Monday, February 27, 2012

Hey there Everybody!!!!

This week was soooooo great. okay our numbers were really down but we had some really great miracles.and i just love my companion! a TON.

Hermana Rojas is pretty much amazing. I have learned so much and we work together better than me and hermana callejas and we get along better and she is just content to be quiet which is nice sometimes and at the same time i am more comfortable talking to her. And she just loves people. she isnt okay we are here to teach a lesson so im gonna cut off the investigator really quickly. so many of our lessons have been listening to people asking questions about their lives. what they want to learn and hten working a scripture into it all to help them realize taht our message will help them (we are in the process of finding investigators) or working their worries/problems into the lessons. and she is amazing at finding out peoples worries and needs. Its sooo great! and its nice to have a companion that actually wants to go out and work and isnt afraid of all the people.  and just loves them all.  even in their weaknesses.  ahhhhhhh such a good week. (dont get me wrong i loved hermana callejas but my personality fits a lot better with hermana rojas.)  Shes a convert to the church and so she relates really well with our investigators as well. I have a lot to work on... i need to be better about asking questions but she helps me a lot in our studies. comp study is a lot of practicing but its really good and really constructive.  I feel like im re-learning all that they taught me in the mtc. its so good.

oh and another thing she told me is that it is okay to tell the people that i cant eat all of the food! WOO HOO!!!! i always feel like im gonna explode bec they give me so much food and she told me just dont eat it all and that she hates it when people tell you you have to eat it all because its not true.    oh i feel so much better. i feel like ive gained so much weight. ( i havent really gained that much. just a little but i hate it.) now i can go back to normal because im not trying to fit in an obscene amount of food.

But so yesterday we went to go find an old investigator and we taught her and we invited her to noche de hogar in the church last night and to go to church and she was alittle aprehensive and said well maybe... but then we said a prayer to leave and after the prayer she said. "ill go to the meeting tonight and church on sunday" great!!!! and so then we got to noche de hogar a little late and she was there!!!! she actually came and she said it was a beautiful meeting and she wanted to come back sunday and that we could come visit any evening!!!! wooo hooooooooo.... i am so excited about that.I dont know what happened but something changed her view point.

and we have another old investigator that we finally found this week. we have been trying to teach her for more than a month and she is never there when we have appointments. Its really pretty annoying. but we finally taught her and then teh rest of our appointments didnt work out but saturday night we found her and she couldnt talk but she told us she didnt want to miss anymore church and she would be there sunday. and we were like okay.... so we went to find her sunday mornign for church and she came!!!! she has investigated the church a couple times so with yesterday she has gone to church enough times to be baptized saturday!!! if we can get her taught all the lessons. which if everything goes to plan we can.  but she is so ready to get baptized she has a strong testimony and a really really big desire to change and follow the gospel.  the first time she came to church with us she couldnt find the keys to the house and so she climbed out the window.... its pretty cool.

Oh we have had so many different miracles this week i wish i had time to tell you all of them. but i dont.  but one thing i have learned a lot lately is HUMILITY. Humility is really really important. its so easy to just judge people. judge situations but you can be completely wrong. we have gone to find a lot of old investigators that we dropped because we decided they didnt want the gospel but as we are re finding them thats not true. or my opinions of people just change when i look at them differently.  I dont know how to describe it. but i love it

well i should go
love yall
les quiero!
hermana applegate.

Monday, February 20, 2012

Ahhh we had transfers again today! and Hermana Callejas left, as i suspected.  Her health was really really degrading.  Saturday we didnt leave to work til 5 because she didnt have any strength and looked terrible.  But i was SOOOO nervous to get a new companion. So nervous.... After hermana doxey and hermana callejas left hermana suarez and i did the normal p-day stuff waiting for our new comps to get here.  It was her first real transfer too.  Hermana Doxey was her mission mom and Hermana Callejas mine.  we bought ice cream and ate meatless tacos (it was sooooo good to just eat veggies. I am SICK and TIRED of meat.) 

But i love hermana suarez. Im glad shes still here in Oran with me.  She actually came into the MTC (here in buenos aires because shes from mendosa) the 29th of september. So we are leaving at the same time! but she gets one more transfer than me because she didnt have to learn castillano.  We decided we are gonna always live in the same area. train together etc. we will have to see what happens but she is really great. 

So hermana callejas was supposed to leave at 8:30 this morning so we had to be there at 8 so we didnt have time to do a whole lot before and her bus never came until 11... we were there til 11:30 and my comp came at 2:30 so we didnt have much time to clean and eat and shop and wash clothes. I felt bad for my comp coming to a kinda dirty house, but i did get it all cleaned up. and i got a couple new skirts out of everything. and shirts too. which is good bec my wardrobe has gotten boring.

Soo my new companion. is Hermana Rojas.  She is from Cordoba Argentina, is 24 years old and has 2 sisters and 1 brother. and she taught little kids before her mission.  She is really nice nad i think i worried a little too much before she came.  I feel good about her as my companion and for this transfer. now my stomach hurts because ive eaten way too much today because of my nerves ( i never used to be a stress eater. whats up with that?)

So this week.... I learned a lot about patience. and the lords own time.  Saturday i was really frusterated because we had all of these plans to improve and then she was sick and we couldnt leave and put or plans into action yet.  Sooooo I did a lot of studying.  You know that chapter in 2 nephi (one of the isaiah ones) that talks about the daughters of zion will lose all their fancy clothes and be ugly and smelly (not the exact wording but you know the one) well i decided Isaiah saw the sister missionaries here in oran.  Everyone gets sick. i never look cute and we are always sweaty and i say that a lot but the next chapter says that after the daughters of zion have been cleansed of their filthiness they will have a place of refuge and recieve blessings. So the sickness of hermana callejas, the heat, walking for miles for members that dont know that they are members (that was crazy) is just a refiners fire and the Lord has greater blessings for us.  And then i was reading in Doctine and Covenants 5 (i think it was 5...) but it talks about Joseph Smith only being given the gift to translate at first and he wanted to do more. and then the lord told him to stop for a time bec people were trying to destroy him (and martin harris was gonna screw up). and it was during that time that he wasnt translating that Martin Harris lost the manuscript. and if he hadnt stopped translating we wouldnt have as much of the book of mormon that we have now. They wouldve lost more. I realized that God has a reason for everything. Including a sick companion. a hard area. everything. He has a reason for everything and it will be the best thing for us. weve just gotta use it to improve and work through.

Yeah i learned that mostly but some other stuff too... but hermana Rojas and i are ready to go to work.

and thanks to everyone who writes me. it always makes me smile to hear from people.

love yall
Les quiero
Hermana Applegate
Well hello there everybody its monday again! haha what a week.... 

But i want to start off by apologizing to everyone for being a slacker when it comes to letter writing... a really really big slacker. sorry.. :)

But so this week was interesting.. i learned a lot.  We had zone conference this week which i was a little worried about because our numbers have been really low... yeah its been hard to teach people. and even harder to find people who actually want to change their lives. and its really scary to talk to a stranger on the street. I tried contacting one person and she would only talk to my companion after telling me that the way i was talking to her made her very uncomfortable and she is a good person... yeah people are crazy here. i love it.

But zone conference was really REALLY good and we did get reprimanded, but i love my mission president so much and his wife! they both gave us so much encouragement.   Hermana Levrino showed this video about soap.. that sounds weird but its about how they took a group of sculptures and gave them a bar of soap and a knife and were told to make something in an hour and they came up with so many cool things that they carved out of the bar of soap and talked about how youve just gotta have a vision for what you want it to be and slowly remove everything else. You have infinite possibilites for your life (for my mission) and if you have a vision on where you want it to be you can make it happen. slowly but surely.  and so thats what im trying to do. Ive done a lot of praying for help to turn into the person and the missionary i want to be and slowly but surely i can feel myself changing. Slowly but surely. i wish it would happen faster. I wish i had all the confidence in the world to walk up to everyone and tell them in a language im learning that i have a message that can change their life. in a tactful way and ask them questions about their lives but i just dont. i get better everyday. but its a lot of work turning my soap into something else.

And Presidente Levrino talked about a lot of things but he also talked about faith and the need to have faith in our lives (so right there i started to finish my sentence in castillano.. cool..)  He talked about Peter when he was walking on water and then he feared and he fell. But the savior picked him up again but he said "oh ye of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt" yeah that was for me... I am a person of very little faith and i need more. I dont have a lot of faith and i dont have a lot of humility. my two goals for the next few weeks.. faith and humility. Hopefully with these two things we can turn our area back around. (but it doesnt help that the elders that were here about a year and a half to two years ago were really RELLY disobedient. they went to Carnival which is a weird celebration they have here that goes all night long fridays and saturdays with dancing and a parade and not very well dressed people you get the picture and they went to clubs. and yeah especially fo rhte other hermanas people do not trust the missionaries...)  But with faith we can find the people that the lord prepared. i just need to trust him more. 

So yeah thats the most exciting parts of my week the rest was hot sun, doctors appointments for my comp...

so until next week!
and i love hearing from everyone! it always makes the week better even if i dont write back.... 
Les quiero
Hermana Applegate