Monday, December 19, 2011

hey everybody!!!

so im sorry about my lack of email last week i seriously spent my whole time writing and pressed send at the very end and it didnt work and so i clicked okay and everything disappeared well my email did and i couldnt find it so i had to go to work. but sooo this week was really good. really busy and really stressful but really good all at the same time. i am so tired but its great bec as soon as i get out the door to go to work i dont feel as hot and tired its only once i sit down and stop. haha a tender mercy from the lord. i know yall probably get tired of hearing this but it is soo hot here. blahhhhh the last couple days have been terrible (heat wise everything else has been great).
So ill start with yesterday and work my way back. so yesterday was church of course. haha but i had to give a talk... uh oh in spanish. but so i prepared and prepared and 2 other relief society sisters talked before me and we all know how much women like to talk. i think they gave great talks from what i could understand but it took up pretty much the whole time so i was hoping to get out of it bu no such luck i was trying to keep it simple and fast but one bad thing about trying to hurry through a talk in a different language is you arent really sure if it comes out the way you intended it too.. so i am still really worried i said something that wasnt true or crazy. but H. Callejas said it was good and the spirit was strong but the best part about it all is that i actually was able to do it in spanish without writing it out word for word the words just kinda blobbed out of my mouth which is what makes me nervous for saying somethng wrong... yeah... anyways so we go and we look for our investigators before church.. and so church starts at 9 so we left at 7:30 and we actually didnt make it to the church till 9:30 (luckily we have relief society first bec we are always late bec were looking for people) so we spent 2 hours walking fast out in the sun we covered like our entire area. i have become quite a walker... but only 2 of the ones we searched out came... its a little disheartening to spend all that time finding htem and then they arent there or dont want to or wont wake up... but one Marcello we had met saturday night he is the uncle of facundo who we baptized the 10th and he is a little special but he came and right afterwards he told h. callejas that he wanted to be baptized!!!! we didnt even say anything about it. he just came up to her and told her! and then we had a lesson with facundos brother who has not been at all in the church at all but him and his friends listened ot us. it was quite a miracle. and we had a really interesting lesson wiht gladis last night but i told you about it in the letter i sent today so i wont repeat it...
    but so saturday we had a baptism! for Facundo (a different facundo there are a lot of people with that name here.)  his brother got baptized about a month ago and Facundo has such a testimony. its interesting bec the first lesson we had with them i was listening to them and santiago has a lot of reservations about the chuch and kept asking all of these weird questions like how do we know theres a god.. etc. and i wondered if he was really the one baptized bec facundo was giving him answers. and he has really studied the bible. he has a special spirit i love him. but so his mom came to the baptism!!! she came to sign his paper saying he could get baptized and we talked to her for a while and she loves her kids so much she is so excited for them to be baptized because she knows its right but she doesnt think that she can bec she has made so many mistakes so we are meeting with her this week... on the 23 but so she was there and the spirit was so strong. i think she is gonna be a lot more receptive now.  keep your fingers crossed. 
    and then friday... friday was quite a day. we were all over the place bec we contacted references and then had to get hte key to the church and then go to facundos interview and we ended up staying there for a while and then we had lessons and had to walk out to the end of the world for lunch and hten we had to study and then a lesson with vanesa and some of our lessons didnt show whihc makes it feel like we arent doing anything when we are waiting at the church for someone to show and we are the only ones there... ahh ... but so we were hurrying as fast as we could to the church for the interview.. we were late and this lady is standing by her gate and calls us over. and so we go over and she starts talking and i dont understand and h callejas says we actually have an appointment weve gotta go. and this lady got kinda hostile and told us no we needed to share a scripture with her. so h callejas pulls out her book of mormon and the lady says no and pushes us in the gate (h callejas whispered to me that she was drunk but i didnt understand until later when she had time to elaborate bec i dont know the word for drunk.. its not in the spanish for missionaries book that ive been studying..) but so she has us sit down and h callejas takes the book of mormon and starts to find a scripture and she says no. im gonna choos and takes the book of mormon and opens it to a random scripture and points to it and h callejas reads it and explains it to her and how she can repent etc. so we start to try and leave and she stops us looks at me and says "now you wheres your bible" and so pull out my book of mormon and she does the same thing but before i could explain we manage to hurry off to our appointment. whew. it was so weird.
   thursday was weekly planning so nothing really exciting happened then. we have that for like 6 hours in a hot room not fun.. but of well
wednesday was zone conference and it was sooo fun it went longer than it was supposed to be but we had so much fun. we all brought white elephant gifts and put them in a bag and at the end one of the elders dressed up like santa and brought them in the president levrino would call a name and wed go get a gift. and a loaf of this chocoalte chip bread (by the way i tried fruit cake this week cause EVERYONE eats it here. gross... ) and took a pic with santa. all the sisters were shaking his hand it was funny. the elders would run and jump on his lap. but i learned so much at the conference. well the part that i understood i learned. i learned a lot about dilligence and thought of new ways to get our numbers up because our zone has been doing really good and making our mission goals so he gave us higher ones... haha. at least i think... i never really know if i hear everthing right. but because our time is so different they christmas devotional was really late so we didnt get to watch it so president levrino played it for us.
oh by the way!!! speaking of christmas im calling home at about 8pm on christmas day so i htink thats about 4 or 5 for you guys.... im not sure you might want to check that.  but im calling form the phone in the capilla (the meeting house) i think and im buying a calling card. thats 50 min. president says i only can talk for 30 minutes which means 40 minutes bec everything lasts longer than he says so he always says 10 min less than we actually get. but so thats less time than michael. i dont know the phone number. but i will call. and ill call the house (the house phone works right? on the invitation it had your cell? should i call your cell? i guess ill find out bec you cant answer.. so im gonna go with the house. and if that doesnt work your cell...)
but so zone conference was really good but its hard to listen to everything in spanish im afraid i tuned a lot out... oops but hte devotional was really good i loved the video they showed. so i complain a lot about spanish but it is getting better every day!!! i actually had conversations with people all by myself this week i was pretty excited. but i should probably go. thats most of my week anyways.
i love yall!!!
and i do get all the emails people send
love
hermana applegate

Monday, December 12, 2011

I am afraid this week it is a little slim on news! Here is the message I got :)


hey mom.... so i just wrote you a really long great email and now i want to cry bec something happened when i sent it and it didnt send and got deleted...a nd now im out of time.... i am so sorry i will send one next week but im great im sad now that you cant read all the cool things i wrote. but i love you im thinking of you im doing great and p day is over so ive gotta go. i loved your songs and i have letters for christmas coming but yours and dads ill have to send in the next weeks stuff bec i ran out of time for that tooo i feel soooooo bad. i love you
jen

Monday, December 5, 2011

First letter from the field!

hey mom!!!
I am here alright. im in Oran (thats as much of an address ive got for you) and it is sooooo HOT!!!! i made it safely and the elders did take care of me the whole time so nothing happened but it was crazy!!!! so we flew 10 hours to get to Buenos Aires and then we got there and they put us all in a line for customs but the mtc gave us this envelope to give people when we got to argentina a nd so we confused all the workers and it took like an hour-hour and a half to get us all done. and then we wandered through the airport until someone from the church found us and they ushered us all to a bus and we drove around for about an hour and then they dropped us off at another airport and left.... we were confused til someone else came up and didnt know how to speak english but got us all on planes so i had another 2 hour plane ride and when the y flight attendant talked to me i realized i cant do this!!! i dont understand a thing and my elders were on different parts of the plane. but i love my mission president in my initial interview he told me that the lord had confidence in me and so he did to. it was exactly what i needed to hear.
Oran is about 5 hours bus ride away from Salta and it is very different we had to hand wash our clothes today which was actually pretty exciting. The people are so friendly and i do A LOT of walking i got a blister on my foot the first day.  and the next day it was bleeding from my shoes and our ward mission leader Jorge came with us and all day they were checking up on my foot and telling me how to take care of it.
 
oh and its actually better that you didnt send a lot in the package bec there is a tax here on packages 50% of the amount claimed on that and then to change that into pesos there are 4 pesos to each dollar so its expensive and sending it to the mission home was exactly right. they go pick them up once a week and get them out to all of the missionaries.  and there is a list of stuff that youre not allowed to send i dont remember all of it and i forgot the paper but i remember clothes is on it and medication like vitamins etc... maybe electronics... ill tell you next week. by the way pday is monday
 
So i had a cool experience this week!!! well ive had a lot. but we stopped by this investigators house i dont remmeber her name.. but we were talking to her and her son came by who si in his 40s or 50s i think and he was talking and being friendly and then all of a sudden he went off about something it had to do with religion i didnt catch a whole lot of it (which happens an awful lot here) but finally i jsut knew that i needed to bear my testimony and tell him i knew god existed so i did very powerfully and hermana callejas (my companion who ill tell you aobut later i still only get 45 min of emailing time)  said we should sing so we sang i believe in chirst in spanish we sing at all of our lessons and so we did and she bore her testimony of the savior and during the song i could see him change. he had tears in his eyes. then he hurried and left.
It was really really cool to see. the people here are so friendly. some of them really intimidate me but they love the missionaries. even if they arent members.  the food here is very different. everything is fried. and my stomach is not happy with me. but thats okay i can at least finnish my plate! barely but hey the people are so nice they really have very little and they still give a lot.
i really love it here but ive gotta go