"he was speaking english..."

February 7, 2011

Hola! so i will try to attatch some pictures to this, so i can really prove that im in argentina and not just hiding somewhere in provo haha. anyways, this week was AWESOME! After i got off last week i bought a flippin sweet hammock, i tried to set it up in the apartment but we cant find anywhere yet. its so cool. i absolutely love it. that made my last p day awesome.

first of all im too excited to wait any longer to tell this story. Its like SOOOO amazing. so rewind to 2 weeks ago, this old man we were teaching said "hey there is this young boy who lives behind me who used to see the missionaries, you should go teach him. i think he wanted to be baptized but his mom said no, but that was a while ago so just go see how he is" so we tried to go by a few times but he was never home. we kinda were about to just give up, but we went by one more time. this kids name if Fausto. He is 13 years old and right when we met him he was thrilled to talk to us. we invited him to church and he came the next day, and when we taught him, his younger brother, Lino, who just turned 12, started listening and coming to activites as well. i LOVE lino, he totally reminds me of Dane. They are the BOMB!!! I adore teaching them with all of my heart. anyways, in the first lesson with both of them we said "will you prepare to be baptized?" and Fausto said "ya how soon can i be baptized?" WOAH!!! I was like "well can we fill the font now" haha not really, i dont even know how to say that in castellano. anyways him and Lino are getting baptized on the 18th!!!! you are ALL invited to come because it is going to be off the hook! they are the tightest kids. anyways, we had to ask the mom for permission though, which we were nervous about because she said no the first time, and we had no idea when that was. so one day we went over there and she was there with some of her daughters (one of them only wears a bra, its weird. shes kinda a punk). but when we asked the mom, she said yes without even hesitating!!! and she said she wanted to be taught! we taught her and her other daughter (not the punk) and they said they were going to read the book of mormon together! i actually did a lot more of the teaching in this lesson, like i gave the first vision and talked about my love for Joseph Smith and how grateful i was that he restoured the church to this earth, and the spirit was so strong. she really could feel it. she said if she asked God if it was true and he said yes she would get baptized as well. only problem is that she works every sunday, but she wants to come to church so she is working on adjusting her schedule. we were stoked!!! how wonderful their family wants to get baptized! then when we were reading Faustos teaching record, we found out the missionaries had taught him just a few months earlier. they taught him and his mom said a firm no because she thought he was too young and didnt want their family to get involved with the missionaries. so why now, when we knock and ask, they are super inviting and listen, and not just Fausto but Lino as well want to get baptized right away? no idea. but it really made me know i was truely called by God to do this work because there are certain people waiting for me and my testimony here. The other day I was walking with LIno and he bore his testimony to me. it was so sweet. then he took all my pamphlets and said he was going to read them. I told him that he had doubles of some and he said "well then i will just read them twice" haha they also help my spanish out a ton. I cannot even begin to say how much I love them and how excited I am that they are going to be baptized. Ah! Im just so happy for them!!!!! I want you all to meet them!!!

ok I will move on because im sure not too many of you want to read just about how much i love my investigators here. I killed a cocroach in my apartment the other day. It was the size of a hot wheels car. I was screaming and freaking out and going all ninja with the spray (which we felt inspiried to buy the day before--miracle). The bugs here are on steriods. So are the fish! So Dane asked if there are Paranas in the Paraná river, turns out there are deadly huge fish that bit off a young boys hand!!! ya dont wanna swim in that thing...the beach here is called "Thompson", pretty cool. I took a picture by it cuz its like my name. I wanted to think of some crazy things that are different here to tell you...One day we were walking and I saw a bunch of cars parked with water jugs on top. My comp told me that if a car has a water jug on top, that means its for sale. Weird huh? Someone could just move the water jug. Also you would not BELIEVE how much of a crazy trend maté is. I asked a member how much people drank, and she said usually 20 glasses a day. I swear all day people just sit out front and drink maté and relax. what a wonderful life :-) but it makes it easy then to just go up and teach because they cant say they are busy haha. people here are very nice and friendly. i love it because everyone says hi. well, some form of "hi". a lot of times they say "chao, adios" for hi. that would be like if i said "bye! how are you doing?"

People here are friendly, but VERY blunt. they say very rude things right to your face. my comp told me that she knows people who have had acne and the people here will say "do you have a disease on your face?" or they will tell you if you look fat, and so on. One lady at chruch told me i had the face of a pioneer...whatever that means. I just hope thats good haha. Everyone also tells me i have huge feet. how do they notice that? they call me "rubia", which means blonde, and im not a blonde haha. my comp has very very blonde hair so she thinks its weird when they refer to me as rubia as well. We ate Lunch at the Sosa and they have 2 nieces who just are little 10 year old Divas and sit there and touch me and play with my hair and say "que hermosa, que linda, oh hermana muylinda" and treated me like their own little barbie doll, cuz i cant talk that much. little kids seem to really like me here because of that. Lino has a blast with me because he just talks a million words per minute and i just say "que bueno". i guess the other day he asked if i would buy him a candy haha. that kid is just using me cuz im still slow at castellano!

The family we ate lunch with last week that called us angels invited us over again. we taught them how to play spoons and it was SOO fun. I love that family. we read them joseph smiths story and the spirit was so strong. I hope they get fully reactiviated. We found another new family this week, and it was amazing. We came in and she said "ya we were about to get baptized, but the missionaries got changed (white-washed) and we never saw them again. we do want to get baptized tho" it was so incredible!!! their names are Carlos and Roxanna, they just need to get married first. they have been together for 12 years and have 4 kids, so hopefully that wont be too hard to convince them to just seal the deal haha. teaching her though was my first encounter with someone just breast feeding right in front of me. thank goodness it was just us sisters and not the elders haha.

anyways, i love you all so much. i know this gospel is true with all my heart. i have seen the spirit touch peoples lives and it really is remarkable. my castellano is getting a lot better, but sometimes i struggle. i think it works like the liahona. if im mad or frustrated, all i hear is gibberish. when im happy and feeling the spirit, i understand a lot better. one time i about freaked out because i could understand word for word what was being said! then i found out that he was speaking english. haha that was embaressing...

le amo!!!
chao
hermana collins