soy embarazada

The week turned out pretty good, except we felt sick almost the whole time- and there is nothing worse than being outside walking all day when you feel like you are going to puke or collapse at any moment.  Thursday we got priesthood blessings and I´ve felt AMAZING ever since.  I love the priesthood, I love the priesthood, I love the priesthood!  

We have transfers today. I am staying but Hermana Saenz is leaving , and I still don´t know who my new companion is....... BECAUSE I'M TRAINING A NEW MISSIONARY!!!! My hijita (daughter) is going to arrive Wednesday, so I´m on a trio with the other hermanas from our area until then. And, I have to pick up my hijita in Salta in the mission offices so I get to go sleep and stay in my old area!!!!!!!!! 

Sorry that this letter is late, and it´s going to be short because when we were writing yesterday the power went out and we couldn´t finish.  Luckily I have 5 minutes today to send what I already had written.  

Updates on how it is to be a mama next week.  Love you!

Hermana Shumway

Hermana Saenz

 eating asado

That blue thing in the background is clouds, not mountains!!!  It tricked me for a minute and I almost felt like I was home. 

Oran

I'm Sick

We´re going to start with the bad:

1-Our baptism didn´t happen.  

2-Me and my companion spent the whole night throwing up. 

3-Somebody switched all the keys on this keyboard so I can´t type super fast or well.

And now the good:

1-We got sick Sunday night when we were already back home, and today is p-day so we didn´t loose any proselyting time!

2-The hermanas that we live with rubbed our backs while we puked, made us boldo, cleaned our room and bathroom- and washed our clothes for us.  (And we have to hand wash) They´re angels.

3-We taught a lesson with a family where the dad isn´t a member but the rest of the family is, and it was the cutest thing ever.  All the little kids had a hymn memorized that we all sang, and the dad was smiling the whole time and even tried to sing with us.  And then the little boy taught his dad how to pray and I almost cried it was so spiritual and cute.  He accepted a baptismal date and then laughed because he has the same age as Christ and is going to follow his example really close for that!

4-There are more good things than bad

I love you.

Hermana Shumway

Wild pigs

This week we saw a zombie walking down the street, pretty normal stuff.

  I got to do splits with another Hermana in her area, and her town is even smaller than Oran!  It´s super wet, and the mud is up to mid-calf, and there are giant, giant wild pigs roaming the streets. I didn´t have my camera so I couldn´t take pictures :(  We taught so many cool people!

We´re going to baptize the coolest person ever this weekend- joni. (johny) He´s 22 and he´s already super excited to leave for a mission himself.  He has the best laugh in the world, and he´s super funny.  He told me that at night he can remember the things that  we taught him in my voice. Haha, every one here either loves my accent or they are elderly and can´t understand me. Joni´s cousin and her husband (they are 18 and 19, and have the cutest little toddler) whom got married and baptized on my birthday last month try to imitate my voice when they do their couple prayer. haha. 

 I love these people. I´m crazy happy.  Weird stuff happens every day I feel the spirit all the time.

 

 We painted the house of one of the members and after he invited us to asado!   Haha,  We ate so much steak that I was literally sick and we almost couldn´t go to church.  Prayer and boldo works wonders

Fasting brings miracles.

Hermana Shumway.

Crazy backpacker.

Remember the crazy backpacker?  She came to church!!!! And, she´s super amazing!  We were talking about the law of chastity and she stood up and told everyone that even though she´s gay and isn´t active for this reason, she wanted everyone to know  (and especially our investigators) that she knows without a doubt that this is the true church.  That she could never deny it and will never deny it. She talked about how active her family is, and how they are sealed, her brother in the mission, the power of the Book of Mormon. She was shaking when she finished, and it was so powerful.  Everyone was shocked and touched. After the meeting she thanked us for inviting her to attend and we gave her a Book of Mormon and our best wishes.   Hours later when we were crossing a park to go to an appointment we saw her sitting by herself reading the book we gave her. She´s heading off to Bolivia today.

I´ve never met so many cool people in my life.  And I´m eternally grateful for the opportunity to feel the spirit with people who haven´t felt it  in a long time.

Hermana Shumway

 Antonela the fire eater

 Us and Antonela!

We made Pizza on P-day

The Lord is watching out for us.

Everyone in Oran is crazy.  I love it!  The other day we were walking down the street and a crazy backpacker stopped us and told us that she was a member and that she has a brother serving a mission in Chile.  My companion touched her dreads- she was pretty neat.  Her and her homies juggle fire in the streets at night fto make money to get by. 

This week we visited all of the recent converts and less active members who don´t have the priesthood and motivated them all to talk to the branch president.  I love working with preisthood.  We want to be a ward.

This week we had a super miracle.  We didn´t have a lunch appointment with a member so we went to a tiny-tiny restaurant that a couple of inactive members own.  It cost 30 pesos a plate- but my companion only has 20 pesos- but I told her it was all good and that I would lend her the other 10.  We sat down and received more food than you could possibly imagine and it was SUPER delicious. They gave us soda, bread, treated us super well.   Then when it was time to pay I looked down and realized that I didn´t have my wallet.  We were really embarased and didn´t know how we were going to tell them that we would have to come back in an hour to pay them.  When we stood up to ask them (in vain) how much it was, they told us nothing.  That is was on the house.  We felt so bad but so good at the same time.  The Lord is watching out for us.

Some other really great stuff happened! And crazy stuff. But I´ll have to tell you guys in person, I lost 10 pounds in 1 week. We drank a lot of mate.  And I´m back to handwashing all my clothing.  And it´s winter and we don´t have hot water. BUT I¨M SUPER HAPPY.

We played futbol for P-day today

Oran

My new area is AMAZING.  I love it.  It´s not a ward- It´s just a branch, so there´s so much work to do and everything is a little bit disorganized but I´ve never met so many amazing people in my entire life.  Super humble, with SUPER strong testimonies.  One of the members found out it was my birthday 2 days before I came here, and they had ice cream for me when we went to teach them.  Another member gave me a gift it was a  place-mat that she had painted when we ate lunch at her house- the members LOVE the missionaries.

Our investigators are super different, and some of them don´t know how to read or write.  That kinda freaked me out in the beginning, but I´ve had some of the most spiritual experiences of my life working with the people here. Don´t ever take for granted the opportunity to read the book of Mormon yourself whenever you feel like it! 

  There are 2 converts that got baptized 2 days before I came who were super excited to pay their first tithing even though it was only $3.  They´ve only know about the church for about a month and they are already willing to give everything to the Lord.  

This week I gained a super strong testimony of the Word of Wisdom.  You know that blessing that says  we will have the strength to run and not be weary if we always keep the word of wisdom?  Tru dat.

About 2 days before transfers in my other area we were visiting with a member and his grandma who isn´t a member.  She asked us if we wanted a cup of coffee, and then we looked at her like "whaaat...?" she kinda of laughed and told us she knew we couldn´t drink coffee and was going to give us something else.  She then gave us little mugs of what I thought was malta (which smells and looks like coffee  all the members drink it but it  isn´t really coffee).  I looked the grandson he he started drinking it all chill, so we started drinking.  But, turns out it wasn´t malta.  If was DECAF coffee.  Which "is coffee".  I felt super bad, but I kind of forgot about it until I came here and my legs almost died.

My first day here in Oran we left to teach and I was super pumped but didn´t know there was a ton of mosquitoes here that think I´m delicious.  When we got back to the apartment my legs were covered in bites- HUGE bites.  And my legs swelled up until I basically couldn't move my ankles.  My legs looked like they belonged to an obese person, and were super red and itchy and full of venom.  In the morning it was worse.  I didn´t take pictures because it was disgusting.  I almost couldn´t walk so we went to the doctor and I got a shot in my behind and some pills.  At the end of the day I still felt bad- and was trying to think what I did to deserve this.  Then I remembered the coffee, and repented super good.  Woke up the next morning, and my legs were almost their normal size again!  And now they are just super blotchy!  I can now walk like a normal person!!!!!

Take all of the commandments super seriously.

I´m really happy here.

Hermana Shumway

My Birthday

I GOT TRANSFERRED!!! To Oran!! It´s basically touching Bolivia. It´s not a big city, and I have dirt roads again I´m soooooo happy and excited.  I had to take a 5 hour bus ride and it and we had to go really slow in certain parts where the road was bad.    My new companion is Hermana Saenz from Equador.  She´s 25 and is an English teacher. She´s super funny and great.

My birthday was awesome!!!!  I got 2 cakes (one from my companion and one from the investigator that I wrote about the last time), and cupcakes, and a present- it pretty much rocked except I had to leave my area and my cakes. :( So now I can´t continue to eat them for breakfast.

I almost forgot, I saw (via satellite) my first temple dedication this week!! It was so beautiful.  Elder Cristofferson (who served his mission here and can speak Spanish well) and Elder Uchtdorf (who... can´t) It was so cool to be able to hear the dedicatory prayer in English and Spanish and feel the spirit in the both languages.  

Everyone here is so happy because now there is a temple 10 hours from here  instead of 22.  I never realized how big of a blessing temples were.

And the cultural event was BEAUTIFUL.  I want to learn how to do traditional dance.

We got the best ice cream I´ve had in my entire life last P-Day

My candle was a firework.

We went to an art museum and I thought I was funny, and the security guard too.  He followed us around the whole time and tried not to laugh. And probably because he thought we were gonna ruin the art or something like that.

 With one of my favorite members