Conferencia General

Hola familia!

Things are just going so great here. Last week was super cold. I actually got to wear a sweater, but this week it got hot again up until Saturday, of course, for Conference. It was raining super hard! I’m so stoked to talk about conference, but I am getting a head of myself.

This week was the semana santa! I have never really paid much attention to the whole week of Easter, but here it’s a really big deal. Thursday through Monday they don’t have school. Basically Thursday through Saturday every store was closed, even Stock, which is like our Walmart. It was crazy. There was literally no one in the streets. They all went to the campanea (country) to visit family. haha

One of our new converts, like 3 months, is named Moura. She is also menas activo (less active). Her story is kind of crazy. She got baptized because she had a dream where her mom was reading the Book of Mormon and she was dressed all in white with a white veil, like a bride, over her face. Crazy stuff like that is always happening here. I feel like South Americans have special gifts because they come from Lehi or something, because everyone is always telling us about dreams they have that prompt them to be baptized. Anyway, she doesn’t really see herself as a Mormon. She is always on facebook, haha and she says “Look what all my Mormon friends are saying about Conference” or the new video and such. ahah It’s really funny to talk to her because she just is always talking about mormons and facebook. Anyway, we were with her the other day and she said Friday she was out in the street working and she was walking and saw the sister missionaries that live in our building. I think I forgot to say that we have a companionship of missionaries that live in our building but they aren’t in our barrio. Anyway she saw them and then she saw the elders a little while later and then she saw us. haha She said the only people out on holy Friday was her and the Mormons hahah, but she is also a Mormon. 

We have some really great investigators here in Villa Elisa. One of them is named Maria. hahah Everyone is named Maria here, but she is so great. She has 3 asistencia so she is all set to be baptized this Saturday!! Last Sunday was here second and then this Sunday we were scared she wouldn’t come to conference because of all the rain. We didn’t see her until after the conference and she was laughing. You didn’t think I was going to make it, did you? hahah She always calls us chicas. I love it. Hola chicas. haha I love her so much, mostly because all her life she has been looking into different religions. She was Catholic but then she found lots of things she didn’t like about the church so she started going to a Baptist church I think it’s Baptist. It’s called Baptista in Espanol. They are really intense here. She loves to read and she loves the Book of Mormon. She has a hair salon in her house and she is just such a happy, crazy lady. She reminds me a lot of my Nan, Kaylynn. The other day we were sharing with her the video gracias a que el vive and she was just crying the whole time and then we sang “I Know That My Redeemer lives”’ and she told us that she loves the hymns of the church so much. She said only the true church can sing of Zion and know where it really is. After we shared the video with her she left for a second and her 12 year old son Cristabol came and was talking to us. We shared the video with him and he said he was so excited for Christ to come and establish his church on the earth. Hermana Guardado was like we have some news for you haha He already has established His church. Cristabol was so excited. We taught him about Jose Smith and about how he too can have the priesthood. He told us he wants to be baptized!!! Then his mom came back and he said, mom, they have a baptismal service 25 de abril. I want to be baptized. She said we will see, haha but he didn’t come to conference. We will find out why tonight at noche de hogar. But he is really smart like his mom. They both have so many questions.

We also have this really cute 17 year old girl named Miralla I love her so much. She is just like Maria, she always has a million questions. The other day she kept asking us why the Catholic Church does all these weird things for the samana santa like they don’t eat meat and they don’t cook for three days so all they eat is chipa. I don’t think I have ever talked about chipa before. It’s this way yummy bread that they make here with cheese in the middle. I have never eaten anything like it and all these woman sell it in the street in this big basket on their head. Anyway everyone was giving us chipa this whole week. Back to miralla, she kept asking but why do they do this and that and we told her we don’t know, haha we aren’t catholic. We explained what we believe and she was like ohhhhh that makes so much more sense! She is really smart. She is wants to be baptized, but she never comes to church. She is kind of a lifetime investigator. She loves to learn but she doesn’t want to commit to anything, but I have lots of hope for her. 

Ok so conference. Conference is like the missionary super bowl because if we can get our investigators to conference they will be baptized because there are always milagros in conference. Of course Saturday it was raining soooo hard. It was frustrating. We were calling everyone trying to get them to the capilla. On top of that, our connection wasn’t working. We didn’t get to see the Saturday morning session because we couldn’t get it to work. We just saw like a few seconds of Linda K Burton which was amazing from what I saw in two seconds. But we got to see all of the second session in Spanish. ahah I could have gone to the English room but the majority of the missionaries were in the Spanish room. I was kind of sad because everyone always says conference is the best because we get to watch in English but at the same time it was a really cool experience to watch in Spanish. And a huge milagro happened, I almost understood it all!!! Some of them were really hard because the translators were talking way fast and I was trying to take notes in Spanish but lots of my notes were in English ah ah ah haha but I understood a lot. Saturday was basically just missionaries and our stake president. Sunday was a full house and we kept having problems with the transmission. It was super sad, but it was so cool to hear the people who spoke in Spanish. They were super easy to understand! 3 NEW temples!! whooooo Man, I don’t know if you guys heard the talk from the 70 who said missionaries, you can’t go back to babalonia. haha All of us were like ok, I promise. hahah I have never spent a conference in the church. I loved it. Between sessions we had like a big party with food and just hung out. Oh I forgot, Moura came! and she stayed all day! She loved it so much! Anyway, I better go, but hopefully we will have a baptism this week!

I love you all so so much, 

xooxoxoxo

Hermana Ball