Zone Conference Picture

wow, i can not believe you are making that many pumpkin pies, that kinda seems a little insane, maybe you could just send one this way...this week flew by like all the rest of them...and i can not believe that in less than a month i get to call you all.,..the only thing that sucks is that its only going to be for 40 minutes that we can call, and i have 2 families to talk to, totallly not going to be long enough, but i hope you are all together on christmas...the weather has been gettin pretty hot, and super muggy..ahh you guys are all preparing for blizzards and my tan lines get worse everyday haha....its crazy, having to be outside all day tracting really takes a toll on ya, but i`ve actually gotten used to it.they changed our pday today, and we had a district activity.

love, gioia

My First Missionary Fight... not really, but she didn't title the email so I did :)

so, this week totally flew by, ah we had the craziest experience the other day, i can barely believe it.def not something that i am ever going to forget...ok so we were knocking doors in this one neighborhood like normal....but nobody answered so we crossed the street to talk to a few people that were sitting on the curb outside of there houses, there was a man in about his thirties i would have to guess... and then two women...so we present ourselves as normal, and then he said that he already knew everything, so my comp asks him...so tell us what exactly do you know about our church? because they always so they have heard everything about our religion and in reality they know nothing...then he was like, well where do you want me to start, with Moroni or with Jose Smith...and we were way shoked cause it seemed like he actually knew what he was talking about, and we got to know him a little bit more, he seemed nice at first and told us that he is a priest of his own church, which he wouldnt mention the name of...and said that he had done a ton of research about all the major religions before he finally decided to stay with the one he is with now...then he started asking us questions, well basically he directed every question at  me and was totally trying to destroy my testimony....i literally met zeezrom from the book of mormon....and i knew that all he was trying to do was confound us, which he did not suceed at doing...i cant even remember all the questions he asked us, really deep complex questions that nobody knows the answer to, and then when we said we dont know everything, he would critisize us and say "you dont know, you dont know" you have been called of God, why cant you get amswers to these questions, there is always a why to every questions, and you cant be true servants of a God if you cant answer a question....so we threw the same questions back at him, but he wouldnt answer them either....it was completely strange, and i knew that he was only trying to get us to deny our testimonies, then he started saying really horrible things about our church things that i am not even gonna repeat..and it was the first time that i have ever felt angry with an investigator, but i just kept testiflying to him and said that everything that he was saying was a lie, nd he was like but how do you know? you cant know the truth, and i just said i know that thru the power of the holyghost these things are true and its something that you should seek to obtain, and he shut up, and we walked away...ahh, i cant even describe well how it went, but yeah, after that my testimony def grew, and for all of his intentions of trying to get us to deny our faith we held firm and his plans failed.

love, gioia

Still San Jose- Cambio 4

hey you guys!!!!!

ah man, this past week has been so great!!! the temple was amazing!! i´m not gonna lie i was super nervous to have to go through a session that wasnt in english, but it was great! and afterwords presidente da silva and his wife had a great zone conference with us. We got to discuss some great things about the temple!! things that i had never ever thought of before!! anyways, changes came, but i am staying here in san jose one more change at least, ahh, and i can hardly believe that i will be approaching 5 months already in the mission, which is practically already six and that mean that i am nearly a third way through the mission? but who´s counting right? haha it is crazy how fast it is going!! i cant say that i am a greenie anymore!! or as they call us here i am no longer an oro....anyways...next week we will be back to our regular schedule and pday will be on monday as usual...

ok, so something big that we have been planning that we are going to be doing here is we are planning to have a family home evening with the entire ward led by the missionaries...and we have been planning it for a long time, because honestly the situation here is pretty grim, and the progress slow!! we are going to teach the members the importance of the social role that they play in missionary work and how for any investigator to recieve a true conversion they have their are 2 types of conversion...the social and the spritual, and how important it is that they do the social part, which is the easiest part!!! anyways, we have been planning a ton of practices and want the ward to be involved, basically its like an interactive fireside, but i am kinda nervous because the other 3 missionaries that are in our ward are pretty much depending on me to make this happen, but i know that if we plan it well this activity is really going to make a difference in the ward we are in...there are so many things that need to change here!! and we need to start with building up there families and encouraging them to live the gospel more fully, because until they do, we will be knocking doors all day everyday, doing the work alone...but that is not the way it should be, their is so much success if we can get them reactivated and invloved in a very personal way...i have sent  a bunch of pics from zone conference and the temple...you can see the missionaries in my district, and the one with the four of us is me and my comp and the elders that are also serving with us here in the same ward....there are four of us here, but even if we had six more missionaries the work would stay the same, we need the members so much!  but yeah---i am gonna try and send more letters soon!! i love you and miss you all and i can not wait to be able to call you in a month and talk on christmas!!!! ahh its gonna be great, i hope you all can be there together so i can hear from all of you guys.

here is the address again...to send any letter or package to

MisiónUruguay Montevideo

Dalmiro Costa 4635 bis

C.P. 11400

Montevideo, Uruguay

:)

hey guys!!!! i freakin love you all thanks for all the emails!! sorry they changed pday only thins week because we are going to the temple tomorrow!!! woot woott!! and yeah! zone conference is tomorrow!! so excited! and heads up, changes are this tuesday, so i will be having the next pday on tuesday, so yeah...i might be staying in this area, might not...i have one favor to ask, there is a talk by diana holsher i think is her name...called the missionary next door!! all of you need to listen to it soooo good, and i need someone to see if it is available in spanish, we want to do a ward activity but its kinda long for us to translate ourselves..anyways, i will write much more next week,,,i´m pretty sure that me and my comp will be together for at least 1 more change in san jose, but ya never know!!

love, gioia

San Jose... I can't remember what week

hmm...i am not sure what week i am at now, i cant keep track anymore....but i am way excited because we are going to the temple in 10 days, and it will be my second zone conference....so exciting. this week we had some tough experiences, two of the really great families that we had been teaching dropped us...man i hate when that happens, they told us that they like our company and the messages and everything and that they dont doubt that it is true, but they just dont think that they need to change, or that they dont feel it is neccesary...i never thought it would be so hard hear that, from people that we have learned to love so much...but they have their free agency and its just not their time to accept the gospel right now i suppose, kinda sucks, but thats part of this work...moving on with hope and faith knowing that the poeple who are prepared to recieve the gospel and are willing to change their lives, are out there...i know they are, but it has been so stinkin hard to find them....it has really caused me to reflect alot and really made me gain my own testimony....i never really understood what it meant to have your testimony tried, and even tho it is growing daily, it is being tested...so many times investigators, pretty much all the people we meet, have so many profound questions about life, sometimes it makes me wonder too...if God really does love us, why does he let so many things happen? or why is it so hard? but then i just have to constantly remind myslef that His plan is perfect and that without these tests my testimony would stay the same, every time someone questions us we are called to anwer  as the voice of the Lord, and even tho sometimes i dont even understand why people are faced with so many things, the answer is always the same, thru the gospel of Jesus Christ their problems can be solved, or at least made bearable, our burdens will be lighter with our knowledge and underdstanding of His plan for us. even though my knowledge is not perfect i know that there is no other way to have happiness in this life, we can either liv the rest of our lives wondering why things have to be so hard, or we can rely on the Lord, ask Him in prayer what He wants us to learn form it, and gain strength, we really cant be stronger until we are tried and tested, and i love be able to help people realize that. that yes it is true, life is hard sometimes, for many of the people here, all the time, but if they would just think for one minute and take the time to ask our father in Heaven if He really does exist, will He please help us? then they would recieve the answer to there prayers and they would be willing to act and follow the example of the saviour...everyday we strive to improve the way we teach and live worthy of the spirit, which is the only teacher there is really. i am so happy for all of you and that you have been writing me, and i hope that whenever you start to question something, especially your testimonies of the church and the principles of the gospel, that you "would not ask if these things are not true"  there is a quote by gordan b. hinckley that has really helped me out lately..."Do you want to be happy? Forget yourself and get lost in this great cause. Lend your efforts to helping people...Stand higher, lift those with feeble knees, hold up the arms of those that hang down.Live the gospel of Jesus Christ."

if we are not willing to make an effort and live the gospel of Jesus Christ, we shouldnt expect to recieve the fullness of the blessings he has in store for us...i guess that is what sometimes makes me sad when we find great families who just "dont feel like its neccessary to change" when if they would just experiment upon our words they would recieve the promised blessings....thats how it is for all of us, and i guess its good to question things sometimes, it makes us think about why we do or dont do certain things...but until we try our faith and test the Lord to see if by our obedience He will bless us, we will never know partake of the amazing blessings that await us. the more we appy these principles, the more we recieve, we just have to ask and try it for ourselves.

 

love, gioia

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