Back home to good ole TEXAS

Hola amigos! I'm sure many of y'all already know but I made it home safely to the lovely Estados Unidos this past Sunday night! It was heartbreaking having to leave Argentina and all the wonderful people there, but good to be home with my family!!

Getting us out of Argentina was a little crazy and chaotic though so I thought I'd share a little bit about my journey home. Sorry in advance, this is gonna be a long one, so you can just skip to the pictures if you want :)) We had known we were supposed to be coming home for a while but were sitting restlessly in quarantine until "further notice" for news of when we were going home. It was probably the worst being in quarantine, in a tiny apartment in Argentina, without ANY sort of technology (except for our little tiny Nokia phones), and billions of police roaming the streets outside arresting people for being out. Having to walk the two blocks to the church and then the 10 blocks to our bank to take out pesos were some of the scariest walks of my life. Thankfully I never got arrested though. They had also extended our quarantine until April 14th so that kind of dimmed our hopes of leaving anytime soon. But, Wednesday they finally told us we had a flight home on Saturday April 6th from Buenos Aires to Salt Lake City!! The only problem was going to be getting us from Salta to Buenos Aires. This was about a 20 hour BUS ride. Yay!!

Wednesday night they said to get all of our things ready because they didn't know what time we would be leaving the next day for Buenos Aires. We had to print out a billion forms with permission from the government to be out on the streets in case the police stopped us. Sadly these flights were only for the American missionaries (about 90 missionaries in my mission) so my companion would be staying behind :( As of right now I think all the Latinos are still in Salta but should be returning home within the coming weeks. Lets just say I didn't sleep much, or at all on Wednesday night.

Thursday my zone leaders called me early in the morning to tell me our colectivo would be leaving at noon and I needed to be ready. Sweet. But then I never heard anything from them or from anyone until about 5 pm at night... Haha our mission had been successfully rounding up the other missionaries in the far away areas (like Mosconi) but still didn't have a bus ready to take us to Buenos Aires. We didn't end up leaving until about 1 am the next day on this colectivo. We met up at a church building in Salta that was in an area where there wouldn't be a lot of police at like 8 pm and then hung out with everyone there and said goodbye to President Orquera and his wife. Saying goodbye to them was one of the saddest moments and I know it was especially hard for them, because they not only had to say goodbye to a couple of missionaries, but the majority of the mission. Due to the police restrictions only about 1/4 of the mission was able to come to this church building and the others would be traveling on a different colectivo leaving from the Southern part of the mission or we would pick them up on the way. Finally we set off at about 1 am with the majority of the colectivo FILLED with our suitcases. We went to go pick up some missionaries that were not able to go to the church. At about 2 am though, we got stopped by the police. They told everyone to get out and wanted 10 volunteers. No one knew what was going on so we just sent a bunch of elders. Then they came back for 10 more and 10 more. Turns out they wanted to test all of us for corona virus and stuck a temperature gun to our foreheads and checked all our passports. It was kinda scary at the time but thankfully no one had a fever so we were able to go. After that we got stopped by the police several times but none of them made us all get out again. We got to Buenos Aires at about midnight Friday night. It was actually pretty fun once we got to Buenos Aires because we met up at the old MTC there with the other missionaries from other Argentina missions flying home with us. The church chartered two 777 airplanes to fly us out so there were about 550 missionaries on both planes. We left for the airport at about 3 am and literally stood in long lines until about 7 am when we boarded our flight. There was a flight that left at 8 am and a flight that left at 10 am. They took all the people NOT from Utah who would have connecting flights on the earlier flight and then all the people from Utah on the 10 am one. The flights were pretty cool being filled with missionaries but bittersweet having to leave Argentina. And I was running on like 0 sleep for 3 days so that was fun. Once we got to Salt Lake it was even more chaotic because they had us all scramble to find our bags and then some got on connecting flights immediately whereas others wouldn't have flights until Sunday so they sent us to a hotel. Other planes with missionaries landed as well so it was easy to lose people. I think I said goodbye to literally 3 people from my mission. My flight didn't leave until Sunday at 5 pm though so I got to hang out with Maddie and Nate in Utah which was awesome!!

Altogether traveling home was pretty crazy but definitely an experience I'll never forget. I loved Argentina with all my heart and hope to be able to return soon. Right now my plan is to keep my same end date (in March 2021) and get reassigned and sent back out as soon as I can! Until then I'll be at home trying to keep up my Spanish (so if you know any Spanish I'd appreciate any help I can get)!! Even though this time in the world is pretty crazy and can feel scary at times, if there is one thing my mission taught me it is that Heavenly Father has a plan for each and every one of us and He will NEVER abandon us. His plan is individual and PERFECT. Even though this was not a part of my plan, I know that Heavenly Father is in charge and everything happens for a reason. Amo mi Padre Celestial, mi Salvador y su evangelio. Fue un placer para poder predicar el evangelio en Salta Argentina aunque fue solamente por un breve tiempo. Thank you guys for all your love and support these past 6 months!! Hope yall are staying safe and away from covid-19!! Happy social distancing!!

con amor,

Hermana Tate

Goodbye my sweet sweet hijita Hna Nazareth :((