Sunday, June 21, 2015

Week 46-June 15, 2015

Week 46-June 15, 2015

hey everyone!  hope everyone else is doing well. this week was good for us, lots of people came to church and we are going to the temple this week with two of our menos activos to do baptisms! i also learned how to make arepas this week (columbian food) so that was awesome. basically im pretty without energy today becasue i spent the whole night throwing up becasue of some ribs someone gave us for lunch yesterday. on e of my worst nightmares was that i would have to throw up in someones house that we were visiting and it happened last night. haha at leaast i was super lucky and no one heard :) but i am  better now. also it is freezing cold here now. hope you guys have a fantastic first week of summer!! love you all!

Week 45-June 8, 2015

Week 45-June 8, 2015

wow sounds like everyone is doing well :) fun to hear about blake. so sorry for kylie :( dont give up on helping her! even if she gets sick of you, keep going! :P also congrats lydia on getting elected VP of chanteurs! and dont worry Natalie, just means you can get even better at everything else, too :P you have so many talents, you dont have time for just one! :P 
anyway, one of the things ive learned here is how to recognize when im feeling the Spirit. also that little kids feel the Spirit way more than everyone else..examples
Antonio (12) ¨me siento libre¨
Javier (6) ¨como Dios estuviera aqui¨¨relajado, casi dormido!¨haha 
Millari (11) ¨me siento protegido¨
Connie (14) ¨siento algo caliente aqui¨(pointing to her heart)
haha one of my favorite parts of being a missionary is when kids tell you things like that without even knowing why they feel that way when we are at their house or at church.

by the way Dad, thanks for your scriptures about the love of God. unfortunately two of them are talking about Christ. the best one was the one in John... :)
also mom, you would love the fruit here. i thought of you sunday when some guy in the street came up to us and just randomly gave us a bunch of fresh, huge, beautiful grapes. also we passed the ferria and turns out a couple investigators were working selling fruit (fresh fresh fresh from the farms) and i got to try pepino (cucumbers but smaller and orange inside and sweet). they were delicious!
also a menos activo this week said he had a gift for reading peoples handwriting, so he read ours and said that my mom is worried, along with other things. haha hope thats not true...
also if mom could do my a quick favor, it would be AWESOME. i just want to make sure my netflix account doesnt still work. could you just try logging onto netflix with my username (ashleyjeanjensen at gmail.com) and password (iluv2dance) and see if it works? thanks..

anyway, this week was great! at church yesterday we had tons of people come! Victoria is going strong to go to the temple (menos activo who FINALLY came to church-miracle) and bore her testimony yesterday, as well as Felipe, the boy we are teaching and who is preparing to get baptized. He talked about how he got thrown out of the house by his dad and then hit by a bus and in a coma and the doctors all thought he would die but he is still here! he has so much faith. also a man the elders contacted and then taught during divisions in our sector (we didnt even know him yet!) came to church. his name is manuel. he is golden...but we think he has to get married so hopefully we can help him with that. Beatriz came to church again. we hadnt been able to find her in weeks because she started working and works until late. when we finally found her, she told us she had been sad because she thought we had abandoned her. she is way stressed out about work and her husband but not husband is being a jerk. 

anyway, it was a good week :) 
love and miss you all!!
have a fantastic last week of school and such!!!

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Week 44-June 1, 2015

Week 44-June 1, 2015

wow sounds like taylor leaving was quite the adventure!!! also it is obvious that he will be a lot better at writing than me :P haha but hopefully you guys can forgive me. glad he got to england safely and is doing great!
anyway this week here in chile all kinds of crazy things happenes! haha basically i found out my entire ward is crazy and we also found lots of people with mental problems contacting this week, but they are awesome. one of them, a 20 year old guy who had an accident and as such has a few challenges mentally, mostly just with his memory, is super awesome and came to church this week!! he is totally going to get baptized, we just have to help him remember the stuff he needs to know and help him keep quitting smoking. we have another investigator we found that has a lot of potential but he wont stop making jokes about marrying us during the lessons so we might have to leave him until someday the elders find him or something.. also another investigator whose daughter just got interned for drugs and bipolarism but she is awesome and her mom is super receptive and acepted a baptism date. we finally figured out how to teach the first lesson more simply because literally nobody understands. ever. so now we just talk about the power of God that Christ had to heal people. we dont even mention prophets haha and it worked!  the Spirit was there and she understood what we were saying. 
also this week Jorges mom taught us how to make sopiapillas!! so that was fun :) she is super nice to us even though she is super catholic. i think she really respects her son and the progress he has made. its awesome :)
also they took out two of the elders from our ward so now we have part of their old sector, so we have been getting to know it this week. super evangelical. there are literally at least 20 churches in our sector alone. every block has an evangelical church in someones house or something. crazy. also there is a part that is super poor. the poeple can just go and build a house there with what they have. its crazy to see. but the people there are super humble. its true what they say about the more humble people being more receptive. 
also we found a menos activo this week (finally) we basically told us that there is ALL KINDS of drama in our ward and things the people have done or are going through secretly that seriously challenged our faith in families and marriage. but hopefully we will get over it. but i wont go into detail because its not necessary. long story short, some of the people here have literally gone through the inimaginable in their marriages or lives and have lived to tell the tale. some of the people here are stronger than i could ever be and have TONS of faith.i learn every day from their examples...
anyway, love you all and have a fantastic week!

pretty part of our sector but not very successful because its richer. so basically we knocked some doors, took some pictures, found pomegranates and left. haha