Changes!!!

Well, a lot of crazy changes are happening this week!!! Tomorrow, I leave Paraná and head to San Nicolas in the province of Buenos Aires! It is still right on the river and I think about 3 hours from Rosaio as well. My next companion will be Hermana Reyes, who actually was companions with Hermana Kusilek for a bit, so I have only heard wonderful things about her. But whoever out there has been praying for my Spanish to get better, your prayers worked. She is from El Salvador and doesn't speak a word of English. Soooooo My Spanish is going to get a LOT better. I can talk and understand pretty well now, but i know i have a lot of improving to do. So a latina comp will help me immensely. Other changes are that our NEW mission president is already in the offices!!! I get to meet him at a special conference this Thursday (so i pack today, go to San Nicolas tomorrow, then back to Rosario Thursday, lots and lots of traveling!!) I will write about that next week. But i am very excited to meet him and his wife, they look very sweet. Plus at this conference i get to see all my friends from the MTC, I am very very stoked about that.

I loved being in Paraná for the past 6 months, but part of me is ready to leave too. After contacting literally every street here, you feel ready to change areas and see what else is in your mission. But after telling some people that I'm leaving, they started crying and crying. It was weird because I know I have been working very very hard here, but sometimes I feel like people either don't care or don't notice. But I really have learned this week how much people here love me and that I equally love them back so much. Alexis, one recent convert here, wrote me in my journal that when he first met me, he was so surprised that I came to this country hardly knowing any Spanish at all to share something that I felt was the most important thing in my life. He said that really struck him. I have countless dictionaries he has given me to try to help me with my Spanish, but yesterday he said that my Spanish has gotten so much better (i told him studying from the book of Mormon has helped me a little more than studying from his animal encyclopedias). But never did it hit me so hard that I needed to start my mission here and struggle with the language here so it would spark the interest of Alexis and help him to get baptized. Right now I am working on plans with Alexis and Cesar to get them to go to the temple in a year before I go home. That would make me SOOOO happy. (ps mom, Alexis is writing you a letter trying to convince you to come and pick me up from Argentina when i am done with my mission haha)

how was the 4th of July? the day of indepencia here is the 9th of July, but it sounds like a really tranquilo holiday. No fireworks or anything like that. Probably because it is too cold. It is COLD. I actually am excited to get moved to another area for the rest of winter because we have the worst pench in the mission with a heater the size of a shoe box and nothing else. I am constantly freezing. My comp said other penches have like heated showers and heated sinks and heaters in the pench, I pray San Nicolas does.

Well, I don't really have much else to report. I finished the book of Mormon in Spanish for the first time this morning. After I took the invitation up in Moroni 10 which asks you to pray and See if it is true. As I was praying I realized how much I have learned as I have made the sacrifice to read that everyday. It took me 3 months from starting to finishing, and it was hard to read it all in that little amount of time. But my testimony has REALLY grown, and also I really have noticed an improvement in literally every aspect of my mission. To all of you, I invite you to pray to see if the book of Mormon is true as well tonight. Because I testify that it is.

les quiero mucho

hermana collins