Adios Buenos Aires!

Buen Día Familía!

I hope you all are smiling right at this exact moment, cause I definitely am! I have just loved everything so much here! Here's the news for the last week:

Friday we got to go out as a district and get contacts around the temple. We'll always take any excuse to get outisde, so of course it was fabulous. The people we usually talk to around the temple are often the sweetest old people you ever have met, that have got to be at least 104 years old. I love talking with them, and I'm sure I would love it even more if I could understand what they say. The young youth that we'll talk to occassionally are much easier to understand though.

Saturday, we went out for Proselitismo again, except in a new area this time. My compañera and I had a very interesting area, definitely different than our last one. It bordered a really busy street that had lots of shops on it (some of which were sometimes a bit sketch or of the night-time apperal sort haha). As we walked further into our area though we got into more houses. We didn't have as much success this time, but we were able to understand a lot more spanish and have more meaningful conversations with the people that we did talk to. Some of which were an evangelical, an athiest, an evangelical, a catholic, oh and more evangelicals... everyone is evangelical. Which I'll be honest, I don't even really know what that means! But they believe in God, so we've got some common ground at least. Also, my compañera almost accidentally bought a whole sack of potatoes just by waving to someone haha super funny! And we ate like homeless people sitting on the side of the street cause there were no benches or parks, so we got some good looks haha.

Sunday was really great. So every week there's a topic for that Sunday, and eveyone in the CCM has to write a talk in spanish and then after the Sacrament is administered a district leader will get up and announce which 5 missionaries the president has chosen to talk. So you better prepare your talk every week, cause you never know if it's going to be you. Well this week my number got drawn and I was called up to speak about Caridad y Amor. SIDE NOTE: We were placing bets how long it would take a missionary to mix up the word caridad (charity) with castidad (chastity). Lo and behold, the very first elder that gets up to speak says "today the topic im speaking on is chastity and love". Maybe I should be better, but I promise you it took all my effort to not snort out loud from laughter! Anyways, I gave my talk which involved talking a lot about D&C 12:6, D&C 12:8, Mosiah 4:16, and then ending with the promise in D&C 81:5-6... if any of you care to look those us and see what you can learn. I definitely enjoyed making the correlations between them and speaking about their importance. So I spoke for the usually about 5 minutes and was just glad that I never said castidad instead of caridad. Although I may have said "I love you, Jesus." Which isn't too bad, just a bit preachy sounding and not what I was going for... But it's alright cause another hermana in my district that spoke right after my said "I love myelf, Jesus". Probably not even funny, but we laughed for probably 30 minutes about that. And then my compañera Hermana Christensen and I gave the lesson for our Didtrict meeting right after sacrament, and I thought we did really good considering we didn't really plan much. We've become really good at teaching with eachother and picking up where the other leaves off. I'm gonna miss having her as my comp, it's been so effortless with her, I love it!

On monday my district and I came up with a fun game of 'blind bottle toss' hahah. Hermana Harman in our district is blind in one eye, so in tribute to her we spent a long time one day chucking water bottles at eachother with one eye shut hahah. It's pretty trippy to try actually! And I don't know how, but we found so much fun in doing that haha. Also, our district is practically a zoo now. We decided what animal everyone would be and we've got: a bear, a bunny, elk, egyptian cat, salmon, cow, cocker spanial (cant spell), zebra, badger, baby baboon, turkey vulture, and I'm a merekat apparently haha.

And now for the big day: wednesday we got to go and meet Elder Cook and hear him speak!!! It really was so wonderful! I can't ever get your suit jacket washed mom cause he touched it for so long while shaking my hand! We also got to meet and hear from Elder Gonzales who is the missionary leader for all of south america. I remember him speaking in general Conference before. I really was so amazing to hear from them and be able to meet them! I learned so much. Shucks... I wanted to share something with you guys about it, but I wrote it in my other notebook that I forgot to bring with me, so now I can't remember haha. I just know that I am still beaming from being able to meet him!

And now it's Thursday and we just got back from the temple which I always love! It was my last time that I'll be able to go to the temple cause I leave in 5 days, on Tuesday, to Neuquen which is so crazy!! I'm gonna miss all the missionaries here cause all of them are going to Uruguay or Paraguay. But I'm so excited to get out there and meet my trainer!

Here's a picture for you and hopefully I'm able to attach some more in another e-mail! love you all lots!!

 Also, thank you grandma, Kaden, and Kelsey Haddox for the Dear Elders!!

Love you all mucho!

Hermana Ashcroft

 Just your typical missionary standard works... what I study from every day.

This is my companera, my district and I on the temple grounds!

Prosilitismo

 May 23, 2013

Hola Everyone!

Things are continuing to go so great here! I love every bit of the mission so far. It's to always know what to write, cause as of now our days are all pretty similar while we're still in the CCM. But so I'll tell you about the one day the week that definitely different-

Saturday, like I said we get to go out into Buenos Aires and do Prosilitismo. Honestly, best thing about being in the Argentina CCM! So this Saturday we went out for our second time and it was definitely a different experience than the last week.

It was kinda gloomy weather on Saturday and was suppoe to rain later in the evening according to what our teachers told us they looked up online, but as we got to our area (my compañera and I were able to drive with everyone else this time which was nice haha) nobody was outside. Now siesta goes on here from like 12/1-4/5 o'clock, which still baffles me that people just close up shop and go home to sleep... but last week there had still been a fair amount of people out that were workers or just walking around. This week the weather was keeping everyone inside, even though it wasn't that cold, the Latinos usually get freezing if it's anywhere aroun 50 degrees outside haha.

We went to a park though to eat our lunch and then we started looking for Agustine's house that we had met last week while he was cutting trees. My compañera was holding the map this time, and lets just say we got a bit lost....or a lot haha. She somehow managed to get us over 3 blocks oustide of our area, it was super funny! So after that she made me be in charge of directing us and using the map. I guess watching dad navigate us all those times paid off at least a bit, cause I was able to keep us from getting lost anymore haha. We walked around looking for Agustine's address and talked with about 3 people that we saw outside, but never for too long. After awhile, we came to the conclusion that his address was outside of our area, so we would just have to give it to the real missionaries to find. That was a bit of a bummer, but we continued to walk around trying to find anyone that could be outside.

And then I had to go pee... like sooo bad!! And we're in the middle of neigborhoods and it's siesta, so any small shop there might be is closed down already! So we start 'clapping' at every door hoping that some one will see the desperation in my eyes and let us in to shar a message and let me use their bathroom. I think desperation must be shown by a different facial expression here, cause I was giving it all I had, and it totally didn't work. Most people to answer their doors, and the ones that did obviously weren't reading my face, otherwise they would have let me in in a heartbeat. By this point now, I was dying and was totally going to pee my pants! We walked up to a small medicine shop and the lady put her head out the window and by this point I can't even think so all my spanish had left me, so when I said something to her (thinking I was asking if she had a bathroom I could use) she came back with laxatives asking me if I needed to buy them.... hahaha definitely not what I needed. She finially understood us, just to say that no she didn't have a bathroom. It was over for me... Untill a glimps of hope came in the form of a hotel! It was a small little hotel, and was totally gated off, but I just walked right up to the huge gate that cars drive through and stood there in desperation. And what do you know, some angle opened the gate after what felt like forever waiting haha.

Anyways, after that adventure I was ready to find everyone we could! We left the hotel and it started raining, even though it was only a bit after 1... but I was just so happy and we went around knocking on evey single door! With still just as little success though haha. After an hour or so we finally met a girl names Maria that was about 16 years old. we talked to her for quite a long time and the let us all the way up to under her porch which was more than anyone else had done haha. She was so sweet and we shared a few messages with her and then gave her a Book of Mormon and she sincerely said to us that she wanted to pray about it. Best thing ever to hear someone say those words!

After we left her house, it was raining a bit more, but we just kept walking through all the streets, knocking on doors. we finally started to make our way back to Karina's house, who we had met last week and told we would come back. We got there about 3:40 and we'd said we wouldn't come till 4 so my compañera wanted to wait, but I just felt like we should go try and see if she was home. We had to be back at the bus stop on the other end of our area by 4:45. So I go up and ring her doorbell (her house was a bit nicer) and over the little intercom comes a man´s voice. Now we always usually start with 'somos misioneras', but something stoped me mid-word and I said 'so...es Karina aca?' Asking if karina was there instead. He said something we couldn't understand and then hung up. So we just waited, hoping Karina would come out. after honestly about 2-3 minutes (which is a way long time to just stand outside waiting) Karina opened the door with a big smile on her face and came and invited us in!! We talked for a bit and she said her little boy was sleeping and her husband was upstairs working or something. And then we just talked for a bit more and then we got into our lesson. We started with a prayer and I don't know how we did it other then by some serious help from the spirt, but we taught her the whole first lession in Preach my Gosple, and we were able to do it in a way that made it meaningful to her! I recited Joseph Smith's first vision (which I was amazed I could remember since I's only started memorizing it the day before). We explained the atonment which she had never heard of before. Talked all about the restoration and taught her about prayer and how much God love's her and knows everything she goes through. She asked us why if the book of mormon was written by many ancient prophets, was it called the book of 'mormon' and on this one we had to use the help of some hand signals haha, but we were able to explain that mormon was the one that abridged all the books into one. Honestly, there's no way I could say the Lord wasn't with us, cause our ability to comunicate was way beyond what our level usually permits. We challened her to read some certain sections out of the book of mormon and then to pray about it all. She asked us for the address of the church which we gave her and then we asked if she would say the closing prayer. She got a little teary eyed and explained that she nearly craied when we offered the first prayer and didn't know if she could do it. So we simply explained how we pray again and said that whatever she said the Lord would be listening. So she agreed and gave such a sincerere prayer. She had tears all down her face when she finished but was beaming at the same time. I just lvoed every bit of it and it made me so excited to share this gosple with everyone!! She offered us some coffee before we left and we just kinda chucked and said no thanks.. not quite time for the Word of Wisdom lesson haha. When we got outside it was already 4:30!! We had taught Karina for over 45 minutes! So it was a good thing we had gotten there 20 minutes early! We ran all the way to the bus stop in the rain and I stepped in so many puddles getting myself drenched, but I just couldn't stop smiling! I honestly am still just so happy about all of it, and I pray for Karina every night now that the real missionaries of the area will take the information we gave them and be able to teach her how she needs to be taught. (we explained to Karina that we wouldn't be able to come back since that was our last week in that area, but that we would send other people to her to teach her more, and she seemed a bit sad that we couldn't come back, but said that of corse some more missionaries could come)

So that was my wonderful experience for the week. Every time I think about it I can't help but think of how much the Lord helped and guided us. I'm convinced that had we told her husband we were missionaried he would have just hung up and we wouldn't have been able to meet with Karina again. And I know that we were given help with the language!

I hope everything is going so great for all of you! I miss everyone and I think of all my friends and family at home eveytime I tell stories with my compañera or district. It's funny hearing about people's lives before the mission!

I still absolutely love my compañera and we get along so well! She's willing to run, so I get her to run about 2 miles with me at actividad fisica and then we usually play futból or vollyball with all the other missionaries. Also, I went through the temple last week compltely in Spanish, which was super neat!! The language gets eaisier and easier every day, but I still have so much to learn and remember! And Argentines are definitely harder for me to understand than the other Latinos haha so I'll have to get use to their accent.

Love you all lots and hope to hear more from you!

Hermana Ashcroft

PS- I finally got your guys's Dear Elders last week!! Thanks so much!!

PSS-tell grandma thank you so much for the e-mail and that I loved it!!

Sending love from the city of 20 million people

                                                                                  May 16, 2013

Hola Familia!

So I'm into my third week here and it's been so great! Last Saturday we got to go out and do proseletismo which was super awesome. I almost couldn't believe that they just send us out to the middle of the city with only our equally as gringo companion and tell us to go share the gosple after only 2 weeks of being here. Super crazy, but amazing! When Saturday came we were all suppose to get on a bus together that would drop each companionship off at our different locations. So we went outside to get ready and then one of the Argentine teachers calls "Hermana Ashcroft y Christensen y Hermana Lutz Crowley"... So we went over to him to see what he wanted and he told us that there was no room on the bus for all of us, so us 4 were going to have to take a taxi. If you can't tell by the names, all of us are complete gringos and don't speak spanish. And then he told us that the taxi wouldn't be there for awhile, so it wouldn't be able to follow the bus, so we would have to explain to him were to go... in a city that we don't know... at all. I immeditaely lost the draw and got booted to be the one that had to sit in the front seat with the driver cause I 'know the most spanish' which believe me when I say, that isn't saying anything, it just shows how little spanish we had between us. The taxi showed up though and we made the 40 minute drive into our area and he just dropped us off at a random street corner (which ended up not even being the right place) and we had to use a map that they hadn't explained to us and try to find our area and the place we would be getting picked up at hours later. Talk about sketch haha. And although we almost missed our ride back to the CCM, we figured it all out eventually and made it. During proseletismo was super awesome though. At first my compañera and I were kinda lost, but then we found quite a few people that we could talk to, we taught a few lessons, gave out our Libro De Mormóns and our pamphlets and we even got 2 return appointments for this Saturday! We're gonna teach a lady named Karina and her little 2 year old boy, and we're gonna teach a boy names Augustine and his family of 8. It's incredible how much the Lord can accomplish through 2 Hermanas that don't even know the language and yet we were able to communicate well enough everything that was necessary to say. At one point we ended up in a kinda sketch part of town and a lady we talked to said (in spanish of course) "don't be talking to people around here, you girls are far too pretty to be walking around by yourselves, it's not safe for you here". Yeah... that for sure made us feel all warm and fuzzy. We walked for a bit more though and then just decided to pray right there in the street for some guidance and comfort. I can promise to you that prayer always works, and you can be as specific we your prayers and you want and the Lord will hear and answer them, cause he defintiely answered ours. And within minutes we were back where we should be and we were teaching a man named José that we gave a book of Mormon too and the address and time of our church meeting so that he could try out the church and learn more. Also- the women in Argentina seem to always been grumpy and not care to talk to you at all, but the old men are so nice and the best to talk with... not sure if that's creepy or not... In any case, I'm so excited to go back out the Saturday and teach the families we made appointments with and try to find more people!

Things really are going so well and I love doing this work every single day to learn as much as a can so that I can hopefully help some people to have this happiness in their lives. The waking up has finally started to hit me and I definitely am tired in the mornings some days (thank you mom for the zip fizz!). Also, the language is becoming more complicated, and every day after Activida Fisica, around 4 or 5 o'clock, I start to get a language headache. My brain just feels like there is too much in it and I can no longer speak spanish or english for that matter haha. All my verbs and conjugations just blow up in my brain. Yesterday was really bad, and when my companions and I went to teach our Progressive Investigator (IP) I don't think I said a single thing right. I gave him a book of mormon and he asked if he had to pay for it and I basically told him "no it's a natural talent for you" hahah. Our teacher was looking at me so confused and trying not to laugh the whole lesson cause I kept saying all the wrong words for everything haha. I just keep telling myself that my brain is having growing pains but that it will be super big in no time so that I can speak normally.

So most of your guys's letters I am replying to via a letter that I wrote this week. So you should get it in the mail in about 2 weeks I think. Let me know how long it takes to get to you guys and if you have ever gotten my other 2 letters yet. And thanks dad for being concerned about my suitcases haha, they made it here in one peice which is good! They're trooping along as of right now.

I told you all that I got a new companion and along with that came 2 more companionships into our district and it has made me just love my district all the more! One Elder Brewer is the funniest thing ever, he took sign language for a lot of years, so he is always trying to talk with his hands and and the poor chap just struggles in the most hilarious of ways that we all always end up laughing so hard. And when in doubt of what the word is in Spanish, we all just add and 'o' onto the english word when we say it in hopes that it will work. However, the other day we ended up saying a super bad swear word I guess... So the moral of the story is don't make up words. It's bad. haha.

From now on we get an hour each week to write which is so nice! And my district will be wrting on Thursdays starting at around 8am our time. Possible 10am some weeks.

I have to give a shout out to Julia and her being married now, Congrats! I'm so happy for you!

And also one to the most adorable nephew in the world that just got blessed, and to my sister and brother that are the wonderful parents of baby bear.

And also (this one's important) to my Norwegian Thea Skandsen!! I know it was your birthday like forever ago, and I've been thiniking of it for ever now but haven't been able to tell you so yet! Happy Birthday sister! I hope you had such a wonderful day and I hope you know that I love you dearly!

Also to Emmie Buma and Aubrey Nilsson- Happiest of birthday's to you two! Be sure to let me know if you get married in the next year and half! hahah, but really.

And to Amaya who has written me but I haven't been able to reply- send me and address for one. Hope you are preparing and are so excited for your mission for two. and C number 3 happy birthday to you this month too!

I love you all so much and hope everything is going well!

Hermana Ashcroft

Hey There!!!

                                                                                                                   Thursday May 9, 2013

Dear Family,

Its so good to know that I havent been completely forgotten yet! (By the way, I still dont know how to find the apostrophe on these keyboards, so dont judge). Yeah, I definitely dont know whats going on with the mail and Dear Elders, Ill see if I get any today. My district has the first writing shift at 7:30 though, so Im not sure yet if I have any mail. Thanks for all the e-mails though, I copied them so that I could get them all printed out and read them today, and then Ill respond to what you all wrote me either in a personal letter or an e-mail next week. Dont worry though cause ive already sent 2 letters to you all through Pouch Mail that you should get at sometime, I dont know how long it takes for mail to get there through the pouch mail, so let me know.

Dad gets the honor of my e-mail this week, simply because he is my Dad and I love him. Also, his e-mail was the last one I copied and pasted to get printed out and I happened to read the end of one of his Dear Elders that never got sent and it cracked me up to the point that I was laughing out loud.

Things are going so well here! Im sending you all another pouch mail this week with some other random thoughts throughout my week that ive had time to write down. As of now, my letters to you all are really like my journal, so be sure to keep all of them haha. We are kept so busy here, but I totally love it! We actually just got new companions, wait for my letter to find out why, so my companion is Hermana Nicole Christensen now and I totally love her! We get along way well and shes from Logan Utah. Were definitely more on the same page with our Spanish and our teaching style than me and my last companion were. However, with the change we got a new night teacher and they took away my favortie teacher! Itd deffintely a bummer, but our new teacher is still alright.

Story time-

So within hours of my and Hermana Christensen becoming companions we had to teach and IP lesson (investigador progressivo) meaning our teachers act like progressive investigadors and we have to teach them for a week or two. It honestly feels so real though that its ridiculous haha. But so me and Hermana C had to teach a lesson and before we both had relied more on our companions to teach cause they spoke spanish like perfectly. But so we had no time to plan and prepare and get everything in Spanish, before the lesson. So were walking to the IPs room and I knock on the door just for her to say ´We forgot to pray!´ so i quickly start praying even though ive already knowcked on the door and then we just start busting up laughing cause he opens the door. So we say not ready yet! and he closes the door. Strike one. so we knock again and i hear him sya somthing in spanish that i thought was Come In. So i open the door and his face definitely let me know that he had not said come in so we star laughing so hard again and close the door. strike 2. so we knock again and as soon as he opens the door his phone rings and he answers it and closes the door on our face! Strike 3! so we knock a gain and he opens the door, but by this point we are not composed at all and were just laughing so hard through our whole lesson!! Mayb its not that funny, but the simplest things are funny in the CCM!

Ive got to go cuase im out of time! I love you all so very much though!

And I have to give a quick shout out to my mother, cause its mothers day this week!! I love you so much mom and you are the best mother anyone could ever ask for! Look for my letters cause they will all be coming. Thanks for the love and support! I think well have mroe time next week to write

hermana ashcroft

Hermana Ashcroft's First Week

Seeing as you, Mckell, are the only person that has written me, you get the honor of recieving my e-mail. We have such a short time to write anyways though, so I havent necessarrily read your e-mail yet, we have to print them out to read throughout the week and then I can respond to them next week. Please tell anyone that is not family, that if they e-mail me and want a direct response, to send me their address as well so that I can write them throughout the week instead of with my limited computer time. This limited time is stressing me out, I only have 15 more minutes and I still need to copy all my e-mail and send them to the CCM to get printed out. So Mckell, you are now incharge this week of distributing this e-mail to any other family members that wish to see it. And you can scold other people for not writing me.

About DearElder, they only print them out once a week here and they give them to us on Thusday. And make sure to get it sent to be printed out, not just to my e-mail, cause I definitelly didnt get any DearElders printed out this week, shame on all of you.

I absolutely am loving it here though!! a few things I want to make sure to get remembered:

Hailey-pay my tithing, also if you could send me a copy of the piano music that I have for Praise to the Man that would be great.

Parents-there is something in my closet for you that I fogot to give to you, its in a brown bag and be sure to realize it talks haha. And mom be sure that you gave my checks to dad for him to deposit.

Now, about getting here: there were 8 of us that traveled to the CCM (MTC) together and it was defintiely an adventure. I sat next to this guy on the plane named leonardo stur and it was so awesome cause I was able to teach him a lesson and he was so open to it! Except then he got all personal and leaned over and kissed me and that was weird, I had to push him away and say that since Im a missionary I cant have relationships of any sort haha. It was odd. But he was still a really cool guy from Rosario and Im pretty sure I convinced him to meet with more missionaries. The 8 of us that traveled together are the first in the history of this CCM to come to the Argentina MTC that are Americans going to Argentina missions.

I really am almost out of time... my District if called Mormón and we are 8 hermanas y 2 Elders. We got to go to the temple once this last week cause it will be closing for 2 weeks to be cleaned and it was really so cool to be able to do and in Spanish! I defintiely struggled though. Also, our drive from the ariport these men picked us up to take us to the CCM and we were so convinced that they were going to kidnapp us cause they took all our luggage and the said they didnt work for the church and they spoke no english! It was really funny, but lo an behold we made it here! Ive woken up at least by 6 every single day here!! Believe it, its tue!! Theyre kicking me off!! ive got to go!! LOV YOU!!

hermana Ashcroft

also, my address is (i think)

Hermana Lauren Maureen Ashcroft

Neuquen Argentina Mission

Argentina Missionary Training Center

Autopista Ricchieri y Puente 13

1778 Ciudad Evita

Buenos Aires

Aregntina