rafaela week 2 - aug 16

hi hi hi hi!

gracias por sus cartas! and sarah actually wrote to me. thanks! you are so funny, i was laughing, you´ll get used to the tan walls. i´m glad you are enjoying my room though. also sarah davis wrote to me! yes, i got your dear elders sarah. i got the one while i was in the MTC too. It´s just so hard to find time to write letters! literally, preparation day is loaded with things we have to do, and we aren´t allowed to write letters any other day. so i am super sorry for not writing but i love your letters!

this week was pretty amazing. the lord must love me or something, cuz he just kept giving me all this revelation on how we should be teaching, who we should be teaching, and also revelation on how to be a mom-weird i know. this week on like 4 or 5 different occasions i would have a thought that i should do something. then later i would read the general conference talks and the very thing that i had thought was written there. also some things were confirmed during zone conference that i had thought about that week. i can´t even explain it, but i just kept having thoughts and then they were re-inforced by something else later. it was like Heavenly Father was saying, "you need to do this!"...and then later, "you really need to do this!!!" so my comp and i have been applying these things and we are being blessed.

yesterday after church i was having a hard time, and so was my comp. we were just really tired and didn´t feel like working. and saturday we didn´t get into houses and all our citas fell through and we got ripped off for something. but of course we continued to work! and then last night we had 2 amazing lessons! where the spirit just took over and the Lord really used us. we walked out of that last one feeling so good. it´s always like that, when you are having a hard time, you know something good is going to happen soon! but ya, my testimony definitely continues to grow here.

we only had 2 people in church yesterday, we are really struggling with that right now. trying to figure out how to get to all the of them to wake them up to come to church. a man named oscar came with us yesterday. we went and picked him up in a taxi because he can´t walk. he fell off a building and one of his legs has no feeling in it. he had his walker with him though and used it to walk all the way from the taxi to the front doors of the church. we was sweating by the time he sat down. not a very long distance, but for him it was. but he loved church and wants to come back next week and to be baptized! so we are working with him. we found him in the antigo investigadores (people other missionaries had taught and then dropped for some reason).

i seriously love this gospel so much. I think the biggest thing i learned from my last area was the importance of the family and the little things. thank you mom and dad for always trying to teach us correctly. like the importance of going to church every sunday and keeping the sabbath day holy. also the importance of FHE and family prayer, and reading your scriptures and saying your prayers. soooooo important!!! i´ve seen families that don´t do it, and then they wonder why they are having problems. then we ask them if they are doing their family prayers, scripture study and FHE. they say they aren´t, and we say...that is the problem.

so kind of a cool story. my comp and I were outside at like 6:45 am doing our morning workouts. (we are trying to be 100% obedient which means we have to have 20 min of cardio everyday) i was running back and forth, while my comp was jump roping. anyway, this truck pulls up across the street, and all these guys dressed in camoflauge with these big old guns hop out. probably 8 or so of them. they look like the argentine FBI, swat team or something. and they start making their way down the street, like crawling kinda all sneaky like. so i look at my comp and we´re like,...we should probably go inside.... but before we went in we saw them go to the house on the corner, and one started kicking the door and yelling something. that´s all i know. but later when we actually went out to work, the guy that lived there was outside cleaning his car, totally normal like nothing weird had happened that morning. but the front door did have a dent in it where i imagine the swat team guys had kicked it. maybe it was the wrong house, or a drug dealer or something. who knows.

I also realized this week how viscious dogs are. they are terrible. the dogs in argentina are super territorial, and they have like neighborhood gangs. and when another dog from another neighborhood enters their territory...oooooh!! it´s scary. it happened last night. this is the second or third time i have seen it here in rafaela. this little puppy was following us last night (super cute!), and as we passed this one chain linked fence, the dog behind went crazy, barking, growling, barred teeth. and then i see in the distance by the railroad tracks 3 dogs sprinting at us full speed. they were barking and growling, and 2 sprinted right passed us and full on attacked the little puppy. the poor little thing went running the other way, but those other dogs were on top of it so fast,i´m sure they took a bite out of him. it was scary. and all the other dogs in the neighborhood we barking too. it gave me such a sick feeling. the other dog that had come around the corner was following my comp and i. growling, snarling, but not coming too close to us. they are a little scared of us, but i´m surprised i haven´t been bitten yet. it made me so mad though that they had attacked this little dog. those big bullies! i´ve never seen dogs fight like that.

anyways, i gotta go. i love you guys! thanks for your prayers and for you love, and for not forgetting about me in argentina!

todo mi amor,

hna. amundsen