Hermana Tess Crawford: Hola!!

Hey!

First of all oh my gosh, I can't believe they already have my flight reserved and everything! 9:23 am at the Sky Harbor Airport......... Ahhhhhhh. Ok.

I'm glad you guys had a great week. Girls camp sounds like it was amazing based on what the girls told me, and the floor looks so great! I can't believe they flooded the house- that's insane! I hope everything's alright.

I also hope Rustin's surgery goes well and that in Olivia's next dive meets she gets better judges who aren't crappy scorers.

This week was a pretty good one! We got to go to Mendoza on monday and the meeting with Pres. was incredible. They talked about unity and tied in the Mundial aka the World Cup which is about to start in a few weeks (which I'm not excited about because it's gonna be cold and no one's going to let us in their houses because they'll be watching the games..), and they talked about being true disciples of Christ. This week we get to have zone meeting and share what they said with the other missionaries who didn't go. Our idea was to make a zone flag/standard of liberty type of thing with an Argentine flag that we wrote a scripture on (Moroni 7:48). It's going to be awesome.

My comp and I are doing great- we get along super well, she really is amazing and her story gets more insane every day. I'll tell you more about it when I get home, you'll want to hear it. She's kinda freaking out a little bit though because she literally only has TWO WEEKS left!! She's been emotional.. It's kind of helped me calm down a little though because the time I have left is a lot more that what she has left so it feels like it's further away... kind of. She's great though.

Our fave. family the Ibañez's are doing really well actually. Both boys came to church, and we're slowly helping the younger one resolve his doubts and the whole family understand the book of mormon better. We had a sweet lesson last night about applying the scriptures to our lives and we had them each read a story from the BoM individually, summarize it for us, and apply it to our lives. It went really well and they're starting to get it! Pray for them please, they're the best!

We had exchanges this week with the Hnas from Barrio 2- my old area. I went over there with Hna Aguilar (the Peruvian I lived with last transfer). It was cool to be there again and to see a few people I knew including the Patriarch, my investigator Luicana (her son got baptized, but there are major problems and threats from her boyfriend that keep him from going to church and her from getting baprized, and they're moving), and also an investigator of there's who's going to get married & baptized and was actually being taught a while before I was there last year who we had visited a few times but she stood us up twice so we gave up trying. Everyone really does have their own timing, it's crazy. It was fun to be with Hna Aguilar too- her comp is having some problems so I tried to help her figure out how to deal with them, which was good.

Oh yeah- interesting experience: we got a call last week from our district leader who said there was this guy who they talked to on the street that invited them to an addiction recovery group which happened to be in our area so he gave us the info so that we could go. We went this saturday and there was about 30 people (alcoholics and drug addicts) in a little gym room on benches in a circle. The meeting lasted 3 hours and it was actually extremely interesting to see the different stages of addiction people were in and to hear their thoughts/feelings and hear the advice other people gave them. There were some who we're in a really desperate and depressing state, and others who were doing ok but still struggling, and others who were recovered and super grateful. Towards the end Hna Anderson & I commented and talked about how God can help us overcome addictions and that His way is the best, longest-lasting way and that they could talk to us after the meeting to get more info about our message. We also said we thought it was awesome that they were helping eachother and talking with eachother about how they feel and what's helped them. It really was amazing, but at the end the guy in charge came up to us and said that we can come back if we want but this is a non-religious group and that he doesn't want religion contaminating it... So yeah, we might go back one more time because we said we would but it sucks because we know that the only real way that they'll be able to completely heal is through the Gospel. We tried though and invited them, so we feel like we did our part to help.

The ward is great and a love them all already. I got to give one of my last testimonies in Spanish on sunday, and they all freaked out that I don't have a gringo accent at all. We skyped with a lady from spain who's a recent convert's girlfriend who got him interested in the church and is keeping him active by reading 2 chapters a day from the book of mormon and analzying it- she's great.

Random story- our next door neighbor is the mom of the kids we teach English too and she's really young and has basically no money, but she's super sweet and we love her. Last week she asked us if we had an extra bible and we didn't, so we gave her a book of mormon instead (: We decided to help her and let her help us by paying her to clean our pench this morning, and I had an awesome experience answering the questions she had about why mormons sacrifice so much and why we suffer so many things as missionaries. She's great and is starting to get interested in our message, so pray for her too! She's going through a lot of rough things right now but she's so great.

This week's going to be fun. We're traveling 2.5 hours to Malargue- the furthest south that this mission gets- on Thursday to do exchanges with the hnas. down there. It's going to be FREEZING. Also it's my comp's second to last week so she'll probs be getting even more emotional.. haha! I love you guys and I hope you're week is mansa! Don't get too trunky y no quemen tanto por favor!

<3,

Hna Tess Crawford