I'm glad you all had a great week! The
dogs are sooo cute! Mom and Dad can we keep them? Pleaseee?? ...we'll
take good care of them I promise!! :) Kim, have you named them yet?
Well, Matthew is still the stud of the school making
all the girls weak at the knees when he walks by it seems. I'm not
surprised:) Hahaha...que capooo! ...and the cinnamon rolls look
delicious! This morning Hermana Hundley and I went around the corner
from our pension and bought some facturas... Argentine donuts...but
they're not really donuts...but they're delicious.
Well, last Monday was an awful day. We didn't sleep
hardly at all because we had to get all of Hermana Cortes' stuff ready
to go to Gallegos! We woke up early...like 5:00AM
ish, finished packing, didn't have time to eat breakfast, and then
later when we went to Trelew with the Elders we went and bought ice
cream as a district...1 kilo. Downed it like champs and then we went to
the terminal and one by one said goodbye to the Elders from our zone. At
5:00PM
Elder Elliz left...I still don't know why that one was so hard for me.
I think it was because he was the one that called us every night to ask
about our day...kinda like when I was at BYU and I would call home each
day or night or you would call me. It's nice to have someone who wants
to hear about your day and make sure you're doing okay. I was bawling.
Great...because I need one more thing for people to look at me funny
for. These people already think I'm weird...crazy Argentines. I'm sure
it looked hilarious though, I'll give them that much. Anyway, I decided
that I hate change. I hate saying goodbye...especially to people. It's
gonna rip my heart out when I leave Rawson.
Welp, round two came when
Hermana Cortes left at 8:00PM.
That one wasn't as hard for some reason...mostly because I think I had
prepared myself mentally and emotionally for that moment and it just
kinda happened really fast. I was going to be staying with two hermanas
from Trelew but we had to wait for another Hermana who was arriving at
like 11:30PM.
Welp...all day I had only eaten a little bit of ice cream that we
bought earlier. Turned out it was Hermana Twitchell we were waiting for!
I'm gonna take a time out from the story to talk for a minute about
Hermana Twitchell...she's soo great and staying super positive. I hadn't
heard that she was going home on Tuesday.
I can't imagine how hard that would be, but it's probably good because
she's gonna get to the point where she won't be able to fly home because
she's so sick. She's awesome though. She's one tough cookie for
sticking it out for this long.
Okay, back to the story....so we slept in
Trelew...didn't go to bed until at least 1:00AM because Hermana Twitchell arrived late. Woke up at 6:30...obviously.
We studied and then went to the terminal...still not having eaten
anything. So, all those attributes of missionaries that we find in Alma
17 that we read about Alma and the Sons of Mosiah? Yep, one of them says
something like "they suffered hunger and fatigue." That scripture took
on a whole new meaning this week for me...keep in mind that in the last
three days I only had about 15 hours of sleep and it had officially been
24 hours without anything solid to eat...pretty sure there's a rule
about that in the handbook. Well, turned out that my companion was not
on the bus she was supposed to be so instead of going back to Rawson
with the Elders to eat lunch with a family that had prepared lunch for
all of us, I got to stay with an Hermana in Trelew at the terminal for
another 2 hours, miss the lunch appointment, and wait for my companion
to come. Well, she finally did.
Here's the part of the story that kills
me. Elder Verges knew that I hadn't eaten and it was likely my new
companion hadn't either, so he talked to the family Nievas and asked if
we could come a little bit later to eat...they happily agreed...Elder
sent me a text with the good news. I was super excited...but when my
companion arrived, we started looking around for Hermano Chemin who was
no where to be found. He was our ride back to Rawson. It's about 2:00PM...turns
out, he also assumed we must be hungry and came back with 6 HUGE
footlong hotdogs for us to eat...my companion and I both ate two a
little reluctantly knowing that the Nievas family had a feast prepared
for us since they always make sooo much food. Our only hope was that the
Elders had eaten almost all of it. No such luck. We got to the members
house shortly after and there were two huge plates of food with 4 Elders
smiling happily at us so excited that we were finally going to get some
food...I wanted to die. We slowly but surely got all the food down and
left the house with the Elders (using the excuse of having people to
visit...which was true...but we had like 3 hours) ready to
puke...luckily we got out BEFORE they could offer us dessert. Now, it
was about 27 hours that we didn't eat anything solid...that's not fun
and a little bit uncomfortable, I'll give you that, but I wasn't dying.
But going from hungry to completely stuffed and overflowing in the
matter of an hour is just straight up miserable. Poor Hermana
Hundley...her first experience in Rawson. Oh well, we've more than made
up for it:) And mom, don't worry, we always have plenty of food to
eat...it was just a weird situation where we were stuck in a terminal
for hours and hours with lots of little inconveniences:)
So, speaking of Hermana Hundley. She got to Rawson on Tuesday
in the afternoon. I don't have any pictures of us yet, but I will soon!
She's AWESOME! We are already having so much fun together. There's
always an automatic connection between the North American sister
missionaries because we have pretty much the same experiences before the
mission and lots of the same challenges coming to the mission. But, get
this! Turns out Hermana Hundley and I were in the same Statistics class
at BYU! Hahaha... what are the odds? Of course we never ran into each
other because the class had 900 students...so maybe the odds were in our
favor...haha just kidding. But cool, right? Oh, also...did you know that
Daniel Cottam is getting his mission call this week? I didn't either
until just now...wanna know how I found out? Yep, Hermana Hundley told
me. That was a super awkward moment. We both just kind of looked at each
other...looked at her screen... laughed...and then kept writing our
emails. Hahahaha...sooo funny. They met at BYU and apparently are pretty
good friends. Small world? I think yes. Anyway, Hermana Hundley is from
Mesa, Arizona. She is thinking of studying exercise science at
BYU...just like ME! Hahaa...but for reals we are gonna get along so well.
She speaks the language really well and we haven't had any problems
this week with not understanding or having a hard time teaching. The
hardest thing is the change for the menos activos and investigators.
It's gonna take a few visits more for some of them to open up, but it'll
come! Hermana Hundley came from Rio Gallegos where she served for 4
months. I love her!!
Welp, that's pretty much the news for the week.
Today we're going to the beach to stare longingly at the waves from a
safe distance with Hermano and Hermana Chemin and, of course, the
Elders. We have two new Elders. Elder Sanchez is from Panama and Elder
Watkins is from Utah! He graduated from Davis High last year...so he's
from like draper or something like that. I can't remember. They're both
awesome Elders and we're excited to have them in the district! It's just
Elder Verges and me left from our original district here in Rawson.
Crazy how the time goes by. I can't believe that I've been in Rawson for
3 months already. It's insane.
So, I don't remember if I told you about Mariela, our superstar investigator. She has a baptismal date set for February 1
and is sooo ready! She's a reference from a ward member. She came to
say goodbye to Hermana Cortes at the terminal in Trelew and we've been
visiting her everyday! We're also teaching her 13 year old daughter
Agustina. She's great! She's a little slower with the learning and will
hopefully be able to get baptized the same day as her mom, if not maybe
the week after. They are both really interested and have received
answers that the church is true and that this is the correct decision
for their lives, but it's one thing to feel it, and it's another to
actually do it. Mariela is willing to give up anything to get baptized,
but we still have to be super careful with her because as we've seen
with other investigators, this is the time that Satan works the hardest
on them. He knows that it's their Salvation we're dealing with, and
sometimes the investigators haven't come to really grasp that concept
yet. Lots of prayers and fasting for her coming from my tiny pension in
Rawson. She's gonna make it though, she's strong.
Oh, also. I had to speak in church again
yesterday...about missionary work. again. It went well. Ten minutes is a
long time in English...in Spanish it's an eternity. I slept about 4
hours Saturday
night because I kept waking up freaking out about speaking. There's
just something about a bunch of fluent Spanish speakers staring at you
and knowing every time you say something wrong. Hahaa...good thing they
love me, right? Hahaha...it went well though. Nothing to stress about:)
Have a fantastic week! Stay safe and happy! You're always in my prayers!
Forever and always,
Hermana Heath
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