Baptism! And exchanges...

Dear Family and Friends,

Lauren´s getting married?  That doesn´t surprise me that much, but that´s super fast!  Another wedding I´ll miss.  Oh well. 

Mom, yes we have senior companions, but with Hermana Ihler and I, we´re both senior companion.  Also, I haven´t paid much attention to leadership on the mission.  Like I said, we have 2 sister training leaders for all the sisters in the south.  We hardly ever see them and hardly ever hear from them.  Except last monday we got the email saying that the next day we had exchanges with them.  What?  They couldn´t have let us know sooner.  Very bad planning on their part.  We had to cancel lessons that we had planned because of bus schedules and trios with the other hermanas and things.  It was a mess and I was pretty mad.

But the exchange was fun.  I had to travel 3 hours and went to Roldán and we had awesome lessons there and awesome contacts.  I miss the pueblos!  Cities are hard.  But I was with Hermana Chambi who´s from Peru and is great.  So much fun.  She´s also a convert and left on her mission a few months after she turned 1 year as a member.  So cool.  We laughed lots, I got to sleep on the bus and so it was overall great there but i heard it went horribly wrong in our area.  Oh well.  The Hermana that came to our area might have destroyed our relationship with Alejandra.  She´s making it hard to meet with her and Hermana Ihler wants to drop her.  which makes me super sad.  

The other big thing that happened this week was Brisa´s baptism!  We picked up a less active for church and got to church about 5 minutes beforehand.  The elders were worried that the baptismal font door wasn´t going to open.  We got that solved in very short amount of time only to find the bigger problem.  There was already water there from the last baptism 3 months ago!  It was so disgusting and it wouldn´t drain!  So we didn´t go to relief society or principios del evangelio, we worked on trying to figure out the font.  Brisa´s mom was ticked.  She blamed the elders, which is wasn´t their fault at all, and said some horrible things.  But we finally got it figured out before sacrament.  The baptism was supposed to start at 1 but the bishop was in a rush so they started at 12:30 without Brisa!  And half of her friends came late.  ugh.  But in the end it all worked out.  Everyone was mad at us but what are you going to do?  The important thing is that she got baptized and that she´s happy.  Just sometimes I would like a little more support from the members.  Please treat your missionaries good.  All the missionaries in this city get treated very badly and it´s hard to want a baptism when we´re not sure if the convert will be welcomed or not.  Really hard to want another baptism when everyone gets mad at you for everything.  I´m 21 I don´t know what i´m doing half the time!  I´m not perfect!

But other than that the work has become a little slow.  We had to drop almost all of our investigators and we´re trying to find.  But there are good people here and I know there are some waiting to hear the gospel!  It is the best news!

Side note, we had to counsel a less active this week on some serious issues she has and it was amazing!  Hermana Ihler and I were exactly on the same page and we know that it was exactly what the Lord wanted that sister to know!  I love being a missionary!

Hermana Borup

Pictures: Exchange with hermana Chambi

Elder Villalon cleaning out the nasty spiders and cockroaches 

Brisa!  I do love her.

Valentine's Day

Dear Family and Friends,

So this week was the week of cat calls.  Every week in Argentina actually, but this week was worse than normal.  We decided it was thanks to Valentine´s day.  Tuesday was especially bad and I decided that Hermana Ihler could not wear her boots again, and she decided that I couldn´t wear my black skirt again.  I think it´s just because two americans are together.  It was always bad with Hermana Smith and Dean.  I think it´s also because Hermana Ihler is tall...

So besides that we had a great week.  We started teaching Brisa, the girl getting baptized this Sunday.  We had to teach her almost everything in a week, her interview is today, and then we have to teach her everything else this week.  And then her younger sister also wants to get baptized, but I think she´ll have to wait a few weeks.  That took up most of our time because they don´t live in our area and they don´t even live in the city!  So we have to take the colectivo there and then walk about 15 minutes on the freeway to get to their house.  She´s great though and so ready.  All of her efy counselors are coming for the baptism and a lot of her friends too!

Alejandra´s doing great.  This week we went with a member in our ward to her house and she loved it!  The member gave her a Liahona to read and a living christ sheet!  But she didn´t come to church and we don´t know why yet.  Really, all that´s laking with her is the smoking.  She just can´t give it up!  We don´t know what else to do!  We taught fasting this week and she´s even willing to fast!

We weren´t able to see Jonathan this week because of this work but we have an appointment for today! 
The mission is starting a new thing.  today until easter we´re trying to get 500 baptisms.  Crazy!  Considering we have like 50 a month usually...  But there´s a plan and I´m pretty excited about it!  We know Alejandra, Brisa, Brenda, and Jonathan can be baptized soon, but we still have to find a few more.  Yay for contacting.

Saturday I felt really homesick.  Probably the most I´ve been on my mission.  I just really wanted to be at that wedding, but it´s done now.  Hermana Ihler´s cousin married her roommate on friday, so we were both thinking about weddings all weekend.  I hope at least some of my friends will wait until I get home to get married.  I just want to witness a sealing I guess, and have friends when I get home.

Sunday I was asked to play the piano again.  I should have never told the elders I play.  This week went a lot better though.  And since I don´t know any sacrament hymns, I got an excuse to just play with one hand!  And it was the best hymn I played! 

So that´s it.  Mom, could you look into when I have to sign up for classes?  I have a question on whether my Bio 130 lab covered the bio lab I have to take for dental school or if I have to take molecular bio lab.  Thanks!  You´re the best!  Happy Valentine´s day and every other holiday they don´t celebrate here!
Hermana Borup

More Food

 10 Feb 2014

Dear Family and Friends,

So this week I got lots of letters.  Thanks!  I love letters.  But mom, I still didn´t get either of the packages.  I´m worried too.  I´ve noticed that the envelopes have a harder time getting through than the boxes. I don´t know why.  But I did get the calender from weston!  I love it!

So I really don´t have time today. But some of the highlights.

This week we became best friends with the bishop.  The elders were in Rosario at a zone leader capacitación and so us, the second couselor and the bishop met on wednesday night without them.  I brought banana bread with dulce de leche on top (request of the bishop) and we talked about what was going on in the ward.  He gave us a few names of less actives to visit and we planned an activity for the less actives to come to church.  It was very productive and fun.  Turns out our bishop is super cool and funny.  And now he loves us.  he even gave us his own key for us to go and get a copy.  Awesome!  We´re going to have a key to the church finally!  

After that we updated the elders and then the four of us cleaned the church on friday.  I have a new respect for these elders.  They were good cleaners.  And we seem to be working as a team now with the bishop rather than all of us doing our own thing.

This week was rough for getting lessons, but we did have some good lessons.  One was with Jonathan, the less active´s pareja.  We went with a member and the member was just awesome.  Taught priesthood better than I could have.  But Jonathan couldn´t come to church again because of work.  We´re praying that he can find another job.  

Hermana Ihler and I made every day special this week.  As in every day has a theme.  On thursday we bought little candies and ate one every 30 minutes.  And on friday the theme was pictures and saturday was grido (ice cream) day.  Tomorrow is fruit day and wednesday is chocolate.  Sometimes missionaries just need a little ánimo to keep going.  Especially on the days where no one will let you in and you just walk and walk and walk.

At church I was asked last minute to play the piano.  it was a disaster.  Hermana Ihler was asked last minute to give a talk.  I would have rather given the talk.  I was shaking so bad that all the notes were off.  Oh well.  I did my best.

Oh and the bishop announced a baptism on sunday for the 23rd.  It´s a 14 year old from an incomplete family and she was just waiting for her dad to baptize her.  Her dad just started coming back so now she´s ready.  Except, she hasn´t had any of the lessons.  The bishop asked us to teach her even though she´s in the elder´s area because she felt uncomfortable with the elders.  We feel bad for them because they did nothing wrong, but the important thing is that she´s getting baptized right?  Hopefully we can get her 10 year old little sister on board for the same day.  Shouldn´t be a problem.

Well have a great week.  Also, the creek flooded.  That was fun.  And a lot of people have water in their houses.

Hermana Borup

Me killing the fungus  and it didn´t work.  Hermana Giuliani told me I had to have rubber gloves, goggles, and a mask.  This was the missionary version of that.

And pictures of the flood disaster.  And it´s still raining!

Orange Fungus and Rain

 3 Feb 2014

Dear Family and Friends,

Oh how I love Argentina.  Actually, this morning I told the other sisters, "I´m done!  I´m going home and being a missionary in the states!"

Let me explain,

So our apartment has been without hot water for the past transfer and without water in the kitchen for the last 3 weeks.  That´s been a pain because it all of a sudden started to rain and the water´s been freezing.  So our showers have become less and less frequent and our apartment more and more smelly.  All of that is fine.  I can deal with it.  Hermana Ihler was quite upset about it, but she´s new to the apartment and will get used to it as well.  But this morning, due to the flood from a couple of weeks ago we discovered a new problem.  Orange fungus.  I´ve never seen it like this before.  Last week I cleaned out our food cupboards and I found it, but I thought it was a weird powdered food Hermana Garbin ate.  So I didn´t think much about it.  But it grew again and got on a lot of our food.  We had to throw a lot away.  But I´m just so grossed out.  Why!  I guess it´s time to call Hermana Giuliani to tell her about the flood, the hole int he wall, the no water, and the fungus.

This week was awesome!  Hermana Ihler is my new companion and she´s from Pocatello, Idaho.  She´s a nurse yes, but that´s because at BYUi it only takes two years.  So she´s going back and studying more.  But because she´s the nurse, we get to take the phone with us everywhere!  Missionary work´s going to be a lot easier.  Other missions get ipads and we don´t even get our phone on the streets.

So we had great lessons this week.  I don´t have a lot of time but first Alejandra.  We were having a normal lesson and then she told us she had something to tell us next time but tshe didn´t want to say it right then.  We continued and I felt impressed to say something to her.  The first time I felt impressed to say something that specific to anyone.  She started crying and told us that morning she heard a voice say the same words to her.  She said she knows it´s all true and she wants to be baptized now, but she has to quit smoking first.  It was amazing!

Then we found a great new investigator.  The contact from the other sisters I talked about last week.  He wants to feel forgiveness in his life.  His pareja is a less active and feels super guilty for living with him without being married.  Basically, they´re ready to get married, repent and feel peace in their lives.  He wants to be baptized and is looking for another job so he can come to church and meet with us more often.  His name´s jonathan.  

Also, this week we got hit on a lot.  Hermana Ihler´s too pretty for this place.  A man on his bike stopped to talkt o us and said he wants to be baptized so that we´ll start going to his house because we´re pretty.  Uh... well if he comes to church that will be a miracle so until then, we´re safe.

And that was the week.  I´m eating healthier because I´m scared the nurse will tell on me.  But she´s awesome and really doesn´t care.  

Hermana Borup.  Oh!  And I saw pictures from the Narducci baptism this week!  They are so cute!

Pictures: Getting soaked in the rain, the fungus, and our district last transfer

Great News

 28 Jan 2014

Dear Family and Friends,

Remember the Familia Narducci from Arroyo Seco?  They got baptized!!!!  Woooo!!!!  Probably not Eve yet because they have to get married, but all the kids!!!!  I´m so happy.  Yes, yet another baptism I was not there to see, but it doesn´t matter.  I was able to teach them and be in their lives and see the change in them.  I will never forget saying goodbye and seeing Lucas, the 13 year old, cry.  Ahhh!!!  I´m just so happy right now.

So another transfer done.  I have a new companion.  Of course.  I only last one transfer with each companion.  Her name´s Hermana Ihler and she just turned 11 months in the mission like me!  It´s going to be a blast.  She´s also the nurse.  Ha, I think this assignment was inspired.  Hermana Mueller and Romero are staying and Hermana Garbin goes to Venato Tuerto.  This change is for the best, but it´s still hard to say goodbye to yet another companion.

So this last week was great.  I don´t have any time to talk about it.  But a few highlights:

On tuesday we contacted a boy.  He opened up and we asked him if he believed in God.  He had dreadlocks and at first I thought he was on drugs.  Because he didn´t answer our question but just smiled and told us that he plays the....  I didn´t catch the name.  And then he started playing this instrument from Australia.  it was super weird but then he answered our question and told us that God is energy.  And a lot of other stuff that I had no clue what he was saying.  It was awfully fun though.

Saturday we ate rice and french fries, ya we´re healthy.  But then we had dinner with Beatriz, an investigator.  And she made meat and french fries and fried eggs for us.  I thought I was going to die.  I think I need to cut back on dairy yes, but also on grease.

Sunday we were asked to be with the nursery.  Yikes it was a disaster.  about 6 kids and a big mess.  And then I gave a talk in sacrament meeting.  I chose to speak on the holy ghost and little did I know, the other elder, Elder Higginson, spoke on the same thing.  It was the spirit.  I guess it´s what the ward needed.  Following those promptings. 

Thursday we didn´t have light.  And it was the hottest day of the year.  So there was no air.  I thought I was going to die.  But we had to walk in the night without light and it was kind of fun.  I told Hermana Garbin, because she was super happy that there wasn´t light, that good thing I knew how to get home.  She still doesn´t know the area after 4.5 months.  Ha, oh boy.  Good luck Venato Tuerto. 

Yesterday it rained.  Hard.  Super fun.  We got soaked, ran home, changed, and then got soaked again.  But it was a good day.  We have a new investigator named Elsa.  And we have a golden referral that we tried to contact but he wasn´t home so we´ll try and go tomorrow if my companion gets here early.

The mission is great!  I love life.  Pictures next week!  Keep up the missionary work Dad!

Hermana Borup

P.S.  the situation with the plumbing has not been fixed.  Still no hot water so when it´s raining, we choose not to shower.  Our apartment smells lovely