Prayers are answered!

Hello family!

I´m writing earlier today because we´re going to catch a collectivo to Santa Tome and spend the pday there with the district! We´re going to the puente to Brazil, meaning we´re going to the bridge at the border and apparently there are shops and stuff there, so I´m pretty excited about that! It should be fun to see.

So I should probably be careful from now on with what I ask you guys to pray for, because literally everything I say (my health, the fridge, etc) is resolved within a day. Our air conditioning was installed on Tuesday morning, and then the Hermana Gonzalez randomly asked the guy if he could fix fridges too and he was like sure! So our fridge was fixed on Wednesday morning and I found it rather miraculous. We celebrated by moving our mattresses onto the floor directly below the air conditioning and have slept there every night since haha. It´s now official that we have the best pension in the mission because it´s so nice so every living condition I have after virasoro will be downhill from here. 

Also funny story, this week on Thursday Hermana Gonzalez and I were talking about how we haven´t had milanesa in awhile and we´d like some with cheese and tomatoe on top, and then the member we went to on Friday served us milanesa with cheese and tomatoe on top and we were like YES. So then during the lunch the member asked me what I like and I said I like pollo y papas (chicken and potatoes) and then we went to the Moraga´s on Saturday for lunch and they served really good chicken and potatoes and I was like this is really funny so I thought in my head, mostly as a joke, I´d like empanadas tomorrow and then the member who brings lunch to church for us and we take it home gave us empanadas. Heaven takes care of me, and also has a sense of humor :)

Questions from the family:

so first of all, how's this week been?

This week has been really good! I don´t have anything specific to share that I can think of, sorry! It was nice and fresco, almost cold, on Saturday which was a nice break. Also this week I attempted to make lemon bars for Hermana Moraga´s birthday, and considering I had no measuring cups or anything and just guessed and then used a gas stove, they were semi-decent. But no one here knew the difference so they told me they were good :)

how do you wash your clothes?

Hermana Moraga is an angel and washes them for us. 

Well that´s about all I can think of for now, sorry it was early and you guys didn´t have much time to write me! Didn´t realize it would throw you off :) 

I love you guys a ton and pray for you always!!

love, Hermana Rawlins

Yes I know I´ve gained weight though I think it looks worse than it actually is in those pictures.

Divisiones and New Boots

yay Emily´s mission call wooot!!! I´m so so happy for her and it all looks so exciting!! yay yay! It´s gonna be waay sweet to be serving alongside of her and Emily you rock!

So this week was pretty good for the most part, I had divisiones with the hermana lider capacitadora (I have no idea how to spell that sorry) so that was nice because she was nice. At the end I asked her "como estoy como una misionera?" and she said "muy bueno, va a entrainar este cambio" and I was like ...oh gosh. Within the next three cambios 30 missionaries are coming, and only FOUR of them are Elders. Soo yeah. Crazy!!!! I´m kinda freaked out about that because I´m still not confident with knowing what I´m doing, let alone in Spanish, but I also have peace knowing that if I´m asked to do it it means The Lord believes in me. So that´s that. 

Also we´re close enough here to Brazil that carnivale happens here as well, so that will be rather interesting sometime in February. They go right down mainstreet, which is naturally exactly where we live. Our balcony and window have a great view of mainstreet, so those days we´ll likely be hiding inside hahaha. 

I bought boots this week finally! There´s a picture of me with them. They´re nice and were only 115 pesos so I was pretty happy about that :)

Well I´m sorry this letter seems to be really lame. Nothing quite as good as J. and the frog happened this week, but I promise I´m not as down as this letter sounds. I really am doing well! :)

I´ve been thinking this week about how this really is His work. He´s been doing it since the beginning of the world, and He´s just glad we´re trying to help. I´m learning and praying to focus on what I CAN do and not what I can´t, and when I do I´m really happy being able to serve other people, even in simple ways.

love you all a ton!

-hermana rawlins

Just Another Normal Crazy Week

So this week has been good, thank you all soo much for your love and support last week!! Helped a ton and I am so so thankful for all of you!

On Thursday this week, President and hna Lapierre came to virasoro to do interviews, and it was just SO good. I really love him and Hermana Lapierre and am thankful for them and their love and advice. 

Saturday was loco. It rained, but not enough to wash the dirt streets clean, only enough to wet all of the loose dirt and make a TON of mud. We left as usual so we were trucking through the mud and rain to visit J. There had been some confusion because his dad talked to us one time and said that he was already baptized, so we were like, but why does nobody know him? Soo the night before we were looking through the records and discovered that he, indeed, had already been baptized. Haha. So we went to deliver the news to our investigator that "surprise, you´re baptized!" and we got there very muddy and J. was very busily stabbing a huuge frog in front of his house with a large metal stick. Not being phased, we talked to his grandma and asked how old he was so she went and got his documents and we did the math and said "J., you´re 12!" and he was like "no I´m 11!!" (still stabbing) and we were like no you´re definitely 12! and he was like NO I´M 11!!

So at this point I started to chuckle because my life is ridiculous, and then we walked out into the street in front of the house and a chico was herding a bunch of horses down the road so they all started stampeding cause he´d just gotten them started, so hna gonzalez screamed and ran against a fence to get out of the way and at this point in my life I stood in the middle of a muddy Argentinian road with horses galloping around me, and started laughing hysterically. 

Rest assured the rest of the day continued to be loco, but I´m running out of time. I´m learning to love the craziness and find enjoyment in it :)

What happens with the cyber is it closes at noon for the siesta, so we come back later at the end of the day and I use that time to email the President, and we also do anything we need to on a computer, like print out invitations or something.

I love you all a ton and will be praying extra for our family right now!! I know the Lord is always, ALWAYS watching out of us and His plan is greater than we can understand. Sending you all my love from here in Virasoro!!

-Hermana Rawlins

Questions from the family:

Can anybody write you at your email address, or is it limited?

anybody can write me! the limited part is my time to read and respond to things other than thank you!! and love you!! Haha

We didn't know you had elders in your branch til your last letter. Tell us more about the organization of your area.
So Elders have been here for a while in virasoro, and then they divided the area of the town when we the hermanas arrived. Like what happened in Morrisville. Same ward, two areas for elders and hermanas to work together in the same ward. Then Santa Tome has the same deal, and they´re also in our district so our district leader who is in charge of us and our well being and work is there, and then our zone is apostoles so it´s us and another district of elders and hermanas in aposotoles. Hope that makes sense and is what you wanted! I found out yesterday that we have 9 active Elders (of the priesthood) in our branch. So that gives you an idea of numbers and what we´re working with here

Any letter mail yet?

Yes! I got a Christmas letter from all of you with the picture of the Savior, and a Christmas card from Grandma and Grandpa Rowe (thank you!) So I haven’t gotten the announcement still which I´m mad about, and the fabric. The letters I´ve gotten have all used the little global forever stamp, I don´t know if you´ve always used that or if that makes a difference.

my shoes after the really muddy day (but actually pretty clean compared to what they had been), rip the nice tan color I liked. Everything is tinted red here, including my ankles. Never comes off.

a cool sign here in the centro

This family has a really sweet grape tree in their backyard, and their little boy stood on a chair to make sure he would be in the picture as well. I think he´s pretty funny

there´s a brand here that´s called Amanda so random buses will drive by with AMANDA really big on the side and in the groceries stores there´s huge bags of mate with AMANDA on them as well. We think it´s really funny, so we bought some rice to take pictures with. My goal is to get a picture with a bus!

Spanish Mishaps

hi famjamily!

Okay so this week has honestly been rough and long because I got sick at the beginning and had to keep working with a fever and cold symptoms every day. Whereas my solution to getting sick is to lie in bed and not take medicine because I don´t like it, the solution here is to take a bunch of Argentinian medicine and keep working. But the medicine is helping and the nurse is nice and speaks English and I got a blessing where Elder Sattler basically said keep working and you´ll be fine haha so that´s what I´ve done! 

Elder Sattler has a new companion here (this is a pair of Elders that also works in Virasiro where Amanda is) because his first trainer finished and went home. Elder Morales his companion told me my Spanish was good for a "nueva" so that was nice haha! Anyway we´re excited to really get this town moving with the work now and Elder Morales is great! 

Some funny things that happened with my Spanish this week:

I was teaching in Spanish, and really trying hard, and all of a sudden blurted out "because" instead of porque. It was so funny cause neither me or hermana gonzalez expected it so we both almost cracked up during the lesson. My poor brain just spits out whatever it can think of fast enough.

Also, to the same investigator whose name is J., I tried to ask how often he prays to make sure he really is, and instead of "Con que frequencia ora, J.?" I said "Con que frequencia ora, Jose Smith (Joseph Smith, the first prophet of the Restoration of the church)?". Again, hna gonzalez and I both cracked up.

And in the SAME LESSON (not a good day for Spanish for me) I tried to ask "When did you go to church with your dad?" and instead of papá I said papa, which can either be translated as "When did you go to church with the Pope?", or "When did you go to church with your potatoe?". Hahahaha

I´m trying to get better at just laughing at myself, and sometimes I make it reeaally easy. :)

Questions from the family:

What is Relief Society like there?
small and kinda of boring for me because it´s all in spanish and everyone talks really quiet. So i have serious problems staying awake haha :)

What do you do during all of your walking time?
think, sing hymns in my head (weirdly in spanish sometimes), and try not to die from the sun. oh gosh we walk so much

Any snail mail yet? Letters sent in the mail to her have been really slow getting delivered.
nope, but my leaders are in posadas today for a meeting and then we have a zone conference tomorrow where i´ll be with them so I´m crossing my fingers for some tomorrow!

Dad said Chile made a big deal about New Years, was it like that? What did you do?

It wasn´t really a big deal, I personally don´t think they make a big deal of anything here in virasoro. We ate carne asado at a members house that pity-invited us cause they found out that day at lunch we didn´t have a place to go. (everyone eats super late so no one wanted to ruin their plans and eat dinner earlier with us haha). So that family was nice us enough to prepare a little something early for us and then we went home early cause the environment there was gonna get rowdy. so yeah. Happy new years! :)

Did you find a SD card?

I found one in the cyber but I haven´t bought it yet. I can though!

Do you have another American nearby?

Elder Sattler came in on the same transfer with me and he´s here in Virasoro, and now one of the Sisters in Santa Tome is brand new so I´ll see her every week for district meetings!

love,
hermana rawlins

 

a random bird was in a shop which was fun