San Jose Week 8

guess what we had our first baptism!! it was great ;) we had been teaching a young girl of 14 yrs named yescica. she is so great and such a strong example for her family, i really feel blessed to have met her, and shared the gospel with her! ...anyways...i hope everything is going great at home!

so, i know your all busy with the wedding haha, but what in the world is going on!! haha, i dont even know what day erin is getting married :) fill me in please and send pics!!! of her engagement and everything...erin and stace can help attach them to one of your emails. i love and miss you all ;) and remember that i need addresses for everyone...savannah is the only one who emailed me her address so for now i am going to send her all the letters i,ve written to stacey and erin and everyone so that she can get them to you all, until i know where to send them.

tell erin i am so excited for her! and that i miss madi and niki! i miss you all! but i am so grateful to be here...haha i was just realizing the other day that when i get back i will be 23 haha, that makes me feel old.

..also, something everyone should know just in case....dont worry about sending packages amd paying more so they come sooner...send them the cheapest way possible, because even when they say it will come in 2 weeks or 2 days...it will not come in that time...once it leaves the country, and enters uruguay they hold it at customs and inspect it...so just know that i prob wont get any of the birthday packages for another month or so,,,,it takes almost 2 months to get them...so just know that when they say it will get to me in 2 weeks it wont, so dont pay extra to send it....

anyways, i love you all, and am so excited to continue working here....

love, hermana moyes

San Jose Week 7

Where have you guys all been?? haha, i know it must be super busy with erins WEDDING!!! what is the day she is actually getting married? and i want to see her engagement pics!!! someone should email me them!! hmm...well, i am staying in this area for another 6 weeks at least, but i was glad i didnt change areas, beacause finally we are getting closer to seeing some results!! wow, last week we had zone conference with Elder Arnold, the area 70, and it was amazing these leaders are truly servants of the Lord, i have never learned so much in one afternoon all at once! whats been going on with you all? how are chris and james and stace and shad and erin? it def stinks that i cant email them, but i still want to hear from them :) what else is going on back at home...today, can you believe it is my 2 months in the mission!! 16 more to go, it honestly feels like i have always been here! this week we had some really great experiences!!! this entire time on the mision we hadnt had a single investigator come to church, it has been so hard to get them to come!! and the ward here is very weak, there are a lot of problems between the members that we are trying to fix to help strengthen them abd build the area, but me and my companion decided to fast and pray even harder to help the people have a desire to come to church, and i couldnt believe it this week!! we had 4 people show up!! me and my companion were so happy i can not even describe it! it has been the biggest battle here! that was one of the most important lessons i learned this week, to trust in the Lord and be patient, because the results will come! and they always come when we least expect it!!! i have learned to expect these miracles when we least expect them to come!! but they always come in due time, when we maintain our faith...it reminds me of a story someone told us in one of our meetings...about a worker who was put out in a field..God had set giant boulder in the middle of the field and told the man that his work was going to be to push the boulder...so day after day the man worked, with every piece of strenghth that he had, pushing pulling, sweating trying to make the boulder move, but after months and months, it still hadnt budged even an inch...so later after wanting to give up and feeling useless, he asks God, why isn´t this rock moving? i am working as hard as i can, i dont know what else to do? then God responds...¨"i didnt tell you to move the rock, i asked you only to push it.¨" 

and the entire time the man had been pushing it, he had gained muscle and strenthg that he had never before know, not realizing that the change and the work that took effect wasnt in moving the rock, but strenghting him.

i know that that is how life is, sometimes we feel like we are up against a giant boulder not making a difference in the lives of anybody, but we are making a differnce! and we are growing stronger as we do it! i love this story, because it teaches us to never give up or think that the good we do is in vain...if we trust in God and do exactly what he commands us to do, we are going to be blessed and strengthened..even when we dont understand or think it will at first...we must put our faith in him, and miracles will happen, when we least expect them to!

 i love you and miss you all, i wish i had more time to describe the people we are meeting here and to write more experiences we are having...the rest of this pday i am going to actually write you all more letters!! but still...please have somebody email addresses! i dont really have anybodys!!!

love, hermana moyes 

San Jose Week 6

 cant believ this will be my last week of this change...i dont have time to write today this pday we woke up at 3:45 am an took a train to our district mtg and then sone activity...and we just got back, so its late and our pday is almost over! next week will be as normal and i can fill u in on more details and send pics :)

 

love, gioia

San Jose Week 5

wow,

i cant believe how fast time is passing here! thank you all for writing me!!! i promise you will be receiving letters sometime soon! ok first i need you guys to ask everyone to email me there addresses, i dont have a single address! so if you could email them to me that would be great...but until i get them, i am going to have to maybe just send an envelope with multiple letters for all you guys and you can send them or give them to everyone else for me...i have letters, but i dont know where to send them ;) and also if u could email me some simple recipes...banana bread, bread dough, choc chip cookies, brownies etc....i dont know how to make anything off the top of my head, and i dont have any recipes with me :)

alright, this week has been great! yesterday we had a great experience, we have been working with a youg married family and we hadnt been able to contact them in a while, and we thought that they were avoiding us, but yesterday, they said we could come over and teach them, so we finished up the planning that we were doing and were so excited that they wanted to hear from us that we ran to there house! we ended up watching a dvd of the restauration with them, and they thought the dvd and the story of joseph smith was beatiful, and they are really progressing! i have realized more and more each day, the importance of being obedient to the Lord. he really does put people in our path for a reason, but if we are not following and listening to the spirit, we will miss these opportunites! i know that this church is true, and that joseph smith was a prophet! we are so blessed to have this knowlede, and everyday i have the opportunity to testify of Jesus Christ, i have realized more than ever that we really are in the latter days, and that the only way to be happy and to feel peace in our homes and for ourselves is by following the will of the Saviour, and learning about Him.

i love you and miss you all!

you can send me packages and letters to the mission home anytime throughout the mission, always send it to the mission home at this address!

Mision Uruguay Montevideo
Dalmiro Costa 4635 Bis
C.P. 11400
Montevideo, Uruguay

last preparation day we went to the zoo here...haha it was more just  like a park with a few cages, but it was fun!! hope u enjoy the pics! :)

love, hermana moyes

San Jose Week 4

ok, first of all i am so jealous you get to enjoy the sun! haha, it is freezing here, and i have never expierenced so much rain in my entire life!! at least twice a week it rains all day and night non stop...and we come home soaking wet...we tried tying grocery bags around our feet but somehow the water still gets into our boots...it was hard at first, im not gonna lie i hate the rain, but we have learned to get over it and have as much fun as we can, sometimes it works to our advantage haha cause when we are knocking on peoples doors they feel sorry for us and let us come in and teach them, when they otherwise would have just said no...for example the other night we had the greatest experience ever...we were completely exhausted and it was about 8pm, we are supposed to be out contacting til 9pm, but with the rain all day and night we were soaked and we still needed to get about 10 more contacts to meet our goal of contacting 20 new people each day, so we finished a lesson and decided even since we were freezing and soaking wet, we had to complete the goal and find more people, so we decided, that since we only had an hour we wouldnt teach any lessons, we would contact the people give a brief message and make an appointment to come back and teach the lessons....but, the Lord had something else in mind....after knocking on a few houses and getting rejected, we found a house and a man with his 2 children let us in and he was really interested in our message! we ended up teaching him the entire message about the restoration and the book of mormon, and he was soo excited and interested and kept asking questions...we definitely felt the spirit with him and his family. and after that experience we left his house soo happy haha we ran home, and kept thinking about how important it was that we persevere, even when the rain is pouring down! we wont be led to the people whom the Lord has really placed in our path if we arent willing to give everything that we have...that was just one great experience that helped me this week, now the rain doesnt bother me as much haha...

hmm...ok, i will def take pics of the house....it is very modern...haha, actually i am not gonna lie, when i first got there, my companion from honduras kept talking it up and saying it was the best house in the mission, compared to all the other areas, but it is horrible haha, it was extremely hard for me to adjust to living there, almost none of the outlets work, a lot of the lights dont work either, and if we want to flush the toliet, we have to fill up a bucket of water and fill the toilet tank ourselves, or else it wont flush....haha it makes me laugh now, but at first i was thinking "you have to be kidding"  after being in week in some of the members houses seeing them with 3 kids with barely a roof and no electricity, what we live in is a mansion! and i would never have thought that before, but the Lord has humbled me ALOT and i realize everday how spoiled we are in the States, we really are blessed with so many day to day things that the people here dont have....i am going to send some pics of everything so you can see what i am talking about. the people here are great, although not very many come to church...that is one of the hardest things here...nobody has a car, some have motorbikes, but the majority dont have anything, so when it rains nobody comes to church, and nobody will make the effort to walk to church...we meet amazing new investigators everday, and we are trying to prepare them for baptism, but they wont come to church because they are lazy! it is soo sad, we have been working alot with this problem...

what else, well someone needs to tell savannah she is a bum for not writing me! i havent heard from her in a month! and if you guys could forward this weekly email to all the siblings that would be great! tell them all that i still want them to email me!! even though i cant repy thru email i still love reading there emails, haha its a little selfish, haha but thats the rule, i can enjoy their messages, but they cant enjoy my responses, unless i send them a letter...well, time is almost up, it is crazy how fast it goes, i will get better at writing more letters throughout the week, so i am not rushed trying to cram in all my experiences in 30 minutes on the computer...

here is the address of the mission house, send all my mail here...they never send stuff to our actual address that is why i havent given you one....so send it to the mission home always...and they will make sure i get everything

i love you and miss you all!

there are some pics of when we crossed some railroad tracks it was a scary bridge haha, and a pic at one of our district meetings.

Mision Uruguay Montevideo

Dalmiro Costa 4635 Bis

C.P. 11400

Montevideo, Uruguay