Merry Christmas to all my friends and family I didn´t get to talk to on Sunday!!

This week we have seen lots of miracles. We got to fast on Thursday and I don´t know why, but I am seriously always amazed at the power of God and the power of a true fast. I can honestly say that the purpose of all my fasts have been answered, and I have seen miracles. If it were physically possible, i would fast all the time. haha. but i know that i like to eat, and i know that food is healthy, so i don´t. And i´m super excited that this coming Sunday we get to fast again. It will be so good to fast about the new year´s goals that we want to make. Start the year 2012 off right.

And this week, in three days I complete 1 year as a missionary. It is sad to see it fly by so fast. I love being a missionary. I´m so greatful every single day that I am a missionary. I´m so greatful every single day for the experiences I have had that have blessed my life and strengthened my testimony. I´m greatful everyday that I have the opportunity to wear the name of Jesus Christ every single day and know that all I do represents Him and His church. The joy and the love one feels as a missionary, make it worth every trial. Make it worth every sacrifice.

Anyway, it´s a short one today, but I hope you have a happy new year and eat lots of yummy food!! haha. (They always say that here...."hope you eat lots of yummy food...") haha.

love, sister yingling

dearest family and friends,

hey guess what....president gave me permission to call andrew instead of you guys. sorry. i´ll call on mother´s day.

oh and this week was crazy. we lost a whole day of work because we had our zone conference and our christmas celebration on wednesday, and so it made some things complicated. And it was just a weird week to say the least.

ok, i can´t trick you all like that...i feel bad. haha. i´m NOT calling andrew...don´t worry. i wouldn´t give up calling home to call him anyway, so don´t even worry. but i should be calling Sunday at 6pm Argentina time. I think that is 2 or 3pm your time. I forgot how many hours difference it is there. anyway, super super stoked to call. :)

ok, so yesterday we went to church and the mom of the first couselor showed up randomly. we just met her friday at a ward activity that we had, and she isn´t a member. she told us that sunday morning she woke up and just felt like she needed to go to church. it was awesome!! i love the little miracles like that, that we experience every day. they keep me going. it is interesting where i´m at because it is a totally different ball game. Here we are so far away from the rest of the mission and from the neighboring area, that we doin´t ever get together with the other missionaries to have district meetings. i never thought that would be a big deal, but i realize that you have to trust in the Lord a LOT more to find your inner strength because you don´t have meetings that keep motivating you. It is just you and your companion. Sounds weird, but i´ve learned a lot more of my weaknesses, and i´ve learned that i have little faith.

we are in an area filled with people that are so ready for this message. so ready for the gospel, and yet we are having little progress. yes, we see miracles, but progress...hardly any. i have tried to figure out what we are doing wrong, but sometimes it isn´t that we are doing anything wrong, it is just not the Lord´s timing. I do have faith, that one day we will see the fruits of our labors, but pray that i will have more faith so that here in junín we can move the mountians (haha even though there is no such thing as a mountain here...). I studied a lot about faith, charity and forgiveness this morning in my studies. 3 things that are crucial. I love studying the gospel, because it keeps you from falling too far. it keeps you on the straight and narrow because it helps you recognize your weaknesses, because we have them all.

this life is to help us learn how to be more like God. to be more perfect like He is. i have a long ways to go. but i love the mission, because it helps you a lot in this battle...that´s why everyone should serve a mission!! haha. :)

anyway, so guess what, i got to play a violin for our christmas p-day that we did. because we are so far away, we didn´t get to do it this week with the rest of the mission, instead we did it with our zone. but it was super fun. and we got to go to a nice restaurant (all you can eat...yum) for lunch.

ok, i guess that´s all. i´m soo excited to call on Christmas!

love, sarah

p.s. Angela,
dress = love it
colors and cake = también
hair = it´ll be so pretty all wavy like that
ring = i do like the ring. and don´t even worry about what people say about the smaller diamonds. i figure in the future when you have the money you can send it in to be changed if you want one diamond that is bigger. for now looks pretty blinging to me! haha
ahhhhh...i will cry the day you get married. menos mal that i know the guy...haha. tell brooksie hi for me and thank you for the package!!!!

michaelanne,
ok, i haven´t forgotten about you. don´t even worry. oh and i´m so glad we went to nats!! woo go BYU XC! um, letter is coming asap. it´s super hard to write, but thank you for all your letters!! they seriously help me so much. love you!

dear peoples,

yesterday we saw some pretty big miracles. President Carter raised the number of Lessons with Members that we need to do every week. The only problem is that in our area, the members aren´t used to working with the missionaries because as i learned today the previous Elders rarely did lessons with a member present. Anyway, so it was super, super hard to accomplish the required 15 lessons with a member present for the week. Saturday night we had only had 4 in the whole week. We were so sad, because every single day we called tons of people trying to arrange to do visits with them and nothing came together. Anyway, we prayed lots. and lots and lots. We knew Heavenly Father had the power to arrange everything so we could accomplish the goal. So in planning saturday night, we put 11 Lessons with a Member as our goal, and prayed for a miracle, Because Sundays are shorter days and so it is harder to get 11 lessons in, let alone with a member present.

Anyway, we went to church hoping to find someone (of the 15 members that showed up) who could work with us the rest of the day. And guess what...we found him. A new member that recently moved to our ward. He is waiting for his family to move here from Córdoba and so for the time being he had no obligations. So he worked with us the rest of the day. And we accomplished our goal. Wow. Talk about miracle right. That is why we must ALWAYS rely on the Lord. He knows whats best and how to make everything work out.

anyway, no time left
love sarah

Dearest ones and those who care to read,

This week was crazy filled with miracles and i don´t even have a lot of time to tell you about them all. so quickly:

first, we went to visit a family on tuesday who told us that friday they were moving. we asked them where and they said that they had no place to move to, but that they were getting kicked out of their house and that they couldn´t find a house because they have really bad credit. (or however that works here...) anyway, so we made an return appointment for thursday. passed by their house thursday and they were packing all their stuff even though they still had no house. they were in a frenzie and we told them we just wanted to say a prayer with them. they said ok and let us in. we knelt down (us and the entire family) and prayed for a miracle. that they could find a cheap rental that day. well, we didn´t really have any other way to help them, so we waited, and prayed some more. at the end of the day we called and the son said, "hermana, we found a house! thanks to God. thanks to your prayer we found a house!" we were so happy. seriously, tears of joy fell as i experienced just a little bit of what that family (especially that mother) was feeling at that moment. i love how Heavenly Father at times tests our faith, but at the end of the test of our faith, He shows us miracles. Those who have faith are the only ones that can receive tangible evidence of God and his power. Those who need tangible evidence to have faith, unfortunately will rarely receive the evidence.

ok, only have time for two quick miracles more. this week we were worried about who would come to church, because we wanted to go looking for them. so and we were working, we passed by the house of a lady that originally was pretty cold with us. the same day that we first contacted her, we started teaching the neighbor and her son (10 yrs old) came out to listen. he told us to pass by another day but because his mom had been so cold, we didn´t go back that same day. anyway, this lady called to us from her window and said, "where is your church, because my son wants to go..." haha my companion and i looked at eachother like, wow, that never happens. :) anyway, he came to church with his cousin. now we are hoping to start teaching their families.

dear persons in the states,

this week was a little bit crazy and hard. I learned a lot about the atonement and how we really need to make use of the atonement every single day of our lives. If we don´t, it can be easy to let pride slip in to your hearts. Plus, that is why Christ suffered for us. So we could actually make our lives better by using the atonement. If we don´t make use of it, every day, then His atonement is in vain those days.

this week has been pretty warm here. i don´t really know how hot it got. 90 degrees F more or less. I don´t know. but i do know that we haven´t yet hit summer here and it is going to be hot here. haha. but don´t worry, becuase i´m using lots of sunscreen.

this week to celebrate thanksgiving I made a pumpkin (actually it was butternut squash) and apple pie. my companion likes the pumpkin pie but not the apple pie, because here they don´t really use cinnamon, where as there, we use it alot. but that´s ok. more pie for me. haha. oh and we ate lunch at a members house who gave us raspberries and ice cream for desert. the cool thing was that the raspberries were sooo big. they looked like black berries, but with the raspberry taste. then they let us pick some of the raspberries from their bush (it was definitely a raspberry bush too) and we took them home so i can make a raspberry pie. super excited to make that one.

and, i can´t really think of what else to write. i can´t believe it is almost december and i feel like it is june. haha. weird.

anyway, that´s all. hope you enjoy the cold. :)

love, sarah

Dear family and friends,

Ok, first I have to say.... HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAXWELL!!! I LOVE YOU!!! :)
wow, can´t believe he is three. i remember being three. weird.

Ok, so this week was a fun one. We were told that we had a bus to take 40 people to the district conference (it´s just like stake conference but smaller because we are too small to be a stake...). Our leaders were really stressing getting the investigators to church this week and obviously we wanted to get them there as well. It was a 3 hour drive to our district meeting, so we had to find people that were willing to be at the church at 6:00am Sunday morning (when no one wants to wake up at 8:00 to go to church at 9:00). Then the leaders of the branch were telling us that we couldn´t bring any investigators because the bus was already full of investigators. So we had a problem. And what did we do?

We prayed.
A lot.

I don´t know how many times I can be surprised by the miracles you can experience by relying on the Lord completely. I hope I can always remember that, because life is so much better when you rely on the Lord. It was crazy, but somehow it worked out. Heavenly blessed the branch to only be able to rent last minute a larger bus so we could take more people. And he blessed us with members that were excited to invite everyone they knew...literally. At the end of the day, Sunday was a success. We brought investigators to church, enough to surpass our goal, and there was still plenty of room for the members too.

President Carter spoke at the district conference and told the members, "I have permission to add 20 more missionaries to our mission. Where will I put the missionaries? I´ll put them in the places where the members prove by their actions that they are willing to work with the missionaries. Junín has need for 2 or 3 more missionary companionships because it is so big, but right now you only have 1 companionship of sister missionaries. I am willing to put more missionaries there, but you as members need to prove to me that you are willing to work." haha I laughed. It´s so true though. Missionary work doesn´t go hardly anywhere without the help of the members. It is just impossible. So, get to work!! haha. jk. But seriously, just inviting those who aren´t members to participate in activities really helps the work a lot.

Anyway, don´t have time for anything else, but I love you all lots!

Love, Sister Yingling

p.s. Sammy, Happy Birthday yesterday! I miss you and hope you had a spectacular birthday.

oh and the pictures are from last P-Day at the lake and the movie is from yesterday. It down poured and we got soaked. I thoroughly enjoyed every second of it. It is super fun to ride bikes in a down-pour. We biked through puddles deep enough that our feet were completely under water the whole cycle. haha. It was fun, and I was excited, so I took a video. I hope you like it. Sorry I think I speak spanglish part of the time.

turns out i can´t send the video because it is too big. wish i could cut it somehow. i guess you´ll all just have to wait 8 more months. sorry!

Dear fam and friendsies,

Ok lets see. Highlights of the week.

Starting from today and working backward...

We went to la Laguna!! I wish we could go to Lagoon...but it was still awesome. It is a lake that is about 15km from our apartment, but still in our area. Suposedly we have memebers that live out there, so we need to go work out there. Plus it is sooo pretty. We went on bikes and I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it. I´ll send pictures next week...

So being in a branch, we have permission to teach some classes when the members don´t show up. Yesterday my companion taught the Sunday School class for the youth. There are on average 2-4 youth and they are awesome. I taught the week before. There is a boy named Facundo who is 13 yrs. old and is the life of the ward. Seriously. Last week he shared his testimonio and left EVERYONE crying. He is a really choice son of God. They really need him here.

Speaking of that, I love being able to associate with some really, really strong and choice spirits. Seriously. It is amazing how Heavenly Father has EVERYTHING planned out. He knows who needs to be born where to bring about His work. In my short time as a missionary, I have met some people that really are incredible. Who have such strong testimonies and such spiritual gifts as I have rarely seen before. I know these people are placed in the parts of the world where the church is not well established to help establish the church. It is all part of the plan Heavenly Father has created for us.

Anyway, that´s pretty much all, plus not tons of time to write this week.

Lovies!
Sister Sarah Anne

Dear Family,

Ok, so this week was a crazy one.

Tuesday:
Last district meeting with the best district ever. we were all sad to have changes, but changes are good because we learn and we grow. After our district meeting, they told me to go to another room with my companion and then i had to enter with my eyes closed. when i walked in they started singing happy birthday (ok, but in spanish) and there was a cake and everything. i was happy because i didn´t think i would get to have a cake for my birthday so it was a good surprise. also, in the district meeting i got my birthday package. THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I love, love, love the markers and the journal and the reeses. yum! I was glad to find something with peanut butter...and especially reeses. :)

Then tuesday night i got the call. H. Reales and i both thought that i would be staying and she would be leaving. So i wasn´t prepared when they told me that I was leaving. We were both like, "what?!" and "NO! NO! NO!" She didn´t want to stay because it was very likely that she would be training, and i didn´t want to leave because that´s just how it is in the mission.

Then wednesday we were doing our plans at night when we heard the voice of a sister in the ward who is 78 yr. asking our neighbor where the missionaries lived. so we ran out (because poor lady can´t walk very well and it is also dangerous to be wandering alone at nighttime). she said, "i wanted to give you something for your birthday" and gave us a tupper of chocolate moose topped with cream (one of our favorite desserts she makes). oh, she is soo sweet! i really am going to miss that ward a lot.

then, thursday, i was off. we went to the mission offices to have our meeting to find out all the changes. turns out, h. reales is going to be training. my new companion is Hermana Azcurra. Also from Argentina. haha surprise? it is funny because i have been blessed to have all Argentine companions. we have other sister missionaries who aren´t from argentina and plenty of americans too, but i have been blessed to be with the argentines. i seriously don´t mind at all. we were sent to the area Junín. 6 hours away from my last area. if you want to look at a map, i am almost on the border of Santa Fe and Córdoba (the provinces). So that is how i spent my birthday. Traveling in a charter bus (for only 4 hours) to my new area. It was sooo fun! haha. I like traveling anyway, and it was a double decker charter bus to top all that off.

plus, i got my dream of going to the country. my companion and i never thought that we would have the chance to go to the country (because they always had elders there...) it is sooo much prettier here in junín. and there is a lake in our area, so i should be sending you some prettier pictures for the next little while. but, because we are so far away from everything, we don´t have district meetings. it is weird. and, we are in a branch instead of a ward. so we are getting used to that too.

the members think it is weird to have sister missionaries, but the worst part about moving into an area where there were elders before is how dirty the apartment is. seriously. i´m just going to send you pictures of how "clean" the bathroom was. the bathroom is the worst, but the kitchen is bad too. haha i sure hope my brothers didn´t ever let their apartments get this bad.... This morning i spent 1 hr. cleaning just the floor of the shower, the toilet and the sink. the next few p-days will be the same until we get the apartment clean. i´ll send you the after pictures too.

ok, in junín, we are privileged to work with a senior missionary couple. they are great and they have done a lot in the branch. he is the branch president and they have worked miracles here. they told us that when they first got to junín there were only about 10 members who went to church, but now this past sunday there were 40. :) not too bad for a branch. plus they all have such strong testimonies. it was great yesterday to hear all their testimonies. my companion and i get to teach two different classes. the gospel principles class, and the sunday school class for the youth. that´s fun too. oh yeah, and the area is so big that we get to use bikes!! :) plus it isn´t as common that you get robbed here in the country, so that is another reason we can have bikes. it is super duper fun.

this sunday we had some miracles because of all the work that the elders did before. we have been blessed with investigators that are really prepared for the message and 2 of them came to church on sunday. :) there is a lot of work to do here (as there always is...haha) and we are both super excited to be here. I love feeling the spirit super strong even with just few people in sacrament meeting. it is cool to see that the same spirit is here in this branch and is utah with hundreds of people every sunday in sacrament meeting. that is why this gospel is awesome and a testimony to me of the truthfulness of this church and that is why i love it.

anyway, gotta go work!
love,
Sister Yingling

0628: Cristian who was baptized not last weekend, but the week before and his niece who is handicapped.
0631: After our district meeting my district surprised me with a birthday party! :) haha they bought me a cake with my favorite color and everything. It was great...and yummy!
0632: They caught me tasting it. haha
0633: My cake! Cakes taste different here...i like the ones in the states more, BUT that being said, i loved it still. and i was super greatful that i had a cake. :)
0637 and 0635: Elders in my district
0641: The district my old district....now we don´t really have a district because it is just my companion and i and our district leaders companionship.
0661: The moose that the sister in Libertad gave me for my birthday. yum!
0662: Hna. Reales and I leaving our apartment.
0667: My new comp. Hna. Azcurra. She is 30 years old, but doesn´t look it at all because she is sooo little. haha. we are complete opposite when it comes to looks.
0669: Hna. Azcurra and I on the bus. We were lucky and got to sit on the upper level. haha look at the guy behind us that is looking at the camera. and the guy that is sleep behind us as well. haha. those seats were sooo comfy. sadly right after this, my camera died so i couldn´t take pictures of the scenery but i´m sure i´ll have more opportunities in the future.
0671: when we celebrated my birthday that night with a make shift cake. my comp says that i have to make three wishes. i only made one and then the camera quit. haha.

dearest persons that i like,

Ok, must see pictures of halloween and all of your costumes. Sounds awesome. Here, no one did much. There are only a few businesses that had halloween stuff out, and i´ve only seen one person dressed up (working in one of the businesses... haha). It´s ok. They are still working on catching up to our awesomeness here. haha. but my comp. H. Reales said that in Córdoba they celebrate halloween more. Córdoba sounds very much like the states from what she has told me. i wanted to dress up as my companion for halloween, but she didn´t like that idea very much (because like i said halloween isn´t as big a deal here), so my halloween consisted of cleaning the apt, running errands, and eating at mcdonald´s. i ate the yummiest ice cream there today....yum, yum, yum.

oh abby. i like your pictures lots. who took them all? you are too pretty to go to a dance with that weird boy, but i guess that is all right. oh, and i liked your outfit lots. especial my shoes. haha jk. especially all of it.

ok so not lots of time to write, but here are some details.

-Cristian (30 yrs. old) was baptized on friday. oooh, it was soo good. he has changed his life around lots and is so much happier. you can just see it in his face. that is the awesome part about living the gospel. it just makes you happy. also, a lot of his family came to his baptism and they really liked it. i think his family will be a miracle family if we can just help them all get married. they are all really receptive. :) God´s chosen.

-We had a miracle this sunday. As we were waiting for sacrament meeting to start, one of the Elders in the ward came to me and said, " a lady named Eugenia is here". my eyes got all big with surprise and i practically ran to greet her. then i saw that her boyfriend came too!! he was born in the covenant but stopped going to church when he was 16 yrs. old. and the last time he went to a church meeting was over 15 years ago. we have invited them many, many times and she only came to church once.....2 months ago. then we tried visiting them lots, but nothing for the longest time. so on saturday we went to go visit them and they were home. they were angry with each other (but really angry) and so we didn´t want to interfere, but i didn´t want to leave there without inviting the spirit. so we invited her to pray. she didn´t want to at first, but we reminded her of the blessings of prayer and she prayed. then we left. i guess the spirit really worked on them, and they were humbled enough by their difficulties, that they finally came to church. Proves how powerful the spririt is and that we can only be helpers in the work. we do nothing of ourselves. it was such a nice surprise. (early birthday present).

anyway, no more time. hope it all made sense.

love,
sister yingling

Dear family and friendsies,

So, I just printed out today the pictures that you sent me.... thank you so much! But i´m still waiting for pictures of my parents....hint hint. :) Well, my birthday isn´t this week. but it is in the week to come. i´m excited. because i´ll be one year older and wiser too. happy birthday to me!! haha. hopefully i can use that wisdom to help me in the work.

oh, and i like hearing that there are two mormons running for president and that i´ll get the chance to vote for them. yay!! Go latter day saints! haha.

um, well, what happened this week? well, we were sad because we had a baptism planned, but then we learned that he smoked, so we had to move the baptisimal date. But we all learned the importance of reading your scriptures and saying your prayers. It is the first thing that goes. When people loose their testimonies it is because they stopped reading the book of mormon. That is when you are weak and when satan can attack you. For example, when Cristian told us that he had smoked, we were sad and shocked. Then we asked him when the last time he read the Book of Mormon was and he said something like 4 days before. Even in such a short period of time like 4 days Satan worked hard and tempted him and he fell. But, he learned (and we all learned) of the importance of reading the Book of Mormon every single day. It sounds tedious and it sounds like it doesn´t matter THAT much, but it does. Thats why i love studying the scriptures every single day. they give you power and protection that you don´t even know you have until it is gone.

and they voted for their president on sunday. they pretty much do everything the same as us except it is an obligation for everyone 18-75 years old. if you don´t vote, you get a ticket and it is a pain to pay (even though it is super cheap).

um, i guess that´s pretty much all for now. oh except i just barely learned that transfer changes are on my birthday (Nov. 3), so that will be weird because i might be moving to a new area and i for sure won´t be with H. Reales anymore... :( i hope it isn´t the worst birthday ever...but i´m sure it won´t be. Any situation can be good, depending on how you look at it. I love the gospel, because it helps you look at every situation with the right eyes, and it teaches you what tools you can do to change your life and be happy ALWAYS. Those who are sad are those who don´t want to keep the commandments, and lose the hope they could have. but those who do keep the commandments always have hope, which brings happiness.

until next week!
love, sister sarah

dearestests,

ok. so. this weeks was interesting. i think i always say that. i´ll have to count how many times i say that in all my emails after my mission....haha. we had some pretty cool experiences.

there is a family that we are teaching. ok, it is a husband and wife that we are working with. the husband is a less active member that goes to church every once in a while and his wife is pentecostal evangelist. i think that is how you say it in english... anyway, to say the least, she doesn´t want anything to do with us. whenever we come over, it is "hello, how are you?" just to be nice, and besides that the only other thing she has ever said to us is, "i´m not in this conversation..." when we tried to ask her what she believed about faith, etc. anyway, so it has been hard. we have felt for a long time, that we need to break the ice with her. we need her to trust us and have more confidence in us, but we haven´t found a way in.

so we decided to make a calendar to help him do his scripture reading. everyday for a month we put a scripture from the Book of Mormon and a scripture from the Bible that talked about similar topics. topics like the restoration, the restoration, and the restoration. haha. no. not all of them were about the restoration.

when we got to their house, he wasn´t there (which was weird because he doesn´t usually work that day, but this time he did). we thought she wouldn´t let us in, but she asked us if we wanted to come in for a little bit and wait for him. so we said, yes...of course. :) so we were so happy for THAT miracle. we got to talk with her, and we feel like now she trusts us more. then we explained what we did with the calendar and she seemed pretty happy about the scriptures we put from the bible. then as we were getting ready to leave, her husband walked in. so we explained it to him, and we left.

then sunday, he came to church. he told us he was really grateful for what we did and that we came just in time. we were a little confused, but happy he felt that way. then the ward mission leader told us what had happened.

in elders quorum, this brother broke down crying while he was bearing his testimony. he told everyone that when he was traveling home on the train that day, he had decided to drop the church for good. there were just too many contentions in their marriage because of their religious differences, and he couldn´t do it anymore. so as he was coming home, he was trying to figure out how he was going to tell his wife. well, when he got home, we were there. then after we left, the elders quorum president called him. those two things combined were a testimony to him that God really didn´t want him to give up. They were a testimony to him that God knows what he is going through and cares about him.

i was so happy when i heard that because it helped my testimony grow. i know Heavenly Father loves every single one of us. I know that He cares about us, and not just that, He cares which church we go to and which church we are in. He wants us in His church, and once you are in, He doesn´t want to loose you. I´m so grateful everyday for the opportunity I have to participate in these miracles.

Ok, no time to write more!
love, sarah

p.s. this past sunday was mother´s day here. might be the only country in the world that has mother´s day in october and not in may. so, happy mother´s day mom! (again). and it was on your birthday. or is your birthday the 18th. i´m forgetting everything here. it is weird. either way, happy birthday again!!

Dear Family,

Ok, so good stuff happens on the mission. I love, love, love the mission. haha. ok that was a little dramatic. but seriously. i wake up every morning grateful that i get the opportunity to be a missionary. grateful that i have a special calling, and grateful for all the things that i have learned.

This week was great. We are teaching a guy named Cristian and his mom Silvia. Cristian is going to be baptized the 22nd of October. His mom wants to be, but isn´t married, so we are praying to find a solution to this problem. We taught Cristian about the Word of Wisdom this weeks. He told us that he smokes, but that he wants to stop smoking. He told us that he wouldn´t smoke anymore, and since that day he hasn´t smoked. He has progressed soo much. One of those chosen of the Lord. He thanked us the other day for all the peace that we bring into their home and how his life is changing. The cool thing is when someone tells that and you are caught by surprise. It means that you really haven´t done anything and the spirit has done 100% of the converting. it is ironic, because it is ALWAYS like that. haha.

I guess that is one thing that I have learned about the mission. I think I thought that to be a successfull missionary you had to work and work and work to try and change the hearts of the people to repentance. But you don´t. You just have to do what you are supposed to do (pray, be diligent, exercise faith, be obedient) and the Lord will guide you to His chosen. Then the Spirit does all of the converting.

This week was a happy one. It rained a lot, and I love the rain. Even though it makes missionary work more difficult, somehow I still love it. haha. Anyway, I don´t have time for much else.

Lots of love!
Sarah

p.s. happy birthday Gina and my little Angel with chocolate twined hair (haha...your nickname is a little bit long...haha). Love you both!

oh, and the picture is of a picnic we did as a district. we all brought "our" instruments..haha. it was fun.

Dear family and friends,

I was watching the conference in Spanish when they announced the new provo temple and I almost jumped up out of my seat and screamed YES! haha. But i´m not joking. I am so excited for that. It is funny how Heavenly Father works to answer prayers. Seriously, that was such a huge issue just because of how many people go to the temple. it is sad, but lots of people in provo don´t go to the temple because they can´t wait for hours to enter in a session, or do baptisms. it is worse with the baptisms because there is only one font.

I like all of you learned lots and lots during conference. I am really fortunate (maybe it was like this in Erik and Jacob´s missions too) because I can choose to watch the conference in English or Spanish if I want. They have a room just for the missionaries so they can go watch it in English if they want. I like to watch it in english because i like hearing their voices. It just isn´t the same when you are listening to a translator. Had I been in the smaller room watching it in English I can almost garantee you I would have jumped up when the prophet announced the Provo temple....haha

This week was an interesting but good one. It is funny how Heavenly Father teaches you lessons to humble you up sometimes. haha. I always need help being more humble as my brother so kindly pointed out... :) I can learn from the examples of my brothers. Teach me how you do it!! haha But this past saturday a boy named Joshua was baptized between conference sessions. It was such a good baptism! We really felt the spirit lots and lots. It was the last baptism to complete a family (well kind of...because the dad has other kids that aren´t members from a different wife) and it was so happy. That is why this work is so good. You get to see how happy people become by using the atonement and changing their lives around to follow christ.

Let´s see what else? Hmm...I can´t think of anything else. Just that I really liked conference, but that has already been said.

photo 1: The traditional 9 months picture. haha. wow, can´t believe this week I finished half my mission. :( Weird.
photo 2: Joshua is the one closest to H. Reales. His friend Brian baptized him.

Welp, love you all lots!
Hermana Yingling

Dear family,

So, yesterday we had computer difficulties and so i didn´t get to writing you. But here are the results of the new transfer changes:

Hermana Reales and I stay together one more transfer!! a little bit crazy because that isn´t very common, but it will be good. We have a really good district and we are all working hard together. We just got out of our district meeting and we have a lot of good goals to help our stake progress. We are in the Merlo stake, and Merlo has been known as the stake (zone) that doesn´t baptize or have success in our mission. well, there have been a lot of changes made, and the president is changing a lot of the focus of the mission. We have seen huge miracles. Not just in our area Libertad B, but also in the stake. For example, the transfer that H. Reales and I arrived in Merlo, there were lots of changes in missionaries etc. Tons of things changed. The tranfer just before all those changes there were only 4 baptisms in the stake. Then, for example, the past month of september there were 13 confirmations. All the wards are making a lot of progress. Going from 4 baptisms in 6 weeks to 13 in jsut 4 weeks. We have higher hopes for the month of October, especially since it is general conference and we have the opportunity to bring more people to the conference to listen to our prophets voice. It will be a good week for sure.

I have a huge testimony of faith. The more faith we have, the more miracles we will see. That is because we will work harder because we know those miracles will happen. It is so true. Those who have faith have the desire and excitement to work hard everyday to accomplish a miracle. Not just in missionary work. That applies to normal life too. Any goal that we have, if we have faith that Heavenly Father will help us accomplish it (because without Him it cannot be done) then we will do it. Andrew is a really good example for me of accompishing goals through faith and showing your faith through hard work....haha. So, Andrew (not to embarrass you), thanks for your example... :)

Anyway, I guess there isn´t that much else to write. This week a mother (Silvia) and son (Cristian) came to church. They were waiting for us outside of their house Sunday in the morning! That was awesome. That hardly ever happens. Oh yeah, and we played a musical number on Sunday. H. Reales on her clarinet (that her mom just sent her) and me on the bishops violin. Even though we hardly practiced- because there is not time for stuff like that- it turned out pretty good. But it is really rare to have musical numbers here, and so everyone liked it anyway. I love the was music brings the spirit (and helps everyone pay attention...haha).

Anyway, that I guess is all. Love you all lots!
Sarah

p.s. in two days I will be 1/2 done with my mission....wow. weird.

So, dear family,

This week we got taught a lesson or two by Elder Aidukaitis. I bet Jacob or Erik knows who he is and how he teaches. If not, look him up on youtube...you´ve got to find something. He is Brazilian, but i know he speaks Spanish (obviously) and English as well...so I bet you could all find something. Let´s just say he is brutal. haha. But i learned a LOT. I learned that I have a long way to go to be a better missionary, and I have lots and lots to improve. But sometimes it is good to be chastised with love because then you know what you have to do to do everything better.

So, this week was a good one. We got to do some service in a public hospital here. It was fun because I like to do stuff like that (painting, washing windows....you know, making stuff look better).

And we set a baptisimal date with a lady named Hilabia. She is really old, but looks like she is 55 or 56. She has been through tons of churches, and really has her mind thinking how the baptists think. But, the good thing is that she said that she is willing to change and that she wants to stick with us because she really felt something different when we first taught her. Because she is older, she doesn´t understand everything the first time, but she can feel the difference. That is huge. I love the Holy Ghost because we as missionaries really don´t do anything. If the Holy Ghost doesn´t reach their heart, they won´t have the desire to change or keep he commitments they need to keep. But, if the Holy Ghost touches their heart and they recognize it, the changing is always a lot easier.

So, things are coming along here. We really do see miracles every day, but I know we can see more. Pray that I will be able to change how I´m trying to change so we can see more miracles here.

I love you all...even though I didn´t even get any letters...or emails. ;)

Love, Sister Yingling

Dearest family of mine,

Ok, so best P-Day ever! Ok, I dunno if it was the best, but it was fun. And it reminded me of being at home cooking with MY mom, so I think that's why I liked it. Anyway, we had this great idea all planned up with the elders in our district to go play basketball at the stake center and make breakfast and or lunch or something and it was going to be fun. But then we wanted to make something for our bishop and his family, but the only problem is that he is a baker and so we wanted to make something from the states that he doesn't make here. So we were thinking and i thought, "hmm...cinnamon rolls" but we would have to do it on P-Day because we can't waste that kind of time any other day. So then i was wondering how I would make cinnamon rolls, and i couldn't remember. Maybe I never really knew. But then I remembered that sister Carter (President's wife) has a pretty good recipe (because i asked him what his favorite sweet was that his wife makes and he told us cinnamon rolls). So we called her up to ask. She said she would call us later because she didn't have the recipe with her at the time, but she would call us. Then she called us like 5 min. later and said, "Do you want to come to the mission home tomorrow and we can make cinnamon rolls together?" haha we were so excited because we have never been to the mission home. The elders have a chance of going because they do leadership training here etc. However, sisters never get to go. And the funny thing was that we were just talking about how we wanted to go to the mission home. So, we cancelled on the Elders. Here are some pictures of our adventure...they turned out pretty good. And now I have the recipe. And i hope that story made sense... haha

Oh, and some other pictures of our other P-Day adventures the past couple weeks. I don't know why I uploaded my picture of my green and pink socks, but I liked them. Just to remind you that yes I am still weird, just trying to be more like Jesus is all... :)

Ok, this week was full of miracles. Miracle #1...I already wrote about. Miracle #2...turns out the bishop has a violin. he let me borrow it to play at a baptism. and when i tried to return it, he told me that i could keep in the apartment and use it until i was transfered...which might be in 2 weeks or longer. :)!!

Miracle #3... we have been trying to teach more people inside their homes because well, you can't feel the spirit as well outside when there are all sorts of things going on to distract you. So we have been praying to teach people in their homes the first time we talk to them. And it happened two times this week!! That never happens, so it really was a miracle. Prayers do get answered, just so you know. Even for the littlest things (like getting to go to the Mission home... haha).

Miracle #4... an 11 year old girl named Paola was baptized!!! :) She really was very prepared. And her inactive mom went to church this week too. her mom has really, really progressed. Sometimes I think that some children are to be baptized just to help their parents in the enduring to the end process. I get just as happy seeing someone come back to church as I do with a baptism. She was so happy, and the baptism was soo good. the spirit was really strong. and even though not very many people went to the baptism, it was perfect. I'm going to send some pictures of her now. Anyway, I have run out of time to write more.

Until next week,

Love Sister Sarah Anne Yingling

sorry i didn´t write yesterday. we had some complications and so i am writing today.

anyway, this last week was an interesting one. actually it was real good. we found a teen named Patricio who is the friend of a member. We went and taught him and he told us that he wants to be closer to God and learn more about Him. It was so great. So now we are helping him prepare to be baptized. Also, this sunday we saw tons of miracles. I feel like I say this after every fast sunday, but I LOVE fast sundays. seriously. we can always see lots of miracles. For example, we were fasting to have more people in sacrament meeting that aren´t members. We didn´t know who we would take, but we had a few people planned. They almost all fell and we were sad. But, when we went to sacrament meeting, there were a few people that we weren´t expecting. They came to see a baby blessing. It was so great.

right now we are struggling to find people in their homes when they say they will be there. it is a little bit frustrating, but then i always remember that as long as we do our part, Heavenly Father will guide us where we need to go. Also, since we started from zero in this new area, there are many people that we have found, but haven´t had a chance to teach. I´m excited to see what happens in this area in the future. I think we have found lots of good people that someday will be ready to hear the gospel. Maybe their aren´t right now, but they will.

Oh, and yesterday we were super excited because we contacted a family that is really friendly. Turns out they have 8 children. Dad, I told them that you are one of 8 kids in your family as well. I´m excited to go back and teach them.

Oh, and i´m super excited because the next week Elder Aidukaitis from the seventy is going to come and do a conference with us. I´ve heard a lot about him, and so i´m excited to learn from him. well, i guess that is all. back to work. Until next week!

Love, sarah

Ok, due to some inconveniences today we don´t really have a lot of time. So to be obedient, I´m just going to write real quickly... :) This week we had a meeting with President Carter. Actually it was all day Friday. We arrived at the mission offices at 8:00am and didn´t leave until about 6:00pm. Wow. Long day of meetings. But it was great. President Carter changed a LOT of things about the mission. I thought this would happen, but I´m really excited about it. I really think with all of the new rules and with all of the new focus, we are really going to see an increase in baptisms. But not just that, an increase in CONVERSIONS. As you all know, there is a HUGE difference between the two. Because a baptism with a conversion is the type of baptism that Heavenly Father recognizes. Plus it is just sad to see those people who you taught that got baptized go inactive. Super sad. So, I am really excited about these changes to the rules. Anyway, that´s pretty much it. We a learning a lot about miracles and obedience and enduring to the end. It is great.

That´s about all... love you lots!
Sarah

p.s. here are some photos since I can´t write very much....enjoy!!

001: Marta
002: Elias

The two huge miracles of the last transfer!! They are so awesome and have really strong testimonies.

Hey awesome peoples i know,

Guess what, this week was so crazy. One of those weeks that is really frustrating, but at the end you are greatful you struggled to see the blessings in the end. The whole week we did a whole bunch of good things, but at the end of the week we were still a long way away from meeting our goals and it was pretty depressing. Everyone that we had planned to bring to church either got sick or went out of town because of the holiday weekend they had here. Sad day.

Anyway, Sunday rolled around and we knew that we had a lot to do with very little time (because church takes up the whole morning). We were hoping that we would see miracles for our obedience and diligence during the week. And guess what, we saw some pretty incredible miracles.

The first miracle: We went to visit some people who of course were not home, so then we went to our back-up plan that we had. We passed by a house where a man and woman were standing outside their door just chatting. We passed by and the guy said, "hola Elderes". (haha it is so funny to be a sister missionary. Especially in a place where there have NEVER in the history of this ward been sister missionaries, because even the people on the streets who aren´t members don´t know what to call us. haha). I recognized him as the man i have been wanting to talk to for a few weeks (because every time we pass by him he says that same thing...and every time i want to talk to him) but for always being in a hurry we never talked to him. anyway, my companion started talking to him first introducing us a missionaries for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Turns out the guy is an in-active for most of his life (actually the son of one of the members in my first that I always wanted to go visit, but we never did) and he just recently moved to this ward. Anyway, his girlfriend isn´t a member and her son isn´t either. They both (Eduardo and Eugenia) are wanting to change their lives for the better and she really wants to go to church. He does to, but doesn´t feel like he is worthy to go to church. Anyway, it was awesome because they said that they would go to church this coming Sunday!! Now they just need to quit smoking and live the law of chastity and get testimonies! :) I´m so excited for them.

Ok, when we left their house we contacted a girl named Myra. She told us that she had spoken to elders a while back and they gave her a Book of Mormon. She said that she felt a lot of peace after talking with the elders and she has already read the whole Book of Mormon. She said that when she started reading the Book of Mormon, good things started happening in her life. She wanted to go to church, but didn´t know where the church was. so we arranged to visit her and she said that she is going to go to church this coming Sunday!!

Two miracles in a row. Wow. I love how Heavenly Father lets us struggle for a while, but if we endure with faith, knowing that if we do our part then He will do His, He really blesses us. I have really learned that I can do nothing. The only thing that I can do is be obedient. If I´m not obedient, I will not have success as a missionary, but as I am obedient, I know I will continue to see more and more miracles.

Anyway, that´s all folks!

Until next week.... love, Sister Yingling

Dear family,

I learned this week that in Buenos Aires, Argentina hail the size of baseball falls. haha it was soo crazy. Friday during the night I woke up to hail and fell back asleep thinking it was the normal quarter sized hail (yes, the small marble sized hail is really, really small here...) that fell a couple weeks ago. Then when we got up in the morning, it was really pretty outside. Anyway, we went on with our day as normal and right as we were about to leave, the sky turned from sunny to night time and down poured. it is fun here because in a matter of minutes it can go from summer to what seems like a hurricane, flooding all of the streets. Hail the size of quarters fell again. We stayed inside until it passed and then went out.

We were going about our day (i was sure greatful for my boots that are AWESOME) and we decided we should stop by a members house to pick up something. As we walked to her house, there was thunder 5 times in a row...super, super loud. seriously the loudest i have ever heard it. We got to her house and as we were talking to her from outside her window the sky again went from sunshine to darkness in literally seconds and it started to rain. We pulled out our umbrellas and then it started to hail. Initially it was the size of marbles and the sister asked us if we wanted to come in. We said, no because it would pass soon. Then they got bigger, so she went to go find her key to let us in and i was looking back to see how big the hail was. There was hail literally the size of tennis balls or baseballs falling. Just then the Elders called to make sure we were under a roof, and I told him we were working on it. Then a huge hail hit my umbrella, and i scream-giggled because it was so exciting. haha. Seriously, so fun. We finally got to go into her house for refuge. Surprisingly our umbrellas didn't break. I am always really greatful for my umbrella...it is awesome.

And now they are wanting to use the computer, so id better get on with the spiritual stuff that happened this week. Well, we found two less active families who have children who are 11 years old and they aren't members. The cool thing is that they both of desires to go back to church and they want their daughters to be baptized. There are some stuggles that we are working out, but with the help of the Lord, we are going to working on activating these families and baptizing their daughters in this coming transfer.

We prayed really hard for a surprise baptism this last weekend, and we got one. Well for the ward anyway. It wasn't for our area. Anyway, one of the elders in our ward was trying to arrange a surprise baptism and so we got to help out with that. the girls name is Jessica, and she is like 20 years old i think. Her dad is a recent convert and he didn't know that he was going to baptize her. It was cool when she walked out in white. Everyone was all super excited.

This week i saw a lot of my prayers answered. I have a huge testimony of prayer, but also a huge testimony in patience. when we pray for answers and for things to happen, we need to be patient. we can't expect things to happen on our time table. it is always on the lords time-table. the cool thing about that is that it always works out better too. :)

well, until next week!
sarah

dear family,
hey guess what. I went to a petting zoo today. For p-day. but it was awesome because i got to hold a baby lion, pet big lions and tigers and ride a camel. :) Best petting zoo EVER! Oh and I went to a cathedral in Luján. I bet you could look it up. It is really pretty awesome looking.

anyway, this week was so awesome. Marta was confirmed a member and we had 98 people in sacrament meeting!!! Three of the 5 families that we have to work with went to church and have desires to be more active in the church. It is really fun working ina ward with a set of sisters and a set of elders. It just seems like we can get so much more done and that the bishop can use the talents that the elders have in places that we don´t work very well and vice versa.

It is funny in our stake because there have hardly been any sister missionaries here and so they all look at us like animals in a cage or something. haha and they don´t know how to react with us. it is really funny.

um, anyway, i am learning a ton about how important obedience is. to the enth degree....haha. the more obedient we are as a companionship, the more miracles we see. try it. it is great.

anyway, not much time,
love you lots
sarah

oh p.s. the mission presidents wife does a blog. i don´t know if i already mentioned it, but it is buenosaireswest.blogspot.com if you want to check it out.

Dearest persons that live in the United States of America,

Ok, this week was awesome. We had the baptism of one of our investigators. Actually basically our only investigator. Her name is Marta. She is about 60 years old, and is incredible. She has so much faith and such a strong testimony. She paid her tithing this past sunday. $4 pesos. She earned $40 pesos this week and we taught her all about tithing. even though she didn´t have money to buy food, she saved the $4 pesos to pay her tithing on Sunday. Also, she came to church all by herself even though she was sick (she had the flu or something) and walked in the cold even though she shouldn´t go out in the cold. she said she was going to go to church no matter what because she wanted to be baptized after the meetings. so she got baptized. she was so cold and shaking, but so happy and kept saying, "thank you, thank you". she suffers from epilepsy and doesn´t have the money to buy her medicine, but i know that she will be blessed for her diligence and her patience and her obedience. wow, she is incredible.

and, we had another miracle. we split our ward with some Elders, and a couple weeks ago they told us about a boy that always goes to all the activities and always goes to all the church meetings who isn´t a member. his name is Elias. his dad is a member (as of about 4 years ago) but inactive (as of about 2 years ago). because Elias is only 13 years old, we have to get permission from his dad to baptize him. Elias wants to be baptized real bad, but his dad says that he needs to wait longer. He also told the Elders that he didn´t want them to come by anymore. So, the Elders asked us if we would go talk to the dad. So we got permission and crossed our area limits by like 3 blocks to visit the dad (named Pedro). The first time he wasn´t there so we left a little note ( it is amazing how notes are miracle workers). Elias told us that when his dad saw the note, he was really happy. So we stopped by again. We prayed that he would be home and that we would be guided in our words. We didn´t even know what to say, but that is the name of the the game as a missionary.

we went by his house and he answered the door. he was nice, but a little bit closed (obviously because it was the first time that we had ever met him..) and we just started talking to him. we talked about a bunch of different things, everyonce in a while diving into a gospel topic, which he would quickly change every time we did. anyway, we finally started asking him about why he got baptized and his testimony. that got him to remember that he did have a testimony. then my awesome companion asked him if he ever had the opportunity to bless the sacrament. he said that he did once. we asked him how he felt during that experience and as he started talking, tears began to flow. he told us it was a really nice memory and that he remembered feeling really happy at that time in his life. we helped him understand that he really did want his children to have that experience too which helped him realize that Elias needed to be baptized. then elias shared his testimony with his dad. it was really a cool spiritual experience. he signed the baptism paper right then and there, and we are planning on his baptism for the following Sunday, or if not then, not this saturday, but the next. Elias was so excited that when his dad went inside to get a pen, he started jumping up and down saying, "thank you! thank you!" we were so excited as well that we almost hugged him. haha. no worries...we didn´t. but later that night at our ward family home evening he was telling everyone that he is going to get baptized the next Sunday.

It is moments like these that makes everything worth it.

Love you all!!
Sarah

Dearest persons that live in the United States of America,

Ok, this week was awesome. We had the baptism of one of our investigators. Actually basically our only investigator. Her name is Marta. She is about 60 years old, and is incredible. She has so much faith and such a strong testimony. She paid her tithing this past sunday. $4 pesos. She earned $40 pesos this week and we taught her all about tithing. even though she didn´t have money to buy food, she saved the $4 pesos to pay her tithing on Sunday. Also, she came to church all by herself even though she was sick (she had the flu or something) and walked in the cold even though she shouldn´t go out in the cold. she said she was going to go to church no matter what because she wanted to be baptized after the meetings. so she got baptized. she was so cold and shaking, but so happy and kept saying, "thank you, thank you". she suffers from epilepsy and doesn´t have the money to buy her medicine, but i know that she will be blessed for her diligence and her patience and her obedience. wow, she is incredible.

and, we had another miracle. we split our ward with some Elders, and a couple weeks ago they told us about a boy that always goes to all the activities and always goes to all the church meetings who isn´t a member. his name is Elias. his dad is a member (as of about 4 years ago) but inactive (as of about 2 years ago). because Elias is only 13 years old, we have to get permission from his dad to baptize him. Elias wants to be baptized real bad, but his dad says that he needs to wait longer. He also told the Elders that he didn´t want them to come by anymore. So, the Elders asked us if we would go talk to the dad. So we got permission and crossed our area limits by like 3 blocks to visit the dad (named Pedro). The first time he wasn´t there so we left a little note ( it is amazing how notes are miracle workers). Elias told us that when his dad saw the note, he was really happy. So we stopped by again. We prayed that he would be home and that we would be guided in our words. We didn´t even know what to say, but that is the name of the the game as a missionary.

we went by his house and he answered the door. he was nice, but a little bit closed (obviously because it was the first time that we had ever met him..) and we just started talking to him. we talked about a bunch of different things, everyonce in a while diving into a gospel topic, which he would quickly change every time we did. anyway, we finally started asking him about why he got baptized and his testimony. that got him to remember that he did have a testimony. then my awesome companion asked him if he ever had the opportunity to bless the sacrament. he said that he did once. we asked him how he felt during that experience and as he started talking, tears began to flow. he told us it was a really nice memory and that he remembered feeling really happy at that time in his life. we helped him understand that he really did want his children to have that experience too which helped him realize that Elias needed to be baptized. then elias shared his testimony with his dad. it was really a cool spiritual experience. he signed the baptism paper right then and there, and we are planning on his baptism for the following Sunday, or if not then, not this saturday, but the next. Elias was so excited that when his dad went inside to get a pen, he started jumping up and down saying, "thank you! thank you!" we were so excited as well that we almost hugged him. haha. no worries...we didn´t. but later that night at our ward family home evening he was telling everyone that he is going to get baptized the next Sunday.

It is moments like these that makes everything worth it.

Love you all!!
Sarah

okie dokie, or however that is spelled.

dear familia,

hey guess what, i was so blessed today. we live in the front part of a house that is owned by a lady. (hey i just looked down and there was a dog in this building. don´t worry, that´s really, really normal here, but i just realized that in the states you would never see a dog....but especially a street dog....in a building. thought that would be funny to tell you.) anyway, back to my story. she let my companion borrow her bike so i could go running and she could bike next to me. it was so good. i´m real slow, but oh well. i just need to trust that i can get back into shape quickly when i come home. it felt so good to tire my self running again. i miss it. i have a feeling waking up tomorrow morning will be hard. i try to go running with my companion in the mornings, but it is really hard to ask them to wake up earlier so we can go running. i think hermana reales wouldn´t mind going every morning if we didn´t have to wake up earlier. but because we have to, it is doubly hard for her.

anyway, we are having some great miracles. one of them is kind of a weird miracle, but i know it is a blessing. It is that when people tell us that they have no intention to keep commitments or move forward in the gospel at all. as sad as that is, it is a huge blessing because then we can use that precious time to find more people who really are ready to progress.

and the other miracle is that our investigator Marta is super duper prepared to be baptized. She told us this week that she loves the paintings of Christ that we have in the church because they look just like Him. She has had a lot of death experiences and miracles in her life and feels like she has been preserved to accept this gospel. She told us that she wakes up during the night sometimes just to read the Book of Mormon. She feels like it was written especially for her. And she quit smoking even before we had taught her two lessons (even before we taught her about the word of wisdom as well). I love "golden" investigators like her. Not because they are easy, but more because they show me that really we are not the ones that do the converting. It is the Holy Ghost that testifies, and if they can recognize that, then the Gospel changes their life drastically. I´ll try to send pictures of her baptism next week.

Anyway, to answer some questions. No I have not had fleas yet. My companion hermana claros had them with a different companion, but i try not to touch the dogs that i know have fleas. and when i do pet a dog i try not to touch my head until i can wash my hands.

um, let´s see. oh my companion is named Carolina Reales. We got to the mission at the same time but I have a little bit more time than her because of the MTC in Provo. She is from Córdoba, Argentina. She was studying biology and music before the mission. Her dad lives in California right now, but is going to move back to Córdoba soon. She plays the piano and the Clarinet (but she had to send her clarinet home because we got a new rule for the area that we can´t have any instruments in the mission. borrowed or anything. good thing i didn´t bring my violin...). She wants to continue studying music when she gets back from her mission. She is great and we get along just swelly....haha if that is a word. Anyway, that´s about everything that i know about my companion. believe it or not we are together 24 hrs. everyday, but we don´t talk about ourselves all that much. haha. oh yeah, and she love, love, loves chocolate.

anyway, that´s all folks!
love, sarah


ps, congrats chris and claire. i´m super happy for them.
pps, wow, bexi is gonna have a baby!!! craziness. i wanna see her baby. for sure it is gonna be super duper cute. :)

Dear family,

Ok, so I don´t have very much time. This week was a good one. Well, they are always good. Even when they are difficult. We had some great things happen. One thing that I really liked was that we finally got to meet our president and his family. We had interviews with him and his wife and we met his daughter. she is 15 and makes me laugh. poor girl can´t speak spanish, but she goes to an international school and so she has friend that speak both.

oh yeah, and guess what. Heavenly Father totally blesses you for diligence. This sunday we tried real hard to get some investigators at church, but no body went. So we left and went to go look for someone. We contacted a guy named Fabian on the street. He doesn´t live in our area, but we invited him to church and he went to church with us!! wahoo! it was so good.

I learned so much about faith and hope this past week. Seriously. Nothing happens without these two things. I love preach my gospel. It is so inspired and I learn how to trust in the Lord so much more as I study PMG and the scriptures.

Thanks for the pictures fam. I LOVED them. haha looks like so much fun. We´ll have to do it again some day. Faith I wanna know what´s up in your life.

Ok, that´s all.
Love, Sarah

Dear family,
Hey the date is 7/11. you need to go to a 7/11 and get a free slurpie. yum. one time we did that in high school for our run. haha. ok, ok dad, don´t worry, it was at the END of our run. haha.

Ok, detail shmeetails. I am in the ward Libertad and it is split into two areas (A and B). we work with elder castillo (argentine) and elder jimenez (from utah). This is how my week went last week...

Monday:
we went to the mission offices in Ramos Mejía and I found out that my new companion (Hermana Reales) is awesome. We also learned that we didn´t have an apartment and that we didn´t have ANYTHING for that matter. We stayed the night in Ramos Mejía and worked in that area.

Tuesday:
we moved all our stuff to our new apartment and moved all our furniture in and everything (we have a big fridge and a microwave!!! :)...although I still haven´t made use of the microwave yet... oh yeah and we have AC and heating...not by duct, but still. a whole lot better than a space heater) then we had to get copies of keys so we could get in and out of our apt (actually it is a house that is pretty old, but has been remodeled some what, so it is pretty nice). we met our landlord Delia (we are going to teach her tonight... :D) and we got so sick of not doing anything that we didn´t put all our stuff away and decided to go find some people to teach. because it is a new area we literally had nothing. ZERO. so we started knocking doors. we found some people that were pretty receptive. Oh yeah and we met our bishop and a few members. We didn´t have a ward mission leader and my companion is GREAT and used the spirit to let the bishop know what´s up and that now that we have 4 missionaries in one ward, we MUST have a ward mission leader.

Wednesday:
spent a good portion of the day arranging everything and going shopping because we didn´t have any food. then we knocked doors all night. i think i understand more how Andrew´s mission must have been. knocking doors all day. It´s kind of fun, but then again it is fun teaching people too.

Thursday:
guess what we did. that´s right. knocked doors. oh and the elders brought us some directions and names of old investigators they had in their area book that now belong to our area.

Friday:
tried to visit some of the names we were given and found a guy named Alexis. He wants to learn more, so that is great. oh, and we knocked some more doors.

Saturday:
knocked doors. we were sad because we didn´t find anyone to bring to church (or anyone that could come to church on sunday for that matter...).

Sunday:
I love sundays because we get to go to church. Ok, Sunday always was my favorite day even before the mission, but I like them on the mission too. We walked to church sad because we didn´t have an investigator. Then we had tons of miracles. First, the Elders brought a lady in to Relief Society (Marta). turns out she lives in our area, so she is our investigator...and the Elders already set a baptisimal date with her. Wow. They are great. Now we need to do the same for them. Also, we got to know some of the members and they are all sooo excited to have sister missionaries in their ward because they have NEVER had sister missionaries. One sister (sister widman) told us that she had been praying to have sister missionaries in the ward. :) haha Then we visited Alexis and had a really good lesson. He didn´t want us to enter his house because of his dad. but then his dad came out and started telling us about how all churches are horrible because they are just businesses. he didn´t even let us speak to bear testimony. so after he left we started talking with alexis more (he is about 22 years old fyi...). anyway, he told us that he thinks basically the same way as his dad, but he doesn´t want to think like that. he wants to change. he wants to find peace and find answers to his prayers. so we gave him a Book of Mormon and bore our testimonies and promised him that he will find the peace he wants if he will read and pray about the Book of Mormon. He said he´ll do it. and he wants to go to church on Sunday!! wahoo! sunday was full of miracles.

anyway, that´s all folks! until next week.

Love, Sarah

Dear family,

Ok, so this week was an interesting one. Originally president benton
asked me if i wanted to stay in Ituzaingo 4 for another transfer. I
told him I would like it, but also that I was willing to leave if that
is what Heavenly Father had in store. Anyway I didn´t know if I would
stay and go, but I thought maybe I´d stay because that is originally
what President Benton said. Then we got a call from President Benton
wednesday night (the night before he was to fly back to the states...)
because he had a question. Then he said, "sister yingling, you might
want to start taking photos because MAYBE you will be leaving". So
that was a little weird. I still wasn´t 100% for sure if I was
leaving or not until saturday night when I got the call saying that I
would be leaving. I still didn´t know where I would be going to, but
knew that I was leaving. In the mission all the missionaries make
their predictions as to who is going where and it is real fun to see
if you are right. We knew that we were getting two more sister
missionaries who are visa waiters from Argentina, so we knew that a
new area would have to open because nobody was leaving either. So it
was hard to guess who would be opening the new area.

Anyway, this morning we went to the mission offices to find out where
everyone was going and an Elder came up to me and said that I was
going to the ward Libertad, area B. H. Claros and I looked at each
other all confused (because only Elders are in that Stake, and the
ward Libertad doesn´t have two parts A and B). Then my companion
started saying, "I told you, you are going to the new area!!!" haha
I found my new companion and we started learning about our new area.
Because we are the first missionaries in our area we don´t have an
apartment. Actually, yes. It was signed for on Saturday and we don´t
have furniture or anything. haha so tonight we are staying in the
area where the offices are. This will be interesting to start a new.
I´m excited though. I hope and pray we can start it off right because
then we can hopefully leave the area with a good foundation.

Let´s see what else happened this week. Well, we had to go to the
doctors office this week because my companion got whiplash (she fell
down...poor girl). But she also had an in-grown toenail that she
refused to take care of. haha it was really funny because she told me
(like 4 weeks back) that her big toe was hurting. I looked at it, and
it was obviously an in-grown toenail. I told her that we had to call
the doctor and she just kept saying "no, no, no, it will go away" but
usually those things don´t just "go away". anyway, her toe got all
infected so when we went to the doctors for her whiplash the doctor
looked at her toe and said he had to remove part of her toenail. we
went back on friday and i got to watch the "operation". haha it was
sooo cool. he pulled like half of her nail out of her toe (because it
had grown into her toe). anyway, afterwards we went back to the
mission offices and met our new president. President Carter is great.
And he is taller than me!!! (it is really weird because there are
few Elders who are taller than me and President Benton is considerably shorter than me...haha) Anyway, obviously president carter is awesome because he is taller than me. But really, I can tell that he is a good man and that he will be a really good president.

So, yes, a lot of changes, and I will for sure let you know how my new area is. It is weird, because usually you don´t change to an area or even a stake that touches the stake you were just in, but mine does and I think it might even touch my old area. we will find out when I see a map of our new area.

Anyway, thank you everyone for all your prayers. Seriously, they are the most important thing right now. I´ve really learned a lot about how important it is to realy on prayers in EVERY aspect of life. Not just missionary work, but really, everything. But, missionary work really requires more prayers. I like the story of Alma the younger how he went to the city of Amalekiah (uh, i don´t remember how you spell it in English...) and the people wanted nothing to do with his message (sometimes I feel like that too...even though I´m in an area of the world that is relatively receptive of our message). Anyway, he prayed and fasted very diligently for them and that is when he started seeing people change their lives. I really have a HUGE testimony of the importance of prayer and fasting.

Welp, love you all.

Love, Sarah Anne

p.s. mom, thanks for the reese´s. I enjoyed it so much and I shared it with my companion. She loved it. haha. they need to start selling here in Argentina. Oh and that is weird that they made all the illegal fireworks legal...haha and i hope puggs doesn´t die of a heart attack. i´ll be sad if he does. and I´m glad that the funeral went well for Uncle Louis. One thing I love about the plan that Heavenly Father has for us is that we know that we really can...one day....live with our family again. Heavenly Father is so smart I love it. :) This is one of the most important messages that we share everyday. how are we so lucky to have the knowledge of these things?

oh, i forgot to say HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!!! independence day here is the 9th of July. haha. oh and President Carter and his wife say hi. :)