There is Sunshine in My Soul Today : Merry Christmas 12-23-14

Hola todos,

Hope all of you are having a fantastic week of partying already in anticipation of Christmas! We are feeling pretty Christmas-y, the nativities and Christmas lights and Christmas trees are all finally starting to appear. The Terminal where we catch the bus has been super busy because people are traveling all over for their fiestas, and basically it feels like the first week of summer for everyone (school just got out for the summer here too, so that increases the number of people in the streets :). It´s been warm, but not unbearably hot, so that´s been a blessing for sure!

This last week has been so cool :) We had an entire day of miracles and I am just so grateful that we´ve been able to see a day like that, it was really awesome. We started off the day by visiting a few less actives, and then we went home and studied during the siesta. I came across a few talks on how to be a more concecrated missionary and Hermana Tuttle and I did some serious analysis of our lives and realized that there were more things we wanted to do to be better. So basically we then had the problem of HOW? We wanted to change some little things and we wanted to have more "success", but HOW? So we really thought about the questions we wanted to know the answers to on this topic, and eventually we had quite a list. We got on the collectivo and I finally wrote "Forget yourself and get to work" at the bottom of my questions I´d written down. Then that´s what we did when we got to Laguna Larga. We hit the pavement running and we had the best day ever!

We found a cute little family while looking for directions to a reference. The dad was really excited to see the He´s the Gift video and he was even interested in coming to church. We talked to him for a little while, and we´re going to go back and teach him and his family :D Then we kept on looking for the reference and at one point I felt like I needed to talk to a person watering their flowers and as we walked around the hedge we met this cute little lady named Noemi and she was very nice. She gave Hermana Tuttle some daisies (her favorite!), and she was just so cute! Then we found another little family that was super receptive and then we ran into the person we were trying to find on the street. After talking to him about a time we could come by we stopped by the house of a girl named Florencia (yep, same one we met last week!) and we got to meet her mom and give her a lesson.

I think that this lesson was one of the coolest I´ve ever had on my mission...she believes a little bit in God, but she´s never really thought about it very much before. We taught her how to pray and then let her give it a try. The spirit was so strong listening to her simple but sincere prayer of gratitude. She is so cute, and the coolest part is that she notices that there is something different when the spirit is there with us in the lesson. I can´t wait to teach her more. She was going to come to church with us this last Sunday, but she was sick all night and her mom didn´t want to get her up that early in the morning. So that was muy triste, but luckily, church isn´t a once a year thing :) We went home from Laguna that day walking in the clouds. Moral of the story: When you don´t know what you need to do to improve, you can´t just dwell on the things you think you need to do...you just have to get to work and give it your best shot. Then when you look back on it, you realize that your not a terrible missionary, you´re just not perfect. The beautiful part of that is that you can continue to work towards that perfection and follow the example of the Savior. We can use the Atonement in our lives as a reason and the HOW of change.

This Christmas here in Argentina isn´t so much about the things associated with Christmas because they´re so different here. For me, it´s mostly about my Savior and that he lived so that I can have the chance to be happy for the rest of eternity and I can have the chance to change and be a better person. I am so grateful for his live and that my Heavenly Father loves me that much. It makes time spent a mission pennies in a bucket, but hey, it´s just a small token of how grateful I am. I love sharing this message with the people here in Argentina and you honestly don´t know how many blessings the gospel brings until you see people who don´t have them.

I have one more miracle I´d like to share with you. Sunday night we went to Córdoba to practice our musical number for the missionary talent show (all 300 of us gathered in Córdoba for a giant Christmas party on Monday), and during the practice, Hermana Tuttle realized that she didn´t turn the oven off in the pension. We left in kind of a hurry to catch the collectivo, and we´d used the oven for lunch before we left. She couldn´t remember if she´d turned it off or not, and honestly, I´m pretty sure she didn´t. I didn´t check it like I normally do (she´s left it on by accident before, but usually I check...). Anyway, so that was a potential problem...and we were an hour and a half away, and no one in Oncativo has keys to our pension, so we couldn´t do anything about it. We prayed together, and I think that is one of the most sincere and desperate prayers that we´ve ever said together as a companionship. We prayed that everything would be ok and that one way or another the pension would be alright. We then went on to enjoy the conference knowing that whatever happened we couldn´t do anything about it and that it was in the Lord´s hands. When we got home, the oven was off, but the gas switch was still on. Honestly, we´ll probably never know whether or not it was Hermana Tuttle or an angel that turned of the oven for us, but either way, it was a miracle that it was and that the pension was fine when we returned. Then I found this scripture during studies this morning: Mormon 9:21 and I smiled. Prayer works, and the Lord truly is listening. He loves each of us, just like he loves Florencia and He answers our prayers, even if it´s something so simple as sending an angel to turn off your oven for you.

This week has been fun, and I´m so glad that I got to play Ultimate Frisbee yesterday at the FIESTA :D I´ll just have to tell my family about the party, but I´ll try and send some pictures. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and know that I love you too!

¡Feliz Navidad!

Hermana Swan

Pics: The gang is back together! (except for Elder Hansen and Hermana Schultz, but that´s as close as we´re going to get, as they´re in Bolivia:)