Wednesday, April 30, 2014

I'm still here :D

So, as for transfers this last week. there were almost no changes in the Zone, in companionship's anyway. Hermana Medina and I are still together, and HLCs. But you will never guess who moved in with us! I killed the biggest ant hill last night that just so happened to be in my closet!! Our closets are little cupboards that even I can pick up and move. We've been having a little bit of a fight with ants lately and I decided that I wanted it to stop so I solved the problem and abolished the biggest hill of ants I have ever seen in my life.


As for investigators, we need some.  We don´t know what´s up with us or Formosa. We're contacting, and inviting them to be baptized, but we´re having a hard time finding and keeping people. We're staying positive though! :) Can´t get us down. 

I've been focusing this week more on what kind of missionary I am, and if I have the faith I need to help us succeed, it's hard! But it´s good for me. I've been reading in Alma about the sons of Mosiah and praying really hard to know what it feels like to have that kind of faith so that I can recognize it and put it into practice and it´s really hard to mantener paciencia when there are little kids in the Ciber playing loud video games when I want to be able to focus and enjoy the hour I have to talk to my family. Little do they know. Oh well, beggars can´t be choosers. 

I´m kinda jealous of your week! How cool is that! HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA AND KEVIN! 

Marci, Neal and Joel you are such a cute little family! 

Life´s great! I love being a missionary, and I cannot believe I have 4 MONTHS LEFT!! 
Alright trunky thought over with. 

Love you all!!

Hermana A. Johansen

Saturday, April 26, 2014

News..... You are not going to LIKE!!!

The Heyman's Mission


Parents and loved ones of missionaries: Please do not send any more packages to your missionaries from outside of Argentina.

The Church has instructed us to discontinue to pick up packages from Argentine Customs Offices. This is mainly due to the increased and still increasing cost of retrieving the packages which has been paid by the Church up to this point and has become prohibitive. This does not apply to packages that are sent from within Argentina as they do not go through Customs.

We will continue to retrieve packages from Customs for the next several weeks. However, if you have not sent a package, please do not as there is a considerable delay in the time it takes for a package that you send to be released by customs. (For example, last week I received a small package of pen refills that my daughter sent to me in November.)

I know that loved ones want to send their missionaries packages. We enjoy receiving them as well as sending them to our son who is currently serving in Chile. But, for now please do not send them from outside of Argentina to missionaries in the mission. I am sure that some creative loved ones will find alternative ways to show their love and support for their missionaries. A few suggestions that have been passed along are to put some funds in the missionary's personal account or wire funds through Western Union for the missionary to buy what would otherwise have been sent in a package, etc. I am sure there are other suggestions.

The missionaries will be fine. You will be fine. My wife and I will be fine. We all hope that this restriction is temporary. Thank you for understanding...???!!!

YOU CAN SEE THROUGH MY SHOE!!!!!!

As you may see from the title this week, I can finally see through one of my shoes, there is a little hole right through it, and I´m wearing them right now.

Also this week we had Consejo. It was a bit of a harder hitting one, last month we hit our goal and record of 163 BAPTISMS in the month of March, but in April we've been having a tough time, we went from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. Almost NO ONE in the mission really has anyone that´s ready to be baptized this month, and that´s not a happy thing to hear, and Pres was not happy about that . . . neither were we. So we have our focus for our next millions of divisions. Hermana Heyman had an amazing message as usual. It´s always as if Presidte. Heyman has the what we do and Hermana. Heyman reminds us of why we do it. I got to see Hermanas Lund, Allred and Healey so that was a ton of fun and they´re doing well. Hermana Allred is kinda freaking out, this coming transfer is her last . . . yeah it´s weird.

Last night we had a little adventure. We went to Joaquin´s house with our ward mission leader and his wife to help out his mom and family. Thing is it´s really dark . . . and the way to their house is really muddy . . . . and they all have those crazy makeshift houses with thrown on tin roofs. I was helping Hermana Flores step in not so muddy places took a step forward and almost lost my face. I was going to send pictures but the computer wouldn't accept my camera today, looks like I´ll be sending it next week. It´s just a scratch, but it was crazy swollen last night and we had to go home a good half hour early cause my comp wanted to take good care of me. I thought I was going to have a gnarly bruise, but no, that didn't happen, and I'm bummed, cause it really hurt! It´s not as bad as it sounds.

As for the work. We are teaching a young man, he´s 26 and has epilepsy. He loves the church and wants to learn more, be baptized and quit smoking really bad, but something about his family isn't letting him. He´s got the mentality of a 9 year old and will give into peer pressure really easy and we can tell when he´s been smoking cause he´ll act all guilty and sad in contrary to his happy loving the gospel self. But he´s great and will be baptized someday soon. 
We also found a family of 10, they've had previous exposure to the church and even have family who are members. There´s promise there. I love families of 7+ someone always has the tendency of listening. 

Joel´s so cute! And I can´t wait to go Rock Climbing again with all of you! Don´t worry I can wait a little longer, I´m not trunky. Mom your dreams are crazy, you´d be amazed with all the crazy dreams I have.

Transfers are this Tuesday and that will finalize if I am going to Skype or not and where, so that should be a lot of fun. If we stay here we´re gonna do it at Gabby´s house, she´s great and we love her lots.

Anyway, tell everyone hi for me! Love you all! and I´ll talk to ya soon.

by the way, the foto with my blue legs is not that I´m bruised, its cause we bought new wet socks and the dye made my legs go blue. 

Love you all!!!!
Hermana A Johansen

Monday, April 14, 2014

things that happened this week.......

This week also wasn't that eventful to be honest. Just doing the same thing as we do everyday. Honestly it´s like one big day and all we do is take naps in between. It has had it´s interesting moments though. 

We didn't have intercambios this week cause a national strike with the buses and the supermarkets and it threw everything off. But ya know it´s just going to make next week go by really fast. We have Consejo and probably two intercambios next week. And then we have transfers the next week so we´ll see what´s gonna happen.

So I was thinking about this the other day, and don´t worry I´m not trunky, I just think it´s funny that my planners are starting to over lap and I can start to see exactly what I was doing a year ago, but it´s been about a year since I went to Ohio! How crazy is that!!

Sorry this email is so short. I've got a lot of pictures to send ya and it always takes a good portion of my time on the computer.


Joaquin's baptism 

favorite Hermanas


 
:D more tan lines...





Hey, love you all! I´ll talk to ya´ll soon. 

Hermana A Johansen

mas fotos.....





Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Cow Hearts......

Alright, as you may notice the subject of this week is a little odd. I forgot to tell you a few weeks back that I had eaten a Cow heart and the family who fed it to us didn´t tell us until I had finished luch. . . . Hna Medina couldn´t finish. I wouldn´t eat it again. It tasted like a huge Chicken heart and we all know how much I like Chicken. It was an interesting experience to say the least. 

Conference was AMAZING!  Loved it and soaked it all in as much as I could! WE GOT TO WATCH IT IN ENGLISH! There are a ton of us gringos here and they got it all hooked up for us. I got to hang out with la Hermana R Ashby, in Steven terms she´s like my Elder Harley. We've never been comps but we became really good friends being HLCs at the same time. She´s been in Formosa for forever, and it was really fun to catch up with how she´s doing.

Are you all gonna be reading your Preach My Gospel now? As for what I´m studying we´re working on chapter 3 as a mission focusing on the true doctrine, commitments, and promises of the things we teach. Personally I´ve been working on Cht. 6, Los Atributos de Cristo. I´m choosing two during weekly planning and working on them during the week. It´s great and I am learning a ton.

Dave and Mikayla´s picture´s perdy cute! Way to go kids! 
I will be home for the first week of September for the family reunion. Tell Mike to get ready for Empanadas, and Torta Frita.

Steven! I figured out what your crazy shout sounds like when you get excited about something. Tiene un grito Paraguayo. Tiene que buscar musica Paraguayo.

We had interviews with Pres at the beginning of the week, they were amazing! There´s nothing like interviews and conference in the same week to recharge a missionary. 

I can´t believe I missed the WINTER Olympics, what is this. Thank heavens they talked about it in Conference. That talk woke up what ever athlete I have in me and got me all pumped up to go get people baptized.

That´s a bummer about Elder Riddle. I was thinking about his family the other day wondering how they´re doing. 

Well I got to go, there are some crazy kids in here playing video games and it´s really hard to focus.

Love you all! Take care! and don´t forget what the Prophet told you.

Hermana A. Johansen