Dear family,
It was SO good to hear you on Christmas!
I wanted to answer Scott´s question about the buses here. THey are interesting.Have you ever seen the tv show ¨pimp my ride¨? well lets just say it would make millions here in Argentina making a colectivo (bus) version. At night when we get on there are soem that look like you just stepped in to a club. Last night we got on one with blue lights inside and blue runner lights and ¨cool¨music¨and there are all these mirriors, it´s always evetnful here in Tigre.
So the new news is that my companion got transfered I have a new companion Hna. Sandoval from Chile. OH boy, no English. Good for me...yes. Difficult ...yes. Can I do it....yes. Pray please. She is really sweet and has been in Tigre before so she already knows all the members and the area, this is a real plus.
Oh before I forget, Mom thanks for the photos, they are during the white elephant exchange all the Elders got ties and we got things for our hair. The Hermana in the lavander shirt in my comp from the MTC, Hna Olsen.
OH Jack thanks a million for the email. I actually read the same verses in Matthew on Saturday. Crazy. I´m gonna try and write you an actual letter soon. No promises but I´m gonna try. I´m trying to really study the life of Christ and how he taught and why he did the things he did and how he loved the people, bascially I´m trying to be more Christlike, this is my goal for the new year.
As far as the work is going here.....
This week was full of wonderful things. I loved every minute of our zone conference, I have a whole new and better out look on what is possible and how I can start fresh and new this week and the new year
We had a bit of a difficult time finding our investigators this week, mostly because they were out of town for the holidays. We had a really great lesson with a semi recent convert who is less active. We went to see her yesterday and she said that she didn´t want to come back to church, there were people there who had offended her and she didn´t want to come back to Tigre. Well we thought about that for a minute and I just felt impressed to talk about love and why we love God and how we show that love to him. How if we love him we keep his commandments, no matter what, if we really love him then we do what he asks. It was really great and sh e bsaid that she wanted to come back to church, for sure this Sunday. THe spirit was there with power and force that I don´t think she has felt in a while, she really seems committed to do it.
I was reading in 1 Nephi the other day chapter 7 where Nephi goes back for Ishmael and his family, this story really struck me, and I saw a huge parrallel here with how we are recieving revaltion and using the members of the church to find people and bring them out of the world to dwell with the righteous and God. It´s really great how the Lord prepared a way for the blessings he promises to Lehi and his family to come about through revelation and the hard work of Nephi and his bretheren, I really like it. If you don´t get it, it´s okay It does take soem explination.
Any way need to run,
Love you tons, everyone of you,
love, Aleta
PS. Thanks to the Johnson Family for your letters!
Sister Aleta Bray
Aleta 25
On my Birthday!
Worn Out!
after pushing the car....okay it may have been slightly exaggerated....(explanation of car in July 18th letter)
Aleta Christmas Eve - Beunos Aires
Look at what I Got! Aleta Christmas Eve - Beunos Aires
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Christmas!
Dear family,
Okay so first things first...there´s been a change of plans. Since my branch president´s son , who is serving a mission, forgot to tell his family when he´d be calling, so we didn´t know when we could call. So instead we are going to be at the church. We´ve got keys and all and we get to be comfy in the bishops office. So plan on this number not the other, unless you want to talk to people in spanish.... could be interesting. :) So call me at 7pm MY time, that´s 2 pm YOUR time. i hope that works out okay with all festivities. Oh and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
I´m excited for your call.
Oh mom, I was eating lunch with a memeber last week, Hermana Luna, she´s great, and she was looking for an important number that she wrote down somewhere. I looked up to see what she was doing, thinking it would be in an address book or something. nope. There she was sitting at the table looking and searching through a couple of beat up envelopes with writing all over. I couldn´t help but giggle a little and think of you :)
I´m glad Jaime liked the painting, if she wants when I get home I´d be happy to paint her something else, that has the stamp of approval on it. :)
Dad, thanks for the advice, everything was fine, I understand your piont of view, no bruised feelings here. It takes more that that to take me down ;)
So this week .... lets see...
This was a harder week for me. I felt like a lot of our time was wasted this week. Then I took a step back and looked at the bigger picture and how certain things, were used to set up other events that wouldn´t have happened with out the first falling through. It´s been a faith building week. I´ve learned a lot about service and hard work. Our branch had a missionary activity on Friday and everyone was really excited and had a good time. We only had one family, who are former investigators come.Everyone else was in the ward. They had a talent show and ward dinner. The lame thing was that it was suppose to start at 8, but mormon standard time is even worse here, and it didn´t start till after 9. Well we have to be in our appartment at 9 so we missed out. We saw pictures though and a couple videos. So it ´s okay. We had so many other of our investigators committed to coming, but something always comes up. I´m really starting to see the need for having our investigators fully committed, so that when things do come up they will be able to pull through and keep their word. This is deffinatly something we are trying to work on here in Tigre. We make a lot of set appoinments, but most of the time we can´t find the investigator, they forgot, or are too busy. We are trying to figure out how we can find them.
We had some succes this week with other investigators, one of whom came to CHURCH! Yeah. We prayed what we could do for Fernando so he would come to church this week and a member who lives near him came to mind. So we went and introduced them to eachother, it was great. The member, bore testimony and said he´d pick him up for church and everything. So Frenando came. We talked with him after church and he said, he wasn´t sure what to expect and that it was a sacrifice but he wanted to do it right so he set apart time so he could come to all three hours. He said it was a great expierence and that he had a feeling of peace he´d never felt before. We´re seeing him on Wednesday and we are really excited.So the work in progressing here in Tigre. It´s a great blessing to see miracles like these in peoples´s lives.
As far as festivities go here the big thing in the latin culture is Christmas eve, not Christmas. So we have going over to Presidente Torre´s house on Friday for dinner. We also have zone confrence this week and it´s on the 24th at the mission home. So that´s fun, we get to see Hermana Gulbrandsen. Oh, did you ever add her as a friend on facebook?
So that´s about all I got.
Love you tons!
talk to you on SATURDAY!
love,
Aleta
Okay so first things first...there´s been a change of plans. Since my branch president´s son , who is serving a mission, forgot to tell his family when he´d be calling, so we didn´t know when we could call. So instead we are going to be at the church. We´ve got keys and all and we get to be comfy in the bishops office. So plan on this number not the other, unless you want to talk to people in spanish.... could be interesting. :) So call me at 7pm MY time, that´s 2 pm YOUR time. i hope that works out okay with all festivities. Oh and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
I´m excited for your call.
Oh mom, I was eating lunch with a memeber last week, Hermana Luna, she´s great, and she was looking for an important number that she wrote down somewhere. I looked up to see what she was doing, thinking it would be in an address book or something. nope. There she was sitting at the table looking and searching through a couple of beat up envelopes with writing all over. I couldn´t help but giggle a little and think of you :)
I´m glad Jaime liked the painting, if she wants when I get home I´d be happy to paint her something else, that has the stamp of approval on it. :)
Dad, thanks for the advice, everything was fine, I understand your piont of view, no bruised feelings here. It takes more that that to take me down ;)
So this week .... lets see...
This was a harder week for me. I felt like a lot of our time was wasted this week. Then I took a step back and looked at the bigger picture and how certain things, were used to set up other events that wouldn´t have happened with out the first falling through. It´s been a faith building week. I´ve learned a lot about service and hard work. Our branch had a missionary activity on Friday and everyone was really excited and had a good time. We only had one family, who are former investigators come.Everyone else was in the ward. They had a talent show and ward dinner. The lame thing was that it was suppose to start at 8, but mormon standard time is even worse here, and it didn´t start till after 9. Well we have to be in our appartment at 9 so we missed out. We saw pictures though and a couple videos. So it ´s okay. We had so many other of our investigators committed to coming, but something always comes up. I´m really starting to see the need for having our investigators fully committed, so that when things do come up they will be able to pull through and keep their word. This is deffinatly something we are trying to work on here in Tigre. We make a lot of set appoinments, but most of the time we can´t find the investigator, they forgot, or are too busy. We are trying to figure out how we can find them.
We had some succes this week with other investigators, one of whom came to CHURCH! Yeah. We prayed what we could do for Fernando so he would come to church this week and a member who lives near him came to mind. So we went and introduced them to eachother, it was great. The member, bore testimony and said he´d pick him up for church and everything. So Frenando came. We talked with him after church and he said, he wasn´t sure what to expect and that it was a sacrifice but he wanted to do it right so he set apart time so he could come to all three hours. He said it was a great expierence and that he had a feeling of peace he´d never felt before. We´re seeing him on Wednesday and we are really excited.So the work in progressing here in Tigre. It´s a great blessing to see miracles like these in peoples´s lives.
As far as festivities go here the big thing in the latin culture is Christmas eve, not Christmas. So we have going over to Presidente Torre´s house on Friday for dinner. We also have zone confrence this week and it´s on the 24th at the mission home. So that´s fun, we get to see Hermana Gulbrandsen. Oh, did you ever add her as a friend on facebook?
So that´s about all I got.
Love you tons!
talk to you on SATURDAY!
love,
Aleta
Monday, December 13, 2010
wow, monday already?
Dear family,
Sorry it´s gonna be short this week. We got unexpected visitors today. 6 of the elders from the zone decided to come to Tigre today, so naturally we were their tour guides. Everyone loves Tigre! It really is very beautiful. We had a lot of fun, but didn´t get to do anything that we actually had planned to do. Esta bien, these things happen.
Oh thank you so much for your response Jack, it is perfect. It is really helpful. I´ll let you know if I need anything more. :) As for anyone else ...your stories of conversion really would be helpful. :) if you want to share.
This week just seemed to fly by. I really have gained a stronger testimony of depending on the spirit when planning. We always pray for the spirit and for inspiration, but when we pray specifically, we get specific answers where we should go and who we ahould talk to. This happened a couple of times this week and we found a great family, a mother and daughter they have listened before,but didn't remember much of anything. They are really open to the gospel and our lesson went well.
We have had a hard time this week finding our investigators,it always seems like something comes up that is more important to them. We have some appoinments for this week so hopfully things will get better there.
We had a really great lessons , well noche de hogar,with our investigators Augustina and Gustavo and their family. It went really well and it was great to see laughter and smiles on their faces as they enjoyed time together as a family.
We have an investigator, Rosana, who doesn´t understand the purity of Christ. She thinks that he sinned because he was a man so it was inevitable because all men sin, but at the same time she believes that he is the son of god and suffered for everyones sins, but that he himself had sins. So that was interesting I´d never heard that before. I´ve spent a lot of this week learning more about the atonement and just how amazing and perfect it truely is. How it really does meet the demands of justice and the amazing gift of mercy, there really is no other way back to the father than Christ.
Yeah I guess that´s about it this week.
Love ya,
Aleta
Sorry it´s gonna be short this week. We got unexpected visitors today. 6 of the elders from the zone decided to come to Tigre today, so naturally we were their tour guides. Everyone loves Tigre! It really is very beautiful. We had a lot of fun, but didn´t get to do anything that we actually had planned to do. Esta bien, these things happen.
Oh thank you so much for your response Jack, it is perfect. It is really helpful. I´ll let you know if I need anything more. :) As for anyone else ...your stories of conversion really would be helpful. :) if you want to share.
This week just seemed to fly by. I really have gained a stronger testimony of depending on the spirit when planning. We always pray for the spirit and for inspiration, but when we pray specifically, we get specific answers where we should go and who we ahould talk to. This happened a couple of times this week and we found a great family, a mother and daughter they have listened before,but didn't remember much of anything. They are really open to the gospel and our lesson went well.
We have had a hard time this week finding our investigators,it always seems like something comes up that is more important to them. We have some appoinments for this week so hopfully things will get better there.
We had a really great lessons , well noche de hogar,with our investigators Augustina and Gustavo and their family. It went really well and it was great to see laughter and smiles on their faces as they enjoyed time together as a family.
We have an investigator, Rosana, who doesn´t understand the purity of Christ. She thinks that he sinned because he was a man so it was inevitable because all men sin, but at the same time she believes that he is the son of god and suffered for everyones sins, but that he himself had sins. So that was interesting I´d never heard that before. I´ve spent a lot of this week learning more about the atonement and just how amazing and perfect it truely is. How it really does meet the demands of justice and the amazing gift of mercy, there really is no other way back to the father than Christ.
Yeah I guess that´s about it this week.
Love ya,
Aleta
Monday, December 6, 2010
It´s beging to look a lot like Christmas?
Dear Family,
It looks nothing like Christmas here. Hot today, very hot. Please pray that I will not melt.... or something to that effect. It will be much appreciated. Oh but I am slowly turning blond...well my hair gets lighter and my skin gets darker, soon I think i will just be the same color form head to toe. :)
So Dad, thank you for the advice!
Betsy, so good to hear from you, I don´t blame you for not wanting to leave the boat I wouldn´t want to either.
Jack, thanks for the scripture. I´ve had the very same thoughts on prayer before, thanks for reminding me, it´s important to remember.
Mom, it´s never to late to read the books you know, they are in my room on the book shelf if you are interested. HAPPY B-LATED BIRTHDAY!!!! I thought of you all day on Thursday.
OH, we are having a ward activity on the the 17th and I want to make cookies. They don´t really eat cookies here, well they do they are just packaged stuff. yuck. They spend more time on facturas, pastry like delicious things. Anyway, if you could please send me the recipe for your chocolate chip cookies I would be for ever greatful. The one that you sent me in the MTC with the butterscotch it´s my favorite. Oh and if you want the molasas ones too, those were a big hit.
Aunt Janie, thanks for the updates, I really like that every email you send makes some reference to food or cooking. It brings a smile to my face everytime. I can just see you and the kids up there baking away!
So some things that are intersting this week, well Bailando por un Sueño (dancing for a dream) it´s a really big argentine reality show and they did the auditions right out side my appartment on Saturday. All day long. They started at 9 am and ended at 10 pm. The dance that they had to learn to try out is pretty cool though. Don´t worry I took video, we had a prime view. It did make our morning study a little dificult though.
Oh Argetine side note, any one remember ¨jellies¨ those plastic shoes that I LOVED when I was a kid. Well they still wear them here. All females have at least one pair. Awesome!
This week has been really good. We have been talking to every one, we made it a district goal to really try and talk to everyone, we got 8 new investigators this week because of it. They would have just walked right on by. So that´s important, you never know who will want to hear the message of the restored gospel. Plus I´ve had to talk to more people, gulp, in spanish, gulp. It´s been okay though.
I have a request from a few of you, I´ve been having a bit of a difficult time really relating with our investigators and understanding the things that are difficult for them, because I have always done them, or known I should do them, being brought up in the church. If a few of you wouldn´t mind sharing your conversion stories with me, it would really help me, help the work here in Argentina. So if Aunt Janie, Dad, and Jack wouldn´t mind,I´d love to hear your thoughts. And it´s only for my benifit, I won´t share with anyone unless given the okay, I know it´s really personal. If there were anythings that were difficult for you and what helped you get over them. If you don´t want to I understand. If anyone else who joined to church really wants to they can to. Like Dawnstarr :)
Okay I think that´s about it for this week! I love you all!
Love,
Aleta
ps. Mom, if you want to send some pictures of Washington so people can see where I live that would be okay. Oh and it you wanted to print out a few pictures of paintings and send thouse that´d be kay to :) People keep asking.
It looks nothing like Christmas here. Hot today, very hot. Please pray that I will not melt.... or something to that effect. It will be much appreciated. Oh but I am slowly turning blond...well my hair gets lighter and my skin gets darker, soon I think i will just be the same color form head to toe. :)
So Dad, thank you for the advice!
Betsy, so good to hear from you, I don´t blame you for not wanting to leave the boat I wouldn´t want to either.
Jack, thanks for the scripture. I´ve had the very same thoughts on prayer before, thanks for reminding me, it´s important to remember.
Mom, it´s never to late to read the books you know, they are in my room on the book shelf if you are interested. HAPPY B-LATED BIRTHDAY!!!! I thought of you all day on Thursday.
OH, we are having a ward activity on the the 17th and I want to make cookies. They don´t really eat cookies here, well they do they are just packaged stuff. yuck. They spend more time on facturas, pastry like delicious things. Anyway, if you could please send me the recipe for your chocolate chip cookies I would be for ever greatful. The one that you sent me in the MTC with the butterscotch it´s my favorite. Oh and if you want the molasas ones too, those were a big hit.
Aunt Janie, thanks for the updates, I really like that every email you send makes some reference to food or cooking. It brings a smile to my face everytime. I can just see you and the kids up there baking away!
So some things that are intersting this week, well Bailando por un Sueño (dancing for a dream) it´s a really big argentine reality show and they did the auditions right out side my appartment on Saturday. All day long. They started at 9 am and ended at 10 pm. The dance that they had to learn to try out is pretty cool though. Don´t worry I took video, we had a prime view. It did make our morning study a little dificult though.
Oh Argetine side note, any one remember ¨jellies¨ those plastic shoes that I LOVED when I was a kid. Well they still wear them here. All females have at least one pair. Awesome!
This week has been really good. We have been talking to every one, we made it a district goal to really try and talk to everyone, we got 8 new investigators this week because of it. They would have just walked right on by. So that´s important, you never know who will want to hear the message of the restored gospel. Plus I´ve had to talk to more people, gulp, in spanish, gulp. It´s been okay though.
I have a request from a few of you, I´ve been having a bit of a difficult time really relating with our investigators and understanding the things that are difficult for them, because I have always done them, or known I should do them, being brought up in the church. If a few of you wouldn´t mind sharing your conversion stories with me, it would really help me, help the work here in Argentina. So if Aunt Janie, Dad, and Jack wouldn´t mind,I´d love to hear your thoughts. And it´s only for my benifit, I won´t share with anyone unless given the okay, I know it´s really personal. If there were anythings that were difficult for you and what helped you get over them. If you don´t want to I understand. If anyone else who joined to church really wants to they can to. Like Dawnstarr :)
Okay I think that´s about it for this week! I love you all!
Love,
Aleta
ps. Mom, if you want to send some pictures of Washington so people can see where I live that would be okay. Oh and it you wanted to print out a few pictures of paintings and send thouse that´d be kay to :) People keep asking.
Monday, November 29, 2010
internet.....grrr
Dear family,
Well this is the second attempt at a letter. Got to love the internet. We spent 15 minutes trying to get it fixed then gave up and did all our other stuff and decided to come back. Well it´s up and running now. So we went to an all you can eat place for lunch today with our district over in San Fernando. This was not like a place in the states....it was really yummy. So that was fun, nice to see the elders.
So mom, I´m glad all went so well on thanksgiving. I´m glad the car worked well for you. yeah. I´m sure the packages will be alright. It´s always an adventure. Kammie....you´re alive! It was so good to get your email thanks so much. Oh and Brother Bingham thankyou for the email as well, sounds like life is going good. I got Jaime´s invitation last Tuesday and I thought to myself ,¨what a nice tender mercy of the lord, if I´m not there in person at least I get the invitation on the actual day of the wedding¨. That was really nice. Jaime I wish you all the happiness in the world thats what you deserve.
This was a good week. Every lesson we taught on Saturday was great. They were perfect for the investigators and the members we were teaching. It is really amazing how the spirit can guide and direct you in a lesson and before and after the lesson as well. We taught one family, the Gomez family, who have been less active for sometime now, at least my whole time in Tigre. We taught them a lesson and watched the Testaments. The husband, Ariel,said that at the end when the man sees Christ´s face, he said he(ariel) had a flash and realized that they way he was living he would not be there to see Christ´s face. It was a big turning point for him and his whole family came to church yesterday!
A family that we are working with right now are Augustina and Gustavo. She is really good and he wants so badly to change and become better. We talked to him about the atonement and how you change with the help of Christ. We also shared Alma 32 about faith and how you need to nourish it. We didn´t know it at the time, but he is actually a gardener,so he get´s the analogy perfectly. It really was good and at the end of the lesson he asked his daughter to say the prayer,she didn´t know how so he helped her and he taught her how to pray. It was lovely. He is already starting to nourish and take care of the seed.
We had lunch with a recent convert, Oscar, on Saturday and we talked to him about patrichal blessings, he is really excited and has made some goals to start preparing to recive it. Later he asked both of us about our missions and why/how we decided to serve. He´s seriously thinking about a mission and just needs the papers. So that was a great help to him and a reminder to me about some of the reasons I´m here.
So all in all good week. I wish I could say more, and write to every one. Love you all!
love,
Aleta
Well this is the second attempt at a letter. Got to love the internet. We spent 15 minutes trying to get it fixed then gave up and did all our other stuff and decided to come back. Well it´s up and running now. So we went to an all you can eat place for lunch today with our district over in San Fernando. This was not like a place in the states....it was really yummy. So that was fun, nice to see the elders.
So mom, I´m glad all went so well on thanksgiving. I´m glad the car worked well for you. yeah. I´m sure the packages will be alright. It´s always an adventure. Kammie....you´re alive! It was so good to get your email thanks so much. Oh and Brother Bingham thankyou for the email as well, sounds like life is going good. I got Jaime´s invitation last Tuesday and I thought to myself ,¨what a nice tender mercy of the lord, if I´m not there in person at least I get the invitation on the actual day of the wedding¨. That was really nice. Jaime I wish you all the happiness in the world thats what you deserve.
This was a good week. Every lesson we taught on Saturday was great. They were perfect for the investigators and the members we were teaching. It is really amazing how the spirit can guide and direct you in a lesson and before and after the lesson as well. We taught one family, the Gomez family, who have been less active for sometime now, at least my whole time in Tigre. We taught them a lesson and watched the Testaments. The husband, Ariel,said that at the end when the man sees Christ´s face, he said he(ariel) had a flash and realized that they way he was living he would not be there to see Christ´s face. It was a big turning point for him and his whole family came to church yesterday!
A family that we are working with right now are Augustina and Gustavo. She is really good and he wants so badly to change and become better. We talked to him about the atonement and how you change with the help of Christ. We also shared Alma 32 about faith and how you need to nourish it. We didn´t know it at the time, but he is actually a gardener,so he get´s the analogy perfectly. It really was good and at the end of the lesson he asked his daughter to say the prayer,she didn´t know how so he helped her and he taught her how to pray. It was lovely. He is already starting to nourish and take care of the seed.
We had lunch with a recent convert, Oscar, on Saturday and we talked to him about patrichal blessings, he is really excited and has made some goals to start preparing to recive it. Later he asked both of us about our missions and why/how we decided to serve. He´s seriously thinking about a mission and just needs the papers. So that was a great help to him and a reminder to me about some of the reasons I´m here.
So all in all good week. I wish I could say more, and write to every one. Love you all!
love,
Aleta
Monday, November 22, 2010
Apperantly it still gets hotter....
Dear family,
I´m slightly jealous about the cold there, maybe we could work something out...you send half of it here and I´ll send half of the heat there...then it would be perfect!!! Let´s work on that ok:) So I asked the Branch President yesterday how much hotter it gets here compared to the last couple days and he said like 10 degrees, I may turn into a puddle before christmas. Oh speaking of Christmas I realized it´s still a while, but he said we´d be calling form their house, so I guess that´s one thing I don´t need to worry about. They are a great family, he´s the President, sister Torre is the sunday school teacher, their son, Mathias Torre is the Misional leader and gospel principle teacher and I think all three of them take turns teaching semanary. Crazy, oh and there are a family of four boys so our sunday lunches are quite eventlful and we usually side with Hermana Torre. Lot´s of fun.
So about Steven, I all most mentioned Elder Lowery in my letter last week but changed my mind. funny huh. He is actually in my district. Their area is right next to mine. Yes he is an assistent to the president I think this is his last transfer. I met him my first day and he is one of the few people I know. He is a really great missionary. Poor Hermana Gulbrandsen, she doesn´t know any Spanish, well very little, so he is the one that always translates for her. I´ll probably see him tomorrow at District meeting, if not that´s the building where the mission office is so I´ll get a message to him some how. Small world huh.
Excited for the package. I hope you get it sent off okay and all is good. Everything sounds fine.
Oh, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!! I can´t believe it´s already the dia de gracias. Wow. No, they don´t celebrate it here....it´s all about the pilgrims and native north americans. They know that it exsits though. So I hope everyone has fun eating turkey and things. Have fun up at aunt Janie´s. Hey, are you getting up early and hitting any sales as usual? Don´t let my absence hinder your favorite pass time :)
So this week was a really good one. We found 5 new investigators and they are all so good. One of them Freissy (sounds like fray-zy) is so good. She reads all of the additonal reading in the pamphlets we leave her and reads all the chapter, not just the few verses we leave, out of the scriptures. She is so cute and has a two year old little girl and another on the way. The next step get her and her ¨husband¨ legally married. We found this other family Gustavo and Augustina by listening to the spirit. That was pretty great. They are really good and even came to church this week. She listened to the missionaries over a year ago, but he didn´t like it. Well now he is more interested and is okay with her listening. He gave the closing prayer during our first lesson and he asked for the strength to be able to change and become better. So that was pretty great to hear.
So that´s about all I got time for this week. Off to buy a few things. It´s some new holiday here so everyone has the day off so the street vendors are out today, usually they are only here on the weekends. Yeah I guess Nov. didn´t have any holidays so they made some, cool huh.
Love you lots! Keep my updated about the family. I haven´t heard much about Scott and Betsy or Matt and Shiela. Dad how is work going, general stuff like that.
Love, love, love you!
Aleta
I´m slightly jealous about the cold there, maybe we could work something out...you send half of it here and I´ll send half of the heat there...then it would be perfect!!! Let´s work on that ok:) So I asked the Branch President yesterday how much hotter it gets here compared to the last couple days and he said like 10 degrees, I may turn into a puddle before christmas. Oh speaking of Christmas I realized it´s still a while, but he said we´d be calling form their house, so I guess that´s one thing I don´t need to worry about. They are a great family, he´s the President, sister Torre is the sunday school teacher, their son, Mathias Torre is the Misional leader and gospel principle teacher and I think all three of them take turns teaching semanary. Crazy, oh and there are a family of four boys so our sunday lunches are quite eventlful and we usually side with Hermana Torre. Lot´s of fun.
So about Steven, I all most mentioned Elder Lowery in my letter last week but changed my mind. funny huh. He is actually in my district. Their area is right next to mine. Yes he is an assistent to the president I think this is his last transfer. I met him my first day and he is one of the few people I know. He is a really great missionary. Poor Hermana Gulbrandsen, she doesn´t know any Spanish, well very little, so he is the one that always translates for her. I´ll probably see him tomorrow at District meeting, if not that´s the building where the mission office is so I´ll get a message to him some how. Small world huh.
Excited for the package. I hope you get it sent off okay and all is good. Everything sounds fine.
Oh, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!! I can´t believe it´s already the dia de gracias. Wow. No, they don´t celebrate it here....it´s all about the pilgrims and native north americans. They know that it exsits though. So I hope everyone has fun eating turkey and things. Have fun up at aunt Janie´s. Hey, are you getting up early and hitting any sales as usual? Don´t let my absence hinder your favorite pass time :)
So this week was a really good one. We found 5 new investigators and they are all so good. One of them Freissy (sounds like fray-zy) is so good. She reads all of the additonal reading in the pamphlets we leave her and reads all the chapter, not just the few verses we leave, out of the scriptures. She is so cute and has a two year old little girl and another on the way. The next step get her and her ¨husband¨ legally married. We found this other family Gustavo and Augustina by listening to the spirit. That was pretty great. They are really good and even came to church this week. She listened to the missionaries over a year ago, but he didn´t like it. Well now he is more interested and is okay with her listening. He gave the closing prayer during our first lesson and he asked for the strength to be able to change and become better. So that was pretty great to hear.
So that´s about all I got time for this week. Off to buy a few things. It´s some new holiday here so everyone has the day off so the street vendors are out today, usually they are only here on the weekends. Yeah I guess Nov. didn´t have any holidays so they made some, cool huh.
Love you lots! Keep my updated about the family. I haven´t heard much about Scott and Betsy or Matt and Shiela. Dad how is work going, general stuff like that.
Love, love, love you!
Aleta
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Sorry, it´s late!
Dear Family,
Sorry it´s a day late. When ever we have transfers our Pdays are on Tuesdays. So sorry if you waited all day for my email Mom. Don´t worry everything is fine. I can´t belive it´s already been a whole transfer. I happy that Hermana Romo and I get to stay together! Have I told you anything about her, I don´remember. She is from LA and she has two younger brothers serving missions right now too. Wow, imagine having three kids on missions at the same time, crazy! Her family is from Mexico so she is fluent in castellano, or spanish, apprently spanish is what they speak in spain, not here... So it´s great because she knows both languages really well. We get along great and have a lot of fun.
Speaking of missions.....ARGENTINA!!!!!!!! I knew it! I was thinking wouldn´t it be cool if Alex came to Argentina? and then... he is! Yeah. Congrats. I think Salta is north of where I am so more heat, but my companion says they eat more asado there, that´s grilled meat. The meat is SO good. so good.
Thanks for the emails this week, wow. Lots. I just had time to skim them all so if there are any questions they´ll have to wait till next week. It was nice to hear from Bro. Chord. Barbara sound like life is good! Mom thanks for all the up dates. Alex thanks for the news. Oh and I do get Dear Elders, they just come every six weeks along with all the other mail. So I should be getting them in about three weeks from now. Dad, thanks for the advice about Olga, we´ve tried some of that, but we´ll keep at it.
So news from here, lets see. Oh we ran into this guy, well his wife actually, but that´s along story... so lets just say we met this guy form New York. Well he was born in Uraguay, but was brought up in the states. Well, turns out he is Mormon. Well I guess his dad was somebody ¨pretty high up in the church¨I have no idea who he is, but it was a long time ago. So John, knows about the church, and we really did find him at the perfect time, he has a lot of questions, they are really good questions too. He has seen a lot of things in his life that have caused him to wonder, he´s an ex CIA agent by the way. Google him if you want, he told us to but we can´t. His name´s John Battaglia Ponte. Any way it is amazing how God puts people in our path right when they need to be and when they are ready it´s great!
Well sorry I can´t write more but I´ve got to run
Lots of Love,
Aleta
ps.Oh... So I mentioned Steven Stucki the other day to my companion and she about died that I know him. Apparently he is some kind of ledgend here. She got here like 4 months after he left and she still know who he is pretty cool huh.
pps. any food would be good, stuff to snack on. chocolate, the chocolate here just isn´t the same!
love,
Aleta
Sorry it´s a day late. When ever we have transfers our Pdays are on Tuesdays. So sorry if you waited all day for my email Mom. Don´t worry everything is fine. I can´t belive it´s already been a whole transfer. I happy that Hermana Romo and I get to stay together! Have I told you anything about her, I don´remember. She is from LA and she has two younger brothers serving missions right now too. Wow, imagine having three kids on missions at the same time, crazy! Her family is from Mexico so she is fluent in castellano, or spanish, apprently spanish is what they speak in spain, not here... So it´s great because she knows both languages really well. We get along great and have a lot of fun.
Speaking of missions.....ARGENTINA!!!!!!!! I knew it! I was thinking wouldn´t it be cool if Alex came to Argentina? and then... he is! Yeah. Congrats. I think Salta is north of where I am so more heat, but my companion says they eat more asado there, that´s grilled meat. The meat is SO good. so good.
Thanks for the emails this week, wow. Lots. I just had time to skim them all so if there are any questions they´ll have to wait till next week. It was nice to hear from Bro. Chord. Barbara sound like life is good! Mom thanks for all the up dates. Alex thanks for the news. Oh and I do get Dear Elders, they just come every six weeks along with all the other mail. So I should be getting them in about three weeks from now. Dad, thanks for the advice about Olga, we´ve tried some of that, but we´ll keep at it.
So news from here, lets see. Oh we ran into this guy, well his wife actually, but that´s along story... so lets just say we met this guy form New York. Well he was born in Uraguay, but was brought up in the states. Well, turns out he is Mormon. Well I guess his dad was somebody ¨pretty high up in the church¨I have no idea who he is, but it was a long time ago. So John, knows about the church, and we really did find him at the perfect time, he has a lot of questions, they are really good questions too. He has seen a lot of things in his life that have caused him to wonder, he´s an ex CIA agent by the way. Google him if you want, he told us to but we can´t. His name´s John Battaglia Ponte. Any way it is amazing how God puts people in our path right when they need to be and when they are ready it´s great!
Well sorry I can´t write more but I´ve got to run
Lots of Love,
Aleta
ps.Oh... So I mentioned Steven Stucki the other day to my companion and she about died that I know him. Apparently he is some kind of ledgend here. She got here like 4 months after he left and she still know who he is pretty cool huh.
pps. any food would be good, stuff to snack on. chocolate, the chocolate here just isn´t the same!
love,
Aleta
Monday, November 8, 2010
hot!!!!!!!!!!
Dear Family,
It is getting Hot here! Oh, if there is money missing from my account it is because I broke down and bought an umbrella after being drenched last week. My comp forgot her money so I bought hers too. The strap is for my bag, to replace the lame one that comes with it. So padding would be good. I like the shoes, I guess they are okay. I do wear the clarks more though. I think they will be fine, I mainly need them incase something happens to the ones I have now. Oh and my companion says to send each shoe seperately so they make it to me, sometimes things go ´missing¨ .Dad, if you tried to send an email. it was blank. So thanks for thinking of me anyway. Brandi, thanks for the update, good luck with the job search. Happy belated birthday to you, Melissa and Kammie. The singles ward is great and really fun, you'll meet lots of friends. Aunt Janie, sounds like you are having fun as usual. Jack, thank you for the letter. It was perfect, the pick me up that I needed. That is great about your mom. I'm so excited. So mom to answer question from last week. I get up at 6:30 pray and excerise. at 7 get ready for the day. 730 eat breakfast, usually eggs and toast with some fruit. 8 is personal study, 9 is companion study, 10 is language study then we are out the door at 11. We have teaching appointments at different times throughout the day. We have an hour for lunch useally with members at any where between 1230 and130, just depends on the family. Then we travel all over Tigre teaching people until 9 when we head back home and plan for the nextday. We found a couple of new investigators this week and they are awesome! Rosa recieved the Gift of the Holy Ghost yesterday and that was awesome. One of the greatest feelings in my life. We are still working with Olga, I'll keep you updated there. My companion says she doesn't have agency anymore and that she WILL be baptised. :)Oh I went to capital this week to get my visa stuff in order and we went on the widest street in the world. it is like 11 lanes oneside. Look it up, it´s in congresso and by the obolisque? Any way it was cool, lots of palm trees. Any way that´s about all I got time for. Love you all and pray for you!Miss you,
your missionary,
Aleta
It is getting Hot here! Oh, if there is money missing from my account it is because I broke down and bought an umbrella after being drenched last week. My comp forgot her money so I bought hers too. The strap is for my bag, to replace the lame one that comes with it. So padding would be good. I like the shoes, I guess they are okay. I do wear the clarks more though. I think they will be fine, I mainly need them incase something happens to the ones I have now. Oh and my companion says to send each shoe seperately so they make it to me, sometimes things go ´missing¨ .Dad, if you tried to send an email. it was blank. So thanks for thinking of me anyway. Brandi, thanks for the update, good luck with the job search. Happy belated birthday to you, Melissa and Kammie. The singles ward is great and really fun, you'll meet lots of friends. Aunt Janie, sounds like you are having fun as usual. Jack, thank you for the letter. It was perfect, the pick me up that I needed. That is great about your mom. I'm so excited. So mom to answer question from last week. I get up at 6:30 pray and excerise. at 7 get ready for the day. 730 eat breakfast, usually eggs and toast with some fruit. 8 is personal study, 9 is companion study, 10 is language study then we are out the door at 11. We have teaching appointments at different times throughout the day. We have an hour for lunch useally with members at any where between 1230 and130, just depends on the family. Then we travel all over Tigre teaching people until 9 when we head back home and plan for the nextday. We found a couple of new investigators this week and they are awesome! Rosa recieved the Gift of the Holy Ghost yesterday and that was awesome. One of the greatest feelings in my life. We are still working with Olga, I'll keep you updated there. My companion says she doesn't have agency anymore and that she WILL be baptised. :)Oh I went to capital this week to get my visa stuff in order and we went on the widest street in the world. it is like 11 lanes oneside. Look it up, it´s in congresso and by the obolisque? Any way it was cool, lots of palm trees. Any way that´s about all I got time for. Love you all and pray for you!Miss you,
your missionary,
Aleta
Monday, November 1, 2010
Wow, November already!
Dear Family,
Guess what, Guess what, Guess what?????....... BAPTISM!!!!!!!!!!!
No unfortunately not Olga. It´s Rosa! I realized I forgot to tell you about her last week. She is the sweetest lady I´ve ever met. Muy muy dulce. Hermana Romo and her last companion found her about a week before I got here, but didn´t really get a chance to teach her too much. So we taught her all the lessons and in the first lesson she was praying about the book of Mormon and she said right there in her prayer that she knew it was true! So we asked her about it, turns out she had heard the missionaries before 15 years ago and had wanted to get baptised. She only stopped going to church, because they stopped coming and she wasn´t baptised. Well, turn out she wasn´t leagally married to her Husband , which happens all the time here, but he died two years ago. So she was ready now to be baptised. I love every lesson with her. When we would teach her she would just say, ¨okay, i know, I already do that....¨ We couldn´t believe it. She´s great and I´ll send pictures, eventually¨:)
Oh and before I forget, we found OLGA! Yeah, we are taking it a little slower trying to make sure we address her doubts. Mostly they are about being able to keep the commandmants after she is baptised. We met with her last night and talked a lot about the Holy Ghost. I love it when we teach her, I actually feel like I am helping, it helps that she speaks English!
Okay to answer questions...yes Argentinian is a word. Today I studied the last four chapters of Mosiah, good stuff. Oh my the CENSUS! We could not leave the appartment ALL day. My companion called the district leaders four times to make sure because she couldn´t believe it. we did a project inside with our area map that we´ve been wanting to do for a long time. Yeah, A girl!!!! Congrats! Oh I live in an appartment complex by the train station in Tigre center. It´s the safest part. Shoe size I can´t read it. I think the box might still be around in my room some where though. I think 81/2 not sure though. Rice pack, or both we have a mirco wave. Among things for Christmas a nice camera back strap, for by shoulder bag would be much appreciated.
Okay, got to run. I´ll try to tell you about my daily schedule next week and answer a few more questions.
Love you all,
Aleta
Guess what, Guess what, Guess what?????....... BAPTISM!!!!!!!!!!!
No unfortunately not Olga. It´s Rosa! I realized I forgot to tell you about her last week. She is the sweetest lady I´ve ever met. Muy muy dulce. Hermana Romo and her last companion found her about a week before I got here, but didn´t really get a chance to teach her too much. So we taught her all the lessons and in the first lesson she was praying about the book of Mormon and she said right there in her prayer that she knew it was true! So we asked her about it, turns out she had heard the missionaries before 15 years ago and had wanted to get baptised. She only stopped going to church, because they stopped coming and she wasn´t baptised. Well, turn out she wasn´t leagally married to her Husband , which happens all the time here, but he died two years ago. So she was ready now to be baptised. I love every lesson with her. When we would teach her she would just say, ¨okay, i know, I already do that....¨ We couldn´t believe it. She´s great and I´ll send pictures, eventually¨:)
Oh and before I forget, we found OLGA! Yeah, we are taking it a little slower trying to make sure we address her doubts. Mostly they are about being able to keep the commandmants after she is baptised. We met with her last night and talked a lot about the Holy Ghost. I love it when we teach her, I actually feel like I am helping, it helps that she speaks English!
Okay to answer questions...yes Argentinian is a word. Today I studied the last four chapters of Mosiah, good stuff. Oh my the CENSUS! We could not leave the appartment ALL day. My companion called the district leaders four times to make sure because she couldn´t believe it. we did a project inside with our area map that we´ve been wanting to do for a long time. Yeah, A girl!!!! Congrats! Oh I live in an appartment complex by the train station in Tigre center. It´s the safest part. Shoe size I can´t read it. I think the box might still be around in my room some where though. I think 81/2 not sure though. Rice pack, or both we have a mirco wave. Among things for Christmas a nice camera back strap, for by shoulder bag would be much appreciated.
Okay, got to run. I´ll try to tell you about my daily schedule next week and answer a few more questions.
Love you all,
Aleta
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
What a week...
Dear family,
How is everyone this week? I can´t believe Brandi comes home this week! Wow! Somebody give here a big hug from me! Thank you for your emails. Lorette, Calvin´s walking! wow. I´m happy to hear eveything is good. Lissy, sounds like the job is good. That´s great to hear. Tell Andrew I say hi back. Jack, seriously canons from the civil war? Awesome. Hey found my four leaf clover in my scriptures, stuck it between tape cause it was starting to fall apart. It´s amazing the things you find in the scriptures that you weren´t even looking for.
So Here´s a story I think Chrsitine will like. There is this one house that we walk by a couple times a week and well everyone here has dogs. Usally two or more. They are all over and so loud. Sheesh. It´s funny when you walk down the street and there are just random dogs a sleep on the side walk. Anyway, this house has I think 5 chihuhuas and my companion likes to torment them. One of them is vicious he shows his little teeth and I swear he could knaw off a finger if given the opportunity. So Christine, I can deffinately see how someone could be attacked by angry chihuhuas.
OH, this is great...So I´m not sure how good Argetnina is for my ego...My companion and I were walking down a street in a little bit more of a shady area, don´t worry completely safe, just a little shady. So I don´t really understand a lot of the things that people say to us, which is good. I do know however, what a whistle sounds like, so that point gets made. So this day we are walking along on our way to an appointment and a group of 4 or 5 young men are standing on the side of the road. Usually we just ignore them but this time we couldn´t, it was just too funny. So one of these smooth opporators yells out, ¨Si la belleza fue un pecado, no tendras perdon de Dios¨HAHAHAHAHA. So in English, basically Ïf beauty were a sin you wouldn´t be forgiven by God.¨HAHAHAHAHA. Oh we laughed about it for quite a few blocks. OH and then about an hour later we were in another area and we were talking to a man on the street. As Hna. Romo was talking he was looking at me a lot, which was wierd ´cause I don´t say much. So we shook hands and started to walk off, this guy yells back at us and asks if we believe in Prophecy, we were like ya, we believe in a prophet. So he comes up to me and I had a hard time understanding what he was saying, I didn´t know too many words he was using. Then Hermana Romo, is like, ókay, bueno bueno, we got to go...¨ I was really confused at this point. Well, apparently this man just made some prophecy about me and my future. Huh. I guess I will be married by this time next year and I need to pray to know who it is, or something like that.....okay, well I´ll still be on a mission next year, so.....nope. Oh, the people you meet on the mission.
Okay so sad note of the week, Olga, we haven´t been able to find her. She left us a message saying she didn´t want to be baptized. Ouch. So we are really trying to find her and find out what happened. I wish I had more to tell you.
So good news! We found a new family! They are great! the dad actually lied to us the first time we met him, he didn´t think we´d come back, little did he know. :) He even came to part of church yesterday. Then we went to their house for lunch, asado. Like a variety of meat cooked delicously on the grill. WOW muy rico!. Sorry dad I gave in and tried the blood sausage. IT was okay, I wanted to get it out of the way so I ate it first, then they thought I really liked it so they gave me even more. Oh well.
Sorry I lost track of time that´s about all I got.Spiritual stories next week promise.
Love you all,
Aleta
ps. mom, heat pack, another pair of clark shoes( don´t have to be the exact same ones), any nice short sleeves shirts, not collered just churchy nice, that´s all I can think of right now, got to run. love ya!
How is everyone this week? I can´t believe Brandi comes home this week! Wow! Somebody give here a big hug from me! Thank you for your emails. Lorette, Calvin´s walking! wow. I´m happy to hear eveything is good. Lissy, sounds like the job is good. That´s great to hear. Tell Andrew I say hi back. Jack, seriously canons from the civil war? Awesome. Hey found my four leaf clover in my scriptures, stuck it between tape cause it was starting to fall apart. It´s amazing the things you find in the scriptures that you weren´t even looking for.
So Here´s a story I think Chrsitine will like. There is this one house that we walk by a couple times a week and well everyone here has dogs. Usally two or more. They are all over and so loud. Sheesh. It´s funny when you walk down the street and there are just random dogs a sleep on the side walk. Anyway, this house has I think 5 chihuhuas and my companion likes to torment them. One of them is vicious he shows his little teeth and I swear he could knaw off a finger if given the opportunity. So Christine, I can deffinately see how someone could be attacked by angry chihuhuas.
OH, this is great...So I´m not sure how good Argetnina is for my ego...My companion and I were walking down a street in a little bit more of a shady area, don´t worry completely safe, just a little shady. So I don´t really understand a lot of the things that people say to us, which is good. I do know however, what a whistle sounds like, so that point gets made. So this day we are walking along on our way to an appointment and a group of 4 or 5 young men are standing on the side of the road. Usually we just ignore them but this time we couldn´t, it was just too funny. So one of these smooth opporators yells out, ¨Si la belleza fue un pecado, no tendras perdon de Dios¨HAHAHAHAHA. So in English, basically Ïf beauty were a sin you wouldn´t be forgiven by God.¨HAHAHAHAHA. Oh we laughed about it for quite a few blocks. OH and then about an hour later we were in another area and we were talking to a man on the street. As Hna. Romo was talking he was looking at me a lot, which was wierd ´cause I don´t say much. So we shook hands and started to walk off, this guy yells back at us and asks if we believe in Prophecy, we were like ya, we believe in a prophet. So he comes up to me and I had a hard time understanding what he was saying, I didn´t know too many words he was using. Then Hermana Romo, is like, ókay, bueno bueno, we got to go...¨ I was really confused at this point. Well, apparently this man just made some prophecy about me and my future. Huh. I guess I will be married by this time next year and I need to pray to know who it is, or something like that.....okay, well I´ll still be on a mission next year, so.....nope. Oh, the people you meet on the mission.
Okay so sad note of the week, Olga, we haven´t been able to find her. She left us a message saying she didn´t want to be baptized. Ouch. So we are really trying to find her and find out what happened. I wish I had more to tell you.
So good news! We found a new family! They are great! the dad actually lied to us the first time we met him, he didn´t think we´d come back, little did he know. :) He even came to part of church yesterday. Then we went to their house for lunch, asado. Like a variety of meat cooked delicously on the grill. WOW muy rico!. Sorry dad I gave in and tried the blood sausage. IT was okay, I wanted to get it out of the way so I ate it first, then they thought I really liked it so they gave me even more. Oh well.
Sorry I lost track of time that´s about all I got.Spiritual stories next week promise.
Love you all,
Aleta
ps. mom, heat pack, another pair of clark shoes( don´t have to be the exact same ones), any nice short sleeves shirts, not collered just churchy nice, that´s all I can think of right now, got to run. love ya!
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Wow, that week went fast!
My lovely family and friends,
I love You! Mom, thank you for the letter. How are Scott and Betsy doing? How are Uncle Nick and Aunt Phylis? I´m really glad you got to have such a fun time in Bremerton. Yeah, Tigre is really pretty. Apparently it is a major vacation spot for people who live in Capital, the down town part of Buenos Aires. So on the weekends it is really crazy. It is spring right now, so the weather is beautiful, very much like May in Washington. We even had a few overcast days last week :) It was a nice little present from the Lord. The only thing is, in the summer it´s going to be crazy busy! There is a big river that runs right through it which means lots of humidity. So that should be fun! At least it will be an adventure, don´t worry I´ll tell you all about it.
Oh and something I was going to mention but almost forgot, until I read Jack´s letter.... the FOOD! SO GOOD. It´s a good thing it´s hot here in the summer, cause apparently you just sweat off all the weight you gain from the food. There is a lot of pasta. Most of the time it is home made and amazing. One of the members served us steak and papa fritas (french fries) the other day. Seriously one of the best steaks I have ever had. Resturant quality. Oh and the ice cream is amazing. Oh and one thing they use ALL the time......Potatos! Yeah, I have had them several different ways and each one is great. OH and the soup, yum! SO basically the food is great and I need to get recipies before I leave.
Dad, that´s great to hear about your poetry, keep up the good work to you too.
Aunt Janie, the apple sauce sounds like fun. I hope you got it all done and have room left in the basement :)
Oh somebody tell Daniel S. congrats for me. Hey how are my friends in the Singles Ward, Tamsin, Lissy (are you still alive), The Atkinsons, Wilson´s...everyone!
So as far as what I´ve been up to...One of our investigators Olga is so ready! She just needs her baptisimal interview and we are good to go. She has been having a hard time because she feels alone in her decision, Well we went and picked her up for church yesterday and that made all the difference. She finally got to meet friends. She was so cute walking around and everyone she met she wrote down their names and their phone numbers. Then in R.S. they were talking about baptism and the teacher asked the question ¨who needs to be baptised¨ well, she was looking for an answer like, every one over the age of eight.... But Olga just smiles and raises her hand high up in the air! It was great.
Well I think that´s all I have time for this week.
I love you and pray for you,
Aleta
PS. Mom, the mission president´s wife said to befriend her on Facebook. She puts up pictures of the missionaries from time to time, from zone conferences and things. So yeah you can check that out.
PPS. Jack I got the pictures, thanks.
PPPS. Brandi hang in there. I love getting your emails.
PPPPS. Yes I feel much better by the way.
PPPPPS. Now I really got to go LOVE from me to you!
I love You! Mom, thank you for the letter. How are Scott and Betsy doing? How are Uncle Nick and Aunt Phylis? I´m really glad you got to have such a fun time in Bremerton. Yeah, Tigre is really pretty. Apparently it is a major vacation spot for people who live in Capital, the down town part of Buenos Aires. So on the weekends it is really crazy. It is spring right now, so the weather is beautiful, very much like May in Washington. We even had a few overcast days last week :) It was a nice little present from the Lord. The only thing is, in the summer it´s going to be crazy busy! There is a big river that runs right through it which means lots of humidity. So that should be fun! At least it will be an adventure, don´t worry I´ll tell you all about it.
Oh and something I was going to mention but almost forgot, until I read Jack´s letter.... the FOOD! SO GOOD. It´s a good thing it´s hot here in the summer, cause apparently you just sweat off all the weight you gain from the food. There is a lot of pasta. Most of the time it is home made and amazing. One of the members served us steak and papa fritas (french fries) the other day. Seriously one of the best steaks I have ever had. Resturant quality. Oh and the ice cream is amazing. Oh and one thing they use ALL the time......Potatos! Yeah, I have had them several different ways and each one is great. OH and the soup, yum! SO basically the food is great and I need to get recipies before I leave.
Dad, that´s great to hear about your poetry, keep up the good work to you too.
Aunt Janie, the apple sauce sounds like fun. I hope you got it all done and have room left in the basement :)
Oh somebody tell Daniel S. congrats for me. Hey how are my friends in the Singles Ward, Tamsin, Lissy (are you still alive), The Atkinsons, Wilson´s...everyone!
So as far as what I´ve been up to...One of our investigators Olga is so ready! She just needs her baptisimal interview and we are good to go. She has been having a hard time because she feels alone in her decision, Well we went and picked her up for church yesterday and that made all the difference. She finally got to meet friends. She was so cute walking around and everyone she met she wrote down their names and their phone numbers. Then in R.S. they were talking about baptism and the teacher asked the question ¨who needs to be baptised¨ well, she was looking for an answer like, every one over the age of eight.... But Olga just smiles and raises her hand high up in the air! It was great.
Well I think that´s all I have time for this week.
I love you and pray for you,
Aleta
PS. Mom, the mission president´s wife said to befriend her on Facebook. She puts up pictures of the missionaries from time to time, from zone conferences and things. So yeah you can check that out.
PPS. Jack I got the pictures, thanks.
PPPS. Brandi hang in there. I love getting your emails.
PPPPS. Yes I feel much better by the way.
PPPPPS. Now I really got to go LOVE from me to you!
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
ARGENTINA!!!! woah!
My dearest family and friends,
Thank you for the emails from Betsy, Dad, Mom, Jodi and Jack. They were a great suprise when I got on here this afternoon! Mom, I hope the weather stays good for you to get things done! SO....Tigre is my area, it´s kind of a suberb of Buenos Aires. It´s really busy though. We usually take the colectivo (buses) everywhere. I´m not the biggest fan they drive crazy here, but the busses are better than the remises which are like taxis.
So hey, incase you weren´t aware I´m a missionary....it has kind of hit me this week. I go to peoples houses and share the Gospel of Jesucristo with them. I have had so many great expieriences this week and I only understand about 60% of what is going on most of the time. Apparently I am doing really good with the language, people say that they can understand me, which is good, I´m really slow, but at least the point gets across.
So the Holy Ghost is amazing, incase any of you don´t know that, it is. It is the greatest gift in my life right now. Hermana Romo and I are constintly lead by the spirit to know what we should teach or where we should go. So many times last week we just did the first thing that came in to our minds, which turned out to be the perferct thing. We rean into a lot of recent converts to the church that haven´t been in a while, for one reason or another, we invited them to come this week, fingers crossed.
We are teaching this lady named Olga, she is really sweet and teachers English! Oh the tender mercies of the Lord, I feel so blessed to be able to really know what is going on in at least one lesson. She is progressing really well and LOVES reading from the book of Mormon.
OH! sheesh how could I forget... Yesterday we had a zone conference with Elder Arnold. (which is why I´m writing on tuesday, usually pdays are monday fyi) He is the new area President over South America South. He is the one who spoke in General Conference about the stupid cow, and how the fence was there to protect it. Anyway, it was simply amazing! He spoke directly to me, it was obvious I didn´t understand everything since I kept asking my companion to traslate different things. So he noticed and gave me some really encouraging words. He told a really tender story about how he learned Spanish. After the conference we got to shake his hand and he said some wonderful things that were truley inspired and exactly what I needed to hear. I love the Lord! He is so good to me and I know he just wants me to do the best job possible. He want´s ALL of his children to hear the message of the restored Gospel.
I think tha´s all that I have time for this week. Lo siento. I´m off to a art museum and Ice cream!
I love all of you with all my heart!
Aleta
Thank you for the emails from Betsy, Dad, Mom, Jodi and Jack. They were a great suprise when I got on here this afternoon! Mom, I hope the weather stays good for you to get things done! SO....Tigre is my area, it´s kind of a suberb of Buenos Aires. It´s really busy though. We usually take the colectivo (buses) everywhere. I´m not the biggest fan they drive crazy here, but the busses are better than the remises which are like taxis.
So hey, incase you weren´t aware I´m a missionary....it has kind of hit me this week. I go to peoples houses and share the Gospel of Jesucristo with them. I have had so many great expieriences this week and I only understand about 60% of what is going on most of the time. Apparently I am doing really good with the language, people say that they can understand me, which is good, I´m really slow, but at least the point gets across.
So the Holy Ghost is amazing, incase any of you don´t know that, it is. It is the greatest gift in my life right now. Hermana Romo and I are constintly lead by the spirit to know what we should teach or where we should go. So many times last week we just did the first thing that came in to our minds, which turned out to be the perferct thing. We rean into a lot of recent converts to the church that haven´t been in a while, for one reason or another, we invited them to come this week, fingers crossed.
We are teaching this lady named Olga, she is really sweet and teachers English! Oh the tender mercies of the Lord, I feel so blessed to be able to really know what is going on in at least one lesson. She is progressing really well and LOVES reading from the book of Mormon.
OH! sheesh how could I forget... Yesterday we had a zone conference with Elder Arnold. (which is why I´m writing on tuesday, usually pdays are monday fyi) He is the new area President over South America South. He is the one who spoke in General Conference about the stupid cow, and how the fence was there to protect it. Anyway, it was simply amazing! He spoke directly to me, it was obvious I didn´t understand everything since I kept asking my companion to traslate different things. So he noticed and gave me some really encouraging words. He told a really tender story about how he learned Spanish. After the conference we got to shake his hand and he said some wonderful things that were truley inspired and exactly what I needed to hear. I love the Lord! He is so good to me and I know he just wants me to do the best job possible. He want´s ALL of his children to hear the message of the restored Gospel.
I think tha´s all that I have time for this week. Lo siento. I´m off to a art museum and Ice cream!
I love all of you with all my heart!
Aleta
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Day 1
Hola madre,
I have arrived safely. I am a little queasy from the flight still. Argentina is very pretty and I like it. The drivers are crazy though. There is a lot to get used to. Pres. Gulbrandsen and his wife are very nice and I like them a lot. There is not very much to say. I haven´t really done anything, because I have been feeling so sick. Don´t worry though I know it will be fine, I just need a little time to let my body adjust from the flight I think. My trainer is Hermana Romo, she is from LA. She has been out 11 months and I am her first trainee. Her companion just left this morning to go home to Utah. So she goes from one companion at the very end of her mission to one at the start. She is very sweet and I think we are going to get along great.
Other than that I don´t really know what to say. I´m sure next week I will have tons to write, so sorry it´s short this week, forgive me.
I love you all,
Aleta
I have arrived safely. I am a little queasy from the flight still. Argentina is very pretty and I like it. The drivers are crazy though. There is a lot to get used to. Pres. Gulbrandsen and his wife are very nice and I like them a lot. There is not very much to say. I haven´t really done anything, because I have been feeling so sick. Don´t worry though I know it will be fine, I just need a little time to let my body adjust from the flight I think. My trainer is Hermana Romo, she is from LA. She has been out 11 months and I am her first trainee. Her companion just left this morning to go home to Utah. So she goes from one companion at the very end of her mission to one at the start. She is very sweet and I think we are going to get along great.
Other than that I don´t really know what to say. I´m sure next week I will have tons to write, so sorry it´s short this week, forgive me.
I love you all,
Aleta
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Safe Arrival in Argentina
Your daughter arrived safely in the mission today. We love her and are so grateful to serve with her. Thank you for raising such a wonderful young woman.
Sincerely,
Richard M. Gulbrandsen
Argentina Buenos Aires Norte
Sincerely,
Richard M. Gulbrandsen
Argentina Buenos Aires Norte
Friday, October 1, 2010
Well, this is it. Almost gone!
Dear family and friends,
Thank you so much for the letters. Thanks to Mom, Isaac, Scott and Betsy I loved your letters! They really make my day everytime I recieve one. So my address in Argentina is in my call packet Mom. It's the one that says pouch letters, you send them to Salt Lake then they send them to me every once in a while, I think. That's the word on the street anyway.
I haven't got mail yet today, so I haven't got the package yet, but thank you SO much! Oh and my roommates and comps, loved the bread. I was even nice and shared the glorious muffin with them. So tell Frank thanks.
Okay, so tons of great stories this week. I am really going to miss the Elders. Mom, you asked if we were all flying together. Well, four Elders are going to Resistencia Argetnina and they are on a later flight to Atlanta, but we all meet up to fly to Argentina together. There are 10 people in my district, including me. Three are going to Buenos Aires, 3 to Bahia Blanc and the other 4 to Resistencia. Hope that helps some. Oh and yes, I have taken pictures. I can't figure out how to upload them, and the lines at the kiosks are always really long to print them out. I'll get them to you some how don't worry.
Okay so last week our teacher brought in a flag from Argentina for us. So we wanted to hang it up, so Elder Gochnour got the bright idea to hook it up in the ceiling by slightly lifting one of the ceiling tiles up and wedging it between them. I've seen it done before no big deal. Well, all of the sudden we hear a huge crash and I feel a pain in my leg. I turn around and the whole ceiling tile is on the floor in two pieces. It was hilarious. All of the sudden Elder Haslam comes over with a big piece of tape to fix it and the other Elders are trying to put it back in the ceiling like nothing happened. Well, it kinda worked there is still a small piece missing, but nobody else has really noticed yet.
Oh before I forget, my teacher Hermano Zivic, his dad is giving one of the prayers in General conference so look for that, I think it's the Sat. afternoon session.
kay so next, is our Elders REALLY like to sing. So we were practicing for musical number on Sunday, every district sings in Sacrament meeting, before they leave. So we picked nearer my god to thee, but in Spanish of course. Entonces, we were splitting up the different vereses and running through for a practice run. Well the Elders had a verse they sung by themselves. All of the sudden all 7 of them start singing falsetto. Like I think some of them were hitting higher notes than me! Well they loved the way it sounded and it really took some convincing to tell them that they were NOT singing that way in church. I got it on film though and it's hilarious.
Okay then, yesterday Elder Christianson and Elder Haslam having been working on some new lyrics to the song of "Every time we touch" so last night they had it worked out to just start singing it when Our teahcer Hermana Sybrowsky walked in. SOOOOO funny. She walks in asks how we are, no one says anything, excpect Elder Robinson starts pounding out the beat to the song. Then Elder Jay starts whistling the tune. All of the sudden all the Elders join in with the new and improved "missionary lyrics" such as "Every time we teach, we feel the Spirit,..."Anyway, I have 'em written down somewhere. It was so funny, Hna. Sybrowsky's face was priceless.
Oh, last week at the temple walk, right after I took some pictures with Brittany actually, I dropped my Bluecard down a drain! okay so my bluecard is like my key, you don't want to loose it. It get's you into meals and your buildings, you have money on it for things at the bookstore and vending machines. Anyway down it went into a grate and was just taunting me by floating on the water out of my reach. We couldn't pull up the cover of the grate either. Don't worry I got a new one but it was pretty funny.
Okay, I thinks that's all the stories I can remember, there were so many this week, I felt like I was laughing all the time. I'm really going to miss the Elders and my companions. Sorry this email isn't very spiritual, I had some great experiences with teaching this week too. One where I was actually pretending to be an investigator and it was great. The spirit was really leading the missionaries to what my problem was. It was great.
Okay well there isn't too much time left. I'm not sure what day I get to email from Argentina. So sorry if it's more than a week. I can't believe I will be there next week at this time completely surrrounded by Spanish.!!!!!!!!! Yipe!
Oh well, I know the Lord knows where I am and that I'm on his errand. He will watch out for me and help me learn the language.
Thank you everone for your letters, thoughts, and prayers! I love them
All my Love,
Aleta
Thank you so much for the letters. Thanks to Mom, Isaac, Scott and Betsy I loved your letters! They really make my day everytime I recieve one. So my address in Argentina is in my call packet Mom. It's the one that says pouch letters, you send them to Salt Lake then they send them to me every once in a while, I think. That's the word on the street anyway.
I haven't got mail yet today, so I haven't got the package yet, but thank you SO much! Oh and my roommates and comps, loved the bread. I was even nice and shared the glorious muffin with them. So tell Frank thanks.
Okay, so tons of great stories this week. I am really going to miss the Elders. Mom, you asked if we were all flying together. Well, four Elders are going to Resistencia Argetnina and they are on a later flight to Atlanta, but we all meet up to fly to Argentina together. There are 10 people in my district, including me. Three are going to Buenos Aires, 3 to Bahia Blanc and the other 4 to Resistencia. Hope that helps some. Oh and yes, I have taken pictures. I can't figure out how to upload them, and the lines at the kiosks are always really long to print them out. I'll get them to you some how don't worry.
Okay so last week our teacher brought in a flag from Argentina for us. So we wanted to hang it up, so Elder Gochnour got the bright idea to hook it up in the ceiling by slightly lifting one of the ceiling tiles up and wedging it between them. I've seen it done before no big deal. Well, all of the sudden we hear a huge crash and I feel a pain in my leg. I turn around and the whole ceiling tile is on the floor in two pieces. It was hilarious. All of the sudden Elder Haslam comes over with a big piece of tape to fix it and the other Elders are trying to put it back in the ceiling like nothing happened. Well, it kinda worked there is still a small piece missing, but nobody else has really noticed yet.
Oh before I forget, my teacher Hermano Zivic, his dad is giving one of the prayers in General conference so look for that, I think it's the Sat. afternoon session.
kay so next, is our Elders REALLY like to sing. So we were practicing for musical number on Sunday, every district sings in Sacrament meeting, before they leave. So we picked nearer my god to thee, but in Spanish of course. Entonces, we were splitting up the different vereses and running through for a practice run. Well the Elders had a verse they sung by themselves. All of the sudden all 7 of them start singing falsetto. Like I think some of them were hitting higher notes than me! Well they loved the way it sounded and it really took some convincing to tell them that they were NOT singing that way in church. I got it on film though and it's hilarious.
Okay then, yesterday Elder Christianson and Elder Haslam having been working on some new lyrics to the song of "Every time we touch" so last night they had it worked out to just start singing it when Our teahcer Hermana Sybrowsky walked in. SOOOOO funny. She walks in asks how we are, no one says anything, excpect Elder Robinson starts pounding out the beat to the song. Then Elder Jay starts whistling the tune. All of the sudden all the Elders join in with the new and improved "missionary lyrics" such as "Every time we teach, we feel the Spirit,..."Anyway, I have 'em written down somewhere. It was so funny, Hna. Sybrowsky's face was priceless.
Oh, last week at the temple walk, right after I took some pictures with Brittany actually, I dropped my Bluecard down a drain! okay so my bluecard is like my key, you don't want to loose it. It get's you into meals and your buildings, you have money on it for things at the bookstore and vending machines. Anyway down it went into a grate and was just taunting me by floating on the water out of my reach. We couldn't pull up the cover of the grate either. Don't worry I got a new one but it was pretty funny.
Okay, I thinks that's all the stories I can remember, there were so many this week, I felt like I was laughing all the time. I'm really going to miss the Elders and my companions. Sorry this email isn't very spiritual, I had some great experiences with teaching this week too. One where I was actually pretending to be an investigator and it was great. The spirit was really leading the missionaries to what my problem was. It was great.
Okay well there isn't too much time left. I'm not sure what day I get to email from Argentina. So sorry if it's more than a week. I can't believe I will be there next week at this time completely surrrounded by Spanish.!!!!!!!!! Yipe!
Oh well, I know the Lord knows where I am and that I'm on his errand. He will watch out for me and help me learn the language.
Thank you everone for your letters, thoughts, and prayers! I love them
All my Love,
Aleta
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Time just flies! 9/24/2010
Dear everybody, and anybody, I'm not really sure who all recieves this email :)
So this week was a good one for me. First things first... Mom, yes I'm planning on sending home my ring alomg with a few other things. So don't worry about that. Go ahead and use my phone, although I wish I had a picture of you trying to figure out the touch screen :) My mental image is pretty good though. No, you did not send the batteries, and yes I did get a camera card. No I did not laugh at Aunt Janies atttempt at Spanish, when I got that letter she knew more than I did :) Okay I think that's all the questions. Oh Dad, your poetry thing sounds fun, I'm glad you are enjoying it.
Okay so this week was interesting with my comps. One of them has been really struggling with her testimony since she has been here. She had a tough week. She recieved a priesthood blessing yesterday and we went to the temple this morning so we'll see if she feels good about an answer to her questions. This place can be really trying on people, it's just go go go all the time, the thing that gets me through is that I know that Heavenly Father wants me here for a reason and that there are people in Argentina waiting to hear the message of the restored gospel through me!
My other companion had a really bad migraine for three days. So she also recieved a blessing, we teased that she was just trying to give the Elders someone to practice on. Anyway the doctor's office here was all full so we got to take a field trip down the street to the BYU student heath center. Ok I know that doesn't seem like a lot, but when you've been on the same block in the same four buildings for seven weeks you might understand how it was great. Oh she is doing better now though. So our week was a little un orginized and we kept having to move things around when something else came up. I guess maybe we learned to think on our feet a little better.
Okay so funny stories this week... My favorite was when we were talking about cognates between Spanish and English. there are a lot by the way. There also are false cognates, words that sound like a word in english, but mean something really different in Spanish. SO Hna. Olsen gave an example, emberazado (not sure if that's spelled right) anyway, it doesn't mean embaressed it means pregnant. So then Elder Robinson raised his hand and says, looking down at his desk a little ashamed, " Yeah, like aburrido, it doesn't mean "a burrito""" Then he shakes his head. Okay funniest thing ever!!!!!! I don't think it comes across in the email, but it was hilarious, and even more funny was our teacher Hno. Tingey's reaction. He throws back his head and laughs histerically for about 4 minutes. So not like him, and that's what made it even funnier. Then he leaves the classroom and starts looking down the hall for a class that he can share it with. Oh, good times. We asked him if he told his wife the next day and he said "yep, we laughed together for about seven minutes" so he REALLY thought it waas funny.
Oh, How could I forget1 The best thing of all! So yesterday we are sitting at dinner eating, and all of the sudden Elder Gochnour, our District leader, starts handing out pieces of paper, wierd. Well one gets put right infront of my face and you know what it says.... TRAVEL PLANS! ....AAAAAAAHHHHHH. Okay so I guess it's pretty official. I leave SLC on the 4th at 12. Then have a couple hour lay over in Atlanta, before our flight to Buenos Aires. we leave Atlanta at like 8 something PM and get to Argentina at 7 something the next moring. Yikes all night on an airplane. The great thing is my whole distict is on the same flight from Atlanta, ao we're all together. Yeah! Any way so that was a suprise last night, and then I realized I only have 10 more days here. then I said, "Aleta, take a deep breath, it's okay" so I did, and it is okay.
SO I'm not sure what else to say....Everything is great. I'm loving life. The lord blesses me so much, I know he blesses all of you as well. He loves us all and I'm glad to be here doing his work. Turn to the Lord when time gets rough and tough and he will strengthen you!
Love you all!
Aleta
So this week was a good one for me. First things first... Mom, yes I'm planning on sending home my ring alomg with a few other things. So don't worry about that. Go ahead and use my phone, although I wish I had a picture of you trying to figure out the touch screen :) My mental image is pretty good though. No, you did not send the batteries, and yes I did get a camera card. No I did not laugh at Aunt Janies atttempt at Spanish, when I got that letter she knew more than I did :) Okay I think that's all the questions. Oh Dad, your poetry thing sounds fun, I'm glad you are enjoying it.
Okay so this week was interesting with my comps. One of them has been really struggling with her testimony since she has been here. She had a tough week. She recieved a priesthood blessing yesterday and we went to the temple this morning so we'll see if she feels good about an answer to her questions. This place can be really trying on people, it's just go go go all the time, the thing that gets me through is that I know that Heavenly Father wants me here for a reason and that there are people in Argentina waiting to hear the message of the restored gospel through me!
My other companion had a really bad migraine for three days. So she also recieved a blessing, we teased that she was just trying to give the Elders someone to practice on. Anyway the doctor's office here was all full so we got to take a field trip down the street to the BYU student heath center. Ok I know that doesn't seem like a lot, but when you've been on the same block in the same four buildings for seven weeks you might understand how it was great. Oh she is doing better now though. So our week was a little un orginized and we kept having to move things around when something else came up. I guess maybe we learned to think on our feet a little better.
Okay so funny stories this week... My favorite was when we were talking about cognates between Spanish and English. there are a lot by the way. There also are false cognates, words that sound like a word in english, but mean something really different in Spanish. SO Hna. Olsen gave an example, emberazado (not sure if that's spelled right) anyway, it doesn't mean embaressed it means pregnant. So then Elder Robinson raised his hand and says, looking down at his desk a little ashamed, " Yeah, like aburrido, it doesn't mean "a burrito""" Then he shakes his head. Okay funniest thing ever!!!!!! I don't think it comes across in the email, but it was hilarious, and even more funny was our teacher Hno. Tingey's reaction. He throws back his head and laughs histerically for about 4 minutes. So not like him, and that's what made it even funnier. Then he leaves the classroom and starts looking down the hall for a class that he can share it with. Oh, good times. We asked him if he told his wife the next day and he said "yep, we laughed together for about seven minutes" so he REALLY thought it waas funny.
Oh, How could I forget1 The best thing of all! So yesterday we are sitting at dinner eating, and all of the sudden Elder Gochnour, our District leader, starts handing out pieces of paper, wierd. Well one gets put right infront of my face and you know what it says.... TRAVEL PLANS! ....AAAAAAAHHHHHH. Okay so I guess it's pretty official. I leave SLC on the 4th at 12. Then have a couple hour lay over in Atlanta, before our flight to Buenos Aires. we leave Atlanta at like 8 something PM and get to Argentina at 7 something the next moring. Yikes all night on an airplane. The great thing is my whole distict is on the same flight from Atlanta, ao we're all together. Yeah! Any way so that was a suprise last night, and then I realized I only have 10 more days here. then I said, "Aleta, take a deep breath, it's okay" so I did, and it is okay.
SO I'm not sure what else to say....Everything is great. I'm loving life. The lord blesses me so much, I know he blesses all of you as well. He loves us all and I'm glad to be here doing his work. Turn to the Lord when time gets rough and tough and he will strengthen you!
Love you all!
Aleta
week ...oh sheesh I don't know anymore...there's not enough room in my brain for things like that 9/17/2010
Dear Family,
I can't believe how the time has flown by! I found Brittany the other day. Actually I've seen her several times in passing, but never long enough to say anything of note. So I'm gonna have to find sometime to say hi. I did see Eston Humphry on Wed. I don't know if you know him, he's from Oak Harbor. Any way things just keep plugging along down here. The spanish is coming, much better than it was. I still make tons of mistakes and am not very good, but I guess that's what the MTC is for right. So we actually exceeded our goal of 40 lessons in Spanish last week, we taught 43! It was great. One day we taught 9 I think and by the end of the day our brains were in pain from all the thinking:)
Oh thank you for the package! The Elders LOVE the markers. I pulled them out and their faces just lit up. Kind of funny the things we get excited about down here. Oh my teacher was even more excited than the Elders. The jackets are cute thank you.
Someone tell Jaime thanks for the email. I'll try and write her a letter this week!
Oh so something fun , our Relief Society speaker on Sunday was Sister Dalton. She is amazing, she talked a lot about what power we have because we know who we are. I know that I am a daughter of the Most high God. There is power that comes from that, I can use that power to teach and to help others know that they too are children of God. One of the other things she talked about that I liked a lot was to Smile. Ok so I think I've got this down pretty good. I do smile a lot. She reminded us that this is a happy gospel and we have so much to be happy about. Others will want to know what it is that causes us to be so happy.
Um let's see.. Oh I heard some one say this week that Missionaries are like Diamonds on black velvet. I thought that was prety cool. We are sent out to the world to teach the word of God, and that sets us apart. We stand in stark contrast to the things around us. We are a focal point, and others will be drawn to us and want to learn more. That is so true!
It's crazy to think that I only have 2 1/2 weeks left here before I'm out in Argentina doing all this for real. I'm kinda excited though. So what else....So this is so short, I'm writing kinda slow today.
Oh Mom, don't worry about a muffin, I've got plenty of goodies to last awhile. As you gather things together for another package can you get my spanish dictionary from my room, it's the picture one and also the verb book. I keep meaning to ask for them and always forget.
Oh so there is an Elder in my district, Elder Robinson from Gilbert, Az. It's really funny he reminds me a lot of Matt. Just the way he talks and a few mannerisms, so we were at dinner the other day and we talking and he said that I remind him of his sister Emily. So I thought that was pretty fun. The Elders are so entertaining. I don't remember If i told you about the time that we went up to the temple for a walk on Sunday and Elder Robinson had a back pack. Well he pulls out a bag of cookies, awesome, followed by....a pillow, genious. folllowed by an umbrella. So he lays out, takes off his shoes, falls a sleep on the pillow and uses the umbrella to block the sun. The things these Elders come up with.... I'm so glad I know them.
Well, that's it.
Love you all,
Aleta
I can't believe how the time has flown by! I found Brittany the other day. Actually I've seen her several times in passing, but never long enough to say anything of note. So I'm gonna have to find sometime to say hi. I did see Eston Humphry on Wed. I don't know if you know him, he's from Oak Harbor. Any way things just keep plugging along down here. The spanish is coming, much better than it was. I still make tons of mistakes and am not very good, but I guess that's what the MTC is for right. So we actually exceeded our goal of 40 lessons in Spanish last week, we taught 43! It was great. One day we taught 9 I think and by the end of the day our brains were in pain from all the thinking:)
Oh thank you for the package! The Elders LOVE the markers. I pulled them out and their faces just lit up. Kind of funny the things we get excited about down here. Oh my teacher was even more excited than the Elders. The jackets are cute thank you.
Someone tell Jaime thanks for the email. I'll try and write her a letter this week!
Oh so something fun , our Relief Society speaker on Sunday was Sister Dalton. She is amazing, she talked a lot about what power we have because we know who we are. I know that I am a daughter of the Most high God. There is power that comes from that, I can use that power to teach and to help others know that they too are children of God. One of the other things she talked about that I liked a lot was to Smile. Ok so I think I've got this down pretty good. I do smile a lot. She reminded us that this is a happy gospel and we have so much to be happy about. Others will want to know what it is that causes us to be so happy.
Um let's see.. Oh I heard some one say this week that Missionaries are like Diamonds on black velvet. I thought that was prety cool. We are sent out to the world to teach the word of God, and that sets us apart. We stand in stark contrast to the things around us. We are a focal point, and others will be drawn to us and want to learn more. That is so true!
It's crazy to think that I only have 2 1/2 weeks left here before I'm out in Argentina doing all this for real. I'm kinda excited though. So what else....So this is so short, I'm writing kinda slow today.
Oh Mom, don't worry about a muffin, I've got plenty of goodies to last awhile. As you gather things together for another package can you get my spanish dictionary from my room, it's the picture one and also the verb book. I keep meaning to ask for them and always forget.
Oh so there is an Elder in my district, Elder Robinson from Gilbert, Az. It's really funny he reminds me a lot of Matt. Just the way he talks and a few mannerisms, so we were at dinner the other day and we talking and he said that I remind him of his sister Emily. So I thought that was pretty fun. The Elders are so entertaining. I don't remember If i told you about the time that we went up to the temple for a walk on Sunday and Elder Robinson had a back pack. Well he pulls out a bag of cookies, awesome, followed by....a pillow, genious. folllowed by an umbrella. So he lays out, takes off his shoes, falls a sleep on the pillow and uses the umbrella to block the sun. The things these Elders come up with.... I'm so glad I know them.
Well, that's it.
Love you all,
Aleta
week 5, check 9/04/2010
Dear family,
Okay so another week has flown buy. Crazy. I'm over half way through here weird. Our goal of teaching 40 lessons this week is doing good, we are at 32 and we have all of them planned. If no one cancels on us we will be at 44 by tomorrow night. It's pretty exciting. No, I have not found Brittany yet. I looked all over for her on Wednesday, but then I had to go to lunch during the time she must have got here. lame. I think she must have a different meal time than me 'cause I have yet to find her. At least I will see her on Sunday for sure, since all the sisters in the MTC meet together for Relief Society.
Okay so YEAH! for Scott and Betsy, I had a feeling I'd be getting news like that sometime soon.
Okay Mom, so you have asked about the plaque several times now, and sorry it keeps getting pushed down the list of important things to tell you. So Yes, I know that there are two. I gave a different picture and scripture to each ward. the close up picture with the yellow sweater should have gone to the singles ward with I think Alma 26:16, then the other one and Alma 26:12 should have gone to the family ward. So I hope that helps some.
Okay so thank you so much to Mom, Dad, Sister Deighton, and Tamsin for your letters! Tamsin I'm glad you were able to have fun while writing me that letter. I read the part about Abbey and Travis out loud to my district, there were several laughs. So thanks.They were awesome and much appreciated. It's nice to know I'm still loved down here in Utah!
So lets see.... OH great story this week. So on Sunday nights we get to watch videos. So we can choose between some talks from Genereal Authorities and church films like The Testaments, Legacy, the Joseph Smith one. Any way so on Sunday we watched Legacy. Let me tell you there is nothing as entertaining as watching a church version of a pioneer love story with 2000 Elders. It was hilarious. Lots of "wait what are they doing....I don't think they are allowed to hold hands...." and comments like that. Oh and a lot of laughter. I hope you can imagine that. It was great.
We had a lesson on Tuesday about the Holy Ghost. It was so great, I took a lot of notes. I'm always so amazed at what God can do with you when you have the spirit to lead you. Several times this week while teaching we had a lot of missionaries tell us that that was just what they need to hear, or that was something they never would have thought of. It is really cool, and humbling, to be led by the Lord.
As far as anything in my room goes...just box it up. It doesn't have to be great, just stick it somewhere safe. Oh and mom, how is the car coming? Any bites yet? Did you get any work done on it? Just do what ever you feel is needed.
Oh and the language is SLOWLY coming. Every lesson we have taught this week has been in Spanish. So that's been a bit of a challenge for us. I'm glad that our teachers chose to do this to us this week though, a lot of districts don't have their teaching week till their very last week. We have one then too. Hopefully we'll be better by then though, and kinda ready for the natives....I hope so anyway.
As for things to send if you feel so inclind Mom, this is kinda random, but a set of fun colored expo markers the thick ones. The elders in my district really like drawing on the board and it would be fun for them. Also if you find any cute jacket/blazer thing. I feel a little out of place when I want to ware some sort of jacket and all the elders have their suits on and I've got nothin. If you don't find anything cute, that's okay too I've survived this long. I think I'm good on candy...but any other thing like yummy home made cookies would be appreciated. Ummm, I know there was something else, but I don't remember so I guess it will wait till next week.
I love you all, and think of you often. I hope every one is good. Hi to every one in the singles ward and Anacortes.
Love, Love, Love you!
Aleta
Okay so another week has flown buy. Crazy. I'm over half way through here weird. Our goal of teaching 40 lessons this week is doing good, we are at 32 and we have all of them planned. If no one cancels on us we will be at 44 by tomorrow night. It's pretty exciting. No, I have not found Brittany yet. I looked all over for her on Wednesday, but then I had to go to lunch during the time she must have got here. lame. I think she must have a different meal time than me 'cause I have yet to find her. At least I will see her on Sunday for sure, since all the sisters in the MTC meet together for Relief Society.
Okay so YEAH! for Scott and Betsy, I had a feeling I'd be getting news like that sometime soon.
Okay Mom, so you have asked about the plaque several times now, and sorry it keeps getting pushed down the list of important things to tell you. So Yes, I know that there are two. I gave a different picture and scripture to each ward. the close up picture with the yellow sweater should have gone to the singles ward with I think Alma 26:16, then the other one and Alma 26:12 should have gone to the family ward. So I hope that helps some.
Okay so thank you so much to Mom, Dad, Sister Deighton, and Tamsin for your letters! Tamsin I'm glad you were able to have fun while writing me that letter. I read the part about Abbey and Travis out loud to my district, there were several laughs. So thanks.They were awesome and much appreciated. It's nice to know I'm still loved down here in Utah!
So lets see.... OH great story this week. So on Sunday nights we get to watch videos. So we can choose between some talks from Genereal Authorities and church films like The Testaments, Legacy, the Joseph Smith one. Any way so on Sunday we watched Legacy. Let me tell you there is nothing as entertaining as watching a church version of a pioneer love story with 2000 Elders. It was hilarious. Lots of "wait what are they doing....I don't think they are allowed to hold hands...." and comments like that. Oh and a lot of laughter. I hope you can imagine that. It was great.
We had a lesson on Tuesday about the Holy Ghost. It was so great, I took a lot of notes. I'm always so amazed at what God can do with you when you have the spirit to lead you. Several times this week while teaching we had a lot of missionaries tell us that that was just what they need to hear, or that was something they never would have thought of. It is really cool, and humbling, to be led by the Lord.
As far as anything in my room goes...just box it up. It doesn't have to be great, just stick it somewhere safe. Oh and mom, how is the car coming? Any bites yet? Did you get any work done on it? Just do what ever you feel is needed.
Oh and the language is SLOWLY coming. Every lesson we have taught this week has been in Spanish. So that's been a bit of a challenge for us. I'm glad that our teachers chose to do this to us this week though, a lot of districts don't have their teaching week till their very last week. We have one then too. Hopefully we'll be better by then though, and kinda ready for the natives....I hope so anyway.
As for things to send if you feel so inclind Mom, this is kinda random, but a set of fun colored expo markers the thick ones. The elders in my district really like drawing on the board and it would be fun for them. Also if you find any cute jacket/blazer thing. I feel a little out of place when I want to ware some sort of jacket and all the elders have their suits on and I've got nothin. If you don't find anything cute, that's okay too I've survived this long. I think I'm good on candy...but any other thing like yummy home made cookies would be appreciated. Ummm, I know there was something else, but I don't remember so I guess it will wait till next week.
I love you all, and think of you often. I hope every one is good. Hi to every one in the singles ward and Anacortes.
Love, Love, Love you!
Aleta
week 4? 9/3/2010
Dear family and friends,
I can't believe I'm half way through. Way wierd. This week has been a really good one. As far a funny stories go I've finally remembered a few. The Elders in my district are awesome. Elder Gochnour sits across from me and is always making the most ridicoulis faces. So this story is about mistakes with Spanish. We were eating lunch the other day and Hna. Olsen says to Elder Gochnour (Gawkner) "Usar una servietta por favor" We all look at her and bust up laughing. Elder G. grabs a napkin and says "Fine" and wipes his mouth. So it dawns on Hna. Olsen that she said "use a napkin please" when she meant to say "pass the napkins please". *It was Hilarious. Stuff like that happens all the time. Another story for you, the other night just as i crawled into bed Hna. olsen comes running into the room with her hand over a cup squealing and running towards the window. Well it turns out there was a poor moth stuck in the bathroom and she was trying to let it outside. Well, about three minutes later in through the window comes the very same freed moth. It was huge! So it doesn't really bother me, but the other two refuse to go to sleep with it in the room. So needless to say many squeals and yelps later, and many attemps to get it down from the ceiling, they finally caught it and shut the window. I thought it was really funny.
So I left all my letters back in the room, so I can't really remember questions that any one had off the top of my head. I'm excited that Scott and Betsy are on their way back to Washington. I'm sure that will make Mom happy. Drive safe you two!
Thank you so much to Tamsin, Brother Bingham, Mom and the Johnson family for the letters. They were awesome! I'm going to try and write some back today, we'll see how it goes.
Our Devotional speaker on Tuesday was Elder Richard G. Hinckley. He is super awesome. He talked a lot about 9 steps to having a happy mission. So I've been working on being a little more optimistic. I don't think I should be a lot more, 'cause my comps might not be able to stand that much at one time:) Any way I love Tuesday's, always really good stuff.
Oh this next week should be really interesting... it is our first teaching week. We have one this week and one our last week. So basically we set up appointments with other companionships to teach them lessons. All week. Our goal is 40. So that means between today and next Friday we have to teach 40 1/2 hour lessons all in Spanish! It's gonna be intense. We have been teaching each other this week, during companionship study, in Spanish and we've gotten better, but are FAR from our goal. So hopefully by the end of the week I'll be pretty much fluent :) I wish.
I'm doing really good. I had couple rough spots last week, but I've decieded that that was done and that really it's in my control to let my self be bothered by things or not. So this week has been really good.
Something we've really been working on is asking inspired questions. I can't remember if I told you this already or not, but it is awesome. It's all about letting the Spirit guide you to teach the person. Focus on what they need to hear and not just getting through the doctrine in the lessons. I've had some really powerful experiences with this lately. Yesterday we taught this man and it was just Hna. Clark and I, it was one of the first times I was actually excited to talk, normally i'm under the feeling of" oh, no, my turn is next, I have to talk....I don't want to talk." Any way it was great.
I'm almost out of time, so Mom I'm gonna try to write you a letter today. That way I can actually tell you that you have asked about in detail with out that annoying red clock flashing at me in the corner of my screen. It's kinda gets under your skin, it keeps you on edge I guess.
So I love you ALLLLLLLLLL!
So excited to see Brittany next week, I have plans to hunt her down.
Love ya,
Aleta
I can't believe I'm half way through. Way wierd. This week has been a really good one. As far a funny stories go I've finally remembered a few. The Elders in my district are awesome. Elder Gochnour sits across from me and is always making the most ridicoulis faces. So this story is about mistakes with Spanish. We were eating lunch the other day and Hna. Olsen says to Elder Gochnour (Gawkner) "Usar una servietta por favor" We all look at her and bust up laughing. Elder G. grabs a napkin and says "Fine" and wipes his mouth. So it dawns on Hna. Olsen that she said "use a napkin please" when she meant to say "pass the napkins please". *It was Hilarious. Stuff like that happens all the time. Another story for you, the other night just as i crawled into bed Hna. olsen comes running into the room with her hand over a cup squealing and running towards the window. Well it turns out there was a poor moth stuck in the bathroom and she was trying to let it outside. Well, about three minutes later in through the window comes the very same freed moth. It was huge! So it doesn't really bother me, but the other two refuse to go to sleep with it in the room. So needless to say many squeals and yelps later, and many attemps to get it down from the ceiling, they finally caught it and shut the window. I thought it was really funny.
So I left all my letters back in the room, so I can't really remember questions that any one had off the top of my head. I'm excited that Scott and Betsy are on their way back to Washington. I'm sure that will make Mom happy. Drive safe you two!
Thank you so much to Tamsin, Brother Bingham, Mom and the Johnson family for the letters. They were awesome! I'm going to try and write some back today, we'll see how it goes.
Our Devotional speaker on Tuesday was Elder Richard G. Hinckley. He is super awesome. He talked a lot about 9 steps to having a happy mission. So I've been working on being a little more optimistic. I don't think I should be a lot more, 'cause my comps might not be able to stand that much at one time:) Any way I love Tuesday's, always really good stuff.
Oh this next week should be really interesting... it is our first teaching week. We have one this week and one our last week. So basically we set up appointments with other companionships to teach them lessons. All week. Our goal is 40. So that means between today and next Friday we have to teach 40 1/2 hour lessons all in Spanish! It's gonna be intense. We have been teaching each other this week, during companionship study, in Spanish and we've gotten better, but are FAR from our goal. So hopefully by the end of the week I'll be pretty much fluent :) I wish.
I'm doing really good. I had couple rough spots last week, but I've decieded that that was done and that really it's in my control to let my self be bothered by things or not. So this week has been really good.
Something we've really been working on is asking inspired questions. I can't remember if I told you this already or not, but it is awesome. It's all about letting the Spirit guide you to teach the person. Focus on what they need to hear and not just getting through the doctrine in the lessons. I've had some really powerful experiences with this lately. Yesterday we taught this man and it was just Hna. Clark and I, it was one of the first times I was actually excited to talk, normally i'm under the feeling of" oh, no, my turn is next, I have to talk....I don't want to talk." Any way it was great.
I'm almost out of time, so Mom I'm gonna try to write you a letter today. That way I can actually tell you that you have asked about in detail with out that annoying red clock flashing at me in the corner of my screen. It's kinda gets under your skin, it keeps you on edge I guess.
So I love you ALLLLLLLLLL!
So excited to see Brittany next week, I have plans to hunt her down.
Love ya,
Aleta
Week 3 08/27/2010
Dear everyone,
Man oh man has this week flown by. I can't believe that it is Friday again. This week has been full of ups and down, but I guess that is expected. The highlight of the week was probably our Tuesday night devotional. Why you may ask....cause Elder Holland was our speaker!!!! Awesome. Pure inspiration. Anyway, I just spent forever typing up an awesome email and it got deleted. So lame. So this is not going to be very long. Elder Holland was definatley the highlight. He said alot of things that I really needed to hear. It was so weird to look up from my notes and see a prophet of the Lord standing about 50 feet from me.
So how is everyone. Thank you to Mom, Aunt Janie, and Dawnstarr for your letters, it's nice to know that someone remembers me down here in the foriegn land of Utah.
I had a funny story for everyone, but it takes a while to tell so just know that it consisted of , a bug, silly girl who over reacted to said bug, a window, a flip flop, laughter and aa fire alarm....you can put together the other details right. Use your imagiinations, that's probably better than the real story anyway.
I'm doing well and miss you all. I have been having a good time here. My classes are awesome.
got to go love you all,
Aleta
Man oh man has this week flown by. I can't believe that it is Friday again. This week has been full of ups and down, but I guess that is expected. The highlight of the week was probably our Tuesday night devotional. Why you may ask....cause Elder Holland was our speaker!!!! Awesome. Pure inspiration. Anyway, I just spent forever typing up an awesome email and it got deleted. So lame. So this is not going to be very long. Elder Holland was definatley the highlight. He said alot of things that I really needed to hear. It was so weird to look up from my notes and see a prophet of the Lord standing about 50 feet from me.
So how is everyone. Thank you to Mom, Aunt Janie, and Dawnstarr for your letters, it's nice to know that someone remembers me down here in the foriegn land of Utah.
I had a funny story for everyone, but it takes a while to tell so just know that it consisted of , a bug, silly girl who over reacted to said bug, a window, a flip flop, laughter and aa fire alarm....you can put together the other details right. Use your imagiinations, that's probably better than the real story anyway.
I'm doing well and miss you all. I have been having a good time here. My classes are awesome.
got to go love you all,
Aleta
the real week 2 8/20/2010
Dear family and friends,
So I realized that I labeled last week's email week two when really I had only been here a week. So I hope that is not confusing. Hey could someone tell Brittany and Jenna that the rule of skirt lengths has changed. They only need to come below your knee when sitting. So jenna who is going to a hot palce might like to know that if she doesn't already, oh and there is no longer a requirement to wear nylons!!!! That is awesome and it's world wide.
Okay so this week just flew by. So funny story this week is the PA system. From the front desk they can just call any room in our residence hall. The voice comes over the speaker in the ceiling. The first time it happened was really funny. It's awesome cause it's a two way intercom so you just speak and they can hear you. cool...and creepy.
Spanish is coming along. We learned how to pray like the first day. How to bare our testimonies the second. Then it's just kinda up to us how much vocab we pick up. We have learned most of the verb tenses now and french is starting to help as we learn how to structure sentances. The first two weeks though.... I keep saying what I know in Spanish and then instead of using an english word for the ones I don't know, I stick in french, so then people REALLY don't know what I'm saying.
Oh thank you everyone for the letters, I feel loved. Dear Elder.com is so awesome! Mom, don't worry about forwarding Heidi's letters.
I saw Chris Chord finally, yesterday actually as I was leaving breakfast. I told him to tell everyone Hi. Oh and yeah I was going to tell you that Hailey Radford is my next door neighbor. She is heading out to Tacoma of all places, so she's excited and she knows she likes it there.
One of the elders in my district was sent donuts the other day. Apparently there is something like MTC delivery.com, where you buy it on line and they go out and pick it up. Crazy huh? Ummm, what else...Oh Thankyou for my package mom, everything is great. Thank you to Dawnstarr as well, the munchies are great.
Our district played softball for gym yesterday and that was really fun, It's one of the games we can do WITH the Elders so that was fun. I hit the ball everytime, I've just got to work on not making them line drives. It's kind of stinks when the pitcher is 6 foot and just reaches out and grabs it. I did make it home once though!
I have met so many nice peeople here. The other day two people came up and bore their testimonies to us in English, one was from Italy and the other Mexico. They sounded great for not knowing any english two weeks ago.
So our best friends here, District 44B, Iam in 44A, left this week to go to Chile! lame, for us, but awesome for them. Before they left they showed us their "secret Sunday room" which is a class room in the basement of our building that isn't used on Sundays, so we were able to play the piano and watch a few videos on lds.com. That was fun and now we know about the room, it's way less busy than our classroom. Oh I ment to tell you we have more Sisters!!!! So the new district has 4 sisters in it, so now there are 7 girls and arround 50 elders at church, much better than the 3 of us before. For relief society our speaker was Virgina H Pearce who is Pres. Hinkleys daughter, she was awesome. Okay That's about all I got. I'am already 15 minutes late for dinner. Love you all, miss you all.
Mom, if there are any bad typos can you fix them before forwarding, I don't have time to read back through.
Love you,
Aleta
So I realized that I labeled last week's email week two when really I had only been here a week. So I hope that is not confusing. Hey could someone tell Brittany and Jenna that the rule of skirt lengths has changed. They only need to come below your knee when sitting. So jenna who is going to a hot palce might like to know that if she doesn't already, oh and there is no longer a requirement to wear nylons!!!! That is awesome and it's world wide.
Okay so this week just flew by. So funny story this week is the PA system. From the front desk they can just call any room in our residence hall. The voice comes over the speaker in the ceiling. The first time it happened was really funny. It's awesome cause it's a two way intercom so you just speak and they can hear you. cool...and creepy.
Spanish is coming along. We learned how to pray like the first day. How to bare our testimonies the second. Then it's just kinda up to us how much vocab we pick up. We have learned most of the verb tenses now and french is starting to help as we learn how to structure sentances. The first two weeks though.... I keep saying what I know in Spanish and then instead of using an english word for the ones I don't know, I stick in french, so then people REALLY don't know what I'm saying.
Oh thank you everyone for the letters, I feel loved. Dear Elder.com is so awesome! Mom, don't worry about forwarding Heidi's letters.
I saw Chris Chord finally, yesterday actually as I was leaving breakfast. I told him to tell everyone Hi. Oh and yeah I was going to tell you that Hailey Radford is my next door neighbor. She is heading out to Tacoma of all places, so she's excited and she knows she likes it there.
One of the elders in my district was sent donuts the other day. Apparently there is something like MTC delivery.com, where you buy it on line and they go out and pick it up. Crazy huh? Ummm, what else...Oh Thankyou for my package mom, everything is great. Thank you to Dawnstarr as well, the munchies are great.
Our district played softball for gym yesterday and that was really fun, It's one of the games we can do WITH the Elders so that was fun. I hit the ball everytime, I've just got to work on not making them line drives. It's kind of stinks when the pitcher is 6 foot and just reaches out and grabs it. I did make it home once though!
I have met so many nice peeople here. The other day two people came up and bore their testimonies to us in English, one was from Italy and the other Mexico. They sounded great for not knowing any english two weeks ago.
So our best friends here, District 44B, Iam in 44A, left this week to go to Chile! lame, for us, but awesome for them. Before they left they showed us their "secret Sunday room" which is a class room in the basement of our building that isn't used on Sundays, so we were able to play the piano and watch a few videos on lds.com. That was fun and now we know about the room, it's way less busy than our classroom. Oh I ment to tell you we have more Sisters!!!! So the new district has 4 sisters in it, so now there are 7 girls and arround 50 elders at church, much better than the 3 of us before. For relief society our speaker was Virgina H Pearce who is Pres. Hinkleys daughter, she was awesome. Okay That's about all I got. I'am already 15 minutes late for dinner. Love you all, miss you all.
Mom, if there are any bad typos can you fix them before forwarding, I don't have time to read back through.
Love you,
Aleta
week 2... 8/13/2010
Dear Family,
It's been a crazy week. I've been doing really well. My companions are a lot of fun-but we do have to tone down the laughter sometimes. It's funny 'cause one of them is really happy happy and one is more serious so I'm stuck in the middle to balance us out. We've been spending a lot of time this week focusing on the atonement and I have really gained a greater testimony of everything that it covers and how our lives are blessed throught the sacrifice of our savior.
Spanish is...coming. I think. I'll write more about it when;I have more time. The computer kicked me off earlier and took away five of my 30 minutes so I'm trying to go fast.:) I have a funny story to tell you though. So we sisters are vastly out numbered here. All of the sisters in the MTC meet together for Relief Society and that only takes up part of the gym. Anyway, my companians and I were walking out of Lunch the other day and we entered a "pack" of Elders. This happens quite often by the way. So all of the sudden one of them accidently bumps into us, well a normal person would say sorry or excuse me right? No, no, this elder YELPED...and jumped away. The funny thing is that that happened three times in the last two days. Sheesh Heaven forbid an Elder accidently bump into a girl. AHHHH. Anyway we all think it is fun, how they avoid us like the plague. So that is my funny story I thought you might like that.
Could you tell Brittany and Dawnstarr thanks for the letters they are great! Oh and assure everyone that no I don't have my phone and any texts they recieve are from you pretending to be me. Don't worry I foolow the rules:)
Oh and YES!!!! please use Dear Elder.com It is the best. They print out the letter everyday and we get them in our hand so I don't have to use my time reading on the internet. It's awesome. I think you can use that while I'm in Argentina as well you just have to change the address to the "pouch" address in Salt lake.
Any way got to run. I love and miss everyone!!!!
Aleta
Week 1....ahhhhh 8/07/2010
Mom,
This palce is crazy! I am on the go 24/7. It's great though. I am learning a lot and am having fun. I can already say a few things in Spanish and hopefully that will come easier as I go. Mis Companieras are Hermana Clark and Hermana Olsen, ya I have two. It's pretty awesome sister Clark is from California and sister Olsen is from Manti, Ut. We get along really well. I like the food, there are sooooo many choices, but it's all really good. Sister Clark is even more picky than me and she ends up mostly eating fruit. One really cool thing is that one of my teachers is actually from Buenos Aires Argentina! He is the only Argentine teacher here and our district gets him, cool huh. Oh and our other teacher's sister is serving is bahia blanca (i think) which is two missions right below mine.
Well, How did the family reunion go? Did you have fun and enjoy the HOT weather? It has been warm here, but not to bad because I sit right below the cooling vent in our class room.
We have eight elders in our district and they are all really great guys. They are all so quiet though. It seems like the sisters are always talking. Oh and we are the only sisters in the whole zone....so thats 60-70 Elders to the three of us. It is really werid being in the minority. At school there were around three girls to every guy in my ward, that's a bit of a difference I think.
We have been talking a lot about unity and how to become unified with Christ and Heavenly Father it has been very enlightening. We also talk a lot about listening and getting to know the people we teach and being genuinely interested in them before we start throwing doctrine at them, if you know what I mean.
I am doing good and I have been told if I make it till Sunday then I'll be fine, so that's tomorrow ya! I'm not quite sure how Relief Society will go if there is three of us, so stay tuned till next week. My P-days are on Friday so that's when I'll email next.
Oh I almost forgot, I just got your package THANK YOU! love it. mmmmmm chocolate. The skirts are really cute too. So I'm almost out of time, sorry I don't have too much to say. I'm not sure how Brandi has such long emails every week. I love you so much and tell everybody I say hi, especially everyone you see from the singles ward. Love you, miss you. And remember that you'll be alright and blessed too. Till next week!
Aleta
PS. are you posting this somewhere or just getting emails to forward?
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She has Arrived
President & Sister Gulbrandsen & Aleta
Hermana Vargas, Gillum and me
burrrr, cold spell
