No ma´am, I am not a Russian.

Querida familia (y todos!),

It´s hard to believe that another week has already passed – it’s true that time goes by faster with more time in the mission. Tuesday was the birthday of my dear compañera Hermana Castleman. She made brownies!! It rained A TON this week. The streets transformed into rivers. Man, am I grateful for my rain boots! What was 80 degrees a month ago is now 40 or 50 degrees with humidity and wind :). We are the walking marshmallow missionaries once more... but don´t worry mom, keeping warm. Eating lots.

They say that Toay is a city, but a town would be more accurate. Part of our area includes the farms and fields around the city. We get to teach the people, horses, and cows every now and then. That being said, this week we rescued a horse! The poor thing caught his front hoof in his ground tethering and was forced to keep his head to the ground, eating the same little square of grass. Who know that when I was called to serve in Argentina that I wasn't only called to help the people, but also to save the animals! The horse thanked us by following us for as long as his rope permitted. I feel more and more cowboy by the day :)

This week I've been thinking a lot about reaching my potential as a missionary and person and how I can know if I´m doing enough. It´s a comfort to me to know that He has called the weak to this work, and that if I serve him with all that I have, he will turn it into even more. But still, I want to be sure that I´m giving my EVERYTHING in this work. I love that my companion has the habit and deep desire of giving all we can for every person with which we can talk. If they say they don´t want anything to do with us, we STILL talk to them, we try to help them in any way we can. Get to know them, show them that we care what they are saying. And many times, in this manner, in not giving up on any person, we have found that they begin to want to talk with us. Even if we only answer a small question of theirs, we and they walk away from the conversation a little better off. This has also taught me the importance of member missionaries. If people have never talked to anyone about what we do or who we are, they naturally have fear of us. We always have more success when the people can at least say- "oh! yes, my friend Marí Sosa is a member of that church! She invited me once to go..." and therefore we can begin from something, and they don’t think we´re super freaky! Yeah... a few kids asked us if we were spies this week... we´re going to start wearing more colors, less black...

Share the gospel! Dare to be a Mormon! (People also have a random tendency of thinking that I´m from Russia... what?)

Love you all!

Hermana Hill