All is Well

This week, Amanda's brother, Josh, managed to be on his email at the exact same time she was going to send out her weekly email. After reading through a long conversation between the two of them (the typical sibling teasing), I managed to gather that all is well in Argentina and she attached pics of her week.

There was another baptism this week. Here is a pic of me w/ the new member & my new comp.

This one is of him and his family & friends.

Another w/ his friends.

This is my new comp!!! (Notice the height difference?)

Another of my new comp. She's actually shorter than my last comp. :)

My former comp, Hermana Romero:

My fellow American Sister roomy that lives in our pension.

She wanted everyone to know "I am still alive (bairly LOL) and I am doing great!"

New Comp and a Baptism

So this week was great! I have a new comp who is awesome. She loves to work hard and is smaller than my last comp. lol (Yes, it's possible!) She is also from Peru, so understanding her Spanish was an easy transition. One Peruvian for another. lol

We have another baptism this weekend for our teenage investigator, Emmiliano, who is 16. He is the sweetest thing ever. He likes to draw and always has pictures for us, mainly of the soccer team here in Tucuman, San Martin. I think he is trying to sway our opinion of soccer teams. lol

So this week, we were teaching a lesson outside in the street when all of a sudden this old man, who was in the street walking, started to yell. As we looked up, we saw the last glimpse of a teenager hauling off around the corner. The kid had robbed this old man! He had reached into his pocket and took his wallet!!! The guts of this kid and he was freakishy fast!!! We instantly ran over to the old man and helped him over to the curb and began to ask him if he was alright and if he needed help home. He left angry and confused and so did we. Man, this was not an experience I want to watch again. This poor guy! My other comp told me that she always sees people getting robbed because they are in the really ritzy part of Tucuman and people always want to steal from the rich people. I am glad I am not in their area because I don't like seeing people getting robbed and not being close enough to be able to do anything.

So anyway life is going here. We have had rain off and on and I especially love it when it is ON!!!! Wow, what a nice break from the heat. I have to get going, but the work is great. We are working very hard and sleeping like rocks at the end of the night. I typically wake up feeling as though I slept for 4 hrs. lol But such is life! lol. As for the language, I'm kicking butt! I can fool 3/4 of the people here to believing that I am from Peru or Mexico. I talk a lot like my Peruvian comps, mainly because I study with them all day. lol I've got to go. I love ya tons and want to thank everyone for the emails.

love
amanda

NEW EMAIL ADDRESS

*****  AMANDA HAS A NEW EMAIL ADDRESS *****

amanda.castillo@myldsmail.net

We have updated it also on the upper right corner of this page as well for future reference.

Tsunami / Earthquake

OK, so here are the pictures that I said that I'd send:

This one was of this past week from all of the rain that we had
from the earthquake / tsunami action going on. This picture is of
our canal near our pention and runs through our area. This canal
is 13 ft. deep and was flooded as was most of our area. We
couldn't get in places and when we did, we were up to our knees
or ankles depending on where we were. It was pretty sweet!

This is of the dress that I had sewn with the kit that my Mom had sent.

This is the lesson I made for all of the converts that explains the Holy Ghost.

And this one is of the girl that joined the church that I made the
baptism dress for. (My comp had her camera but only this one
worked for sending.)

love,
Amanda

Hello from where it is very hot and spiders & bugs are very happy!‏

We ate empanadas for Valentine's day (that is what I used the money for) Thank you!

Your donation fed the 4 of us for 30 pesos, which is about 10
American bucks. (Great Huh!)
I also sent a picture of our washer and 'lettuce' spinner for our
clothes.  (Ha!)

Also you will notice our new living arrangements, again, it's
really hot here & since heat rises you can see our solution was
to hug the ground level.

The last picture is for the primary in our new Lake St. Louis
ward, they sent me letters and I got them this week along with
the stamps (yea!  Thank you!).  If you can send them this picture
or print it out for the primary and tell them that I loved it and
I have all of their letters hanging in our house in the windows.
(helps to shade from the heat too!) It was a nice surprise!

Josh has asked for a story about our investigators. Well, I have
a great story but it is kind of sad at the same time.  A family
that we found this past month (named Favian, his 'non' wife
Marina and their small daughter Luciana.  We love teaching
them b/c they are very intelligent and grasp everything we
teach them, but this past couple of visits the husband has been
a little different.  So, we met with him without his wife and
daughter, just us and him.  He began to talk and talk about
everything. We had asked him before this visit to pray to get
married and to know if this church is true.  He told us he
doesn't love the woman that he has been living with for the
past 10 years and the only reason he is still around is for his
daughter and they just found out that she is pregnant again. 
That puts us in a bind now.  We want them to stay together
but not if he doesn't love her.  He doesn't want to pray to know
if the BOM is true, but he will pray about everything else. (I
don't know why).

If you'll remember that this last Sunday was my talk, it went
great! I was able to talk about everything I had wanted to
share with the ward.  Well anyway, Favian never wanted to
come to church previously.  (It has always been his non-wife
and daughter that come but he still insists he wants the
discussions.)  This Sunday he came for my talk & stayed the
whole sacrament & ended up liking it a lot.  I spoke about what
it means to be a member and how to succeed in this life as one. 
Afterwards, he told us he liked it a lot and said that he wanted
to pray now about the BOM to know why we are different and
why we believe these things, but still told us that he doesn't
know about his non-wife.  If you could pray for this family that
would be great.

I have to go but I love you so much.  Thanks for everything,
and I'm sorry my letter was really random.  Please call Carissa
and tell her I love her and congratulations!

Love,
Amanda

Baptism(s)

So this week was great! We have 2 families progressing and have 5 single people progressing as well. Also, we are now teaching a brother and a sister that we found last week and they both want to be baptized. All they need is their parent's permission and then they are good to go. So, we passed by the parent's house because before, they never wanted us to teach in their house, but their mom chatted with us for a while and invited us to her son's b.day party this Friday. This is the son that we are teaching, who is turning 9, and his sister is 13. She said that she wants to get to know us and a little about what we are teaching her son and daughter. She said that they both asked for church clothes for their next gifts and that they want to pray together every night as a family. Being Catholic, that was a shocker for the parents. So now they are curious about what is going with their kids and us. We normally teach them at their Aunt's house, which is next door. It's been great and they are really so sweet!

We also started working with the sister of one of our investigators that is getting baptized at the end of the month. She is 17, really bright and grasps everything. It is really fun to teach her! So anyway, she prayed this week about everything we have been sharing with her and she accepted our invitation to be baptized the same day as her sister. That will be amazing, but I'm not quite sure how we are going to pull that day off. We now have 5 people getting baptized that day! Well, in roughly a week and a half, I'm not really sure how the program is going to work. We still have to figure that one out.

I am giving a talk in church on Sunday about members, their responsibilities as members and how to succeed as a member. This is going to be great, but at the same time it's a little nerve racking. It's my first talk in the mission! Ahhhh! So I am just going to write it and hope that everything goes well and I will let you know next week. This ward has such great people that love to love the missionaries and have us eat forever, which you know is a huge plus for me.

So, I used a little bit of money to buy Raid so I can kill all the spiders in our pentions, which are a ton. We find about 3 a day and they are nice and fat, which means they have been happily living in our beds with us. I am very disgusted because some are big and brown, some giant black, and others a nasty puke color, which leads me into yet another spider story.

It's been unbearably hot here so we all sleep on the floor with our mattresses in the study room. I was halfway asleep when I felt something on my foot, which is sticking halfway out of the sheet with the other half of my body. I looked down and saw something giant and clearish-yellow. My first thought was that it had to be a dream because this thing was huge, but then it started crawling on my foot up my leg. I couldn't scream and all that came out was air. I flung my foot which started a chain reaction with my entire body of flinging my sheet and squirming to stand on my bed. It ended up waking up all of my comps and we began to search for this giant thing that I had seen. Well, during our scavenger hunt for it, we were looking on the floor and came next to the X-mas tree, which is about 2.5ft tall and is next to my bed. I'm pretty sure this tree has been there since the beginning of missionaries because it is very raggedy. lol Anyway, we were all next to the tree looking all around it when my comp screams and falls backwards. Her face was right next to the giant spider. Evidently during my spasm attack, which the spider caused, I flung it on the tree and it was resting on one of the ornaments. We caught it and measured it with a can. If you take the bottom of a can and look at it, this was the size of the spider. Picture it as a yellow-clear color. Yeah, that's right! Giant and ugly! So that is why I bought spray this week. I am sick of them and have probably shared my bed with them many a nights. lol Sick!

I love you all so much and talk about you all the time to my comp. We laugh a lot! I never realized, but my family is quite funny. lol
love amanda

This Week in Photos

(Assuming this is the path that she walks almost daily)

Here are more pics. Tell Mom and Dad I love them and I am sorry that my time was short. The computers stink, they always die and a lot of other things. I wish I had my laptop. lol I love you all soo much! love Amanda