Don´t cry for me, I´M IN ARGENTINA!!! September 5, 2013

Hey hey hey errbody!!!!!!

 

I´m just gonna go ahead and apologize RIGHT NOW for any typos or weird symbols or unnecessary capital letters I make. This keyboard is SUPER weird and not everything is in the same place. Plus, our email time is six thirty but we could start at six if we wanted to, which means we definitely got up at five minutes to six. That extra thirty five minutes is probably going to kill me later, but I gotta give the people what they want!  I´m still trying to type quickly to give all you fine folks the lowdown on what{s been going on. So this is all for you! So no judgin´!

 

So anyway, I don´t think I´ve ever laughed so hard in my entire life.

 

Where to even start??!?!

 

I guess I´ll start with the airport. The night before I left had  a lot of anxiety and fear that was clouding my excitement. It wasn´t until I finally got to the airport and said goodbye to the fam and finally got started that I started to feel that excitement again. AND THEN I walked up to the get and saw about 15 other missionaries sitting and waiting for that same flight. That´s when I was like "I´m ready! Let´s go baptize some peeps!"

 

From Salt Lake I flew with one other Sister and FOURTEEN Elders. What a joy. At least we had plenty of priesthood power? But in Atlanta we met up with two more Sisters and five more Elders. The Elders are so funny. At the airport they had this need for everyone to stay together, even when we were just getting food. So we were just this pack of teenagers in suits and skirts walking in a herd around the airport. We got a lot of double takes! So funny.

 

The flight from Buenos Aire was fine until about 2 am, and then we were all just sooooo ready for it to be over. I think I´m just gonna stay in South America for the rest of my life, because I don´t want to take that flight again. Ugh. So if somebody figures out how to apparate me home, give me a holler. Otherwise I think I´ll stay here....or swim home. Or something.  BUT on the plus side there was a lightning storm right below us in the middle of the night! So we watched a lightning storm happening BELOW us. Pretty cool. I didn´t get much sleep though because I was sitting next to an Elder and I was legitimately paranoid that I´d fall asleep and start drooling, or fall on his shoulder, or something. Plus I was just way too excited! We all were. Sleep? What is sleep? But let me tell you, nothing will beat flying ABOVE the Argentina sunrise. That made it alll worth it....okay almost.

 

Finally finally finally, we arrived at the EEEEEMPPPPPTTTTEEEEEEEE SEEEEEAAAAAAAA. Aka SEEEEAAAAA SEEEEEEEAAAAAAAA EEMMMMMMMMMM (it´s the CCM when you say it in Spanish.) We started out by finding out our companions and who would be in our District. I know you´re all dying to know about my companions, so, drumroll pleaseeeee.....

 

HERMANA BUSS AND HERMANA HUNT.    

 

That´s right kids, I´m in a trio!!!!!

 

I´m with the two girls I met up with at the Atlanta airport. I LUUURVE them!!! A trio can be a little harder at times, but we get along SO well and we are always laughing. I wish I could tell you all of the funny things we´ve said and done, but that would just take too long! The Elders in our District think we´re just a bunch of crack ups. And let´s face it, WE´RE HILARIOUS. Finally, someone who recognizes how funny I am! Some of our one liners we say all the time now because one of us would say it once and now all three of us say it:

 

"Bless OUR hearts."

"We can´t take you anywhere!" (whenever someone struggles at mealtime or trips or something.)

"Well, MY grandparents....." (one of the elders in the other District who speaks Spanish really well never stops talking about how his grandparents served as mission presidents and that just makes him better)

"I´m gonna shoot em.....with the utmost LOVE."

"Behold, eh?" (said in a Canadian accent.)

 

Maybe it´s funnier if you´re here. We certainly crack ourselves up. Even if I do feel the need to beat up Hermana Hunt sometimes (that´s another joke. No worries.)

 

So as for Districts. They split the group up that flew together into two Districts, so Hermana Sanders (who flew with me from Salt Lake) and Hermana B., who met up with us in Argentina, are in the other District, and my companions and I are the only Hermanas in our District. Six of us in my District are going to Uruguay, and the rest are going to Paraguay. In the other District, three are going to Uruguay and the rest are going to Paraguay. Which means total there are nine people from this group going to Uruguay. Wanna know something way exciting? I am the ONLY Hermana in the BUILDING going to the Uruguay Montevideo West mission! There´s one other North American District here who has been here for three weeks now, but they´re all going to the Montevideo mission, not West. Soooooo lot´s fun except for it´s super scary!  My District is the best District around. We are already like a family and I feel like I have known them for waaaay longer than a week! It is going to be so sad in five weeks when I have to say goodbye to everyone going to Paraguay. :( I´m just gonna not think about it....

 

Elder Boyer is our District Leader and he´s from St. George. Elder Dye is from Washington, Hermana Hunt is from Arizona, and Hermana Buss is from Wyoming. Elder Page in the other District is from Colorado and Hermana B. is from Texas. All the rest of us are from Salt Lake is area, which is pretty cool!

 

Okay so as for stuff about my companions. Hermana Hunt, as I said, is from Arizona and she´s my age. She is the funniest person I´ve ever met! And put us together, and boy are we just a couple of people meant for the loony bin. I wish I could send you guys pictures here but I can´t. She played basketball, softball, and volleyball in high school. Hermana Buss is 20 and she is so kind and nice! She´s a little quieter, enough to keep me and Hermana Hunt more calm, but not by much haha. She whips out a lot of funny one liners without warning. She went to BYU for two years before coming here, which I guess I can forgive because she´s pretty darn awesome. Have I mentioned I love those two? We are already best friends and i think we will be for a long time, even though they are going to different missions.

 

Alrighty, so on for the rest of the week! After meeting our District on the first day, we had to unpack what stuff we would absolutely need for the six weeks here, and put the rest in storage. Then we had to wait for interviews with Presidente Openshaw and his wife. Presidente is AWWWWEEESOME. Hermana is cool, but she is super scary. I can´t even describe it. We´re all a little scared of her. After our interviews, we had a couple hours of free time, which I chose to use by taking a shower and having a nap. Oh yeah, my companions and I are in a six bed apartment that we share with one companionship of two Latino girls. Hermana Ferrari is from Argentina and she´s going to Spain (they send all the South American people going to Spanish speaking missions to this MTC), and Hermana Rodriguez is from URUGUAAAAAYYYYYY and she´s going to one of the Argentina missions. Rodriguez speaks pretty decent English so she translates for us and Hermana Ferrari, who doesn´t speak any. It was funny the first day we met them. Hermana Ferrari walked up to me and held her face out, which was for me to give her a kiss on the cheek and her to do that to me since that´s the culture, but I had no clue what she was doing. So I just stared at her for a good ten seconds until I actually figured out what was happening. Hahhaa. Stupid American I am. They are really funny and it kills us whenever Hermana Ferrari repeats something we say in English. Our favorite is "sweetdreamsgoodnight." She really does make it all one word, no joke.

 

After a nap and finally not smelling like the undead, we first had a lesson from Presidente and then from Hermano Agüero, who is the manager of the MTC. I love that guy! He speaks French, Spanish, English, Portugese, Italian, and knows some Russian and Japanese. He is HILARIOUS. Of course, I also think their accents hear make funny things sound even funnier.

 

We started our first day of classes the next day. Everyone lied when they told me none of the teachers here speak English. They ALL do! They try to speak as much Spanish to us as possible though, but they´re going easy on us since it´s our first week. We started Spanish classes and classes on how to teach. Our teachers are Hermana Gutierrez who we have in the morning and Hermano Abad who we have in the afternoon. Hermano Abad is seriously the funniest person and Gutierrez is a really good teacher and has a very powerful testimony.

 

After just one day of classes, the next day we had to teach our first Investigator! Her name is Rocío and she is played by Hermana Gutierrez, but she seems really real. The lesson did not go well. Our Spanish is just so poor and Rocío is only fifteen and really shy so we don´t really know what to teach her. She wants to be baptized but won´t go to church, so we´re still trying to figure out what we can do to help her. We´ve taught her three times now. Our Spanish is still really bad even now but we´re trying our best.

 

Sunday was AWESOME. Even though it was Fast Sunday. Man, that was rough! But it also meant it was a testimony meeting, which was cool. We just do church with the North Americans and the Latinos do church all together separate from us. You know what´s great about Sundays here in the CCM? They actually give us free time, which really means NAP TIME!!!!! I actually got a Sunday nap. That´s what I call a miracle.

 

We had a lesson from Hermano Eckel, an American who is the FBI agent who oversees Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina. He gave us a lesson on sacrifice and dedication and how we need to teach that principle to our investigators while also understanding what sacrifices will be too big for them. He reminds us all of home so we really liked him. Later, we got a lesson from Presidente. He had nothing planned, just said "hmmmm. okay. let´s talk about the Atonement." And with every question someone asked he immediately knew where a scripture was to answer it without looking. He is brilliant. I loved that in that lesson he focused on Christ´s anguish and how that anguish was not given to Him by Heavenly Father, but it was something that came from His heart because that´s just who He was. Presidente told us how we will feel that sort of anguish for our investigators and people who reject the Gospel, and that´s when we will truly know Christ. It was an amazing lesson. I took really good notes on it, so you can ask about them a year and a half from now!

 

That night was MOVIE NIGHT. Where we watch a past devotional or something like that. We watched a devotional from Elder Holland given in Provo back in January. He basically talked about conversion. He spoke for an hour just completely relying on the Spirit. He is my favorite speaker. he focused on the importance of converting ourselves first, THEN going to convert others. The really powerful part was when he said, in his loud, blunt, Elder Holland voice "you had BETTER come home with at least one convert and it BETTER. BE. YOU." That knocked our socks off. I also loved that he explained that every dispensation before us has failed, and this is the one that will be successful! And how Heavenly Father must really love us to send us at this time and trust us immensely if he´s willing to put the salvation of the world in the hands of a bunch of "Aaronic priesthood escapees." Hahaha. If his talk didn´t bring everyone to their knees that night, then there´s no hope for that person. Amazing.

 

The days here are basically the same routine, but they do a really good job of mixing it up and giving us time outside the classroom so we never feel like we´re there for too long. Every day we get an hour and a half of exercise, and a couple days ago we played Ultimate Frisbee as a District. We played Uruguay vs. Paraguay, which meant I was the only Hermana on my team. And basically I found out I should´ve been a professional frisbee player, so I think I´ll just leave the mission and go do that.

 

Okay so not really. But our Elders did tell me I really surprised them with how good I was! Yeah that´s right. We´re not technically supposed to keep score, but if we were keeping score, (and we were), my team won. We DOMINATED.

 

I love our Elders. They really are like our older brothers (even though some are younger than us. But they protect us like older brothers do.) and take good care of us. Plus they are just a bunch of crack ups.

 

Okay I´m almost out of time! If I don´t respond to people´s emails, I´m sorry. I´ll get to them enxt week, I swear!

 

Fun facts about the MTC real quick:

 

it is so much better than Provo. We are learning the language a lot faster and things are so much more chill here.

 

There are five Latino districts and three american districts. That´s about thirty people (the americans) that we do everything with, including meals and everything. I LOVE it! It´s so fun to know everybody.

 

The food here is sooooo good! Family, you would be in Heaven because it is meat and potatoes like all the time! A few days ago we had mashed potatoes and beef with gravy and it was sooooooo goood. Reminded me of your mashed potatoes mom. Mmmmmmm. WE get fed super well here and they make sure they give us fruits and veggies too. I´m all about the bananas and kiwis.

 

There is a really attractive teacher here named Hermona Pedersyn. It´s called Pedersyn fever and all the Hermanas here have it! Just sayin´.

 

The Latinos are HILARIOUS. Especially the Elders.

 

Okay time is almost up! I love being a missionary and I love being here in the Argentina MTC. I love love love you all and I pray and think about so many of you more than you know! Tell my cousins Topher and Conner they still owe me a letter or email, so they better get on that if they want a gift.

 

We´re going to the temple today! SOOOOOO excited!

 

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE YOU ALL! the gospel is true and Jesus Christ lives! Amen!

 

All my love and awesomeness,

 

Hermana Dolan