leader said “You’re like my kids.  I have to make sure you’re taken care of!  I’m very grateful for him, and my companion, and Heavenly Father.  This morning was really hard to get up because I knew we had to run—so I prayed and asked Heavenly Father to help me get up and have the energy…and it worked!!!  One of the members from Catmarca, Javier, put some piano guys music on my pen drive so I listed to that while I got ready.  I loved this morning!  I love listening to music!  Sorry, I’m just really happy!!  Anyways, we were riding bikes in this area and guess what?!  My bike is pink!!! I’m so serious, it is so AWESOME!

So yesterday was really hard.  We rode bikes the second half of the day and we were on our way home and the house we were at was 3 or 4 miles away from the apartment.  The beginning of the bike ride was good, then 1 mile into it I got so tireed. We’d been walking and riding bikes all day (this area is so much bigger than my last area).  I literally felt like I couldn’t go anymore.  My companion was way ahead of me and I was so tired.  My legs were hurting so bad.  I prayed to HF and I think that was the most desperate prayer I have ever said.  After I said the prayed I really wanted to give up, get off the bike and start walking.  In that moment, I could almost feel someone just pushing my bike, helping me along the way.  My legs stopped being tired, my breathing got lighter, and I was able to keep going until we got home.  Seriously it was the coolest thing I have ever experienced. Really, when we’re doing our best, and when we go to HF when we can’t think we can go any further, He will make up for the rest.  He doesn’t expect us to do everything on our own-nor do we have to.

We have about 200 referencias (referrals) and we started contacting them and so many of them don’t want anything to do with us.  A lot of doors were shut in our face today.  There was a lady named Elena that we talked to and right when she saw us she’s said “NO! I don’t want anything to do with you guys.” I said “Oh, it’s only an invitation.” After I said that she gave us a disguisted look and she said “I know who you are. No I don’t want anything to do with you.” After that I was ready to leave but Hna Amaya just kept talking to her.  Amaya is the best.  When we were planning our day today she said “Do you want to do something crazy, something different?” So when we knocked on doors we talked wit hthe people and sang a hymn to them!  It was actually so fun.  I love my comp. She is so spiritual and fun..and super positive.  I’m teaching her English words—she already knows a little English from other companions. But seriously I am so grateful for her. We just click.  It’s just me and my companion in the pension.  We don’t have anyone else living with us which is nice—not as many distractions and we are more focused on the work.  I miss Catamarca.  Catamarca will always hold such a special, special place in my heart.  This is a new chapter of my mission. 

Week of October 6th

Hola! Tomorrow is Mitchell's birthday! I can't even believe he's already 16! I remember when I was 16… Mitchell is going to be 17 when I come home… Okay that's super weird. In like two months I'm already one third done with my mission! I can't believe Rachel Formica is almost done too. It's so nice being able to write in English. We talk in Spanish all day! So grateful you guys speak English :-) guess what? We ran today like we do every morning, but today I really didn't like it!  Hermana Amaya is funny though. She knows when I don't want to run anymore and so she starts singing these really funny songs – ha ha I don't know how anyone could be in a bad mood listening to the songs she sings.

Mitchell! Happy birthday! I miss you like an albino person misses the shade when he's outside in the sun! :) but seriously I hope you're having the best day ever. I was telling people today how it was your birthday and yeah they sat Feliz cumpleanos a su hermano! Yay you are famous in San Francisco Argentina :-) but seriously I hope you really did have a great day. I've been thinking about you all day. I love you. I also wanted to tell you that you have an Argentina twin here… Seriously. We had lunch with a family today and they have a 15-year-old and he looks so much like you! And talks like you – except he talks in Spanish. It's crazy though. Can you tell I miss you? I'm so proud of you bud… I hope you got my card and I hope you like it.

I'm so excited for general conference. As a missionary conference feels like Christmas! But it's not Christmas – because if it was, I'd be super close to talking to you guys! Mom! I got your card! And Mitch and Kate's cards. First off I wanted to say thank you all so much and thank you mom for the $30. Haha elder Toledo was with me when I opened it and he was even excited to see American money! He's also excited because he wants to go buy grido ice cream with it. I want to use the money to buy a camel back for my backpack. Anyway thank you so much for sending it. The cards from you three… Were delivered the day I needed to be uplifted the most. I'm so grateful for you all.

I wanted to tell you about my not so good bike talent! I was riding my bike and my companion was going really fast so I was trying to catch up to her and we were crossing the street and I looked back for cars and forgot to look in front of me and I hard-core ran into a huge pole and my bike handle Gashed into my leg and A really good part of my leg is bright purple and blue. Whoops! I don't understand why bruises can't be pink!

Anyway, I am so happy to be out here on my mission! This is my first Gen. conference session in Argentina! And in Spanish! It started here at 1 o'clock to 3 o'clock and then5 o'clock to 7 o'clock at night. We all met together – all of the members in San Francisco and watch general conference in the chapel. I was so excited! We watched the first session in Spanish and then the second session we watched in English with the gringo elders.  It was so nice to hear English! It felt  like a little bit of home.

I figured out how many miles we walk a day and it's about 6 to 9 miles each day. That is unless we have our bikes – when we have our bikes it goes by a little bit faster – but that's when I usually have my accidents! It's been really rainy here for the last few days – yesterday we went to go visit a less active family and they live on a dirt road and let me tell you it was incredible how much mud and frogs there were! I've never seen anything like it!. We finally got to the other side of the dirt and we had already passed the house so we couldn't turn back and backtrack into the mud so we went home because it was almost 9 o'clock. As we were riding our bikes in the street I forgot to look down and I guess there was a step when we were trying to get on the sidewalk and I totally ate it on my bike… And I'm pretty sure all of the cars at the red light saw it! I only scraped my knee so that's good!

Anyway I have to go. I love you so much. Remember you are always in my prayers and I think the world of you. Thank you for everything you do for me. You're in my heart always.

Hermana Romeril

I Got Transferred to San Francisco, Argentina!

 Hola Familia! P-day was really good last week. We went to the district to a plaza/park and had a great picnic! We kind of were just all in charge of our own food. I got a ham sandwich and some strawberries! It was fun, and then randomly this huge dance company got on the stage at the plaza and started practicing for a show or something. Their music was in English! It was really cool actually. After that we went and wrote emails and then came back and we slept for 30 minutes... it was a good day. We then woke up and got our missionary clothes back on and got to work! We visited a lot of people, and a lot of people were unavailable. We have a lesson this morning with the new investigator, Lucy. She is the Catholic who I don't think has any interest… But I guess we'll see! I taught the lesson and I think it went well. Before our district meeting we had one of those interviews with Elder Ruiz  – it was really sad. I almost cried/almost! Elder Ruiz  almost did too. It was a sad day. 
This Friday was interesting! We had  Pablo's baptism all set– We planned it all out and we called him yesterday to make sure he didn't smoke… And he told me he smoked a cigarette today… So he can't get baptized. These past few days have been stressful. We been stressing over a ton about making sure Pablo doesn't smoke. But if he can quit smoking he can be baptized next week. On Wednesday I have an interview with Elder Ruiz like I wrote about and he told me I look more like a missionary because I'm starting to get bags under my eyes ha ha. 

Oh! I can't believe I didn't even write about this. Who am I? Tuesday night was so funny we were all doing our daily planning and we heard hermana Carrasco scream and she told me "America! Venid. Va a morir." So I come in I died a little bit inside. Why you might ask? There was a huge spider – Iike a Triantula spider!! Holy freak! it was up on the wall almost on the ceiling. So we were trying to figure out how we were going to kill it. We tried throwing balls at it to kill it, but we all have really bad Aim and the spider went nowhere.  We decided it might be good to hairspray it down to the wall, but it was super windy outside so we told hermana brown to shut the window but she didn't and just sprayed it. so because of the wind when she sprayed it, the spider went airborne and fell into hermana carrascos stuff!  She was so mad at hermana brown she called her "friking Tonta!" Which means freaking stupid or idiot. Anyways, we were all still freaking out and it was like 1015 at night and hermana car. Said we have to get somebody to kill the spider. So she and I went to go look for the custodial guy and we couldn't find him so we went to go look for someone who looked like they could conquer this spider. I told her "I feel weird if we just have some random guy cleaning up the spider in our pension, so I was like maybe we should go look for a police because they aren't just random people." So hermana Carrasco went and asked this family if they knew where any police were and they didn't know. So we both, in our pajamas, went looking for a police to kill our spider. We found no one so we went to go looking for a police in a few different streets… found no one. We came back to the pension and hermana car asks the guy we saw in front of the building if he could kill our spider and he was laughing, asking us if we were really looking for police to kill the spider. We told him yes we are really serious so he came and killed the spider and turns out he was a less active member! Who would've thunk!? 

Last thing ...I got transferred! Honestly I'm super nervous. I'm nervous to be in a whole new place with a whole new companion but my companion is really nice. She is from Mexico and her name is hermana Amaya and she's been on her mission for 11 months. My new area is San Francisco Argentina!  In our zone we only have 12 missionaries --4 sisters and 8 elders so we're pretty small here. Our apartment is huge! My closet is so huge and we have a piano in the apartment! I'm learning how to play by the way :-) it's really pretty here, and it's really new. It's good to have a fresh start, just got to get used to everything here and not be scared. I'm almost excited, a little overwhelmed. I was very sad to leave Catamarca. I miss my companion… We had rough times but she was always there for me and we got really close. I'm excited to kind of start all over again though. 

I love you all and pray for you. You're always in my heart, seriously.

Love hermana Romeril 

 Familia Barrone!

                                                   One of our investigator families

September 15, 2014

Hola!

So what happens when you and your companion both run out of money for the month and literally have no food? You make a deal with the missionary from Peru who wants American money. So really the dollar is worth 10 pesos but I'm getting a deal for 12 pesos for every dollar!  But wait! We just found out that we can sell the money to the bank and get 15 pesos for every dollar.  I'm selling $20 for 250 pesos! Thank you grandma Romeril for sending me money!

I love Sundays. For a couple reasons – because I really love going to church and also because it's almost P-day! Saturday we had a really busy day– We had members with us all day after lunch – one's name is Javier and he's awesome! He was with us for lessons from 3 o'clock to 8 o'clock. He was only scheduled to be with us for three hours but he wanted to stay with us longer. He is in his 20s. We had Julio with us for a while too. He's a recent convert and he was to come with us to a lesson with Luis, a new investigator, but Luis wasn't there and his daughter told us to come back another day. So we went back to the chapel and waited for our other member – Angel – the guy I talked about a while back and he was telling me about his worries with his kids and whatnot. Three members we had with us are awesome! We went to visit Marta and Renee but Marta is really sick and when we visited her, she didn't look good at all. She is so sick that she can't even walk and she has to stay in her bed all day. She is so awesome. She lives with her "pareja" Renee. I don't know the world word in English but it so when you live with without being married. Renee is hilarious – he owns a lottery place – which isn't like a lotto place that you'd think of. It's his little lotto – house place and he just kind of sits there all day doing whatever you do at those places! It's kind of a mutual understanding that he can't understand me and I can't understand him – but we try to understand each other anyways, it's good though! It's a little bit harder to understand him over other people because he doesn't have his four front teeth so his letters sound a bit different!

Funny experience in church! We were in church today and this girl who is 13 years older so she knocks on the bathroom stall I was in and I finished using it and open the door and she entered and close the door and opened it again and was being totally serious and said hola. She smiled kind of really creepily and kissed the air and kept smiling so I was like… A lot! And kissed the air back, thinking maybe that was a normal way here in Argentina because I don't know, they do random things here in Argentina but I guess it was weird she did that so Hermana Rivera was busting up as I was standing there a little freaked out.One day last week our power was out for a whole day because one of the hermana's in my pension forgot to pay the electricity bill… So that's been great :-) but we're not home too much during the day so it's okay – but we still need to pay the bill ha Ha. Last PDay we went on a hike as his own and when we all got to the top we had a testimony meeting and all of the missionaries bore their testimonies. It was really cool actually.

I only have one week left with my companion… It'll be weird having another companion. I never want to leave Catamarca. I'm going to be so sad when I have to leave. Next Sunday I will have been out on my mission for four months. It's kind of sad to think that when I hit my four-month mark I'll only have 14 more months left of my mission. It's crazy how fast time goes here. Four months doesn't seem like a long time, but when compared to 18 months it seems like I only have a short amount left. 

I've almost completed a whole journal. This is the journal that I have all of my experience since literally day one, May 21, 2014. When I end this journal I probably won't be a greenie anymore… I'll have finished my 12 weeks of training. Weird!   Why am I feeling all sentimental right now? Don't even know! Seriously though, I am loving my mission. My name badge has become a part of me and every day when I put it on, I think of who I'm representing – Jesus Christ and my family. My plaque doesn't say Kelby. It has the name of my family. The person I am, the actions I do and the words I say are all in respect to my family and Jesus Christ when my plaque is on. Really, I'm standing as a witness of God at all times, in all things, and in all places. Do I want to stand as a good witness or a bad one? I think I now know why am feeling all sentimental today!

We got a new investigator this week – Kinda. Her name is Lucy. I'm pretty sure she's not interested at all in our church – she told us various times that she's really Catholic and it she's not looking to change, but she excepts us for who we are and that she wanted to know more about our church. So we are going to visit her on Tuesday! We visited that girl Pilar  that I talked a little bit about… I know who she reminds me of. She is in Argentina version of fat Amy from pitch perfect!  She's the best! The only thing Pilar needs to do to be ready to be baptized is to move out of her boyfriends house. Or get married in a week… But I think that option is probably not going to work. I have faith though. We are going to be very busy this next week with our new investigators

Oh! I got to tell you something! I was in the bathroom when I first woke up and I blindly picked up my retainer case to put my retainers away… So I feel something crawling on me so I was like oh what's that? I looked down… It's a flipping cockroach! No, I didn't scream – just on the inside!

Okay that's all for this week I love you all!

Celebrating her 18th month mark!

               America and Peru!!

September 1, 2014

Knarly fish that was given to us at the ladies house that I accidentally told her that her "food was ugly instead of good".  AGH!

 At our zone conference!

Hermana Brown rocking a Beatles shirt!

 Mom, you wanted a picture of me in regular clothes--here you go! 

My focus on my mission is to become more like Christ..

Week of September 8th.

Hola! This week has been really good actually! I've been running every single morning and each morning we run to a new house. I've been running with hermana Brown and I like having someone there every morning that motivates me to work out.

Yesterday we had a lesson with Pablo the one who is getting baptized on the 20th if he can quit smoking. We had a member with us, hermano Ortiz. We walked into Pablo's house and it smelled so bad of cigarettes – I walked in and almost had to use my inhaler… That's how strong it was! But we finished the lesson and we experienced a really weird situation with him – (something I don't want on the blog). Needless to say I am glad that we had Hermano Ortiz with us. The lessons that we have with Pablo from now on will be held at the church. After we left we had to go home and wash our clothes because we smelled so bad like deep smoke. We had to come home and shower because the smoke was so strong on us. I feel bad for Pablo I really do. The only thing I can think to do is pray for him and keep doing our part by teaching him. Even though the situation was kind of scary, I didn't feel afraid of him. The only thing I could think of was Jesus Christ. I kept envisioning that picture of Jesus Christ carrying that last sheep on his shoulders. He went to go back to save that one lost sheep back into the fold. And he would do that exact same thing for Pablo. He to sacrifice everything to help Pablo. My focus on my mission is to become more like Christ – in Christ would be that missionary who loved Pablo aside from his differences.

This week we also visited one of our new investigators, Ramon. We had a good lesson with him. He told us about his life and his religion – he's Catholic – but the funny thing was at the beginning of the lesson he told us he didn't want to change his religion and said he knew his religion was the right one, and then later in the lesson he kind of paused and looked at me and said "hermana, what's your opinion of my religion? Do you think it's true?"  I told him there's a lot of truth said his religion – but I told him I've prayed to know which church is true, and I encourage you to do the same. 

One day this week we had a lot of studying to do – like training, language, etc.  We started our studies at 8 o'clock and finished at 1 o'clock for lunch.  In between studies I put my clothes in the washer, and after studies I looked into the kitchen and the floor was filled with water from the washer in the washer clearly was broken. Hermana Brown was helping me clean up all of the water and then we had washed my clothes and hung them up and cleaned up the water – our pension is on the eighth floor and I threw out a cup of water trying to hit the sidewalk and accidentally hit a dog… I didn't realize there was a house down there and the owner came out wondering how in the heck his dog got wet. Needless to say we ended up dumping the rest of the water down the sink like we should've been doing in the first place ha Ha. 

So I'm not going to go into much detail, but they're up in a couple of situations that have been hard with my companion. Yesterday I was really frustrated but I prayed and asked for heavenly father's help to love my companion because I knew I didn't want to live these last two weeks --she only has two weeks left on her mission --like I did the day before--which was a really hard day. Heavenly father did help me to love her and I realize that being mad about it wouldn't help. And I her favorite person in the world? I don't think so – but at the same time I still love her – and she's still my companion. Just like D&C 64:9-11 says… If I expect heavenly father to forgive me and all my imperfections, I need to forgive other people. But anyways we talked about yesterday and I have faith it'll be okay. After we figured everything out we had Javier, one of the members of the ambato  ward came with us for two lessons. They were both de diez. When was Louise, and new investigator and we were able to get to know him a little bit better. He's really funny! He can't actually understand my American accent very well so he just kind of laughs when I speak because he can't understand – and then Javier  repeats what I say so he can understand! My Spanish is getting better – I mean no it's not perfect but I can feel it improving! More people can understand me, I can understand more people – grand really!! Pretty much everybody can understand my accent except for --like older people. Like 60+!  One thing I really need to work on is speaking Spanish more. It's really easy to speak English with other missionaries from the states, but if I do that a lot, my Spanish won't to improve. I have the rest of my life after my mission to speak English! I can definitely speak it here for 14 more months!

Mitch!Hey bud!! I just wanted you to know how much I love you. I talk about you frequently and how you´re my best friend and the hermanas in my apartment even call you Mitch haha. But I hope you know that even though I´m out here in Argentina, I´m still here with you. Not literally, but you´re in my thoughts and prayers I think more than you know it.  Sometimes in high school things get hard, and believe me when I say I wish I could be there with you to talk to you, but I know that you are so strong, and I know that you are strong enough to handle any kind of adversity that comes your way. I´m so lucky to have you as my brother and best friend. One thing I´ve really come to appreciate more and more on my mission is our family. Because, friends come and go and other people in our lives come and go, but one thing that will always be constant is our family. We´re together for eternity :) With that said, 14 more months is nothing when compared to eternity!! :) Know that I love you and I think you´re amazing, and I will never ever forget you! I think about you on the daily, yo :) Have a great week, make sure to say your prayers every night!! 

One last thing.. you asked if i was getting used to the food..haha well we don´t eat with members anymore but well we do every tuesday and so ya it´s good I don´t get super sick from it anymore!! i´m pretty nervous to get a different companion. I´m nervous to have to start the whole getting to know them thing over again! I hope it´ll be okay! It will be okay :) But we didn´t have time to print emails today because we had to be at the terminal to take a colectivo at like, 7 am and got back at 2 our time so I´ll print it next week and write back to next weeks email and this weeks :) I love you allllll and i miss you all :) 

Me and Hermana Carrasco

This is the lady that I accidentally told her that her food is ugly! 

Missionary behind bars!

P-Day!