February 22, 2016

Well.... wow did anything happen this week... or did everything happen this week. so being a long way from posadas its almost as if the office just forgets about us.hahaha not really there are tons of missionaries up here sooo we arent completely alone.. .. im going to start wth the funny stuff and then get to the amazing spiritual experiences that we had this week.  but this whole week we have had problem after problem where do i even begin. its acutally quite humorous. 

so being new in the area and the first ones... we dont have a lot of stuff... including the rent. and water... hahaha so we this week we made a huge list of like 10 things to talk to the office about.

but what do you know.. our phone cant call argentina. they can only call us. so we spent the whole week with dirty water and no money for rent! super fun right.

no wednesday ad thursday we had divisions with the hermanas here in barrio 1 it was super fun!!! i was with hermana nilson oh my hilarious she wants to go ito the marines and is seriously a sister that you would hardly believe your eyes if you met her... but super fun! we got to work with clotilde and fransisco. but it got a little crazy thrusday.... the ZL call us wednesday night and are talking to us about 2 of our girls that need a bit of help finding new investigators. they thought it would be a good idea to do divisions with them.. SOO THURSDYA... we planned it! we left thursday afternoon planning to come back at night... we get all the way out there. ( meanwhile getting lost on this crazy bus system) and we find out there are no buses that return at night because every single paraguayan goes to bed at 6 pm... hahahah no thats a bit of an exaggeration but super early

and we had to stay the night in our sweaty clothes and without a toothbrush. #solid. but yeah as we are getting ready for bed that night we finally get a call from the office to tell us we have to be at the chruch at 8 am the next morning in centro... soo really far.. back by our house. so we set the alarm for 6 am to get out there shower and ready to go to the chruch for CONSEJO!!!! WOOOOOOOO

we had consejo this week.. well a mini consejo here in ciudad. but yeah.... but along with our long list of honey dosss... except we dont have honeys to do them.... WE HAVE TO FIND A NEW HOUSE. so pretty much we are just focusing on our progressing investigators and HOUSE HUNTING INTERNATIONAL. you know it...

anyways long story short but president thinks it will be a better option if we move into a more central part of the area. so we are using the members in order to find a house in the next 2 weeks before transfers come around. #challengedaccepted.

but this week although we finally got money for rent and we finally got everything settled being 500 km away from posadas. we had some amazing lessons.

hermana newell is amazing! seriously she knows what is up...... she knows when it is time to be chill and when its time to get down and dirty and to drop the cane. she is my hero! i seriously love her... every night we just talk like wow... we have such spiritual lessons everyday. and seriously i dont think that i could have done this transfer without her! President la pierre said that it was a clear choice when he was looking at the hermanas to open up this new area! it had to be us!!! because we needed each other! 

Yesterday was AMAZING!!!! we had 4 investigators in chruch... although the week was absolutely crazy and we were running around to and fro and not being able to work as much as we hoped there were baby miracles... I love that!

I know that god is in this work! i know that he trusts me and hermana newell with everything that is going on!! he knows who we are and what we are doing and he is the one in charge! i know that this work is true! I know this gospel is the way! lately i have been reading a lot about conversion.. and really honestly what it means.. there is this talk by elder bednar called being converted to the lord! go read it!!! but it talks about peter. I LOVE PETER! he is soo cool. but how even though peter walked with the lord and talked with him he still had to be taught by him and at the last supeer the lord prayed for him! he was still working to be converted! we are all there... working to be converted!

we have to continually do the little things with real intent. not just do them but apply them... really pray.... really read the scriptures... get as much as possible from chruch.. suffer like our savior... plead with our heavenly father.. and little by little his spirit is going to change us. change our hearts and help us become the people we need to be! its amazing as a missionary to see that change!

i love this work i know it is true.. have the best week and keep the faith!

BIG BIRTHDAY SHOUTOUT TO MY 2 HERMANITAS.... hap!py birthday cuties cammers and clarence! you rock and i can feel your prayers!!! EAT SOME MAGLEBYS CHOCOLATE CAKE FOR ME!!!!

love ya

xoxoxo hermana pitts 

Feb. 15, 2016

this week is half way.. WHAT HAPPENED??? i swear. this has been the fastest slowest 9 months of my life..

but this week has been super good. We are working hard here in barrio 1. 

Every since we got here we have had members calling us right and left to teach their friends and family!!! SUPER COOL! seriously i swear we get like 20 references a week. which is just unheard of.. its crazy how prepared this area was for sisters!! they NEEDED SISTERS!!! sooo out of all their friends we are finding and teaching and NOW WE ARE PROGRESSING!!

I think i told you last week about the familia mendieta that just recently moved from asuncion! but their nanny is amazing we are working with her a bunch to help her be ready for her baptism at the end of this month!! PRAY!!!! please... clotti is 20 and has come to church 2 already!!! We are just putting our faith in the lord to see what he has in store for us!!! we have been really working on working  by faith this week! 

i know that heavenly father is in our lives he is working with us every step of the way and i love as a missionary to see his hand working! sometimes this work is hard... but i think lately i have been realizing that it isnt my work.. it is the lords! i just have to live worthy to have the spirit and allow him to work throught me! 

we have 2 investigators that are progressing a ton!!! one of them is clotti and the other is another reference from a member fransisco.... he is super cool!!!!! he wants to know the truth... its amazing to watch people change to see how the gospel opens up there eyes that is what is happening to fransisco... it is slow! but i know the lord is working miracles in him! he is only 16 soo we have his baptism planned for the middle of march...

there are lots of miracles here in barrio 1... i am sorry i had a whole letter written and then it deleted soo i dont have lots of info... but ill tell you all about it next week

i love you have the best week.... keep the faith i know that its true... the faith the chruch our savior...

Xoxoxox hermana pitts

Feb. 8, 2016 Acting in Faith

Well lets see.. I MADE IT A WEEK!!! hahahha WOOOHOOO. no im kidding. this place seriously is amazing and scary (because we have no idea where we are going half the time) and beautiful full of people i dont even know how to explain it. 

but first of all HAPPY ANNIVERSARY A MIS PAPAS wow... im soo grateful for you guys. i thank heavenly father every day for your examples your testimonies and your faith. I love you guys!!! 
ok... this week. we had quite a few miracles that happened..

so this ward is amazing!!! seriously they take care of us and it is sooo great. There are 3 young woment that are preparing for the missions and want to accompany us (i dont remember how you say that in english ooopps.) but yeah... awkward. but THEY WANT TO HELP US! so we have practically left everyday with one of them to get to know houses of members and houses of menos activos and then the best part is that every day ends with a lesson of one of their friends!!!  hashtag references!!! how BOMB!!! 
but we have been doing really good.. getting to know a little bit more of the area and the members we can at least recognize their faces and about half of their names. There are is about 100 in asistencia which is amazing!! but our goal is to get this barrio going!! 
AHHH ok... what happened this week. WE. FOUND. A. FAMILY. holy hannah it was a miracle. Last sunday we were walking by this house that we had contacted before and they werent home. but their neighbors were pulling stuff out of their car so being the good misionarias that we are... hahah we asked them if we could help... but the dad quickly turned down the offer but as we began to introduce ourselves he told us that his kids were mormon!!! ahhhhh 15, 12. 10 and 6. and that they always went to chruch with their grandma but she stayed in asuncion and that they had just moved their from asuncion. WE WENT BACK!!! and we started teaching the family... getting to know them.. turns out their nanny who lives with them is super sad to leave her home in asuncion and so we invited her to come to church with the kids! AND THEY ALL CAME!!!! 
AND WHEN WE ASKED HER WHAT SHE THOUGHT!!! SHE LOVED IT!!! AND WANTS TO COME BACK NEXT WEEK!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH SOOOOOOOO COOLL 
but we also have a friend of a member of thge family sosa who is really liking the churhc as well.. he is susper awesome and has some amazing questions! but yeah. he has come 2 weeks in a row! as we are getting to know the area more and working by faith really honestly its amazing to see the hand of heavenly father in our lives here! this mission is DANG hard... SUPER HARD. never have i felt soo lost and uncomfortable and out of place and scared than i have this past week but i know that heavenly father is blessing us every step of the way! 
I love this gospel. and love this work. this is the lords work! i know that it is true and i know that he is doing the work we are only his instruments!
Oh... hahahah funny experiences this week... i had a dengue fever scare... hahah ive been a little under the weather these past few days... lots of diarrea and throwing up... but dont worry i am fine now... but they thought i had dangue i swear whatever illness you have the answer to the paraguayns is dengue... but yeah! i am doing fine now.. eating a little but living! hahah I love these people.. the whole ward practically freaked out and were amazing to us! but i guess you ahve to have one of these experiences at least once on the mission. I think it was food poisoning... cold sweats headache the whole shabang.. hahahah but at least i can laugh about it now. but yeah...
we also ate indian food... hash tag curry. but yeah im doing good. 

I love you guys! the mission is everything. have the best week keep the faith and remember how much our heavenly father loves us. he knows who we are and is there every step even though we cant see him. that is why we must act by faith! we must do our part. trust in him. a few weeks ago i was studying faith and hope. I love the verse in romans 8 25 that says that hope is waiting with patience it is having the faith that the good things will come and just waiting patiently for them! thats what we are doing here... developing the hope for our earthly home! i love you
xoxoxo hermana pitts 
keep the faith and act by it! 

February 1, 2016

holy flip this has seriously been the most crazy week of my entire mission... so i let all of you know that i was leaving encarn and headed up north east to the ciudad. HOLY COW..... sooooo monday tuesday and wednesday were pretty normal teaching preaching and enjoying my quaint little city on the coast of the rio parana.. wednesday we had our noche de rama and IVAN GARAY came home! a missionary that was serving in the same mission as bradi richan! CRAZY! but he came home wednesday and thursday morning we were off to ciudad del este....
6 hours in a bus and lots of butterflies we arrived... hahahha My comp is hermana newell and SHE IS AMAZING!!!! i love her... seriously i couldnt have survived this week without her....... i sent a voice recording i hope you can understand its been raining a lot this week. but holy cow... we got here thursday and we didnt have a phone... sooo we spent all day thursday practically lost and a little bit sleep deprived (from a lot of worry) and then friday we got a phone!!!! ahhhhhh wow....
soo let me tell you a little bit about our new area... CIUDAD DEL ESTE BARRIO 1 its the biggest mescla i have ever seen seriously such a melting pot... it is the oldest barrio in ciudad del este.. its crazy the church is alot stronger up here than it is in encarn or in posadas. but there are families from ALL over the world... India, mexico, brazil, paraguay. but the ward is super organized... the most organized i have seen in a while and its kinda crazy! i am talking i havent had a lunch with a member in 4 months... and now we have one everyday and back ups to in case they fall through. we have this awesome leader misional that is from mexico.. (we are going to be eating mexican food tuesdays ahhhh)but yeah there are familes that have A TON of money... im was blown away and there are familias normales. but really its amazing and i am super excited to serve here.
as sisters we have been welcomed with open arms. soo history of the area... there havent been sisters in about 25 years here in the centro... sooo everyone is super excited to have us! its really fun.. but i dont have much to tell you other than i know that god is protecting us and guiding us as missionaries.. we havent found a lot of investigators yet but i know that we will. i know that this chruch is true. heavenly father knows every single one of us. and he wants us to be happy. i love this gospel... love you guys...
a few extra prayers for me this week... please????
love you so much..
keep the faith

xoxoxo hermana pitts 


Ali sent an audio recording!  She and her companion Hermana Newell talked together the whole time:

[No photos this week as Hermana Newell and her companion, Hermana Pitts, both had their cameras stolen.  They also sent an audio file to describe their first days in Ciudad del Este.  They didn’t think they could get it all written down.  Here is some of the transcription.]

Hola from Ciudad del Este!

Transfers were Thursday and we had a 6-hour bus ride to our new area.  We were chatting on the bus with no idea what would happen when we got here. [The two Sisters are opening a new area.] 

Elder Madder came to get us and he has only been here for about a month.  We were pretty lost.

Usually, when you get to an area you have a cell phone and you’re prepared with phone numbers of members.  We got here and didn’t have a phone.  We felt pretty lost the first night.  But Friday morning we received a phone. 

The apartment is perfection—beautiful.  It is like a little house.  We have a room for our study room, a wardrobe area, a bathroom, a bedroom, a kitchen, and a separate dining table.  It’s pretty great.  It is practically brand new except they have problems with ants and with water leakage. [It was raining so hard during the audio recording we could hardly hear.]

Ciudad del Este is nuts.  It’s huge as a city.  The traffic is ridiculous.  We have to watch out because the cars don’t stop for people.

The first day we found out that we have members who live only a couple of houses away.  They are from India (!) and they were making their curry while we were talking with them.  It smelled so good and we were so hungry. We really wished we were eating with them.  They have a gorgeous house.  It is bigger than any house I have been in on my mission.  The kids were all dressed super nice.

It gets better…

On Friday the Elders invited us to eat with them at a member’s house.  They said that they were coming to pick us up and we were like, “what does that mean?”  We walked outside and there is an Audi in front of our house with a Brazilian brother taking us to his house for lunch.  They take us to the Country Club.  It was like being in California at a beach resort surrounded by huge houses and lawns.  They served us Brazilian rice and beans. It was so good.

He took us on a tour of the Country Club and the city.  Ciudad del Este is right on the border with Brazil. The Brazilian money and economy are down and so Brazilians come here to buy cheap things. Everything is super cheap. There is a bridge across the river [Paraná] to Brazil and there are no regulations.  So we could just walk on over to Brazil—we won’t!—but we could.  People travel back and forth all day every day.

The brother invited us to go golfing.  He doesn’t golf or know anyone that does golf but we could go if we wanted.  I have never been invited to go golfing on my mission before.

On Friday we started walking around and contacting.  It was super-hot.  We come to a house and hear someone yelling, “Sisters, Sisters.”  In Brazil the sister missionaries are called Sisters and not Hermanas. The interesting part is that my companion and this woman had talked in a grocery store several months ago in my companion’s last area.  At that time the woman was so sad that her ward never gets sister missionaries.  And here we were at her home!  The family is super strong in the church.  They have a son on a mission and two daughters, 17 and 22, who want to work with us.

Saturday we ate lunch with this family, the Sosas.  After lunch it started to rain and we were soaked.  Soaked and lost.  We were walking through water a foot deep.  We got lost and didn’t know where we were going.

There is a set of Elders in our area but one of them has dengue fever.  So he is has to stay in bed and he is the only one who knows the area as his companion is also new.

Sunday we went to church and everyone had their Audis and BMWs and Lexuses. It is so extreme from the other parts of the mission.  Everyone is always taking us around in their cars.  It is so weird.

We had lunch with a family on Sunday who spoke Portuguese most of the time.  Basically three-fourths of the people speak Portuguese and then Spanish and Guarani and actually a lot speak English.  This family is from Brazil.  The father was born in the church.  They are a very strong family in the church.  They could speak more English than Spanish.

The ward mission leader is Mexican.  He is cooking lunch for us on Tuesday and we will have Mexican food for my birthday!

The members are all super stoked because they haven’t had sister missionaries in like 23 years.  They have this lunch calendar and everyone has already signed up and are fighting over us.  Usually we average four lunch appointments per week, but this ward wants to feed us 7 days a week.  We told them no for P-days.  So now we have lunch 6 times a week and super good food.  Even desserts.

We had two investigators at church and we haven’t even done anything. That was pretty cool.  Everyone is talking about their friends we can visit, and how they want to go work with us.  Hopefully that means we will have guides and won’t get so lost this next week.

The mission is incredible, and there is nothing else like it.  I love it and I love the work I’m doing and how it makes me feel.  It has given me a new outlook on life and my dreams have grown.  There are only 18 months of someone’s life where they get this chance and I’m living it right now!