Come one; come all!

She's home! And Nori will be speaking in church tomorrow (May 29th) at 8 a.m. The building is located on Southern and 48th Street. We invite all who would like to attend.

Coming Home!

Nori will be returning from her mission on Wednesday, May 25th. She will speak in church the following Sunday on May 29th at 8 a.m. (The building is located on Southern and 48th Street.) We invite all who would like to attend.

Dia de Bruja

Aqui andamos. Another week has gone and passed and we continue to see a ton of miracles! We are excited for this week and all our plans. We have an intercambio with the hermanas and I´m going to work with my old companion Hna. Martinez for a couple of days here in Villa Independencia. We are also preparing for the ¨Somos Locos por Locro¨ activity for the 25 de mayo. We are also preparing for a baptism this weekend and we hope all goes well with that. It´s going to be an amazing week just like this last one! And this is how it went down.

Friday the 13th - I think that I have bad luck. I have had it for the last two weeks and it all started when i lost my credit cards and phone in La Falda. And the bad luck has continued with that. I ran out of money and then hot water and then gas for the stove and then my shoes broke and all that good stuff. I told the Flia. Chacon that i had bad luck and they scolded me and told me that there was no such thing as bad luck. And then I responded that the next day was Friday the 13th aka el día de mala suerte here. It was quite comical. And I even saw a black cat and it rained and some other bad luck happened. But now that i think about it, it was a good day because we saw a lot of miracles. We ended the day with a Family Home Evening with a Menos Activo family. We ate Grido and Pizza and had a good time together. There were 15 of them and we taught about Testimonios and the Restoration. The Spirit was there and we had fun.

Flia Romero Bautismo - So we are getting all ready for another baptism of the Romero family. We are baptizing Carmen and two of her nieces - Carolina and Sandra. Hopefully everythign works out all right. Carmen has already planned her whole baptism. We told her that we would take care of everything. But she asked the member she wanted to baptize her, and then she invited the members to talk at her baptism, and even told us when we were going to do it without us saying anything. She told us that we were in charge of bringing the pan de banana and the empanadas. I´m alright with that. So we are excited for that and we´ll be preparing for that this week.

Talk in Church - I gave a talk in church yesterday and I think it went well. Hna. Waters gave a talk on Hope and then I talked on Change of Heart and then our mission leader gave a talk on forgiveness. The talks had nothing to do with each other but that´s how it is done here. They think it´s boring if everyone talks on the same subject. Anyways, it was a good sacrament meeting and we had plenty of recent converts and investigators in our gospel principles class. We had the Flia Romero in church and they brought two dogs. It was kind of a mess but it worked out fine. I think Hno. Chacon chased them off. It was also a blessing to see all my converts in church and the three families are preparing to go to the temple in September and then the other one is preparing for his mission in January. I love the miracles that happen! I love the mission and I´m grateful for the opportunity to be here in Villa Independencia in my mission.

Les Kiero,

Hna. Ellsworth

Yo amo la vida!

I love the mission and I love life! Ya, there are trials and challenges but you just have to learn from them and look past them and see all the blessings and miracles that are in our lives. And I know that i have a ton of blessings and miracles in my life. Here are just a couple that i have seen this last week!

Flia. Chacon – So we live in the house of the members called the Family Chacon. I just have to tell you that they are pretty much my family my Argentina. I just love this family! They help us with anything we need and they are just constantly serving us. Hno. Chacon makes signs for a living so he made this huge, huge, huge sign for the open house. And he made some other ones of the Proclamation to the World, and Eternal Families, and the Plan of Salvation. It´s a cool sight to see. Anyways, they are just a great family and a good example to me.

Capilla Abierta – We had the Open Church House and it was a ton of fun. We invited some of the other missionaries and they were in the streets with signs about the Open House. We had refreshment, movies for the Little kids, and we were giving a discussion about families. We compared the récipe of banana bread with the récipe for a happy family. We used the scripture in 2 Nefi 5 and it worked out really well. We had a lot of visuals and ended the presentation with a video from Mormon Messages. It was so cool! We didn´t have as many people as we wanted but we did doublé the church attendance on Sunday for our Branch Conference. And now we are getting ready for 25 de Mayo for an activity of Locro. The theme is ¨Somos Locos por Locro!¨ Everyone is really excited!

Intercambios with Johana y Cintia – After the Capilla Abierta, we had a Ward council with all the leaders and the Stake Presidency. They talked about reactivating members. We are a huge part of this new system they have called the 5 Families. We have to visit a Menos Activo family daily. But after the training meeting we all went out and searched for a member that hadn´t gone to church for a while. At first nobody volunteered to go (even though it was a Little late at night, we automatically were volunteered as missionaries.) But then I stared down Hna. Vega and she volunteered with her Relief Society counselor. And then I volunteered Johana (Young Women´s) y Cintia (Primary) because they were sitting right behind me. And then everybody else joined in. It was a cool sight to see. We did intercambios with Johana and Cintia because they didn´t know what to do. So I went with Yohana and Cintia went with Hna.Waters. We went and visited three hermanas that haven´t gone for months. And check it, all three went to the Branch Conference. You just have to love misión work especially when you see the results!

Moto Misioneras – After our visits we were way far from the pension and it was already after 9. So we got a ride from Cintia on her motorcycle. Now in case you don´t know, i have never been on a motorcycle because i have a big fear of them. I just don´t like them. But i got pushed on one with Cintia and Hna. Waters. I tried to use the excuse that we couldn´t as missionaries but i couldn´t find it in the Mission Manuel. It wa wierd to ride a moto in a skirt, But it was fun. I´ve somewhat overcome my fear of motorcycles. But with our luck, we had 7 different members see us as we were riding home. Que vergüenza.

Flia Romero – So we´re still working with this family to get them baptized. They need one more attendance to church and they´ll be good. They have the teachings and the desire but they just need to make it to church. They were going to go to church this Sunday but then the dad got sick. I don´t know if it was just an excuse or the work of Satan. Either way, Carmen was pretty upset that she can´t be baptized this Sunday. But she´s excited and committed to go to Sunday because she wants to be baptized before the Locro Activity. Her daughters and nieces want to be baptized too when they make it to church. We all gave them nicknames because i was trying to distract them one day from fighting. So Rocio is Sugar and Carolina is Honey and Sandra is Maza and Melena is Candy. Yep, it´s fun to hear them yelling out their nicknames when we walk up to their house. And check it, every single one of them can say my last name, kind of sort of.

Testimonio – Yo quiero testificarles que yo sé que esta iglesia es verdadera. Yo sé que el evangelio puede cambiar las vidas de las personas. Lo he visto mucho en mi misión y el evangelio ha cambiado mi vida mucho. Estoy agradecida por el Libro de Mormón y yo sé que tiene todas las respuestas que necesitamos. Hay que buscarlas y encontrarán. Yo sé que Pte. Monson es un profeta de Dios y estoy agradecida por su consejo que recibí de la Conferencia General. Yo sé que Dios me ama y me conoce. Yo lo sé todos los días cuando ore. Yo sé que Jesucristo vive y nunca lo voy a negar. La iglesia de Jesucristo es verdadera y puede bendecirnos en todas las cosas. Por eso, estoy en la misión para ver los cambios y bendiciones en las personas. Y digo estas cosas en el nombre de Jesucristo, amén.

¡El Reino de Dios o NADA!

Hna. Ellsworth

Yo veo con mi ojo

So i´ve decided that I hate computers. I actually had that decided a long time before. It all started my freshman year of college when my laptop with all my notes from the semester broke down a week before finals. And now my dislike of computers has only increased because we were put in charge of making an invitation for our church open house this Saturday. I´ll attach the invitation just so you know that you´re all invited. It wasn't too hard to make it but it was kind of a pain printing it out because we didn´t have a color printer or nice paper. Bueno, we finally ended up printing them black and white and giving them out. Oh well, the branch president wanted them in color but I just told him my motto - ¨Tacky as heck but we sure get the job done.¨ It was a little tricky to translate that one in castellano but he understood the message. All I know is that i'm still not a fan of computers and they're not a fan of me.

We are teaching a lot of families which means we are teaching a lot of little kids. Unfortunately these kids have never grown up with a lot of discipline. So they fight, curse, and give me a headache. But then I was inspired by Shannon Whipple and Dawn Thomas from my nursery days. (Shout out to Shannon!! Thanks for the letter!) Anyways, I just started to play games with them whenever they started to fight. Por ejemplo, we were all going to church yesterday and they started to fight. Their mothers were struggling to control them. So we started to play Follow the Leader. It sounds really simple and kind of lame but it totally worked. Every kid got a turn to be the leader. We ended up running down the street holding hands and skipping and walking like models. We looked silly but it was fun. It was my turn last and we ended up at church walking like children and princesses of God. The real challenge was in sacrament meeting. I could see Hno. Chacon, 1^st counselor in the bishopric meeting, laughing at me the whole time. But they all were very good. And then we ended up walking home playing ¨I Spy.¨ And it´s even catchy in Spanish. But I have decided that i´m never having kids. I just don´t have the patience for it.

And President Arnold, the seventy of the area, wanted me to tell you that he loves me. Ok, not just me but all the missionaries in the mission. And he says that we are the best missionaries in the world. I think he might've been exaggerating a bit but it made us sure feel good. He is proud of us because we´re baptizing like we've never baptized before. We are making records in the MAC (Mision Argentina Cordoba) and I´m excited to be a part of it. This month we have the goal to baptize 150 in Mayo. Apparently, that hasn't been done before. It is going to take a lot of work but i´m confident that we can make the goal with faith, diligence, and obedience. The motto for this week is ¨The pope called and this week is the holy week.¨ We are going to pay the price and sacrifice to see the miracles. As a mission, we are committed to be obedient and diligent like we've never done before. We've planned together, fasted together, prayed together, and now we are going to baptize together. We are going to be a Mission of Zion.

Just lovin´ life,

Hna. Ellsworth