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.
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She has Arrived
President & Sister Gulbrandsen & Aleta
Hermana Vargas, Gillum and me
burrrr, cold spell
