November 10 and 17 2014

November 17, 2014       

Hello All!

So this week has been pretty crazy.

Tuesday, we met a “wanderer in time” who came from the first world war, saved for an unknown purpose. That was really interesting. He asked us many thought provoking Questions and some without end. . . And as we walked away we looked back and he was gone! Really weird.

The next day we met an amazing investigators! A teenager who just finished her senior year!  We knocked on her door as she was practicing walking in her high heels for graduation. Good times! Her step dad is less active, and he got real excited to see us and showed us photos of his brother that is serving a mission in northern Argentina!   We chatted for a bit and then my companion said a short simpleprayer to start the lesson we looked up and Maraina (the girl) was in tears. “isn’t it just so amazing how alleviating a prayer is? You can be full of anguish and just like that have peace again.” She said.  So true. Oh how I love the peace this gospel brings. God rally loves us and listens to our prayers and will always help us through the good times and the bad.

We have been doing a lot of strengthening families here. Just like God exists, so does Satan, and he is working his hardest to destroy families. Every family is in danger and we must strengthen our family now! Some things that we have found joy  in is family home evening every week and family history! These simple things God has provided to help us feel His Spirit more and help make our home a place of refuge instead of the bomb site. Also, the most important is family scripture study and family prayer. How I love my memories of that! And my companion and I always have great joy doing this together as well.  Sometimes we pray in one another’s languages it is pretty fun! I love that no matter what language we speak, God understands us perfectly.  Today as my companion was writing her family, a car outside exploded! For a moment we were all curious, then stunned. The owner of the cyber told us all to leave as fast as we could, and I took my companion running! Made real the question everyone asks if your house was burning what would you take with you in the fifteen seconds you have to grab something?  Besides my scriptures, nothing material is really important. All that matters really is the people we love.  Like I talked about in the paragraph above, our families are the most important. Make sure you are taking care of your family. Show your love to them every day. I was so grateful nobody was harmed.  Just in that moment, I had been writing my testimony to President Lovell. And even though it was a little scary, I wasn’t frightened, knowing that everything would be ok. Because God is in the details of our lives. This world is full of crazy things, but when we walk with God, we don’t have to worry. Crazy things still happen, but we can trust that God will help us always and that things will work out for our good.

Search for the peace and happiness that we all need. I promise you can find it in God. Reading your scriptures, praying, going to church, and the temple, even serving our neighbor in a simple way help bring the peace and happiness. We are all here, just wanderers in time for a bit, until we return to our eternal home. My wish is that we all return safe and sound to the arms of our Father. The decision is ours. The time to act is now.

Have a great week! Hermana Albright

November 10, 2014

Hello all!

So this week was super fun! The Elders in our ward had a baptism! Her name is Laura and she is so cute! Her husband is less active, and they got married just two weeks ago in preparation for her baptism! We have a noche de hogar with her tonight I'm super excited.

Random funny story, today my comp and i found out that we know the same efy dance! Hey now hey now what you gonna say now...whoo whoo whoo whoo make your sandwich put it together EAT IT! Hahaha good times...who woulda thought? Efy around the world!

This week was a bit windy again, and that naughty wind likes to put out our fires! So the water tank heater and the air heater went out multiple times. We had lots of adventures with that! The air heater almost exploded the last time we tried to light it again, and for a couple days we resorted to heating water and using a bowl instead of our showerhead. But its warm again now and we are back to summer time weather!

I thought of a cool parable of the heaters.Satan is like the naughty wind trying to put our fire out! And sometimes we think man there is just not anything left to do, and we let him put our fire out and we stop fighting and he wins. OR we can do all we can to create a shield of faith (we are doing the armor of God lesson again for fhe haha can you tell?) and block those darn winds from putting out our fire! And we can make our fire bigger too so that it is even hardder to put out! and we can share our fire and light the fire for those that have gone out already. THats one cool thing about fire. It loves to share! You dont lose anything at all as you share your fire, in fact, lighting something else makes your fire brighter! So this week, ¨let your light so shine¨and make your fire grow!

The Spirit of God like a fire is burning...

Hope you have a great week!

Hermana Albright

 

 

November 3, 2014

Happy halloween everyone! Hope you had lots of fun! Argentina doesnt celebrate halloween, but the weather did! We got tricks instead of treats this year, and a tornado came into the country! unheard of. So out came the winter coats and boots and tights and the sleeping bags and light up the heaters once again because it was cold! We really are in the last days here.

So last week we met a guy named Emmanuel as we were walking through the park. He said he wanted to change his life around and come to christ, so we were happy to help him! When we went to his house however, we could not find it. He had said it was on a corner so we knocked all the corner houses. A girl came out and said that he didnt live there. Sad, we left. Then, as we were going to a less actives house on that street later in the week, we walked by an old investigators house and i had the impression to knock it. SO we did, and out comes Emmanuel! The brother of an old investigator! The Lord is totally in the details of the work.

Cool fact about argentina, they are super family oriented and often we find a ward that has the whole family, all grown up and with their own kids now, and that one family makes up the majority of the ward. Changes the meaning of ¨ward family¨a little bit haha. THey literally are family here! So when something happens in a family, it has a huge impact in the ward. so Hermana Flores passed away, and although we did not get have the privileege of meeting her in person, we did have the privilege of hearing many wonderful stories of her and the legacy she has left behind. It is so wonderful to know the plan of salvation when hard things like this come our way, beecause we understand God's plan and take comfort in the knowledge that she is in a beautiful place, where she has no pain or hardship, and that she is helping others on the other side now come to christ too! one thing that really impacted me though was the description of her beauty. Everyone described her as hermosa(beautiful). When she was living, and when they saw her all in white before burying her, she was hermosa. Many men use this word in a vulgar way, and it has been my least favorite word in spanish as i have spent the past year disgustingly listening to men of all ages shouting out to me and my companion. I lost completely the feeling of beauty. But listening to all the people talking about Hermana Flores, the word completely changed for me. Hermosa. When they said it, I could almost feel the love, the purity, the strength and the tenderness that she had. She was hermosa because of who she was, not because of how she looked or anything like that. It was part of her being.That is the true meaning of beauty. The kind that comes from within. All you beautiful women reading this, will you take this challenge with me to become hermosa from the inside out? I know that as we do this, we will not only change ourselves, but also the world. Remember that God looks on the heart, and so should we. He loves us, His precious daughters, and will help us make this world more hermosa as we lean on HIm and spread His love.

I love you all and wish you a wonderful, hermosa week.

Hermana Albright

my new comp is great. So funny! and a little crazy. Haha we attack each other randomly throughout the day, usually ending it sumo style hahaha. and shes teaching me portuguese! But mostly its very cheeky stuff haha so if i ever want to get in a fight with a brazilian i am good to go!

 

 

October 27, 2014

So this week has been super crazy (I dont know what happened to my keyboard but i cant do excalmation points. Just imagine them on basically every sentence like normal) From Monday to Thursday, we were rocking a trio again. You know I was loving that. Hermana Cooper, a missionary serving in our zone and in the second ward that shares the church building, is training. So she stayed with us until her newbie came on Thursday. We also did two tsunamis for the elders in our district, thursday and friday. Put that all together and we had very little time to work in our own little area this week. But its been good.

My new compy comp is Hermana Oliveira. Shes super cute. From Brazil, has nine months, and is helping me learn lots of fun porteguese. We are having lots of fun together. ummmm any other questions about her, i cant think of more to say haha but she really is great.

So spring time is in full force, moving quickly to summer. Its been soooooo hot this week. And the mosquitos have come out again yayyyy. I already have a ton of bites. Whoops. But the best part. I dont know what in the world it is but there is white fluff flying around everywhere. It comes from the trees here and makes walking in the sunshine so beautiful. Sometimes it looks more like snow, and sometimes it looks like magical. I love it.

This week I-ve been really trying to find a menos activo that I taught my first week with Hermana Caballero. I dont know why but we were never able to visit her agian after that first visit. But since I was new in the area and i am also always directionally challenged, I had no idea where her house is. I asked every member that came out with us, called her, checked the area book...nothing. So domingo i asked her member friend and she drew me a sketchy map. So that night, we went on a hunt for herª I had a vague memory of what her yard should look like but it was pitch black our first visit so not even that was great. So we just started walking down the streed and im praying for guidance and none of the houses look familiar. The member tells us that we are probably lost and maybe its not even on this street and we should go visit someone else but something told me to just keep going. And there, at the end, there was a yard that looked familiar. So we knocked, and there she is. Ah it was so exciting. We had a great lesson and shes coming to our family home evening tonight whooohoo.

Last but not least little bit of news, our zone leaders invited us to change how we knock doors. Now, we are to pay more attention to go where the Spirit directs us, knock where we feel, and then present ourselves as representatives of Christ, here to bless this person through a simple prayer, and ask if we can have two minutes of their time to offer a prayer with them. OH how I love it. It makes me focus more on the spirit, really think about the meaning of my calling and who i represent, and helps us and the person feel the spirit so much more. I am so grateful for this change and for the opportunity to feel the spirit even more.

How great of a priviledge we have to offer a simple prayer to our Father in Heaven. He is the Almighty God, the Supreme Creator, and He wants to talk with and hear from us. From you. From me. And from a simple prayer, we can feel His love. We can receive His guidance and help. We can work miracles. Oh how I love prayer. I hope you really take advantage of this priviledge this week and really take the time to talk with your Father in Heaven. ANd not just to Him, but rather WITH HIm.  I know that He hears and listens to our prayers. I know that He loves us with a love infinite and eternal. I know that He will always answer.

I hope you all have a great week. Happy Halloween

Hermana Albright

October 21, 2014

Man can you believe how fast time is flying? Gah! It's craziness.

So transfer news, Hermana Caballer is going to Confluencia and I stay here. My new companion is Hermana Oliveira and is from Brazil! So I'm going to learn Portuguese!

This week was amazing! We achieved or even bettered most of our goals! WHOOO! SO exciting. We have been having so many great moments and lessons. One of which comes from a new investigator, Natalya, who lives in the Military Neighborhood. I love working there it is so beautiful and calm and has so many trees! Anyway, we had an awesome first lesson with her. She is an old investigator, and started listening to the hermanas in the beginning of this year when she was having trouble with her depression. The hermanas helped her learn to depend on Christ and she is so grateful and has overcome many of her problems. The hermanas were transferred so she got lost in the mix but a member told us that we should pass by and she was very happy to receive us! WE talked of Christ and how he can help us in our life, through His Atonement, and how we receive the fulness of the Atonement as we fulfill His commandments, one of them being baptism. We read Alma 7:11-15 (my favorte!) and then invited her to be baptized and she said I would love to! What do I need to do?   Such a great answer. I am so excited to keep teaching her.

As we left the lesson, the couple that had accompanied us said Today I learned just how fearless you hermanas are! (they both served a mission some years ago). Haha the hermano said Man when you started talking about baptism I just thought ok this where i shut up and let the Spirit do the work! He is definitely leading these hermanas! I am just going to hide under the table and hope everything goes well! Hahahaha dont worry he didnt really hide under the table. But we talked about how the Lord really is hastening His work and we have to follow His directions to help bring aobut the salvation of more of His children. I am so grateful for this time that I have to serve the Lord and see His promises fulfilled. I invite all of you to find a way this week to participate in the work of salvation! I promise that you will have greater peace and happiness as you do so, because when we participate in this great work, we are working side by side with the Lord. There is no higher honor than that and no greater joy. Hope you all have a great week!

Hermana Albright

totally gluing this to the front page of my journal! She walked and walked, by Heidi Albright, based on a true story hahhaa so many great tresures in the liahonas!

erika, an amazing member that helped us so much, moved to brazil! Ah so sad!

Well hermana caballero forgot to bring her camara and she has the most fotos from this week so thats all sorry!