June 13th: Week 2

Okay, here´s another go at this (and maybe there will be pictures at the bottom :)) (nope, the cord isn´t the right size. Next week!)

Snippets I missed last week:

So our apartment has been raided twice... by ants. First from the sink, helping clean the dishes :S, and second from the walls into the garbage and the bathroom. Both times, I took it upon myself to spray them. And then wipe up the carcasses. And then spray the ones that showed up 5 minutes later. And wipe those up. :P nasty... But I´d rather do it than have ants.

If I get the pictures in, make sure you see my bed. I don´t like to look at it, becuase it has pink floral sheets, a yellow pillow, a gray sleeping bag blanket, and a green and orange tiger blanket. Ouch!! say my eyes every night. But they keep my warm and clean :D

We were walking down the street and I saw some flowers hanging low from a fence and wondered if I should duck or not. I decided to at the last minute, and then saw that they were full of thorny branches. Whew! close call.

Two recent converts-Lucas and Micaela- are very helpful and willing to acompany us as we visit people.

Last week we met Tita and Carlos. Carlos let us in, thinking we knew Tita and Tita talked to us thinking we knew Carlos. When they found out that we didn´t know either of them, they started asking how we got their info, and we explained that their neighbors had referred us to them and that we were missionaries. We´ve taught them a couple times, but they are very fixed in their religion.

On Wednesday morning the lights went out, so we opened a window so week could see. Hma Walters said that usually it takes a couple days for the lights to come back on... :O. Thankfully, though, they were back on by the time we got back that night. But we´d put our milk in the freezer so it wouldn´t go bad, so it all froze. Ah well, at least it´s good. 

Another thing that froze were the hardboiled eggs we were saving. have you ever seen a frozen hardboiled egg? It´s weird and it´s even more weird when you microwave it.

Thought from studying on Wed: Laman and Lemuel, How could ye forget! (chapter 7, I think) You´ve seen an angel! Hma Biesinger, how could ye forget! No one´s trying to kill you, you´re just talking to people! You´re in the Lord´s hands, just work!

D&C6:33,34,36. (I also loved 24)

Language mix ups: I was looking up the word [Mieda which means fear, but I thought it had an r and so I found a swear word instead. :S Ooops. Also, the other day Hma Walters was trying to say ¨barrier to marriage¨ but said ¨barrage to marrier¨ :D We´re both forgetting english. 

I did another street contact, and we found out she was the mother of a less active. Then when we went to visit the less active, the mother was there instead, so we talked with her for a bit before leaving. Miracles! 

Quote by Abraham Lincoln: It is difficult to make a man miserable when he feels worthy of himself and claims kinship to the God who made him.

More thoughts: "My track record for making it through bad days is 100%, and I think that´s pretty good". Scriptures: DC 121:7-9, 122:5-9, 58:3-4, 2 Corin 4:8-9, 17-18, 3 Nephi 15:9

As I´m reading the Book of Mormon this time I´m noting parts where people´s prayers are recorded and where Christ is speaking. And in the New Testament I´m writing the questions Christ asks. If you ever need ideas for studying the scriptures, Preach My Gospel has lots of great ideas.

I did my first intercambio (exchange? in english?) with a Latin Hermana named Hna Latoja. She´s from Chile and was baptized a year before she went on her mission! We visited with some less actives and the next morning went and did service for the mission leader in the ward. Then we had some delicious milanesas before we changed and headed back to switch back companions.

Our mission president is changing on teh 28th of this month, so we´re having a special zone conference this week. We get to go to the temple and do a session and then have lunch and the meeting in the temple. I´m so excited to go again!

We fasted this week for a hma to be able to quit smoking, and we hope she´ll be able to do this. This was our first week with the ward since last week was stake conference. Everyone was excited to see us, and one sister even went around organizing our lunches, and two more offered to help us with laundry. They didn´t have anyone playing the piano during sacrament, so hopefully I´ll be able to play next week or we can find a less active or convert to do it more permanently. :D

After church and lunch, we went to visit a recent convert: Lucas and his dad. We read Ether 12 with them and we were able to pray with them. They´re really amazing and hopeful that the rest of their family will join. We also contacted a family that was referred to us by a member, and they were so happy to see us! The member is 14 and the daughter in this family was 15 and the member had talked to the family about the church and the family had looked on mormon.organd lds.org before we even visited them!

The father is Evangelical, the mother is Catholic and the daughter is athiest, so it should be interesting, but the mother and daughter were eager to read the Book of Mormon and were willing to pray. They were also patient with my Spanish, and understood what I was trying to say.

Scripture study today: 1 Nephi 11, Nephi´s on a mountain. It seems like all of the prophets are on mountains when they have a super spiritual experience (Moses, brother of Jared). It makes me miss the mountains in Utah a little. 

I love this account, because it parrallels the vision of the tree of life with Christ´s life, and it´s just so beautiful.

Well, I´m afraid to walk away from this email because in twenty minutes I´ll remember five things I forgot to say. But such is the way of things....

I´m really starting to get settled into missionary routine (which is a funny sentence because the routines rarely happen and life hardly ever settles down, but you know what I mean ;)).

I know this is the work of the Lord. I know that He´s there for us. I´ve had to rely on Him more and more as the time has passed. But He´s always supported me.

Love you all! Enjoy your chocolate and your sleep-in days, and make sure you share the gospel with your friends!

Sister Tova S Biesinger

June 6th: First Week Out!

Since it´s been a week and a half there´s a little more to share, so please bear with me.

Some last looks at the CCM: There´s poem that I discovered and felt like I needed to share, so I typed it up at the bottom of the email. 

We had infield training all day on Friday and were going up and down the stairs between the big room and our district rooms. A thought from that: we need to repent everyday not becasue our companion sees us, but because God sees us, and He knows if we need to repent, and He won´t give us His Spirit if He knows we aren´t worthy, and we can´t do this work without His Spirit.

Funny story: I found a talk last week by James E Faust that talked about hope. That was all I knew about it, I´d found a reference to it in PMG, and thought I should look it up, so I did. One page into it, it said something like ´I met with Elder so and so of the Buenos Aires South Mission...´ :D =0 Wow!! I got so excited, I stopped reading, and went to the closest person I could find (which happened to be Latina) and tried to explain why I was so excited. I finally settled down, and started to read what I assumed was an inspirational story from my mission. It was inspirational, but not in the way I´d anticipated. You can read the talk to find out what happened :D. But right before the story, Pres. Fasut said something that I really liked, and needed to hear. ´A mission is one of the safest things you can do. You are in the Lord´s hand.´

The last time proselyting was about the same as last week. The man we set an appointment with didn´t show up :(, but we think it´s because he´s a firefighter and it looked like there was a lot of activity at the station. 

Another thought from another meeting: You can count the seeds in the apples, but you can´t count the apples in the seed. Hma Benton shared that and then shared the story of Abinadi. I´d always thought it was cool that Abinadi converted Alma and Alma converted hundereds of other people, but she traced it even further to Alma the Younger teaching the people of the Nephites and his friends the ons of Mosiah teaching the Lamanites, and Alma´s son Helaman led the stripling warriors, and Helaman´s son Nephi converted thousands of Lamanites and Nephites with his brother Lehi, and it all traces back to Abinadi refusing to be intimidated and refusing to deny The Christ.

Along with that ´The work is not easy, because salvation isn´t cheap.´ Along with that is the poem at the bottom.

So that´s it from the CCM. ... ready for the real news??!!

I´m a real missionary!! Unfortuately I´m a real missionary without a cord to attach my camera to the computer. Sorry Fam!! I´ll find a way to do it next week.

I´m in Villa Madera of the Aldo Bonzi Zone and my compañera is Hma. Walters. She´s short with beautiful red-brown hair. She´s from California and speaks really good spanish. (It´s funny, because she really was forgetting english and would say things like ´touch the button´ or ´take some water´ because those are the verbs in spanish) Her mom´s actually Argentine, and so it was really cool for her to be able to come here. 

We met at the mission home, where they fed us empanadas, pizza, and chocolate cake with chocolate and dulce ice cream. mmmmm... Then we took a rented car to our ´pension´.

Neither of us had been in this area, and elders had been living here before. I didn´t believe the stories about elders´ apartments before. ... Instead of unpacking (I honestly didn´t think I´d want to unpack) I spent 1 1-2 hrs cleaning out the fridge from when some chocolate syrup exploded, or something.
We´ve found approx. 5 socks behind beds, desks, etc. We bought a lot of cleaning supplies our second day. :). But the elders made sure that we had lunches scheduled for every day this past week, and are always ready to fill us in on questions we have about people in the area book.

After cleaning we had an appointment with a family who met the missionaries right after praying for direction: Paula, Niko, and Taina (24, 12, and 4, Taina´s her daughter and Niko´s the son of her husband). We had a great lesson, but haven´t been able to return, and so are going to try extra hard this week.

The next morning we were waiting outside the chapel (which is behind our aparatment) for the elders who were going to show us where the bank was so we could have money :). Another woman was waiting for them with a scripture case she´d made for one of them. We talked to her (actually, I just listened) and found out she actually wasn´t a memeber, but had attended seminary for five years and introduced the rest of her siblings to the gospel, and they were all baptized, but she said there was a complicated situation so she couldn´t be baptized. We talked with her until the elders came, and then went to the bank.

We have eaten instant pea soup in a cup, cereal in a cup, oatmeal in a cup, a banana smoothie (courtesy of Hma Walters), spaghetti (ditto), and cinnamon rolls (courtesy of me :)). The member that have fed us have been great and the food is always amazing.

My journal entries are one-5 words summaries of events, and I´d hoped to expound more in my letters, but I only have 15 mintues left. :(.

Later that day (Wed) we visited Adela, a 89 yr old less active. She reads scriptures and just has health problems for church.

On Thursday we went to the bank again because we needed the rent money. When we paid it they told us that we actually nede 100 more ollars (US) because the aptment had been rented for a year. So we let the elders in charge of aprtments know, and they took care of that for us. 

We went around trying to find people from the area book and found Maria Ester, and Less active. She´s trying to quit smoking, and we´ve been able to visit with her a couple more times. She´s very friendly. We then had lunch with the primary president, who is super sweet and her son Juan kept climbing around a running (reminds me of Maia). THen she refered us to a less active who lives up the street. Her name is Anali, and she wants to come to church but has a tough work schedule. She´s also worried about her 14 yr old son. Her daughter is going to serve a mission soon (Dafni) and has gone with us to try to teach Paula and some other people.

We also tried to meet with the Pres. of RS that day, but we took a ´short cut´and couldn´t get past a fence. At the same time it was pouring rain, so we were soaked (except for one spot on my coat that was covered by my little brown bag :)).

We spend a lot of time walking to a place, only to be turned away or need to reschedule. We can use the bus, too, but need to budget :).

On Friday we spent our time for Weekly Planning cleaning and making the rooms more cozy (pics next week). We had lunch with some other members and their granddaughter. We met with the RS Pres, who is an amazing lady who needs a wheelchair but is always calling us and letting us know about someone else who needs us to visit. 

We met with the elders in charge of aptments and they helped take some things out, and then dropped us off at our next apptmtn. Unfortunately we had the wrong addres written down, but were able to visit with the investigators who did live at the house. We´re meeting this Friday with the woman we were supposed to meet with :D. By the time we got back to our aptment we needed four more contacts, so we went back out and met two amazing ladies. One of them took two items and the other didn´t accept any but was willing to talk there about the gospel.

Saturday We got weekly planning done and were able to meet with a recent convert and a less active. We got a reference from the rc, and were able to find another less active family who also gave us a reference. Satureday was harder for me because I felt sad, but was able to be better becasue a lady on the bus home looked at me and then grinned and said ´Hola!!´ and gave me a greeting kiss. Then she wass embarrassed and told me she thought I was someone else, but it was still great!

Sunday was Stake conference, and the bishop gave us lunch. So we still haven´t met a lot of people in the ward, but were able to sit by the recent convert, and later wnet around contacting people from the area book.

I´m having a great time and love you all!!

If you guys have any ideas for finding new investigators either from missions you´ve served, or just ideas you have, that would be great

Also any short recipes.

Thanks, love you!

´Where were you that Night?´

On that night of darkness

Millions lay abed

Millions more were wakeful

On this night so red.

Deep within the stillness

The Master bowed His head

And He saw your faces

As He moved ahead.

That night a woman labored

To bring a babe to life

That night our Savior struggled

To pay for worldy strife

A father rested soundly

From his day of work

Another Father cried

As His Son refused to shirk

A sinner in the city

Cried for all the pain

A Stranger in the Garden

Had blood that dripped like rain

That night there was a child

Who died before their time

And appeared before our Master as

He paid for every crime

His mother lay in slumber

Hands peacefully entwined

As He felt her sorrow

For the road He had to climb

That night the angels praying

Were spellbound at the scene

Of their brother suffering so

In the garden green.

One of us approached the throne

Of Father in the Air

Then descended and stood by

Tio help our Savior there.

Where were you that evening

As the weight pressed down?

As you were asleeping

Your Savior won the crown

The night seemed nothing special

His friends could not see why.

So they lay their heads down.

They didn´t hear Him cry.

That night the gates of death and hell

Strove against the Rock

But Christ our Lord would close them

His blood would place the lock

Perhaps the night seemed longer

For watchmen on the wall

How could they know the Son of Man

Had made up for the Fall.

After all He´d suffered

And alll the pain He bore.

Perhaps He had to pause--

For there was one life more.

One more lamb to rescue

One more child to save

After all He´d carried

After all He´d paid

Where were you that evening

As He knelt again?

No doubt you were before His face

As He took your pain.

So rise up, mighty warrior!

Shake off the chains of hell.

Your Savior and Redeemer

Sounds the clarion bell.

Awake from sin´s fell slumber

And take upon His name

Keep His face before you

And He will do the same.

You need not stray and wander

Far from Home´s warm light.

For Jesus did it for you

On that one dark night.

Sister Tova S Biesinger

Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission

May 26th Letter

Next Tuesday we´re all leaving! (besides the ¨New Americans¨ :)). It´s crazy to think that this time next week I´ll have a companion (probably Latina) and be somewhere in the middle of the city or out in the country.

We´ll be leaving at different times, since some people need to take a quick flight out. I joke that I just need to walk across the street since we´re technically in my mission (although we´re the farthest north you can get). An elder brought out his tourist book of Argentina and I got to see some pictures of the Pampas which are in my mission, and they look so cool!!

Crazy thing happened this week: I found two people who have read one of my favorite books... The Seer and the Sword!! None of us had never before found anyone who had heard of it, and we all just happened to be here wiht each other. :D It was pretty great.

This week I passed my one month mark. I´m officially 1-18th of the way done with my mission :D. 

I made a list of the things I want to have accomplished during my mission. Apparently one of the instructors had the same idea, because he went over everything we were supposed to have done here at the CCM.

I hadn´t done everything, because I forgot about that one paper (in the 10 papers they gave us) that had the goals. :D. So this week I´ve set goals that I thought were unacheivable, like memorizing 100 words, 12 phrases, and 1 scripture    per day, plus reading out of a bunch of books and still studying and practicing with everyone else. ... My companion told me not to kill myself when I told her about it.

But (besides today :S) I´ve been able to do it through a lot of prayer.

We get the chance to perform next Sunday. I´m violining again in ¨Lord I would Follow Thee¨and again on Monday for our farewell fireside, we´re doing ¨God be With you ´Til We Meet Again¨. It´s so sad to think I probably won´t see anyone here again, but we all know why we came here.

I got to give a talk in Spanish last week. I shared my Dad´s favorite poem ¨The Race¨ and Presidente said he´d probably be able to get me a translation in spanish so I could share it with the people I serve.

For Spanish this week we learned about the mood that is inexistent in English: the subjunctive. :P. We´ve mostly got the hang of it, and have been playing a lot of review games.

Oh! Crazy thing this week. Last Thursday or Friday an elder got super sick, and Hma. Benton (Presidente Benton´s wife) figured out that he had diabetes and they got him to the hospital. He´s about as tall as me and skinnier than Drew. When they got him there, they found out his blood was as thick as molasses and if he had gone one more day he would have been in a coma. It was crazy. He got better through the treatments that he needed, but will be going home today. 

We hope that he´ll get better enough to come back out to Argentina, but if not he´ll probably be sent stateside. 

The cool thing about this entire story is this: when Presidente visited the elder in the hospital a couple days after it happened, he said to the elder, ¨We´ll soon have you moving forward again.¨ The elder responded, ¨I don´t view this challenge as a setback.¨ Presidente was so proud when he told all of us. I hope I could have faith like that.

Proselyting was a lot better this week. Our district was only 6 referrals away from breaking the CCM record last time, so our goal was 8 per companionship this time to break it. Hma Adams and I got 13 referrals, although we didn´t get very many lessons. We were able to turn people´s rejections into referrals by asking ¨Would it be better if we came another day?¨ We had a couple of really good lessons thought, and one even set up an appointment for meeting us at the same place and time this next Saturday.

Unfortunately, one of the sisters got sick and the elders and her companions were helping her get to a chapel back to the CCM, so they weren´t able to do much. So we have the same goal for this week, and hopefully we´ll be able to get it, because it means that that many more people will have the opportunity to be sealed with their families forever.

We even had time to grab some icecream right before the bus pulled up to pick us up, so it was a very successful proselyting. :D

A funny thing happened on Monday. The elders found music on the computer that we use for language study. It was Enya, but everyone (even the hard rock fans) was happy to hear it for a little while. I can´t wait to get my CD´s someplace where I can listen to them. 

One of our teachers told us that every time they pretend to be investigators, the teachers are thinking of real investigators. So after a particularly spiritual lesson practice, I asked her if the person was an investigator that she had on her mission, and she said that it wasn´t, it was her own story. It made the Spirit so much stronger, hearing about what she´d been going through when she accepted the gospel. 

She and her husband (of 9 months) both work here, and they are the cutest people! They´re always happy and full of energy and jokes. But they are also both very spiritual and strong in the gospel. I´ll be sad to leave :(

I was thinking about the scripture in Moses 1:39 where God says bringing us immortality and eternal life is His glory. Then I started thinking about how happy I´d be to see my dad after a year and a half. Then I connected the two, and thought about how happy I´d be to see Heavenly Father after a lifetime, and how that is really His purpose. That´s why things happen, that´s why we have commandments. Because God wants to see us again, face to face. He even made the first gift free: immortality. He´s bringing us as close as He can, but He needs us to come the rest of the way. 

I love you all!! I hope you have a great week. 

Sister Tova S Biesinger

May 19th Letter

So this week everything has really started to blur together so I apologize in advance for repeats or for missing things (although you won´t know if I miss thngs :))

Here are some of the main differences I´ve found between english and spanish: there are 4 verses in Called to Serve, and 3 in Sweet Hour of Prayer (which were two of my least favorite hymns in English, but are okay in Spanish). Mucho means much and many, so that´s easier. And there are 2 different types of ´past tenses´. ;P. We also started learning about different moods for which there aren{t equivalents in English.

One sister said the truest thing the other day: ¨Missionaries find joy in the smallest things... becuase we have to.¨

I have been publicly announced as the person who laughes the most in our district. I definitely don´t laugh the hardest, though. The same sister who said the above quote has nearly (and not so nearly) wet herself in laughter. We also started this thing where if you take a joke too far, or say somehting that makes everyone else uncomfortable, you get a mark on the board. It didn´t last very long, but I think it raised the awareness of how many times people took thngs too far. Even here at the CCM (which people are now comparing to elementary or middle school in their weaker moments). 

But all in all everyone is happy and leraning so much faster than any of us realize. I hope that my companion is a Latina when I get out into the field so that I can really get more Spanish mastery done.

For proselyting this week our distric was only 6 away from breaking the CCM record for referrals, so we have a goal for this week--8 referrals per companionship. My comp and I didn{t talk to as many people this last week as our goal, but we contacted a lot. 

Our first contact was a young man who approached us and asked my companion if she wanted to go on a date with him to get some coffee :D. Ummm.... no. Ah well, we were able to find a nice lady who talked with us through her fence about Joseph Smith. She was very curious about him, but didn´t want the Book of Mormon we were offering. We explained as well as we could that it was like the Bible, and I pointed out a chapter that was like Matthew 5. We got her to keep it, and hopefully she´ll read it. We forgot to get her informtaion, though, so I{m praying that another missionary will find her and answer more of her questions.

This week proselyting was a lot harder than it was last week, but I just think about that woman and a couple others we were able to teach. I just hope that the overall experience is the exeption and that usually things go better.

While we were out we got some chocolate covered oreos, and were going to get some empanadas, but ran out of time (which is good, right?). Another sister got some chocolate dipped chocolate chip cookies that were stacked into sandwiches with Dulce le Leche.... mmmmm they were heavenly!! 

Yet another sister got some Lay´s chips, and shared some with me that night. They tasted so good!! 

We aren´t starved for American food, since they feed us cereal and even hamburgers every once in a while, but there are some things everyone is missing (brownies and popcorn being primary among them :))

One thing I´ve heard multiple times here is that on your mission you become the person you want to become. So I´ve been wanting to take some time to write down the person I want to become, but I keep forgetting. I´ll do it this week, before I leave the CCM. I had a dream last week that I came home from my mission and was so guilty and disappointed in myself becuase I´d just cruised through it doing the bare minimum. It was terrible, and I still felt guilty in the morning. I want to make sure I don´t feel that way. In the talk we listened to this week, Elder Holland said that all Satan has to do to win is for me to keep quiet. I he gets me to just sit back, or walk past people, he wins. ¨Exhert all your power to Call upon God.¨

A scripture my companion found this week: Luke 10:19 ¨Behold I give unto you (missionaries)  power... nothing shall by any means hurt you.¨

Sister Tova S Biesinger

Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission