Atalaya Week 2!

Hola everyone!
My second week in the field was great! I learned so much about faith and why it's important to plan.

On Tuesday we had some great plans and great backup plans. Not a single one of them worked out all day. However, because we had planned well and with the guidance of the Spirit we were where we needed to be to find great people. We found one lady, Alicia, who is just wonderful. She really understands and when we were teaching the Plan of Salvation on Thursday, she would say things that just led right in to the next point or would answer the question we were just about to ask her. Yeah, she's great.

On Wednesday we found a lady named Micaela and her daughter, Candela. We found them because we had a cita with their neighbor, but she wasn't there so we started talking to them and they allowed us to sit down and teach them the Restoration. After that, they agreed to let us come back and teach them so we made an appointment for Saturday evening. The bishop's daughter, Brenda, was going to come with us to this lesson so we went and met up with her before our appointment and went over. However, they had just left. :( We tried to go to their neighbor who wasn't there on Wednesday when we met them, but she wasn't there again. We told Brenda we had one person we contacted in the street the other day, Angelo, that we wanted to go see if he was there and she said she would come with us. We want to the address Angelo had given us (well, he just said it was on the corner of two streets) and there was a pregnant lady who lives there and she said she didn't know any Angelo, but we asked if we could come back another time to teach her and she said yes! We started walking down the street and Angelo was sitting with his little girl a couple of houses down! SO, we got to teach Angelo and we found another person to teach.

Friday was really hot and we almost died. But it's okay because we got everywhere we were going eventually (the streets are kind of interesting here) and we were doing God's work!

Okay well, that's all the time I have for this week. I love you alll!!! Do great things! The gospel's true, God loves you!
-Hermana Cheever

Atalaya Week 1!

Hola everyone!

Well, I´m in Argentina now! My first area is a city called Atalaya and my area is half of the Atalaya Ward, the other half is covered by the Elders. My companion´s name is Hermana Abbott and she´s just great! She goes home in three weeks though so that´s sad. She´s probably the best companion I could have had for my first companion in the field. She always inspires me to do my best and to improve every day. She also knows the struggles I have with being a tall white girl in the middle of Argentina because she´s also a tall white girl.I´m pretty sure we get asked where we are from at least 10 times a day, if not more. 

Castellano is strange. I can now understand about 70 percent of what people are saying. Sometimes less (like when they have no teeth) sometimes more. I´m very glad they give you a filtered water bottle in the MTC because the water here is no good to drink, it has to be filtered. Almost everyone here is named Maria, Roberto, Angel, or Milagros, I swear! It gets so confusing when we are planning our lessons! Also there are a million people with the last name of Gonzalez. We have at least two Gonzalez families in the ward and across the street from the one family lives another! 

Now for the work,

We have a familia we are teaching and the mom and daughter have a baptismal date for the 30th! We are trying to work with the dad, but he´s a little stubborn and likes to get off track during the lessons. However, the other day when we went over he started really paying attention so that was good. I´m excited for them, they´re a great family! 

Also, the other day, we were in the barrio 20 de Junio and we saw this family sitting out on this grassy spot so we went and talked to them and they let us sit down with them and teach them a lesson. So yeah, we taught The Restoration to about 10-15 people all at the same time. They also said we could come back and teach more so that´s good!

We´ve been working with a lot of less actives and they´re great people, we´re just trying to strengthen their testimonies so that they will feel God´s love for them and return. A lot of them are little old ladies and pretty much the reason they don´t come is well, they´re little old ladies who don´t get around very well. They do appreciate it when we visit them though.

Every week I´m going to teach everyone a word in Castellano (I´m sure at some point it will just be Spanish, but I´ll start with Castellano). This week´s word is Factura. A factura is a donut here. It´s also a bill though ... you just have to go by context. I had my first factura this week though and it was delicious. It was more like a pastry with dulce de leche inside and powdered sugar on top.Hermana Abbott had a sweet potato one though. (I´ll teach you the word for sweet potato later.)

I love you all!!!
El Evangelio es la verdad y Dios les ama!
-Hermana Kaitlin Cheever

Safe arrival of Sister Kaitlin Rose Cheever

Dear Family and Friends of Sister Cheever,

We are writing to inform you that your missionary, Sister Cheever, has arrived safely in the Argentina Buenos Aires West Mission. We have enjoyed becoming acquainted with her and are excited to be serving together.

Thank you for the sacrifices you are making at home to have a missionary in the field. We know the Lord blesses and cares for the families of the missionaries.

Warmest regards,         

                            

President David P. Robertson and Hermana Julie Robertson

Hermana Cheever's 2nd (and last) Week in the CCM

Hello everybody!
So, guess what! I'M GOING TO ARGENTINA!!!! I went and talked to the travel office on Thursday and they gave me my travel plans for the flight to Buenos Aires with the like 26 other people going to Argentina that day so I guess my visa came through!.

Okay, I'm giving you all an assignment now. So, my District Leader, Elder Meyers, is very musically inclined and he and some girl wrote a song that's on the LDS youth album for this year and you should all go listen to it. It's great. It's called "Lay it Down" by Jonathan Meyers and Cera something or other. If you go to https://www.lds.org/youth/theme/2016?lang=eng and scroll down to the bottom, there's a list of the songs there and that's how you can find it.

It's so weird, I leave in two days! Last week I just wanted to get out of here and now I keep thinking I wish we had more time because there's so much more I feel like I need to learn and prepare and study, but oh well! Well, I can't really think of what all happened this week so that's why everything's kind of scattered. Oh! We got 11 new hermanas in our zone! We only had 9 last week, then all the ones who were here before us left and there were only 5 of us so yeah, that's exciting. 

On Thursday we had this thing called in-field orientation. It was very long and very boring and I think I only learned like 2 things. I did meet new people though and I have a new favorite person. Her name is Sister Soto. She's form Costa RIca and she's going to the New York New York North mission and she is just the cutest thing ever!

This week we started teaching two more investigators, Carlos and Viri. Carlos is from Chile and his parents are Lutheran, but he doesn't really know what he believes so that's been interesting. Viri is from Veracruz, Mexico and she is Catholic, but not super strong Catholic so it's been pretty easy to teach her and she's so accepting. Esperanza is still doing great! She's been praying and reading the Book of Mormon and she said she would ask for next Sunday off of work to come to church! Missionary work is pretty great :) 

The gospel's true, God loves you!
-Hermana Cheever

On Thursday, President and Sister Burgess (The MTC president and his wife)
were walking down the hall of our classroom building and they stopped and talked to us during our study time.
They're pretty great

I found my friend Tuma from BYU-I! I had forgotten she was coming on Wednesday
and then I saw her walking down the hall during one of the breaks we had for In-Field orientation.

Hermana Cheever's First Week en el CCM!

Hola everyone!
Well, this is now my 6th day in the MTC and I only have 7 more! I don't know where I'm going next week because my visa hasn't arrived yet, but if it's not here by Thursday, they will be temporarily reassigning me. So that will be fun! Okay so, I'm going to apologize now because I'm probably going to be abusing grammar rules all over the place for the next 18 months because my brain already thinks half in Spanish. This week has definitely been an adjustment. However, yesterday was Fast Sunday and let me just say, Fast Sunday in the MTC is great! The Spirit is already so strong, then you add in the Spirit that comes when 1,000 or so missionaries are all fasting together and oh my goodness! It's amazing! It also definitely strengthened my testimony of fasting. By Saturday I was almost completely mentally burned out and I couldn't focus on my studying. So, I decided to fast and pray that I would have the willpower and strength to focus and yesterday was the most focused I have been yet! I was able to learn so much and I got the First Vision memorized in Spanish!

This one is my companions and me. (Me, Hermana Wyson, and Hermana Billin)

My companions! I am in a trio! Well, a foursome today because Hermana Thompson's companion left at 4 in the morning today and she's not leaving until tomorrow. My companions are Hermana Tansy Billin from Lebanon, New Hampshire and she's absolutely wonderful. My other companion is Hermana Brenna Wyson from Laguna Niguel, California and she is amazing! I love them both so much. In my district there's our trio, and two sets of Elders. Elder Garibay and Elder Jaramillo are from Springville and South Jordan. Elder Meyers is from Orem and Elder Fajardo is from Colorado Springs, but he was born in Colombia. All of us except Hermana Wyson are going to Argentina and all the Elders are going to the same mission, Santa Fe. Hermana Wyson is going to Quito Ecuador.

This is my district. From left to right it's 
Elder Garibay, Elder Jaramillo, Hermana Billin, me, Hermana Wyson, Elder Meyers, and Elder Fajardo. 

So we have an investigator named Esperanza, and she's from Mexico and is the only person in her family here in the US. She grew up Catholic and has a strong faith in and love for Christ. The first lesson we invited her to read the first page of the Book of Mormon and pray about it. When we went back the next day, she said she had forgotten to read, but she had tried ot pray like we do and she said she really liked it! Then in the lesson we invited her to give a prayer so we told her the basics and we said a prayer as an example for her. Then she prayed and ah! It was amazing. We also read Mosiah 18:8-10 with her and invited her to be baptized and she said she wasn't quite sure, but she would think about it and pray about it! We have our next lesson with her later today so we'll see how everything went over the weekend!

Last night after our Sunday devotional, we watched the devotional given by Elder Bednar a few years ago called "The Character of Christ" and oh my goodness! It was the most amazing thing like ever! Something I wanted to share with everyone was he said something along the lines of when you think you can't do it, you're right. But, with the strength of the Lord you can! I know that this is so true! I have seen this so many times in my life especially since being here in the CCM. Another thing that was kind of the main focus of the talk was that Christ always turned outward to those around Him when the natural man tells us to turn inward. 

Well, I love you all! I hope you all remember to do the things that Christ would do this week and turn outward in love and compassion when you want to turn inward! Read your scriptures, say your prayers. Don't just pray to say you prayed. Pray so that you are having a conversation with the Lord and really listening for what He has to tell you. One of the teachers had my district do that this week. We all went and kneeled, like actually kneeled not just sitting on our feet which I was guilty of before, and he challenged us to pray sincerely and listen for promptings for 15 minutes and for at least ten of those minutes be on our knees. The gospel's true, God loves you!

Love,
Hermana Cheever

We couldn't go on our temple walk yesterday because our Branch President thought it was too cold, 
so Hermana Billin and I were looking longingly out at the people who still got to go.

These are the hermanas in my zone/branch. We wanted to get a picture before Hermanas Dayley, Vega, Mejia, and Thompson left, 

but half of us had already gotten ready for bed so that's why we're in our pajamas! 

From left to right it's Hermana Dayley, me, Hermana Wyson, Hermana Billin, Hermana Chairez, and Hermana Paiz. 

On the second row it's Hermana Vega, Hermana Mejia, and Hermana Thompson.