28 November 2016

Another week down here in Buenos Aires. To be honest it was a pretty normal week.  

We went to visit Roberto this week, the man that had come to church with us last week. We felt like we needed to committ him to be baptized so that's what we did. It was a cool lesson. We had taught him about the Book of Mormon and we were asking him a bunch of questions about if he would read and pray and his answer was never a yes or no. Then he would always try to go off on some other topic. I prayed really hard that the spirit would be there so we could control the situation, and so we asked "Roberto, if you receive an answer that these things are true, will you follow the example of Christ and be baptized?" and he simply said "yes."  Well the next day we went by to see what he felt and he goes "I like this but I don't want you coming by every day. Every few days is fine. And I won''t go to church every week, only when I wake up and feel like it" and so.. that sucked. We havent gone by in a few days though. We´re going to pass by soon to see how he´s doing.

I did divisions this week with some sisters from Lima. I was with Hermana Doxey. She is the most humble, charity-filled person I have ever met. She is such an example. It was a good day too. We reached our goals and found a lot of people with potential. Sadly the majority of them live in the Elders area but.. it is the same work right? 

This week I was studying about faith, and I read something in the bible dictionary that I liked. It says: The Lord has revealed Himself and His perfect character, possesing in their fullness all the attributes of love, knowledge, justice, mercy, unchangeableness, power, and every other needful thing as to enable the mind of man to place confidence in Him without reservation.

Christ is perfect. And because He is perfect, we are able to be 100% confident that He will never fail us. Whatever we´re going through, we are able to place our complete confidence in Him and know that it will all be alright. 

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Prestwich 

I totally forgot to write about this in my group email.. This week we had an activity in one of the plazas en Zárate. We got some stand up things of the "light the world" christmas cards from this year and the card from last year, and one of Christ. We got together as a zone at 5 to practice singing. It was awful. Hahah like none of actually sing. And there were only 4 of us sisters since 2 couldnt come and they made us sing alone like 70% of the time. So we got to the plaza aroung 7 with some members, a ton of Books of Mormon, and santa hats. Only a few people shouted "its still november!" at us, as we started singing Christmas hymns. We went around the plaza singing and it was actually super cool. Except for all the people that took picture and recorded us, it was fun. We´re going around the zone doing it.. Hopefully we´ll see some success!!  

Caroling in the Plaza

4 sisters in the zone

Buscando una familia

This week went by demasiado fast. It's so weird how fast time is going by, because I remeber in the beginning that every day felt like it would never end. Now I wish time would slow down. 

It's been a really good week! My companion is awesome. We get along really well. We started off the transfer making some goals for what we wanted to do this transfer. One of those was that we wanted to find a family. So we got to work. We focused 100% on families. All the reference we asked we for families, we let the whole ward know, our studies are about families and every prayer is about finding families. When we made the goal I felt really strongly that it's possible, we just need to work for it. 

The elders in our ward gave us 2 references this week. One for a man named Roberto. We went by and he let us in, and told us that his wife and son had passed away. He´s older, but very open. We taught the plan of salvation. It was a really cool lesson. We committed him to coming to church with us, and yesterday he came! He really liked it, so we´re going to try and committ him to baptism this week!!

Another reference was Arturo and his family. We went and they let us in. They were so awesome!! They had history in the church, but never got baptized. I asked them if they could change one thing in their life, what it would be and the mom goes "everything. I wish I could be born again and start over" and the dad goes "I could write a book of everything I want to change". So there is a LOT of potential there. I'm super excited to keep working with them. And it's a family!!

We´ve planned a lot of activities as a ward and a stake to start sharing the Book of Mormon more and we´re super excited! Time is going by so fast and it makes me so sad! I love Argentina with all of my heart. 

One of the counslers in the bishopric is one of those people that knows everything, and we had lunch with them yesterday. So we went with a list of questions to ask him, and he gave us the answer to all of them. Then we read a scripture in Alma that talked about the mysteries of God and how if we have faith they will be revealed to us. It made me think about something a companion taught me. That to me, the mysteries of God are like.. how any worlds there are and things like that, but she told me the mysteries of God are in the scriptures. It's personal revelation. Everything that we need to know to have eternal life is in the scriptures. The hermano told us that those who know so much about how many worlds and how God became God and all that slowly drift away from the church. Because yeah, they know all that, but they wouldn´t be able to explain what the Atonement is. The most important is the doctrine of Christ. The basic things that are in the scriptures that are actually so profound that we´ll never understand everything. Look at the prophets and apostles. They never talk about worlds or Gods or anything, just the basic doctrine of Christ. 

Just thought that was interesting. Love you all and have a great week!!

Love,

Hermana Prestwich

En el cora

So much has happened since last Monday.  

My comp left to Oregon on Wednesday. It was so sad. Its so cool how the mission introduces you to people from the other side of the world that become your best friends and helps you build that relationship that will last even longer than the mission. I miss my comp :( But anyway, when she left, I was put into a trio with the other sisters from Zárate. I was not looking forward to it to be honest, because working in 2 areas is not that fun.. but it was SO FUN. Haha the sisters are awesome, and we had such a good time together! I love their ward.

Alicia was baptized on Saturday! We had set up her interview for friday, and when we got to her house with the elders, she wasnt there. So the elders went tracting while we went looking for her. We found her and she told us that she couldnt be baptized. That she had been thinking a lot and that she wasnt in a position financially to be able to pay tithing. So we called the elders and they said that we should have the interview still just to see how it goes. So they went in, and we waited outside. I could hear and see though, and that interview is exactly what she needed. I was praying so hard that Elder Dote would be able to say what she needed to hear, and from what I heard, what he said was pretty dang powerful. Even I was touched, just from being outside overhearing. 

So Alicia was baptized on Saturday. It was weird because I was without a companion. I dont like doing missionary work without someone to go through it all with me. BUTTT the bishop called me yesterday saying that when he said hi to Alicia on sunday, he smelled cigarette smoke. So we might have a small problem there. We´ll see what happens this week. 

Monday was the day before transfers, and honestly its the day the no one does ANYTHING. Theres a member in the other ward that does hair so we went. Well, she ruined my hair, do Im gonna have to figure out how to fix that, so if you dont get many pics these next few weeks, well.. im saving myself from embarrassment. But it was one of the elders birthdays, so we had a little surprise party for him. It was super fun. 

But transfers came!! Im still here in Zárate! My comp is named Hermana Urgilez (still have yet to pronounce it right) from Spain. She´s 26, and a convert pf 2 years. She seems super cool so Im excited for (hopefully) one more transfer here in BautiZárate!! 

The other week was stake conference, and the had the returned missionaries share their testimonies. One of them shared a testimony that hit me hard and made me think a lot. He talked about the Atonement, but in a way that I had never heard it before. He said how he was studying one day and imagined Christ suffering in the garden, and imagine the moment when Christ asked if there was another way, and if it was the Father´s will, to not have to do it. Instead of thinking of it from Christ´s perspective, he imagined it from his own view. He said that he pictured himself in heaven watching this happen and just pleading and praying that Christ would be able to do it. Because he needed the Atonement. It made me think and I applied this to myself this week in my studies. I imagined myself up there watching Christ suffer and just pleading that He would be able to do it. Because I need the Atonement. We all need it. We´re going to make mistakes. We DO make mistakes. But thanks to Christ, we can forget them and move on. We can start again, and we can live with our Father and Heaven again. 

I challenge you all this week to think about the Atonement and how you can make it more personal. 

I love you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Prestwich

Alicia's baptism

"Ketchup to my Fries"

Celebrating Birthdays

Pedro, our dog 

 Zárateee

This is the perfect picture to describe our workouts in the morning.. 

11 November 2016

Friends and family.  

This week was good, but I'm afraid this email won't be as long as nothing that exciting really happened.

Tuesday we had leadership council. We at 6 in the morning with beautiful weather, and when we were in the bus it decided to start pouring down rain, and didn't stop. So we showed up at the mission home soaked from head to toe. Literally. And we werent able to get that dry so we were wet for about 10 hours. That was fun.

Wednesday we had our zone meeting. Which was fun, and then we were supposed to have interviews with president and the asistants, but as we were eating lunch and waiting, we got word that the assistants were in an accident and we being sent to the hopsital. Turns out that they hit a semi. We saw pictures and they were COVERED in blood and the car was destroyed but they literally didn't even have whiplash. They crawled out of the windshield and took pictures in front of the car. It was insane. So we cancelled interviews.
Alicia is set to be baptized this coming Saturday, but she hasn't come to church for the past 2 weeks so we might push the date back. She's been progressing well, and sharing the gospel with EVERYONE. We´ve found so many people through her. We´ll see her tomorrow and probably change her date. :(
My comp leaves for Oregon on Wednesday. So I'm super sad. I'll be in a trio with the other sisters for a week since transfers are next week. It will be a challenge working in two areas but it should be fun.
Sadly that's about all the happened this week. I''m super happy. Lifes great. The mission is great. Times going by fast. The mission is the best experience of my life. In my interview with my president and with his wife it hit me how much I love my mission and how much I've really grown here. Something that I don't really notice every day. But I think that just comes with being involved in the gospel, not just the mission. The more we learn and study the gospel the more we understand and are able to progress.

Love you all and hope you have a fantastic week!


Love,
Hermana Prestwich.

Didnt take a single picture thiss week. Next time I promise!