Ha! snow.....yuck‏

Dear Family,
I´m sorry to hear that the snow caused so many problems for many of you this week. It looks really pretty though. Mom, thanks for the picture, I laughed when I saw all that snow. The man next to me saw my computer screen a laughed as well, then he asked it was, so I told him and we both decided that the warm weather is preferable to that. Although, today is really warm...a little too warm (not to brag or anything) but I wouldn´t mind a little snow.
Okay, so Dad, I´m glad you finally got to see the pictures and liked them. Yes Brandi I am very tan, the tan line on my feet is rather entertaining though, when I take of my shoes it still looks like I have shoes on (just white, as that is the original color of my skin).
Oh and really, I have visiting teachers.....when should I expect a visit? hahaha, it´s kinda nice to know that I´m still thought about back home. I expect more frequent emails from now on, from those visiting teachers... Oh and Melissa thanks for your letter as well, your trip sounds like fun.
Mom, I´m glad that you are feeling better. Yes you can add Natalia as a friend, I´m almost possitive that she is a member of the ward here in Tigre, just that she has a different last name now because she´s married. I think I sent a picture of her and her family playing jenga, she has the two adorble little girls.
Poor Betsy, has to wait a little bit longer. I am excited to hear when the baby finally arrives.
As for my life here in Tigre.....We had interviews with President Gulbrandsen this week and that was really great. He actually reminds mem a lot of Bishop Atkinson, except he is a lawyer instead of a dentist. Personality wise, very similar.
We are really starting to see the results of having a member with us during our lessons. All three of the investigators we had in church this week were directly related to having a member with us during our visits. Two of them have been hard to get to church. They both have baptismal dates, but in order to keep them they have to come to church. Well she, Susan, wanted to go to church and one time we picked her up. The problem has been that her mom doesn´t want her to go to church by herself, she thinks that it is very dangerous to be out early in the morning on Sundays. She is a concerned parent, so she didn´t want her 18 year old daughter alone on the streets. Well finally her brother decided that he too wanted to come to church and a member, Hno. Acosta actually invited them and offered to come and pick them both up and that they would all go together. Yeah. This same member is stopping by their house tonight to help them with a problem with their roof. This family is really starting to feel the love of the Savior through the help of the members of his church. It truly does make a huge difference. I recently re-read the talk by President Monson to the Relief Society in Oct. He said,¨True Charity is love in action.¨ I love this. It really is true, in order to truly have a love for someone we have to do something, show it some how and when we do this we are that much closer to showing them a divine kind of love.
This week has been good,I´ve really started to take the hymn ¨count your blessings¨ to heart. All you really have to do is remember, remember the Lord and your blessing from him.
Well I think that´s about all I got for you this week.
My love as always, take care,
Aleta

ps. I hope it warms up some for you!

Happy President's Day!

Dear Family,
Thank you so much for the emails. Dawnstarr thanks it sounds like all the Pilchers are doing really well. Mom, I guess it´s good I´m not around right now, since I haven´t had the chicken pox (well maybe) it´s still in debate I guess. Jack I hope you get feeling better soon. aunt Janie, wow, sounds like a blast. I hope your birthday was great! Oh and Betsy I like the names, don´t waver, stay strong. Oh and no, I differ from Scott in that I am not really one to go off on adventures and travel the World. I prefer to stay around home and enjoy the local fun. I guess I´m just more boring than he is. Oh well. I can´t wait to see pictures when she finally comes!!!!
As for me here in Argentina...there was a few days of rain this week, yeah! Oh, but the day before the rain was horrible, yuck, so muggy and humid and hot. I was so glad when I woke up the next day to RAIN. It has been a little cooler though, not as bad as January, my companion says that it is still pretty hot all through March. I really hope she´s wrong.
Okay, and as for spiritual things....This week was much better than the last. It really is interesting how life can be like a roller coaster, ups on day and downs the next. It is just like Lehi says there must needs be an opposition in all things, without it we would never appreciate anything. I have a lot of gratitude for all of the blessings I´ve seen this week, in the lives of our investigators and my companion and I.
We are excited we have two investigators with baptismal dates, Jorge and Gina . Gina is 8 and her father is a less active member, her mother is not a member of the church and at first was against the idea of her getting baptized. We talked to them together and the father, John really stood up for the church and the gospel. He wants to come back, but he´s not living the law of chastity, as in they aren´t married, and feels like he is an outsider. We are going to try and work more with him and assure him that with the Lord all things are possible and that through repentance he can feel the love of the Lord more than at any other time. We need to talk to the both of them again this week to confirm the baptism and make sure that the mother, is still okay with it.
We also had a great lesson yesterday with Pablo, he has been having a rough couple of weeks, but he did come to church this week. His religious history is Evangelical and so he has a bit of reservation to leave what he knows and move on to something else. We´ve been trying to explain that it is just more, like before he was able to see but his vision was blurred and the restored gospel is like having glasses to see everything clearly. It isn´t different just more defined. Well yesterday we asked if he had prayed or not to know if the Book of Mormon is true, he says that he knows it´s true and an inspired book, but hasn´t prayed about it. We assured him that if he prays he will get an answer. We also talked about real intent and what that means. We watched ¨the restoration¨ and he really liked it. He committed to ask specifically about the Book of Mormon and if it is truly the word of God.
We have also been having some success working with our recent convert Luz Maria, she is a great little missionary. She has been talking to all of her neighbors and introducing us to several of them. One of which is Jorge, he´s really great and came to church yesterday as well. He was a little hesitant to accept a baptismal date at first, since he was baptised in the Catholic church when he was a baby. We explained about authority and also Moroni chapter 8. He also has a few issues with organized religion in general because everyone is so different and all claim they have the truth, needless to say he really related with Joseph Smith. We have another lesson with him tonight and are very excited. I am definitely gaining a strong testimony of the importance of recent converts.

Okay that´s all I got for you this week.
I love you all and will write again next week (as if there were any doubt of that)
Love you,
Aleta

happy valentine´s day

Dear family,
First off happy belated birthday to Sheila and early birthday to Aunt Janie! Thanks for the letters they lift my spirit every week. Yes, mom, some of them I read at the computer and others I print off and read later, or over ´cause they are just that good :). And yes, they do celebrate valentines day here. I´m pretty sure that is similar to the states. Although everything here is less commercialized. There are not constant remainders of it every where like there would be in the states. It´s kind of nice.
I´m so glad to hear that you all had a great week. Sounds exciting. Mom, Thanks for informing me about Mallory.
Oh I almost forgot to tell you. I had lunch yesterday with a family from Peru. Well they gave us purvian food...Mondongo, something like that. This was in a soup with corn. Well I had no idea what it was and my companion didn´t say anything to me. Well after I had eaten it and noticed that my companion had only eaten one or two pieces of hers I did what I knew I should not have done...looked in the dictionary. Yep...intestine. Yuck! Ps. it didn´t taste good so you don´t need to try it, take my word for it.
As for this week, work work work, like usual. It is really interesting to see how the lord prepares people in advance for trials that they have. One of our investigatores is going through a really hard time right now and to top it off his dad died yesterday. It is amazing though that he has God again in his life and that he knows were he can find solace.

I love you all.
love Aleta

say it with me...bau...ti..smo.... bautismo!‏

Dear Family,

Today is the first day of a new transfer and yep, still here in Tigre with my comp. yeah no changes!

Yeah! Well we had a baptism Saturday and it was amazing. We definately had our problems to work through to get everything done, like the fact that the day of the interview she was locked in her house and couldn´t leave. He uncle had left with the keys and locked the door, not knowing that she needed to leave with us at noon. So we taught the her a lesson through the window in the door, luckily that one opens :) well we had to reschedual the interview for Friday night and when we returned...she was still locked in. Poor girl, don't worry it´s not as bad as it sounds and it was a little bit funny. Finally her uncle came and she had her interview. Then on Saturday we pretty much spent the whole day with her to make sure that didn´t happen again, but no worries in the end it was beautiful. I´ve never seen someone so excited before. Luz Maria had a constant grin on her face and she was just radiant. I´m so grateful for the opportunity that I have to be here in Tigre a little bit longer and help more people have this joy and the Love of the Savior in their lives. We have started to work a lot with the Relief Society presidency in welcoming her and helping her feel more comfortable with the all of these new things and people. She´s very attached to the two of us, so we are working on ways to get other members involved in friendshipping her so there is a nice hand off from us to the ward.

We also met with Pablo this week. He is really great and has a strong testimony of the Savior and his importance as the Son of God and Redeemer. He is just worried about what others will think if he continues to learn more about he church. He says that if he knows, with out a doubt that the Book of Mormon is true than it wouldn´t matter. We talked a lot about the restoration and the authority and also about having real intent when you pray. I think that this helped him some and we´ll have to see this week. We have plans to take a member, Hno. Acosta, with us this week to meet him, they have similar backgrounds, and he is really excited to meet him.

Sorrry going to be short this week so I can attach some pictures...finally. Well, okay nevermind, I´m having problems with the computer maybe next week.



Love,

Aleta



ps. thanks for the letters, Aunt Janie, dad, brother Bingham and Jack, they were all great.

end of January already? woah.

Dear family,
Thank you for the letters! Yeah. Thanks Brandi!!! I wish you could have seen the smile on my face as I read the part about ¨It´s a wonderful life¨! Yeah yeah yeah!
Okay, mom sounds like you had a fun week with the bedroom. Hope things turn out well for you with that project. I´m sure that the Cookies went over well and that if he shared, his whole district is grateful. Yes I did find powdered sugar.
Dad, I´m really glad that you are having fun with your book, sounds like a good one.
Jack, grape jelly......really? very resourceful. hahaha
Oh and a belated Birthday shout out to Jackie and an early one to Isaac and Betsy!
Okay so as for things here...it´s been good. Still hot, but good. It´s really interesting to see so many blessings and progress here in Tigre, when I feel like I´m still not quite working at full steam. Maybe the Lord just knows that I´m trying and that is what counts. I can´t even count the number of blessings I saw here in Tigre this week. Many of them were small and simple but I know that that is usually how the Lord works.
We had a wonderful lesson with Pablo on Saturday. We watched ¨Finding Faith in Christ¨ with him and a recent convert, Oscar, and one of his friends, Erika, a former investigator. Well the spirit was incredibly strong during and after the movie, the we talked about the savior and what he means to us. Pablo was at a bit of a loss for words, he has an amazing testimony of the Savior. Then to our surprise Erika shared her feelings as well and what she liked about the movie was how the family is sharing about Jesus and testifying to their friend, but not in a pushy way. I´d never even noticed that before, but it is really true. They are sharing their testimonies of Christ out of love for their friend. Then she surprised us and said she´d like to talk a little bit more about this later.
We also had several good lessons with Luz Maria, she has a baptismal date for this Saturday and things are still going well for that. We just need to work some more with the members to help her feel more comfortable with other people. She is quite attached to the two of us.
Yesterday we had a lesson with a reference from a member, Nelly. She is really interested in our message and wants to learn more. We shared about the Book of Mormon and are going to follow up on Tuesday.
So yep, that´s pretty much my week. I hope all goes well with everyone at home.
I love you all!
Aleta

great week

Dear Family,
Mom, thanks for your letter. I did get the other package last week, the one with the shirts and apple cider, yum. Thanks a lot. Yeah,I know I need to write a few letters, I´ll get around to it one of these days I promise:) Oh and I agree last week was a fun little surprise with the email.
Well, as far as my life goes.....things are much better with my companion. I think that is hard when to people are so very different and to top it off are from very different cultures. We are making it work and usually laughing at each others wacky customs. Ha. yep. OH and have I mentioned that it is HOT here, yep still hot, incase anyone was wondering. Alex is lucky that he´ll miss the heat.
Let´s see can´t tink of anything new me wise, so as for the reason I´m here.....
This was a really good week. We finally had investigators at church! All of three of them really liked it. It was so great to be able to help people feel the spirit of the Lord at church and learn more about his gospel and how they can apply it to their lives. One of our investigators, Pablo, is really a genuine person. He does what he says he is going to do and want very much to follow the Savior. He used to be very active in another church, but hasn´t gone in the past to years. He realizes that something is missing in his life. The first time we met with him he said that he felt full, in a way that he hadn´t felt in a really long time. He told us yestserday that he really liked it and felt really good, but is a little nervous to take steps away from what he knows and where he is comfortable. He said a lot of things that we teach him and talk about are new to him, and he´s just not sure. Well, we assured him that Heavenly Father wants the very best for him and that through sincere prayer he will recieve an answer from God. He has amazing faith in the Lord and it has got him through some tough times in his life, we are excited to see him again this week and see how the Lord has helped him.
We had several lessons with Luz Maria this week. She told her aunt the otherday that she wants to be baptized. That is a big step for her and hopefully that will help open up the line of communication between the two of them. They don´t talk too much. Her testimony is growing and we are getting better at figuring out ways that help her understand the lessons. We have arranged for a member to help her learn how to read. Luz Maria is very excited for this and I know this will help build her confidence in the Lord and how he can help her if she trusts in him.
Basically, I´m trying to work hard with the time the Lord has given me in Tigre and we are seeing blessings in the lives of our investigators as they begin to put the Lord first in their lives.
Well that´s about all I got this week. I´ll try and be more exciting next week.
Love and miss you!!!
Aleta

Ps. Jack, WOW! That is so great. I´m praying that things continue to go well.

another week here and gone‏

Dear family,
Well thanks for the letters they are always great.
Betsy I like both, good job and tough decision with the names.
Well this is going to be kind of short. My computer just shut down, so now i have to do it all over again. To do Internet we come to a little place across the street from the train station. There are a lot of computers and each one has a number. Well the person at the desk tells you what number to go to and turns it on , then you get charged for how ever long you are on the computer.Well when you are done you tell them what number is yours and they turn it off. WELL, somebody got the number mixed up. For some reason they thought that they were number 4, but really they were number 8 and I was number 4. So Mine got turned off in stead. Oh thus is life, it does keep things interesting though.
So dad, no i haven´t gone to the museum, it´s closed Mondays, but yes I´ve seen the outside, pretty cool architecture. Oh and yes Portas de frutas in very much like a huge flea market slash arts festival. It´s only open on the weekends though, oh and holidays, so I did go once with my other companion it was a lot of fun.
Somebody tell Alex that Argentina is amazing and he is so lucky to come here! Good luck in the MTC and enjoy it.
Jack, I really liked your letter today.
Mom I really like the quote. Thanks a lot. Hopefully I can get the package soon. Maybe tomorrow!
This week was very good. We had three investigators with baptismal dates last week, but only one came to church. This seems to still be one of our biggest hurdles. One of our investigators Agustina, is really good and she has a strong desire to follow the Lord and be baptised, she knows that it is true. She just doesn´t want to move on with out her husband, well they still need to get married. She has come to church a couple of times and once with him, Gustavo. She feels that it is just not he same with out him. So this week we are working a lot more with him. In the beginning he was really interested and wanted to change, for himself and for his family. then out of the blue he didn´t want to listen anymore. We have yet to find out what really happened. Hopefully we will be able to get to the heart of things this week and help them progress and come closer to the Lord.
Also we have an investigator, Luz Maria, she is 19 and very sweet. She can´t read though, and that does make things a little more difficult. We are taking things slow and trying to make sure that she understands everything. She has some kind of learning disorder, but really wants to learn about the gospel. So we are trying to not overwhelm her with information and we need to repeat and go over everything a few times so that she retains it. She came to church yesterday and really like it.
All in all things are going well here in Tigre. We are starting to see some of the fruits of our labor. I feel like the Lord has a lot of wonderful things in store for Tigre.

Well that´s it, that´s all folks, ´till next week
bye, or as they say in Argentina, Chao!
I love you all SO MUCH.
Aleta