July 15

What I like about rivers is…

...You can´t step in the same river twice.

Well hello! 

How is everyone doing up north? We had a pretty fair week this week. We had a conference for the Hermanas which is always fun. we spent the whole day practicing pretty much and got home at like 830 after leaving at 530 in the morning because it was a few hours away. we also went to 2 different baptisms of other districts. We have close to no lessons this week but we worked a lot with menos activos. i think we are going to put a bigger focus on them because there are so so so many here! every one we contact ¨hi we´re missionaries...¨ÿa i know i´m a member¨  öhh...¨¨ haha. we have also put a lot of time into trying to figure out how we can apply plan alma to our ward because it´s too small to have 4 missionaries so we thought maybe 6 missionaries between the two wards and one companionship can work on the menos activos but the problem is that there are more menos activos than investigators. but we are going to try to focus on our menos activos because if we can strengthen the ward and strengthen all of these memebers to actually be members during the week they can set a better example for everyone else and we will be able to find more people to teach. I would say the biggest problem with menos activos is that they have seen the members doing something that they shouldn´t or they complain aboutthe bishop. who is amazing by the way... 

Remember that people are always watching you and most importantly people are always listening to you to. Even back home, those frieds i have that have left the church or young women that stopped coming is because they heard their young women leaders saying things about them. Remember that everyone is a child of God and as hard as it is to not say anything bad ever, your few words could take away someones salvacion so.... 

okay so my hands are freezing. just like they were at home. i dont´feel it but it´s really funny cause seriously every person i shake hands with says something about it. and let´s just say i shake hands with a lot of people. haha. they also think it´s funny that they turn different colors. their skin never changes color. wierd huh? does anyone else in the family have this problem? 

´Well. I best be going! Love you so much!!!!!! REALLY It¨S TRUE!!!!! 

Hermana VandeMerwe

so i guess i have a few minutes so i´ll tell you this story. while we were at the sisters conference i was sitting at a table with gringas so that was fun cause i could understnad the funny things lol. anyways there is this sister that kindof reminds me of the girl that we read the blog. she was talking about her grandparents serving in new jersy or something and said ¨¨ya my grandma told me ´the missionaries here all have their smart phones and now they´re just waiting for their... tablets.¨ with an enphises of disgust on the ¨tablets¨lol ¨and i´m like, please. sometimes i don´t even have shoes to wear.¨

LOL. another sister added ¨seriously. my biggest concern is if i have enough gas to last through the day¨ 

Haha!! it was really funny. probably more funny if you were there. and don´t worry i have shoes and gas. and we´re apparently getting that stuff in january so that will totally change the mission. really it would be a COMPLETE different mission with thtat. different way of teaching. different planning and so much more!ç

okay gtg bye!

July 8

I have seen 2 shooting stars just randomly. isn´t that random? Usually you have to stare at the sky for a while to see them. okay, maybe i spend too much time looking at the sky...

How´s everyone doing? 4th of july was great. I sang a few patriotic songs on our way home. and i almost forgot the national anthum i had to really think about it because guess what came on that very day? my visa!!! I´m oficially a citizen of Chile!

Our new address is the one that you have and we have moved so go ahead and use it up! 

Sav and mom i´m really suffering without your help for shopping. I need to buy boots and i dont´really have time to shop around so i found some hush puppies but they´re really expensifve and everything else has heals. i also found someothers but it has fabic at the top so i´m sayihg no to those even though they´re cheaper cause if they get wet-when they get when they won´t dry anyways i might end up buying the really expensive ones cause i don´t have time to find others and hope that they wil be really good. what do you thiink_ keep looking? ooh when you do send a package. can you send those oil things and i have a sister in my house that wants twistables. can you send a thing of thsoe too?

okay sorry no time! nothing new this week. Oh we had a conference and that was good except we can´t use a lot of words now... lol

love you all so much! i love your detailed letters sorry mine are not! LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE

July 1

i have so much to tell you and so little time. Thank you for your letters i want to respond to every bit but we´ll see what i can do. It´s true they don´t have a 4th of july here dad. it´s wierd i know but the day just doesn´t exist. they have 32 of september because that is when their national holiday is in september. but they spend all week celebrating with lots of food so they add an extra day at the end to make up for the loss. 

4th of july is such a fun holiday and gil and sj are going to be hitched en la morning! fancy that. CONGRATULATIONS! 

nothing really changes here with te facebook thing and ya we have a cell phone.  we just started tracking this week we haven´t had to do that yet but we´re getting desperate apparently. on thursday we tracked a street that we have no contacts or memebers or anyone. it was pouring rain and so no one wanted us to come it and then someone called us through the pounding rain to come over so we went to their house but... she was a memeber so that failed. talked to her for a bit. she has a son leaving in a few days for brazil for his mission. vising her sister who doesn´t want anything with the church... haha so ya tracking is fun.

i´ve used one of the games so far thanks! we are planning to have another ward activity in july oh it is july but i don´t know what. 

so the hot chocolate is good i guess. lol. it´s just the reg. and we don´t put whip cream on but dessert is almost always peaches and cream. I LOVE IT! 

i don´t know when our address changes and i don´tknow what it is. thanks for ordering that stuff for me. we can´t order it throught he missiion dad. only stuff for our investigators like books of mormon which we´ve been out of for probably a month. that´s kindof hard to teach about the book of mormon and the pray to know that it´s true when they don´t have it.. haha but the church is busy printing them i´m sure. 

so this week i finally bought peanuts from this cute little train thing that this man pushes around. it´s just the darnest thing. a little train with peanuts. but it wasn´t very much for how much it was so i probably won´t be doing that. like a whole 50 cents for this teeny tiny bag... okay i hadn´t converted it yet but still... 

another day when trackting there was a rainbow full and bright with a twin! i tried to call everyone out of their house to see this beauiful sight but no one wanted to come... modern day snake on a pole. 

we found this family of evangeligists. that. was fun. lol. okay i probably shouldn´t say that but they reminded me of hippies so i obviosly had fun and when they started preaching what they beleived someone started playing music to go with it and they passed around the mate and then we had them say the closing prayer... that was interesting.  

okay but really this is the best part of the week. really not the best part because i dont´know what it means as far as the future goes but one of our investigators aparently saw me as a ghost by her sons bed. LOL!!!! she was tall and had blonde hair so it naturally was the gringa missionary. I was laughing so hard!

I´m am so glad that we can be resurrected. i rememeber studing this at the mtc and really thinking. hhm.. i think we are really going to miss our bodies when we die. but then again we will be busy preaching the gospel so it shouldn´t be too bad. it´s amazing that we are going to have a perfected body! and that our spirit can completely control it. What is our spirit going to be?

our ward is going to the temple in september and this week the youngens sold completos to raise money to go. i´m not sure how hard it is for them. i´ll find out. my ward doen´t have a lot of money so i´m sure it´s harder for them!

more on this next week!

LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so sos sos oss ossoso much!!ç

Hermana Vandemerwe

sav! Have a happy birthday celebration and happy birhtday!!!!!!!!!!! i love you so much more than i can write in 2 sec.