Transfers have come!!

The beach and TRANSFERS

(sigh of relief) YES! we can breathe now!!! Bow chica wow wow! I AM SO HAPPY TODAY! I feel like today is such a good day! The sun is shining out side, not too much wind which is very rare (heavy winds every day) I want to play futbol today at the church but nobody else wants to play :( they all want to sleep and rest all day! BORING! Not us, we are going to do something outside. I have so much energy today I feel like our appointments tonight are going to go so well! We found some amazing people! They are so prepared! Last Pday after we emailed we were walking to contact someone and we discovered the BEACH! I could smell the ocean like a mile away! okay thats an exaggeration because the beach is like 7 blocks from our house so its close but the thing is every time we have ever left our house we turn left and the first time we decided to turn right we ran into the beach. Pleasant accident! Tender mercy for sure! We have been meaning to go but have never gone until now. It was very different from the beaches at home in California but it was so beautiful! Instead of all sand its all pebbles and we found a beaver on the beach. He was obviously way far from home. He was so dang cute though, I wanted to go to the store and buy him some fish. Poor little guy looked so hungry and lost! I felt like my family was close because the memories of the beach are all good family memories. The ocean puts me at ease and brings me peace. It was good for us to see. Later on It was a full moon and shining on all the waves. So pretty!

Ok sorry, im all over the place in this email, first things first, TRANSFERS CAME! woot woot... Elder Christensens drum roll right here... WE ARE staying together and staying here! E. Finlay has gone home, E. Christensen is now our new Zone leader with E. Hales again and we have two new elders coming in today and tomorrow. We are glad that we have more time to work here. Everyone thinks ill finish my mission here since I only have until feb. Which is fine because we have a lot of people that need the gospel and I have fallen so in love with these families and Natalia and Karen. We are keeping them strong! We like our zone, we are all getting the hang of things.

 

STATUS OF AREAS

I consider myself blessed to have been able to see a little bit of everything in our mission! The last time I stayed in my area longer than one transfer was in the beginning of my mission I was in el campo in Campana for 6 months! Then to down town capital in Almagro -1 1/2 Urquiza - 1 1/2 and Caballito for 1. Then down to the bottom of the world to Ushuaia for a week. Now Chacra for 2 transfers so far! it wouldnt suprise me if it was for the LAST months I have left.

The rama (branch) really wants me to finish here. I always try to keep them laughing and happy. I love bringing more energy here to this place, it needs it.

 

WERE STOKED

I am planning on rocking this transfer! We both are. Hna. Romo and I had such a crazy, wonderful difficult amazing fun time together and I see Hna. Milmont and I having similar I love my comp so much and we are learning so much from eachother and she is such a doll! Now that we are super comfortable with eachother we have really grown together and its been good for us this last week. I feel so proud of her as I see how she applies the stuff she learns from me and she gets really excited for all her progress. Makes me so happy to know that I can help her and that she is learning so much. Her spanish just gets better every single day and so does her confidence! Im proud of her! I believe in her. I believe in everyone, but struggle with believing in myself, even elder christensen told me that the other day and they are all right. I know that its something I struggle with but Im gaining more confidence through all my trust in the Lord and im just going to do all he expects for Him to make me who he wants me to be. I love that I can strengthen my relationship with my Savior each day as a full time missionary! Its such a good feeling.

 

GOOD MEMORIES DESPEDIDA

Speaking of the great feeling being full time missionaries... so many of our good friends had their despedida yesterday! E. Brown, Finlay, Peterson, Bond, Davis, Vera, TONS! CRAZY! I will miss all of them! They were so great! ARG-BAN mision no es lo mismo sin ellos pero bueno.. life goes on! :D They need to get back to their families. We are going to live this time up that we have left in Argentina. Im going to cherish it like nothing else. I love these people here so much they are always going to be in my heart and I hate saying goodbye to them. Its going to pass way too fast. I have a lot to do! I cant imagine having to take off my plaque and dont want to. That will be a hard realization.

 

NEW PEOPLE!

We have seen so many miracles its amazing! We are starting fresh and with a lot of faith in the new people we have found. We ended up finding a ton of prepared families ready for the gospel just by simple talking with every single kid in the street that we saw and then we asked them to walk with us to their house and introduce their families to us. They are all happy to see "chicas" as missionaries here now they say because they have only seen "varones" and so we are still getting a lot of good comments about us being here in Chacra and it feels good to be appreciated and know that the Lords children really need us here at this time. We found Fernando, a 23 yr old thats living here with his aunt and cousin to work en la Fabricas. He recently has been really active in spiritual things and on and off with the Evangelical church for a year and a half or so. He is such a good person but seems like when we teach him, that he doesnt understand the concept of baptism. He has a date to be baptized but doesnt understand why he cant keep changing it and waiting. He thinks that he has to be perfect before hes baptized and its really difficult to get him to understand how Baptism is the first fruit of repentance and only through baptism now can he recieve a greater light and knowledge with the Holy Spirit. We have teaching him all the doctrine on it in the Bible and the Book of Mormon and he still thinks he needs to keep waiting and changing his date. Hes such a good kid but just seems like hes confused with the doctrine. He repeats the same things over and over quite a few times and its great and all but it doesnt have order or purpose. He just says over and over.. god is love and is loving always, and he has chosen to guide me because he loves me and Im finding my path and accepting jesus in my life and he is all loving and all powerful. then he starts over, and says... yeah god is loving and all powerful and jesus is my path. and I cant seem to help him get passed that repetition and help him so see that God IS loving and thats why we have an order and a plan prepared for us to return to him and we do it first by being baptized to recieve the holy ghost and then have our understanding open to bigger and more profound things. But Hes preparing to be baptized November. Ezekiel will be baptized soon! Hes doing well! Natalia is amazing and seeing more blessings each day for joining the church and seeing the difference! Im so proud of her I love her more than I can tell you guys! Shes amazing. Karen is super strong. Shes only 13 but so mature for her age and already preparing to serve a mission even now haha. Shes strong and independent. Her testimony is solid! We had an appointment with Fernando but he wasnt home and normally we dont enter the house of his aunt because he says that their family are all evangelical and catholic and dont want us to come in but this time I felt prompted to ask if we could come in and have a lesson with them. We ended up having one of the most spiritual lessons ive ever had here yet. We taught the Aunt, her friend, the cousin, and fernando once he got there. We spoke about how the things of the world are not ever sufficient for our happiness without God. We need God in our lives or we can not feel the peace we all need in this world. We spoke about various addictions that are problems for them and with teaching them directly the DOCTRINE of Christ and in the scriptures we taught that we need to learn self-mastery in this life to reach our full potential and bring us closer to God. That this life is time to prepare to meet him and bring as many with us as we can. This life is meant to be enjoyed, but we should evaluate mere amusement apart from eternal happiness. For instance the FAMILY, is way more important than some fancy car or big house. We left that house full of the spirit and expressed to them how much God really loves them and wants them to come to him for answers. Also we have been getting to know the members more still and we decided after lunch to knock on all the doors we felt prompted in all the appartment buildings near by. I wanted to cry from how much success we had. We found pregnant mothers wanting to know how they could live with their baby forever, we found little children that have been abused and need to feel the peace of the atonement, we found a gothic kid that wants to believe in god but doesnt know how to because hes never been taught and hes had a hard life. We found SO many people that want to hear our message and need to know they are true children of a loving Heavenly Father. We have been working with a few families that are progressing but slowly. We need to do all we can this week to help them see the importance of baptism now and not later on in life.

SUNDAY

My companion is a KAPA! shes so funny and so good all in one! Ill explain, she was suppose to teach Gospel Principles for us all and it was going really good. I was so proud of her and tried giving her a thumbs up with a huge smile from the back of the class and her spanish just kept getting better. It was impressive to see her confidence growing in the spirit. Then when the spirit was the strongest... im watching her and thinking... is she going to set a baptismal date with this lady in the front whos crying? I couldnt believe it... she totally did all by herself and with great faith! After the lady said she wants to be baptized I looked at the Elders and they said, it was their investigator in their area and not in ours and that this woman needs to get married still. So I tried using sign language and it must have looked so retarded to my companion because I tried saying, "ok, good job now stop there because shes not married we can talk after class!" but she couldnt understand... that went into a longer conversation about more personal things like why they arent married yet and our President was feeling uncomfortable and trying to tell us this should be discussed later. I asked my comp to let me whisper to her and tell her "good job but later" and then we ended the class. Afterwards President ended up having a big talk with us and saying its ok because she didnt know, but also to be careful in the future in her mission that we need to seperate classes and personal lessons. I agree hes totally right, but on the otherhand she totally followed the spirit and I was a super proud companion! The spirit was way strong so we know it was what the Lord wanted her to ask, now she knows for future. Its a funny story though we laughed about it later because she thought she was on a roll and was really excited and then realized they werent married. Shes awesome and is progressing greatly. Getting people to church this Sunday was a project and we failed it. We tried everything we could. We passed by all of our investigatores in the morning but everybody went out of town because yesterday was Mothers Day here. Its a horrible feeling to take the Sacrament when you see so many empty chairs that need to be filled. We repented before and after taking the Sacrament for not being able to help them all come. It was rough on me because thats all I desire more than anything, to get them to church and to make the covenants to keep the commandments and feel the peace of aligning their lives with Gods will. That way they might be blessed in all things. Our president of the branch met with us and almost started crying to us though because he says that we dont realize all the good that we are doing for him and for our members here as we work in this branch. He said, "You work hard here and I notice all of the things you do, we have not seen 3 confirmations and 2 baptisms in so short of time here in this branch before, and then you showed up and you bring a love that the elders just dont have, the branch loves you and we need you here." He was so sincere and so grateful to us that it really made us feel like we are doing whats expected of us. Theres so much more that happened and so many miracles, but Ive got them all jotted down in my journal and we have to go now. WE LOVE YOU!

 

I want you to know how much I love each of you. Your support is precious to me. This work is impossible without all of you back home praying for us. SO thank you, we can feel your love and prayers! FAM... miss you tons.... but ill be seeing you before you know it. time flies!

XOXOXOX BESOS!!!!!

 

Love Hermana

Ashley Ann Gillum