!!Fotos!!

Burnt finger from relighting pilot light before baptism

At the baptism

 This is what dripping wet looks like!

At the temple

Going to the temple 

Only got 4 minutes to save the world!

I rememberthat I started my mission saying that, and now I´m on the other side of this process saying the same thing. WEIRD! Alright, enough about you, lets talk about me.

Lets talkabout how this week was crazy insane, and I loved every minute of it.

Monday - wehad a rock awesome game playing cita with our investigators with the recently returned missionary and the family loved it and him.

Tuesday -we ask said recently returned missionary to do our daily contact for us because we were working in the temple all day Tuesday and Wednesday. Working in the temple was great. It was actually very quite because it was raining ALL DAY LONG.

Wednesday -we finish working at the temple and drive home in the rain- We get back about 7:30 at night and RUN to have daily contact with our investigators to find outthat one little girl fell in love with the recently returned missionary....and now wants to get baptized. LOVE IT!! More details on this one. On Monday while we were teaching she was being all sorts of flirty. She was touching his ears/hair, commenting on his eyes. He was beet red and I was trying to compose myself. Finally, it wasn´t happening to me. Poor guy, I do feel bad for him.Oh, did I mention that this little girl, Milagros, is 8? Anyways, point is, now she wants to get baptized and we call Pte Gulbrandsen and he gives us permission! Even though she´s never been to church. At least we have been teaching her. I promise Kind of. She likes to run a round, she has a lot of energy. Beside the point.

Thursday –we go to the church to do our planning and to clean the baptismal Font. Which takes, forever. Then we go tromping out in the POURING RAIN to find the family for their interviews. We swim back to church (okay, a member picked up most ofthem and Hna Lobos and I walked/swam) to find out zone leaders waiting to do the inverviews. Perfect. While we are there we have them try on their baptismal clothes and they are running around like crazy super happy. Ayelen comes out of the interview and shouts “I´m getting baptized!” Well, lookie there. I´m glad you are happy about that. Then they start running around in the baptismal Font I had JUST cleaned. And it got dirty again. But it was an easy fix so that´sokay. A Little dirt never kills anyone.

Friday –Everyone is calling us. Are we still doing the baptism? Are your investigators getting baptized? Uh….DUH They are getting baptized! A Little bit of rain shouldn´t stop a baptism. However, sometimes here in Argentina it does stop a baptism. But that´s beside the point, it´s not stopping this baptism. Because I have a lot of faith…and we´re calling a remis. Done and done. We show up dripping wet to the baptism. But all 4 of them are there. They all get baptized. SCORE!

Saturday –we wake up and leave early in the morning to go to the temple with our baptisms. Woohoo! It´s a long ride, and we´re super squished in the back of a convey, but we get them all in and they love the temple. LOVE IT! They are so being fiel.

Sunday – we go to get them for the confirmation. We have a bit of a scare as some sex-crazed idiot tries to follow us for 7 blocks. But God has more power then Satan…and we still had credit on our phone. So we call up Hno return missionaryto walk us to church. By the time he gets to the house the creeper is gone, butwe still feel better protected because we have a priesthood holder. Yay! Preisthood holder!! And it came to pass that this weekend there were not 1, not2 but 4! Count them 4 baptisms and confirmations in the Zarate II Ward. And the crowd goes wild! Wooooaaa!! And I know that I didn´t really do anything. God is great. He gives us baptisms. Love it.

And now, I´m chilling with the Hermanas of Campana. It´s a holiday so we´re going to go do some fun stuff. I´ll talk to you later! Seek out miracles!

Hermana Reed

Benedryl - the $7 babysitter!

Sometimes, I think about sleeping just a little bit to much. My body is going all wacky from the different schedules we´ve been having this week. There just isn´t a sleeping routine anymore. BUt it´s okay because we receive blessings! Like working in the temple. It was great. We went last Wednesday - leaving at 6 in the morning taking a little breakfast break in capital and still managed to make it to the temple by 10 o´clock!...we were supposed to be there by noon. We were definately not late! So we were able to have some study time while we waited for our shift to start. We went and had lunch with Pte Gulbrandsen and Hna Gulbrandsen in the CCM that is behind the temple and then started to work. Hna Lobos and I started in the reception tent. Essentially, after the tours, everyone is led to this tent where there are chairs to sit down, a few snacks/goodies and time to reflect on how you felt and what you saw. Our job was to invite everyone (specifically those that weren´t members) to fill our a commentary card and to answer any questions that they had. It was a fun opportunity because a lot of the people were members - so we got to ask about their conversion experiences, and help them understand a little more about the temple. Talking with those that weren´t members was also really fun because we were able to teach mini lessons. They had really good questions, but it was just amazing to see the changes in the people for going through the temple. One Hermana told us that a man in our group started the tour being a little cocky, having only come for his daughter, not really wanting to be there. But throughout the tour he began to feel the spirit and by the end was very reverent and had a touching experience. Many people came out crying. The tour ends in the sealing room talking about the family and everyone having the chance to look in to the 2 mirrors into the eternities.

Then around 9:30 when everyone had finally left we were able to go up to our rooms....except the lock didn´t work. So we trooped back to Pte Gulbrandsen our mission dad to fix the lock. And he acted in a very dad-like manner. First, he was laughing at us because we were all so tired we were slap happy. Hermana Whitehead was dying. She was laughing/crying at everything (to be fair, we as the farthest missionaries had gotten up at 4 in the morning to be at the temple) and Pte Gulbrandsen just laughed at her. We figured out that the key didn´t work because it had been next to an i-phone all day (which I´m glad, because if Pte had opened the door when I couldn´t I would have felt like an idiot). So, first, like any good dad - he tried to jimmy the lock with his credit card. When that didn´t work, he went to go look for a spare master card. We eventually made it into bed.

9 o´clock the next day we start up again. This time we are in the entrance. There´s a hostel/building where the tour begins with a 10 minute video explaining the temple and the Hermana´s give a 30 second presentation of the videio and then we leave. That´s all. It was definately more routine/robot-esque but good at the same time. In the down time between groups we were able to read our scriptures.

And then when the next shift of Hermanas came in at 1 we were free to leave. And we started traveling and were back in Zarate at 7. Just in time to do daily contact with our 3 baptisms this week!!!

It was an amazing experience, we were able to spend a lot of time with Pte and Hna Gulbrandsen. Hna Gulbrandsen is hilarious. When we ere in the reception tent we spent a lot of time with her. And even though she still struggles with Spanish, she throws herself into the work. She just makes sure she has a translator with her at all times. But she was totally being our mom too - making sure that we were okay, keeping us busy, happy, entertained, and then helping with the people. She´s wonderful. I love our mission president and wife so much.

Okay, that´s pretty much the most exciting thing that is going on. Sunday morning was an adventure because it had rained like crazy the night before. Small little rivers that nearly kept us from getting our investigators. We had to cross over on a makeshift bridge. And then one little cranky girl almost didn´t go to church because "she was tired". Honey, you don´t know tired, get out of bed. I didn´t say that, but I thought it. Instead I just got some water and splashed it on her face.....done with love. It got her out of bed and she was able to enjoy el día del niño at the church. Afterward she thanked me for waking her up. Oh the joys the gospel brings.

Alright, I´m heading out. We´ll be going to the temple again tomorrow. So I´ll be giving you an update on the works again next week.

Love you!

Hermana Reed

You know the difference between you and me? I make this look good.

Hey there family, Can I just tell you something real quick. Life is funny, and never easy. And if think that we deserve an easy life we for sure haven´t read the scriptures enough. That said, I´m for sure looking forward to my first "p-day" in casa when I´m going to take a very loooong nap. 

First - transfers. Nothing changed. I´m still in Zarate II, and I´m still with Hermana Lobos. Hermana Whitehead and Hermana Erickson are still in Campana II - so life is pretty good. We got a super awkward despedido phone call this morning from the only Elder that left from the district. He called everyone, so it wasn´t inappropriate, it was just weird. It´s always weird, it´s happened a couple of times. They call, and give a little shout out to every person (Elder Burgas kindly wished me a happy death and that I baptize a lot this transfer....thanks Elder). And Hermana Lobos and I kept saying. "okay....bye!....okay.....bye. Bye Elder. Thanks Elder, bye." Despedidas should be like bandaids. Just take them off real quick and then throw it in the trash. I´ll be seeing you again. On facebook if not in person. Geesh. Elderes. I never knew that people could get so sentimental. I mean, I know I´m funny.....but that is ridiculous. 

We moved! And we have light! When we moved we just had a bunch of cables hanging from the ceiling, we lacked the portolamparas. I don´t know what it´s called in english. the thingymajig that you put the bulb in. Anyways, we have those now. We spent the first couple of minutes with the lightbulbs singing "divina luz con esplendor benigno, alumbrame!" Okay, I was singing Divina Luz. My companion just listened. What else did we do? Oh, well, we went back to work. It was a pretty rough week, work wise. Everything just seemed to be off a bit until Sunday. With all the moving and what not it was super hard to have daily contact with our investigators, and in the end we didn´t have anyone at church on sunday. Blegh, hate that. But we showed our faith and went to their houses directly after church to re-fijar the fechas! They will all get baptized......someday. but we will be like Ammon and Alma and baptize nations for OUR faith. Because God is very involved in the work and wants us to be successful. 

Things did start looking up Sunday night. We set up a cita with a recent convert at church and then asked another member to accompany us. Well, this member just happens to be the Young Adult representative so she asked if we could make it a FHE thing. Sure! Why not? Miembro Justo! So we end up having this FHE with 6 people, and we decide to play charades with the commandments (10 commandments + a few additionals). And it was funny - because it doesn´t matter if you are in Argentina, or the U.S. if you´re 20 or 30 - you will still feel dumb acting something out in front of a group of your closest friends. (Why? You´re friends because you do dumb things together. I´m pretty sure that´s part of the definition of friendship...) Or maybe they weren´t as good of friends as I thought. Either way, it was doubly funny because I´m sitting there thinking it will be the easiest thing in the world  - there are only 10 commandments and the others are pray, read. We do these things in church all the time. Primary answers. But it was harder then they thought. It´s one of those "oh, I can recognize the answer, but can´t come up with it myself" type of moments. And it was great because we read Mosiah 2:41 afterwards which talks about the blessings of keeping the commandments and enduring to the end. And we talked about how it´s hard to keep commandments when we don´t know what they are. So as members of the church, we have made promises to keep these commandments, we better know what we should be keeping. So we need to keep coming to church, reading, praying, to know what it is that God wants us to do. 

Also, we need to be sure that we are interpreting the commandments correctly. Because every person was acting out the commandment, but sometimes in a way that we had no idea what they were doing. So, even though we knew the commandment, we just stared blankly at them...or burst out laughing. So, we need to be sure that we are keeping the commandments in a way that those around us, recognize what we are doing. (Something akin to being an example of the believers.) It was a good little devotional. They all had a good time, we taught our recent convert. And then we were able to talk about the mission for a bit. 2 of the YA´s have received mission calls (one to Colombia the other to Neuquen), one is thinking about going on a mission, and our recent convert is 18 - and prepping himself to serve a mission. The other was our ward mission leader - who has served a mission. He helped out a lot and had some funny stories to share. But, all the current or returned missionaries gave heartfelt testimonies that the mission is the best thing that they had ever done. I sure like it. 

All right, that´s all for now. I´ll talk to you next week!

Hermana Reed

o P.D. i don´t really know my duties specifically for the temple, or when. I still don´t know the schedules, but all we will be doing is talking to the visitors in the reception hall - to answer questions, and we will be part of an opening movie that introduces the temple. We won´t be giving tours. But it will still be cool to work there. :)

Love you!