Pics Week 46

A street I walk normally

Choir Practice

A train we missed 

Cut with a potato peeler

An investigator

Power out again

Week 44 pics and Week 46

Catch up...

June 5, 2017

Emergency getting off the train

June 19, 2017
Today I opened up my email, and there it was.... the dreaded email.... that comes to every missionary... 

the subject line-- no se ponga trunky... :O 

(it`s the email that asks for airport information) 

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

:(  

Luckily, I`m not trunky. I still have a lot of time and energy to use in the mission :D.

This week there weren`t any changes in our ward. (or in our zone, for that matter. It was really weird, everyone stayed the same. It`ll be a fun transfer :D)

Tuesday we had a food miracle. We didn`t have a member wh waas going to give us lunch, so we were going to have to take the time to cook. But as we were going to visit someone, a less active family greeted us and asked if we had lunch. No. So they invited us over. We had lunch with them, and were able to visit a lot more people with the time we had.

Wednesday I woke up with the flue and my comp with a stomach ache (food poisening) and we went out to work!! It was amazing becuase we were so weak we had to rely on the spirit and he helped with our leson with a less active and Magali, our investigator.

Magali has progressed  a lot this week. She told us she smoked Wednesday, so we went to teach her friday about the word of wisdom. Before we started, she told us that she`d already gone from 20 cigarettes each day to 10. And we hadn`t even challenged her to stop yet! Now she`s gone two days smoke free. and feels great. The down side is her boyfriend moved back in this week... after we`d talked about the law of chastity. :(. We`re working on it.

It`s been a great week. We were able to feel the spirit a lot and set goals to feel it even more. 

There weren`t a lot of people in church Sunday. :( This was sad, but we`ve had better attendance, and we`ll be working for that this week. 

Monday we found a new investigator whose sister was an investigator, but died of cancer. Now we`re hoping that Miriam accepts the gospel and is able to do the work for her sister who passed away. Woohoo!! Miracles!

Yesterday we talked to two sweet old men who like to read the Bible. We gave them copies of the Books of Mormon. Immediately, one of them opened up to the introduction and started reading and said "This is great. It should tell us a lot of information." :D They were thrilled when they found out they were free :).

Love you all have a great week!!

Sister Tova S Biesinger

Week 41 and 42: Another Great Week

May 15 pictures and email and May 22 pictures and email:

15:So this week we had exchanges, a zone conference, a baptism, and mothers day call so it was pretty loco :).

Tuesday we had four lessons!!! All with good investigators that are progressing or almost progressing. We`ve started killing two birds with one stone by having Candela (the little girl who can`t be baptized because she doesn`t have permission) in the lessons we have with her neighbor, a less active member. 

Then was a crazy 24 hours of exchanges, I was in the other area--Adrogue. We had an amazing lesson with an invesigator that didn`t feel like she could pray, but we had her say the prayer in the end and she started crying. 

When we finished there was no rest from traveling. We dropped off my things and went to two lessons (one fell through) and then returned to the chapel to have the baptismal interview of Fabian.

That night we ordered pizza

The next day we had zone conference. For lunch we had pizza. So we traveled early in the morning and got home in time to have another lesson with Fabian and dinner with a member. She made pizza :D

Saturday we had a lesson with a family medio-eternal investigators, but were able to hear from the mom what she felt she lacked in life and teach about the plan of salvation.It was so spiritual, and she even accepted the invitation to be baptized! 

Sunday was crazy, we were in the chapel from 9 until almost 3 with the baptism of Fabian and ward counsel and everything :). We had a crazy lesson with an investigator after lunch and then ran to do skype in a member`s house. Apparently my english is pretty bad and I have a spanish accent :D. (But in spanish I have an english accent, so I`m stuck between the two :S).

Today we had our district activity and an elder from Brazil made us Strogonoff de Brazil (It`s different from the US version). You fry garlic a little bit, put in a bunch of cut up chicken, put in a bag of sauce (like spaghetti sauce, but different :)) some cream, ketchup, and mustard, and parsley. It was super yummy. I made an interesting brownie that had a cave in the middle somehow, and was all the way cooked besides a doughnut shaped area. I don`t understand how... but it`s delicious for me anyway :D.

I love you all! I`ve loved feeling lost in the work. I know that wherever we are, if we have our priorties right we can feel this way, that whatever happens, we`re doing the Lord`s will and it`ll turn out all right 

Love you! Hugs!!

Sister Tova S Biesinger

22: This week we had a couple of visitors-- called Viajeras ¨Traveling Missionaries¨-- two sisters who help us do double in our area for a week and especially help us find new investigators. They arrive Monday night and leave Sunday afternoon and always come in rounds of two, so this afternoon we`ll be receiving another two :D.

Hna Davis-- remember? My comp from last transfer? :D-- and Hna Menezes from Breazil were here, and everyday we did divisions.

Also, Tuesday we had interviews and a less active sister brought us a container filled with lunch. It was kind of funny, because none of us knew her, we just had her name in the calendar and her phone number. When she arrived I thought I`d recognize her, but nope :S. She lives in the elder`s part of the ward, so I hope that they started to visit her, because she was super sweet :).

It`s been raining a lot this week, so there was a lot of walking in the mud. One day we were literally walking through a mini lake the entire ¨street¨ had two inches of water. I had rain boots, but Hna Menezes only had her little shoes, and her feet got soaked :(.

This week I did an inordenate (is that a word?) amount of cooking: Monday for the district activity, Wednesday for the district meeting, and Thursday for a sister`s surprise birthday party. It was fun, but I ran out of cooking things. :(

Today for lunch my comp and I made mashed potatoes and gravy, mmmm.... with an argentine tomato salad on the side of course :)

Oh! Speaking of american food, I love my companion. She received a package from her family with.... (hold your breath....)..... Root Beer flavoring.... and instructions of how to make root beer.... mmmm... for my cumplemes 13, she made up some root beer, bought ice cream, and I had my first root beer float in a year!

It was kind of crazy sharing an apartment with two more, but we made it work :). Hna Menezes started to teach me portuguese, which I can understand, becuase it`s super similar to spanish, and I just need to learn what`s different in order to speak it. Eu amo ser missionaria. 

So yeah, it`s been an amazing week. Sad news-- our investigator that got baptized last week couldn`t make it to his confirmation this Sunday becuase of the mud. :(. But the elders had a baptism and it was so sweet. It`s been great for the ward to have two baptisms in two weeks. We`re going to be working to keep it up.

I love you all, have an amazing week!

Sister Tova S Biesinger

Oops!  Sideways...sorry, folks.

Skyping with family!

Week 28: Hola Todos! (#2)

This week has been amazing.

I don´t know if I already shared that last week we past a couple of men outside a house and they started asking us questions (Where are you from? Are you Evangelists or Catholics?) but we kept walking. Afterwards my companion felt bad, so we started walking more instead of taking the bus in order to see if we could find them again.

Last Monday, we found one (Matias) outside the same house, but he was drunk. We still talked to him and later his dad came out to tell us that if we could come back another day, his son really needed to learn about God. So my companion went back during intercambios and they had a good lesson with him, and he accepted baptism! He´s going through a lot of trials right now, so he´s really depressed but likes it when we come to talk to him and teach him about how he can change his life. Wow!

How to make the missionaries in your district amazingly happy and homesick at the same time-- make lemon bars :). Every missionary from the States said something like this ¨Are these lemon bars?¨ Yep ¨Wow, my mom makes these!¨ :D

This week, a youth in our ward was with us for two days in a row, and we were able to give out ten Book of Mormons and teach investigators and find less actives with him. 

As we were contacting, this member contacted a lady and introduced us as from the Church of Jesus Christ, and she finished his sentence ... of Latter Day Saints. She and her family moved here a year ago, and for about 4 years have been inactive. But her son is studying to be a piano professor and came to the piano classes on Saturday. We talked about the piano and I showed him some exercises and he showed me some cool songs he´s already learned.

Then a family came to learn piano and won the prize of the first people that have come for two lessons in a row :). It was amazing to see the mom. Last week they´d learned what the notes looked like and this week we took a hymn and practiced identifying the notes. She got so excited that when it was her turn to practice on the piano, she took out her favorite hymn and started playing it! She played the first line and then turned and gave me a huge hug :). Then she finished playing it! It´s amazing seeing her and her daughters practicing. It´s also cool to feel how I need to teach them each so differently and at different levels. It´s that way with missionary work, too. Everyone has different expectations, situations, and experiences and need different approaches and information.

This Sunday there were alot of less actives that came to the church!!!! It was amazing. One woman recently lost her son, and has felt that she needed extra peace, and recognized that she could find it by coming to church. We were able to talk with her a lot, and are going to visit her again. 

It´s been una semana maravillosa!! I feel a lot more excited and my companion and I are working hard.

I love you all, have another great week!

Sister Tova S Biesinger

Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission

Week 27: Hola Todos!!

Cómo están?

This week was amazing, and we´ve had miracles come our way!

Our district meeting was great, we put together our vision and took all of our favorite scriptures, took a phrase, and made a ¨Super Scripture¨!! 

A member (Luciano--16) came with us to visit Mimi and we decided that we´re going to trust in the scriptures and read them with her for the lessons. She´s already received almost everything we have to teach her, and just needs to exercise her faith and act.

We also talked with Olga (less active) and she´s also progressed a lot. Now she just needs to attend the church :).

Miracle in Thursday!! We went to see if a reference was home, and not only was she home, but when she saw who we were, she let us in, and we started talking! Catalina is going to have her baby this month, has a lot of great questions, and is so receptive to our message. We shared about the Plan of Salvation, and she believes in a lot of the principles already, and just needed to hear about them.

We also visited a new member in a critical time, she just received some hard news and we were able to share in Mosiah 24 when Alma and his people received strength to carry their burdens. 

We visited her again in Sunday and just that morning an uncle had passed away. The Lord really loves her because he keeps putting her in our path during these hard trials in her life. 

In Friday we were able to have a lot of lessons! We found a family that usually isn´t home, and they shared with us why they don´t want to come to church, which is great because now we know how to help them. 

We also got to know an amazing family in our ward. We had lunch with them then they came to our piano classes. They´re so much fun, and it was great to get to know them. We´re going to be reaching out even more to the members this week. 

This week has been amazing. I love my companion and the ward. The investigators are great, and the people are open to the message. I´m loving reading the scriptures. As a zone we´re reading the entire Book of Mormon this transfer, so it´s been really cool (and I´m reading it all in Spanish, woohoo!!)

Love you all!

Have a great week! 

Sister Tova S Biesinger

Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission

Week 26: Good News and Bad News

The good news is that I had a great New Years with other missionaries (different ones from Christmas) and on Sunday a member family surprised us by taking us to their house for lunch where we ate and chatted.

The bad news is that as I was plugging in my card to send pictures the computer once again wiped my memory :(. 

Thankfully, my companion takes all the pictures that I take, so she can send them to me to send to you guys :D.

Last Monday was great. We finally remade our map that we have of our area that was ugly and confusing, so now it makes sense and looks super cute. 

The Reeses didn´t turn out like a reeses but it tasted amazing! :D There´s now an elder from Sweden in our zone, and he said that he´d make something from Sweden and give me the recipe. Yeah!

Tuesday was full of miracles!! 1-- we went ot find a reference from a member, and contacted her father in law, who gave us her address and we gave him a card!

2--We talked with the reference

2.5-- We contacted a lot of other references we received and have appointments for this week.

3--My companion had lost her scriptures, but we found them again in the house of a member

4--My companion got new scriptures... A Spanish Quad!!

5--A member took our dirty clothes to clean them

6--We found a less active that we don´t usually find

7--Another less active went to the mutual activity!

8--A member that hasn´t attended church for a while was in her house, let us in, and told us what was happening. We were able to talk to her, and she and her whole family came to the church yesterday!!!

It was amazing.

Wednesday we had our first district meeting in our news zones (they were all divided, so now our mission has 12 instead of 6). It was fun, and after that we had lunch and visited Mimi. She invited us to a birthday party for Leonardo this Friday and asked us to play violin and sing. :S. So then we went to a member´s house and they helped us find songs to play for the party. :)

Luciano is a young man in our ward who accompanies us in a lot of our visits. He went with us in our lesson with Maria in Thursday and helped us by sharing scriptures and bearing testimony. If you ever get the chance to go with the missionaries for a visit, take it! Even if you only do it once, for 10 minutes it´s worth it and it´s such a strength for the missionaries and the investigator. He also made some contacts that were fun-- he´s preparing well for his mission in a few years.

Friday we were able to talk with the reference we contacted on Tuesday. She has a lot of problems, but accepted a Book of Mormon and said she´s read it and pray. We´re going to call her to set up another appointment. 

This weekend we received lunch and dinner from a member and ICE CREAM!! It was 41 degrees cel. in Saturday, and then it rained Sunday morning. One thing that is certain about Argentina is if it´s going to rain during the week it will do it Sunday morning. Without fail, throughout my entire mission up to this point. 

It´s been an amazing week, and I´m so excited for this upcoming week.

I know that this is the work of the Lord and that the Spirit guides it. 

Have a great week! Enjoy the snow! 

Love you all!

Sister Tova S Biesinger

Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission

Week 25: FELICES FIESTAS!

Hey everyone!!

This week was crazy for two reasons-- it was Christmas, and I was sick. :D

Monday I fell asleep at 6 and woke up the next morning.

We went to our district meeting and I shared the cupcakes I´d made before knocking out and I received a blessing for my health. Our zone and district is super fun, so I´m a little sad about transfers that happened today, but excited to get to know even more people.

On Wednesday we worked in the afternoon and had a couple of lessons. We taught about temples with Mimi, and she asked us if she marries with someone being a widow, which husband will she have in the next life. We told her we´d answer her question next time.... :). We´re going to use the episode in the Bible when someone asked Christ the same question. God has all power and He loves us so He´ll work everything out for us.

Thursday we were both sick, and I used the afternoon to disinfect the apartment. And then we got better!! Woohoo!!

We got to teach Maria about the Law of Chastity Friday (my favorite :S) and she didn´t completely understand, so we need to teach it again :(. But she´s super sweet, and we´re looking forward to her future when she´s married in the temple!

Saturday another companionship arrived and we did divisions to so one did her skype with my companion and a member, and I went with the other to collect Christmas cards and packages in Monte Grande. We needed to be inside by 6 due to the partiers that would be out, so we enjoyed a dinner from members and the fireworks out our window, and a game I got for Christmas.

Christmas day it RAINED and THUNDERED and LIGHTENINGED!! :D I was happy, because it was the closest thing to snow. But because it was Christmas no one was open including the buses, so we walked to church happily in the rain. It was a beautiful sacrament meeting, I got to play violin one last time with the ward choir, and then we went to have lunch (hamburgers!) and went to talk to our families!!! Yeah!!! I was so happy, and loved seeing my cute little brothers and sisters and Drew (jk, :)--you´re cute, too Drew :D) and Grandma and Grandpa and my mommy and daddy and everyone! It was amazing.

Experiment of today--making a Reeses.

 

I´m excited to get back to work, and to work with the spirit that´s left behind after Christmas when everyone is still happy and a little more relaxed and open to the Spirit (and the missionaries :)).

Happy New Year´s everyone!! Enjoy your week!

Sister Tova S Biesinger

Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission

Week 24: Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all have a wonderful time this holiday season!

Wow! it was just last Tuesday that my companion and I arrived on time in the train station and couldn´t get to our zone conference until 20 minutes late becuase we had no idea where it was and no one was answering their phones becuause they´d already put them in silent and we had to wait until the elders that arrived late showed up. It feels like it happened two weeks ago. :S

Zone conference was amazing!! One elder shared that we are literally living the dreams of the prophets. They saw our days and were so happy with how the church was growing.

After the conference a couple of sisters had a lot of stuff (book of mormons, pamphlets, etc) to bring back in their two hour journey, so they stayed the night in our pension, and the pensioneros (elders that organize everything in the pensions, rent, furniture, todo) picked them up the next morning with their things. That morning was the birthday for one of them and so we had a little celebration for her with balloons and presents. 

That day (wednesday) we had a lesson with Mimi about praying, reading, and going to church and it was really good. She still doesn´t really want to be baptized but our lessons are a lot better and she´s a lot more open. We also talked with Hna Olga about the Restoration, and then had a last minute rehearsal with the stake choir. 

They had their performance yesterday and the missionaries joined them for the last song- Joy to the World. I also joined the program playing the violin. In a couple of songs they also had me play the tenor part on the keyboard to amplify the sound. It was crazy and fun!

The performance was amazing! We´re going to get the photos and videos from the two photographers (members of our ward :)) and I´ll send them to you all.

To my embarrassment this week I fell asleep during a ¨lesson¨. :S We´´d found an old investigator and she talked and talked and talked, and it was late afternoon and I was sleepy, and so I fell asleep around 5 times during her conversation. :(. Lesson..... DON´T FALL ASLEEP DURING LESSONS!! :S

But we got a return visit, so she wasn´t offended (or didn´t notice, hopefully :))

Friday we had a lesson with a member that´s super sweet and is raising her neices. She came to the ward dinner that night which started at 8 and ended at 12 (we only stayed an hour), but looked super fun!

Our investigator Maria accepted the Word of Wisdom without any problems, so we´re super happy for her! 

Saturday and Sunday were musical! We practiced again with the stake choir in the morning, ran to lunch, ran from lunch to violin lessons and piano lessons with a less active member and her granddaughter, and ran to the stake center again for the baptisms of the stake. One of which was a member in our ward. She was the last person in her family to accept the gospel, but now they´re all together, and she wants to visit people with us. She´s super sweet, and it´s amazing that she´s had this opportunity.

Then Sunday was church, practice for the ward choir, eat lunch, and practice for the stake choir, and perform for the stake choir. 

It was really the best church production I´ve been in, and in the end people were crying, and Mimi was able to go, and it was all amazing.

Overall, I´m super happy. We have fun plans for Christmas, the highlight of which is going to be..... the apple pie. JK, talking with my family!!!

Famililes are amazingly important, and in the Christmas season we appreciate them even more. Because Christ was born, He was able to perform the atonement. Because He performed the atonement we can be clean from sin. Becuase we are clean we can enter the temples. And becuase we can enter the temples our families can be sealed together forever. 

I love you all and *May your days be merry and bright, and my all your christmases be white*

(we´re going to have a lightening storm here. I guess that´s the closest we´ll get to snow :))

Sister Tova S Biesinger

Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission

Week 23: Hola! Feliz Navidad!

This week was super fun!

Last Wednesday a member notified us that he wanted to go proselyting with us. So he went with us! He´s 16 years old, and is amazing. We had a lesson with an investigator and afterwards he invited her son to mutual and the church, and he went! Thanks to all the members who help us out, it really makes the day of a missionary when this happens. 

Also in Monday we´d made brownies and cinnamon rolls and piña colada (without alcohol, don´t worry) to bring to eat at the end of district meeting Tuesday. But at the end of the meeting our lunch called and said we had an hour to get there (and we were 1 1-2 hrs. away) so we left the food with the elders and to this day I will never know if it was delicious or not (besides taking their word for it, but I´ll never know for myself :( ...).

Then our weekend was amazing because WE SANG ALL WEEKEND!!

All of the missionaries in our zone sang chrismtas carols in three different parks that were next to train stations, and I got to play violin!! The funnest part was afterwards, as we all went home in the train we sang and I played violin some more. :)

I´ve been finishing Alma in my scripture study, and this is what I learned from Moroni. 1--we should be like him (he is ... Alma 48:7-16). 2--how to handle adversity: have faith and a sense of duty or motivation, receive counsel and comfort from leaders and loved ones, have unity, pray, endure with power, and forgive (see Alma 43:46, 48, 49, 50, 54, 44:20).

It also talks ALOT about preparation. When he isn´t fighting he´s preparing. When Teancumn doesn´t know what to do, he prepares. As we prepare we can face the trials and fights that come our way with courage and faith.

Oh, and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!! I know it´s not there yet, but it´s basically there. :)

I know that as you do the Light the World program (even every other day) you´ll be able to feel the Spirit more, and see miracles in your lives and the lives of others.

Love you all!!

"May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be white."

Sister Tova S Biesinger

Argentina Buenos Aires South Mission