Anyway.. I hope all is well and everyone is being especially grateful for their blessings this week. I know I am. Am I a horrible missionary if the highlight of my week was that BRUNO MARS FINALLY FOUND ME. POR FIN. I have been waiting 3 months. I knew our love was too strong for the mission to keep us apart. Oh my gosh I´m pathetic... But Imagine, me doing Cyntia´s hair again and his beautiful voice comes over on the TV... Treasure... that is what you are.... Oh I lost it. Literal tears, sobs of joy. I died. Forgive me. I´m terrible. tengo mucho pescados... er pecados. :)
So.. Argentina is ruining my feet. I have a nasty ingrown toenail. You´re welcome everyone. and I am terrified that my feet are going to end up nasty like lots of the people who live here.. cause I stub my toe at least 17 times a day. On rocks, trees, cats, birds... the air. It´s painful. Also, I am COVERED in mosquito bites. Like the men here, the mosquitos love my white skin.. and they love my blood. cause I eat lots of Dulce de Leche.. and I´m sure my blood sugar has sky rocketed. but I´m still skinny so it´s alright. Pretty sure my metabolism has sky rocketed as well cause I´m ALWAYS hungry... except for after lunch because the members feed me more than my stomach can handle and I´m always bloated. "Quiere un poquito mas?" Si un poquito... Okay vamos y give you more food than we gave you on your first plate. They are really gracious and I love them. My companion though, loves to tell me how pregnant I look after lunch and she loves pointing out each new zit everyday... Also, I guess my freckles are ugly.. I like them but she doesn´t. CONFIDENCE-- blown. I think that´s why I get so many compliments from creepy people everday cause If I didn´t, my self confidence would be totally gone.
So my companion doesn´t have a filter but things are continually getting better. Last Thursday-- I forgot to tell you this, we had lunch with the bishop and his family and he said something that changed my life...
"Hace su parte.. no puede hacer todo." Do your part because you can´t do everything. I can´t be a perfect missionary. Sorry to break it to you, I can´t do it. I tried and I tried and It´s just not possible. Also, I can´t expect my companion to be perfect. I am SO OVERWHELMED with the amount of work we have here and I feel sometimes like I´m not doing anything. because we don´t have investigators coming to church... We had another creepy person come. He touched my bum. I wanted to die and I almost slapped him. And then when we went back to visit Maria (he was her neighbor) NOT TO VISIT HIM, we found out that he just upped and moved away. No one knows what happened or where he went.
I feel like my guardian angel probably scared the crap out of him somehow. I think about a story I heard once or twice about a sister missionary and her companion who had an army of angels protecting them this one time.. ;) I strongly believe that I have been blessed with special protection. I never feel scared.. Sometimes I am disgusted in the way people look at me. And there have been times that Hermana Mendez and I have been prompted to go another direction and I feel a little uneasy, but never scared. I know that the Lord is taking care of me. It´s such a blessing.
So Maria´s birthday was Sunday. We had a little party. We tried to make a cake but burned it so I ate it anyway and we took her muffins... They were better than the cake. We were SO HOPEFULL that they would come to church. because on FRIDAY, we took maria and her boys to the capilla for a little church tour and we gave them a lesson there about the gospel. The spirit was so strong even though her boys were running around like wild men and they were so excited to come back!! But when she woke up in the morning she had a crazy bad toothache and can´t take medicine (but she can smoke) cause she´s pregnant. Rompe mi corazon.. the party was good though. She really wants to be baptized but stupid max wants to wait to be married. grrrrr. Just pray that we can get them all to church this sunday.
Funny story that I forgot to tell you about last week... So Sunday night. Not two days ago, the one before that. We got home right on time. 9:20 ish I don´t remember and we open the door to the staircase that leads to our apartment door... perfect... but when we put the key in to open our pension, it wouldn´t work. for nothing,,, and we looked at it and part of it was bent.. we have these cool skeleton keys.. so hermana Mendez took it and started beating it against the wall to try and bend it back and it broke. broke. and would not work. and we only have one key. and our landlord doesn´t have a spare... the office doesn´t have a spare.. so we ended up calling the president and he send his secretaries to come pick us up and we got to sleep in the mission home and eat breakfast with president and sister lapierre. haha. Pretty great. If only I had facewash and pajamas.
I love being a missionary. And I love my companion. She has truly been a blessing... no matter how much I complain about her and continue to complain about her. I am so grateful for her. She is so kind and loving and she has a strong testimony of the gospel. We are working better with each other. so much better. She lets me help in the lessons. she trusts me with navigating our routes throughout the day and we are honestly becoming a companionship. I´m starting to take over in the lessons and I can talk more and explain things that Hermana Mendez can´t even explain. It´s so cool And it doesn´t even make her mad. We´re praying together at night right before we go to bed which we didn´t do before and it is seriously making a world of a difference. We are not perfect. Far from it... but we are improving and we are doing better every day.
I love the gospel. I am so thankful for the incredible blessing it is in my life. There is no where else I would rather be. and there is nothing else I would rather be doing with my life at this moment. The church is true. Heavenly Father loves His children. The knowledge we have of the gospel and of the Atonement is incredible. and it is such an incredible experience for me to be sharing it with the people here in Argentina. Even though I´m not baptizing the world, I am so grateful for the lives that have been touched through me, somehow in ways that are not by me...
All of these lines across my face. Tell you the story of who I am. So many stories of where I´ve been and how I got to where I am. But these stories don´t mean anything when you´ve got no one to tell them to. It´s true, I was made for you. ARGENTINA. ;)-- My favorite Lesbian, Brandi Carlile.
The work is work, but the work is working.
Te amo muchisimo!!
I´m so thankful for you!!
Hermana Rupe.
p.s. so excited for my little hermanito to be joining me in a week!!
Also please tell Jakey to email me. SO STOKED!! SPANISH SPEAKING CANADIAN!!
And HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY 16 YEAR OLD BABY BROTHER CARSON!! whoo hoo. Old farts you boys... Love you love you love you.
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