Letter from Resistencia Barrio 4 - 27 December 2011

Dear Family,

Merry Week After Christmas! I didn´t know this when I called on Sunday but yesterday was oficially a holiday so, as always, our Pday was moved to today.

Christmas was nice. It has been over 100 degrees here in Resistencia (with humidity!) but on Christmas Eve a storm moved in and it was cloudy and rainy and dropped at least 20 degrees and stayed like that through christmas day. Hna. Griffeth and I were pretty happy.

I have more to tell about Christmas but I am actually out of time!
It took all my time to upload the photos. Here are a few explanations:


Many of them are old and from Goya. The photos of me standing in a field with horses and walking down a dirt road with Hna Da Silva are from my last few weeks there. The picture of the baby in the tub is also from Goya can go with the email I wrote about that day we found Sandra sitting by the side of her house reading her Book of Mormon. That is her baby Bruno I wrote about who was sitting beside her playing in the tub. The one with me and the little girl giving the thumbs up is also from Goya. That is Dalila, one of the most amazing little girls in the world.

All the Christmas ones are self-explanatory and can probably go with the email I wrote last week about our tree and ornaments and stockings. Or with the email I am going to write next week about Christmas/New Years. There are pictures of our christmas dinner too, which I will write more about next week.

The one of my feet is just to impress you with HOW INCREDIBLY TAN I am getting. But that doesn´t need to go on the internet because my feet are gross.

The one with me next to a map is just to show off our hard work. We made that entire map and it took days. It also gives you an idea of what I look like after working for 6 hours in 107 degree heat.

Okay. Gotta go!

Thanks for the emails and the SONGS! I am thrilled.

I love you,

Brooke

Letter from Resistencia Barrio 4 - 19 December 2011

Dear Family and Friends,

The trees are shaking with cicadas (or some other loud buzzing bug), the mangos are ripening (the other day I watched as a group of kids picked the green mangos from the lower branches of the tree and chucked them at the taller branches to try to knock down the riper red fruit which always seems to first appear just out of reach for some reason), the air is full of smoke from the constant explosion of fire crackers and the smell of asado (argentine barbecue), the streets are littered with half-moon watermelon rinds and bees are bathing in the sweet nectar, meanwhile small plastic swimming pools are popping up in every yard and children are happily splashing and bathing in the (sweet) cold water, santa is playing his saxophone and even the smallest corner kisok is stocked full of packaged sweet bread. What does all of this mean? Christmas is near, of course!

So far I am enjoying my summertime Argentine christmas. Like I said above there are lots of santa statues in stores and street corners and for some reason he always seems to be playing a saxophone. I was heretofore unaware that santa played the sax but...I like it!

The work is going well here in Resistencia. We are working hard and meetings people and things are looking up. Last week we got a reference from the elders for a man that lives in our area. His name is Julio. We passed by his house several times and he never answered. The last time we passed by one of his neighbor´s, Ramon, saw us leaving and said "Julio isn´t answering? Here let me try!" and he proceeded to knock yell ("Julio! Julio!"), slam windows and, finally, push the key through the key hole. Julio finally emerged. He is going through some rough times, it seems, ever since his girlfriend left him. He doesn´t get out of bed much. But he had been reading the Book of Mormon which the elders had given him when they met him on the street. We are just starting to teach and work with Julio but I will keep you updated on how it goes. I have a soft spot in my heart for him. and for Ramon who helped us get him out of his house and who is also listening to our message.

Last week Hna. Griffeth and I bought a little Christmas tree for the equivalent of $5 and we have been decorating it little by little this week in our rare snatches of down time. I made a popcorn string and Hna. Griffeth has been making really cool origami ornaments. We also bought ourselves some stockings and are going to fill each other´s stockings with little gifts.

Yesterday we watched the re-broadcast of the first presidency christmas devotional in our chapel here and I loved it. It is nice to remember the true spirit of Christmas and to be spending this Christmas visiting people and teaching and singing and praying with them. I can´t think of anything better. I know the savior lives and that the atonement is real.

Merry Christmas,

Hna. Parker

Letter from Resistencia Barrio 4 - 5 December 2011

Dear Friends and Family,

Transfers! This Tuesday night we got the news that Hermana Da Silva would be training again and that I would be transferred to Resistencia Barrio 4... as M1 (senior companion). Early the next morning we were on a bus to Resistencia--Hna. Da Silva to pick up her new companion, and me to meet my new companion and get to work here in the city.

It is quite a change and I am still adjusting. I am sure this came through in my emails, but I really did grow to love Goya (the place, the people, everything) with all my heart. I have realized even more forcefully how much I loved it now that I´ve had to leave. But! there are exciting things about working here in Barrio 4. First, Barrio 4 was Hna. Da Silva´s first area and she had a lot of tips and suggestions about this area and a list of people for me to visit. Second, I am still in a bit of shock that I am senior companion in my third transfer and I don´t feel at all prepared but Hna. Da Silva always said that it´s when you move up to M1 that you really start to grow and progress as a missionary, so i am looking forward to this as a growing opportunity!

Cons:

-No Hna. Da Silva. I am going to miss her. She was a lot of fun and an excellent trainer.
-Very confusing addresses. There are lots of apartment buildings and it is hard to find people.
-The record keeping was not very good in this area before I got here so we are basically starting from nothing.

Pros:

-I am now serving in a ward and not a branch. This means there is a good support system of members and well functioning programs (young mens, young womens, relief society, etc).
-Lunch with a different member every day!!
-Peanut Butter! (there is a Walmart here--which would not be a huge plus except for the fact that they sell peanut butter, so I am putting it on my list of pros).
-I am now VERY close to the mission office...which means I get my mail much faster.
-Hna. Griffeth! She is great. She´s from Lehi, Utah and she´s been here one transfer more than me. She was also trained by an "Uruguaya" and was in Formosa before she came here.

Okay. I better go. I will right more next week about my new experiences here in the city and I will send pictures!

I love you all.

Hna. Parker

Letter from Goya - 29 November 2011

Every Day is a Holiday!


Dear family and friends,

Yesterday was another holiday here in Argentina which means our P-day was pushed to Tuesday (today). I asked many many people what holiday we were celebrating but no one seemed to know. Juan, one of our recent converts (and a man so kind and constant and gentle and pure in his actions and intenions that I do not hesitate to say he is one of the best human beings I have ever met. he is a widower and lives with some nephews and a bunch of cats and he always makes us tortas fritas and smiles really big when he sees us or anyone from church and he is always one of the first to arrive at church every sunday and he also seems to come to every baptism and pays his tithing faithfully every single month although he doesn´t know how to read so he always asks for our help to fill out his name and the other information on the tithing slip) told me it was something to do with "Malvinas", but someone else told me very emphatically that it absolutely was not. Someone out there in the real world should do a little googling for me to let me know what holdiay we were celebrating so I can celebrate retroactively. I love celebrating. 

Anyways, all is well in Goya. Tonight we will find out what happens with transfers. I have not the slightest inkling about what might happen. President Heyman is known for making sort of crazy changes (including sending an elder to a very remote province in his very last transfer to be a zone leader). I´d love to stay with Hna. Da Silva for her last transfer in the mission (and for Christmas!) because we are working with a lot of great people and it would be sad to have to leave them. Also, we are just about to install air conditioning in our apartment, and to be honest, that is a major plus for staying in Goya as well. Anyways we hope everything stays the same but Hna. Da Silva and I are afraid that one of us will leave, so we have been making little preparations--visiting all the people we love and explaining to them about transfers, just in case. They give us NO time to go say goodbyes in my mission (they call us Tuesday night and we are usually on a bus for another city early Wednesday morning) so we have to say lots of just-in.case goodbyes. Lujan, who doesn´t have a phone, left us with the phone number of a neighbor who lives a few houses down so that we can call there and they can pass on the message to her if one of us leaves. Yesterday we also visited one of our favorite families with their 6 little children that live out in the countryside and brought each of the kids popsicles and took picture. I will let you all know what happens in my next email. It could be that everything will continue as normal. Or, if there are changes, I am sure it will only prove to be a new adventure. 

I would like to thank very much the anonymous sender of a small ziplock bag of peanut butter playdough. I recieved the envelope earlier this week and I loved the surprise! I can´t believe it made it all the way here in the regular Argentine mail without being intercepted or disgarded. But, anyways, I thought I would thank the not-so-anonymous sender (I know who you are!) and let them know it made it here safe and sound. And just in time! I was just down to the last spoonfuls of the peanut butter I got in my birthday package. 

This week some beautiful things happened. Many of my favorite moments as a missionary are sometimes hard to summarize or quantify. Sometimes it is a single image or sentence or a meaninful look. Yesterday, for example, as we approach Sandra´s little wooden house there was a moment, right before she looked up and noticed us approaching that we watched her sitting there unawares, on a bench in the sun, reading the book of mormon, her little naked baby Bruno at her side happily splashing in a makeshift pool she made for him from a stray bucket. When she saw us coming she smiled. "you´re reading!" we exclaimed. She nodded and said that Lucas (her two year old) was sleeping and Bruno was being so good and quiet that she thought she might as well take a moment to read. Anyways that moment: Sandra, sunshine, Book of Mormon in lap, Bruno smiling and spalshing. That moment is still shining brightly in my mind.

Well, that´s all I have time for today. There are "bigger" things that have happened this week but sometimes I like to write about the details. I think it´s these details that make life endlessly fascinating and rich and unpredictable and beautiful. 

Well, we are off to try a few more flavors in our favorite ice cream shop...you know, just in case. 

Love from Goya,

Hna. Parker 

Letter from Goya - 21 October 2011

Dear Family and Friends,


Happy Thanksgiving!

Today I celebrated Thanksgiving with my companion. After celebrating Halloween with our branch activity last month I decided I might as well celebrate every single American holiday I assumed I would miss as a missionary. Hna. Da Silva was excited about the idea so I went ahead and made Thanksgiving plans.

We only own three plates and three chairs, so we decided we could only really accomodate one dinner guest in our apartment. After some deliberation, I decided it would be nice to invite Aylen, a girl in the branch here who is about our same age and teaches seminary. She made for very nice company. It was a small celebration but a good one and I think we successfully captured the spirit of the holiday--eating a nice big meal and chatting about what we are grateful for. Hna. Da Silva will hit 17 months in the mission this week and she shared some very sweet thoughts about how grateful she has been for her mission and for all of her experiences as a missionary. As her time is growing short, and our second transfer together is almost over, we have been extra reflective this week and it has been nice to talk about all of her experiences and the things she has learned and a few of her goals for her last few weeks as a missionary. 


I have only been here for 3 months but I am also very grateful for this experience. I am learning things I am certain I could not have learned anywhere else. I am thankful for my companion. I am not sure if I have mentioned enough in my letters how great she is. I will try to make up for that now: Hna. Da Silva is GREAT, I really could not have asked for a better trainer. She is patient and fun and brave. She is an excellent teacher. She is great.
I am also thankful for family and friends whose love and support has been invaluable. I´d love to hear from more of you! Send me a letter sometime. I promise I will respond.

 Anyways all the Thanksgiving preparation and clean-up has left me with little time to write so I will have to leave it at that this week.

 An Extra Happy Breakfast Thanksgiving to all the believers! I will try to have a more elaborate breakfast than usual this coming Saturday but make sure you celebrate in my honor. Remember the poor starved peasants who had to eat the leftovers of the bourgeoisie for breakfast. This is their day.

Never Forget Your Imagination,

Hermana Parker

Letter from Goya - 14 November 2011

A Busy Week

Dear Family and Friends,

I know this sounds cliché but I can  hardly believe another week has passed. Besides a sluggish Wednesday (the weather was atrociously hot and sticky and I almost melted in a puddle of sweat and humidity) the days flew by. It seems to get really hot right before it rains and then the rain relieves us for a few days.

This week was full of tiny miracles. There were moments of frustration or exhaustion, but we would offer a prayer (sometimes aloud, sometimes silently) and push through and reach end the day feeling mostly happy and fulfilled. I am finding there is always some small moment of triumph even on the stickiest sweatiest most seemingly unproductive day.

Sundays are often our most hectic day because we have to get up extra early so we can get ready for church and make it out the door in time to go and find a whole bunch of investigators. It is a real struggle to get anyone to come to church for the first time and we find that they usually only make it when we go to their houses in person and walk with them to the chapel (or sometimes we have to catch a taxi). Obviously we can´t do this every week, but it is usually necessary the first week. So, lately, to help get more of our investigators to actually make it to church Hna. Da Silva and I have been dividing and conquering on Sunday mornings. Saturday night we call two women in the ward and ask them to come with us on splits and we each go with a different temporary companion to pick up a different set of investigators. This week it all paid off when we made it to church and found almost everyone we had invited had made it (this is not very common. there have been weeks where we went on splits and each went to get 3 different people and NO ONE ended up coming). I literally almost cried when I saw them all. It was a beautiful sight. Probably the best part was seeing Sandra (a recent convert, Lujan´s daughter) and her husband and her two boys walk into the chapel. Her husband has been struggling with some drug and alcohol problems and only recently decided that he wanted to turn his life around and quit the drugs and come to church and be a better husband and father.  We had an earthshaking sort of lesson with him a few days ago where he came to us, a little ashamed and  humbled, and with tears told us he needed a change, that he couldn´t keep doing what he has been doing. I know this sort of change is hard, and it might take some time, but I have faith in him. I really do. Especially after seeing him walk in to church with his wife and children. I don´t think I´ll ever forget that image.

Speaking of children, often there is a gaggle of children of investigators sprawled throughout the rows of seats around Hna Da Silva and I during Sacrament Meeting. I always bring little pieces of paper and colored pencils and Hna. Da Silva brings lollipops and we try our best to keep them quiet and occupied but it isn´t always easy. Usually I sing a line of a hymn, then congratulate a child on his drawing while trying to keep singing, then give another kid a colored pencil, then hand out a lollipop, then sing the last line of the hymn, then draw a dot-to-dot picture of Jesus, then try to tell some kids to fold their arms for a prayer, then congratulate another kid on his drawing, then look for another colored pencil for another kid, try to listen to a word or two from a talk, etc.

This Sunday I actually gave my first talk ever in Argentina and it went very well. I talked about our responsibilities as members of the church and as followers of Jesus Christ to care for and befriend other ward members. Retention is a BIG problem in this branch. We have no functioning home or visiting teaching program to speak of. But everyone is working very hard  to try to change this and to reach out and bring back people who have fallen away or been forgotten. I based my whole talk on the story of Peter--focusing especially on the scene in John 21 where the resurrected Christ appears on the shore as the disciples are fishing and tells them to cast the net on the other side of the ship and then he eats with them and tells Peter to "feed my sheep." I love this story. It has a special place in my heart.

Well, I know I said I´d give more details about the conference but I am out of time! Everyone should look up the story about the woman and the oil in 2 Kings 4:1-7. I had never heard it before and Sister Christofferson based her WHOLE talk on it. It is a beautiful metaphor about how the atonement of Jesus Christ and his gospel can help us to pay our debts and then some.

Have a blessed week!

Love,

Hna. Parker

Letter from Goya - 7 November 2011

Mission Conference

Dear Family and Friends,

It has been a pretty crazy week and I am going to keep this short. My entire zone traveled to Corrientes Friday night to spend the night in the apartments of the missionaries that live there so that we could wake up bright and early Saturday morning and travel the last 40 minutes to Resistencia for our special mission conference with Elder Christofferson.

We made it to Corrientes pretty late at night and slept on hard tile floor (there were only 2 beds and 6 sisters) in smothering heat. But my gift for sleeping really came in handy and I managed to sleep a good 4 or 5 hours despite the conditions. In the end, it was all more than worth it to get to meet and listen to an Apostle speak. We also got to listen to Sister Christofferson, and Elder and Sister Jensen (of the 70) and Elder and Sister Foster (of the area 70).

behind elbow on right

Next week I will share some things from the notes I took. For now I will leave you with my testimony. I am so thankful for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know the atonement is real. For me, belief in Jesus Christ is unflinching, immovable faith in the good and in the power of goodness and light to overthrow darkness and sadness and destruction. I have seen this first hand in my short time in Argentina as I have seen the changes people experience when they choose to come to Jesus Christ. This belief pentrates to my very core and it makes me an optomistic person--I have hope in a better world through living the gospel. I am thankful to know that Gods speaks and leads His church today. I am thankful for a living prophet and apostles.

Until next week,

Hermana Parker