The Details

So this week i had some great experiences on how the lord is always in the details of our lives and how real modern day revelation is. 

Monday night we get a call from one of the district leaders in the zone and he says hey we want to eat breakfast tomorrow as a zone were going to do a conference call to decide the details. in the end i got assigned to make a cake... that we ate for breakfast. Anyways. That meant that in the morning we had to run to the store to get some things. And yeah. Normally things SHOULD open at 8 but argentine standard time is sometimes a lot worse than mormon standard time. so we get home at about 8:40 and start to bake for a breakfast that was supposed to start at 9 hah. Anyways we had fun cooking away and at 9:30 are out the door. To quickly get there we wait for a bus that didnt come and for any of you who have read Preach My Gospel you are probably familiar with a story that has to do with 2 missionaries in mexico that a taxi takes them home in the pouring rain and it was a miracle. Yeah that basically happened to us. Minus the rain. A taxi driving on the main street in the area honks at us and my companion waves and asks me who it is. I say i have no idea but then the taxi stops and backs up and asks us where we need to go we say to the church and he tells us to get in. Apparently he was a member and felt like he needed to give us a ride. What a blessing. We were so greatful cause we were really late! 

Then on thursday in the middle of a lesson we get a text that says basically SURPRISE! The whole mission is going to the temple tomorrow! We freak out and wow was it a great experience. 

We are really blessed with some great investigators. unfortunatley they didnt show up to church on sunday but we felt satisfied with what we did on our part and know that we need to continue in faith! 

I love this work. I love argentina. And i LOVE being a missionary and representative of jesus christ!

love hermana ostler

All are Invited!

Things Are Heating Up

Wow this week has been crazy. We have been working like crazy and have really been seeing miracles. The lord has been blessing us so much. BUt with all this craziness in the mission there is no room for a boring moment. For example, our zone leader who is in our ward HAS CHICKEN POX. Which means he and his companion are confined to their apartment for at least a week and we get to run errands for them. We also got called on an emergency excoursion to an open house and well basically we have been running this whole week. The lord has been in the details of our lives and the world is really changing. Its amazing to see what the lord does for his children. Prayers are being answered and we keep praying! 

In other news while everyone else is pulling out their winter clothes things are heating up down here! Summers coming!!! haha

love you all!

hermana ostler

Hermana Ostler's Peeps in La Boca

 half the zone

 hermana pardo going home

 smile! nametags

with a member

Around Town

 congress

 the villa

 soccer finals craziness

 so im dying... haha

dinner with an american missionary couple. i didnt know whatelse to do while waiting haha

Tomemos Este Monte

Wow this past week has been crazy. THe mission is going crazy actually. Basically everyone is getting super excited to be able to work super hard and reach our mission goals. Its all CRAZINESS. Were working harder than ever and this years theme has been "climb a higher hill." We are doing crazy things to be able to do more than we ever have. WERE GOING TO CONQUER THE MOUNTAIN! 

THis week i also have seen more in opposition to our work than i have in maybe my whole life. We have over come it and know that this week that follows will be a great one and that will see MIRACLES! 

I AM SO EXCITED! 

love hermana ostler

17 Miracles

Wow this week... Where do i even begin. 

For being the last week of one of my companions it was crazy. We had a lot of fun and was a bit of a roller coaster. So to the 17 miracles part. So this sunday we had a baptism. Basically everything was in opposition to her the whole time. Here are the miracles that lead to her baptism. 

1. we found her 3 weeks ago in a "conventillo" (basically a pathway with a bunch of houses) with a towel on her head. she said she was looking for god, didnt know if he existed and wanted to learn more and was brought to tears in the first contact when she said a prayer. she accepted to come to church. 

2. Her whole family was against her going to church. we lost contact after the first lesson and she wouldnt answer our calls. She had missed the first 3 sessions of conference and we couldnt find her. We felt like we should go by the conventillo to look for another possibility and right after we rang the doorbell of the other person she came out, and oh was she surprised to see us. She said that she wasnt going to go.

3. a member MAGIALLY shows up and bears his testimony to her, then she decides to go to give it a try. 

4. She loved general conference and really felt the spirit. We set an appointment for tuesday.

5. We go to her house tuesday and have a great lesson we invite her to pray and in her prayer she said "my mind was set but thank you for changing it and sending these girls to doubt my decision" SHE WAS GOING TO DROP US! but she didnt thanks to the spirit. 

6. we keep teaching her the whole week and she keeps her commitments and everything seems to be going well

7. she had a bit of a problem with smoking and coffee but in the end it all worked out

8. Sunday: we go to church, she comes and my companion is talking to her and she says that SHE WAS GOING TO DROP US... AGAIN. But once again, the lord comes through and touches her with the spirit and wants us to keep coming by

9. Starting the week of her baptism. We are quite a bit behind on teaching and cant see us too much during the week. luckily we finished everything

10. she feels pressured to be baptised because we always call her when we cant pass by to see how she is and everything preparing well for the big day. My companion says that if she doesnt want to its ok and that its her choice, were only here to invite. she thinks about it for a moment and says that she wants to be baptized. 

11-17. now heres the huge roll of miracles showing that the lord works in mysterious ways and sometimes just too mysterious and is very direct in answering prayers. So saturday she has her interview and we go over the baptismal interview questions and she has problems with a few of the questions, including tithing. we resolved the problems including her questions about tithing and she passed her interview. all good for the next day and super excited. Sunday comes everyone is excited then all of the sudden 3rd hour of church rolls around and its assigned by the stake to talk about tithing.... long story short basically all of her questions about it the day before were answered DIRECTLY. not being generally accustomed to this kind of answer, she got a bit freaked out and thought that we had said something and the whole ward was targeting her to force her into the whole thing. She got really mad and said we were all crazy and basically it was a huge daggar to the heart because we were really good friends with her at this point. She said she didnt want to be baptized and left.

Naturally we felt really sad cause its like a great friend had just said that everything we did was crazy, and, well we cried. My companion after about 15 minutes asked me for the phone and sent her a text telling her that we love her and asking her to pray about it. She responded saying that she wanted to believe in god and in the church because she thought it was all true. We then ran to her house and long story short we all ended up crying together and the member that magically showed up the last time that was going to baptize her showed up MAGICALLY AGAIN. She decided to be baptized (better late than never) and it was a sweet moment. 

God is a God of miracles. Believe it. 

love

hermana ostler

Prayers and Missionary Show and Tell

So recently in a leadership meeting we decided to change a bit of the focus of the mission to pray more often, including in a first contact. THis includes a goal with in the first contact that we teach a very short lesson of the restoration and in the end of everything finish with a prayer. Even if they are not interested. In the meeting we were a bit shocked (but we as leaders came up with it) and President was like "are we in agreement? is this what we want to do?" there were a few that were a bit sceptical because it was a big change and very difficult in many areas to accomplish this and in the end someone shared 2 Nephi 32:8 which says: "the evil spirit teacheth not a man topray, but teacheth him that he must not pray."

We all laughed and president said ok well do it then. At first it was wierd to ask a person if we could pray with them 5 minutes after meeting them but it really brings something different into the lessons and contacts. The power of prayer is amazing!

Other story of the week is that yesterday one of my companions and i got called in to primary to be the sharing time lesson as the missionaries. It was amazing to recognize the wards love for us and also share our thoughts with them about our missions. I could really feel my saviours love for them and everyone in the moment. The youth of these days are so amazing and are a real light to the world. Im so glad i have been entrusted with the duty and responsibility to help save souls. It makes me want to shout to the world what there is and I just want everyone to listen! THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST HAS BEEN RESTORED AND HE GUIDES IT! I am so blessed to be his representative and disciple. 

I love you all!

love 

hermana ostler

As Sisters . . . .

 my (hopefully) next companion haha

 matching with sister ayer in a leadership meeting :) were just that cool

 doing an open house! i got to be comps again with my hija!!! :)

 with a missionary who lives in our ward who just returned home before she got released

watching the womens conference. #aguanteingles

The Nouns of Hermana Ostler's Mission: People . . . . .

 car craziness

 interviews with a dying asistant

 we get bored when our comp is sick... 

 missionary selfies are the besssst

were the bomb.com arriba boca!

Places . . . . .

 lunch with a member in a cute cafe. its weird eating in a sit down restaurant....

 trip to the hospital hahaha (dont worry it was for my comp)

 peruvian food its the best!

arroz chaufa

 la boca is the best

 san fern. 

temploe trip

and Things!

COLES ARGENTINE TWIN!!!!

Chairs!

 Desserts!

 I SWEAR im not trunky haha but really. im not

 (Is Dora a person or a thing?)

scripture chase argentine stile

No Tocar?

A Post It that we left on some stuff then when we looked for it we decided to put it on my tag haha

Party in LA BOCA

Wow so this week was literally psyco. literally. heres a rundown

monday: pday. we had a pday for the sisters in the mission. we watched the
general womens session of conferece then... ate. WOOO i love food. haha

tuesday: leadership council got home at 4 and worked for the 5 hours that
remained. we drastically changed a few details of our lessons and this week
dropped a lot of numbers (we forsaw that) but we know we will start to see
miracles from it so its all good

wednesday: zone conference. it was a great recap of tuesday but with more
working

thursday: we lost the day due to two great things.l first half of the day
we spent in interviews (my comp was sick when our zone had them) and we got
awesome training from the aps. and the second half was spent in the temple.
the convert of my companion went through for the first time and was then
sealed to her deceaced husband. what a sweet experience.l

friday: TRAMITES. Ladies and gentlemen, after almost exacly one year of
being ILLEGAL in this country i FINALLY SUCCESSFULLY completed my tramites
and am legal once again. YEAH.

SATURDAY and SUNDAY: GENERAL CONFERENCE. Wow there was just so many great
things. Funny story. So I got to watch it in english on a tv connected to
the internet so sometimes the internet was a little sketchy and we had to
reload it about every 2 or 3 speakers losing about 30 seconds of the feed.
NATURALLY, elder eyring gets up to start the sustainings all of us gringos
glued to the screen waiting anxiously to see who the new apostles were.
"presendent thomas spenser monson as prophet seer and revelator, henry b
eyring and dieter f uchtdorf as his counsilors...... THE FEED CUTS. We alll
yell and grab the remote trying to get the feed back. all the elders then
shove eachother out of the room(this looked a lot like a scene from the
best two years when the mail finally comes) and try running upstairs to see
if they can see it in spanish. that fails too. haha oh elders. we luckily
get it back up in time toi see them walk to their seats and generally
figure out who they are. THen in the same session right in the middle of
elder hollands talk it cuts AGAIN. RAGE.k So that was a fun time.

THen during the sunday afternoon session there was a boca soccer game. Keep
in mind theyre winning the cup right now and the stadium is about 6 blocks
from the church. So in the middle of bednars awesome talk we hear
GOOOOOLLLLLLLL. I just decided to take it as a spiritual goal cause his
talk was spot on.

My favorite session was the saturday afternoon session. I had a lot of
prayers answered in that session and it was great. You should check it out
if you didnt get to see it :)

Id love to hear what your guys favorite talks are!

love you all!
love hermana ostler

Save the Scriptures

                 VS

sooo i dont have too much time to write but ill share an experience from this week. So we were at a less actives house and her 1 year old son was playing with her book of mormon about to rip it. she quickly takes it out of his hands and says here take this shoving her phone in his hands "id rather you break this than my book" i look at the phone which is a really nice phone. just about new. i thought wow how many people in the world would rather shatter their phone screen than have a page damaged in their scriptures? It was pretty eye opening for me because there arent many who would say that. 

sorry its short

but yeah

love you guys!

love hermana ostler

EARTHQUAKE!

WEll this week was VERY uneventful. But really. I spent just about the whole week in the apt. Yeah fun times. But before you ask what the.... why? What were you doing?? My comp had gastritis... (i hope the spelling is the same in english and spanish...) basically when your stomach acids burn your stomach... yeah fun times. so anyways. I had a lot of scripture study which i actually really enjoyed.

Now to the title of this email. You have probably all heard about the earthquake in chile last week and would have thought ahhh hermana ostler was ok didnt feel anything cause shes on the OTHER SIDE of the CONTINENT. WRONG. Due to the above statement of me being stuck in the apartment for a week at about 8:30 Argentine standard time (lol that probably doesnt exist but i like it haha) im sitting in my bed in my room in my apartment on the 10th floor of our apartment complex studying my scriptures. And this is my thought process. Hmmm this is a weird feeling what is moving? (it felt like a boat going over a small wake on a lake) now being from california my first instinct is crap earthquake wheres a table to get under? then i think of my science experience of plate techtonics (thanks mom) and am like no. not possible were in the middle of a plate nope. so then im like ok i have been sitting here way too long in a fixed position reading... i think im going crazy. then i look around and my clothes in my closet are rocking back and forth and the light hanging from the ceiling too. So im like uhhh not normal and think back to earthquake. but NOT POSSIBLE. Then once im really confused my comp yells from the other room. HEY DO YOU GUYS FEEL THIS. Oh thank the heavens im not crazy. so we decide to leave the apt but as we are about to go out the door it stops. well. yeah. i tell my comps that it was probably and earthquake in chile or peru and it must have been really strong. so we ask the neighbor (which was a bad idea) cause all she basically said was what do you mean you dont have means to look it up? how can you not have tv radio or computer?!?! you girls are crazy! so yeah that was a fun time. then the member we called told us that we were a bit crazy and feeling things. and about 15 min later everyone calls us and says we were right, earthquake in chile! 10 points for hermana ostler and her plate techtonic knowledge. thanks again mom and iusd. youd think i would have been able to get a higher grade in high school science. haha anywaysssss moving on.

other than that the week was relatively quiet. saturday we finally worked and sunday we had an almost miracle. a guy showed up to church and wanted to be baptized. the elders said he was from our area and we believed them but then at the end of the block we asked his address and was apparently in the other ward. that was a bit frustrating but i learned that even when were super frustrated the lord can calm our hearts and tell us its ok and that he has something else prepared for us. :)

love you all and have  agreat week! 

hermana ostler

LA BOCAAAAA

WHoooooo after a crazy pday and a lot of comforting and informing the newbies who just got to the mission on tuesday i finally arrived in la boca at about 9! Well there went our day for procelighting. But a bit about my companionS. yes i have 2 haha the first is hermana hernandez and shes from honduras dont ask me where cause i have no idea... all i know is that the country is right next to guatemala.... (shout out to carrie) haha but yeah. she goes home this transfer and she was my sister training leader back when i was in versailles. weird to be companions now hahah. My other companion is hermana bekaouche. (pronounced bek-oww-che) sometimes i just call her hermana beka cause her names difficult.. its ok she cant pronounce mine either haha shes from lima peru, has 3 months in the mission and has the most crazy conversion story ever. but like in the history of mankind. yeah. 

the companionship is fun because, well. i dont know if you can tell from any of the pictures but im about a head and a half taller than the both of them. and im blonde. and really white. WHOOO. so yeah basically i stand out like a sore thumb. its a fun time. they give me a hard time for it hahaha

soo this week. since theres never a boring or uneventful day in the mission, we skipped tuesday for the reasons mentioned above, so wednesday. we woke up and hermana beka had a headache and a HUGE zit looking thing that we still dont know what it its but the mission presidents wife says its a boil and she popped it a few times and it kept growing then started to ooze puss. so they sent us to the hospital. fun times. thursday morning. zone meeting. Friday. Hermana Beka had tramites to get legal in the country. Where i got good news! After about 11 months of being illegal my papers supposedly finally got here! yeahhh! well see if the luck lasts. 

But since we got back at about 3 and hadnt had lunch we decided to go to a peruvian place. and well i was bored after we ate and was looking at the picante (spicy sauce, but like really spicy this is peru were talking about) and thought hmm i wonder if i would die if i drank the whole thing. the answer is pretty darn close haha yeah dont have pictures but i do have a video. my companions say im crazy haha

saturday. Service activity for mormon helping hands. we traveled about an hour to get there and we helped repaint a school it was a fun time cause about half the mission went (and all the members and their pertaining wards) so basically all the members in the city of buenos aires were there. super cool. although i kinda miss electric sanders... the sand paper made my hands feel like... well sandpaper. 

also if you want to know basically what the area im in is like type in google photos caminito or boca soccer field. my area is a block away and it all looks the same. whoop. 

so yeah thats all for this week. a bit longer than usual haha

love you all!

hermana ostler

People and Places

  

day 3 in la boca

day 3 in la boca: trip to san fernando and retiro doing traits! 

day one in la boca, trip to the hospital for my comp haha

 welcome to la boca :)

Service with a smile!

mormon helping hands service project

Chao Zarate!

Well this last week has been a bit surreal. I knew i was going to be transferred but it was still really sad to be honest. These last 4 months in zarate have been the best. The person i was when i arrived in zarate and the person i am now are completely different. its something that even the members picked up on. Although at the beginning of my mission i said i would NEVER go to Zarate, i came to love it and it is by far one of my favorite areas. I have learned so much there and it has changed me as a person. I left behind a lot of people i love there but am excited to start the sprint at the end of the race inn....... LA BOCA!!!! WHOOOO. For the record i called it. This will be my second area with a big shot soccer stadium (the rival of river in nunez) and my preferred team :) 

Something I learned this week or more come to realize is how much the message we share as missionaries affects people. It really changes lives and i feel so grateful to be one of these messengers who can bring this happiness to people.

I also had the awesome opportunity to see ELDER OSTLER TODAY! ahhh it was so great to see a familiar face. I got to talk to him for a few minutes and wow. He is a copy of uncle brian! hahaha family is the best! 

WElp love you all! hope you have a great week!

love hermana ostler

A Special Prep/Transfer Day for Hermana Ostler

casa rosada

NICKKKKK! He made it safely to Argentina and is doing great! 

that pday fun

oh you know just casually chilling in the mission home writing my family (this is me right now haha)

my new companions! yep im in a trio!