San Jose

wow!! thank you all for writing me! we have had a really great week...i can hardly believe i have been here for 4 months now...yesterday we had stake conference in las piedras, and m russel ballard and boyd k packer spoke to our area thru a special broadcast...it was way good! the church here really is still in its young stage, not a lot of stong wards have been formed yet, but i know that it is only going to continue to progress! haha before i forget, yesterday the funniest thing happened..i dont know if i have mentioned in other emails, but  the dogs here are insane, there are like 50 dogs in the street for every person here...and they are everywhere...i have kinda gotten used to them, haha but i still hate them..so the other day we were contacting at this one house and this dog was in front of the door and i rubbed its belly with my shoe for like 1 second, and when we left the house it followed us like all day! it was ridiculous, and it was attracting tons of other dogs, it was horrible, everytime we passed by a pack of dogs they ran after the little dog that was following us and tried to attack it, so it ran towards us for protection and we were in the middle of a dog fight, it was horrible so we spent all afternoon trying to ditch the stupid thing....it followed us everywhere, we finally waited until it wasnt looking and we sprinted like 3 blocks to get away from it...ah...there are so many strange things that happen to us, haha we were laughing so hard after we had finally ditched it, and we were out of breath...gosh, what experiences we have had....

i got to do my first interchange with an american hermana...hermana kleinman...it was way fun! the first companion that i could speak english to, it was like we had been sisters all our lives and we only changed companions for one day!! i had forgotten how great it was to speak english and talk to someone who understands life back at home!! shes from orem....but yeah, i love my paraguayan companion!! she is teaching me soo much! when her family joined the church, all of the people in her neighborhood that had been close friends all her life stopped talkind to her family and now they dont associate with them because they are mormon....but she has the greatest testimony of the church! i have sent some pics...one with my comp and the other elders that are serving in our ward.....i cant wait for savannahs package, tell her that she can send videos if she wants i can find accesss to a dvd player..

love, gioia

Almost 4 Months

this last week has been a long one, but luckily we have been able to focus oon a lot more of the investigators that really are willing to listen to us. i hope that everyone is doing good at home. it would be great to hear how things are going! savannah was able to send a few of erins wedding pics in the last email!! they looked great!! we found out the other day taht after a million years of asking they are going to let us missionaries go to the temple...our zone is going to get to go november 11th and i am so excited!!! it is going to be great! haha this week we had some funny experiences....being here i have met quite a few catholic priests, and usually they are nice haha, but we were knocking doors the other day and this man came out was like i´m a missionary too and didnt want to listen to us so we asked him if he had heard of the book of mormon and we invited him to read it, but he refused and we asked him if he knew anybody that could benefit from our message and he said no then got all angry and was like if i told you someone to help then you would be working for the catholic church and he was like these are my people...haha but we just kept testifying to him of the truth and that we were there to lend service to everyone, doesnt matter what there religion is, we have met so many other priests and other people like him...thats always the best when they get all angry and dont want to listen to us, i have learned to have patience with them, and to maintain our testimony of the truthfullness of the restored gospel....i never would have thought i would have been confronted by other priests and teachers of other religions, but its interesting how many different types of people we find everyday in there homes

sorry this is short, hope you like the pics...

love, gioia

Week 18

Wow! it was so good to hear from all of you guys! the last email didnt have the pictures, haha so you will have to tell stacey or erin to work there technological skills...i am so excited for you all....haha it made me laugh really hard when you said to nicole that she she ask again next summer to shave her legs...wow everyone is just growin up! and kort is having another boy!! maybe when she gets to the 8th kid it will be a  girl!

 well, my new companion is great i am really blessed to have been placed with her...even though we are completelu different, i honestly have learned more from her example in just one week than i had in the first 2 changes....and guess what? she is teaching me how to speak guarani haha we´re starting  with a few small frases.. anyways, i thought it would be harder ahving had to be in charge of showing my new companion the area, but it really wasnt at all... i really feel like i have grown a lot this past weel, because most of the things that my companion before always did, i have been doing...like calling all the investigators and the members and making the appointments, and having to decide more things, because i know the area, and my comp doesnt...its been good tho, things that i thought were hard before, or that i was a little hesitant in doing, have become natural, and easy, just another part of missionary work....but i cant describe how much my new comp has taught me, she is really obedient and i love her testimony and how she works hard and does thing the right way!! and she is a little OCD like me and she keeps things really clean!! its been a relief to have a change of companions!! and we have been able to focus more on finding people whom the Lord really has prepared...we have always had a lot of investigators, that love us and let us come and teach them regualry, but they never still after these few months have come to church....so long story short, we had to be really honest with oursleves this week and going to drop a lot of the investigators that we had been teaching, because we had been losing a lot of time on people that were not progressing and willing to make the necessary changes in their lives....its hard, because we try so hard to convince these people the truth, and many of them have become our friends, but they are not ready to accept the gospel now, and i know that the their are people that have been prepared to hear our message and that really want to investigate the gospel, because they really are searching for the truth...i know these people are out there, and me and my companion are really excited, its going to be hard, sometimes it feels like we have nothing or nobody to work with...but i know that we are going to have succes, and that we will be led to those willig to change there lives.

 

i love you all, thank you for writing....i cant wait to see the pics of the wedding

!

 

 

love, gioia

Changes

Well, i can hardly believe it this is my first change in the mission!!! guess where i am going??? haha, nowhere, i will be in san jose at least one more change and guess what?? i have a new companion...her name is Hermana Medina and she is from Paraguay!! i havent really gotten to know her yet, we just met at the bust station and are writing emails in montevideo before we go back to san jose!! well!! i can not beleive how Amazing the conference was!!! it was so great! all of the talks were amazing...i loved the talk by elder arnold, it way crazy, because just a few weeks ago he was here with us teaching us at our zone conference! and it was such a blessing to meet him and his wife! they have such amazing and active testimonies!! talk about people who live what they believe, they truly carry a great spirit about them....
ok, i wasnt nervous at all about this change until these last few moments!! but i know that me and hna medina will have some great times together and that i have much to learn from her. i can´t wait to see what difference we can make together with the investigators that we have...and now it is up to me to show her the area, i`m a little nervous about that...im sure we are going to get lost alot haha, but i`ve been there 12 weeks so i should be fine! well, seems like everything is going great at home!!  . that last email i wrote i was way excited because i thought spring had arrived then it rained and stormed all week...haha we had to buy some really nasty looking and smelly rain boots, cuz thats all they had, its pretty funny you would laugh if you saw me wearing them, dont worry i`´ve got pictures...when it rains the streets turn into rivers, and i mean gushing ones!! haha the water doesnt stop.. well, conferenece really was amazing, i love our prophet and our leaders and i know that what they say is true, and that like they said the words of the living prophets are even more valuable than the words of deceased prophets! and how blessed we are to have a living prohet!!! i know that if we listen and apply there teachings we will be happy and we will have successful lives and accomplish everything  that the Lord sees fit that we need to accompplish . i have to send pics in the next email, because i dont have my usb cord with me to put them on the computer...but i have some pretty good ones haha, the conference weekend...me and my companion and another set of sisters stayed the weekend in an area called Progreso, so that we didnt have to travel back and forth from our area every session of conference because the stake center is a few hours away...but anyways, it was interesting i will just say that...6 sister missionaries in a tiny old one bedroom apartment...haha, good times, and there were only two beds, so we didnt sleep to well on the floor, but we just looked at it as if we were camping haha, we might as well have been outside!
send me pics of erins wedding!! you guys are killing me!!!! and tell chris and james and stacey and erin to send pics and updates too!!! savannah said she looked beautiful! tell stacey to forward me some pics soon!!!
well i love you and hope you keep writing me and send more pics!!!

love, gioia