Dog Eats Rat

Hola fam!

Holy calor. I´ve never sweat so much in my life! Which I´m sure you all wanted to know. ;) I hope you´re enjoying your pseudo-winter!! Enjoy it while you can!!!

The other night we woke up to the biggest lightning/rain/hail storm of my life. There was literally lightning every second, but you couldn´t hear the thunder because it sounded like our roof was being pelted with baseballs! I like the storms here. :)

So this week we have a new investigator named Nestor. He´s a reference of the familia Costa in our little branch and he is SO ready to receive the Gospel. We had a super good noche de hogar with him at the Costa´s on Saturday, and we didn´t even have to invite him to church - he told us he was coming! Missionary work is SO much more effective when we work with the members. Invite your friends to activities and to learn more!!

Alright, this week it was dog eats rat, haha. We were at Norma´s having a lesson and we look over and her dog is chewing on what is left of a rat! Hna Chesler starts screaming and puts her feet up on her chair. Norma is chasing the dog around trying to get the rat. And this time I´m the one laughing. Something funny with an animal is always bound to happen at Norma´s. :)

I´ve been thinking about HOPE lately and what that really means. Because of this Gospel, I have a PERFECT hope that I am going to live with my Heavenly Father, my Savior, and my family FOREVER. I have no doubt that if I continue to be faithful, that is going to happen. No matter what happens in my life, nothing can take that hope away, unless I choose to stop living the Gospel. That hope means EVERYTHING to me. I can´t imagine life without it. Life would have no purpose, no meaning. From that hope springs the most profound joy and peace, no matter what is happening. There are so many people living without that hope, but this Gospel is one of HOPE!! Share it! Learn more about it! The joy from doing so is indescribable.

¡¡¡OS AMO!!!

Hna Chipman

Cathedral in Bahía - makes me think of Spain!!

Yeah, we had ice cream delivered... :D

1 kilo of ice cream coming right up!

Amigas in church! Maria Paz normally isn´t that pale... haha :P

Dog eats rat :)

Dog Eats Bird

Happy Monday familia!!!

FELIZ CUMPLE DADDY-O!!! One year older, and maybe wiser too. ;) Chiste. You´re a pretty wise old man!! And now you´re twice my age!! Crazy! Love ya daddy-o. :D

We did some servicio this week!! We almost never get opportunities to serve here, so we were pretty stoked. We cleaned this little abuelita´s house. I have never been in a house so dirty, but she can´t really move around that well and all her family is in Buenos Aires, so she can´t really help it. Poor thing. I think her neighbors bring her things to eat. And now her house is squeaky clean! :) There´s actually a lot of people here like that. Lots of people work caring for abuelos whose family isn´t around. It´s sad. But we just keep visiting the little abuelitos to read and sing to them. They love it. Sometimes all people want is for someone else to notice them and listen for awhile.

So we saw a lot of random things this week... 

First, we were at lunch with a member and the husband busted out his accordian to play for us! SO tight. I loved it.

Second, cat fight (literally) of the year. Mariana and Macarena got new little kittens and they brought them out to show us. Well, they aren´t quite used to the dogs they have yet and they started freaking out. One was clinging to the front of me. Mariana has the other one, which is freaking out, and she´s trying to pull the one off of me while the dogs are barking and trying to sniff the cats. It was a scene straight from a movie. Hna Chesler and I were laughing so hard.

Third, just walking down the street and there is this dog chewing on an entire bird. Not on the ground or anything, just hanging from its mouth, wing flapping around. Gracias Argentina, haha. You´re welcome for not taking a photo of that one (only because I didn´t have my camera...). ;) The dogs here...

Also, we saw lots of little miracles this week, like finding investigators we´ve been looking all over for randomly in the streets, or knocking on just the right door and just the right time. Heavenly Father is guiding His work and making it all possible! He works miracles in your lives everyday. Pay attention to the little tender mercies He extends to you each day. I promise they are there! He is so anxious to bless you and He is doing it ALL the time!!!

I love you all!! Have a fantastic week!

Hna Chipman

´Murica! :)

Macarena y Mariana with their momma Norma, and the other little chica
that Mac wanted in every single picture, haha

Mariana y Macarena! They are so good

He just wants to come out and play! ;)
(and eat you!?)

Lunch with Hna Parreño! We´re all twins. Presh.

Bahía!

The new and improved trash can.

Does somebody need a hug??

LA FALDA

Hello there fam!!! I hope you all are just swell and loving life, cause life is pretty great. :)

Yesterday we had real traslados (transfers), buuuuuttt nothing happened. Hna Chelser and I are still in La Falda. Wooooo!!! I´m excited. La Falda is definitely different than MdP. Our area is a lot smaller and the branch here is teeny (although basically all the members just happen to be on vacation this month), but it´s great! We love it. And the people here are all wonderful. And eating lunch at President´s house every week is pretty cool too... ;)

This week the hot turned on. Like the real hot. We had the nice sea breeze in MdP. Yeah, not here haha. I´ve never been so sweaty in my life! Not even as a lifeguard!! But we love it. It´s more funny than anything else. We did have a nice downpour this week tho. We were in the middle of a lesson with an investigator named Angie when it started and she lent us her umbrella when we were leaving cause it was still going. Well, the umbrella was only kind of keeping us dry so we found shelter underneath a porch. Two minutes later the door opens and someone runs out and the guy that lives there invited us in to keep dry. His 7-year-old daughter then gave us a whole 30 minutes lesson on dinosaurs! Haha, that made my week. I could not believe how much she knew. She showed us ALL her dinosaur toys and explained every single kind to us. :)

Ok, the real highlight of the week tho were the two baptisms on Saturday!! The two daughters, Mariana and Macarena, in the little family got bapitzed. It was SO good. They just loved every bit of it and Norma was all teary. You could tell she really felt and understood how important this was for her family. We´re trying to prepare her for baptism next month. Haha, so we only had one, rather large, white dress for the baptism... We had the older one, Mariana, go first. It went all the way down to her ankles but fit ok. Then the little one, Macarena, had to put on this huge, soaking wet dress right after. Haha, she was such a good sport. We tried to roll the end of the dress up so she wouldn´t trip all over. Hna Chesler and I were trying not to laugh. Luckily, it all went ok, and the important thing is we could feel the Spirit. :)

These past couple weeks I´ve been studying about the Atonement/the Savior and my love for Him and for the people has grown immensely. His life and sacrifice for us are truly incredible. I invite you all to do the same! Take some time each day to study about Him and about what He has done for you. I promise your love will increase and your burdens will feel lighter!

Well fam, I sure do love you!! Keep smiling and saying your prayers! :)

Con mucho amor,
Hna Chipman

Haha, she´s trying to keep the papa gato from eating all the food.

View from our casa. Not too shabby. ;)

Yeah, it´s that hot...

Sorry for the lack of pics... the comp I´m using isn't letting me load some of them, like the pics of the baptism. :( I´ll try again next week!!

"Emergency" Transfers

Hoolaaaa de Bahía!!

No worries fam, there was no emergency. Just emergency transfers, which basically means they just need to do a transfer of a couple missionaries in the middle of one of our normal transfers. So I´m in La Falda now, a little branch in Bahía. We traveled here on Friday. Presidente lives in our area and we get to eat lunch with him every Wednesday. Oh yeah. :) I actually traded places with Hna Kroska, so now she is in Mar del Plata with Hna Saunders. It was good to see her for a little bit!

My new compy is Hna Chesler. She´s from West Virginia, but her fam just moved to Utah. She´s 22 and graduated from BYU-I just before she came here. She´s awesome. I love her already! We´re gonna have a blast. We´re the only missionaries in our area, which means we have the house to ourselves. It´s fun. She´s a really great missionary and I´m learning a lot from her!! :)

In other news, I actually have a washing machine now which means my clothes are finally really clean!! Haha, the simple things in life.

I´ve met a few of our investigators here. There´s a family of a mom and her two daughters that are SUPER solid. The daughters are set to get baptized this weekend and we´re praying for the mom too. Just a couple things to work out first. There´s also this 14 year old kid, Augustín, that they´ve been teaching. He hasn´t really seen the need to get baptized but yesterday we had a super good lesson with him and he´s going to really pray about it. He wants to find an answer. It was actually a miracle that we found him. They had been looking for him all week, coming by, calling. Nothing. So we decided to not go by for awhile. But yesterday his dad had seen us walking around and he rode up to us on his motorcycle and told us Augustín was home so we went by and found him!!!

The more I do this work, the more I realize it is impossible without God. You have to have His help or your will not get anywhere. We see little miracles happen all the time. We´re guided to the right place at the right time and hearts are touched, certainly not by what we say in broken Castellano, but by God Himself. I testify that this is His work. This is His truth and His Gospel in its fulness and everyone needs it. It is important for everyone because we are all God´s children and He wants us all to come home.

I love you all SO SO MUCH!!!! BESOS!!!

Hna Chipman

Linda Mar del Plata! Chao!!

Linda compy. She´s so good. Gonna miss her!

But my new compy is pretty great too. Isn´t our little rama cute? :)

Leaky roof! We had a MASSIVE rain storm yesterday. Like blizzard rain.
Luckily we made it back to our casa right before it hit.
And good thing we had some buckets!!

Meanwhile, this was happening outside. The roads just all turn to rivers in the rain.
Maybe we should invest in a raft. :P

The weekly dog picture. :)