My First Baptism

My daily schedule: wake up at 6:30, work out until 7:00, get ready. Then personal study starts at 8:00, companion study at 9:00. And then for my first twelve weeks there´s a training program that we work with so we do that at 10:00. Then we leave at 11:00. We have lunch with someone at 12:30 then we work until we have to be home at 8:00. Then I have an hour to study Spanish. At 9:00 we plan for the next day for a half an hour. Then we have from 10:00 to 10:30 to get ready for bed! It´s CRAZY!

We walk everywhere. We counted, it´s 14 blocks to our area from our house. Sometimes we use the bus…but it´s not super reliable, there´s no real set schedule and during the Siesta it only comes like once every hour.

I haven´t gotten any mail yet.

Monday we had an awesome Family Home Evening with the Familia Falcon and a recent convert of the Elders, Jorge. It was awesome we watched the Restoration and everyone loved it. Jorge bore his testimony and I think that everyone was blown away he is definitely one of those people that was prepared to be baptized long before he met missionaries.

We had another Family Home Evening with the Familia Guzman, again AWESOME! They invited their neighbors (like 10 of them) that are non-members and we shared our Christmas message with them. I will talk more about that later because it’s the coolest thing to happen in missionary work!

I went to the clinic on Friday for some medical tests and the clinic is all the way in the Center, which is like 10 blocks the opposite way of our area so we used the bus to get there and we used the bus to try to get back to our area, what an adventure. We didn´t really understand the instructions that we got so we just decided to get back on the bus where we got off because it has to go in a circle right? Nope, wrong. It took us all the way through the Center then all the way the opposite direction, then we reached the end of the line and had to get off and wait for the next bus in 5 minutes, and we had to pay again, we were on the bus for over an hour but we did a lot of contacting which was way cool, but it was hilarious. We definitely saw some Elders from our zone, but in a completely different area and we were laughing so hard on the bus and everyone just thought we were crazy, we tried to hide so they wouldn´t see us…haha.

This week we had an AWESOME service project we got to help one of our investigators build a house! Never thought I would be able to say that. I attached a picture and there´s not a whole lot more to say about that.

SATURDAY WAS MY FIRST BAPTISM!!!!! Oh my gosh, it was amazing! Oscar is like a 73 year old man. He was taught by missionaries 28 years ago and went to church for over a year and was never baptized and stopped going, Hermana Zubeldia and her previous companion found him but didn’t teach him everything. It was so cool to see the change in him! He was an awesome investigator and now he´s going to be an even more awesome member! So we had to fill up the baptismal font and we didn´t really know how. We definitely filled it will scorching hot water and didn´t realize it until like an hour before the baptism, so we almost cooked the poor old man alive. But we fixed it and it was beautiful. The Branch President when he went to church 28 years ago came and surprised him, he definitely cried and he was crying when he got in the font, oh it was just so cool! I wish I had more time to tell you more about Oscar.

So transfers are this Sunday. So next Monday I could be in a totally new area! How cool!? And Scary!? Oh and I will definitely have a new companion!!! AHHH!!!!

Okay so this week we have been working a lot with an AMAZING tool the church has given missionaries this Christmas. It is a 2ish minute video called ¨He is the Gift¨ I love it. I wish I could watch it like 100 times everyday, but for everyone who is reading my blog, member, nonmember, active, or not, please watch it. Christmas is the time to remember that we have a Savior. Not just Mormons and Catholics, but everyone. Christ is the Savior and Redeemer for the world!

Along with the short video there is a talk that I read this week that I really liked that I would love if everyone read it. It is called ¨Come Join with Us¨. I get the opportunity to have a front row seat to watch how the spirit touches and changes lives. I know it can because I see it happen everyday.

I´m so happy to be a missionary and to be sharing the gospel with these people I don´t even know and I want to share it with all those I do know too. I know this is the church of Jesus Christ and there is a place for everyone here!

Always,

Hermana Barker

 My first baptism - Oscar

 Hugs

Wild Horses

Hey Everybody!!

This place never ceases to surprise me. There is always something new. This last week we were walking along and then all of a sudden I see a horse right in front of us...then I look up and there were like 7 more. I´ve never seen a wild horse before and definitely not grazing in someone´s front yard!

Last Monday was awesome!! We were walking to a lesson and we stopped to talk to a member that just had surgery, and she was in a lot of pain and couldn´t sit down so she had been making bread all day long and she gave us some, it was so dang good! It reminded me of Grandma Eva bread, like that good. Then we shared a message with her, and from when we got there and when we left she was a totally different person. It was so cool to be able to help her. 

Then we went to our appointment with Oscar (He is getting Baptized on December 6th!!!) We were going to teach him the Plan of Salvation but he had friends over and they kept asking unrelated questions so we decided to focus on his friends more than him (he was fine with that) and one of them pulled out cigarettes and we got super nervous because he´s trying to stop smoking and she offered him one and he said NO! and that he doesn´t smoke anymore! Super cool. And then they started getting kind of argumentative with us and Oscar steps in and just bears this awesome testimony to his friends that he knows this Church is true....it was the coolest thing ever!! I can´t wait for Saturday! 

Most of our stake was at the Temple this week, they make a trip for like 4 days every 3 or 4 months so all of our regular lunch appointments cancelled but we had investigators offer to feed us and of course we said yes! First we ate with Moira. She taught us how to make ñoqui! I can even roll the little dumpling things. It was super yummy and way fun to learn. 

The next day we had lunch with the lady that had surgery, Hermana Falcon. Since she couldn´t sit she couldn´t really go on an 8 hour bus ride and do 4 days of temple sessions so she stayed home and her husband went, so she was super happy to have some company! She taught us how to make these really yummy ravioli/empanada things! 

Then later we went to a recent converts house, Nieves, she´s like 80 years old and the cutest thing in the whole world. She wanted to make us popcorn and she pulls out this massive pan and puts like two little old lady sized hand fulls in of popcorn then she put the lid on and started tapping it with her finger and she was saying ¨gotta wake them up! ¨ so so funny! The popcorn was super yummy, they don´t put salt on it here though they put sugar on it which I don´t mind, it´s still good, and I just love popcorn! 

There are so many funny things that happen here. We were walking down the street and we always try to have a little candy with us because kids love it and this little boy saw us and started yelling at us to come back, so we went back and then he asked us what we are selling and if he could buy some of my candy. I gave him a couple pieces and he had the biggest grin on his face. I love all the kids here (The two girls in the picture with me are the Granddaughters of one of the members we eat with).

Next funny thing that happened we went out contacting with a member and he has a parrot and as we were leaving his parrot said ¨Chaio gordito¨ i.e. bye little fatty. I cried cause I was laughing so hard! 

Saturday we had lunch with Oscar. I don´t even know what we ate but it was DELICIOUS!!!! Hermana Zubeldia says they are Cannelloni! They were home made and super yummy. Then he had a cake for us and pancakes with Dolce de Leche! I was painfully full when we left. 

This week I went to my first baptism! The Elders had two investigators getting baptized. It was so so cool to see! I can´t wait for next week for Oscar´s baptism. He is super excited! He went to church for a whole year like 10 years ago and then stopped going and he´s now gone twice and he´s just the sweetest thing. He´s a little rough around the edges when he´s at home but when he comes to church he dresses up (which is rare, lots of people just wear jeans or even sweats to church) and he even showers!! haha 

I´m loving it here in Argentina! Thank you everyone for your love, support and prayers! 

Always,

Hermana Barker

xoxo

 My roomies

Hermana Zubledia and me out contacting

 Riding the bus in Santa Rosa

Some of my new friends in Argentina

 Yep more missionary training 

The streets of Santa Rosa

I Met and Killed My First Cockroach!

This week was a pretty good one! We had 3 investigators in church yesterday, Moira, Enso (her son), and Oscar. We found a new investigator that is pretty solid but we have only met with him once. I´m just so hopeful for the people here because I know the gospel could bless their lives so much. My Castillano is coming along pretty well. Don´t think I´m learning Spanish, and never tell an Argentino that they speak Spanish, it´s a major insult. Sometimes it is really hard to understand people because they don´t have ANY teeth...like none. The dental hygiene here or lack there of is unreal.

A couple funny things from this week; we had a member take us out to a really far neighborhood in our area and we got in her car and I looked down and there was a shoe tied to her clutch pedal because I guess the pedal just fell off so ya know why get it fixed when you can tie a shoe to it with some nylon and call it good. Sometimes in lessons the people just start talking and they never really stop, I have never met someone in my life that talks as much as anyone here. They will tell you their whole life story even though they have no idea who you are. Sometimes in lessons when they start to ramble I will look at Hermana Zubeldia and go cross-eyed and she can´t do it so she just laughs. There aren´t a whole lot of funny things that happen on the mission so we have to take what we can get. 

We also had Zone Conference this last week. It was awesome, and all in Spanish, 8 am to 4 pm, I got super lost by noon. We also had hamburgers for lunch, no not hamburgers. They are sandwiches with 4 hamburger patties that aren´t real hamburger and the buns are like the size of printer paper. They were HUGE not real hamburgers...haha. The food here is always a surprise but pretty good, sometimes it´s better not to ask what it is and just eat it, sorry mom I bet that freaks you out. Nothing awful or super scary yet, I had ravioli this week with a family that owns a meat shop and it was homemade and it was seriously amazing, Ethan might have even liked it...hahaha!

I´m sleeping alright. It´s getting pretty hot here and we definitely don´t have AC. Oh and all the weather forecasts we looked at were super wrong. I guess they have ruined their ozone layer here so there is like no protection from the sun, so I guess winters are pretty cold, but no snow, and summers are SUPER hot. Like 50 degrees, Celsius some days, that is 122 Fahrenheit, oh no, I might melt here.

We have to walk 10 blocks just to get to our area and our area is huge because the edges of it are lots of fields and few houses so we definitely walk a TON, like probably 100 blocks a day. I´m getting some pretty nice tans lines from my shoes with the straps and my watch.

I love my house, it´s very interesting. Here´s a couple stories: we definitely had a pet cockroach that I figured out where it lived and sprayed Raid on it...yeah didn´t die just ran out of it´s hole and I had to kill it, so I stepped on it (with shoes, on thank heavens) it sounded like cracking an egg it was awful, I killed it at like 4 am so needless to say I didn´t sleep the rest of the night. Our washer is so loud, it literally howls on the spin cycle, we can´t hear each other scream super loud when it is on. Our bathroom definitely has bidet (one of those things that squirt your bum to clean it) we don´t use it. And our ¨shower¨ is just a spout and there is a drain in the middle of the floor so if we shower too long the water leaks out from under the door into the hall, haha. We don´t have AC. We have 2 fans one is definitely broken and only works if we point it like straight at the ceiling.

So a little bit about our investigators, Moira we have had for a while. She is super great and loves everything we teach her but she isn´t married and her husband isn´t interested anymore, so he´s not really in any hurry to get married, so she can´t get baptized yet. But they really want to get married; they just want to wait until they have enough money to throw a big party, so it´ll happen, just maybe not soon. We had an awesome lesson with her this last week though but I got super confused and lost, but I bore my testimony anyway and after Hermana Zubeldia said my testimony was amazing!!! The gift of tongues is so real, sometimes I don´t even know what I am saying! It´s super cool to see the Lord´s hand in the work! Anyway, her son Enso is so, so cute, he reminds me so much of the boys, he really likes the lessons too and wants to be baptized but we don´t know how his real mom feels about any of this and he hasn´t asked her permission to be baptized and she has to approve him being baptized. Oscar, he is like a 65 year old man who went to church for a year 10 years ago then just stopped and never got baptized, so we are working a lot with him right now. We have him committed to the 6th of December!! Super exciting! And then our new investigator is like 30, recently divorced and has an adorable 4-year-old daughter; he is committed to the 13th of December. The work really is under way here in Argentina.

For anyone still reading my blog, please, please, please go watch the Mormon Message ¨Good Things to Come¨ by Elder Holland. It is my favorite. 

Thank you for all your support.

Love Always, 

Hermana Barker

xoxo 

Argentina hamburgers

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone

Clutch repair