Week 17 ~ Six Hour Train Ride

Hello Everyone!

This week went by quickly! On Tuesday I was able to take a trip to Bahia Blanca to become legal here in Argentina, haha! We took a 6 hour train ride from 12 am - 6 am and I spent the day with my MTC comp - Hermana Samano! It was so great to see her again and catch up on all that has happened since the MTC. I also was able to see some of the Elders from my MTC district and group and we laughed a lot and shared stories. It was awesome!

Spiritual experience:

This week we received a reference from a member and we went to teach him but he said he was on his way out of town and so we set a return appointment with him for the next week. We walked about 10 minutes away and received a call from the member that referred him and the member told us that his friend called and said that he was on his way out of town but realized that the things of God are more important and asked us if we could come back to teach him. We were so happy haha! We turned around and went to teach him and it was a super spiritual lesson. We looked up in the sky and there was a double rainbow. It was like something out of a movie hahaha!

Funny experiences:

Yesterday it poured rain and we showed up to church soaked to our bones, the members looked at us like we were crazy.

We got rid of the bed bugs by fumigating our whole entire apartment. We weren't able to sleep there for one night, hahaha

That's about all I have time to write for today! Thank you for all your sweet emails and prayers. Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!

Love,

Hermana Spackman

Week 16 - Tarantulas and BedBugs

Hello Everyone!!

It was another great week here in Santa Rosa! We had a baptism this week WAHOO!! It was a cute little girl named Abi. She is 9 years old and way more prepared for her baptism than I was haha. She is so sweet! She had to be baptized about 5 times because the words were wrong or she didnt go all the way under, but we promised her that she is super clean now hahaha. It was an awesome day!

We also had zone conference this week and got to see our mission president and all the missionaries in our zone! Zone conferences are so awesome because we get to spend the whole day together and everyone gets so pumped for the work.

Spiritual experience:

In zone conference we talked a lot about exact obedience and faith. My companion and I decided to put it to the test and have a day of exact obedience. We woke up at 6:30 and started our exercises right away, did our studies as focused as we could and put all our efforts into leaving on time and being super obedient with the rules - and we saw a ton of miracles! We taught a lesson to a little girl with bad anxiety and she invited her neighbor (a lady we are also teaching) to come listen. We taught her, her dad and this lady and gave them all Book of Mormons and they promised to read them. The little girl's dad was crying, thanking us for helping his daughter. It was awesome. That same day we found a lady in the park who had previously been taught by Elders and she asked us to teach her again. We asked a less active to accompany us to lessons and she said yes. A member told us that his son had seen us helping out at the wedding and asked who we were and why we helped so much. This member gave his son a Book of Mormon and asked him to read it and pray about it. All in all, we saw a ton of miracles!! It is crazy the blessings that exact obedience can bring. Hermana Arechaga and I have tried to continue living in exact obedience each day, and we have seen more and more miracles this week. Its awesome!

Funny experiences:

hahah I have a ton of these this week:

There was a TARANTULA in our apartment this week. Yes, a real tarantula. Us four hermanas were up on the table with a broom and the spider under a bowl trying to scoot it outside. Our grandma neighbor came into our house and took off the bowl and whacked the poor thing nearly to death with a broom. It was the funniest thing I have seen to this day. I have a video that I will send to my mom if anyone would like to see it.

I also have bed bugs!!! This morning I woke up with over 50 bug bites and almost cried. We spent the whole morning spraying our house down and washing everything. Please pray for us.

We taught a lesson to a prisoner over the phone :) He told us he is reading the Bible everyday and feels the Spirit!

We taught our drunk lady again and she almost threw up on us, again.

Thats about all I have for this week! Thanks for all your love and support for me and each of your sweet emails. Enjoy this Thanksgiving season!!

Love,

Hermana Spackman

Pics - Abi in her baptism dress, Zone Conference with my cute companion and the TARANTULA

Week 15 ~ Wedding Planners or Missionaries?

Hello!

This week was THE BEST!! Our investigators got married on Saturday so that they can get baptized later this month. It was awesome! My companion and I helped make a ton of the decorations for the wedding and we were able to get special permission from our mission president to see the first part of the wedding. Probably the best day of my mission EVER hahah.

This week we were able to find a sweet lady who is a less active member but has never been to church here in Santa Rosa because she didn't know where the church was. She asked us if we were Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses (we're always getting mixed up with testigos haha) and when we said we were Mormons she got so happy!! She said that her brother is living in New York and has been praying for missionaries to pass by her. She let her brother know we came and he was soo happy. It was really cool for us because we knew that God had guided us right to her.

Spiritual experience:

Yesterday my companion and I had two different promptings about people to visit. We decided to follow my prompting first and visit a lady who we've been teaching. The problem is that she is never home on Sunday and we've tried to visit her multiple times but she hasn't been there and she lives very far. We decided to visit her anyways and she opened the door!! We were so happy. And because we went to visit her first we still had time to visit our other investigator that my companion had felt prompted to visit. I've been praying a lot for the Lord to show me where to go and what to do and this week I've seen a way that I've been led every single day.

Funny experiences:

One of our investigators showed us her pet duck and umbillical cord necklace during the lesson. I don't think I need to say more

Yo quiero escribir un poco de mi testimonio aqui en Espanol. Yo se que Dios nos conoce personalmente y El nos ama. Yo se que Dios responde a nuestras oraciones y quiere escuchar cada uno de nosotros. Se que yo tengo un proposito aqui como misionera y que esta obra es del Senor. Se que El Evangelio es el mismo hoy en dia, gracias a Jose Smith. Yo se que las familias realmente puede ser eterna. Yo quiero compartir esto en el nombre de Jesucristo, Amen.

Hope you all have a good week! Thank you for your emails and sweet words of support!

Love,

Hermana Spackman

Week 14 ~ Grandma Ain't Playin'

Hello Everyone!

This week went by fast for us in Barrio 4! We saw some really cool miracles and also some really crazy weird stuff as always, haha.

We found a new lady to teach this week and she is so sweet. She lives alone and doesn't know how to read, but she has a desire to learn more about the gospel. We taught her about Joseph Smith and the Restoration and felt really strongly that we needed to ask her to be baptized. This was sooo scary for me because we ́ve only asked one other person to be baptized and it was after a few lessons, but this was our first lesson with this lady. But we decided to do it anyways, and she said YES! Wahoo! We are so excited to continue teaching her and help her with questions.

Funny experiences:

My companion and I almost got thrown up on by a drunk lady. Thankfully, she ran to the sink just before :)

One of our investigators is selling his 50 plants of weed so that he can live the Word of Wisdom!! YAY!!

Okay this story is a kicker:

One of our investigators has an 8 year old grandson and he is one of a kind. When we were in a lesson with his grandma, he was threatening his mom to give him 100 pesos or he was going to throw a brick at her. When his mom didn´t give him the money and started driving away, he was yelling insults at her and so his grandma went to stop him. Well, then he turns on his grandma and starts hitting her with a pipe. A PIPE hahah. We´re just sitting there like what the heck hahaha. His grandma comes back to us and asks us to use our phone (She doesn´t have one) and we´re like "Yeah for sure!" thinking she´s going to call his mom. We hear her on the phone say "Can I have a car sent to my house?" Turns out this abuela called THE POLICE on her grandson with our cellphone hahahah. We were dying. The police showed up in the middle of our lesson and we just sat there like it was nothing. I have never felt so awkward in my life! But really, this lady is a legend. She actually followed through with what every single mother has threatened to do. Hopefully I described that story well enough for you to get a picture of it in your mind haha.

Spiritual experiences:

A few nights ago we were late to bed but I had a really strong prompting to take my wallet off the table and put it away. But, because it was so late, I ignored it. As I was getting ready for bed, Hermana Jarmon said to me "The weirdest thing just happened, I had a prompting to lock the door and I just went and it was unlocked!" I then shared with her my prompting about my wallet and we were like wow that´s pretty weird that we had similar promptings at the same time.

We sat down by our beds to pray and I kid you not, two seconds later there was a loud knock on our door. Like someone pounding our door. If Hermana Jarmon wouldn´t have locked the door, it would´ve swung wide open and my wallet would´ve been sitting there on the table. Wow. It was really humbling for me and taught me the importance of listening to promptings the first time. Sometimes we pass off promptings as just our own thoughts, but I am learning to realize the difference between my own thoughts and those of the Spirit.

That´s pretty much all I have for this week! This week I have really felt a lot of gratitude for the opportunity to be a missionary. There is nothing else like it in this life, I don´t know when I will ever again be able to devote this much time to learning about my Savior and trying to be more like Him. It is awesome.

Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers!

Love,

Hermana Spackman

pictures this week:

our cute outfits for halloween ;) 

celebrating my 3 month mark in the mission!

the 4 of us in our sunday best <3