30 September 2013 - general letter

How fast has gone by this month!  I can hardly believe that tomorrow begins October.

This week has been an interesting one, possibly one of the most roller-coaster weeks of the mission.  Hermana De Leon and I have been working like crazy women, trying to find new investigators and see some progress with them.  On Tuesday of this week, we had 8 lessons in one day.  That´s sort of a huge amount.  But on Sunday, when it came to sacrament meeting, we didn´t have a single investigator come.  We´re working hard to find out how we can motivate them to come to church... that seems to be the real challenge. I love Argentina, but the people here are notoriously lazy.

But who is ridiculously excited for general conference this weekend?  This sister!  It´s great, because there are 4 sessions, so more people can come, at different times!  And also, it´s just a great thing to invite investigators to.  Hermana De Leon and I are so excited to fill the church with people this week.

In this last week we had 14 new investigators, but there was one that was probably my favorite.  Her name is Yisella, and she loves to study history and cultures.  She has done all sorts of research of different cultures of the world and is really interested in learning more about her ancestors.  I´m pretty sure we were super good friends before this life.  I´m also pretty sure that she would absolutely love the Book of Mormon.  Unfortunately the lesson we had with her was pretty short, but we´re going to visit with her this week, and hopefully we´ll be able to help her learn more about the history of South America!

Anyways, I´m quickly running out of time, so that´s all for this week!  Hope everyone is well, and enjoy conference!

Love,
Hermana Walton

30 September 2013

The mission teaches you what you can and can´t eat from off the street.

They´re called misporos.

23 SEPTEMBER 2013 - General Letter

First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my favorite little sister, Macalla!  I can´t believe she´s already 17!  Where did the years go....

Speaking of time flying by, this week I will hit my 6-month mark of my time in the mission.  And according to my ministerial certificate, I should be released from my calling as a missionary on this date in exactly one year.  That´s really not too much time left in the mission!  1/3 gone.  I´ve got to make the best of my time here!

This week was kind of a crazy one.  Hermana De Leon and I had been working a lot in a very small part of our area last transfer, so this last week we decided to open a new part of our area and expand our efforts.  We spent several days just knocking doors and looking for new investigators to teach.  Those days can be pretty tiring, but we´ve seen some good potential in some of our investigators and are excited to continue working in that area. 

But one night we were out working and it had been quite the day.  We found a few new investigators and were headed to an appointment about 30 blocks away.... when we had a bike accident.  The breaks on Hermana De Leon´s bike were faulty and when I stopped at the curb, she ran into the back of my bike and went hurling foward, landing sprawled out on the pavement.  Luckily there was no more damage than a few bruises.  But the back of my bike was pretty damaged, so I ended up carrying the back of my bike for 25 blocks until we arrived at the bike shop of a member.  Needless to say, we missed our appointment for the night, and we both ended up feeling pretty sore by the end of it, but at least it´s an interesting story to tell.

Anyways, we´re still working hard in Junin.  Although we´ve had some problems with bringing our investigators to church- which is ultimately how they are going to progress- we´re working hard to improve that.  Because of the lack of church attendance, it doesn´t look like we´re going to baptize this month, but we´ve got big plans for the month of October.  The work continues on.  That´s something kind of interesting about the work-- we´re always planning ahead, for the next day, next week, next month, that sometimes it´s hard to remember what the date actually is.  But we have lots to do and only a short time to do it, so we press forward!

I hope everyone is well and I send my love!

Sincerely,
Hermana Walton

23 September 2013

Like how to fix your bicycle,

and how to shine your shoes,

and how to cook Guatemalan food.

15 September 2013

How to make two sister missionaries ridiculously happy:

1.  Dig up a part of your garden that contains their favorite flowers and give it to them as a gift.
2.  Accept an invitation to listen to them the next week.


Okay, honestly, lots of people do the second part, but it´s not every day that little old men in Argentina give you a Forget-me-not plant.   Needless to say, I walked all the way home with a huge grin on my face and my hands full of flowers.  The best.

News for the transfers:  Hermana De Leon and I are together again here in Junin!  Wooooo!  I love this area.

This week  the weather here has been a bit bipolar, which has made the work interesting.  We had a day where we thought we were going to die of heat stroke, and then two days later we brought out all of our winter  clothes again.  What´s up, Argentina?  How about you decide what time of year it is?  We´ve been trying to decide which is better... the freezing rain, or the blistering sun and wind.  But it doesn´t matter, in both situations, we don´t like to  ride bikes, so we were on foot for most of this week.

Being on foot means that we only covered a small part of our area.  I´m pretty sure that we´ve knocked almost every door exists in that area.... so it´s time to branch out a bit.  That´s our goal for this week, to work in different areas.  But I still love that area, because all the  neighborhood kids know us and we´ve actually taught a few of their families that way.  Now whenever we pass by they ask us if they can ride our bicycles... we only let them once!

Anyways, hope you all are well.  The work continues here in Junin.  Love you all!

Until next week,
Hermana Walton




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September 9, 2013

This has been a great week!

First of all, we had a day of rain, which was really beautiful... I´ve missed those grey Oregon skies.  The only problem is that now it´s humid and it´s actually pretty warm today.  I´m not quite ready for that.

This week our district leader had his birthday, so we had a little celebration for him, which was a blast.  One of the sisters in our district is from Mexico, so she made burritos... first time I´ve had anything like that in a long time.  Argentines don´t like spicy food.

And the best news of all... we found an incredible new family that we´re teaching... 10 of them!  Okay, so it´s a family and their cousins, but it´s so great to see them all!  And get this- the parents are MARRIED! Woooo!  That´s an anomoly and a half here in Argentina.  But they´re super receptive of our message and always have a ton of great questions.  And all of them are super excited to read the Book of Mormon and actually follow through with their commitments.  It´s a miracle.

This week is transfers, but we still don´t know what´s going to happen.  We´re going to get a call today to know if we need to buy tickets to travel to Ramos Mejia, but we won´t find out until tomorrow night which one of us goes.  I hope I stay here because I absolutely love Junín.  Everyone here is super friendly and just great.

Dog?  Or is it?

Anyways, that´s basically it for this week. But I send my love!

Hermana Walton

Local Animals

September 2, 2013

Feliz Septiembre!  I can hardly believe how fast the time is flying... we only have one more week in this transfer, and I´m hoping that I´ll keep here in Junín.  I really love it here.

This week was a bit crazy... we lost quite a bit of time to work because we had to travel to Ramos Mejia on Sunday, and then on Monday we travelled to Chivilcoy for a Zone Conference, and then finally returned to our own area in the evening on Tuesday.  By the time we finally got back to our area we were exhausted from too much time sleeping on floors and in colectivos, but happy to get back to work.  

So I´ve been getting a lot of emails over the last few weeks with requests to know more about what I´m doing here in Argentina. If anyone has specific questions that they would like answered, pregunteme!  I am happy to respond to any questions. 

This week Hermana De Leon and I officially became Argentinas.  As I mentioned last week, Hermana De Leon finally took care of her Argentine ID, but even more important than that, we MADE EMPANADAS for the first time this week!  Woo!  Other than that, we mainly just ate a lot of gnocchis, because it´s the end of the month and that´s all we could afford to make. Nevertheless, they are delicious!

As far as the work goes, this week Hermana De Leon and I decided to start visiting less-active members of the church... we have probably about 15 active members in the church, but we have probably a few hundred inactive members... so we have plenty of visits to make.  We found a great little family of 5 through our efforts with that, who we are now teaching.  The mother has a problem with smoking and for that didn´t feel comfortable in the iglesia, but she welcomed us into her house and was very happy to talk to us.  The youngest children are not baptized, but we set a date with them to be baptized at the end of this month.

Speaking of the end of this month, it´s almost Spring!  Wooo!  It´s been absolutely gorgeous here in Junín, and everyone has been out on their motorcycles lately.  One of these days I´m going to get a photo of the streets absolutely full of bikes to send home.  It really is something to see.  But anyways, Spring!  Here ¨dia de primavera¨ is actually a pretty big deal.  Everyone has plans to go to the Laguna or lo que sea to spend the day with their family.  Who would have thought.

Anyways, until next week!

Love,

Hermana Walton