Week 56-August 25, 2015

Week 56-August 25, 2015

hi everyone!! good to hear everyone is ready for school to start again and doing great! im dong well, we went to the temple this morning and that was awesome and im starting to really know my new sector and the members (its easier every change because my spanish is better) haha. 

i have a mission for mom or dad, i need to know the story of conversion of our family. who was the first member of our ancestors? how did they join the church and such... 

also do we have any relation with the john tanner of the D&C videos? haha just curious..

this week we found lots of new people and got to work in some other sectors looking for new investigators and found lots! lots of miracles in finding.. knocking lots of doors. haha one example, last night i was getting kinda frustrating of knocking doors all day and so i was praying in my mind for help to find people and have pacience and after like 5 doors we ffound a pregnant mom who let us in and we taught lesson 1 and she started crying in the end and said she was happy. she had been wanting to start going to a church with her family and we had stopped by. she wants her famiy to be forever. the only challenge is that she is living with her husband but they arent actually married. but miracles happen :P just gotta have faith haha thats something i struggle with sometimes (i tend to overthink things instead of just trust God) but i am getting better. also its a miracle in the mission how God gives us the faith to be excited and have hope in everyone even after so many people have decided not to accept the message. its all worth it for the one person who accepts. also the seed theory is true. ive been able to see that with my first sector, i was always frustrated because i felt like we werent accomplishing much in the way of investigators but now a few of the people we found have gotten baptized and the sector is doing great :) the key is to just keep working hard and trying your best and God will do His part. its His work, not ours. anyway i learn new things every day... :P 

anyway i am doing well and learning how to cook food from argentina and such :P also trying to lose weight ..:P haha i love living with other hermanas, even when we have one shower for 4 hermanas. 

love you all and have a great week!

Week 55-August 18, 2015

Week 55-August 18, 2015

haha great job with all your missionary work! 

glad you guys saw the picture from Blake cuz i havent had a chance to take any haha he promised he would make sure everyone sees it :P lol but i didnt see the pic.. :/

it was super fun to see him but weird at the same time to see a friend from the other side of the world all of a sudden here in chile haha  he came to pick up his brother and they came to our change meeting and such. 

but as for the changes, im in the cityish again, in maipu. im in the stake Olimpo in the sector Los Heroes 2. im here with Hermana Galeano from Argentina who was in my first zone :) she is awesome. i prayed for another latina companion and God answered again :P haha  the sector is great but a LOT more wealthy than my last sector, which makes finding people who are receptive a Little more harder but its ok and im excited to be here. i think we will be visiting more members and looking for refereces more because we will finish knocking ALL the doors this week..haha its a lot smaller of a sector too. we have a family of super awesome investigators who came to church sunday and are excited to be baptized! the Ward is super united here and they have a lot more activities and energy to do missionary work and such so that is fun :) 

also guess what?! almost everyone understands me!!! haha i was so scared for changes because last time nobody was used to my accent and noone understood me. but turns out hermana arangos efforts worked! ive even been asked like 3 times if im from argentina or chile. :P and hermana Galeano said i dont talk like a gringa, i have a french accent or something. i probably have the weirdest blend of columbian and honduras and peru accent. haha yay for less gringo accent!!!

we live with two other gringas, so that is fun. 

anyway, im doing great and hope you all are doing well too!

sounds like the california trip was a blast!! enjoy the last couple weeks of summer! when does school star?

have a great week!love you all!

Ashley with friend, Blake Cowan from BYU (visiting to get brother) and new companion, Hermana Galeano

Facebook message from Blake: "I don't know you, but I do know that my mom loves getting pictures of her babies out on their missions. Haha! Ashley and I were in the same ward at BYU when she lived at liberty square. I just saw her yesterday as I was picking up my brother from his mission there and she's doing great! "

"The world is so small or as the Latinos say, "El mundo es un pañuelo." That is her new companion! They had transfer meeting on Wednesday and their president made a LOT of changes to their mission. I'm sure she'll tell you all about that so I won't steal her thunder. Just know that you won't get an email till Tuesday cause their pday has been changed. Yeah, Ashley and I had talked about serving with my brother before she left on her mission. Also, her mission president had us over for desert the other night and he said that your daughter is one of their hardest working sisters in the mission"

Week 54-August 10, 2015

Week 54-August 10, 2015

just so you know, thanks a TON for your loyalty and efforts to send me so many packages and mail. you guys are seriously the best. makes my week every time. love you guys tons :)

sorry cant write much, spent all my time transferring photos and such :P

anyway, it was a good week :)

Vicente got baptized and lots of his family could come even though it was raining! his parents felt the spirit and bore their testimonies and so that was awesome! hopefully it will help them stay motivated to go back to the temple..

lots of rain and mud this week. 

i gave a talk this week and hermana arango said everyone could understand me, which was a miracle because even in english no one can understand me when im nervous and talk fast :P

they changed our pday and everything and announced that we have changes tomorrow. im leaving and will have to tell you guys next week were i end up :P

gotta go but love you all and have a great week!!! enjoy your vacation and send pictures!​

The member who taught us to cook

our zone

​im making an effort to take more pictures

this was the baptism of vicente! finally!!

​the mountains with snow now..im literally in love with these mountains

​zone tshirts

Fernanda

Fernanda and caurie and Jared:)

Week 53-August 3, 2015

Week 53-August 3, 2015

so this week was crazy. lots of stuff happened. basically its impóssible to tell all the stories in email but i will try to give the short version...

first thing. we went to the temple finally with jorge!!!! its was AWESOME. it was kind of crazy at first because we messed up some stuff submitting the name of his grandpa to the temple so that was a little stressful because the priesthood doing the baptisms had to wait but after we got it figured out and we went to do the ordinance it all went awesome. Nothing important works out perfectly. Ever. haha the Spirit was so strong in the temple. i love the temple. its a tangible peace when you enter. he did the baptisms for his grandpa and other names from the temple and then they had a little meeting for all the people doing baptisms for the first time that night. the temple president spoke and it was awesome. jorge knew all the answers to his questions :P then we just sat in the little room in the temple for a few minutes afterwards and talked with him and there was so much peace. we could all feel it. he didnt want to leave. he thanked us for bringing him and said he was going to keep going strong in the church and he wants his endowment and to get married in the temple (our next mission; find a wife :P) . His mom came with us and a convert of the elders juan carlos who is awesome but didnt want to do baptisms yet. he is waiting to go with his dad for the first time. so they waited outside the temple. afterwards jorge told his mom about how he felt inside and said he was going to be an addict to the temple. :P basically it was awesome. so grateful to be part of it.

sunday jenny and her daughters came to church!! it was super fun to have them there and turns out they knew a few of the members so they felt comfortable and seemed to enjoy it. 

Then yesterday was one of the craziest nights of my time here. we were looking for new people, contacting with a member accompanying us. It was something called a cosechon when all of the zone came to our ward to work in our sector and help us find new people so we had members with us and we had a few companionships of elders in the sector working. basically we passed by for a contact we had talked to a few times now and we asked her how she was and she started crying. turns out her  husband who doesnt live with her anymore because he is alcoholic had stopped by and broke into her house, breaking down her door. she lives in the toma, the super poor part where the houses are practically shacks of random wood. basically we started working and rescrewed her door in and then we started talked inside her house. during all this her husband showed up again but was waiting outside because we were there with her. she has a daughter and a little boy. anyway, while we were inside he decided to come in. the daughter was so scared she was crying and hiding this whole time. the moment he was outside the door coming in i was pretty dang freaked out. the wife was so nervous she was shaking and we had no idea what to do. he was totally drunk and drugged. anyway, he came in and we invited him to listen to our message. we sang i am a child of god, all of us shaking with nervousness not knowing what to do. long story short, he tried to argue with us a few times and got mad at one point but didnt do anything because we were there. we couldnt leave though and our cell phone was dead so we couldnt call anyone or the elders so they all waited for us, not knowing what was happened. we finally got him to leave and called the police on the phone of the member with us and finally left at like 9:15pm. the elders were waiting and worried and we ended up having to run to make it to the house in time. crazy night. but the mom and daughter accepted a baptism date and are super excited :P

also we learned how to make pizza and crepes from a chef today. 

anyway it was a good week.  love and miss you all!

Temple doing baptisms with Jorge and Hermana Arango

Temple doors

Week 52-July 27, 2015

Week 52-July 27, 2015

good to hear that singing in the rain went so well and that benjamin is rocking it in soccer and that mandy is enjoying gymnastics :)

this week was interesting. President is super stressed out all the time and basically we are scared of him all the time and his meetings and lately he has been pretty mad about some things so this week at the last minute he said we couldnt go to the temple with the stake and that instead we had to go to a 7 hour training meeting with him. we were pretty devastated to be honest. basically long story short, ive cried more becasue of stuff the leaders have said or president than any other thing in the mission and hermana arango is even more sensitive than me...basically i had to pray for a ton of humilty and patience this week and surprised myself with how much better ive gotten since when i left :P  but anyway, we couldnt go to the temple and so jorge didnt go and victoria didnt go but fernanda went, so that was awesome. also we finally got permission to go this saturday with jorge instead and hopefully victoria can come :) the training meeting ended up being super good. President is an awesome guy, super faithful and its obvious that he seeks and receives tons of revelation. his job is super hard, im so glad i will never have to be a mission president.... haha

funny stories this week. a drunk man in the street tried to bite hermana arango and i had to intervene and argue with him about how she was mine and then he thought we were lesbian and we had to explain that no, we are definitely not lesbians and such. lol basically the poor guy is pretty frustrated with his wife and the whole thing ended up being super funny. 

Vicente was going to be baptized this week but his family didnt come to church again so now he cant be baptized yet. it was pretty disappointing.we even threw rocks at their window sunday to wake them up. there are just so many people who think they can live the gospel in their house but it doesnt work like that. we need the sacrament and we need to serve others for our own salvation. President said something interesting this week. he said if we dont serve, we cant enter the kingdom of God. if we dont do our visits (home teaching, visiting teaching) we cant enter. period. it really hit me because its true. there are so many people who need help that if we arent willing to help, how can we expect to be with God some day? also hna arango and i have decided that every morning in studies we learn about how hard salvation really is. the Atonement has to be pretty strong because there are so many things to do and so many mistakes we make basically the Jehovah witnesses are right and we will all be in the terrestial kingdom. we always joke that our goal is to make it to the 'toma' of the celestial kingdom (the poorest part of our sector, where the people just go and build there own houses because the land doesnt belong to anyone). forget about mansions there, i just want a shack in the corner :P also hna arango said something interesting the other day. i was confused about how there are so many people who know the commandments and the bible inside and out but dont really know God. she said its like sopaipillas, someone can see them and study them and know their texture and color and everything about them, but until they actually taste them they cant enjoy them. until we actually decide to live the commandments, we will never really know if they are good. we have to trust God like taylor says and live it to know and really get to know God. 

 anyway, love and miss you all. 

hermana jensen

ps ill send a pic of my boots right now. i finally bought new ones today :P 

after glueing them like 3 times...