Fwd: First Week In The Mission Field

March 2 2015

My First week has past and man was it HARD! I am pretty homesick to be honest! But I know this will pass. I love serving the people here, they are so nice and really humble and it warms my heart to be able to make a difference in their lives. We do a lot of service, but my favourite it to teach about the Gospel, nothing makes more of a difference in their lives than leading them into the arms of their Heavenly Father.

My companion and trainer is Hermana Ramos from Honduras. She has only one month left of her mission so I have the most experienced trainer. She calls me nena or hija, which is like my child or bubba haha. She looks after me well and we get along really well. But she leaves in a month which will leave me to introduce my new trainer to the area! I have to learn where to take everyone.

It was a really tough first week out in the mission field. I am living in a tiny town called Olmos in La Plata about 3 hours from Buenos Aires. It is a farming town and very poor. The roads are mostly dirt roads with rocks and potholes and we are biking everywhere, I am going to get really fit! There are flies and dogs and rubbish everywhere and half naked children just running everywhere. But the people are really lovely. The houses are mostly shacks that they build themselves and often about 5 different shacks will all share a bathroom. 

Our flat is nice though, it has two bedrooms and two bathrooms, I feel very spoilt.

We only have hot water in the dowstairs bathroom. And we dont have a washing machine so we have to hand wash everything in an ourdoor sink. Hermana Ramos had a new zealand companion before me, a tongan girl, Hermana Tongi, from wellington! We are the only NZers in the mission. Ramos and Tongi only moved into the flat we are in about a day before I came and Tongi left, so it is nice but REALLY dirty and has like nothing to eat off or clean with. So today we went shopping for all the stuff we need and cleaning supplies and we will go home soon to clean it really well. We also have a cockroach problem... so someone is going to come and sort that out this week

Ive met lots of lovely people and know that once I adjust to the poverty of this town I will enjoy living here more. We are teaching a 78 year old to read which is really interesting haha. He lives in a tiny shack that he built himself and his place is surrounded by dogs. I have been playing nurse for a lady who lives way out in the country. She has had really serious surgery on her foot and there are no health nurses and her husband didnt know what to do to clean it and change it and they have 2 small boys. So I went round there and took the gross dressing off and cleaned it and redressed it. I wore gloves, dont worry, it was nasty. There was loads of dry blood which meant the dressing was glued to the stiches and I had to soak it in saline and it smelled really bad. They live in a wooden shack out on a farm so the bandage was really dirty, but it i a much nicer house than many around here. They bought all the stuff for me to clean it and re-dress it, but I but some of my iodine solution and antibiotic cream on it too. She sees the DR this week, but the surgery was about a month ago or so I think. She is lucky itisnt infected.

Soon we will be giving english lessons at the church for the kids! I am looking forward to that. We have been teaching a few people about the church and met some others when we were on the bus going to a meeting and they want to learn too, so thats exciting!

My Zone has about 30 missionaries and 10 in my district. We meet once a week to catch up and the district and zone leaders call every night to make sure we are okay. There are two other missionaries in our area so we have lunch with them each day. I am great friends with everyone, we all have a great time! The mornings and evenings when I am not out working are the hardest because I have a lot of time to think about home and it makes me a bit sad. 

I hope that everyone is doing well, i appreciate your emails, I print them so I can reread them durring the week. 

I love you all and miss you all so much!

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