Monday, September 29, 2014

SDFLKJSDFLKJSDFLKJ HEY CHANGE THIS LATER

Mis Queridos:

So this weird thing happens on the mission where the moment you step into the computer cafe, everything that happened in the past seven days leaps out of your brain, and takes the collectivo to San Juan. So, I´m a little empty at the moment. 

Yesterday we sang with the stake choir, and that was fun. The choir needed some help in the alto section, so we were given permission to sing with them and help them out during stake conference coming up in a couple weeks. Sigh. I love music. After practice, in which I basically sang and remenisced (or whatever that word is) of those Maeser choir days, we drove home with the choir director, his friend, and a sister in the ward, and we all sang Christmas hymns together. I don´t really know why, the choir director was just talking about programs that he had done in the past, and started singing Christmas hymns. So all squished in the little car with a hymnbook between us in the backseat, we harmonized all the way home. 

We had a really interesting lesson yesterday too, before practice. We came across Maria on the street, and as soon as I said "iglesia de Jesu Cristo" her face lit up. We explained that the church of Jesus Christ is centered on the teachings of Jesus Christ as he established them in ancient times, and she seemed to really like that. Yesterday when we taught her, the first lesson, she just kind of sat there listening, and anytime we mentioned Jesus Christ or the Bible, she payed special attention. We came to find that she´s very well read in the bible, and has a very strong desire to follow Christ, and to find the truth, the truth, and nothing but the truth. I´m a little worried about teaching her, becuase she knows the bible backward and forward, and was asking a lot of questions that regardless of whether or not I understood her spanish, I had no idea how to answer. Hna Tirado seemed to know what  she was talking about however. Hna Tirado and I discussed the lesson afterward, and she´s very excited to teach Maria because if she can come to know for herself that Joseph Smith was given the same priesthood of the prophets of old, and that this truly is the same church of Jesus Christ established again on the earth, she´ll be baptized in a heartbeat, her desire to do what´s right is that strong. The only thing I´m worried about is that she´s very fact based. As long as we can teach her to trust the spirit, and to find answers for herself through prayer, then she´ll be golden. 

We also had two church attendances this week from less actives! We went sunday morning to eat breakfast with Hermana Rubio before church and drive with her to church afterwards, and on the way to her house we crossed paths with Lucas. Lucas´ mom is named Sandra who we found her walking down the street one night, and shared a card with her to find that she was already a member. Sandra was baptized at 15 years, and was only active till age 18. She has one other son besides Lucas named...something that starts with an F. Both of her sons were baptized 8 years ago, and both became less active soon after. So so no one in their family has been to chruch in 8 or so years, and here comes Lucas down the street, all by himself, an hour before the meeting starts because he thought is started at nine. If that´s not a miracle, I don´t know what is. 

That´s all for today. Oh, the pictures. One of the members has a pet bunny, I made empenadas one day, and one of the sisters went home a few weeks ago, so there´s all the sisters in our district just before she left. 

Love you all! Can´t wait for General Conference this week! Woot! 

Hermana Cannon


Monday, September 22, 2014

Guess What? PICTURES!

Mi Querida Famila: 

Finally got this ancient camera figured out! Yay! More on the pictures later. 

So this week was again another pretty slow week. We went to Mendoza Monday and Teusday for another reunion with the President and Hermana Goates for all the newbie missionaries, came back to Balloffet Wednesday, and returned to Mendoza Thursday night to do my visa paper stuff Friday. We were a little bummed at first that they didn´t have us just stay an extra day Wednesday to do my papers, and as we were walking through a neighborhood Wednesday morning complaining about it, a woman called to us from across the street, and invited us into her home. 

Turns out she, Olga is her name, had seen us on the bus and knew we were missionaries, but had never had the courage to talk to us until now. She told us that many bad things had happened in her house, and she wanted us to say a prayer for her and her family. Hermana Tirado and I were shocked. Of course we will! Olga, her daughter and daughter in law all knelt down with us as we prayed, and afterward Olga began to cry. "I don´t know why I´m crying," she says, "I just feel so good with you here." Luckily, we knew exactly what she was feeling, and shared with her about the Holy Ghost, a little more about prayer, and set up an appointment for Saturday. 

When we left their home, and started walking down the street, Hermana Tirado started crying. Did that really happen? We said a prayer together, and thanked heavenly father that we hadn´t stayed an extra day in Mendoza so that we could meet this family. This experience is such a testimony to me that God truly prepares people to hear the gospel. After so many weeks of no new or progessing investigators, to have this experience, to find this family so prepared for the gospel, hearts so open to His spirit and message, it´s truly wonderful. 

And they were waiting for us on Saturday too! That was the best part. Because a lot of people will be great the first lesson, and then will kind of avoid us afterward. But they were waiting for us, we taught the first lesson, and we´re so excited to continue teaching them. 

I know that God is aware of His children. He´s aware of me as a missionary, of his children here in Argentina, and of all of you. We all have times where we may not be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and we feel all our efforts are in vain, but it is in these times that we need to put in more strength, and excersise more faith. Because it is only when we turn to Christ and His atonement that we recieve the strength and comfort needed to keep going. And the blessings will come. I can promise you that, because God has promised us that. The blessings may not be when or what we thought we wanted, but in the end it will always be what we needed. And I testify of this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. 

Hermana Cannon

The pictures! I don´t know what order they´re in, but one of them is our Mormon Helping Hands activity when we painted in the school down the street. Very dirty. And very fun. One of them is my district last p day eating sanguchitos, or sandwiches. And the last one is of me in Mendoza. Yay Cannons! :) Love you all! 

Monday, September 15, 2014

Okay, Now I´m Settled

Dear Fam: 

What with our Conference with the President Monday, P day Tuesday, Zone conference Friday, and Service Project all day Saturday, la obra misional was a little slow this week in San Rafael. So now that I´ve taken a few weeks to get my bearings here in Argentina, I thought I´d take this time, to give you the low down on my area, and answer all the cliches so many love to ask. :)

So San Rafael! How to describe... Firstly, the weather. Right now we´re just coming out of winter and heading into spring, so although most of the trees are still barren, the popcorn is beginning it´s popping, if you know what I mean. (Primary, anyone?) We´ve been getting a few little sprinklings of rain, but nothing too heavy or hindering besides the fact that you have to be sure your laundry isn´t drying outside during the storm. Not fun. 

The food! We eat lunch with the members basically every day, which is great. I would describe the food here as basically anything you´d eat in the states, just with less flavor, less sugar, and less fat. We eat a lot of pasta, potatoes, and salad. Rice too, but not as often as you´d think. Their salads typically have lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, and for dressing usually just oil and salt, or lemon juice. Ranch doesn´t exist here. Also, Argenines tend to have obsessions with random things. Like mayonaise. It´s basically gold here. And soda. Every meal they´ll bring out a liter of soda. It´s more common than water. Which I guess is a good thing seeing as I can´t drink the water here unless it´s bottled, and luckily there´s a brand of soda here without sugar that lots of people buy, so that´s been great. 

And the empanadas! They say empanadas are very common here, and I guess they are, but I´ve only had them once. Basically it´s a tortilla thingy with meat (somtimes eggs and olives too, or other random things) inside, then it´s folded in half, press down the edges like a pie, and bake it in the oven for a while. A member family fed us empanadas the other day and we both ate like ten or something. It was kind of disgusting in a very delicious and succulent way. 

I wouldn´t describe the area as poor, more just well used. Anything you see around here has wear in it. If it can go for another year, it does. Let´s just say garbage day means a few grocery bags of stuff. 

Let´s see, what else. There are bikes and motercycles everywhere. Any time of day. Everyone has them, and uses them, all types of people. You´ll see guys in suits riding their bikes to work, women riding around with a little kid in a baby seat attached to the back, and all kinds of people hauling different things around like groceries, wheels, boxes, random stuff. 

Oh, how could I forget. We´ve got the Siesta here. It´s definitely a thing. After lunch, the biggest meal of the day, everything shuts down. All the tiendas, gas stations, schools, everything. Everyone locks themselves in their houses and takes a little nap. AKA, no coming to the door for missionaries. So, we take this time to study. We have a half hour in the morning for personal study, and then study our other half hour during the siesta, plus our hour of companion and hour of language study. Normally missionaries don´t have as much study time, but I´m in training so they give us that extra time. 

Anyway, there´s a little bit about Argentina for you. As for the people, generally we´ll talk to them on the street, give them a little tarjetita, and take down their address to visit them later. If they didn´t lie to us about where they live, which happens quite often, they´ll usually let us in for one or two visits before they lose interest. Let´s just say we´ve got lesson one down, backward and forward. A lot of people are Catholic or Evangelical, so after a visit or two either they´ll tell us they appreciate the visit, but really have no interest, or they´ll just kind of hint at it by giving you excuses or not opening the door. But, we keep searching. Somewhere under some Argentine stone there´s someone with a heart prepared to hear this message. We´ll find them. 

Meanwhile, we visit a lot of the less active members. As President Goates says, reactivating a member is just as important as a baptism. Strengthening the ward is just as important as finding new investigators. So, we´ve been doing a lot of that, and the work moves forward.

Well, that´s about all for this week folks. Thanks for the letters and prayers. I´m so grateful to be here bringing people closer to christ, whether they be members, less actives, or that random guy over there. The church is true, and I know it. 

Hermana Cannon


Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Pday Tuesday

Hola mi familia! 

Yeah, it´s not Monday, sorry about that. I was supposed to tell you last week that we had a Zone Conference yesterday, so we changed our Pday and I forgot to. Buuuut, I´m here now! :) 

So, I guess I should start from last Monday. Just after emailing we went to the stake center to eat lunch and play games with the other missionaries in our zone. After playing games we went to the kitchen where we had left our groceries and things, and my bag was gone. The doors to the chapel had been left unlocked and someone probably waltzed in, saw us all playing in the gym, grabbed my bag, and left. So, mom and dad, that explains the call you got about the credit card, and canceling it and such. The thing is that I never have either of my credit cards with me, in case of robbery, but it was the first monday of the month, so we had to go to the bank to take out all our money. Of course, all my monthly money had been in my wallet as well, so we had to call the finance guy and he put my monthly allowance on my companion´s card so I could have that. I also had the home card because I was going to take off some money from it as well, but I didn´t get the chance, so there´s the that. Most everything else in my bag was replacable. My agenda, my chapstick, my water bottle, the emails I had printed out, both from last week and the week before (sorry to those still waiting for replies! I´m reprinting everything today, so thanks for the patience haha, I promise I love you all!), The worst thing though, was my camera. My beautiful, kind of expensive camera, case, extra battery and SD card, and the computer cord. I thought it would at least last the transfer. 

But I´ve learned some things. First of all, God knows what we need. And that week hadn´t been the best week to begin with. One of the elders in my zone talked about how a mission experience is kind of like marriage. It starts out in the honey moon stage where everything is great and you´re excited and love everything, and then reality hits and things get hard, and then with time you learn and grow, and things slowly get better from there. Buuuuut, that´s not really how it happened with me. Reality hit my right off. The culture is different, the food is...well...not North American, and everything is in spanish. It´s probably the farthest thing from a honey moon. It´s hard. I was talking to one of the sisters from Georgia in our zone about how the days are kind of split in half. The first half will be really good, you´ll feel good and excited, and happy, and the last half is hard, and you´re discouraged, and down. Or it´ll start out hard and end up happy. 

But it was interesting. When I found out my bag was gone, things didn´t get worse, things got better. 

Firstly, let me tell you something about bags and women. Due to some wise-guy in history, womens pants and skirts hardly ever have useable pockets, or any pockets for that matter. So if a girl wants to carry something, she can either use her hands, or a giant external pocket attached with a strap over her shoulder, more commonly known as a purse, or bag. Basically, anything of any value to a girl, you can find in her purse. So when I found my bag had been stolen, not only had I lost quite a few valuable posessions, I literally felt like I had lost a limb, my heart, everything.

And then, I started to find things. We were walking to the bus, and while we were waiting, I realized, ooh! I still had my watch. Sitting on the bus I thought of our appartment. Ooh! I still have all my clothes. My sleeping bag. My weird little multi colored hippy monkey sent from the fam. My scriptures. My journal. (Two things I had almost put in my bag that morning). Oh, and get this. One of the sisters happened to have an extra camera. It´s from the ice ages, and the selfie range capacity is basically none (bummer), but what a miracle! And the best part, as we were just getting to the appartment, I realized that I still had my Nametag. Yeah, it´s cheesy or whatever, but when I looked down and saw it, I almost started crying. None of that stuff mattered. Not that it doesn´t really stink that I lost a months worth of pesos. Not that I don´t still groan every time I take a picture on my little feo camera. But I´m still Hermana Cannon, still serving here in Argentina, still representing Jesus Christ. And that´s all I need. 

Anyway, time´s about up, but there´s my dramatic story for you. 

Aaaaaand speaking of the miracle camera, I have it, but the computer doesn´t read the card. So I´ll see if I can come across a camera cord next week and see how that works out. 

oh, also, here´s the mission home address if yall´s wanna send me letters! 

Hermana Emilyn Cannon
Mision Mendoza Argentina
Cabildo Abierto 161
5501 Godoy Cruz
Mendoza
Argentina 

Love you all!

Hermana Cannon 

Monday, September 1, 2014

I´m not good at titles

Dear Fam:

I don´t even know where to start. All the days and weeks kind of tend to melt together. 

First of all, Yay for Baby Elizabeth! I started reading all the emails sent to me about the baby, and seeing the pictures and I´m just sitting here crying and trying to stop crying so I can read and see and stuff, and it´s so exciting! I´m an aunt! Congratulations Katie and Tristan! I hope everything is still doing okay, and I´ll send some extra prayers to you and Elizabeth June this week. 

I guess I´ll talk a bit about some of our investigators. I think I already told you about Gisella, I don´t remember. But she was the first investigator we taught. She´s reading the book of mormon a little more now, and told us that she´s been thinking lately about how she wants to follow Christ. Wahoo! We gave her the first lesson and she said that she would read the pamphlet and pray about it, which is also good. 

We also found two investigatores de oro this week, which was exciting. First we found Gladys, a former investiagator, I don´t remember if I talked about her before either, but she also has a very strong desire to make some changes in her life and come to christ. We´ve only been able to meet with her once, but I can´t wait to work with her too, and help her strengthen her faith. 

The other golden investigator is named Telma. She lives across the street from a sister in the ward, and is a referral from this sister. We´ve only had one lesson from her as well, but she also has a great desire for truth, and told us that she´d come to the next lesson with a list of questions, which is great. With Telma, a lot of what has been great in working with her is that she´s already friends with a member. 

I know people say this all the time, but member missionary work? Yeah, it really works. Things really do go better when members help out in the work. The one lesson we had with Telma was basically me and my companion sitting there listening to Telma talk to Hermana Mirian, and listening to Hermana Mirian bear her testimony, share her own conversion story, and help Telma understand how to recieve answers through prayer. It was great because as missionaries we can share and teach, but there´s something about having a friend, a member in the church sitting there bearing testimony of the truth, that the investigator can so much easier apply the same truths in their own life. Missionaries need Members! 

The church is true. Prayer is real. And faith, paired with works, will bring success. I know that´s true. 

Love you all! 

Hermana Cannon

p.s. The pictures! The one of us sitting at the table is my Feliz cumple-mes picture. One month from my MTC date! Wahoo! My companion also finished one year on the mission this week, so we celebrated with french toast and peanut butter. 

The other picture is me standing next to a palm tree, and a pine tree. A strange phenomenon that you see all over here in Argentina. Still throws me off. Darn Clima. :) Chao!