Another semana in good old Mar Del Plata-June 27, 2011

Hola querida familia,
    I hope you are all doing well and enjoying your hot weather. We are freezing our buns off here in the South of South America. You always picture South America as somewhere that is always hot. Well, that is a big fat mentira. I mean, Lie. It gets cold here and we are the only ones that really feel it because everyone else just stays inside their house and won´t let us in. Haha... and the craving for facturas is worse than ever. But we are doing well and enjoying this time.
    This week was kinda interesting. It was a test of being happy for other peoples´ success. The other hermanas who share a house with us had a great week. They found a bunch of new golden investigators, all of whom came to church. It was so awesome - our Gospel Principles class was packed. There were actually more people there than some of the branches that I´ve seen here. It was a very happy day. We are really excited for them. We didn´t do quite as well, but we did have Gloria there. She is dating a guy in our ward and she´s been investigating for a while. She´s had a ton of baptismal dates and she works a lot so she´s really hard to get a hold of, but she came to church and she feels good when she´s there. I´m pretty sure that she´s going to get baptized, but it´s kinda tough to say when. We also found a few new investigators this week that are Catholics. They spent the whole lesson telling us about how they didn´t agree with anything the Catholic church does and then when we invited them to church at the end, they said," No, we´re faithful Catholics." What?! You can´t be that faithful if you just spent 45 minutes badmouthing your own church! But that´s just the way they think. The hard thing is that they also described how a church should really be and they described the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints perfectly. But there just wasn´t a way to make them understand that it´s right here under their nose (well, in Edison and Gaboto). One of these new investigators was a family with three kids, but they said that they dedicate all their time to their family so they don´t have time to go to church. If only we could help them understand what the gospel of Jesus Christ would do for their families...
    Also it was Hna. Clark´s birthday on Tuesday so I made her a cake. It was the same one I made for Hna. Collette´s birthday, but even the elders that were there when I made that cake liked this one. I decided elders aren´t very good for birthdays. Most of them just said," Thanks for the cake." while they were stuffing it in their mouths, without even throwing a "Oh, happy birthday." to Hna. Clark. I guess I¨m generalizing. The elders in our district aren´t very good for birthdays. :) We did find some new investigators, which is a pretty good birthday present... but they have to get married.
   This week, I also learned that repentance is beautiful. Lots of times we feel bad for the things we do wrong or the things that we just didn´t do, but it´s true that you can always repent. Sometimes, I think my life as a missionary is pretty hard. But then I think about Jesus Christ, my Savior, who suffered everything and he didn´t even complain. How can I complain, when I´m just suffering a little bit of cold and rain? I´m pretty sure I shouldn´t be allowed to complain. I should just think of Him and everything that he did so that I can be happy and feel free of guilt. I decided to change and ask Heavenly Father to forgive me for the way I was acting and feeling. It was a beautiful feeling. I really felt like Heavenly Father had forgiven me and now I´m like a new person, ready to do good things and to let my Savior help me even more so I can become the person I want to be. It kinda surprises me that i can still be learning such important lessons this late in the mission. I also thought about how life is probably going to be easy either so I have to dedicate myself now to Heavenly Father and to his work. It´s such an important thing and I can´t get lazy now when he needs me to do so many more things in this life. I am in this until the end. I love my Heavenly Father so much and am so grateful for all the wonderful things he has put in my life that i have to do everything I can to show him how much I love him. He told us that he wants us to show him that we love him by what we do - by keeping his commandments and by caring about his other children more than you care about yourself. I guess I still have some work to do, but I want to be showing Heavenly Father my love for him my whole life. I know I am his daughter and he really wants me to succeed. I really want to succeed so that I can live with Him again.
   Well, I just wanted to share that with you and I hope my experiences and realizations can help you make some of your own. Heavenly Father loves you guys too and wants to see you again. I love you all so much. Thank you for your support. :)
Love,
Hna. Seegmiller

La gordura es hermosura-June, 21, 2011

Hola Familia,
    ¡Feliz día de la bandera! Today is "Flag Day" in Argentina, which means it is another holiday. Winter is just full of holidays where people just shut themselves inside all day and don´t work. Today just happened to be Pday so the holiday didn´t affect us as much as it usually does. I´m pretty sure the only way that they celebrated Flag Day was to not go to work. They have a ton of holidays in winter.
    Anyway, this week was pretty crazy. I told you guys last week that we were getting two more hermanas to come live with us and work in Puerto. They´re totally cool - Hna. Arancibia from Osorno, Chile and Hna. Diaz from Santiago, Chile. They make five Chilenas that have played a big role in my mission so I´m pretty sure I have to go to Chile someday. I heard this joke a while ago that I think demonstrates Chilenos pretty well. "What is the country that is closest to heaven?" "Argentina because it´s right next to Chile!" Yeah, they´re a little bit prideful about how awesome Chile is, but they are really good people. It´s been pretty fun having all of us together there. They always throw out their little English phrases that make me crack up. We found out that Hna. Arancibia thought that the song "Bad boy, bad boy, whatcha gonna do when he comes for you." was saying "cowboy, cowboy." That was pretty funny. I also taught them to say," Get a life." Haha... they taught me some Chilean phrases and I´m going to test them out in District Meeting and see how it goes. We also made chocolate chip cookies for Hna. Arancibia´s 9 month mark in the mission and she was pretty excited. I actually turned 16 months in the mission this past week. Pretty crazy.
    With the winter here, we basically have the streets to ourselves after 6:00 at night. It´s great. The other night, I was taking advantage of that and just started leaping down the street. I got in a few good leaps before I looked across the street and there was this lady standing in her doorway looking out into the night. I stopped leaping and kept walking normally and said," yeah, that lady was definitely watching me." How embarrassing. Also, we were waiting outside the gate to a recent convert´s house the other day and Hna. Clark was playing with their dog when her nametag (which has been kinda broken for a while and always falls off) totally fell inside the gate and the dog picked it up with its mouth and took it to its doghouse. We started screaming so that somebody would take it away from him and the kids inside came out and rescued it, but it was already too late. The tag had a big bite-mark/hole in it. Hna. Clark was pretty sad, but I couldn´t stop laughing. At least it´s a good story, right? I lost my nametag the other day too. It just fell off. After 16 months of not having a problem, it just fell right off and I didn´t notice. Now i have to get one of the badly manufactured Argentine ones. But it will be a cool souvenir.
   Also this week we found Germán and his mom, Nelsa. They were a reference from a guy in a different ward. He went with us to meet him. We set a baptismal date with him, like we´re supposed to, and he accepted. I´m pretty sure the member thought we were nuts, but he let us do what we thought was right. When we went back for the second lesson, he said that he wanted to go to church on Sunday, but he didn´t think it was necessary that we come to his house again. It was a very strange situation. I don´t think I´ve ever had an investigator that didn´t have a problem going to church, but didn´t want the missionaries to come over. We´re going to have to work on that, but he did come to church and totally loved it. Church is totally great though. It´s almost guaranteed that everyone who goes will like it. Plus, our ward is really awesome. Yay Puerto!
    The fun thing about getting two more hermanas in your ward is that you have to divide your ward and your investigators and it turned out that all of our good investigators are in their area. So Hna. Clark and I are back to looking. That´s what most of the mission is, but we´re having a good time doing it. We found this less active guy and his wife in the street yesterday and he said he wants to come back to church. Yay! Heavenly Father just put miracles in our path all the time. We hope we can help him. Barrio Puerto is getting bigger all the time. It still smells terrible, but I´m pretty sure that I´ve gotten used to it. I officially have 5 weeks left of my mission. It´s a pretty weird thought, but I´m doing well. I´m just trying to take advantage of this last bit I have left. I do know that this church is true and I can´t be afraid to tell everyone I meet. I love my Savior and I love this gospel. I also know that life doesn´t end with the mission, but this is just the start. And at least I´m starting it right. :) Love you all!
Hna. Seegmiller

Feliz cumple, Mamá!-June 13, 2011

Hello familia!!
    First of all, a very feliz cumple to my wonderful mother. She deserves to have a good day and much more than just a shoutout in an email from a daughter in Argentina, but this is basically all I can do for now with my limited resources. But I love her so much and just want her to be very happy. I hope she knows how much she is loved and appreciated by everyone who knows her. :)
    Well, this week turned out to be pretty interesting. I didn´t tell you guys about the baptism that we had planned because it´s always really sad to write all about it and have it not work out. It´s much happier when, like today, you had no idea and then SURPRISE!!! Baptism! So we have been teaching Patricia and Ricardo ever since Patricia came to church like four weeks ago. She came because one of the hermanas who was speaking that day invited her to hear her speak. Her and her husband, Ricardo, listened to the missionaries six years ago and came to church a bunch of times and were about to get baptized, but then they didn´t. But this time when the hermana invited Patricia, she was ready and she totally showed up to church that day. I talked to her and asked her if we could go by. So Hna. Clark and I went by and visited them and set the baptismal date for June 4. They accepted it, but seemed pretty hesitant. Then we taught them all the lessons, left them a bunch of chapters to read and always left them the assignment to pray and left them a bunch of different church movies to watch too. They did everything we left for them to do and really started changing and felt accepted into the family of our ward. They came to the ward activity on May 25th and they were totally comfortable. One day, we went to them with the Flia. Galli (who are the ones that invited them to church) and talked to them about seriously preparing to be baptized on June 4th. Patricia said she would and Ricardo said he would pray and read every day. That Sunday at church, Ricardo felt really good and received some sort of answer. He still said he wouldn´t be ready by the fourth, but he said on June 11 that he and his wife would BOTH get baptized. They seemed really excited about it so we set it up and the ward did a great job planning the baptism. It turned out really beautiful and you could totally feel the spirit. Catalina, the 84 year old Italian friend of the same Familia Galli, also got baptized with them. She started coming to church when the hermano started talking to her about temples when she went to buy clothes at their store and she "felt something really special." She said she wanted to go to church with them. She started going and she hasn´t stopped going and even though her family is basically against the church, she decided to get baptized and was really excited about it. She even got a pedicure so that her feet wouldn´t look bad going into the water and bought white underwear because she didn´t have any. She´s so cute and loves the church so much. She kept talking about how she was sad that she hadn´t ever heard about the church before. She´s basically amazing.
     So it was a really cool lesson about the power of member missionary work. It all started with just talking about the temple and inviting a neighbor to come listen to her give a talk and ended with three peoples´ lives being changed. It was probably a good lesson for me to learn right now too because I want to know how to do member missionary work too so I can keep being a missionary after I take off my nametag. So be like the Familia Galli - get our there and tell your friends, neighbors, doctors, coworkers! It will change their lives!! And probably yours too. :)
     Also, we did get transfers this past weekend and me and Hna. Clark will be staying in Puerto together. Yay! But with a twist. Two other hermanas are going to come join us in Puerto, Hna. Diaz and Hna. Arancibia (two Chilenas). I´m excited for my Spanish to get good again. :) So now we have four hermanas sharing our ward and our apartment. Today we had to go out and buy a new wardrobe and another mirror. We also had to get an hermano to bring a bunkbed over from another house and then we had to put it together, which was quite the challenge. But with the strength of three hermanas in skirts and a prayer of help, we were able to get the bed put together! Now we just have to put the dresser that we bought together and find a new table to use. It´s going to be kinda squishy, but I´m pretty excited about it. Always a new adventure. :) And we have all transfer to go out and find all the people that Puerto has that are just waiting to be found. Well, hope you all have a lovely week and tell someone about the gospel. It´s basically the best thing ever. You can use that line if you want, but I´m sure you can think of something better. :)
Love,
Hna. Seegmiller
P.S. Here are some pictures of us with Patricia and Ricardo, me trying to be Argentine, my crazy district, the baptism and my zone leaders. :) Good times in the mission.

Nuevos investigadores, anyone?-June 6, 2011

Hola Familia,
    I hope everything is just dandy with you guys. This week was actually pretty good for me. Our president said that we got 101 baptisms as a mission in the month of May. So we´re improving... a lot. Yay. He also said that in order to keep improving, we´re going to need to find a lot more new investigators. So that was the challenge for this week - new investigators. We ended up finding 11 - pretty good, but still not quite the 15 that we´re supposed to be getting. Some of the new ones were good, some were weirdies, and a bunch of them are just not ready to commit to anything. But it was still a really cool testimony that when we´re focusing and praying, Heavenly Father can help us do anything that we want to do. Lots of times He´s just waiting for us to ask and have faith. It turns out having faith is actually really hard. But He´s also willing to help us with that so we can´t really complain.
    Patricia and Ricardo have been progressing really well. Their baptism is scheduled for this Sunday at 5 PM, after a special Stake Conference that´s going to be a transmission from Salt Lake. I´m pretty excited about it... the Stake Conference and the baptism. Patricia has to quit smoking to get baptized and she´s doing really well. We got a call from her this week when we were in a lesson and we couldn´t answer so she left us a message. The message went like this," Hello Seegmiller. I called because you said to call you if I wanted to smoke and I really want to smoke right now. Pray for me. May Heavenly Father bless you. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." It was so cute. She´s trying really hard to do everything like she´s supposed to so she even changed "May God bless you" like she used to say to "May our Heavenly Father bless you." We called her back later and she said that she overcame it by buying two little candies. Catalina, a grandma of 84, is also getting baptized with them. She loves the church so much and asked us if everyone who goes to church has been baptized and we said yes. She said," Okay, then what do I have to do to get baptized?" She always wants more people to go to church because you just feel so good when you go. It´ll be good. We also found this guy from Chile, Marcelo, in the street a few weeks ago who´s a member of the church, but he´s been inactive for like 25 years. He told us that he wanted to come back to church and he´s now come to church 2 times. He´s pretty cool and always makes fun of our Spanish and other jokes. We´re pretty excited for him that he is putting his life in order again.
   We also had some fun experiences this week (as always) with random men. We were walking down the street the other day and some guy says," Hola elders.... Beautiful elders." in English. People just love to practice their English on us. We just smiled at him and then almost died laughing as we walked away. We didn´t even have time to tell him that we´re actually hermanas, not elders. We also did divisions this past week and Hna. Nava from Mexico came to join me in Puerto. I´ve been having a real problem lately where I almost fall over all the time. I think it´s my large shoes that do it. Luckily, I always have my companion at my side to catch me and I still have yet to faceplant. So I was walking with Hna. Nava and I tried to step onto a curb and somehow missed it and she had to grab my arm to keep me from dying. I thanked her and we kept walking on the sidewalk, where we passed a man that had watched the whole falling/saving encounter. I thought that it was kinda embarrassing that he had watched that, but oh well. He wasn´t going to let it slide though. When he walked past me, he looked at me and said," You almost fell. Haha." and walked away laughing. Wow, thanks buddy. I thought it was pretty funny though.
   Hna. Clark and I also almost got separated this week. I got off the bus at the stop we needed to and I looked behind me to see the doors of the bus closing right in front of Hna. Clark´s face so that she couldn´t get off. I screamed out loud when I saw her. She just looked at me with this horrified look on her face and pushed the button so that the bus driver would open the door again. Luckily, the bus driver did open the door and she could get off the bus. I´m sure the people around us thought we were totally nuts, what with me screaming and then laughing hysterically when she finally got back to my side. Good times. Hna. Clark also almost told this lady in a lesson that after having Jesus, Mary married Joseph Smith. "José Smith" just rolls off the tongue, but she stopped it before it came all the way out and Mary was still able to marry Joseph the Carpenter.
    Well, the mission is basically a miracle and the gospel really is too. It´s amazing how much it changes the lives of the people that let it. Hna. Clark and I are going to go out and find our 15 new investigators this week and try to help the 11 from last week progress. We´re going to have to work really hard, but that´s really better because then we know that we are going to be happy. Also, to those of you who have written me and I haven´t written back, sorry about that. I´m trying to do it, but it´s hard to motivate myself to write a letter that will get there only a few weeks before I will. The time really is getting shorter. Aaah! But now I´m just using my Pday time to be in Argentina, take pictures, buy souvenirs, and get fat on facturas. :) It´s a good time. I love you all. Thanks so much for the support!
Besos,
Hna. Seegmiller

¡Feliz 25 de Mayo!-May 30, 2011

Hola familia,
Well, another week went by here in Argentina. On Wednesday, it was the 25 de Mayo, which is Independence Day here in Argentina. Luckily, we had a ward activity, so we had something to do that day. No one really wanted to talk to us. We went to the church and had empanadas for lunch. Then we all played games. An hermana had arranged all the games and everyone would win points for winning the game and then they could buy treats and stuff from the prize table. We got put in charge of the Memory Game, where you had to make matches with the pictures on the cards. It was a favorite of the older ladies in the ward. They each came by five or six times, trying to win more points because it was the least embarrassing game. I think they were also trying to test their real memories, but it didn´t go that well. Haha.. :) They would try forever and then a little girl would come up and win in like two tries. Pobrecitas. There was also this other game where you had to run up to a bowl of flour and look for the little candy that was hidden in the flour. But you had to look for it and take it out with your mouth, so your face got covered in flour in the process. It was pretty entertaining to watch, but not too many people wanted to play it. Our investigadores, Ricardo and Patricia, came to the activity and they totally loved it. Ricardo got put in charge of the Pin the Tail on the Pig activity. He was having a great time and everyone treated him like he was already part of the ward. One of my favorite parts of the activity was when Ricardo and Hno. Galli, who both like to throw out little phrases of English that they know sometimes, sang "Row Your Boat" in broken English. It was probably one of the funniest things I´ve ever seen. I´m pretty sad that I didn´t get it on video.
We also haven´t run out of creepy men in our area. This week, we were walking down the street and this old man with a cane yelled," Lookin´good!" in English at us. Just some random guy. Good times. And then we met this other guy who speaks English pretty well and he was wearing an I love Obama hat, with a picture of Obama on it. Pretty entertaining. I think I want to get one of those hats, even though I know more about Cristina (the presidenta here) than I do about Obama. Oh, and we found this lady whose name is Blanca Nieve. She told us that we weren´t going to believe that that was her real name, but she said it´s true. Her mother actually named her Snow White.
Well, life is pretty good. Just looking for some new investigators and enjoying the ridiculousness of living in Argentina. I hope you are all doing great. Thanks for the support and prayers. They are always needed. :) Love you!
Hna. Seegmiller

Se me acabó la creatividad...-May 23,2011

Hello family,

Well, this was a fun week full of walking and clogged showers and investigators that don´t want to get baptized and WALKING and coldness and a lot of eating and WALKING. That pretty much sums it up. But overall, it was a pretty good week. :) We did find out that you can fix a clogged shower drain by using a plunger. Our doorman taught us how to do this and we were excited to learn something new.

We also went out with a member in our ward who´s thinking about going on a mission this week. We did some contacts and we found some lady who had just moved from La Pampa. She was really excited when I told her I had lived in Toay for four months. Then she was saying the normal stuff about how it´s only one God that we´re all worshipping so it doesn´t really matter what iglesia we go to. And Hna. Clark said that she was right and told her," Yeah, God is THE God." It was such a funny thing to say and didn´t really make much sense that I couldn´t hold it in and started to laugh. Then Hna. Clark started laughing because I laughed at her and la Pampa lady just looked confused. That same day, we passed some Testigos in the street and were shocked when we saw one of them, a super old grandma lady using a stick to hit a puppy over and over again and yelling at it to leave her alone. It might be the funniest thing i have ever seen. That same day, we went to see a nice man we had met on the street and walked into his house in the ghetto to see him and three old grandpas being super drunk. We invited them to church anyway and one of them said he was going to go. He didn´t show though.

I was also talking with Hna. Clark one morning about how so many members of the church have been on their missions and have seen the people that no longer go and have thought, " I will never become like them." And we were talking to one of these less active members this week and he said that he thought that when he was on his mission and then life hit him. It scares me because I have always thought like that - "that will never happen to me" so maybe I´m more susceptible. I said I´ve always thought that i was pretty strong and Hna. Clark said that if I think I´m strong and I´m just depending on my own strength to overcome my temptations then I probably will fall. I thought it made a lot of sense. If we just try to be strong be ourselves and use will power to overcome everything that Satan throws at us, we might not make it until the end. But if we allow Heavenly Father to help us overcome the temptations and stay strong throughout our lives and pray nonstop for his help, recognizing that we aren´t strong enough, then we will probably arrive in one piece. I wrote it down in my journal too so maybe Future Kasidy will find it in just the right moment and it can help her... me. Well, that´s my thought for the week. Stay strong and rely on God for pretty much everything. We´ll ber here all week looking for some chosen people and hardcore relying on God to help us find them. :) Have a lovely week!

Love,

Hna. Seegmiller

Zone Conference-May 16, 2011

Hello family,
This week was totally hectic and crazy, pretty much just like every week when you think you will have a baptism. You feel a lot better when the crazy, hectic week actually ends with a baptism, but that isn´t the story this week. We thought Rocío was totally ready to get baptized, but then she had to turn in a ton of papers for school and do a ton of stuff and said that she would feel better if she could wait and get baptized another time. We don´t really know what to do with her. We look at her and we just see how much better her life would be with the gospel and how much it would change all her situation. We can´t force it on anyone though, so we´re just waiting for her to realize and looking for other people who are going to be a little faster in realizing.
We did have Zone Conference this week though and it was totally awesome. It gave us that boost of energy that we needed to not collapse at the end of the week. They didn´t even make us do any practicing, which we were probably a little bit too happy about. But President talked a lot about the Atonement. He said that as missionaries, we probably don´t understand the Atonement like we need to. We need to try to understand it better and apply it to ourselves. We definitely aren´t perfect and will not become perfect while we are in this mission. But the work we are doing is so great and important that we really need to rely on that power to help us. Then we had a workshop about having "the vision." They said that we need to see the vision of our area and what it could really become. So we thought about what that means for Puerto and Mar Del Plata. In our area (South America South) there hasn´t been a new stake in over 5 years. That´s such a long time, but now we are getting ready to split the stakes here and there would be three stakes in Mar Del Plata. That means that we all have to be working really hard so that we can actually achieve this goal. And we also talked to President and he said that he´s going to put another companionship of hermanas in Puerto! So cool! So basically we have to get our ward clued in on the vision so that we can all work together to achieve this huge goal. A new stake! And there is always the vision of a temple in our mission, Bahía Blanca. We are always talking about how someday we will have a temple in our mission and we will hear it announced in Conference and we will jump up and shout for joy (Prez said that we will do it when we´re in the Conference Center without even thinking and then we´ll look around and notice that everyone thinks we´re crazy, but we´ll see someone else on the other side of the Conference Center who served like ten years before I did and he´ll also be shouting and jumping. I think I would probably just bawl uncontrollably for like an hour instead of jumping.) I can definitely see that happening and I know that one day, we really will hear that announcement and it will mean so much to all the people here and so much to me. We have a ways to go before we get there, but we´re on our way.
So now Hna. Clark and I are really excited about getting the ward excited about missionary work and putting a new plan in effect to get people working and inviting their friends. We´re aware that it´s going to be really hard and probably not give any results for a while, but we´re willing to stick with it and really get the ball rolling here.
Also, Hna. Clark sings really well and she can do the alto part on the songs so I like to take advantage of that and make her sing with me in the houses of investigators. It´s really awesome because it would probably be an okay performance in the States, but here it´s "hermosa" and the best thing they´ve ever heard. It makes us feel good. The other day, we found this new investigator named Mariana and we sang a song for her and her son, Salvador, who´s like 4. He liked it a lot and even asked for another one so we sang a verse of " I Know that My Redeemer Lives." He totally loved it. He loved it so much that he couldn´t contain himself while we were saying the prayer and started singing" Señor, vive..." He couldn´t remember the words or the tune, but it was really cute hearing him try to sing.
Well, I think that´s pretty much it for this week. That and also, the secretary sent me my travel plans to go home. It totally freaked me out. I have a seat number assigned on a plane so it´s pretty much sealed that I am actually going to go home. I still don´t think it´s hit me yet. I´m going to Miami! Woo! That´s where all Argentines have relatives. Maybe I´ll be able to find some of them and baptize them real quick before my layover. We´ll see... But I´ll be getting home on Wednesday, July 27th at 2:40 pm if everything works out well. Pretty freaky. I´m excited, but it´ll be totally weird to not be a missionary anymore. I have been doing it for a while now. It definitely has its hard times. It is hard. But at the end of the day, I´m always still happy to be here and grateful that Heavenly Father let me come. It´s taught me how true this church really is and how much it can help us in our lives if we just let it. And how the Atonement really can change us if we let it. That´s the challenge we have - letting Him help us. Well, have a lovely week and good luck with that challenge. Love you!
Hna. Seegmiller

Happy Mother´s Day!- May 9, 2011

Hello family,
It was a very happy Mother´s day here in Argentina... for me and Hna. Clark. Everyone else here is still waiting until October to celebrate it. They´re weird and celebrate it then so we didn´t even get any chocolate or roses because we´ll "be mothers someday." But it was still a good Mother´s Day because I got to Skype the family and it was so fun. Fun to see everyone and discover Jarrett´s ridiculous sideburns. Without the miracle of technology (el milagro de tecnología), I would never have known that important fact. It was actually really weird listening to Hna. Clark talk to her family because we actually have the same first name. So I listened to her family say," We love you, Cass." and "Hey Cassidy! Did you know...?" and it was totally weird. She said the same thing happened to her listening to you guys. Pretty freaky. What are the chances that I would have a companion whose name is also Kasidy?
This last week was pretty good. We got ditched by two investigators. We went by their houses and each one of them tried to give us the BOM back and say that they didn´t want to change from being Catholics. Pretty sad, but sometimes that happens. It´s pretty hard to change. But we told them to keep it and to give it to their friend if they didn´t want it or to keep it and keep reading it. Not the most fun, but they just aren´t ready yet. Someday they will be... In the meantime, we are going to keep looking for those that are ready now. Speaking of those that are ready, we went to the Familia Roberto this week. They are our beautiful family that we are teaching that just moved into our ward from Barrio Centro. We thought of doing a Family Home Evening with them where you use big rocks, little rocks and sand and show how it doesn´t fit if you put in the sand first, but only if you put all the stuff in the jar in a specific order. It´s supposed to be used to teach about how you really have to do all the important stuff like pray, read your scriptures, go to church first and then you will have time to do all the other stuff - like go to school and work and have fun too. But if you try to do the other stuff first, it really doesn´t all fit in. Well, it was a great idea, but we really didn´t have any rocks to use. So like any good missionaries would do, we went to the street to look for some rocks. We found some really small rocks and some medium sized rocks in the road and spent a good fifteen minutes picking them all up and putting them in the pockets of our coats (by the way, it is really starting to get cold here. I´ve already whipped out my wool tights). Every once in a while, a car or a moto would go by and the people would look at us like we were nuts. I would look up and smile at them like I was normal, but Hna. Clark tried to keep her head down "so they won´t think that Mormons are crazy." Pretty entertaining. So we took our pockets full of rocks to our apartment to see if we could make it work (with about an hour before our FHE was supposed to start) and found that the medium rocks weren´t big enough. So we ran out of our apartment, remembering that a road was under construction right next to our building. On the way down the stairs, we saw some planters with the perfect size rocks in them and I really wanted to borrow them (with every intent of returning them), but Hna. Clark wasn´t up for it. Probably better that way. So we sprinted to the road and found a bunch of big rocks and sprinted back to our apartment, tested it out (and it totally worked) and then sprinted to the FHE at the member´s house. Well, it turned out that the rock thing didn´t really work because it didn´t fit in the jar no matter what order you put it in, but they were all nice to us and pretended that it worked and got what we wanted them to out of it. But overall, it went well and was a totally crazy, rock-hunting filled day.
Also, Hna. Clark has been overjoyed this past week that it is getting colder. She says that she likes winter better because we have big coats that cover our bodies and it looks like we have no form and the men aren´t as creepy. I thought it was pretty funny, but so far it has proved to be totally untrue. We had the creepy police officer that asked us for our number. I thought he was totally nice so I gave it to him and took his, just in case we were ever in danger. Then we got a text from him on Sunday morning that said," How is the most beautiful woman who´s ever crossed my path? Are you leaving to preach the word today or are you resting?" Yeah, we didn´t text him back and my trust of Argentine men went down even more. And then we left our house and a guy said to us," Will one of you marry me?" Umm, no. Gracias.
But life is good and we are planning on helping Rocío get baptized. She´s really going to make it now and we know that she is so ready. We just have to have our bishop and ward on board with us. But the mission is good and we are working hard. It´s getting cold and we are looking for new investigators, but feeling more and more support from the ward every day. This ward really is great and I feel lucky to be working here, even with the fish smell. Love you all! Have a lovely week! Go to church and it will probably be better. :)
Love,
Hna. Seegmiller

Oh the mission...-May 2, 2011

Dear family,
How goes life? My life is pretty good. Another transfer has ended and my mission life is slowly ebbing away. And it´s kinda freaking me out. But I am happy to be here and I have another new companion. I´ve had five companions in the last five transfers. I just can´t seem to hold on to them. But my new one is Hna. Cassidy Clark. I lived with her in Tandil and we always got along really well. We have the same trainer, Hna. Davis, so she is actually my little sister. She´s cool and excited to work. We´re going to have a good time and work really hard. She came from La Falda so she brought a letter with her from the Familia Soria, the family that got baptized when I was there. They told me that they are doing so good. She´s the Relief Society teacher and he´s president of Young Mens! Their kids are doing great and are excited to get baptized. It was so beautiful to hear from them and hear that they´re doing well.
Meanwhile, Hna. Collette left me a good memory to remember her by. She bore her testimony because we always do on the last Sunday in a ward and she tried to tell everyone that she was going to miss them, but mixed up the words and said," This ward is going to miss me so much." Everyone understood what she was trying to say, but I still laughed to myself. Then a bunch of members came up to her afterwards and told her to keep practicing her Spanish. Pobre. She´ll be fine though. And at least it´s something to laugh about. :) I´m just going to keep practicing my French. Je te vais couper la tet! Haha...
Puerto is doing well. This past week was Hna. Collette´s birthday so I tried to do everything I could to help her celebrate it well. I made her a cake that turned out pretty well and the whole zone sang her happy birthday. I bought her a scarf and a cute alpargata keychain and made her a classy homemade card. Then I told our Ward Mission Leader that it was her birthday and he told her that she needed to have a member cake! So the next day we went over and ate cake with him and his wife. And then we ate more cake on Sunday with the Bishop and his family. So basically a lot of cake... and Argentine cake is not the best. Just use a lot of dulce de leche and you´re good to go. But a lot of dulce de leche will make you throw up or feel very sick to your stomach for a while. So it was a fun week!
We also have found some new investigators, but since it was REALLY cold and windy this Sunday and all our investigators are Argentine (go figure... actually one is from Chile), they didn´t show up to church. It was pretty sad, especially because Rocio and Franco said that they would FOR SURE come this Sunday. Well, hopefully they do come and can get baptized, but we shall see. But life is good in Puerto. Still smells like fish. Still full of chosen people just waiting to be found. So Hna. Clark and I are going to go find them! Wish us luck... and pray for us. Love you all!
Hna. Seegmiller

I have a nephew!!!-April 25,2011

Hello familia,
I am doing really well. I am soooo excited that I have a nephew! He was born a little early though and so now I have to wait even longer to meet him. But he looks really cute and they say he´s doing well. I´ve already been seeing things in store windows that I want to buy for him. Also, this past week, I got the Easter package that Mom sent me and we have been eating chocolate and kinda getting sick on it for the past week. It lasts a lot longer when there are only two of you eating it. The missionary work is going well in our area. We have a bunch of investigators, but they´re kind of all struggling to progress. Rocío didn´t come to church this week because she was "tired from her son´s birthday party the day before." She´s going to have to wait a little while longer to get baptized, but I know she´s going to make it. A family with five kids that were investigating the church in Centro just moved into our ward and the mom and one of her sons went to church this week. They seem pretty great and we really want to baptize them.
We actually did divisions again this week and I went to be with Hna. Freeman in Centro. It´s a pretty big area too, but we had a good time. She´s super cool and I enjoyed being her companion for a few days. We were knocking on doors in Centro and we rang this lady´s intercom and introduced ourselves. She said," Oh, we were just about to light the black candle for the devil. Do you want to come in?" We said "No thanks." and then she yelled," Okay, then don´t bother me anymore!" and hung up. Then we laughed really hard. I would give her points for creativity because I´m pretty sure it was a joke. Pretty sure...
I was also talking with Hna. Collette and she was trying to tell me about a store that she wanted to go to that sells earrings, but she couldn´t remember the word for earrings. She said," Ellos venden.... orejas?" Me: That´s ears. Her: Arvejas? Me: Peas Her: Ovejas? Me: Sheep! (laughing) It´s aritos!
It was pretty entertaining. It was just one of those bad Spanish days that happen sometimes. But it was pretty funny. She´s actually very good at Spanish.
Also wondering... what´s happening with the Mother´s Day phone call? I´m planning on Skyping if I can, but I need the password. I´m excited to talk to you guys and see you! SO fun! I hope you are all very happy and doing great. Thanks for all your support and prayers. I love you all! I still pridefully show our family picture to anyone who will look at it. And then they spend a few minutes trying to decide which one I am and they usually think Karli is me. Then I say," No, she has a man. I´m the one without a man." haha... And they say that we all look the same. Oh, Argentines. Gotta love em. Well, have a great week!
Love,
Hna. Seegmiller

Je vais te couper la tet!-April 18, 2011

Hello family,
My lovely companion, Hna. Collette, has been teaching me French this week. This particular phrase that got chosen as the title of my email this week was taken from when she was telling me a story from when she was living in France with her family and this guy got really mad at her brother and yelled," Je vais te couper la tet!" at him, which means," I´m going to cut off your head!" Pretty strong words. But I thought it was pretty funny so I asked Hna. Collette to teach me how to say that in French. So I practiced a little bit and wrote it down. Later, when we were walking down the road, I would randomly say that to her in French. It turned out to be really funny for me because she would totally freak out and I just laughed, since it doesn´t really mean anything to me. Then it got even better when we went to a less active lady´s house and she told us that she understands French. So I, of course, took advantage of this great opportunity and told her," Oh, really? My companion has been teaching me French. Je vais te coupe la tet!" She looked totally freaked out and Hna. Collette looked scandalized while me and the other two family members just laughed at their reactions. It was pretty great.
This week went pretty well. A few weeks ago, pretty much all our investigators told us not to visit them anymore so we have been rebuilding our group of investigators and now we have 14 newbies. We´re not sure if they are going to progress, but we would like to think that they are. We do know we were super blessed to be able to find them and at least tell them a little bit more about the church. We did finally have someone come to church. Rocío, a very inmature 29 year old, finally came. She had been before and she totally loved it, but it had been a few years. She showed up to church in the rain (most members in Argentina don´t even accomplish that) and loved all the classes. She is really open and tells us exactly what she´s thinking always, which actually proves to be pretty nice. She said that going to church helped her feel better and learn more than all the times we went to her house to talk to her and we were like," Duh! Can you please tell that to all our other investigators?" That is our main problem right now. People that think it´s lovely to listen to us, but they don´t want to move from their houses on Sunday morning. Even less now that it´s starting to get cold. And I´ve decided that it is going to be REALLY cold here. With a lot of wind. Should be fun... :)
This week went by really fast because we did divisions. This time, I got sent to be with Hna. Vargas in Pompeya and Hna. Collette stayed in the area with Hna. Salas. They are both Argentine hermanas and both really awesome so it was really good to work with them. And, Hna. Vargas didn´t have anything to eat for breakfast in their house so she made me a cake! Sweet. It was super good and tasted almost like Texas Sheet Cake so I´m going to try to make it for Hna. Collette´s birthday that is coming up next week. I also took advantage of divisions to sneakily buy her a present for her birthday. She has no idea. I hope she likes it. Hna. Vargas and I were able to find 3 new investigators in their area and it was really fun teaching with someone else and talking to her. Maybe she´ll be my comp next transfer... it would be a party. I also learned that it´s really important to just always ask people if you can teach them. Even if you think that they won´t accept, you never really know if they will or not. We´re going to start doing it in our companionship now.
One last story... we were walking by this young couple who were sitting outside the Bingo of Puerto and just staring into each other´s eyes, as the young people who are "in love" tend to do, when the girl just started hugging the head of her boyfriend. I saw it and was pretty weirded out, but when we had walked a few more steps, Hna. Collette asks me," Hermana, do you want to hug my head?" and I said," How did you know?" and then we laughed really hard. I guess it sounds kinda weird now, but it was really funny. We have a good time making fun of all the PDA that we see every day.
Anyway, I´m feeling very happy here in Mar Del Plata and enjoying the time I´m with Hna. Collette. She continues to crack me up. We are going to keep teaching, finding, and working hard to be able to help those people who need us to be able to get to know the gospel of Jesus Christ. It´s great and it continues to change me every day. I love seeing the way it changes everyone else too. It´s amazing. Share it with your friends. ;) Love you all!
Besos,
Hna. Seegmiller

Hello from Mar Del Plata-April 11, 2011

Hola Familia,
So this week was filled with creepy men, new investigators, and surprises...good and bad. It really was impressive how many creepy men we met this week. The first one was a reference from the elders. I guess they didn´t realize how creepy he was or they probably wouldn´t have sent us to his house. But we went and he came out and we told him that we´re missionaries and we´d like to share with him and his family. It was kinda windy that day so my skirt was kinda flying away and I was trying to do everything I could to keep myself modest. He just chuckled and said," Oh, your skirt´s flying up." Then he said he was busy then, but we could come by later. And then he asked us if we were single. We said yes, but we´re missionaries and he said," oh, because I´m looking for someone...." Oh boy. "Well, have a good day, sir." And then he told me that I have a nice voice. Wow, I´m so flattered. So we said good bye and then Hna. Collette laughed at me as we walked down the street, never to return to this creepy man´s house again. But maybe some nice elders will find him again someday. Then we had even more men yell at us than ever before "Oh hey rubia!" "Oh que ojos celestes!" "I want to learn about God!" and one taxista stop and ask if he could drive us somewhere because we were so beautiful. Then to top it all off, on Sunday morning when we were walking to church, this old guy sees us and says," Hey, you dropped something!" so I look behind me to see what I had dropped and he says" Un pétalo." Well, I had no idea what a "pétalo" was so we just kept looking at him like we were confused and he said," What? You didn´t like it?" and walked away. We asked some of the young people at church what the guy had said and they explained that he was saying that we dropped a petal... because we´re flowers. Oooooh, now I get it. So anyway... it was just a week full of creepy men. I hope we have less this next week.
We found two families this week. We went with the elders to meet a family that they had found from a less active lady in their ward. We went to teach the dad, the mom, and their 13 year old daughter. They are so cool and really excited about all the new stuff that they were learning. We went to their house on Tuesday and Thursday and taught them the first two lessons. We were so excited about them and sure that they would get baptized. Then we had a Family Home Evening planned in the church on Saturday night and we had the other family there and the dessert made and we were waiting outside for our lovely investigator family to get there. We had even called a few hours earlier to make sure that they remembered and they knew where the church was. When they didn´t show up on time, we called them and the dad answered. I said his name and that we´re the missionaries and when he realized it was us, he hung up. When we called back, it went straight to his voice mail. We were trying to be optimistic about what had happened, but it was a pretty sad moment. So we still haven´t figured out what happened to them, but hopefully we will be able to go teach them again. They are so great.
A surprise that we got was when we went to see Rocío, our investigator from a while ago, who took my Restoration movie and wanted to watch it. We went to her house to at least get my video back (because we were pretty sure that she was going to drop us) and she said that she knew that we were going to come and she had just been waiting for us. So we went in her house and she said that when we had told her the baptismal date of April 16th like 3 weeks ago, it stayed in her head (even though she had totally rejected the date). And she had been praying and watching the Restoration and reading the Book of Mormon this whole time, trying to figure out what was right. And she told us that she felt like Heavenly Father told her that she needs to be baptized. She´s been to church before a few years ago. Hna. Collette and I just looked at each other, pretty confused, but said that if she wants to reach the goal, she can and we will help her get there. So now we´re planning on baptizing her this Saturday. Life on the mission is pretty much crazy. But we´re excited for her.
We´ll have to wait and see what happens with the rest of our investigators. We hope that they can all progress. And we´re going to keep trying to find new ones. The ward is really great and so ready to help us. We´re trying to work the best we can. Also, the members told us this week that President Monson talked about how the young men need to be preparing to get married. So then I got a lot of jokes about how they´re preparing now and they´ll probably be ready by July when I get home. Oh, members... they just want gossip. They´re probably already stalking my Facebook to see if I have any prospects. :) Well, thanks for all the support and the prayers. I feel good being here in Mar Del Plata and we´re going to be working hard this week, helping Rocío and finding more people who need the gospel. I know I need it and am so grateful that it´s a part of my life. Heavenly Father loves us and is in charge here. We´re going to be so much better off if we just follow what he tells us to do. Love you so much!
Cariño,
Hna. Seegmiller

General Conference! -April 4, 2011

Hello family,
So this week turned out to be pretty lousy. It was probably the worst numbers week of my whole mission. We´re kinda lacking investigators right now. We´re trying to find new ones, but it has kinda been resulting in a lot of walking and sleeping really well every night and a lot of zeros in my agenda. Everyone knows that missionary work is like that. But everyone here also says that Puerto is an awesome ward and that we can have a lot of success here. I totally believe them and am excited to see it, but we have to fight through the dry periods first. But Hna. Collette and I are still excited and ready to work and to find all those people who we know are ready here.
It probably didn´t help the week that much that we did divisions with the hermanas who work in Centro and I had to stay in Puerto. Hna. Diaz from Chile came to join me. She´s going home with me in July and I´m not sure it was the best idea to put us together. She has counted how many Pdays we have left in the mission (15 now...aaah!) and she didn´t hesitate to tell me. I´m going to try to forget that now and go back to letting Hna. Collette convince me I have a really long time left. That was a happier thought. The real bad thing about being with Hna. Diaz is that it meant that I was in charge and I still had no idea where I was going in this huge area. I tried to lead the way, but I got totally lost and made us walk like 15 extra blocks, only noticing that we were going the wrong way when we almost got to the beach instead of the big road. We walked in the complete opposite direction than where we needed to be going for like twenty minutes. Oops. But it just made me feel really stupid. I just wasn´t ready for this area with 100 streets after three areas with like 20 streets to memorize. I have no doubt that I will figure it out though.
But on a very happy note, we had General Conference!! It was amazing as always. I really think it is even better as a missionary, even if it means that you have to watch it with a bunch of elders. They set up an English room for us who speak English and it´s so awesome to hear the Prophet´s voice and to be able to sing in English! I loved how the Prophet talked about temples and imagined all the temples being filled with people in the coming months. It made me really excited that I´ll be able to go again too. I loved getting answers to questions that I had. But mostly I loved seeing all the prophets and apostles and listening to their strong testimonies and realizing that this work is going to keep moving forward. There is nothing that we can do to stop it. The church is going to keep growing. More and more people are going to come to accept the gospel and let it work miracles in their lives. And i just feel grateful to be a part of it. I also realized that I just have to make sure that I am strong enough so that I can help as much as Heavenly Father needs me to. Pretty amazing. Well, thanks for your prayers and your support. I´m going to be working hard to get to know Puerto this week and finding some new investigators. I know that we have tons of help and I am very grateful for Hna. Collette, who continues to make me laugh constantly. Also, we made chocolate chip oatmeal cookies today, due to the request of our district leader for our meeting ("You´re women so you love baking.") It was a little taste of home, even though I had to cut up a chocolate bar to make the chocolate chips. :) Well, I´m still loving the mission and feel very glad that I made the decision to come. This is Jesus Christ´s church and the world needs to know it. Your friends need to know it... so tell them. :) Love you all!
Hna. Seegmiller

Mar Del Plata - LOCURA sin cura!-March, 28, 2011

Buen día, familia,
My first week in Mar Del Plata turned out to be pretty crazy (like every other week of my missionary life). The first thing I heard about Puerto is that it smells like fish really bad. And then I heard that it´s a really awesome ward and has a bunch of active members! It´s like a dream! So all week I was really excited to go to church and see just how many members there were. It´s a really big, beautiful church and it´s only two blocks away from where we live! We also live pretty close to the beach and we can see the Atlantic Ocean from our window. The Atlantic Ocean is a new experience for me. I feel like I´ve always been involved with the Pacific Ocean, but the Atlantic is nice too. And when we finally made it to Sunday again, I wasn´t disappointed! The church was just FULL of active members and people wanting to meet me and try to pronounce my name and wondering if I play the piano (thank goodness that I do or I don´t think they would let me stay!). There were like 70 of them and all the members said that there were a bunch of people out of town because of the long weekend (because there was another holiday for no reason... oh Argentina. :) We went to lunch with the Bishop after church and he started telling us that we have a Ward Mission Leader and Ward Missionaries. WHAT?! No way! And we have a Sunday School President WITH COUNSELORS!! I couldn´t believe it. I haven´t seen that since I left the United States. I honestly had to use my hand to close my mouth because I was so surprised. So basically I love it here.
Also, my new companion in Hna. Christa Collette. She was actually in my same major, Elementary Education, at BYU before I left (at the same time and everything) but we didn´t ever meet each other. We had to come to Argentina to meet. She´s been here four and a half months already, but she loves the area and the ward. She´s really funny and we laugh a lot together. I wrote down something funny that she said every day this week. The best part is that she doesn´t even know it´s going to be funny and then when I start laughing really hard, she still looks oblivious and it makes me laugh even harder. Some of my favorites are: "ROSA!" that she yelled really happily when she saw a lady who actually turned out to be named Ana, "sí, the Catholic church kills the faith a little" to a Catholic lady in the street, and this little encounter with a random old man after picking an avocado off a tree in the street and not knowing what it was (it has a weird shape here)...
Excuse me, sir, what is this?
Avocado
Oh, thank you.
Nothing else?
Oh, um... also, we´re missionaries...
BYE!
And he walked away as fast as he could, leaving us to laugh really hard. So it´s been a pretty good time. And I´m looking forward to being able to find lots of new investigators. Our area is HUGE!!! It´s like eight times bigger than any of my other areas and I kinda feel the pressure of so many people to visit and teach and baptize. It´s hard to find time for everyone. Luckily, hardly any of them want to find time for us so it makes it a lot easier. Also, a lot harder because we have to find people to baptize. But we are really excited for General Conference and are going to try to get a bunch of investigators to go. Who doesn´t want to go and listen to the prophet? Well, I hope you are all doing wonderfully. Good luck with all that you´re doing and pray for us. :) Thanks for the support.
Love,
Hna. Seegmiller
P.S. These are some pictures that we took this week.
1. The sign outside of our apartment so you´ll know who lives where. It still says "Elderes." Someone forgot to change it.
2. Me with a Puerto sign.
3. The only thing that there are more of than people in my area... fish. More specifically, dead fish. Mmm.. que rico.
4. Me in the puerto with the boats.
5. Me and Hna. Collette on the beach
6. Hna. Collette and I being weird
7. Me inviting Mar Del Plata to repent. We erased it before we left though so they probably won´t do it. We´ll have to keep inviting them individually.

March 21, 2011

I somehow deleted Kasidy's e-mail from this week and can not find it. It was short because she was transferred. She is now in Mar del Plata with a new companion. Here is some information about Mar del Plata:

Mar del Plata is an Argentine city located on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, 400 km (249 mi) south of Buenos Aires. Mar del Plata is the second largest city of Buenos Aires Province. The name "Mar del Plata" had apparently the sense of "sea of the Río de la Plata region" or "adjoining sea to the Río de la Plata".^[1] Mar del Plata is one of the major fishing ports and the biggest seaside beach resort in Argentina. With a population of 614,350 as per the 2010 census [INDEC], it is the 7th largest city in Argentina.

Economy

One of the beaches of Mar del Plata during summer tourism season.

As part of the Argentine recreational coast, tourism is Mar del Plata's main economic activity with seven million tourists visiting the city in 2006. Mar del Plata has a sophisticated tourist infrastructure with countless hotels, restaurants, casinos, theatres and other tourist attractions. Mar del Plata is also an important sports centre with a multi-purpose Olympic style stadium (first used for the 1978 World Cup and later upgraded for the 1995 Pan American Games), 5 golf courses and many other facilities.

As an important fishing port, industry concentrates on fish processing and at least two large shipyards.^[2]

The area is also host to other light industry, such as textile, food manufacturing and polymers. There is a well-developed packaging machines industry, its quality being recognized in international markets^[3]. One of these companies was one of the pioneers in the automatic packaging of tea bags^[4], exporting its original machine-designs abroad. Another company also exports its products and sold royalties to other countries.^[5]

During the mid 1980s, Mar del Plata saw the birth of electronics factories, focused mostly on the telecommunications field, with two of them succeeding in the international market.^[6]

Located southwest of the city there are quartzite quarries. The stone is traditionally used in construction (see Architecture). There is a huge area of farms in the rural areas surrounding the city, specialized mostly in the cultivation of vegetables.

Although the area had suffered from a high rate of unemployment from 1995 to 2003, Mar del Plata has seen 46,000 new jobs created from the third quarter of 2003 to the third quarter of 2008, representing an increase of 22%.^[7] The 2008 Davis Cup Final was held in Mar del Plata and, after being shut for a decade the Gran Hotel Provincial (one of the largest hotels in Argentina) was reopened by the Madrid-based NH Hotels, in 2009.

Mar del Plata continues to lead Argentina's room availability: of 440,000 registered hotel rooms nationwide in early 2009, the city was home to nearly 56,000 (5,000 more than Buenos Aires).^[8

Nickname(s): La Feliz (The Happy One), Mardel, La Perla del Atlántico (The Pearl of the Atlantic)
Mar del Plata Location in Argentina
Coordinates: 38°0′0″S 57°33′0″W / 38°S 57.55°W / -38; -57.55Coordinates: 38°0′0″S 57°33′0″W / 38°S 57.55°W / -38; -57.55
Country	Argentina
Province	Buenos Aires
Partido	General Pueyrredón
Founded	February 10, 1874
Government
- Intendant	Gustavo Pulti
Area
- Total	79.48 km2 (30.7 sq mi)
Elevation	38 m (125 ft)
Population (2010)
- Total	614,350
- Density	6,816/km2 (17,653.4/sq mi)
Postal code	B7600
Phone code	+54 223
Website	www.mardelplata.gov.ar (Spanish)

"Cuando hay viento, lloro. Cuando hay comida, como."-March 14, 2011

Hello familia,

Well, I somehow ran out of time today, but luckily, not much happened this week! My lovely companion, Hna. Araya, got super sick and we spent two and a half days in the house. Fun! It was super hot at the beginning of the week and we were outside walking all day. It wasn´t very good for us because I got a cold and Hna. Araya got a fever on Thursday night. We had to come back home early. She took her temperature and it was 101 degrees. She had that same fever all day Friday and Saturday. We called the doctor of the mission and he told her what pills to take. So now she´s healed again, but she had a few days in bed. And I got to read Our Heritage. It´s a really good book and it showed me just how much other people have sacrificed for this church. Pretty impressive.

I also found my old journal entries and found out that I gained 11 pounds in my first area. And since then, I´ve lost 13! Pretty impressive, huh? I´m pretty sure it shows in the pictures that I´ve sent home. I was a little gordita before. Haha... We´ll see what the coming winter does to me. I guess you guys will see when I get home. :)

Hna. Araya and I also talked this week about how nothing is worth your salvation. Lots of times we make decisions that puts our salvation at risk. The more we talked about it (and shared our thoughts with a less active lady) the more we realized that nothing is worth risking our salvation. Everything else we experience in this life will basically end when we die. Salvation and our chance to live with Heavenly Father again is the only thing that we will have. SO all the worldly things that we have here and the things that we would trade for our salvation really aren´t worth it. If we think about all our decisions in terms of "Is this going to help get me to my salvation?" it puts everything into a whole new perspective. There are a lot of things that we have to sacrifice when we think like that, but it´s definitely worth it because at the end of our life, we will have the greatest reward... the possiblity of living with our Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and our families again.

Basically, I love my companion and she´s teaching me so much about how to be a missionary and how to live life. I´m grateful for her and for the chance to be with her here in the mission. Also for the chance to be in the mission. It´s amazing how much it has changed the way I think and helped me to know exactly where I want to end up... with you guys in the Celestial Kingdom. I love you!! Thanks for your support.

Love from

Hna. Seegmiller

P.S. The title of my email today comes from me and Hna. Araya walking down the street and having a ridiculous conversation. I said," When it´s windy, I cry." and she replied with," When there´s food, I eat." Haha... we laughed for a good ten minutes and then thought about writing poems together. It´s so profound. :)

Sonreí, sos Argentino y vivís en Tandil. ¿Qué más querés?-March 7, 2011

Hello dear family,
I found the title of my email on the back of a bus this week and totally loved it. I said it all week whenever we were feeling kinda down and Hna. Araya just cracked up every time. It´s so profound. "Smile, you´re Argentine and you live in Tandil. What else do you want?" They have a point. It comes out a little stronger in vos though. Well, this week was not as awesome or full of miracles as other weeks, but at least none of our investigators died. :)
We had Daniela who came to church last week and we had an appointment to go by on Tuesday. We went over to her house and saw her outside, but when we got closer, she went inside and her daughter came out and told us she wasn´t there. We went by like four days in a row and she was always "busy." We´re pretty sure she´s living with her boyfriend again and doesn´t want to tell us. Maybe we didn´t hide very well how happy we were when they broke up... oops. So we´re going to let her think about her life for a while and pass by her house again when she´s ready to not hide from us. It happens, but it did make us mad that she kept making her daughter lie for her.
We also met Jorgelina this week, who has 8 kids. 8!! And she´s married. She said that she liked us when we knocked on her door so she invited us over. She smokes a lot so we´re going to help her stop. She accepted the baptismal date and said she would go to church, but didn´t answer the door when we went to pick her up. It´s really weird because all of our investigators right now are really active in their own churches so they´re already used to going to church. We just have to convince them to go to our church and get baptized instead of their own church. But Victor and Cristina in La Falda did it so these people can too.
We did have one miracle - Valeria. She´s the girlfriend of the less active son of our ward mission leader. She wants to change her life so we´ve been teaching her. She was going to get baptized the 12th of March, but then she decided that she wanted to get married first so she could really keep the Law of Chastity. So now they´re getting married on the 23rd of March and she can get baptized right after. Yay!! And she just quit her job so that she can go to church every Sunday. So this Sunday was her first day. Now we just have to reactivate her boyfriend. But she is super cool and brave for making all these changes and for following the answers that Heavenly Father is giving her.
Oh and tomorrow is International Woman Day so I hope all the women that read this have a very happy day. Apparently, it´s a big deal here so we´re going to tell the elders to do something for us. YAY! I hope you are all doing very well. Hna. Araya and I are having a lovely time here in Villa Aguirre and loving our cute little rama. Our miracle family continues to amaze us. Braian received the Priesthood this Sunday. I wanted to cry. He´s going to pass the sacrament next week. I love being a missionary and we´re trying to do the best we can. I love you all and am so grateful for your love and support. I received a lot of it this week in form of a lot of letters and a package from Kylie and friends (and there are letters coming your way!). Thanks for your prayers! Sonreí.
Con amor,
Hna. Seegmiller

Una semana media loca-February 28, 2011

Hola familia,
I hope you are all doing super well. We are doing well here in Villa Aguirre. This week was pretty crazy because we had four baptisms planned for Saturday so we had a lot of stuff to do. Our lovely old man investigator, Antonio, showed up to church on Sunday with his son and we were so happy. Braian, Elisabeth, and Ayelen were even more solid than ever and the members of our branch are already in love with them and going to visit them at their house every day. We just had to go visit them, get them an interview, and get them baptized. And they were so ready and so excited.
We went to see Antonio on Tuesday afternoon, but when we got to his house, everything was all locked up. It was pretty weird, but we decided to go back another day (since he doesn´t have a phone). So we didn´t make it to Antonio´s house until Thursday and when we got there, his son was outside cutting the grass. We said hello and talked to him for a little while and then asked him where Antonio was. He said," He´s in heaven." and when we looked disbelieving, he said," He passed away on Monday." We mostly didn´t believe him because his son is a little weird, but he invited us to sit down and told us that he found his dad on Monday morning and that by Tuesday night, they had already buried him. It was really hard to believe. We kept asking him if he was serious and finally, he took out the papers from his dad´s death and showed them to us. Hna. Araya and I just sat there and cried while Hna. Acosta talked to Jorge for a while. We sang " I know that my Redeemer lives" and left. It was definitely a weird experience and really sad. He was only six days away from his baptism and he passed away. I guess we know that Heavenly Father knows what´s going on and everything happens for a reason, but it was still hard.
We did have some happy things also - Braian, Ayelen and Elisabeth got baptized on Saturday and almost the whole branch came to support them. Hna. Araya, me, and the elders did a musical number - Nearer, My God, To Thee. It was a really beautiful baptism. I just kept asking myself why Heavenly Father blessed us two misioneras with this beautiful, prepared family. I never came up with an answer, but I am very grateful to have been part of their conversion experience.
Another cool thing was that we went to visit Daniela, an investigator that we were thinking about not visiting anymore because she wasn´t progressing and because she lives with her boyfriend. When we got to her house, she said that she and her boyfriend weren´t living together anymore because they had broken up. It was like a sign to us from Heavenly Father that we needed to keep teaching her. So we invited her to church and set a meta for a baptismal date. The next day, we went to pick her up for church and she was waiting outside for us. What a miracle! I don´t know what it is about the people in this area and going to church when they say they will. It´s really weird and hasn´t happened to me in any other place. I´m not complaining though... it´s super nice.
Well, that was my week. I´m loving being a missionary and love being with Hna. Araya. She´s so great and I really love her more every day. I hope you are all doing well. Good luck with life in the real world. I´m going to enjoy my missionary world while it lasts. Love you!
Hna. Seegmiller