I made Alicia cookies for her birthday.
3 hours of baking wore me out!

Alicia and I the day of her birthday!
She invited us over to eat roasted baby pig with her fam.
I sure love her!!

The Goat and I :)

District Lunch for P-day
Ate in a restaurant for the first time in 8 months!!
Roasted Goat...Delicious.

This week we found two great new investigators, Graciela and Vitalia! Graciela is a single mom of five kids and they are all Evangelicos.  They had tons of questions for us the first lesson but when we told them that baptisms in our church are done the same way as Christ was baptized, they all committed to following his example and preparing to be baptized the 18 of July! They still have lots of doubts but we are going to do the best we can to help them realize that our church is the only church with the fulness of the gospel!  Vitalia is awesome as well.  She is about 68 years old and super Catholic.  We taught her the Restoration of the gospel and at the end of the lesson when I asked her if she would pray to know the truth of our church, she broke down crying. She told us all about how she has 5 kids and neither them nor her husband visit her that often, so she feels very lonely.  She is in her house almost all day every day and is struggling to find peace and comfort in her life because she is so lonely.  We then were able to teach her about the Atonement and how through the mercy and grace of Christ, we can find strength and peace to not feel lonely in our lives because he is always there.  We promised her that through the gospel of Jesus Christ, we will be able to help her find what she is looking for in her life.  She thanked us a million times at the end of the lesson and told us that she wants us to definitely come back :)  I am super excited to do all I can to help Victoria and Graciela come unto Christ and learn of His beautiful gospel!  

I wish I had more time to tell you all the other things that happened this week but I will fill you all in next week!! Thank you for all the prayers and support!! love you all so much!

Hope summer is treating you all very well! :)

Quote of the week:

Do not wish to be anything but what you are- and try to be that perfectly.

-St. Francis de Sales

xoxo 

Hermana Van Boerum

pics:

Stefani Mora likes to steal my camera and take pics!

group activity Saturday night!

Nadia (recent convert) and I 

the district at 1am this morning saying goodbye to Elder Jenkins

Leila Mora and I

Roxana Leal and I 

Happy First Week of Summer!!!

Another great week here in Argentina!! Wow I cannot believe it is summer there!! This week is the first week of winter here for us :)  Enjoy the summer sun and spending time with all of your friends and family!!

Yesterday the branch presidency from Rincon de los Sauces came to visit us and bring a few things that we needed in our church.  Recently their "group" in Rincon became a branch so now they are coming to Chos Malal every few weeks to help us transform our group here in Chos Malal, into a branch like theirs! The branch presidency is awesome and I am super grateful to be working with them though.  Yesterday, they gave a great lesson on the repetition of gospel principles in our church.  For example why are we always repeating the same things in our talks every Sunday?  Why do we teach the same principles and doctrine over and over again in our lessons every single year?  I had never thought about those questions before but I loved the example they used to explain the purpose of repetition.  When parents ask their children to do something, do the kids automatically listen and start doing it?  Or do the parents have to ask about a hundred times and always remind their kids what they need to do? (I have seen this countless times in my home, sorry Mom and Dad for all the times you had to remind me to do the dishes or take out the trash!) Anyway, this really put things into perspective for me about the church and I now realize that we as members have to constantly learn and be reminded to do all that Heavenly Father wants us to learn and do.  It is the same reason that in the temple when we do baptisms or any of the other saving ordinances, we always use the same exact words.  We need to remind ourselves of these things in order to always be prepared to enfront the struggles of life, and sometimes it takes the 100th time to truly learn it.  All in all, I found this an interesting concept because repetition applies to every aspect of the church!  The Sacrament, principles in the Book of Mormon, temple ordincances, talks, lessons, General Conference talks, etc.  Repetition is key!

Not too much happened this week but yesterday, for family home evening, we watched Meet the Mormons with Alicia Mora and her 3 girls!  Alicia an dI cried lots at the missionary part but it was fun to watch and it made me think lots about my fam and how blessed we are to have this gospel :)  All our investigators are doing great and we are working hard to find them and teach them!  I will fill you all in a little more next week! :)

Hope you all have an amazing first week of summer!!!!!!

Quote of the week:

You can either complain that the roses have thorns, or thank God that the thorns have roses!

-Anonymous

xoxo

Hermana Van Boerum

Lots of Rain This Week!

the Sister Missionaries in My Zone

My Whole Zone

Roxana, Hermana Leal and Me

A Pic of Our Church Building Where We Hold Our Sunday Meetings
Super Small!

The Mora Fam and Me

Our District at the Top of the Mountain we climbed this Morning
It was Pouring Rain, Super Super Windy, and SOOOO Cold!
Happy Winter!!! 

Pics of Chos Malal and My District!

Two more weeks until President and His Wife leave

In the mission when a sister missionary trains a new sister missionary, the trainer is known as the Mamá (mom) and the new missionary is known as the hija (daughter) haha.  It is just a term that the missionaries use for fun, but on Thursday I met my hija, Hermana Vilca!  She is 27 years old and from Peru (yes my hija is 8 years older than me)!  Hermana Vilca is super funny and came with a big desire to serve the Lord so I am excited to work with her for the next 12 weeks and train her the best I can! Although training can be a little stressful sometimes, I feel super privileged because new missionaries come into the mission field with SO much faith.  I remember my 12 week training and I was just full of faith and ready to share the gospel with any person that looked my way!  Those 12 weeks with my incredible trainer, Hermana Pérez, were full of miracles and I am excited to fill these next 12 weeks with the same.  It has been a wild week but so far everything has been going pretty well and it is such a blessing to have the opportunity to train Herman Vilca!  I almost think she is teaching me more than I am teaching her! :)

Speaking of miracles, I have been wanting to tell you all about our 40 year old investigator, Juana!! This happened about two weeks ago but I haven't had time to tell you all!! The other day Juana was walking in a school building and noticed a book lying on a set of stairs that everyone was walking on top of.  She decided to pick it up because it caught her attention and then took it home.  Juana started to read it and said that the words touched her heart so much that she just wanted to find what church teaches from this special blue book!  Two days later after praying to Heavenly Father to help her find this church, she walked past the missionaries in the street and something told her to go back and talk to them!  It is all history from there but my comp and I are now teaching her!  Such an amazing miracle and you can just see the Lord's hand in helping Juana find her way to the true gospel!  We have only been able to teach her twice (Hermana Huisar and I) but she says that she wants to be baptized!  After teaching her the necessary steps to prepare for baptism, she realized that she isn't quite ready yet because she can't quite forgive someone who hurt her really bad.  We are hoping that through lots of prayer and scripture study she will be able to find strength to forgive this person.  We have a lesson with her planned for this week and I have felt impressed to share the "mormon message" video about Chris Williams and his story of forgiveness, so we will see how things go and I am just sure it will help her soften her heart :)

Hope you all have such a great week!! Oh also hope that you are all enjoying the warm weather there because it is 22 degrees today and I am in a skirt...IT IS SO COLD! haha love you all so much!

Quote of the week:

A candle that lights another loses no light itself.

Anonymous

xoxo

Hermana Van Boerum

My New Comp

It is so pretty here!!!

Susana who lives in Mesa, Arizona but is from Mexico!
She is my homegirl, love her!!!

Me, Diana our investigator, and Vale!

Group lunch with the members and investigators.