Adventures in Argentina: The Week of Many Travels and Little Comprehension

The time of the week has come. I am finally a big girl and get to have PDay on Mondays!! The jingle, "Im a big kid now" is in my head. =) First off I am sorry if the punctuation is not right in this email. They have a spanish keyboard with english stickers so I am not sure where everything is. Including the apostrophe mark. On to the good stuff though, my week in recap form.

Sunday(seems like an eternity ago)- We had three devotionals this day with the departure devotional, the main devotional, and rewatching The Character of Christ before we left. Crazy spiritual high and exhaustion. The devotional speaker was Chad Lewis and he did a great job. Funny story. After his devotional we were trying to find a bathroom and went out these doors right into Chad Lewis and all these missionaries getting pictures with him. My companions all shook his hand but I was too far back. Good thing I guess because I would have never washed that hand again and would have probably gotten a parasite here in Paraguay because of it. =) Jokes!

Hermanas Myers, Farrow, Albach, plus 2 more

Monday- This day was nuts. We were up by four am to finish all the last minute things so that we could make our shuttle at six. We got on the shuttle and they dropped us off at the provo frontrunner station and we rode it up to the airport. Crazy.

Enjoying my last Cafe Rio for a while

Then I made it through security and the first thing we did was go and get our last meal at Cafe Rio. It was delicious. The lady only charged me 2$ for it because she just turned in her papers and was being super kind. Then on the plane I sat next too two non members which was perfect because I had been praying to have the opportunity to share the gospel. Which i did for the last 40ish minutes of our flight to Georgia with a man named Fred. He is super smart and is an engineer but is only in his 20s. Crazy. Great opportunity. Then we got to Georgia aiport which was crazy because we had to go to a completely different concourse to call our families. Then we boarded the plane to Buenos Aires at 9pm with the whole Uruguayan rugby team that had just been playing in Canada. I know because I sat next to two of them on the whole 10 hour flight. They slept for most of it, made fun of us for the rest. But they did let me know those two little facts. It was so crazy because on the plane everyone was already speaking spanish. The flight was long...and went into...

(Some of this is review for those of you who read my blog...but oh well)

Buenos Aires Airport

Tuesday- We arrived in Buenos Aires!! Hurray!! We met our contact and were put onto a bus and headed to a different airport in Buenos Aires. Passed the temple. Beautiful!!! At the other airport a nice man bought all of the missionaries in our group gelato. It was so sweet! Then we had to wait for seven hours for our flight out of Posadas at 640pm. There was no room on the plane for my carry on so I covered it with a blanket and sat in awkward uncomfortableness for the hour and half flight to Posadas. We arrived and were greeted by the Presidente and his wife and the office elders with a banner. I sent pictures. It was pretty awesome. Except for the no understanding what was happening thing. Then we went to his house, had dinner, and then got set up at a chucci(high class/fancy) hotel.

WELCOME TO THE ARGENTINA POSADAS MISSION!

Wednesday/Thursday- The food here is so full of carbs. Everything is bread. Crazy!! You already know about my crying incident. Yikes. No more tears since though. Unless I cut onions then no gurantee. Anyways after that incident and after I wrote that email we played games with one of the AP's Elder Silva. We actual played signs in spanish. Needless to say I killed it. =)

This awesome statue apparently has no name...
at least that we can find.

From a distance

Then we went and were given five pass along cards we had to hand out around the city. It was so scary but I went with Hermana Houtz and we were able to do it. Hurray! Walked back to the mission home and had dinner. Oh...and dun dun dun I met my trainer!!! Her name is Hermana Lindsay Chandler. She is the sweetest thing ever and this is her last transfer in the mission.

Puerto Iguazu, Argentina

We also found out we would be staying in the mission home that night because we were taking a taxi up to Puerto Iguazu at 330AM the next morning. It is 6 hours away by bus. We made it in four hours. We had to go there for the Paraguayan consul again because the one in Posadas shut down. It was a long day full of sitting and sleeping but still fun. Hna. Chandler and I had a lot of time to talk. We got back from Iguazu at about four or five that night and had our new missionary orientation with the office elders and Hna. LaPierre. Then we had food and went to bed.

Hermanas Chandler and Albach -

Friday-We traveled to our area Ciudad Del Este this day. It is a six hour bus ride. Can you say traveling for days?? It was crazy! Just more opportunities to sleep though I guess.=) When we arrived it was pouring rain. And when I say pouring I mean I have never seen rain drops that big in my life. We had to take all my luggage to our pension (apartment) which was about ten minutes away and then lug it up to the third floor. Totally awesome welcome and adventure for my first day in my first area. Then we got cleaned up and I changed and we had lunch with a member named Carmen. It was super good. She made this dessert with milk, frozen corn, and something like cinnamon. Delicious!! I learned that rico=delicious. Then we went to the grocery store and got me some stuff to last me the weekend. I spent 96 mil in Guarani. Cool right? We then went out tracting and met Jose and Jorge. They seemed really nice and we planned to visit them later that week.

Posadas

Saturday-My first full day of tracting and in the field! Crazy!! We met Fatima a lady that was super sweet. We left her with a Libre de Mormon (LDM) and promised to come back and see if she had received an answer about it. We had lunch with the Olivera family who is from Brasil. They are so sweet and they have the cutest little daughters in the world. The food was SOO good. Didn't want to leave because it was so cold in their pension. Then we had a lesson with Christian who is a recent convert of Hna. Chandlers but has been struggling. It was really good. We met him at the church. I tried to teach in spanish but then he told me he couldn't understand me and to try in english. Whoops. Embarrassing but oh well. So I did. I think he got most of it. The spirit was so strong. I loved it. Then we met up with the other Hnas in the area and had ice cream to celebrate my first real day in the field. Yay! Good first day!

Sunday- Crazy day! Had church from 8-11am. Didn't understand most of it. But I did understand that two of the three members of the bishopric told me I would be bearing my testimony in sacrament meeting. Not too bad actually. They have relief society first and sacrament last so I had some time to prepare. Not really. They were awesome though and said it didn't matter what I said but that the spirit was there. We then went with Ana, a member of only four years, later that day to visit some of our investigators. They ended up being busy so we decided to tract and, boy, was it awesome. We met and taught Alicia and Dalica. They were so great. I spoke in both lessons. It was totally broken Spanish but I know that as I open my mouth and am willing to look like a fool the Lord will bless me. I really believe that Dalicia has some potential. She really needs the gospel in her life right now. Then we finished by visiting the familia Gonzalez who are recent converts and just helped show them how they could watch conference online. It was great. Felt good to actually be doing work of the Lord and feel like I am beginning to understand better what is being said around me.

Monday-Today- First Day in the field

We had a zone meeting in the morning where we went over our numbers and did a practicar (practice). Then we went grocery shopping again and then we went back to the pension and I was able to finally unpack and get everything organized which felt so good. I was so happy to be all in and ready to make it feel like home. Then we came to the cyber and I have been emailing you all. You are all awesome. The Lord is good and He is there. The work is hard for a reason, it helps us to come closer to our Savior and understand that the work was never easy for Him. Love you all and I will write more about our adventures and progress next week!!

Remember who you are and who you ultimately represent!!

Hermana Albach