When one area closes...

 So this week was full of miracles and surprises :) On Wednesday we had interviews with Pres. Thurgood. When I got into my interview and sat down he says, "Well, there´s something that I need to talk to you about." Then he proceeds to tell me that they´re having to close my area in Alejandro Korn. With the division of the mission we don´t have hermanas sufficient in the mission right now to fill all the areas there are so they have to close ours. Luckily it´s only temporary. This week was full of preparations for closing down the pench and passing everything we have over to the elders! We don´t know where Hna. Latoja and I are going yet...but that´s what´s going to be happening!

    We had a lot of success this week and I´m just super grateful for the chance I´ve had to serve here in Alejandro Korn. The ward is amazing, the people here are wonderful and I´ve been able to learn and grow so much. One day this week it rained so much and that was fun. It started raining around 3 and then stopped about 8 at night. It was actually super funny because every time we entered a house they gave us a towel to dry ourselves off....haha but we were able to have some lessons and had success :) when it rains we can´t ride our bikes really because everything is mud!! It´s great because we both just laugh about it and it can be fun to get covered in mud if you make it that way! I learned that everything is really just about our perspective.

   This week we had intercambios!! (exchanges) I stayed in my area and Hna. Knowlton came to be with me. SHE IS THE BEST :) I forgot what it was like to be with Americans!! I learned so much from her in that day and she´s just so awesome. She goes home in just a week, but we had such a blast together. The hermanas in the mission are just the best.

   Oh by the way!! There´s a new rule....that we have to be done using the computer by 4 pm our time, so from now on I´ll most likely be writing in the morning. Also...happy August!!! I can´t believe that we´re already in August. We were talking to someone the other day about how much time I have in the mission and I told them just a little over 9 months and they go "ohhh you only have a little bit left" What!! I couldn´t believe it. Time just flies by when you´re having fun. It is so possible to work and be obedient and have fun all at the same time :)

    Sorry, my letter isn´t super long today, but we´re doing so great. Hna. Latoja is the best and makes me laugh all the time. The other night we just went to bed and then she got up and went to the bathroom....while she was in the bathroom I hoped into her bed and hid myself under the blankets. When she came back it was pitch dark and then I jumped out of the bed and scared her! We laughed for such a long time....I¨ve learned that God wants us to be happy! The purpose of this life is that we can have happiness. 

Cuídense mucho (Take care),
Hermana Feldermann

Streets of Mud

The sky is beautiful here

Working in the mud

:)

 I think that smiley face pretty much describes my life. This week, I´ve been really focusing on letting my will go and trying to do the will of the Lord. There were some things that I have been hanging on to, and this week I decided to let them go. It´s not that they were bad things, just now is not the time for them. Now is the time to serve the Lord with all my heart, might, mind and strength. And wow the difference it made! It´s so much easier to live doing what the Lord wants us to do because we are just being blessed constantly! New pathways are opened, and even though trials come, they are just so much easier to overcome. I learned that the Lord designed this life for us to have success, not for us to fail! If we feel like we´re failing or not having success it´s because we´re wanting to do what we want, and not what the Lord wants. We will never win or be happy fighting against the will of the Lord.

   Robbery is a huuuuge problem in my mission. I haven´t been robbed yet, but in our zone meeting on Tuesday the elders gave us like a 20 minute lecture on how not to get robbed and what to do if you get robbed. It was actually kind of funny. This week we also had exchanges! I headed to another area and it was way fun. The pension of the other hermanas is freeeezing because they just have a tiny little heater that works! Poor things. Exchanges are so fun though because we always end up seeing miracles.

   Something funny that happened this week...Hna. Latoja and I were doing street contacts and there´s this house that we always pass that my comp has always wanted to stop at. We decided to stop because there was a lady outside and I let hna. Latoja take the initiativo (lead). She goes up to the lady and asks, " Can we give you a tarjeta (card)?" (Sorry my English translation is going to be super bad). Then the lady goes "No" With the biggest smile on her face. I looked at Hna. Latoja to see what she was going to do and she just pauses for a minute then goes "are you sure?" the lady responds again with a no, in the most friendliest way with a huge smile on her face. Then Hna. Latoja had no idea what to do so she pulls out every card that she has and makes like a fan with them then goes, " You can choose a color!" jajajja (hahaha) poor thing!!! The lady didnt´have any mercy and didn´t accept a tarjeta (card). But it sure gave us a good laugh. I love my comp! She´s so funny and we also just laugh all the days.

   A miracle that happened this week...we were trying to contact a reference that we had received. There´s this house that we always pass that I like and a menos active (less active) lives in front. I wanted to know the people that live in this house so I asked the menos active (less active) what they were called. We went to contact them and this lady came out. I started talking to her about how I like her house and before we even said anything about how we were missionaries she asked us if we wanted to come in...ummm YES! Then we went in and taught the first lesson of the restoration and it was one of the best first lessons that I have ever taught. The spirit....wow it was amazing! Then we went back the next day to be with her and she had read the whole chapter that we had left her in one night, and had such a great lesson as well. She couldn´t come to church this weekend because it was her mom´s birthday and when she said the prayer at the end, she even asked God to forgive her because she wasn´t able to come to church that Sunday. She´s so great!! This church is so true!! 

Have a great week :)

Cuídense mucho (Take Much Care),

Hermana Feldermann

The baptism of Elias

The elders made us lunch one day

One of the members told us that the key to healthy hair was using an avocado and an egg together, so we did it. 

When one door closes, another door opens

So this week was full of miracles and funny moments. The best parts of life :) the hardships are also pretty great because we always end up learning so much. The motto of Hna. Latoja and I has been, When one door closes, another one opens, and this has not been more true than this week! Every time we got rejected this week, some sort of miracle happened. For example, we were contacting this house and when we knocked, a voice yelled at us "Go away! No one´s here!" hahaha.....so we turned around and ended up talking to a lady on the street who let us in and we taught her a lesson! It was such a miracle. Then one of our appointments feel through and we knocked on another house and a man opened the door and yells "NO QUIERO!" or i don´t want..... sorry it means more in Spanish. Then right after that a lady comes out of her house and says that she´s been wanting to talk to us, and that she´s been trying to find us. And THEN another one of  our appointments fell through and I had this feeling that we should go visit this less active lady. She had been on my mind since the morning and I couldn´t stop thinking about it so I said that fine, we were going to look up her direction and pass by her. Right after we decided this we went about one block, and saw this lady. She started waving us down and when I saw her, I just....somehow knew it was the  less active that we were looking for! Then she comes up and says she´s been wanting us to come visit her and we set up an appointment to go meet with her. When one door closes, another one opens!

    This week a miracle happened with Mariano y Rosana. They are so great, and then just need to get married to be able to get baptized. Rosana wants to get married but Mariano wants to finish his house before he gets married. This week we had an amazing lesson with them and the spirit was so strong. They both said that they have no doubts that this is the true church, and at the end we asked Mariano if he was willing to marry Rosana and he said.......YES!!!! ahhh!!! Then they said we could get a date at the county office I think it´s called....so we went and they didn´t have dates until October!! We were talking with the lady for a little while and then finally she said that in some occasions, they make exceptions. So she called out this man and we were able to get a date for the 27th of August!!!!!! I can´t even express how grateful I am!!! The Lord just blesses us so much!

    Something funny that happened this week....one of the water faucets in our pension broke, so a guy came to fix it. He fixed the faucet and then the next morning when we went to shower.....we didn´t have hot water. Oh man....keep in mind it´s winter here! If it was summer it wouldn´t be a problem. Soo....we heated up water on the stove to use to shower. What an experience that was! This week we were also supposed to have exchanges with some other hermanas but while we were waiting for them at the train station we got a call and they told us that the train had broken....what???? haha so everyone had to evacuate....Then yesterday we were leaving the house of someone and then all of a sudden I hear behind me, Hermana! Wait! So I look behind and my companion just goes."hermama, don´t laugh at me" then lifts up her foot and it was covered with nasty water from the sanja!! hahaha she had almost fallen in the sanja and to stop herself she had put her whole foot in and it was soaked. poor thing....But overall, this week was a good week. I´ve reached the middle of my mission and I can hardly believe how time is flying!! I´m trying to make the most of it. Everyday is a chance we have to improve ourselves and if we don´t, we just wasted a day. Have a great week :)

Cuídense,

Hermana Feldermann

The baptism of Elias

 We had a baptism yesterday!!! His name is Elias. I already told the miracle story of how we ended up being able to teach him, and yesterday was his baptism. He´s so great!! On Saturday, one of the families in our ward, the familia Diaz got sealed in the temple. Just a little over a week ago they completed their year mark as members. About 40 members of the ward went, including Elias and his family. Even though they couldn´t enter, they could still stay outside in the garden. We saw their family and Elias that night after they got back and he was so excited. He was saying how he couldn´t wait to enter, and that he only needs to wait 7 years until he can go on a mission :). I feel so blessed that we could be here to experience and to watch his conversion.

   The baptism was so great, and I also had the most embarrassing experience of my whole mission as well :))))) ....we were talking about temples and family history work. We were talking about how the temple is the place where the families can be eternal. I was trying to say something about when I get married in the temple with my husband.....and the word for husband is "esposo" and the word for wife is "esposa" Just one little letter right? I´m guessing you can probably already see what happened......I guess I don´t know Spanish after all? Instead of saying esposo I said esposa....then everything yelled "esposo!!!" And then I turned super red and wanted to crawl in a hole and die. And then my poor little companion is so sweet and gets so nervous talking in front of big groups of people so she didn´t say anything to continue and well....that was that. But we were able to bring back the spirit and it ended just fine :) never again will I mix up my a´s and my o´s.

   This week Hna. Latoja got sick around Tuesday....and then on Thursday I got sick and we were both sick together and almost died, but now we feel a lot better and it´s all fine :) Hna. Latoja started feeling bad Tuesday morning, which is the day we have our reunions of our district. While we were waiting for it to start, in walks President Thurgood with his wife!!! Everyone just stood up and didn´t say a word. Now that the mission is smaller, they´re going to start visiting all the zones during their reunions....starting with ours. And so for the first part President went with the other district. Then at the end he came and sat in the back of our district. Right after he came in, our district leader said that we were going to do some practices of teaching lessons in a different way, and he called on me and Hna. Latoja to do the practice in front of everyone.....including President.

    So now our mission went from about 250 missionaries to 125 missionaries, and only 32 are sisters. By the end of the year the number is going to go up to 200. I´m grateful that I have the chance to serve in this mission, in this part of Argentina. I know that God lives and that he loves us all so much. This gospel is the best thing in the whole world.

Cuídense,

Hermana Feldermann

Another day, another miracle

Hey there!! Happy late Fourth of July!! It was weird having it be cold and almost not realizing it was the 4th! But it was also fun because we rode around on our bikes singing patriotic songs and Hna. Latoja asked me to teach her some so I did and we sang them all day. :) I´m having a lot of fun being with Hna. Latoja. We laugh a lot and make jokes and this week it rained and was muddy most of the week as well so it´s always an adventure with the bikes and the rain!

  We are going to have a baptism this weekend! I don´t know if you remember the family that I talked about, the family Sosa. They reactivated in a miraculous way after being inactive for 6 years and we have been teaching their 11 year old son, Elías. He´s the best! He had his baptismal interview this week and he´s going to be baptized on Sunday! His mom wanted to make sure that he really understood the things we were teaching before he got baptized. Last week he got super sick and was in the hospital for a few days. He had been praying every night that he would get better and that nothing bad would happen and everything turned our much better than they hoped that it would and he recovered just fine. Afterwards he said that he knows that the church is true because God hears our prayers and helped him feel better. It´s so sweet.

    Another miracle that happened this week was....Ema! We haven´t been able to teach her at her house because her husband (who is a less active) is not liking too much that she´s getting so involved in the church and to avoid problems we´re teaching her in the house of her mother in law! We´ve been a little nervous because we can only be with her once a week and we were afraid that things were just going to go downhill because we couldn´t pass by her house and things like that. So we had our appointment with her this Saturday and man, it was amazing. We were talking and then she goes "I need to tell you something....I want to be baptized." Then she keeps on going and says..." I know that the church is true. I know that it´s true because God is answering my prayers" We were so happy!!! The only problem is that she needs to get married! Ugh!! Satan is just working so hard so that people can´t join the church and be happy! In our fast and in almost every prayer we are praying that the Lord will be able to soften the heart of her husband so that he will be willing to marry her! She came to church this Sunday all by herself....and she walked as well. She lives about 18 blocks from the church. It´s amazing the things that people are willing to do when they know that the church is true!

    So something interesting this week was that one of the members served us something for lunch called mondungo...I think that´s how it´s spelled.It´s cow stomach.....bleck! jMy companion was a lot smarter than I was and was carrying a bag with her so when the member left she started shoveling spoonfuls of it into her bag so she wouldn´t have to eat it! I´ve learned my lesson. 

I just want to say that I know this church is true! I´m so grateful to be serving a mission because I know that the Lord is changing me. I was reading the conference talk by Michael RIngword...I think that is his name. He said something like how we can own up to who we were because of who we are now, or the person that we´ve become. I´ve really learned the power of the Atonement, that it changes lives, literally. It´s changed the lives of so many others, and it´s continually changing mine every day. I pray that we all can realize the power of the Atonement in our lives. There is no greater gift that God has given us! I love you :)

Con mucho amor y un abrazo fuerte [with much love and a strong hug],

Hermana Feldermann

Mission Argentina Buenos Aires Sur!!!

Sooo......transfers were today and....I´M STAYING IN ALEJANDRO KORN which means that.....I´M STAYING IN THIS MISSION!!!!! yay!!!! I won´t be heading over to the new mission, I´m going to stay here in the south mission with President Thurgood.

   So many things happened this week! I talk in my sleep, and Hna. Latoja told me that one of these nights she woke up and said that I was talking in Spanish and teaching the lesson on the Plan of Salvation and that at the end I bore my testimony.....haha do I qualify to be a 24/7 missionary yet?

   This week something crazy happened with family history! We have this family that we´re teaching, Mariano and Rosana, and their kids as well. He is from Germany...well his dad is or someone along in the past line. When I was filling on my little pamphlet of Mi Familia this week I was filling out the side along my German line and found out that one of my ancestors had the same last name as him!!! This means that probably somewhere along the line way back, we´re related. How crazy is that?? It was way cool. We´ve been working a ton with this little family. They want to get baptized, but they're not married. We talked about baptism this week and set a date..or like a goal rather. They were super happy and they´re like, yeah we want to get baptized! and then we had to tell them that they would have to get married first. Rosana really wants to get married, but Mariano is a little....no sé.(I do not know) He wants to have his house done and I don´t know what other things, but he´s slowly warming up to the idea of it. Please pray that they can get married!!

    This week we had an amazing lesson with Ema. We were talking about the atonement of Jesus Christ and it was just so amazing. We read a scripture about what Christ did for us, how he took upon him the sins and the pains of the world so that He would know how to help us when we had problems (Alma 7: 11-13). After she read it she just stayed quiet for a minute and then asked us...."Could this really be? That He would actually do that for me?" The spirit was so powerful as it testified to her that Jesus Christ is her Savior and that He loves her so much, that he would do that for her. Moments like this, is when I know why I´m here. There is nothing more precious that the moments when people come to know their Savior and what he did for them.

   This week it rained for about 3 days straight! I actually like working in the rain, it really makes it such an adventure, especially with the bikes and all the mud. My companion's brakes on her bike gave out Saturday night, so we switched bikes. That was quite the adventure let me tell you, to have to try to not run into anything without brakes! But the Lord blessed us and everything worked out :)
 

     It was raining way hard Sunday morning when we woke up and when we got to church...there was almost no one. We had an attendance of 27!!!! 27!!!!! we could not believe it!!!! One of the last weeks it was 85!! When it rains people don´t come and it´s just so sad. One of the speakers was talking about the atonement of Christ, and he said this quote that I loved by Jeffrey R. Holland. It´s not exact but it goes something like this, "If people really understood the power of the atonement, they would run to church every Sunday." What a powerful statement! How much do we REALLY value the opportunity to go to church every Sunday and take the sacrament and receive forgiveness of our sins? I realized that everything in this gospel has to do with the Atonement of Christ. Our reason that we do everything is because we believe that through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we can live again. That we can be free of our sins and receive eternal life. We sin because we don´t fully understand the Atonement or what it really means for us in our lives.

I hope you have a great week! Que Dios les bendiga :) (God bless you)

Con mucho amor, (With love)
hermana Feldermann

Everyone in the mission received blankets

Hermana Latoja and I

My Comp had to go to the dentist

Hogar, dulce hogar (home, sweet home)

 I actually don´t even know where to begin to start telling about what happened this week......haha okay so on Tuesday we had intercambios (exchanges). So I went to another area, and when I get back the Hna´s told me that our power had gotten cut at like 4 that morning. I thought no big deal, but then we called the pensionerios...or the elders that work on the pension and they said they would send someone to fix it the next day. That night was the best, because it was like we went camping!! It was way cold, and so before we went to bed we put on 5 layers of clothes and then got in our sleeping bags! Haha so the man came the next day anddd....couldn´t fix the power. And my companion was also pretty sick so after he told us he couldn´t fix the power we went to the hospital with Hna. Latoja....haha I have officially been to the hospital with all my companions except my trainer. We headed to the hospital because she´s been having a ton of pain in her mouth and her head for a lot of days. Then the doctor sent us to go see the dentist. We went to the dentist and they ended up having to do an operation thing on her tooth....poor thing. Then afterwards we had to go to the mission home to arrange some things. When we were there we were talking with Hna. Thrugood, President's wife, and when she found out we didn´t have power she got super upset with the pensioneros! They told us that we might not have power for about the next week.....so that night we took our mattresses and a suitcase and moved to another area, San Vicente, to live with the Hermanas there. Then when we got to their pension that night.....the power got cut in their area as well, and because the power got cut, there were a ton of protests.....people got mad and lit fires in the street and stuff like that. we had to travel in colectivo, or bus for 20 minutes every morning and night to get to our area, but at least we were still able to work! However, yesterday night we were able to move back into our pench--finally!

   So this week we saw some amazing  miracles with some of our investigators. We have this one investigator named Ema, I´m pretty sure I´ve already talked about her. She wanted to know how she can recognize answers to her prayers, so we left her some chapters to read in the Book of Momon and she read them. Then when we went to visit her she told us about how she was making biscochuelo....it´s like a type of bread, but it´s really specific and has to be at the right temperature and everything to rise right. She was  making it for a family event and needed it to turn out right and the first one she made turned out flat like a pancake. Then when she went to make the second one, she said a prayer....and it turned out perfect!! Then she made the third, didn´t pray, and it turned out flat again. It was way cool to see how excited she was, and how that little experience really helped her build her testimony about prayer.

    We found this amazing family, and the parents are named Mariano and Rosana. We´ve been teaching them for a few weeks now, and they´re the best. Mariano loves to read the Bible and knows a ton, but he has never in his life went, or wanted to go to a church. Rosana has always wanted to go to a church so her kids can have some kind of Christian background. They have 3 kids, Julieta who is 11, Lucas who is 8 and Samuel who is 3. They live waaaaaayyyy far away from the chapel and on Sundays, the buses that run by there only pass like once every hour, and sometimes not at all so it´s really hard to get from there to the chapel. We were talking to our bishop about them and planning about how we were just going to leave super early to go look for them and then bring them with us in bus to the chapel. He told us that just this once, he would pay for a remis, or a taxi thing, to help us bring them to the chapel! So we got it all set up and then they came with us on Sunday and LOVED everything! They loved everything they learned and everything they saw...they told us how they just feel such peace and calm when we come and teach them and when they´re in the church. Literally, there is nothing like this kind of happiness. :)

    I´ve learned a lot this week. That despite of everything that´s happening, I´m so happy. THAT´S what the gospel does! If we´re living the gospel, we can be happy no matter what circumstances we´re in or what is happening. Because this gospel is a gospel of happiness! We have the certeza ((assurance), that we´re doing the best we can, repenting and being obedient. The only thing that can happen is blessings. When bad things happen, or things don´t go according to plan, what a great thing it is to know that the Lord has an even BETTER plan than what we had wanted. And in the end, we receive even MORE blessings. He just wants to bless us and love us--nothing more :)

Con mucho amor,

Hermana Feldermann