En Seriously??

The theme this week was heat. Argentina had a heat wave come through and it was miserable haha. Presidente told us that for 6 hours on Saturday, Rosario would be the hottest place on earth. He was right. Luckily, I live 3 hours away, so Venado Tuerto was a few degrees cooler than the hottest place on earth. Also thanks to the heat, we had a couple power outages and water getting cut off so there was really no escaping the fiery inferno.

Me and Hna Easton have been having a blast here as companions though. We really do click and stay up late talking every night. The good news is now I can connect with someone in English, the bad news is I'm using Spanish way less. However, we are making a list called "Gringo-isms" to help us with the language and sound less like Yankees (which is what they call Americans here, and it's pronounced shankee). One funny thing about it though is I'm truly learning Spanglish. In spanish "seriously??" is "en serio??". This week I have developed a habit of saying "en seriously??" to everything... oops. 

 

And you guys. Covid is so bad here. Almost every single missionary is in quarantine, except us because we had just gotten out. Presidente and Hermana Tolman got it and everybody else just started dropping like flies. We were running around buying food for people and bringing insurance cards to Elders who needed to get tested. We ended up teaching the English class this week because the Elders couldn't (it was fun but SO hard for me to explain English in Spanish and answer questions haha). A lot of us Yankees are scared we'll get sent home again, so prayers would be very much appreciated. 

This week has been really slow on the proselyting front. We have been putting 110% effort into social media this week: calling new specialists, training other people, getting on calls with President or the APs, etc. We are literally constantly talking about how to improve our social media accounts to find more people to teach. I'm talking, eating, sleeping, and breathing Facebook. But even though we haven't had many lessons this week, our amigo Juan Cruz came to church for the first time! 

Juan Cruz is really a special person. He has such a huge desire to learn and to be around those things that help him feel the spirit. We've been teaching him for a month now, but he visits his out of town friends pretty often so it's hard to get him to church. He loves everything we teach and hanging around members and has been praying about the baptism, but he hasn't been reading his Book of Mormon too much. We don't want to push a date on him until he has read and prayed about the Book of Mormon, so we really hope he keeps coming to church and progressing!

I know this email is getting long so I'll just do some bullet points of other fun stuff from this week

-we found an American style grocery store with numbered aisles and a freezer section. It was amazing. 

-And in that grocery store, we found PEANUT BUTTER. It's all natural, super runny, unsweetened, and needs salt but it's PEANUT BUTTER. I have missed it so much and we may have gone through the jar in about 5 days. 

-There was a worm in the toilet at church which Hermana Easton informed me was indeed a parasite so that's kinda quirky. 

-THIS WAS CRAZY. We opened the oven for the first time in like 2 weeks to bake our breakfast and found a WHOLE ENTIRE CAKE that we had forgotten about. We pulled it out and it was rock hard on top, but when we took it out of the bundt mold, it was still soft on the inside. So. We ate it. And it was good! Frankencake made my week. I wonder how good it would've been when we actually made it....

Ok quick spiritual thought before I go. One of my favorite quotes is "The Lord loves effort" and I have seen it in so many aspects of mission life. Efforts I put towards studying the language, reading the scriptures, having unity with my companion, etc are always rewarded! Your best effort may look different than someone else's best effort, but the Lord ONLY cares that YOU are trying. So don't give up! The Lord celebrates the little victories and I hope yall do too!

Love yall

Hermana Thrasher

PICS

1. A member brought us a meal and it was milonesas with white rice and eggs and tomatoes and peas. It was interesting. Also we ate it on the floor by the air conditioning because it's the coldest spot in the house. 

2. Frankencake

3. This is how we end up looking every single day after 7 hours in the office. 

4. So we take 10 minute power naps sometimes and this is my chair pillow 

5. New comps!!