Thursday, November 27, 2008

November 27th, 2008 - Happy Turkey Day!

Hola mi famlia y amigos,
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!! First thing is I am so thankful for you all. Thanks for the faithful emails, prayers, letters, and treats. I love them all. I am sorry mom and dad you didn’t get to give your talks. You can send me them and I’ll read them. Well, Presidente Wilson and Hermana Wilson are the best, they gave us a thanksgiving dinner or lunch I should say. It was fantastic. They started cooking yesterday and helped the cooks here make us turkey, potates, stuffing, gravy. We also had two desserts it was awesome. It was the first time I had ice cream in two months, very tasty. It has been a really good day. We had a zone meeting and talked about testimony and thanksgiving and at the beginning had a thanksgiving quiz and I didn’t do too bad...haha. Anyways, I am glad pday is on thanksgiving. I miss being with my family, but it sure makes me appreciate holidays at home so much more. Today is the last time I will go to the Argentina Temple, it’s so beautfiul and that will be sad not being able to go every week. Thanks for prayers and words of encourgagement about going into the field. I loved the MTC it has been an amazing experience here. There are so many great people here and so many great things to learn and study. Spanish is still kind of worry, I am really slow at picking this up. But I know I will have a companion who speaks and all will be well. It has been a really neat and really hard week. On Saturday we went proselyting again and we went to new area and went for about an hour and half longer. It was really difficult because we talked to tons of people who were VERY catholic and liked there religion and in the afternoon everyone was taking siesta time. We were able to talk to a man from Uruguay, Daniel and we gave him a book of mormon and he really listened and was so patient with all of us and that was neat. And we have two appts. for saturday so we’ll see if they go through. It was a good experience. On Monday Elder Aidukaits and his wife came to speak to us. I shook there hands and he smiled at my name. They are so neat. I loved their talks. He is in the first quorum of the seventy. He talked about how we can see miracles on our mission because the Lord has promised we could and what we need to do. Actually they both talked a lot about miracles and feasting in the scriptures. It was so neat and inspiring. Very good and neat people. I loved listening and it was 2-3 in spanish but I still understood a lot. They have a neat spirits. This last week is a little crazy and stressful, we are leaving Tuesday morning.
I hope you got my letters last week with the temple schedule and I am sending you a picture of our zone that we took last week, we all get a free picture. So I hope you get it. This is what I recieved from everyone to let you know, I got an email from mom, dad, and stefi, and two letters from grandma mohrman. Thank you so much. I love everything. Thanks dad for the gingerale. Can you let me know if you get my letters? I don’t think I need anything but thanks so much anyways. I hope all is well. Enjoy your yummy food and day of rest. The next time you will hear from me I will be in Uruguay. crazy, two months have already gone by. Thanks for the prayers, I am pretty nervous. Happy week!!! I love you!!! Te amo!!!
Con Amor, Tiffani

Thursday, November 20, 2008

November 20th, 2008 - Greetings from the CCM...

Hola mi familia y amigos,
I hope you all are doing well. Thanks for the letter from Grandma. I received the two packages THANKS THANKS THANKS!!! Just like Christmas. I also received emails from Mom, Dad, Nikki, and Joseph. Thank you much!!! I love hearing from you! Well, It sounds like life is getting exciting for you all that time of the year. I keep playing Christmas music over and over to get in the spirit. And I actually miss the snow covered mountains. One night as I was missing them and the holiday season I was thinking I am right next to a mountain and it is white. The temple. It made me feel better and so I can listen to Christmas music and look at the temple. Happy Holidays!! Eat lots of good food and cook lots for me. I cannot believe I am leaving in a week and a half. A lot of missionaries are going crazy being here but I am pretty content, I mean everything is taken care of for me, it is cool, and I just get to enjoy studying. Because when I leave I will walk all day in the lovely humid heat and start having to cook for me and Hna Wilson gave us a lesson on taking care of our health out in the field and all the bugs and parasites just waiting to make a home in me and kind of scared me so I am just really grateful to be here. I am working on being happy about the field. Because I really love proseylting on Saturdays. You know me and change. haha. It will be good. Ummmm...this last week we went proseylting on Saturday and I always forget to tell you dad but driving in France was heaven compared to here, the lines on the free way are more like guidelines that as long as one wheel is in or half the car in or around then your okay. We’ve had some pretty close calls driving to the area but it is a bus full of missionaries so I think we’re okay. But they are CRAZY with driving!! It was a neat day! We were able to have some good placements on Book of Mormons and talk to some neat people. We talked to this guy Martin who already had a Book of Mormon and was asking us doctrinal questions in spanish...kind of tricky. But we did pretty well he was catholic and wanted to know why we didn’t worship Mary and worship and stuff like that. He was neat and accepted our simple answers and testimony and said he would read and pray more. Saturday really gave me a strong strong desire to memorize where more things are in the scriptures. We also talked to this girl Sophia and she said she didn’t believe in God but we realized it was because she didn’t know about God she really liked listening to us and said she would read. Those are just some of the experiences but we were so much more united and bolder on Saturday and contributed more. We had a companionship goal for Hna. Yeates to talk more and she did and she did AWESOME!!! I really like my companions and I am really going to miss them. We already talk about how excited we will see each other at zone conference. Hna Orme says in exchange for all the chocolate I have given her she is going to find me a husband during her last semester at BYU. Pretty funny girl huh... On Sunday we watched Legacy it was better than I thought it was I used to hate it because it was so sad and it was still very sad but I appreciated it more. This week we had two english fasts where we couldn’t talk any english for part of the day and we get really good at charades. haha. We have been playing some scripture and spanish games a couple times a week against the other district that is going to our same district and we beat them. I have a really good district and they are really smart in the scriptures. very motiviating. I like my teachers. Things are good. I played the piano on Sunday and I didn’{t do too bad just my rhythm I insisted on Silent Night because of my ancestor and everything. It was good. Thanks again for your emails and letters I love them. I hope all is well. Sorry this is a little scatterbrained in writing. Te Amo!!!!!
Con Amor, Tiffani

Thursday, November 13, 2008

November 13th, 2008 - Happy Early Thanksgiving

Hola mi familia y amigos,
To start I received emails from Dad, Mom, and Nikki. Thank you. And I received letters from Mom and Nikki, and the envelope from Dad. Muchas gracias. I really appreciated all of it. Well I am on my last 3 weeks here at the CCM in spanish or the MTC. I was going to tell you that I left on Dec. 2, but your one step ahead of me. It is amazing how fast it has gone and yet how sometimes days are really long. It has been a pretty calm week. We said adios to second group of latin missionaries and hola to the new ones. There are now about thirty of us north americans and 7 north american sisters. We are now about half and half with the latins. The other girls are really nice. The temple opened again this week and I am excited I get to go after I email. This past week has had some up and downs. Pretty routine. One really neat experience was that President and Sister Bowen came and spoke to us, he is the area president and and in the presidency of the seventy. He spoke for a about an hour and a half. They laughed and commented briefly on my name when I shook there hands. He spoke a lot about magnifying our callings as missionaries and the importance of obedience and Preach my Gospel. He was nice he translated about a third of it so I could understand more. But I still was able to get a lot out of it. So last Saturday wasn't the best experience we had tracting we were a lot more timid and didn't talk to as many people. I don{t know why, but it was hard. I felt bad because I didn't do my best. Which is sad. But next week I will do better. We were able to give a BOM to a really nice lady and she seemed to really like our message. She was working here while her family is in Chili. A lot of people are like that. It was really quiet in our area and so we tried some door to door contacts. Not really successful. They have buzzers and intercoms and cameras so we didn't do that too long. Nobody talked to us. We found a few people who had been given BOM by other missionaries and they liked it and it was neat to see that and here how they were still reading it. Right now we{re learning Lesson 3 in spanish it is pretty difficult memorizing everything, every friday we are tested so to speak and give our teachers lesson 1, 2, and 3 now. Kind of nervous about that. We usually practice to a latin companionship everyday and they are really nice about that. Hna. Wilson asked me to practice a song for sacrament on the piano. I'm a little nervous about that because I haven't played forever. But I practiced a little bit and I think I can do okay. Last Sunday was good, well they are good in general because we get a siesta which is something I won't get to much of when I leave so I live it up. We also get to watch church movies. We watched church history seminary movies and they were really good. I am starting to get into volley ball down here, surprise surprise. It is really big down here and I really like watching the latins and playing with them. There are a lot of missionaries that are really good and the teachers sometimes play and we have quick tournaments during activity time. It is fun. Yesterday we were playing with an polynesian Elder from Oregon who plays for Oregon State and he treats the volleyball like a 300 pd lineman. It is hillarious to watch but sure scarey to be in his way and a couple of sisters found out the hard way. kind of funny. I really like my district they are really funny guys and we get along well. Which is good. I have also forgotten how to eat down here because I always spill and drop things. My companions want to take a picture of me with a bottle of stain stick. It is good, I think I will be ready to leave even though it is really scarey. I am sorry I don't have much more to talk about. Thanks again for the letters, prayers, and emails. I hope all is well. Te amo. I love you much.

Con amor, Tiffani

p.s. stefi and joseph get on the ball. I love you.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

November 6th, 2008: Happy Holiday Season

Hola Familia y Amigos,
Muchas Gracias for the emails from Dad, Mom, and Nikki. And another Muchas Gracias for the two envelopes from Dad and Mom. I am so grateful for the love and support you all give. My district is amazed with you. I got the one envelope with the cd today and so I will listen to it tonight. Thanks. Thanks for the letters-emails in it. I am grateful for the chocolate but I think it may be getting to warm for it. It is kind of melted. But it is okay, I still eat it. My health is good so I can keep working. So I heard about the election from some of the cooks here and I felt really bad for you and for me. I wish I had done my part and voted just to show support. I am glad the propisition 8 passed there are silver linings. Hna Orme showed me a scripture in Helaman that day that told about the people turning away from God and putting in bad men as leaders and corrupting there governments. Very applicable. I am amazed everyday at the book of mormon and how it applies to everything about us. It is so neat. I am really learning to love the scriptures. I am grateful that we have the gospel and that no DUMB president can ever take it away.
On a positive note, Hna Orme, Hna Yeates and me had some great experiences proselyting saturday. I really enjoy doing it, even though it gets pretty hot and humid and my feet hurt. It is worth it. I hope I still feel that way when I do it everyday all day. We were able to place 5 books of mormons to people that seemed really interested and sincere in there desire. We gave like ten pamphlets and were able to get 7 names and contact info for the missionaries. It was so awesome. It was neat to have people understand our poor spanish and be able to still feel the importance and joy in our message. The spirit is amazing. We went to the same are as last week Vicente Lopz which is by the coast. Our area touched the coast. It is a more well to do area. We went all day saturday well from 9 to 4 and it was a busy enough area that we didn{t have to clap a single door (they do that instead of knock). The best people we talk to and are golden we joke and cannot run away from us are security guards, men that the neighborhoods pay to sit in a box about the size of 2 telephone booths and protect them. Basically they sit all day and do nothing. They are not from the area and are usually from the lower class of people kind of less to do. But pretty much all we have talked to minus a few are really nice and humble and listen to us. We were able to get 3 references and hand out two bom to them. One man Raul was so neat and he loved our message and when were were done he said that he really felt something. It was neat beacuse that discussion was really united and we all participated. The spirit is amazing, again. There are also a lot of workers in the area and we talked to man named hector with his two sons were with him about 9 and 10 and he stopped his work to listen. He was really humble and let us talk for like 15 minutes. He was interested. I had candy in pack because was a long day and i gave the boys packages of skittles which they really liked and made them less restless and kind of listen a little bit. They liked us. My favorite experience was about a girl Frede we met last week who was amazing and she was a maid who stopped to talk to us and she told us her brother had a book of mormon in paraguay and that she knew about us but not really anything. So we gave her a bom and challenged her to read it. The following week we gave the contact infos to the missionaries and we had lost her number and I felt so bad. I hoped we would go to the same area and if we did I prayed we could find her because she had a neat spirit. I prayed friday and saturday to find her and saturday around 11 she was one her way to work and we found her and she gave her number and told the bom was beautfiul and she liked it. It was amazing. Prayers are answered. I love sharing this message with people. Thanks for your prayers of support and words and love. I appreciate it so much. I love you all.
con amor, Tiffani
p.s. I will write questions and comments to letter to you all this week. I love you. thanks for the stamps.