Allen, Argentina

October 14, 2013

Hola to all,

So Friday I received my new companion that I'm training. Her name's Hermana Gil and she's from peru. She came straight from the Argentine MTC. She left for the mission almost right after she turned 19 and she's super sweet! Although, now that I've learned to understand the Argentine, Colombian, and Mexican accents, I'm working on understanding Peruvian (is that correct?...haha). I can understand her, but every country is defintiely distinct in how they talk and there's some things that she has to say about 5 times untill I know what she said haha. Also just beacuse she talks kinda quite. But she really is so nice! A bit timid, but her testimony is strong and she's super willing to learn. Which means that I have to be ready to teach haha. It's honestly a bit nervewracking to be incharge of our planning, studying, and the lessons. Especially since I can't say that I understand perfectly yet or talk all that great either. The last 2 days my tounge has felt tired speaking spanish cause I'm spaking a lot more now that I need to demonstrate and explain everything to her. She speaks pretty good english, but we nearly always speak spanish (which is good for me, cause I need to learn more haha). 

Our area is really pretty (in comparison to my last at least) and it's lots of groves. There's lots of fruit trees here. And our pension in super nice! It's super pretty with a really nice garden and everything. The only downside is that the hot water doesn't work yet... Our showers are so cold that i get brain freezes!!! haha it's really like jumping in that lake with the iceberg. At some point or another though, they should be fixing that. Hopefully sooner rather than later haha. Oh and my companion likes to run! I went running today for the first time since the CCM! Definitely have gotten fat... haha but I was just so happy to run this morning, I even work up at 6 so that we could have more time to run, that shows how excited i was haha. 

Yesterday at chruch there were about 35 people, including the 6 of us missionaries (4 elders and us 2 sisters) that now pertain to this ward. And there's supposedly about 800 members in this area.... so there's lots of work to be done and we'll be working lots with less actives again. It's a bit tricky opening an area and lots of organizing to do, but I honestly am seeing so many blessings. In the last 2 days I've realized that all the things I wasn't sure if I could do while training, the lord has helped me with. I'm saying words that i've never used or heard and I'm able to know what to do. There's no doubt in my mind that it's only because of the blessings that i'm recieving. I really know now how if we do all that we can, the lord really does make up the rest for us so that we can do that which we wouldn't normally be able to do. 

well, I don't have much more time, but I want to leave 2 scritpures for you guys to look up- Mosiah 7:33 and 2 Nephi 28:32. There both super short. Simple, but great. 

I love you all so much! And pray for you at least 3 times a day. I'll try to send some pictures and a more intersting e-mail the next week haha. 

thanks for the photos dad! I loved them! Glad you guys all got my letter that I send with elder kimball, sorry it took 4 months to get to you haha. 

Con Cariño, 

Hermana Ashcroft