First Week in the Field

Its my first real Pday in the mission feild and I am sooooo excited to be writing and reading so many emails! Also, just so everyone out their knows, DearElders are still free to my mission. It takes two weeks for them to arrive so getting writing now!

Anyway, where to start where to start. This week was much better than last week. I still have random flashes of homesickness in the mornings, but as soon as I get out on the streets and into the work here I feel so much better. I LOVE ARGENTINA!!!! Something that really helped was finally having my own place in the mission instead of being added to an already existing companionship. I have MY companion, MY apartment, MY area, MY bed, and MY place here in the mission. I didn´t really give many details last week because I was stressed and short on time, so I´m going to break it down a little more today.

My companion: As I said, Hermana Coelho is from the Northen part of Brazil! She is twenty two and joined the church at age nineteen. She was baptized just two weeks after the missionaries first met her and she is AWESOME. She has seen both sides of things like the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity so she can testify of the difference it makes to live the gospel. She is a great teacher and always pushes me to go out of my comfort zone and try things I didn´t think I could do. I think the perfect thing to describe her is ´sweetly bold´.

My Mission: Wow, my mission president is strict but awesome! He never fails to inspire us with his words. EVERYTHING he says and does is focused on 100 percent exact obedience. If we get to the apartment a minute late, or wake up a minute late, we are being disobedient. Because of this strict obedience, we aren´t allowed to drink Mate at all or any soda that is dark colored. Most of the missionaries that just left for home have still never tasted Mate in their life. I am one of the few. We can only listen to MOTAB Tuesday through Sunday and other music on pdays. Dad, I am soooo glad we put those 300 motab songs from past conferences on my ipod last minute because that is all we listen to and I am the only one with an ipod and speakers. However, President also knows how to have fun within the boundaries of obedience. If you have been reading the blog, you know that we had a special conference for the sisters on Halloween. We had a DELICIOUS lunch and we got to trick or treat at every door as we moved to the next part of the meeting. It was just what I needed that week. I was also excited to get to see Hermana Foutz! Its wierd to think that she is not my companion anymore. Also, the first day we were here President said he wanted to show us a clip of a video about a trainer and a trainee. He then showed us the clip from Lion King where Rafiki is reminding Simba of who he is. I almost cried through the whole thing, partly because it was a message I needed, and partly because it was Lion King and I was so excited to see something familiar.

I think the thing that has been hardest to adjust to so far is the eating schedule. First of all, I have no clue how people gain weight in this mission because we never eat. I have already lost a few pounds and its only been a week. We usually don´t eat breakfast, and if we do, its a roll or piece of bread. For lunch, we have something called Vianda where the members cook the food and we pick it up and eat at the church when we get time. Lunch is always spectacular, but then we don´t eat dinner. Sometimes we have a cookie or something before bed, but it is wierd to me to only eat one meal a day. The food is delicious though! I love Argentine everything.

My Area: Ok so A little about my area and our work as missionaries. We get rejected a lot, but we still have tons of work to do! We are always busy teaching lessons and we can usually find people who will listen. For example, we found eight new investigators just yesterday and taught them lessons. We have nine investigators preparing for baptism and tons more that are still unsure. We are never bored or lacking for things to do. The culture of the people here is to be bold and confident, therefore, when we do door contacts, we don´t give up after they say no once. We don´t even give up after twice. We usually wait for them to have said no five or six times before we leave. We ring the doorbell three times before we give up and people interrupt each other all the time. At first I was so confused at why my companion was so pushy with people. I thought they would be offended, but I have since learned that it is just the culture. Just about every investigator we have said no the first three times. When they interupt you, it means they are listening. Its slowly growing on me. I wanted to talk a little about my investigators, but I have so many I can only pick a few. First of all, my favorite is an older lady from Peru named Evangelina. Her kids are members and she is catholic, but she has such a sincere desire to know what is true. When she is skeptical about something, which is often, she speaks up, but is sincere and kind about it. She just needs to marry the person she is living with so we can set a baptismal date! Also, we have been teaching a man named Marcelo. His baptism is in a week and a half and we are so excited.  He has been through a lot in life and he is a single dad. You can tell that everything he does is for his four year old daughter. One day we came over and he was painting his entire house pink because the paint bucket had princesses on it and she liked it. He wants to be baptized and believes in the church, but for some reason I feel like something is missing. He doesn´t seem fully converted so we will work on that more.

The ward is fantastic here! They are like my second family and I already feel like I know so many of the members here. When Marcelo came to church this last week, the welcomed him more than I could have ever asked for. I was proud of their desire to be a part of missionary work.

Finally, I had one cool experience. On Friday it poured rain all day long. I was excited to get to wear my cute new rain boots and use my umbrella and rain jacket, and I felt a little bad when I saw that my companion had nothing. She just trekked around in the rain in her normal clothes with her normal little fabric flats. I tried to share with her the best I could but we both just ended up soaked. Anyway, our lunch appointment fell through and I was feeling pretty down since it is the only thing we eat all day. I told Heavenly Father that I wanted to serve his children with all my heart, but I couldn´t do it without eating something. Then throughout the day, random people kept giving us food! Our investigators, the members, people we had just met, they all had food ready for us when we met them. It truly was a miracle and I we had a lot of success despite the rain.

Anyway, I am out of time. Write me DearElders and keep sending the pictures. I love them all! Its getting hot here which is weird because its November, but I  LOVE it.

Lots of Love,
Hermana Millett