Sunshine and Mosquitos!

Hello Family!

Hahahaha Kyrst, you had me scared with the title of your email! I had to open my email last tuesday briefly to send something to the office secretaries and I could only read the titles of each email. All week I was like, "Woah! I think Kyrst got transfered!" and I was so excited to open up my email for nothing. Ah well. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! When someone goes to Chile that I know I will send you something. 

LOVED the pictures of Lindsay's wedding! Congratulations!!!! I will probably be writing from the house of the Cortes family again Mother's Day

. What's the time difference from here to there? We have church at nine in the morning here so at one o clock would be something like nine or ten in the morning your time? It might be something like that or it would have to be at eight my time. I'll work it out with my comp and let you know next week.

Anyway....so things in Junin. First of all, I LOVE JUNIN. This place has become like my Argentine home and there are going to be lots of tears when I have to get used to another area, but thats ok. Its the mission life. Its definitely fall time now! Things are getting cold! Also, we have joke between the missionaries here that God has sent a plague of mosquitos to curse the wicked people of Junin. I seriously have never seen so many mosquitos in my life! The second we step outside we get swarmed and they bite through two or three layers of clothes too!. Fortunately, one of the ex companions of Hermana Meneses left her with a bottle of bug spray that is 90 percent DEET. Its the only thing keeping me alive right now.

I'm not going to lie. The month of April has been a little tough. It has been the first time that I have been totally in charge of an area and I wanted so badly to do really well with keeping up the success of these last few months. However, since the change of companions we haven't had a single investigator in church for three weeks. Since I arrived in Junin we have always had at least one person at church with us. When we had interviews with president he talked about how sometimes God tries our patience and we pass through times in the mission and in life when everything looks gray and stormy. However, when the sun finally comes out, those stormy times are totally worth it. The Sun came out a little bit this morning. 

I want to tell you the story of Silvia. ( I know, another Silvia. Its a common name here). This Silvia is practically a member of the church. She has been listening to the missionaries for almost two years now and she attends church just about every Sunday. The members all know her, she helps with visiting teaching, loves reading the Liahona, and is just missing the baptism step. However, she isn't actually married to the man she is living with. When the missionaries first taught her about the law of chastity, she readily agreed to get married. As they worked through the paper work to get it done, they realized that they had lost the paper proving that the husband was legally divorced to his previous wife. Without this document, marriage was impossible. They had gone to the civil registry many times to look for it, and came out empty handed. So, for two years, she has faithfully waited. She understands the need for baptism perfectly and has been a little depressed to see so many others obtain what she so desperately wants and then fall away from the church and waste the gift that they have been given. When I arrived in Junin, my comp told me that the other Hermanas had done everything possible for Silvia and there wasn't more to do. Well, in these weeks as our plans have constantly fallen through and no one else came to church, we decided to start visiting Silvia again. She told us that the other Hermanas had already tried to find the document and that it wasn't worth trying, but we figured, until we really tried for ourselves we couldn't give up. This morning we went to the civil registry to try our luck. I don't think I have every prayed so hard in my life. We got in line and one of the secretaries attended us. We gave her the information and she said it would be impossible to find it with so little info. We called silvia, said another prayer, worked out some details and went back. This time, a different secretary attended us and told us the same. We were about to leave, but we felt that we needed to change the marriage date and try one more time. ( I felt like I was doing family history. Maybe if we try in this census... or this year... or with this name change....) This time we were attended by yet again another secretary. She went to the back room to check her records and when she returned back with a paper in her hand, I just about cried then and there.  The secretary was a little mad,"Next time you have to come with more information! This record wasn't even close to the date you gave me and you are lucky I took the time to look for it! There are other people waiting!" I didn't even care. I wa so happy! 

So I need you all to pray that we can get a marriage date before May 24th for Silvia! In Argentina you have to go to the civil registry and sign up for a turn to get married and some times it takes a while, but we are going to work it out. Silvia is sooo happy and I don't want her to have to wait too much longer.

Well, thats about it!

Love you tons

Hermana Millett

Explanation of Pictures

I stole some pics from my comps camera (Mal's camera was stolen). They aren't fantastic, but they are photos. We took our monthly trip out to the house of the Olguin family out by the lake. Unfortunately, we didn't get to go to the lake yet. Next week? We'll see. 

The first is me and my comp in front of the Olguin's house. 

The second me and my favorite Latinas! (It changes depending on who is my comp at the moment ;)  )

My comp and I in the bus on the way back to the normal part of Junin