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

hey everyone!!!

Its hard to believe its been another week! crazy. haha its been a crazy crazy week.

I feel like no one has really wanted to talk to us this week. its been really hard to find people and then we do find people and we go and teach lessons and they last a really REALLY long time. the people just dont be quiet sometimes. haha that sounds terrible but a lot of latins have a lot to say about everything so you say "and i know that joseph smith was a prophet" and they start talking for 5 minutes about something.... its funny sometimes. i usually dont understand what they say so i just smile and nod. but i love the people so much i am okay just sitting and smiling. But for example we had a family home evening last monday with a convert. and we invited another convert and her grandson and she had other people there and jorge came and brought a friend. and the plan was to watch the prophet of the Restoration video and then share a scripture about Joseph Smith (the one about he lived great and he died great..) to help strengthen their testimonies about Joseph Smith. And no one here really knows anything about church history. But so in Oran every now and again they shut of the power. to everywhere. and when we got there they had turned off the power in that subdivision (barrio in argentina) great. there goes the video plan.  So we turned to a lesson we were gonna give this convert about charity and love.  :) and about halfway through the power came back on so they turned on the video (which is like an hour and a half to 2 hours...) we left them while watching the video bec we had to get back to the pension.  yeah i felt bad about that one. but the friend of Jorge´s is now meeting with us. and it did strengthen their testimonies.

Oh mom!!! so im turning into you a little bit. :)  So we had a family home evening for the branch last night.  We have them every sunday for our investigators and converts but tomorrow one of our branch missionaries is leaving for his mission so the branch president wanted a big one for the ward. So we centered it on missionary work and Jorge gave a talk about the importance of missionary work. but i get frusterated sometimes bec i feel like our family home evenings are just another lecture time for these people. they just arent fun. i wouldnt go... so i decided to plan a little missionary activity for the branch. (we actually had a pretty good turnout which was exciting bec ive heard that here no one shows up to activities...)  but so my activity was i called them all on missions. I actually had little papers with missions on them i was gonna have them all open up and then leave on their mission but there werent enough people to make 10 papers for 5 different missions functionable.  so i numbered them off. and they moved to their missions. and then i paired them all off into companionships. then i gave them 2 minutes to get to know their companion. they were all confused for a little bit bec i still cant explain things very well.  but so then we had them practice. because in the mtc and in mission meetings we practice. and in our studies we practice. a lot. so i had them practice contacting someone on the street and bearing their testimony to them.  then i had 3 people come up and share what they learned. :) it was pretty exciting. and i thought "im becoming like my mom!!!" and had to smile because you always come up with stuff like that. But doing stuff like that at family home evenings is foreign to them and having food they all like having food but when we were planning it they looked at me like i was crazy when i said we should bring food and have a little activity. but they liked the idea of food. so it turned out really well and we had investigators there and got a new one too.

So that was probably the most exciting part of the week. IT was Hermana Callejas´ birthday this week though. wednesday she turned 23.  So the Cabana Family had us for lunch that day. and htey bought a cake for her. and so i ate all this food cause they always give you a lot of food here and then cake. and hermana callejas cut the first piece and i guess here the birthday person cuts the first piece then gives it ot the person they like the best. I didnt know this. so she cuts this ginormous piece and everyone closes their eyes nad she gives it to me and im like uhhhhh great.... a big  huge piece that i cant finish and everyone cheers. i felt a little bad and was so confused but i figured it out and gave her a big huge hug.  it was fun. but a lot of food.... everyone gave us food this week. and then we made food for another family whos birthday was the same day.and made food for the baptism we didnt end up having.

So we were supposed to have a baptism this week... that made it crazy. Because Marcelo is handicapped mentally. hes supposed to be 13 mentally but he seems so much younger a lot of times. younger than aubri (hes actually 35) but when he came to church for the first time he came up to us after sacrament meeting and said he wanted to be baptized. and weve really been working with him.  using pictures and drawing. the only thing he remembers constantly is the spirit. and he wants to have the gift of the spirit. He feels it so strong.  but when we say key words he remembers. he remembers quite a bit when you really work with him for the answer. but so we go to get his moms signature for permission and hermana callejas had to talk to her for forever to get her to sign and she said we had to talk to the sister first and get her signature too. okay so we figure out when shes gonna be there and come back at that time and shes sleeping and no one will wake her up.... for like 2 days so finally they say to come back in the morning. which is when we had the interview and so we double, triple checked to make sure they would both be there nad they all said yeah shell be there and he will. great. so we get there with the elders for the interview and they told us that everyone went to bolivia for hte day. and wont be back til night time. great....so stuff like this went on until past the time for the baptism nad finally they told Facundo that they dont want him baptized and then we could find them. yeah... itw as crazy. and im a little sad but i am glad the family really cares about him.  They are very protective of him. i just want to help them understand that  this is a good thing.

so i guess this isnt a very uplifting letter. im sorry.

oh and if anyone has recipies for things we can make for baptisms nad activities and stuff like that could you please send them (cookies, brownies - they dont have box mixes.., anything) im getting tired of the carrot bread stuff hermana callejas makes and banana bread. or even a good recipe for banana bread would be great... thanks...

So ive been studying the last couple days about the destruction of hte nephites. its a little depressing to read. especially on days where you walk and walk and nobody really wants to talk to you. but it mormon 9 i found a few verses that i really really liked.  3 of the verses (21, 25, and 27 i think) say believe in Christ, never doubting.  that is what i needed to hear this week. never doubt. i do that a lot. i feel like i should do something and then i dont because im not sure if thats just me being crazy or not paying attention in lessons, or yeah lots of different reasons to doubt. but its important not to doubt. i was planning a family home evening for tonight and my mind kept going back to that and the verse in joseph smith history "i had seen a vision, i knew it, i knew that god knew it and i could not deny it" and how i need to be more firm in my convictions.  everyone needs to be. Joseph Smith was. He died for what he had seen because he didnt doubt and lots more people are examples of that. thats one thing that i learned this week.  i learn so much here.

but i love yall! its been a good week
les quiero!
hermana applegate

hey everyone!!!

this week was slow still but better than last week because it wasnt a holiday. (and it helped that i wasnt sitting around for 2 afternoons while my companion was sick :) that was only one day and that was bec i was sick but im better now!!)

But so today we went to this town called irigoyen.  We have a less active family weve been working with bec the kids are all non members and we are trying to get them baptized.  But the one daughter is married and a member but it is her birthday this week and the same day is my comps birthday. So we went to celebrate it was a pretty fun day but i now am all peopled out. really peopled out haha. Thats just me.

But while we were there we made empañadas which are probably my favorite argentine food. they are really good but so they are a little tortilla/bread type thing that you flatten and put in meat, potates cheese etc. theyre itty bitty and then you fold it over kinda like a calzone and fry it. i think some people bake them too i like those better but when you fold it over everyone folds it in a way that it looks like a little braid and i cant do it for the Life of me. Looking at them all before theyre cooked you can tell exactly which ones i made. the ugly ones but they tasted just as good! and then we had mango. Everyone has mango trees here. and ive eaten a lot of mangos. they are so good! but the first day i ate one i was there and they handed me a knife and a whole mango and i was like uhhhhh how do you eat this? finally Hermana Callejas took it and cut it open for me.  Every one just cuts a slice eats it. Manners here are so different. I feel bad at meals with families bec i am trying to hard to adjust to the culture and food and i concentrate on how to eat things so im afraid sometimes it looks like im not enjoying the food. Which is sad because it is always really good.

Anyway... So this week we had a lot to do so we had divisions where i went with one sister in the ward and Hermana Callejas went with another one and no one was home or wanted to talk to us. The one investigator that was home told us she didnt want to talk to us anymore. I was kinda really sad. But so finally we started to knock on doors and I found like 3 new investigators! by myself! im pretty excited about that. My spanish is getting better everyday. I actually understand whats going on in conversations now. but now sometimes i get so caught up in the excitement that i know whats going on, i forget to say something.... oops

So i learned something really cool I was reading in 3 Nephi (Love 3 nephi) but chapter 14 talks about how not everyone who says "look at all the good things ive done" will make it into heaven and it actually says that christ will say "i never knew you" and i thought that was a little harsh. they did good things in his name... but so i started to read the cross references. and the parable of the 10 virgins kept coming to mind. and in seminary (i think) we watched a video of it. and the 5 wicked virgins after trying to find oil went to the house of the bridegroom and he opens the door and they tell him that they are his friends and he says to hold up their lamps so he can see their faces to make sure and they couldnt so he sent them away.  So i think thats kinda what that scripture is saying (im not sure so dont hold me to that doctrinally) but just because weve done a couple good things doesnt mean weve done all that we can.  The 5 virgins had some oil in their lamps and they were waiting anxiously for their savior. but it wasnt enough. they didnt do everything they could to remove the darkness from thier faces so their savior would know without a doubt who they are. 

I think sometimes i catch myself doing this in my life. i justify the things that i dont do with the things i did do. And ive realized here that diligence is key for anything. If i want the results I have to do the work. All the work.  NOt just part of it. Not justify not having any lessons because we were doing service (service is good but it should be helping us further the work and plan better) not procrastinate. which has been one thing ive always done. yeah i learned Diligence this week.

And thank you everyone for your letters today. And ive had a couple people ask about care packages. And i am not opposed to care packages. but... Argentina has a tax on packages that come from other countries. and it is half of the dollar amount claimed on the items sent (i think) and then you multiply that time 4 for pesos. so a $50 package is a $25 tax and so its 100 pesos. and the mission has a rule that the missionaries pay the tax. and i have a budget and cant afford a whole lot of packages. soooo if youre going to im grateful. but keep it as inexpensive as possible or combine things with other people. yeah.... so thats my deal with packages.

but i am grateful for letters!!! i love letters and emails and they dont have a tax. i just need stamps to respond.

but thats about it for today!!! love yall

les quiero
hermana applegate

hey mom!!! and everyone else

I dont have as much time today which is okay because i dont have as much to write. 

This week was not too terribly exciting. My companion was sick... actually I was the only one in the Pensión who wasnt sick... and so we didnt get to work a whole lot.  I did a lot while she was sleeping. I worked out. i studied A LOT, and i made plans about food and such. Yeah it was fun for a little bit but id rather be working.

This weekend was pretty rough working too.  There is nobody to teach here in Oran for the holidays and most people are drunk all weekend.  We were very careful about the different places we are going.  and who we visit.  It was a little disheartening when none of our investigators came to  church (finally we got marcello there he has such a sweet spirit, he is handicapped.. im not sure his family is completely happy about him wanting to get baptized but he came up to us after his first sacrament and said he wanted to.).  Hermana Callejas is having a really hard time with it but im doing okay. Im looking forward to this next week with great anticipation. We can only improve from last week. :)

Soooo i have a cool story but im not sure youre gonna think it is that cool mom.. So im sorry. maybe i shouldnt share... But we were walking wednesday and we had tried to visit Ramon (a new investigator) earlier and he wasnt there so H. Callejas said lets go back to Ramons and i was like "uhhhh okay..." and as we were walking i felt like we should not go back to Ramóns and i wrote it off at first as me just being hot and tired and not wanting to bec H Callejas said so. I was a little irritated. But as we kept walking down the road it got stronger and stronger and I knew that we just needed to get out of there fast. So finally i got up my guts and told hermana Callejas. "We shouldnt go to Ramóns" and she got a little annoyed and asked where i wanted to go then and i said i dont know we just need to get out of here fast. So we turned down the next road and walked as fast as we could out of the area we were in. we didnt stop until we got to the pavement (it was 7 and an area we werent supposed to be in past   7 anyways) but as we were walking, Hermana Callejas was talking to Soledad Cabana and I saw 3  police men with their helmets and big vests and gear drive by us on motorcycles and then as we walked further i saw an ambulence with its lights on... So i dont know if something actually happened where we were walking or if it was just a coincidence. But I do know that the Lord protects his missionaries. :)

but thats all for now! love yall

love hermana applegate

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

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

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