Dear Family and Friends,

This next week is very special it is my 7 month anniversary in the mission :) WOW! where has the time gone? 

So last Tuesday we went to the bus terminal at 11:30pm with my cortoplaso and Hermana Valverde. She went to Montevideo. Waited until her bus left. Sad, I will miss her she is so funny. Then we went to sleep at the house of the sisters that live nearby. "slept" for 5 hours and then got up and went back to the terminal to pick up my new companion. A cortoplaso is a youth that fills in for a missionary so we are not alone or so that we can do more work. It is just in some areas I think. 

Anyway I got a new companion! She is awesome her name is Hermana Lopez from Guatemala. She went to byu for 3 years so she is pretty much americanized :) We have a lot of fun but she is more obedient than some of my other companions. It is good, we have a good balance. We worked alot this week but we got lost a couple times. The problem is that none of the streets have signs. Well some of them do, but not very many. Unless we count the streets we get lost. But most of the time we start talking and forget to count. An awesome thing about her is that she just finished training a missionary from the states so she thinks that my spanish is good. Haha it was nice to hear. :) We talk in spanish most of the time and it helps. 

The first two days with her it rained pretty hard and the streets were filled with water. Little rivers :)

Yesterday was fun..... We went to church like normal. In sacrament meeting, the first week with a new missionary, usually they introduce themswelves and bear their testimonies. So I was expecting that Hermana Lopez was going to do that but I didnt have to do anything. I also gave a talk last month and Hermana Valverde didnt have to so I was thinking that it was one at a time. So after the sacrament they announced the talks. So noone here can really say my name. So when they said hermana Beatie I didnt understand. We waited, and waited a little more....I looked up at the stand and they were looking at me. I was like "me"? Si! Well I grabbed my book of mormon and walked up to the stand, with no idea of what to say or anything. I said something about how I didnt know I was supposed to give a talk. I flipped through my scriptures and then I remembered the night before we had a family home evening and we talked about the armour of god. I flipped to dyc 27 and started to talk about that. It wasnt actually that bad. I realized that I was supposed to be talking about missionary work halfway through so I applied it. It actually worked pretty well. If you were in lord of the rings and had all your armour and your friend was there with you and he didnt have anything to protect him. He is going to die. Yep! We cant share our armour or our conversion, protection of God but we can share where we got it from and then they can find their own armour. We really are in a battle. Good against evil! My talk turned out alright. My heart was beating so fast!

Then after weekly planning we went to talk to a family. They dont know that they are investigators :) We shared The Restoration video with them. The mom really liked it and she went and got her bible and book of mormon that other missionaries had given her. She said that she was going to pray that night and ask to know if Joseph Smith saw God. Later we went to their neighbors who are members and talked to them for a minute. The father of this family was like you are wasting your time. That is stupid because if we only wanted perfect people to be baptized then no one would be in the church. The family that we watched the movie with is a little bit more of the world than others but every person needs the opportunity to accept or reject the gospel. 

I am happy to be here in Uruguay, sharing this message. The gospel really changes lives. It is not for perfect people, it is for those of us that are imperfect and need a lot of help. 

I have to go but I will let you know more of my stories next week. 

Love,

Krista