Barrio Jardin - Semana 7

Heyyyyy HAPPY ARGENTINA INDEPENDENCIA DAY!!!!!!

yeah...so because it is independence day, there are close to no colectivos running today, which means we had to walk 2-ish miles so that I could write and tell you all how much I love you and passive aggressively complain about how tired I am from walking so far.  Also, this keyboard I´m using as almost all of its letters rubbed off, sooooo we´re just struggling a bit today.

So first off...EVERYONE IS GETTING MARRIED????? Really though, no exaggeration. I don´t really have any comments to make, but thank you everyone for keeping me in the loop. Happily ever afters for everybody!! yeay

minor accomplishments of the week:

I killed 5 bugs/spiders...with my BARE HANDS wooooo hows that for facing my fears. Granted they weren't very big, but still I think that deserves a pat on the back

and
I finished an entire chapstick and pen without losing them first

Hna. said I woke her up in the middle of the night, because...I WAS SPEAKING SPANISH IN MY SLEEP!!!! Yeay

Food facts to make ya fat :) BUT happy:

1)  In celebration of transfers I tried my hand at baking an Argentine dessert. Pasta Frola (sugar cookie tart thing) and considering the recipe was in Spanish and I dont really know how to cook, it turned out awesome, just a littleeee burnt with the first bath haha. but here´s the recipe:

Pasta Frola

PASTA FROLA:

manteca - 100gr

azucar - 250gr

harina - (por ahi) 400gr

huevos - 2

poco de vainilla
Mix it all together, lay it out all fancy in a cooking mold, then bake it for 15 minutes, then dollop dulce de leche in each of the little squares, and sprinkle cookie crumbs on top!!!

2).  Elder Preece and Elder Ollerton made dulce de leche and it must have been really good because they managed to eat the whole kilo in under 24 hours.

DULCE DE LECHE:

leche - kilo

azucar - kilo

mix in pot for 30 minutes TADA!!! This is awesome, because no one uses dulce de leche in the US, until nowwwww! But...its kindof not good for you, so maybe its not a good thing that I know how to make it in large quantities...he he he

3).  Everyone eats their cereal with hot milk and a bit of sugar....why have we never thought this?!?! It makes cereal eating 100 times better!!!!!!

Highlights from the week:

Being silly with Familia Benitez ! :)

The only thing scarier than being chased by a small gang of neighborhood hoodlums (dogs) is being chased by lightening in a rainstorm. yeah...real real fun. Really though the running through the rain is super sketchy because since all of the streets are made of dirt we´re slipping and sliding all over the place, and then since there´s so much humidity my glasses get all foggy, sooooo pretty much I can´t see anything. Hahah it´s honestly hilarious just a little terrifying.  The other super fun thing about rainstorms is when we´re in the middle of a lesson and I literally have to scream "YOU ARE CHILDREN OF GOD AND HE LOVES YOU" !!!!!!!! so that people can hear you over the noise of the rain and thunder. Mother earth is real real strong down here!

The good thing about drunk people is that they always tell the truth. The unfortunate thing is that sometimes the truth hurts. Hermano Ledezmo, one of our menos activas, is always superrrrr drunk whenever we go visit him. He always tell us how nice we look though, so that´s nice of him. But this time instead, he asked "Hermanita Cannon, you´re face is fat!! We need to make sure Hna. Amopola doesn't buy any pan casero today"...thank you for that...so yeah that was sad, but my mommy says my face is cute when I´m chubby so eh what can ya do.

The Spiritual !!!!!

I started reading Jesus the Christ. Woahhhhh it is so awesome and I´m kind of obsessed, but it is super hard to read in ENGLISH and I feel like I need a dictionary to understand the words haha but it is awesome and like 800 pages sooooo it should keep me occupied for a while.

Alma 26:12 is well...everyday of my life here. enough said

When plans falls through, it is because someone else needs to hear our message! Sometimes it sucks when plans A-E fall through, but we´ve been diligent and finding new people to teach because giving up is silly and every moment of our time here is precious !!!

Well I love you all! Have an absolutely fabulous day!

Les quiero
Chauuuu

Hermana Cannon

My area - Jardin, Misiones, Posadas

Staying in Barrio Jardin ! - El Campo 6

Hola Familia !

Entonces...just recieved a call from our Zone Leaders, because today is CAMBIOS 

 (transfers) !!!!! Well, as I predicted Hermana Tapia and I will remain companeros in Barrio

My Favorite Hermana Gonzalez

Jardín for the next 6 weeks, and then I get to kill her off! MUAHHAHAHAHAH She´s super excited to go home, maybe a little too excited *cough - trunky - cough*. (trunky=when you´ve already mentally packed your bags and all you can do is talk about home blah blah blah). nahh, its okay if I was in her position I´d be wayy excited too! Anyways, no real big changes within our zone, except for Hna. Gonzalez (my favorite) is leaving BOOOOOO :( But we get to keep our awesome zone leaders, so yay!

Anyways, I´m still riding the emotional high for watching the dedication of the Córdoba, Argentina temple! Coolest thing ever!!!!! Super jealous of my MTC Hnas that probably got to actually go, and will get to go to the temple while they´re serving, but ahhhh the spirit that filled our little stake center was so strong.  I couldn´t stop thinking about how much I took having the Salt Lake City temple and so many other temples within an hour of home. Or worse having the Provo temple literally a block away. We are so incredibly lucky...some of these people having been dedicated members waiting years for a temple to be less than a 15 hour colectivo ride. We are so blessed and need to take advantage of the blessings that the temple has to offer! After the dedication was over, all of us were real nostalgic (does that make sense) for the temple. Mehhhhh I miss it !!! But basically, there couldn´t have been a better reward for SURVIVING MY FIRST TRANSFER!!!!!!!!!!!!

Waiting for my mom to call...We finally got to talk on Tuesday.

After lots lots of patience I finally got to talk to my parents on Tuesday night instead of Sunday! Whoop 30 minutes flew by as expected...can´t wait till Christmas he he :)

The song "Rude", by Magic is currently playing here in the Cíber, so that´s really distracting... :(

Oh yeah, so I´m halfway through training! Yeay! It´s kind of terrible sometimes because I really have close to no idea what I´m doing sometimes BUT when you´re in training your pension gets a DVD player to watch all of the ´District Training Videos´ which means....ZUMBA VIDEOS IN THE MORNING FOR EXERCISE. Yes...it is awesome.

Hermana Jackman and her juicer !! 

I did divisions (splits) in my area for the first time, with Hermana Jackman (who is a newbie like me). It was
so fun, she is serving in Paraguay and right before she crossed the border she bought a juicer. So naturally that night we made juice. But as expected when you only pay 150 peso ($15) for a juicer, I wasn´t too surprised when part of the machine was missing, and juice was spilling everywhere. But the juice was really yummy, so it was okay I was soooo nervous at first that we would get lost, but it was actually really awesome! She is soooo awesome and I hope that we can be companions in the future. The Spirit helped us so much to get through lessons that day and we realized that while our Spanish is bad, it isn't AS BAD as we thought! yeay!

I rolled my ankle on a GIANT rock when we were walking in the dark, and I fell straight to the ground. Haha it hurt really bad and it was SUPER swollen so I was one of those wimpy people hobbling around with an ace wrap. Esta bien, estoy mucho mejor ahora!

Sometimes we have to go to the bathroom REALLY bad, and end up contacting a random house so we can use their bathroom, and then we end up staying to teach! Wooo!

Emmy & Cousin Bellie (pre mission)

All of the little children here watch Disney Jr. and this is really distracting because Sofia the First is ALWAYS on and all I can do is think of Bellie :( and it´s pretty funny because I can understand just about everything they are saying now !

I finally got some DearElders!!!!! So that was awesome! I think my favorite one though was from Gammie, "Sorry Emmy I didn´t answer your phone call when you called from the airport. I I deleted your message because I thought it was a solicitor"....sad haha but kinda funny. I LOVE YOU GAMMIE!

A lot of our investigators still forget our names, but they are always really curious and want to know what our other names are. But then they always either call us by our other names (which is confusing) or they just cant remember our name at all....you don´t NEED to remember???......., I´M WEARING A NAME TAG!!!!!

touching the clouds (me :) on the right)

Sometimes Satan is really mean and tries to convince me that I don´t want to be here. But...that´s just silly because there´s no place else I need to be right now. This week was super long, but I feel I grown a lot and learned so much this week. This work is real and it is an honor to be a part of it. 

BRING IT ON! 1 transfer down, 12 more to go

¡les quiero!

ChauChau

Hermana Cannon

El Campo Semana 5

technology issues !

Holaaa ! 
First, I would like to complain about how deceivingly awful calling home is...Yes yes seeing the beautiful faces of the fambam was truly a joyful occasion, buttttt Skyping from a computer with unreliable internet and a semi functioning webcam is not my favorite thing. I could hear everyone, but they couldn't hear me, and it was really sad. And I felt like I was a small animal that couldn't communicate with its  owners that it needed to be taken out go to the bathroom (hopefully you understand the agony from that metaphor). Anyways, found out that A LOT of missionaries actually call home, to spare the stress of the mishaps with technology. ill still get to call Mom again for 15 minutes, annddddd I get to use the "divorced parents" card and call Dad for 30 minutes, so that's awesome :)

attempt to Skype but no sound :(

So...this week was real tough. Hermana Tapia and I chose to focus on the Christlike Attribute of patience, and ohhhh boyyyy was our patience tested...

I started the week off real strong by making it out of the house and to the La Valle for zone meeting, without my name tag. classic. Thankfully there was an Hermana who had left her name tag in the pension of the other Hermanas, so I was Hermana Anderson for the day. I was getting a lot of confused faces, and then some people actually were calling me Hermana Anderson, so it was an easy way to figure out who still has yet to learn my name.

As you recall from last week I was supposed to sing a solo with Elder Thronton accompanying me for the meeting, butttt we hadn't gotten to practice or find music soooo we just assumed that we would do it the following week. FALSE!!!

"and now we will have a special musical number from Elder Thronton and Hermana Cannon"

whooooo?

oh good. Sooooo we winged it I sang, "I Know My Redeemer Lives" and I was super shaky and a little nauseous for the first verse, but after that it was fine, spiritual, and all that good stuff.

THEY ALL LIED! Winter here is REAL and it does get cold! But, winter here is super

annoying because its cold in the morning, like 75 degrees by noon, and then at night its so cold I sleep in my jeans and wind breaker...  Also, my fashion sense had hit an ultimate low when I left the house with long Spanx under basketball shorts under my skirt, two undershirts under my shirt, and two sweaters under my wind breaker...I vaguely resembled Joey, from Friends, during the episode when he puts on all of Chandler's clothes all at once. 

I did something I swore I would never do and I bought a pair of Crocs...but they are super cute, for Crocs, and there is too much mud sometimes to not have them. so they are a necessary evil.

Sad. The zipper on my shoulder bag broke so I had to buy a new backpack. It is purple, and with my short hair, someone told me yesterday that I looked like, Dora La Exploradora (Dora the Explorer) hehehe mehhhhhhh no bueno  :(

WATER!!!!!

So everyone has been asking me about the water sichiation...BASICALLY, if you are going to a country that has a sketchy water system, the CCM (MTC) will give you a handy dandy water filtration system water bottle. It is awesome!!! And I have not gotten sick! However, everyone, especially the Elders all make fun of me, because everyone usually ditches their water bottles and stomachs the water after the first week. FOOLS. Esta bien, I would rather take the ridicule, than have diarrhea!

I just wanted to say THANKYOUUUUUU to everyone that's been writing me and to let you know that I print off EVERY email, so I can read EVERY word, and I will eventually respond to ALL of them!! So keep sending your love and support it means so much to me to have you in my corner.

I have developed a slight obsession with Pepas (shortbread cookies with a dollop of jam in the middle) They are borrato, rico, y capo (cheap, yummy, and awesome)

Also, I discovered that my biggest weakness is pan casero = homemade bread. There are always guys roaming the streets carrying loaves of fresh bread, and lets just say my self control is being stretched to its limits. hehehe pan con dulce de leche is soooooo goooooodddd. Actually, FACT: Dulce de Leche makes ANYTHING taste better.

2 language barrier blunders:

Hermana Tapia was explaining the difference between abeja = bee, and oveja = sheep. Then I was showing off my uncanny impression of a sheep. Then while I was baaaaaaaaaing, I tripped and an old lady laughed and called me a drunk.   Next, we were teaching this lady that had hair so long, it reached the top of her knee (YIKES) But it was really pretty so I told her, "¡su caballo es muy hermosa!" andddd cabello = hair and CABALLO= horse...so I told her her horse was beautiful. she didnt have a horse. she just looked confused and slightly offended.

Hot dog !

The cure to laziness and fatigue is WORK! I have found that the more diligent we are the more success we have and the less tired I am. And this proved so true throughout this past week

Hna Tapia got so sick that we  had to go back to the pension so she could rest and I read the Book of Mormon the whole time. I just love every moment that I get to read its words. I am slightly ashamed that it has taken me this long to realize how amazing, powerful, and inspiring all of it words are, and my testimony of its messages is growing stronger every day. I know with all of my heart that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and I feel so privileged to share it with these people everyday.

I dont know Spanish,

I dont know the lessons,

I dont know the Book of Mormon,

I dont really know anything...

BUT my desire to serve is so strong, and I know that this work and my efforts are and will change hearts and lives of these people and eventually (hopefully) I will be a good missionary and teacher.

lots of love, miss you all!!!!

Te Amo

Chau.

Hermana Cannon

El Campo 4

Hola !

I´VE BEEN HERE FOR A MONTH!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOO HOO and I´m kind of figuring it out...ish.

Mantra of the Week: ¡MAS AGUA, MENOS PAN!  (more water, less bread!)

One of my faves, Hermana Gonzalez

This week started of good, with divisions with Hermana Gonzalez, in La Valle (more city vibe). Yeah...Barrio Jardín is better, but it was awesome to have a mini vacation and work in a different area for a day.

Nothing too exciting besides a lady who thought we were Jehovah´s witnesses and wanted me to come live with her because she´s lonely. pass.

In La Valle there are two sets of Hermanas so we had a mini fiesta consisting of eggs, rice, bread, and fruit smoothies. So it was basically the best thing ever. Also, I´m still not sure how they have a blender. None of the other Argentina have blenders; super jealous.

Apparently I´m really getting the hang of this contacting thing, because when I woke up the next morning Hna. Gonzalez told me in the middle of the night I was clapping in my sleep and introducing myself. haha whoops.

It was hard to go back to Barrio Jardin only because Hna. G and I are soooooo similar and we have the same personality and energy in lessons, but I know that Barrio Jardin is my area, and that I am here for the people.  Ankle exercises are a daily practice, because I roll my ankle at least once a day. At least after years of gymnastics I just pop right back up haha.  So here the custom when greeting someone, whether it´s a stranger or someone you know is to give besos (kisses) on each cheek. It was weird at first but its their custom, so now I´m used to it with all the ladies here. But I don´t think I´ll ever get used to having to quickly stick my arm out and dodge a guy leaning in to my face. No no, I need to shake your hand. Everyone is just so darn friendly.

I currently have 25 mosquito bites (which isn´t too bad) but 4 of them are on my butt! How rude, I feel so violated, and itchy.

Tomorrow I will be singing in zone meeting, with Elder Thornton (who is a Mozart on the piano) accompanying me. Only problem is is that I still don´t know what song I´m supposed to sing, and it´s tomorrow, and I can´t read notes. So....that should be interesting...

Friday was the 1 of May, and the Dia de Trabajador (Day of Work), where ironically, no one goes to work, or school! Instead everyone parties.  Therefore, I embraced my inner Argentine on Friday and ate LOCRO. Locro = everyone´s leftovers from the past week all thrown together into a giant stew. Now, I mean all leftovers...which means...COW INTESTINE. And I´m here to report that cow intestine tastes just as good as you think it would taste...

These puppies...make me miss my Georgie ;)

Two awesome ladies of the ward:  Hermana Correa - president of the Relief Society.  She has a son in Chile, and he is an only child, so she totally understands the relationship that I have with Mom, and provided me with an abundance of comfort food on Saturday. We were at her house for lunch on Saturday, and we were explaining what a blog was, so she had me pull mine up on the computer. She was looking at it for a while and then said, "I can´t understand any of this" Right...that would be because its in English haha    There's also Hermana Manchuk is 87 and is so awesome! She was baptized in her sixties and has a crazy strong testimony of the gospel. She has a bad leg and has to use crutches to get around, but she crutches to church every week, for a mile!!

New Investigators!

While looking for one of our references, we encountered Pierre and Gustavo. The first night we met Pierre I couldn´t understand him at all because he was speaking French. Good. Of, course later after we left,  Hermana Tapia told me that he was speaking Spanish, he just had a super thick French accent. Oh very good. It´s hard enough trying to understand normal Spanish...Any who, Gustavo is Pierre´s adoptive father, and they live with Gustavo´s wife and their son Emanuel, and they are all super spiritual and want to take the lessons! YAY!!! Pierre is 24, but, has more energy than a 12 year old boy, so he is rather distracting during the lessons. One minute we´ll be talking about the Atonement and the next minute he wants to know who my favorite American actor is, or what´s America like, how do I have such straight teeth (S/O to Jeff Sumsion!!!!) BUT, we got to teach him how to pray, which was literally the coolest thing ever! What a special experience listening to someone talk to Heavenly Father for the first time!!!

We had a crazy storm Saturday night and the power went out a bunch of places. It wasn´t too bad
except when we woke up Sunday morning it was still raining which means...no one was going to come to Church :( Yeah...we had about 20 people versus the normal 170 so that was really sad.

Well...that´s about all I have for this week!

Oh wait just kidding, I finally found a place to send letters!!! So I sent 3 and it cost about $10 dollars!!!! Entonces, they better get there or I´m going to be real unhappy. Also, anyone that receives a letter from me better treat it like buried treasure.

Okay, that is all!

te amo,

ChChau

Hermana Cannon