Estoy en Altantida!

It´s really almost as cool as Atlantis here(; haha no I don´t know anything about my area yet other than one of Elder Holt and Elder Beardall´s friends´ is my zone leader!!! HOW WEIRD! 

Okay so this last week was alright, I really don´t think I have ever been so hot in my entire life...It was SO hot and SO humid every single day and it´s not like it´s any better inside...honestly the best word I can think to use to describe how I feel ALL the time is damp...yuck. 

I don´t have my agenda with me from this last week so I don´t remember the small things that happened but I will touch on some of the big ones! 

Okay so remember Rofino...The MIRACLE that we found? Yeah - he didn´t show up to his baptism...)´: We had his date for Saturday and we talked to him Friday night and he was so excited and then... nothing. He didn´t come, didn´t call us to tell us he wasn´t coming...it really was so sad...so no baptism this week...)´: They will keep trying to work with him and hopefully he gets baptized soon!!!! 

WE FOUND A PLACE THAT SELLS TACOS!!!!!!!! Oh my heavens! It was amazing. I didn´t think I would have Mexican food for a year and a half but Argentina is a little more well rounded than I thought! But there is more than just that. So we got there and ordered our food and were planning for the next day and we could see in the windows some of the biggest lightening I have ever seen in my entire life. But we couldn´t see any rain and we couldn´t hear any thunder. So obviously when we get our food like 30 seconds after there is a HUGE crack of thunder...HUGE. Okay whatever...no we walk out the doors and in like 5 seconds we were SOAKED...and we were like 2 blocks from our house so we were running just to get out of it because it literally hurt my body because the wind was so strong and the rain was so big...ahhh it was awful. But we made it home safe, and then our street flooded...not like a little water in some places...the whole thing was a river!!! Obviously there are photos of all of that...

Tacos!!!!

Running in the Rain

But the biggest news of this week TRANSFERS!!!!!!!!! Yupp I got transferred, I´m happy and sad. But I know it´s where the Lord needs me so I´m okay! I´m in a little pueblo outside of Bahía Blanca, se llama, Punta Alta and I´m serving in the ward Atlantida! How cute is that!? I already said that my zone leader is from my high school, I can´t remember his last name though...it´s a hard one his family is from Finland...anyway, it was way cool because I knew there was someone here from Murray, but I had NO IDEA where hahaha, I found him. 

 I Will Miss My Santa Rosa La Pampa Family

Oh and of course since I was traveling...it was a fun experience. So we boarded the bus at 11:20ish...in Santa Rosa and it´s like a 3 - 3.5 hour ride...no we didn´t get to Bahía Blanca until 5 am...you do that math...yupp our bus broke down. In the middle of friggen nowhere. Not just like wouldn´t move...wouldn´t run so we didn´t even have air conditioning...It was rough. But we finally get on the road again and we get to Bahía at like 5ish... and I´m just so excited to go home and crash on my bed because 2 hours of sleep for a missionary is like death...nope. They won´t let us use taxi´s because our area is kind of far and the Elder´s in Bahía Blanca that have a car weren´t answering their phone so we waited until 6:30 to call a member in a ward near the terminal...and he didn´t come until 7:45. We finally got to Punta Alta at like 8:30...it was supposed to be like a 5 hour travel plan...nada mas.... 

Oh well. It´s all good, I´m here and I can´t wait to sleep during the siesta! haha! I don´t know anything about my area yet since I just got here but our house is tiny....I knew my old house was too luxuriuos...my companions name is Hermana Marple, she is from California! hahaha 

I love this work. I love Argentina and I love every one of you guys! 

Thank you everyone for your support and prayers, they are felt and needed! 

Always, 

Hermana Barker 

xoxoxoxo

         

It is a Miracle I am Not Sunburned!

This week we had so much hope and were working super, super hard with Rofino, and he is progressing really well and was supposed to be baptized yesterday, but obviously with that, he wasn´t. He got called in to work on Thursday and they needed him in another pueblo...and he couldn´t make it to church and we didn´t feel comfortable baptizing him if he didn´t come to church that day, but we placed a new date for this Saturday, so keep him in your prayers that he can be baptized on that day. 

We also found an awesome family…and THEY ARE MARRIED!!!! IT´S A MIRACLE IN ITSELF! The dad´s name is José Maria and the mom´s name is Maria José...what? They are ¨super catholic¨ but never go to church...but we taught them the restoration and they really listened and they had tons of questions! They couldn´t come to church though because they were going out of town for a birthday party or something like that. That was a bummer, but they said that they would come to church this coming week. 

Really Sunday was super hard for us because we had a ton of people comprometido a la iglesia (committed to come to church) but NONE of them came...We have another family that we found this week...they aren´t married, but the mom, Vanessa has two kids with another guy and now she is pregnant with Kevin´s kid, so yeah, that´s like super typical for Argentina. But Kevin is an alcoholic and he has had problems with abuse in the past so he´s a little rough around the edges, but he has such a desire to change. The first time we met him he told us all of this in the street, and that he wants to change before the baby is born! (You have come to the right place my friend) We tried to teach him during the week but he wasn´t home. Then we passed by before church on Sunday and he said they were getting ready and would be there soon...well a solid hour of waiting later...they never came...sad. 

We had quite the interesting week in our house there was a lot of sickness going around and we had to keep doing divisions with the other hermanas so we could all see all of our investigators but it was alright, not insanely productive but the work needs to be done. It was super cool, I got to spend a few hours with Hermana Williams, she is one of my companions after Hermana Zubeldia left. But anyway when I was companions with her, she and I contacted this house in the area and some guy answered the door and he was interested but nothing too special, but guess what!? HE IS A PROGRESSING INVESTIGATOR!! He is talking with them like four times a week and I guess he has been to church twice now!!! Yay!!! 

I love seeing the fruits of contacting. Especially right now when most the time we are contacting it´s just super hot and everyone is sleeping so when we finally find someone, it´s awesome when they start to progress!! 

Oh I forgot to tell you guys, but last week we had divisions with our Sister Training Leaders! It was awesome! I worked with Hermana Montelegre who is from Columbia for an entire day. I had a whole day with zero English! AHHH! How scary! But how fun! I learned so much just from the short time we were together, I was super nervous going in, but it was awesome! She already worked in Barrio 2 so she knew tons! 

Today we had interviews with our Mission President! He is awesome! And his wife is the cutest thing in the whole world; I attached a picture of that! hahaha I love when we get the chance to see and to talk to them. They come once a transfer to every single area in the mission, I don´t know if that is normal for all the missions but I love it. To have such close contact with your leaders is such a blessing, especially when your leaders are the best! 

Funny story of the week. I was making breakfast one day and I see this huge thing in the window...it´s a spider, a HUGE spider. So I ran and got the Raid to try to kill it...Raid did NOTHING...I sprayed it like 20 times. Nothing. Then my companion was like we should just catch it on fire...hahaha we used aerosol hairspray and a lighter and lit it on fire. 

The spider

This week was a little random and quite different than the rest but I´m still a missionary preaching the same gospel and I love every minute of it. I love sharing this message of happiness with everyone here in Santa Rosa it really is the best! 

Always,

Hermana Barker

xoxo 

A Week of Miracles

Well the first miracle is that I am still alive, it is SO hot here!!! The worst part is how humid it is. The people here describe the heat as ¨pasado¨...that means heavy. Please just imagine for a moment what heavy heat feels like...then add dirt and sweat add no shade to that and that about explains how it feels here. It´s so easy to see the Lord´s hand in the work sometimes because walking as much as we do in the weather that we do would be physically impossible! Oh and don´t forget that air conditioning does not exist here. I think like 3 people have it but it´s not like it´s hot outside then we go in someone’s home and it´s cooler, sometimes the houses are actually hotter than outside...hahaha, but I love it. 

Okay so the best miracle of all

ROSA GOT BAPTIZED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I have to tell you the story because we definitely thought she was getting baptized on Tuesday...So we went to her house on Friday to see how she was doing and help her with anything if she had any last minute questions and there was a relief society dinner. So we get there and she didn´t feel very good and she was doing the dishes and she never lets us help with the dishes and normally when she doesn´t feel good she doesn´t even want to talk very long. Well I asked anyway if I could help and she said yes!! So I got her to sit down and then Tomas (her son) Hugs her and says ¨I´m so proud of you for getting baptized tomorrow...¨ WHAT?! And we asked her and she was like yeah you guys asked me if I wanted to do it earlier and I said yes (for the record she NEVER said yes she said Tuesday worked better, so we just went with it because getting baptized on a Saturday is still getting baptized). Any way she thinks that we changed the date so she is ready to get baptized the NEXT day, but she hadn´t had her interview yet and no one in the ward knew of the change. So I´m doing the dishes, Hermana Boyce is outside calling EVERYONE trying to get someone to come do her interview and make sure we can use the baptismal font because it has been broken for like 3 weeks...and her 11 year old son who was the first in their family to be baptized and who is preparing for his mission helped us out. He went through and was asking her the interview questions because you never want people to be surprised by what they ask...and there were a few that she didn´t really understand so I´m in there alone with my broken Spanish trying to teach her while I´m doing her dishes...haha IT WAS AWESOME! This was a big help for me because I felt like for the first time my Spanish didn´t need a kickstand and training wheels! Anyway, needless to say, she got baptized!!!! It was so cute when her son Tomas saw her in her baptismal clothes he started crying. It was the perfect baptism! 

Our next miracle is Rofino!!! He is a man who stopped us in the street and asked us to pass by his house. It´s rare that people let us talk to them through their gate let alone stop us in the street and invite us over. Okay! So we go we had a great lesson and we placed a baptism date for the 31^st. Then he mentions that he already has 3 asistencias! WHAT!? So we moved his date up and now he has a date for this Sunday. We taught him the word of wisdom first thing because we saw he had a box of wine in his front yard and he accepted it with out a problem! AHHH!!! The field really is ready to harvest! 

Everyday I find new things about Argentina...yesterday was that ants like ALL the same foods as I do...and they like our house...last night when we came home there were like 1 million ants in our house I don´t really think I´m exaggerating that very much either! They were EVERYWHERE and in all of my food...): Maybe they are trying to help me stop eating so dang much.

I hope that everyone loved their holidays! It definitely has been quite the experience to feel like I´m the one being cooked for Christmas, not the turkey, but hey, I´m in Argentina, doing the Lord´s work...so it really isn´t that bad! Hahaha. 

For everyone who is e-mailing and writing, I promise I am trying to write back! I love you all!!!!

Always, 

Hermana Barker 

xoxoxo