holy cow you guys! i live in a different country and ive now survived a whole week!
k im just going to start at the beginning and tell you everything. so at the gate in utah i found hermana bennett! she was the one whose family was waiting at the gate and she had been crying so i went and gave her a huge hug and we sat next to each other on both flights! she has never been on an airplane before and she was freaking out kinda haha so there was 7 of us at the airport from salt lake all going to the same mission!
so we get to atlanta and went and got dinner and called home on the payphones then we go to our gate and there are like 40 missionaries at the gate! about 15 of the group are headed to the mtc but the rest were visa waiters that had been instate and are now finally going to their missions! so on the flight there was the cutest little boy that sat behind me and kept peeking around my seat! he was probably 2 and was speaking spanish haha so i didnt understand what he was saying and when we were flying over south america there were thunderstoms and it was crazy to watch from above! the lightening honestly looks purple, but then we got to beunos aires and i like helped 10 missionaries go through customs and immagration because they had no idea what they were doing haha and then we waited for like 2 hours for someone to come pick up this group of 40 of us, the church workers were all confused, i dont think they were expecting the visa waiters! but this guy came up to us that was obviously a member here and was just like, "mormones!" haha he helped us out
so the ccm de argentina is crazy! there are 90 missionaries here and about 30 of them are norte americanos (north americans) and the other 60 are the latinos. the ccm building is right behind the temple, and there is a hostile next door for members to stay at that are coming to the temple and the temple is just a stones throw away! sadly the temple is closed for maitenence for the next two weeks and because i think they are updating it with the new movie! we usually get to go every p day! also the power goes off like once or twice a day and i have yet to have a warm shower here haha and we dont drink water, they give us juice with every single meal haha we eat mostly dishes that are like beans and rice, and for breakfast they make everything with dulce de leche, like these donuts that are so good! they are caramel filled donuts haha but also they serve ham sandwichs for breakfast like its a normal thing, kinda weird haha
we got to the mtc and got our nametags and companions, mine is sister minks! she is from oahu hawaii and shes pretty cute shes not actually hawaiian she if very white haha we get along reallly well, she is really good at spanish because thats her major at byuh and im so thankful because we live in a room of 6 girls so me, hermana minks and 4 latinas and they are so cute! they do not speak a word of english, hermana silva, hermana gonzales and hermana rayos are from nicaragua and hermana miranda is from peru! so we like have to learn spanish if we want to have friends around here so we work really hard and we can now talk to our roommates pretty well. they teach us spanish and we teach them words in english. hermana silva said that at home if you can speak english you can get a better paying job so shes trying really hard to learn.
our teachers here are awesome! they all are from argentina. my teachers for my district are hermano abad and hermano mirisonkiv also hermana guiterezz teaches us sometimes but its so funny because hermano abad is really handsome (dont worry hes married) and when we told our latina roommates that hes our teacher they said that god has blessed him with beauty haha and all the sisters just giggle when hes around! haha also hermano abad said that he was companions with an elder schwarz from alpine! haha he went to bolivia but i told him the schwarz family was in our ward!
also the other day me and hermana minks were sitting at dinner when some of the latino elders came and sat by us and one of them that spoke some english said, my friends are wondering if you would every consider marrying someone from south america and we just laughed and then like 5 minutes later in class our teachers all gave us a lecture on how elders and sisters cant talke to each other! whoops. i think it was our fault! no bueno!
so everyday we have class and learn about the gospel in spanish and then we learn some more spanish and then teach our teachers who pretend to be investigators in spanish and we just speak and learn spanish until we´re brain dead and then do it all over again! dont worry im loving it! i still have days where im like holy cow im on a mission!
also my mission presidents! they are president and sister openshaw and both of their kids are in the laguna niguel stake and i told them i lived there! on sundays president openshaw gives us firesides and we can ask any questions we want and he answers them for us, he knows the scriptures back and forward! i swear he has them memorized. also sundays are fun because they give us orange soda to drink at dinner and sunday nights we get to watch a church movie in english! we watched the joseph smith movie last week and this week i think we get to watch 17 miracles.
also on wednesday they tell us they broadcast the missionary devotional they have on tuesdays at the marriott center so we can watch it but the devotional we watched is old because i totally saw elder jardine in the audience when they were showing the missionaries singing! haha
im in the distrito nefi (nephi district) made up of two sets of sisters and two sets of elders and we are all going to the same mission! we all have class together everyday!
also its really hot humid here and theres no air conditioniing! we just sweat and be hot because we cant do anything else haha
also every single missionary has a missionary somewhere else out in the world its crazy!
sorruy for the randomness!
sorry we have like no time to email! it was so fun to here from everyone! i had so much to say this time i dont know if i will have time to respond back to everyone so tell them sorry! im going to try and send some pictures! I LOVE YOU GUYS! i honestly can feel your prayers, ive been so at peace since ive been here and im so excited for whats still to come!
