I love...

Hello Hello!

Happy Holidays! Ha! How weird is that? Thanksgiving has past, which makes it truly Christmas season. There are Christmas trees all over the place here at the stores in Centro, and I still can't grasp my head around the fact that Christmas really is coming because it's so stinkin' hot outside! But that also makes me happy because that means that in less than I month I get to talk to all of you!

Jordan! I hope you have a super special day this weekend when you get baptized. I am so proud of you! I'll be thinking of you and I hope, like mom said, that you picture Jesus smiling at you when you get baptized. :) By getting baptized you walk into the door that leads to the Celestial Kingdom! After Jesus Christ got baptized Heavenly Father said that he was "well pleased," and I know that Heavenly Father is really proud of you too for following Jesus Christ's example.

Well as you can see from our pictures, even though we were far away from home we still celebrated Thanksgiving. On Thursday we had weekly planning, and we were all able to make some yummy burritos together to celebrate. We even made the traditional placemats by tracing our hands to make turkeys, and we wrote on them the things we are grateful for. I feel like by being a missionary I have really learned what things I am grateful for. The Lord has given me so much and I am so grateful to be able to dedicate myself to Him 24/7 to try to give back a little bit for all that He has given me.

I'm thankful for...

This week we saw many miracles, as usual. We had a Family Home Evening with some recent converts: R and F. We all shared our favorite scriptures in the Book of Mormon and I was blown away at how strong their testimonies are for just being members for 7 months. It was so neat to be able to hear them talk about the changes that they have seen in their lives since they have joined in the church. And it's true! The gospel only brings GOOD changes! Sometimes they are hard changes, but they are always good.

With the air of Thanksgiving it made me think about how much I love Argentina. I LOVE Argentina!

• I love these people. 
• I love this language. 
• I love the culture. 
• I love the funny quirks and "backwards social norms." 
• I love the obnoxious business men that get on the buses and say the same thing over and over again for 5 minutes straight to try to convince you to buy something.
• I love the flame throwers that go into the street when the light is red to try to earn some money.
• I love the silly cow bell music Argentines listen to all the time.
• I just love it all.

I love being a missionary. I love the challenge to constantly keep going, to keep the faith, and to trust in the atonement of our Savior, Jesus Christ. And I do it because I know it's true! I know this church is true. These truths and the doctrines of Christ are being etched upon my soul. And even though the journey is sometimes difficult, I've never been happier.

Family, friends, abuelitos, etc..... les quiero!

-Hermana Vawdrey

Hermana Squire

Hermana Carson 

Hermana Batista

Mi Distrito 

Thanksgiving burritos!

Las Hermanas en el Dia de Gracia 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Family and Friends,

So like...hey! How are you!?!! HAPPY THANKSGIVING! I can't believe the holidays are already here. It's crazy! No we won't be celebrating Thanksgiving here in Argentina, but I'll be thinking of you!

We had a great week! Let's see...we walked a lot, taught a lot, prayed a lot, traveled a lot, testified a lot, and had lot of success! We found several new investigators and each of them have their own unique story. It will never stop to being a thrill when people let us in to their house to share a message. The message of the Restoration truly is a treasure that cannot be bought, but it has an eternal reward. It's neat to see it working in people's eyes when we teach them, and even more when we see the change in their lives as they keep their committments.

One day this week V called us (the one who just got baptized) and said her leg was really hurting her. She has problems with her sciatic nerve and she has to get injections often. Her doctor went on vacation this past week so she wasn't able to have any pain reliever. When the pain was really bad she called us, and we went over and saw her. The next say she called us and said the pain was still really bad, but she had just prayed and she was in bed reading her Book of Mormon. The cutie! She told us she knew that if she did what was right the Lord would take the pain away. :) I love seeing her testimony grow!

Other fun news:

• We have a new place to move into! Now we just need to wait for some head guy in Buenos Aires to sign the contract. We'll see how long that takes... In the meantime we're content with living with the other Hermanas in Villa Mitre, so we'll have to wait and see how soon this move will actually happen.

• We found a woman named Belén this past week! YEAH! I was so excited to find someone else who has my name. She has two kids and we're hoping we can help them get to church this Sunday.

• One of our biggest successes this week was that FOUR less active members we've been working with went to church! It's been months and even years for some of them! Woot!

• Ah! I had my 15 month cumple mes this past week. That's freaky... I'm one of the "viejas" (older sisters) in the mission now!

• Jordan! You get baptized SO soon! I am so excited for you! I went to a baptism for an 8-year-old little girl named B, and it made me think of you because that is going to be you soon!

• Taylor Judd! I know it may shock you, but your song "Everything Changed" made it all the way to Argentina! Good job! I love it. You've got some talent. I'm living in the same house with Cydnee Squire who went to Lone Peak, and also on Heritage Tours. She has that song on her ipod. It came on the other day and we realized we both know you! Small world. Hope you are well!

• JACK! Congrats on your mission call to Brazil! NO WAY! I'm so excited for you! Bummed I won't see you for another 2 years, but it's so worth it. :) Good luck with all the mission prep! Study Preach My Gospel and go to the temple as much as you can before you leave!

Family and friends, in honor of Thanksgiving I want to say THANK YOU to all of you for the impact you have made on my life. I love you all so much and am so greatful for your examples. And I'm grateful to my Savior that I can be an instrument in his hands for this time. The gospel is true!

¡Les quiero mucho!
-Hermana Vawdrey

Moving on...

Hellooooo Familia!!

How are y'all? Asì que...Obama, eh? That's all everyone here wants to talk about right now. haha Anytime anyone finds out that we're from The States they're like..."oh! El Presidente Obama!" haha But hey, it starts a conversation! And if we're really sly we can turn the conversation back to the gospel. :)

This week absolutely flew by. Seriously, I don't get it. All of a sudden it was Saturday night, and here I am already writing you! Crazy. This week we had a couple of extraordinary things that happened. On Tuesday we were in our ward mission leaders' house having our ward mission meeting. He informed us that it was 89 degrees in his house. Dandy. SO HOT! And that's in the shade sitting next to a fan! The next day was so windy that the wind cut out all of the electricity in the neighborhood for a couple hours. Then about an hour later we had the biggest rain storm I have EVER experienced. Luckily we were inside doing our weekly planning when it happened, but the rain drops were about the size of a nickle, and it hailed too! Later on when we left the house we were wading through puddles in the street that were one foot deep! Thank goodness I had my jelly shoes on, so it didn't matter. But wow! Argentines always talk about how every time it's really hot that means a big rain storm is coming. Well....now I believe them!

The other big news is that we are moving! Surprise surprise! To make a long story short, we've been having several problems with our neighbor. A few days ago we heard from a member that someone called into a radio station and somehow they announced our address to everyone in Bahìa Blanca! For those of you that don't know, it's a rule that we're not allowed to publicize our address for our own protection and safety. So! Just to be safe we are in the process of moving to a new place and at the moment we are living in Barrio Villa Mitre with Hermanas Squire and Batista again! (But this time in a MUCH bigger place.) Hermana McWhorter and Hermana Marin also live there. It's kind of a bummer to have to bus over to our area everyday, but the change in temporary and we are excited to be able to have some time to live with the hermanas. It's always refreshing to feed off of each other's excitement for missionary work. :)

Hey Ang! Guess what! We're teaching an investigator right now that's named Angi! She's super cool and from the Dominican Republic! She's reading the Book of Mormon, plans to come to church on Sunday and is progressing pretty well! Keep her in your prayers.

Cute Hermana Carson celebrated her year mark on her mission this past week! That's a long time! I'm proud of her. She does incredible things.

Family, I love you! Keep doing what you're doing. Keep Go-ing and Do-ing. :) Hope you have a great week! Chamo!!

-Hermana Vawdrey

Pte Detlefsen's mother-in-law. She has so much energy. Love her!

Another photo from V's baptism

El Distrito

Feliz cumpleanos, Hna Carson!

Esfuerzos

Family,

Here we are starting another week! And another month! We had a great week here in Bahìa Blanca. It is starting to get HOT. We sleep with the window open at night already and pray that the full heat of summer will wait to come for another month.

This past week we had "esfuerzos" in each of the areas in our district. Our district leader, Elder Galan, really wants each of us to be able to achieve the goal to have one baptism for every companionship in the month of November. In order to accomplish this we took two hours out of each day this past week to work in each other's areas to help find new investigators. It was a really neat experience being able to serve the other missionaries in our district. Knowing that we only had 2 hours, we went and worked really hard! It really strengthened our unity, and it helped us realize that we should view missionary work as an "esfuerzo" every day! Every day we should work just as hard as we did for those two hours in each other´s areas.

Ohh! The other day we received a really big compliment. We had Stake Conference and a young man from another ward came up to talk to us. He said, "Hey, thanks for having that family night with that family the other week." At first it took a second to figure out what he was talking about. Then we remembered the familia that we taught. They invited us over for lunch one Sunday and we felt prompted to teach them about Family History work. It seemed really weird at first because we normally focus on the Restoration or the Plan of Salvation. For some background information: the dad is the only member, his wife is super Catholic, and they have three kids. Missionaries have worked with this family before, but since the mom is so Catholic, they aren't progressing as investigators.

Yet as we continued talking to this young man he told us that he talked to the oldest daughter the other night. He helped her set up an account on familysearch.org and she is doing a ton of family history work. She is also planning to travel to go visit her grandma to get more information about her family history! AND! She's reading the Book of Mormon and wants to learn more about the Church. She hasn't told anyone about it yet other than this guy because she knows her mom won't be too thrilled, so she wants to know for sure whether she wants to get baptized and then she'll contact us.

Wow. WOW! That was a neat paycheck for us to hear that we really must have been following the Spirit when we chose to teach that family about family history because it really impacted her!

Some other fun news was that since this Sunday was Stake Conference I got to see the members from Pigüè! It made me so happy to see them again! And it was really fun because I could see how much I have progressed. I can actually speak Spanish now! haha

Well family, I love you. Thank you for all you do! I hope you have a wonderful week, y nos vemos el Lunes que viene!!

-Hermana Vawdrey