written August 24, 2015

NORMA!! We forgot to take a pic at church so we took one in the afternoon at their home.

This is from a zone conference a while back

A little kid taught me how to make a popper out of paper and I got everyone excited about it.

So this week was sooo psycho. We had a lot of intercambios with the hermanas. We knew that this week we are having a conference with the Area President so we thought that it would be good to do three intercambios instead of two. But that meant that we weren’t together Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. It was crazy, we were in buses a lot!!! But it was fun. I was with a Latina, an American that is older than me, and a brand new missionary. It is so fun because you really get to learn so much from each girl and it’s just like having sleepovers every night. I just don’t really sleep. A lot of times the girls need to talk so I stay up til like midnight listening to everything and then I get up at like 5:30 and I do the whole thing again, but in another area. But it was really just an adventure. The crazy part was Saturday I was with the new missionary and at like 6 I got a call from my comp that said that presedente had called her and told her that there were two hermanas that were sick and they had been in the hospital. We already knew that, we had been talking to them all week. One started out sick and now they both are sick. They are finally out of the hospital but one needed to go for an appointment and the other still wasn’t in any condition to travel so we had to end intercambios early and travel back home so that I could be there in the morning to go with her. It was fun going to the hospital but it really made me miss America... the doctor was very interesting. He was just poking her all over the stomach and was like “does this hurt?”... then he gave her a prescription for some meds and told her to drink 2 litros de sprite every day, 1 litro de peach juice, 1 litro de poweraide... that’s sooo much liquid. haha It was so funny but any way I hope they get better. If not we are going to have to keep doing stuff like that. In total I was with hermana Austin 4/7 days, but we had a great week as far as our area goes.

One day we were sitting in the street feeling so discouraged because literally no one wanted us. Then a lady walks by and she points at this baptist church and she is like “are you from that church?” and I was like uhhhh “No... Somos de la iglesia de jesucristo de los santos” (no, we are from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)..... ok bye. hahha She just keeps walking and goes into her house... so then my beautifully inspired comp says let’s go contact her house. haha I was like ummm that’s kind of creepy to follow her home. But you kind of stop caring about creepy when no one wants to talk to you, so we go up and we ask the man that comes out if we can talk to the lady that just went in. hahah He says sure. She comes out and lets us in and we had a great talk with her. She told us that she is looking for a job and if she doesn’t find one she will have to go to Argentina and leave her kids alone here. We called the couple missionaries from our ward. They are great. I think they are from like Spanish Fork they work with self-reliance. They said they could help her. She went the next day and now she has a job!!!!!! We were soo happy but the down-side is she works Sundays. What were they thinking getting her a job where she can’t come to church? ahah But oh well, maybe we were just put in her path to help her get a job. We are still going to baptize her though, she is great and we totally found her daughter last night and put her on a date so that was a milagro.

Another HUGE milagro. Pablo’s mom is great. Remember last week I told you guys about Norma. We sang to her and Pablo gave her a Book of Mormon, she is still Catholic but.... we went to visit Wanilda on Saturday and she wasn’t there but Norma was and she accepted us in and we totally taught her the restoration and she loved it!!! The spirt was sooo strong AND guess what, Pablo was scheduled to give a talk yesterday so I told her that it would mean so much to him if she came. She said she would see what she could do. Sunday we were praying and praying that she would come. We walked into the church, guess who walked in with Pablo and Wanilda, NORMA!!!! I almost cried of joy but it gets better!! Guess what Pablo was speaking on.... BAPTISM!!!!!! It just does not get better this this. I’m telling you guys he was sooo nervous. He told us he had been thinking about his talk all week: on the bus, at work, at night in the bathroom. hahah He is so great. I loved that even though he is going through this hard time the bishop still asked him to give a talk and his talk was sooo beautiful. I cried and cried. He kept saying stuff that we taught him. He said when we are baptized our sins are gone but our weaknesses stay. It was seriously the best talk and I looked at Norma and she was crying... after Pablo spoke another member spoke and he was kind of intense. I was worried, but I think Norma liked it. At the end the bishop dropped cane on how the house of the lord needed to be a house of order and he talked about how we can be better. One thing was to get all the hymn books together after church. After the prayer Norma jumps up and starts going for all the rows, putting all the books away. She is sooo great!!! We had lunch with them and we tried to put her with a date but she kept escaping us but she could totally get baptized before hermana austin leaves in two weeks, so we would appreciate that prayer!

I love you guys so much. I’m loving the work. It’s hard. I had kind of a break down this week, I’m telling you guys so you know that it’s not all rainbows down here, but it’s really just the best kind of hard I have ever gone though. 

Se que Dios esta con nosotros (I know that God is with us)

ROHAYHU,

Hermana Ball 

PS: Norma teaches guarani so I’m trying to use this to help me learn a little more.