Word of the week: ¡Che! (translation: Dude!)

This was an AMAZING week! The Lord truly blessed us this week as we saw miracle after miracle. I’m still so excited about this past week! I’ll start with Zoe. Zoe is an almost 11 year old girl whose mother is a returned missionary and her father is not a member. Zoe has been taught the missionary lessons a bunch of times by a wide variety of hermanas and elders. Her past two recent baptism attempts fell through at the last minute, when the day before, she got cold feet. So, Hna. Goddard and I are taking her on. We talked with her mom to try and figure out what was going on—as if maybe her parents didn’t want her to get baptized or something. In talking with her mom, with Zoe and seeing them interact…we’ve figured it out! Zoe is almost 11, but looks like a 16 year old at least. Her mother is TINY TINY TINY!!!! As a result, she treats Zoe like an adult, or like she should be able to make big life changing decisions without the help or support of her parents. As a return missionary, Marcela (the mom), wants to make sure that Zoe is absolutely prepared for her baptism and that it is 100% Zoe’s choice and nobody elses. The problem is, Zoe is 10 years old! I was chatting with Zoe yesterday while Hna. Goddard talked about books with Marcela and Zoe told me that she just feels a lot of pressure from her mom. In essence, Zoe feels like she doesn’t know enough because her mom keeps telling her that she needs to be preparing. In 10 year old girl mind, the equals knowing more. Zoe is so sweet and can answer all the baptismal interview questions without problems. So, now we are in this awkward position where we need to talk to Marcela and tell her to lighten up on her daughter and to tell her that she thinks that it’s a great idea that Zoe wants to get baptized, rather than saying to Zoe’s response that she wants to get baptized, “well, that just surprises me. You better start working really hard to get ready then…” Zoe is struggling to read that as a loving message. Needless to say, Zoe and I (as well as her 5 year old sister) and I have become best friends. Saturday night, in preparation for her coming to church again on Sunday, we went over and straightened her LONG dark hair (note: her mother took a picture afterwords of all of us, but Argentines aren’t good photographers, and thus the photo has been causally withdrawn). It was a lot of fun and helped Zoe be that much more excited to come to church. Her non-member dad who hasn’t been to church since I’ve been here in San Luis, came to church as well! It was a real miracle! The miracle of the week will be in talking to Marcela and getting her more on our side. Miracle number 2: Evelyn So, Evelyn is so amazing! This week, her kids have all been sick with weird allergic reactions, colds, coughs, etc. which translated into a week of not really reading in the Book of Mormon, except when we went over the visit her. That was kind of a let down from last week, but she took MAJOR steps forward in other ways! We taught her about the Word of Wisdom on Thursday, not anticipating any problems seeing as we’ve never seen any evidence of things that would pose as problems in her home. She first told us about how she loves drinking tea, though that one was rather easily overcome by telling her that she can just drink more mate (traditional Argentine hot drink like tea, but using a grass like herb). Then, right as we were kinda finishing up, she told us that she is a social smoker, but lately with all the medical stresses from her children, she has started smoking more. Thankfully, the most she smokes (from what she told us) is 2 cigarettes a day. As we were teaching at 7pm, she still hadn’t smoked all day, so we told her that we would bring her over cookies the following day if she didn’t smoke for the entire 24 hours. When we got to her house the next day, I was, to say the least, a little nervous, especially when she didn’t come to the door. We called her, and sure enough, she was at home and just didn’t hear us knocking. So, we chatted with her….and…..she hadn’t smoked or drank any tea!!!! We were thrilled. I made sure to cheer extra loud and make her feel a little embarrassed. I was so excited!!!! We ended up chatting for a few more minutes, and she gave us some more details about her life, because, in her words, “we’re friends.” I really feel like Evelyn and I are friends and it’s great! Evelyn was just full of great miracles this week. We got to church early to wait for Evelyn outside, because she said she was coming and wanted to make sure that we would be there. So, we waited outside in the Spring sun. We waited, waited, waited….I started getting really antsy and nervous….and more antsy…..and then…..there she came! (wearing my cute blue blouse with the tie in the back). I was THRILLED! We gave her big hugs and walked her into church. The talks were SO PERFECT, as if we would have told the members what Evelyn specifically needed to hear. She was just beaming after the meeting ended. It was incredible! To make a long story short, after church, we walked her outside and de-briefed for a moment with her and she told us that she just absolutely loved church and the spirituality of it all. She followed it up by saying that she wants to keep coming to church and learning more! We were speechless! We are hopefully going over to visit her tonight! I can’t wait! Needless to say, we’ve been walking on cloud 9 for the past few hours and counting our many blessings! We still have lots more work to do, but the Lord is doing the hard part. This week, Hna. Goddard and I are going to Mendoza for an afternoon for some follow-up info for the new training program. Should be a fun little break from brown San Luis, though it does mean that we won’t be able to see our investigators. I’m just hoping that we can sneak in a trip to Subway for a yummy sandwich… Hope all is well…and things have stopped shaking and flooding in the home land. Love to you all! Hna. Pelton

bodyWord of the Week:espías (spies...in honor of the "spy" pictures we take of things sneakily on the street)

This was a fabulous teaching week for Hna. Goddard and I. Our area is starting to perk up and we are finally seeing some people progress. Here are the week’s highlights: -Mariela: She is the sister of an active woman in the ward whose oldest son is waiting for his mission call. Mariela has heard from missionaries, but about 8 years ago. She has also been greatly expoused to the church by her sister and her sister’s family. She let us into her home last week and again this week more as a courtesy than a desire to learn. This week, we were really trying to get to the bottom of things and help her see why her sister wanted us to come and visit her. So, we started talking with her and verifying to see if she’d been praying. She then went on to tell us how it would be impossible for her to become “mormon” because her live-in boyfriend is Catholic and not open to other religions. She also said that she doesn’t agree with some of the doctrines of the church, to which I asked her to specify. She told me that she believes that all people, no matter their religion, will be accepted back into God’s presence when they die. We then jumped into the Plan of Salvation with her, of which she’d never heard of. I have never taught/participated in a more powerful lesson about the Plan of Salvation. As I was explaining to her that God loves us as His children, but would cease to be God if He were to let some children back into His presence because they will not be clean. He being a perfectly clean being, cannot permit even the smallest amount of sin. Us, all being sinners, must be cleaned by Christ to be permitted into God’s presence again. God so desperately wants us to come back to Him, that He’s given us all the tools to do so, but we must accept those tools and use them daily (including the scriptures, prophets, church meetings, etc). But most of all, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only church with the authority to baptize and therefore cleanse us from the sins we commit. So , if we are baptized in any other church or attend any other church, we will not be clean and God will sadly have to tell us that we are not clean to come into His presence. Mariela sat there speechless, looking at the pamphlet. She had nothing to say. She only said, “well, I’ve never heard about this before.” It was such an edifying and testimony building experience for me as the Plan of Salvation really clicked in my mind and became more of a loving opportunity for us to be clean and earn eternal life with God. Mariela was crying by the end of the lesson. Unfortunately, she is hard to track down, but we are visiting her this week and are eager to build on what we established this past week. Louisa: We were knocking doors Saturday night and got into a home of a young, single mom. She had a friend there who eagerly listened to us. These two young moms just chatted back and forth about all the problems in the Catholic church—how confused they are that you have to pay to have a child baptized when Christ was baptized for free. So, we taught them about the Restoration. Louisa (the friend), then asked us to see the Bible and started flipping through it. She randomly opened the book and pointed to a verse that referred to exactly what we were sharing in that moment. She also shared with us about a reoccuring dream she had where an angelic messanger came to her home, knocked on her door and told her to be to a certain place by 10am. She ran as fast as she could to get there. She got to a big, tall, white buliding, ran in and found hundreds of doors with different names on them. She said that she was confused and didn’t know what door she should go into. She finally found the door where Christ was and she just begged him to let her in because she thought she had arrived late, but he reassured her that she had arrived early. Her dream sounded just like missionaries teaching her the gospel, including the fact that church starts a 9:30 am (just before 10). She too, cried softly as we bore testimony of the true, restored church to her. She instantly knew that she was feeling the spirit. It was an awesome lesson, the only down side is that she doesn’t live in our area…. Evelyn: So, we were able to teach Evelyn multiple times this week and I don’t think I’ve seen someone so prepared to hear the gospel since Monica got baptized in San Rafael! When we got to her house this week, she hadn’t had time to read in the Book of Mormon, so we read a little with her, re-testified, promised her blessings, and re-invited her. When we went back to her house later that week, she’d read to 1 Nephi 10! We were shocked, but what was ever more shocking was how she could remember everything that she read, down to the smallest of details. She told us how she had already noticed that she has more positive thoughts now and that she is more calm and that she can fall asleep more easily now. She said she would have kept reading all night, but wanted to read more for comprehension than just to read it. When we went back and visited her a few days later, she was in 1 Nephi 17. We taught her about the Plan of Salvation and she loved it. We went back on Saturday and taught her about what we do in church on Sunday and even brought over some clothes for her to try on because she didn’t want to go since she doesn’t own a skirt. We played dress up wih her and she was so excited. Unfortunately, something happened and she didn’t make it to church, but we are hopeful for this upcoming weekend. It was quite the miracle though. I asked her if she knows the Book of Mormon is true, to which she replied that she hadn’t prayed yet, but that she was sure that it is. We re-committed her to pray and she easily agreed. We are really excited to keep working with her and help her continue improving her situation in life. It was such a miracle for us this week! After no one progressing for so long, then to have her read nearly 20 chapters in about a week when all we had committed her to read was the introduction! We are thrilled and very grateful! Gyspsies: we taught a group of Evangelical gypsies this week…and even got a few spy pictures while they were crossing the street before we followed them and knocked on their door. It was one of the weirdest experiences of my mission for a number of reasons, but it was particularly weird because they lived in a big, metal warehouse that they hung cloth inside along the walls, and they spoke in some random, d ifferent language. It was so weird! Hna. Goddard and I just left totally confused and dazed. It was cool though. Elders: the hermanas and elders were switched, so now there are elders that work in our ward with us as well. It’s a blast! Elder Evans is now in our ward (he was in my MTC district). It’s cool to see the change that has taken place in him over the course of his mission and it’s nice to see a familiar face. I think those are the best highlights from the week. Things are going well here…it’s been cold this week, but at least there has been plenty of sun. Love you, Hna. Pelton

Word of the week: “ultimo traslado” (last transfer)

This week was a great week to end the transfer and start my last transfer as Hna. Pelton. WEIRD! We discovered an untouched neighborhood in our area, so naturally, we knocked nearly every door and found lots of cool people! We found one woman named Evelyn (about 25 years old) who is a young mom currently suffering from depression. We were able to share the Book of Mormon with her and went back to follow up with her a few days later, but she hadn’t read. We re-testified to her and by the end, she was flipping through the book and telling us how much she hopes she can feel what we feel when we read the Book of Mormon. Yesterday was the obligatory, national elections day (for their president), so church attendance was a little rough because all adults are required to vote in specifically assigned locations and if they don’t, they are fined. The problem then is that you have to stand and wait in line, sometimes for a long time, before you can vote. It was hard to tell people to not worry about it and to just come to church. Hopefully this upcoming weekend will be better for getting people to church. But, back to Evelyn—when we went to her house last night, we had a FABULOUS lesson with her where we went back and explained the restoration to her and how we have the Book of Mormon. It was a very unique lesson for a couple of reasons: firstly, I apparently have arrived…my facial expressions that I did all the time at home have crossed over and apparently I am unknowingly making those faces again. Evelyn just thought I was so funny and just kept cracking up. Someone called her and when she answered the phone, she even told her friend that he/she needed to meet us because we were so funny. She even asked her friend if she could give us his/her address. Hahahaha! It only took me about a year and a half, but I guess I’ve finally become myself as a missionary…in another language. Hahahaha! Ok, but on a spiritual note, I tried to control my funny faces as we taught her and the spirit was really strong. Hna. Goddard thinks that it’s weird to share the First Vision experience (as it, recite the memorized verses), while I think it is the most powerful tool that we have for inviting the spirit into a lesson. So, she glazed over sharing that experience, but I felt that we should really share his words, so I recited it to Evelyn and just was quiet as I finished…for a few seconds. The room was absolutely still. I testified to her about Joseph Smith and the restoration and then asked her how she felt. She just kinda giggled and said that she didn’t know how to describe how she felt, but she felt weird. So, I asked her if she felt peaceful, happy, hopeful, to which she agreed. We then we able to testify to her, right in that moment, that she was receiving her answer that Joseph Smith was a prophet called of God to restore the truth. It was a great lesson and a great reminder to me of the importance of the first vision. We also found another young mom named Rosa, who is angry at God because her mother died about 10 years ago. We shared with her a little about the Plan of Salvation, since she had never wondered about where she came from or why she is here on the earth, but she had often wondered what happened afterword. She literally had no idea and no opinion, though being Catholic, she likely believes in the concept of heaven and hell. As we were sharing and testifying to her about what our Heavenly Father has provided for us as a guide for our lives and the kingdoms of glory, she scooted her chair over closer to us so she could see what we were explaining out of the pamphlet better and so she could hear us better over her young son playing in the background. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she told us how angry she has been at God for taking away her mother and how she struggles to believe in the Catholic church. We have an appointment with her tonight and I am really anxious to meet with her again. She asked us if we were going to invite her to church---YES! PLEASE! Her husband was just sitting there in the background playing on facebook and had no interest in listening to us, but she was quite attentive. We also saw great blessings this week in terms of member references! Franco, a recent convert (18 years old) who just decided that he wants to serve a mission, hooked us up with his cousin. We went over and taught Claudia with Franco and it was a great lesson! We let him testify and explain concepts to her, so he could practice and so Claudia could feel the testimony of her cousin. The lesson went really well and when we saw Franco at church yesterday, he told us that Claudia liked the lesson and wants us to come back sometime! Woohoo! Transfers are this week on Wednesday. As of right now, we don’t know for certain what is happening, but I’m 99.9% sure that I will be staying here with Hna. Goddard in San Luis to finish the training program with her and to wrap up my mission experience. I’m excited to stay because I have lots of friends in the ward and the members are finally starting to have more confidence in us. I’ve been trying to be extra happy and extra loving with the members over the past transfer and it’s really paying off! If nothing else, the members seem happier and we are happier knowing that we have a family away from our own family. Not much else to report. Hna. Goddard and I are excited to start a little “bucket” list of things that we want to do together before I go home. For example, each day we are going to draw a “task” out of a jar that will be our challenge for the day. One of these tasks is to find the ugliest dog. Another is to contact someone riding a bike. And yet another is to take a picture of the other companion doing some street contacts. It should be fun and help keep us energetic as the weather is starting to warm up. Thanks for all your love and support. See you all soon! Hna. Pelton

Word of the week: "ejercer la fe" (to exercise faith)

This week has been beautiful here in San Luis, with warm weather and nothing resembling winter, even in the slightest. This week was a little frustrating in regards to our investigators; we are teaching great people, but either we can’t find them, or they are just not progressing and keeping up with their commitments. This week, Hna. Goddard and I tried a different tactic and tried to have an extra focus on the people we have recently found and taught and on getting them to progress. Unfortunately, we didn’t see many fruits from our efforts. We all seem stumped, as do our leaders, so we are just pressing along and trying to make the best of the situation and at least do our part. This week was zone conference and President Avila came here to San Luis with the assistants and taught us about how to study effectively for our investigators and how to get the members excited to participate in the work. It was a filled day; I felt like the Lord greatly answered my recent prayers about how to help our area perk back up. Hopefully this week, as we are able to apply the things that we were taught, we will see some fruits of our efforts. Last Sunday, a woman from the ward came up to us after Sacrament meeting and pleaded that we go and visit her very inactive son and his non-member wife because they are currently having marital problems. When we finally tracked them down and found their house, we were surprisingly greeted with open arms by the non-member wife. Celeste has apparently been taught by a number of missionary companionships, but is not quite convinced. She is very sweet (reminds me a lot of my sisters because she’s about their age) and loving and looking for help as she is struggling to make some life changing decisions in regards to her marriage and the future of her two young daughters. We taught her about the strength we receive as we commit ourselves to the Lord through baptism and the great counsel we receive through the Lord’s words. When we visited her just a couple of days later, she hadn’t kept up her commitment, but recognizes that it is something she wants, but that she must motivate herself to do it. We got her all excited to come to church, but even though her mother-in-law went by to pick her up, she didn’t come. We were really disappointed because she has family and friends who are members and she’s gone to church before and now more than ever, she is looking for spiritual strength, yet she didn’t come. We were really sad, but knew that we had done our best to teach her by the spirit and commit her to act. We have an appointment with her tonight, so hopefully we’ll be able to reach out to her and figure out how to help her reach her personal spiritual goals. This week, as I was studying about Celeste and about the questions and doubts she has, the spirit enriched my understanding about the principle of faith. Faith is a principle that has way more depth and much more significance and power than I tend to give it. As I was thinking about faith and the way the prophets describe faith, mainly that we must “exercise” it, I thought about what that word—exercise—really means. Let’s see, what first comes to mind when someone says “exercise”?: tired, work, muscles, effort, consistency , charts to track your progress, etc. Now if we take those same ideas and apply them to faith, we get a little clearer perspective of what faith entails in order to have power to move mountains in our lives. The word exercise would suggest that, just like physically exercising our muscles builds muscle, actively exercising our faith builds more faith. If we are exercising our faith well and effectively, we will be tired at the end. But, just like our physical bodies, our spiritual bodies bounce back. We may not notice that we have more strength the next day or even a week later, but as we consistently exercise and make faith a habit in our lives, we will be able to look back one day and we will recognize that now we have more faith “strength” than we had before. But it won’t be easy…we will betired, but we will be able to chart our progress over the weeks as we consistently set our mind to the task and dominate our natural fears and disbelief. Next week is transfers, and we are 99.9% sure that Hna. Goddard and I will stay companions here in San Luis, since the new training program is 12 weeks long (or two transfers), but there is always that random chance that things get mixed up, though, it’s probably not likely in this situation. Hope all are well and happy at home. Thank you so much for your love and support, especially in these final weeks! Love you, Hna. Pelton

Word of the week: Sentir sabores (to taste flavors)

Yes, I am happy to report that I have recently restarted to taste my food....thank goodness! It's quite the cruel joke to be a missionary in a foreign country and not be able to taste all the food you are eating. I am happy to report, that in celebration of this happy ocassion, Hna. Goddard and I went to "Candilandia" and bought $1 worth of candy to eat....since I could taste it! YUM! I still have an annoying cough that is lingering with me....but at least I can taste again! This week was a great teaching week! We were really focusing on asking good questions and focusing on the person rather than just on the lesson. This new training program for the new missionaries has been great for me and my personal growth as a missionary. I find myself trying to be a better quality missionary and focusing more on "being" a misisonary rather than just "doing" missionary things. I put my trust in the Lord especially this week knowing that He would give us the people to teach so we could put into practice what we've been working on this week during our companionship study. The week started out kind of slow and difficult because we couldn't find our investigators, but the Lord greatly blessed us as the week went on! We taught some AMAZING lessons this week, probably by far the best lessons that I've participated in over the course of my entire mission--the Spirit was present and very much so directing the lessons, the words that we said, and the love that we showed. It was all so perfect, like it had come off of a missionary training video! They were great experiences personally and to show to a missionary new in the field. Unfortunately, the people we taught these great, spiritual lessons are clinging to their Catholic traditional backgrounds, but at least we know we did our part and that the spirit testified to them of the truthfulness of what we were saying. It will all work together some day. In one particular situation, we were knocking doors right before the lunch hour (which is the WORST time to knock) because our appointments fell through. We weren't having any luck, until a man let us in to his home. He was kinda awkward and really was just being polite in not slamming the door in our faces, but didn't seem to have any interest in the message we were offering. We sat down and, while trying to be friendly and nice (coughing along the way), we found out that he is recently divorced and lives now with his sister and his kids come and visit him every once in a while. We started teaching him about the Restoration, but it was a very one sided lesson--we may as well have been teaching a cardboard cut out of a man. Thankfully (and I say thankfully in this situation only because it helped us fix the lesson), the phone rang and Sergio went to answer it. I looked at Hna. Goddard and just made this weird face at her like "this lesson is useless! we're not getting to him and I'm not really feeling like this is a very inspired lesson." So, I started looking around his house, trying to think of what we were going to do to save this lesson so it wasn't just a number in our agenda at the end of the day. I noticed that he had a big Bible sitting on a bookshelf in the corner of the room. When he came back and started listening to us again, I asked him about his Bible and if he likes reading the Bible. From this, a number of follow up questions came into my mind and within a few minutes, we had discovered that he stopped going to the Catholic church because he didn't feel anything when he went. He told us how he didn't feel elevated or uplifted when he went to church, so he felt that it was a waste of time and started looking for those fulfilling feelings in other means. He brought out a self-help type book that he's been reading to fill that need in his life. The lesson changed in that moment and the spirit started working very powerfully. I've recently come to discover that when I'm teaching with the spirit, new analogies and examples come to my mind. It's very opposite of who I am and my usual way of teaching (ie: preparing, practicing, thinking things all the way through...not coming up with things on the spot). But in this moment, a great analogy came into my head and it fit perfectly into the lesson and really helped Sergio understand the point and doctrine we were trying to teach him. Here's what the spirit whispered to me (maybe because I've been sick for the past week). -Why do we go to the doctor or the hospital when we are sick? Aren't there lots of sick people there? People that have worse illnesses and problems than we have? But we go to the doctor anyway because we know that the doctors have the knowledge, tools, and the "right" to help us get better, to operate on us when necessary. When I'm really sick, I don't go to the man down the street and ask him to operate on me or give me medications because he isn't authorized to treat people medically and he doesn't have the tools to treat my specific illness. Despite all the diseases floating around in the hopsital, I'm going there because I know that I can trust the doctors because they have received "permission" (for the lack of better wording) to treat people and their different illnesses. Spiritually, we are all sick--some have spiritual illness more grave than others. Like when we are sick, we aren't going to go to same random man down the street to have him heal us (physically or spiritually)....we are going to go to the hopsital, or in the case of a spiritual illness---the church building. We need to go to a place where there are people who have "permission" or the "right" to operate on us spiritually so we can be truly healed. Even though there are all types of spiritually sick people in church, we take the "risk" and go anyway, knowing that the potential cure outweighs the potential illnesses we could catch. The church is a hospital for the spiritually sick. There is no better place to go to be spiritually healed than where Christ is the head doctor and surgen. Like Christ himself proclaimed, He didn't come into the world to save the healthy, but to heal the sick and aren't we all sick spiritually as sinners? I testify that the Lord will enlighten our minds and edify us (D&C 59:20), both those we are testifying to and to ourselves. The Lord will truly give us the words to say in the very moment if we seek His help and are seeking to reach the needs of His children. He truly knows the thoughts and intents of all His children. We ended up sharing the Book of Mormon with Sergio and as we went to mark a part for him to read, he got up, walked over to his bookshelf with the Bible on it and brought back an old copy of the Book of Mormon that apparently other elders had left with him years ago. He told us that other missionaries had left it with him, but it wasn't the right moment in his life, so he never read it. He told us that maybe what he was looking for was in the Book of Mormon and pushed his self help book aside and told us that he would read the Book of Mormon. When we focus on the needs of others, and seek the guidance of the Lord in knowing what to say, having full confidence that He will give us the words to say, He enlightens our minds and we all leave edified. Hna. Goddard asked me where I came up with analogy after we left Sergio's house and were talking about how the teaching went, and I just looked at her and told her that I had no idea, that it had to have come from the Lord because I had never used an analogy like that before and it had never occurred to me before, only in that precise moment, when I asked the Lord to help us save that lesson and help Sergio. It was an amazing experience and very humbling. So, one of the great things about training is that I get to rediscover all the cool, quirky things about Argentina! Just a couple of days ago, I was explaining to Hna. Goddard the process of turning on the hot water to take a shower in the morning. (note: it's been less than 0 degrees here the past few days...so this information is vital). I thought you all might get a kick out of it....ENJOY! 1. Turn on the kitchen sink to the "hot" position. (this helps so more gas flows, making it easier to get the little pilot light to ignite) 2. Light a match. 3. Simulaneously, put the match into the water heater (pilot light opening) and turn on the gas valve below the heater NOTE: because the water heater is located next to the drafty window in the kitchen, there is usual a draft that blows over where you need to light the pilot light in the heater, so, I usual light a candle and leave it on the counter so I don't have to keep relighting 10,000 matches in the process of lighting the heater when the matches get blown out. CAUTION: If the match gets blown out before the pilot light ignites, TURN OFF THE GAS VALVE! If the gas valve is not turned off in this situation and the hot water is left on, gas fills the water heater and in the short amount of time it takes you to light another match and put it in the heater, you will get an explosion....we don't want that. 4. When the pilot light ignites, go to the shower and turn on the hot water. 5. Go back to the kitchen and turn off the kitchen sink so the hot water starts flowing to the bathroom and not to the kitchen sink. 6. Go back to the bathroom, and with a set of pliers, turn on the cold water (since there is no nob for the cold water control) so you don't get burned by the hot water. 7. Don't forget your flip-flops....who knows what that black stuff is growing in the "grout" between the tiles....Hna. Pelton has been on her hands and knees to scrub those tiles and those black slotches don't go away....better be safe than sorry and get out those flip flops. 8. Oh yeah, and when you are done in the shower, leave the water running because if you turn the water off, the little pilot light flame might blow out (since there is that annoying draft from the window) and then we will all die from natural gas!!!! haha...not that dramatic, but the apartment will start smelling a bit like gas within a few minutes. But, if you are the last one showering, turn off the hot water and the cold water (using the pliers again) and then go to the kitchen to turn off the gas valve so the pilot light goes out, 9. Enjoy being clean for the next couple of hours before you go outside and get all dirty again! :) Repeat tomorrow Alright, not much else to report. Taught an elderly couple and adopted them as my Argentine grandparents. Juan cried as he prayed and thanked the Lord for sending him 2 people that we a great relief to him in his stressful life. He had to stop praying because he was too emotionally. I just squeezed his arm and told him that that's why we had come to his home to chat with him and his wife. With wet eyes, he set his hand on mine and just smiled at me. It was such a sweet moment. Love is definately a fruit of the spirit. I have no idea why I asked them if we could adopt them as our Argentine grandparents, but when he started crying, I realized that maybe that's what he needed in that moment, more than anything else we had shared with them. Maybe he just needed to feel the love of the Lord in his life. It's amazing the instant love I feel for people we teach sometimes. It's almost as if I'd known these people for years. That might have been one of my favorite lessons I've ever taught....I felt like the missionary I always dreamed of being. It was a weird and humbling realization. The Lord really does shape us if we set goals with Him. Until next week....Chau! Hna. Pelton