Flight plans, no more professional volleyball players, & 3 Spanish days

Hola Todos,

I hope you are all doing well!! I have made it on my mision here now for 1 MONTH! Yay! Our 1 month mark was yesterday, so I am 1/18 down haha. It has felt like 2 or 3 months though because the time here is so weird??!! Each week feels like a whole month because we are doing so much stuff haha. So we got our flight plans yesterday as well!! YAY! CRAZY! So me and most of the other girls are leaving next monday, in a week, on November 6th to Argentina!! we leave at 8:50 to go to the airport in Salt lake and such, but our flight is at 2:11 that afternoon. We go to Atlanta first, then that night we go at like 9:30 to Buenos Aires! Ah! That will so so cool! But so it is over night, so we don't get there until 12 hours later, at 9:20 that next morning on Tuesday the 7th. But my companion doesn't leave until the 8th on Wednesday, so she will be alone until then after we all leave :(, but be adopted by another group of girls!

So this week I discovered that I am no longer a professional volleyball player, because I jammed my finger pretty bad!! well it was my thumb. So first I bruised my thumb pretty bad a couple times the other week, now I jammed my other one really bad this week. The athletic trainer did an ultra sound on my thumb lol. It helped though and she made me do some thumb exercises haha. It has been sore for a couple days now, I jammed it on Monday so it is better now. but I had to sit out during exercise time from a lot she said haha so I could just run instead on the track.

Tuesday for the devotional we had Elder Gary E. Stevenson come speak!! and we did the choir again so that was amazing and awesome to do it then, they broadcasted it again to the 14 other MTCs in the world! It was so good and amazing! Wednesday we started our English fast again, so for this time we did it for 3 days. It is when we 'fast' from speaking English, so we only speak Spanish. But we did not do so well this time haha because it is hard to remember to speak only Español. Especially when we all want to share a lot of stories with each other! But we keep trying to speak only spanish. 

Thursday me and 2 other people, sister Sederholm (pronounced cedar-home) and elder Brinkman and I all audtioned for a musical number thing, so we did a song called "our Savior's love" and we get to play it next monday at a fireside/meeting or something! It was really good, we are practicing it today so I'll take a video and maybe try to send it next week! Sederholm does the flute, and I do the piano, and Brinkman does the viola so it is awesome! Friday was good, that was our travel plans day! I will be so weird to leave in just over a week! We were all kinda emotional about it and leaving each other! I feel like I have known all of them forever and love them SO much. We also had our last TRC lessons this week!! It was sad kinda because I really love the woman we were teaching, Daniella, who is from Chile! On the last day I drew a picture for her of the steps of ordenanzas and covenants that she needs to make to progress in the gospel, with baptism, the holy ghosts, etc..until you gain eternal life and she loved it haha she thought it was so cute! So I gave it to her and she was so happy.

I have learned so much here, this has been the best thing that has happened to me and it has only been a month now! One of my favorite quotes from a talk my friend gave me called "4th missionary" goes: "you have the ability to change, not just once-but continually you can change all the time. Do not say to yourself 'that is just who I am, or the way I am.' You are responsible for who you are, and who you can become everyday." Another thing I really like is what my companion said 'you can never rely too much on God.' Dieter f. utchdorf said also, "Learn to be satisfied with yourself without comparing to people who are 'always ahead of you,' it doesn't help, don't be a victim to life." I have learned a lot of these things in the time I have been here, learning Spanish, and how to put your trust in God, and be humble more, which I wish other people could learn and experience too! It really makes me the happiest and have so much joy.

con amor a todos,

Hermana Chelsea Martines (pictures will come!)