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!