Viva Argentina!

 

Hola!

This week went super fast!!

On Tuesday night a family in the ward took us to Olive Garden! Definitely made me glad I'm serving in America! #statesideperks

So sisters serving in Temple Square get to spend a few months serving in another mission in America so they can get a taste of what missionaries outside of Temple Square do. They don't find out where they are going until a few days beforehand. A couple weeks ago my friend Jennifer Skaggs who is serving there emailed me and said that her trainer Sister Casagrande was coming to my mission for 2 transfers! And then a couple days ago I found out that Sister Casagrande is now companions with Sister Lewis, the sister who trained Sister Galvan!

In mission lingo, your trainer is your "mom", so your trainer's trainer is your "grandma". And when you leave the mission, it is called "dying". So your last companion is the person who "kills you". Sister Lewis will be going home after these 2 transfers, so Sister Casagrande is killing her. So in mission lingo, Jen's mom is killing my grandma!! Crazy!

Sometimes we get up early to go on runs down by the water. Seeing the sun rise over New York City is amazing! The pictures definitely don't do it justice! When I eventually get transferred to another area (I'm hoping that won't be for like another 4 months) I'm really going to miss having such a great view in the mornings!

One interesting thing about Union City is that there are sooo many Jewish people here. Pretty much everyone here who isn't Hispanic is Jewish. There's a couple streets where every single person we see is Jewish. This is so different for me because I had never seen orthodox Jews before! They dress all in black and the men all have beards and little curls on each side of their face. Sometimes we can hear them speaking in Hebrew. Hermana Galvan says they're not allowed to talk to us. Whenever we walk past them we say hi but they always just ignore us and look away.

Yesterday, like 10 minutes before church started, the ward chorister came up to Hermana Galvan and I and asked if either of us play piano and Hma Galvan was like "Hermana Harris does!" So apparently nobody in the ward plays piano (which is so different than wards in Temecula because seriously everyone plays piano) and the only person who sort of plays wasn't there yesterday. So I had to play the hymns in sacrament meeting for the whole ward yesterday. I was so nervous because I got hardly any time to practice and it was so much pressure! Haha but all was well and I got through it. I'm just scared that now they're gonna ask me to play every week now that my secret's out haha.

I've realized that I'm becoming more and more Argentinian! Hermana Galvan already has me speaking with her accent, and then this week she had me try this drink called mate (pronounced maw-tay). It's kinda like an herbal tea and apparently everyone in Argentina drinks it every day. You have to drink it from a special kind of cup that makes it taste better... it's definitely different but I like it! She also sometimes makes milanessas (a really popular chicken dish from Argentina) and it's super good. And finally, our most solid progressing investigator Cristian who we saw like 4 times this week is from Argentina too!

Cristian is awesome. He had a baptismal date for yesterday (the 28th) but he didn't get to it in time because he hasn't had much time to meet with us and also it takes him a while to get to Union City because he lives in Queens New York (we got special permission from the bishop to teach him even though he doesn't even live in New Jersey). We asked him if he would be baptized on October 25th and his response was "can it be sooner?? I want to get baptized now!" So we told him that we will teach him as much as we can and if he learns everything faster than we expected, he can get baptized before that date. He's progressing so well. He said that he didn't believe in God before he started meeting with the missionaries but now he had no doubt there is a God. But here's the problem with Cristian. He lost his job and he's been looking for a while and hasn't found one. Yesterday he told us that he has $150 left and that's it. If he doesn't find a job this week, he won't have enough money to take the bus to Union City every day to see us like he's been doing. He also won't be able to pay his phone bill, which means we would have no way of contacting him. We are so worried about him because he has so much potential but if something doesn't happen this week we will have no way of seeing him anymore. So everyone who reads this, please pray that Cristian will find a job soon!!