The First Week

Hey Fam!  

So Aunt Tamie´s house was really good! Yes, there was someone there to pick me up when I got there. The first thing I did when I got to the mtc (missionary training center) was unpack, then lunch, and then straight to classes. My spanish is getting there. I don´t really have a choice. We started teaching three lessons a day on our fourth day and it had to be all in Spanish. I have two companions, Hermana Ostler and Hermana Harpole. Hermana Ostler is from Florida and is 20 and then Hermana Harpole is from Herriman and she is my age. You know me I sleep just fine! I am learning alot during class time. The weather is crazy! It will be really hot and then it will start raining. So yes it does get humid but it isn´t bad. I have three other roommates besides my companions. They are from Brazil. We talk to them in Spanish but they also know english so we help them with english and they help us with spanish! I don´t think I need anything at the moment except if you could forward me the email addresses from my old email! I have no idea about fedex but I will find out. I don't have an exact date when I will fly out to Urugauy yet, just six weeks. Avalon is here for another three days then all the north americans are leaving. The mtc is really small so we are all super close. So the food here is okay, we always joke about who´s bread is harder. It is literally like a rock so you have to crack it open and eat the inside, well what is soft. The milk here is alot sweeter which is pretty cool. The biggest meal of the day is lunch. We always have meat with lunch and dinner but no one knows what kind of meat it is...we don´t really ask. As long as it doesn´t have hair on it I´m good (which it hasn´t thank goodness). I say all my prayers in spanish and we teach all our lessons in spanish. We go out next Saturday and start talking to people. I bore my testimony in spanish on fast sunday and we fasted for a whole 24 hours which was pretty cool. I thought it was going to be really hard but it wasn´t. The Lord really pulls his weight out here. He always answers my prayers. We were sitting waiting to teach a lesson and all of us felt very strongly we needed to change the topic. SO we prayed about it and went into the lesson. It went really well and we didn´t have trouble speaking. When I say investigators I mean our two teachers who are playing ivestigators they had on their missions. It´s cool though because even though they aren´t real investigators the spirit still teaches you and helps you. So a couple days ago it was a big holiday in Argentina. Me and my companeras were studying in our classroom and started to hear alot of gunfire so we look out and we see all these people hanging out of buses waving flags running around on the freeway shooting off fireworks and just shooting lol it was pretty crazy. We are on temple grounds so we see the temple every time we look out a window or go outside. we actually get to go today so I´m excited!  My district is a companionship of three elders and then my companions, it´s really small but we are all really close. They call me white girl because they say I have a valley girl accent, but I disagree. Oh yeah, there is a girl here from Burley named Hermana Christiansen. She says she knows Jackson! We had devotional yesterday and we listened to the talk Elder Anderson gave that Andrew mentioned in his email and i actually saw Dane and Andrew in the video! Like I said I see Avalon everywhere. The Lord just has a way of knowing how to make you feel comfortable and at home even in a different country. The flight here was like something out of a movie. I had a lady falling asleep on me, I was right next to the bathroom and someone would use it every two seconds. I felt like i was just missing the chicken on my lap. We play soccer here alot and it is always the Latinos against the gringos. We actually hold our own for the most part. But we also play on less then half a field so who really knows. The accent about Uruguay is very reall. Instead of ellas its pronounced esha or instead of yo it´s sho. That makes it a little bit harder to understand but we work hard and get there.  I showed Hermana Harpole my tongue joke that dad thinks is so funny and she cracked up, so I think that means everyone else has a poor sense of humor because it wasn´t a pity laugh either. We played this game with our teacher where she took our name tags and just took off running and we had to chase her. When we caught her she had hidden our tags all around our distrit room. It really put things into perspective though because I didn´t want to take my tag off and when I finally put it back on I felt so much happier and closer to the Lord. It just made me realize how much I wanted to be out here. We committed one of our investigators to baptism yesterday and she accepted. It was totally awesome! Oh yeah, the power goes out here ALL the time, probabaly five times a day. I am just loving the CCM (that´s what they call it here not sure what it stands for, i will find out though). I just want you to know that I know our Heavenly Father loves us and knows us. He answers your prayers if you will truly rely on him. I know that Jesus Christ atoned for our sins and it is through the atonement that we get to be with our families forever. I know that the book of mormon is true. In Elder Andersons devotional he said if you want to talk to God pray if you want to hear him talk back to you read the Book of Mormon and it is so true! I love and miss you all and I am so grateful for all of you!  

love, 

Hermana Rich