February 22, 2012

TRANSFERS came and guess what???.....

Email from February 20th, 2012


YES!! Transfers and.....I¨M STILL IN USHUAIA!!!
WITH HNA SHELLEY!
Hey I’m LOVING the pictures that I’m FINALLY able to send today so I will write until all the photos load and then move on to the next email for more pics.
I can´t even tell you how nervous we were ALL DAY yesterday because of the impending changes. I thought for sure that Hna Shelley was out of here and I would be left to try and teach the area to my next comp. The Lord loves us and made sure that we could be together 6 more weeks and we are SOOO EXCITED! I love Hna Shelley SO much. She thinks I´m as funny as I think I am so we get along AMAZINGLY! It´s also one of the greatest things because we totally complement each other as far as personalities go because when I´m tired...(haha like every day but whatev) she says GO and when she gets down, I get the chance to lift her up and help remind her of the amazing life that we are living right now. We have such an amazing opportunity to serve the Lord and talk to everyone about the love of God and the beauty of the Atonement....(bah, English is hard. I hope you know I REALLY have to concentrate when I type on Mondays. I hope that the grammar and spelling is at least understandable) QUICK SIDE NOTE before I forget.....
Listen. NO ONE WRITES ME. I know that it´s not that long until we see each other again BUT I’m STILL HERE! I STILL want to hear from you peeps. Just know that EMAILS I love to read but rarely will handwrite you back UNLESS it´s a dearelder letter or a hand written to me. Sorry but it´s not a lot of time I have to write. Just quick notes like what´s up in your life and a quick testimony building experience. Sound good? ok good.
Well, we had such a wonderful experience this past week. Enrique, that we found by trying to contact the referral who is his dad, came to Church last week and this week after a sincere invite from us and the member that had referred his dad. It was so great and such an unexpected miracle from the Lord. Enrique is SO prepared!!!! GOLDEN!
We invited him to church. He went. We invited him to read and pray. He´s doing it every day so that he can understand for himself. We invited him to see a baptism the elders had this weekend. He went and enjoyed every minute. We were right there trying to make sure he had a good spiritual experience and he said he felt right at HOME. I just about cried of happiness. Hna Shelley and I had prepared a specialmusical number (the night before....haha oops) But Hna Shelley is a WONDERFUL singer and we prepared so we knew the Lord would help us to have the Spirit. It was not half bad, if I do say so myself. I was WICKED nervous because you all know I DO NOT sing solo in front of people, but here on the mission, Hna SHelley made me make an exception. :) It was super great.
transfers cont....
So Enrique, SUPER PREPARED. He is so ready for baptism, it´s not even funny. AND when we were announcing it to everyone, he was so happy to invite everyone. He is what they call here ´fueguino´ someone born and raised here in Tierra del Fuego. There aren´t many of them because either people move here from other places or the people from here move north but he is one of those who was born, lived and stayed. SOOO....that means, small town, knows a LOT of people. At church, it was like finding all these people that he says hello to on a daily basis but finding that they have something more than living at the end of the world in common: they have Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and are all trying to follow better His example. It was such a sweet thing to introduce him to people and they say, oh I know you! It was bittersweet. It´s bittersweet because lots of members know him and that´s great because he already has bunches of friends....BUT this is the first time anyone had ever invited him to church. Wow. All these years that he´s been surrounded by members of the Church and at the first invitation, he´s ready. I just wonder if his friends at Church have thought of this too. Well, he knows so many people so we have a LOT of work to do because we are going to be baptizing ´a FUL´!
Cherry on top: President is going to be here this weekend for District Conference and a Zone conference and he will be here for the baptism!!! HOORAY!
By the way, the Zone conference will be Monday...pday will be Tuesday. :)
I am just so torn in all my emotions right now. I love that we are still here. We were in shock last night thinking that we really weren´t moving! And I know that our work is just taking flight after a transfer of WAITING for people to re populate the town because EVERYONE including the members had left for vacation. (Did I talk about that before? How people in Argentina get like a month or two for vacation and they just go somewhere, to visit family, to the beach, whatever for a month or two at a time? This really means that we get a ton of visitors wherever we are but no one that will be permanent. For the south, it means that everyone evacuates to go north to enjoy some sun a while. It was a terrible month having the streets to ourselves....)
OH IT´S DEFINITELY SNOWING today!! It was freezing yesterday and it finally fell on us today as snow! I am dying of cold, it´s ridiculous. BS AS is still warm, like upper 30´s.
transfers cont....2
So i´m torn because two of our GREAT elders are leaving for the north. Elder Herrera already left today (we went to the airport too because a sister from Rio Grande, a zone also in Tierra del Fuego but more north on the island than us, Hna Milmont left to go north to BS AS too) and it´s sad because we are good friends with ALL of our Elders. We love them and they are great. This was my second zone down here in the south with Elder Herrera and Elder Giraldo, but Elder Giraldo is still here. Elder Herrera was with me in Rio Gallegos and he was there and then here all the while I was bouncing around in BS AS and came back. He spent a YEAR down south and will be interesting to see how he adjusts to the north. He´s great! The two Colombians that we had in the zone are leaving. haha they are the ones in all the pics I’m sending. The pics are from everything from the National Park last week, the snow from today! And the baptism yesterday, random things that I´ll just have to tell you about in like...a while. haha but they are all great. Love the Elders in our zone. I learn so much from them and being the only 8 missionaries in the zone, we have gotten really close. It´s pretty awesome!
Love you all
I want you to know that I am so excited to work. I love being here and I love that I have been blessed to have you as my family; I have been blessed to know the gospel and have it as the guiding influence in my life.

Oops some of the pics will wait ‘til next week. LOVE LOVE!!
mwah!
Until next week, Hna Gonzalez











USHUAIA end of the world

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