Week 18-December 1, 2014

Week 18-December 1, 2014

wow sounds like a busy and fun week!!! lots of thanksgiving stuff and more soccer and taylor being home :) glad to hear it was so good for everyone :)

this week was crazy for us, it was hna osterlohs last week so she had to go do stuff for her visa, classes to get a job when she gets back, her farewells and such, so basically the week was a blur of divisiones and such. but i got to go with her to visit her former sectors saturday, which i was super excited about because we got to visit the coast!!! it was raining so basically we just drove to the beach, took a picture, visited one family and left , but i was thrilled to see the beach!! ill try to send pics next week..

friday we said goodbye to people in our sector and basically everyone gave us food lol they say if you come home fat its because the people loved you :P but it could be true because we got a lunch of all of hna osterlohs favorite chilean foods from Sara (our investigator) and then pizza from a menos activo family and then Hno Borquez, our other recently reactivated member, made us french toast because i guess some gringo elders taught him how and nobody makes it here :P it was a lot of food but was fun to feel the love from so many people here. i think that really is a huge blessing of a mission, you get to personally get to know so many people and the people here are so loving..its the best :) then sunday the 8 yr old daughter of our menos activo family that we have been working with got baptized :) it was a great way to end hna osterlohs mission ..

but today we had the change meeting and i was super nervous about hna osterloh leaving but my new companion seems super nice, so we will see what happens .we were just really happy our sector didnt get white-washed (when both missionaries get replaced by new missionaries). her name is Hermana Flores from Honduras. i will send pictures when hna osterloh emails me them ...anyway, it was a good week, just kind of crazy, so it will be good to get back into the regular groove of things this week..

love you all and miss you tons!!!

also i got your package!!! the big one! should i open it or wait for christmas?! :)

Week 17--November 24, 2014

Week 17--November 24, 2014

sounds like everyone is doing well ! :) glad to hear it!!!

and sounds like lydia is going to be a professional singer! congrats ! :P

and congrats to BJ on the reflections contest and what is IGC gymnastics?
and wow dad that sounds like a super successful conference! so glad it went well! and interesting point with the scripture..i think that is something i struggle with. i need more love for the people and need to think less about the numbers (which is hard when the mission is CONSTANTLY asking about the numbers and such). sometimes when i get frustrated i just go into contacting mode and contact everyone so that i feel like at least we will have done a lot of contacts, but they arent very meaningful at that point because they are just numbers in my mind. but im working on it and praying for love..also its hard to stay focused on our purpose and why people actually need our message in particular when everyone is already so religious. the biggest challenge is to help people actually understand why our church is different and that we arent just there to talk for hours about God. but its all good :) i think its a good learning experience for me haha

and congrats to hilary miller, is emily engaged yet? and to Cindy too!! thats exciting!

and we have a member that promised to make us pumpkin pie for thanksgiving so we are excited for that! this week is going to be kind of crazy since hna osterloh is leaving, we have to do lots of divisions for her to go to the temple and such and do visa stuff all day tomorrow. this last week was better, we had another investigator at church so that was awesome! hopefully something more will happen with her!! we also helped a new inactive family come to church sunday which was exciting! all is well and i will send pics this week :) love and miss you all!

sunsets are the best here, also sunrises..the view from our apt again..

last pday at the park for a bbq with our zone. our fanny packs :P

Week 16-November 17, 2014

Week 16-November 17, 2014

haha it was fun to read everyones emails :)

also THANK YOU for the package!!!! super fun to get!!!! also tell benjamin i did his puzzles and loved them! i took pictures but cant send them :/

my week was good, although a little frustrating too. tuesday we found 5 new investigators (three of which was a family who seemed super awesome) but then the rest of the week wasnt as great... on sunday after calling and visitng tons of poeple and doing everything we could think of to get people to church, everyone canceled on us. it was tough and we were both on the verge of a breakdown basically the entire time during church but we had a recently reactivated man there who bore his testimony in sundayschool about how he could feel the Spirit every time we passed by and so that helped me feel better because preach my gospel says a successful misionary is one who through whom others can feel the Spirit, so as long as someone can feel the Spirit through us, we cant be complete failures..lol its just hard because the elders are finding all knds of people and it makes us feel like we are doing something wrong. but we decided we just need to keep being obedient and patient and have faith and keep working hard :) so all is well

anyway funny fact of the week, ¨"whats up" is literally a verb here! lol i cant even take people seriously when they say it. they use it as a spanish verb to describe using social media (any kind) basically. lol so they will say things like "esta wassupando?" or "ustedes tienen wassup?" lol super funny..

oh also we found boysenberry trees in our sector the other day! super yummy ! haha

anyway yes i finished the book of mormon in time :) and i was thinking the other day about my experience with missionary for a day and was thinking how it wasnt that fun and i was terrified of tracting and how actually being a missionary is completely different. i have absolutely no fear of knocking doors and its totally different when you are teaching and contacting people you are actually going to see again and when its your life. missionary for a day and accompaning the missionaries is nothing like the real thing,...

but love and miss you all! have a great week!

Week 15--November 10, 2014

Week 15--November 10, 2014

sounds like everyone is doing well!! congrats mandy on her medals at state!!! and good job at all the soccer games everyone :)

and dad, i get 1 hr and 15 min to email on pday and ya taylor and taylor and emily and some other people write every week too. its great to feel loved :) haha we will see how long it lasts..

and mom, yes im super tan  i get burnt every day i have tan lines everywear and i wear 60 spf sunscreen on my face and still every day at least one person tells me i look burnt ..this week i also got asked if im chilean and someone joked that i almost look Haitian (there are lots of them here haha).

no i havent gotten the papers you sent yet, maybe this wed  we only get mail every other wed

ya christie is doing well :) working and doing BYUI online

This week the biggest news was that we had a conference on sat with Elder Nelson!! super cool. He shook hands with every one of the 500 missionaries there and his talk and his wifes talk and the other couples that were there were amazing!! i felt the Spirit super strong as soon as he walked in the room and he talked about our role in gathering the house of Israel in the last days and such with a ton of interesting facts and knowledge about the topic....super interesting..

haha funny story. while contacting thursday we knocked on a door and a woman answered and we introduced ourselves as always and talked about our beliefs and such and asked her if she had shared with missionaries before (tons of people have) and she immediately said that No and that she didnt like our church.(usually people just say they are already Catholic and therefore already have faith in Chirst and all religions are really the same) We asked why and was there something in particular that she didnt like? She responded ¨"ustedes son extranjeros, no puedo entenderles¨" lol of all the things to turn down salvation for lol just because the missionaries have accents...lol we died of laughter afterwards. my plan is to go back next month when i have a latina companion and see what she says :P we meet the funniest people contacting sometimes..its the best lol

anyway, it wasnt the most successful week ever but next week will be better and i refuse to wear the 100 dollar ecco shoes i bought anymore (i spent an entire day in them walking around and got so many blisters and my feet were so sore...it was the worst) haha ...oh well. it was a good week though :)

love and miss you all! was going to send pictures but we are on a diff comp this week and so i cant figure out how to work it...next week i will

love love love,

ashley

Week 14-November 3, 2014

Week 14-November 3, 2014

hey everyone!

loved hearing about everyones week :)

sounds like everybody is killing it in all their activities..

how did state go for gymnastics?!

here goes for moms questions..

for breakfast this week we have made eggs with spinach and onion every morning, or yogurt.

for Pday we go to the mall to use internet and get groceries and meet up with other sisters sometimes, or we have zone activities, or today we are at estacion central  (a lot like down town LA or something) to buy souveniers for Hna osterloh and a fanny pack for me :P theyre all the style here and a lot better than a big backpack ;)

yes there are tons of little kids,. we blessed two babies this sunday. but i dont think they have as many kids as american morman families because they think our families (6 kids and 8 kids) are huge..most have like 2_4

i like both, i have more time to read and respond to real letters but i can only get them every two weeks and sometimes i cant always go send letters back on Pday, so emails are the best for hearing from everyone every week. but letters are fun too :) 

haah ill have to send another spanish one for you to work on ;)

as for dad´s questions, 

the cold water is extra motivation to run every morning, so we usually are at least a little warm when we get in :P

and ya i think the divorce process can be long and complicated, so they are both still in that process..

i literally busted up and told my companion about your laser pointer idea..lol im sure you at least scared all the neighbors by convincing them that you are crazy ;) lol just kidding, its actually a fantastic idea haha if we have a tree house in the front now we might as well use it right? 

haha taylor emails me every week like he promised :P maybe i get to hear more from him than you guys! haha does he call you guys every sunday or anything? is he still using my phone?

My week:

this week was good. even better with new investigators! we found 9!! but we fasted yesterday to find a family to baptize before Hna Osterloh leaves..we will see what happens.

monday we found the daughters of one of our investigators and they both grew up in new jersey for a few years so they speak english and so we tried to speak in english with them but as soon as we started teaching and testifying, we had to give up lol its so hard to teach in english what i only learned to teach in spanish! and i havent talked about the gospel in english in a while! haha Hna osterloh is worried about her homecoming talk because she has forgotten all the gospel terms in english :P

We learned how to make Chilean bread on wednesday with one of our menos activos and it was super fun. its basically the same as regular bread but in a different shape.. but made me think about how you only get to have experiences like that on a mission. tourists dont get to speak spanish and have someone teach them how to make bread and listen to spanish music. i was grateful to get to be here on a mission :) 

Halloween was fun also! they just barely started celebrating it here, so its not very big yet but the glowsticks mom sent in my first package were perfect to give out and contact with!

saturday one of our menos activos families who we had been trying to track down and visit with the mom´s visiting teacher (we have visited them before and their kids just got baptized in the last year) texted us and said they didnt want us to come or call anymore. that we were bugging them. it was just the mom, im pretty sure the kids still like us, but it was out of nowhere and it kind of ruined out morning. rejection from contacts is one thing but rejection from someone you know well and such is a lot harder..the rest of the morning we had investigators who told us they didnt really want more and such and so it was a hard morning. but we are good now:)  we also realized why missionaries study for so many hours every morning.. we talk to so many people every day with questions and doubts and who tell us we have been tricked by the bishop or such into believing that we need strong testimonies to not be shaken by it all. but my testimony has definitely only grown. 

also we had an investigator in church yesterday who smokes and he smelled super strongly of smoke in the chapel and it made me think of the quote by a general authority or someone who said that the best smell at church is cigarette smoke because it means someone is trying to change/repent ..haha  unfortunately he still has a lot of doubts and questions to overcome so i dont know if he will be baptized anytime soon but he listening, so we will see what happens.

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

"Halloween with the glow bracelets you sent-we gave them out while contacting"

Week 13-October 27, 2014

Week 13-October 27, 2014

haha wow love the pics..lol great costumes everyone :p

and no we dont have warm showers still...they came to fix it but no luck...

and hmmm..i think making church first priority my whole life and all the traditions we had that incorporated the gospel that i look back on now and realize the best moments of my life and my best moments with my family are all memories of Easter and Christmas and blessings and such...i think things like that make me realize how much of an impact the church has made on my life and family and that is what made me want to serve...

and no i didnt get a package yet, but apparenly taylor wood sent one like two months ago that hasnt gotten here so im not sure how long it really takes..

tell benjamin congrats on his soccer game and mandy with gymnastics! where is her state meet?! thats awesome!

and im sure lydia did fantastic with chanteurs! also tell natalie good luck with whatever decision she makes :P either way she will have fun im sure...

anyway my week was good, SUPER HOT though...

we have seen so much success this week, its been awesome and super fun to see the blessings from all our hard work the last couple weeks with not many results..this week we found 7 new investigators! we even surpassed our goal of 6! first time ever,..

we are also trying to be more direct in our teaching...we taught an inactive woman this week and her son ( a returned missionary) wanted to share with us too and gave a killer lesson to his mom with super direct questions and got her to agree to read the BOM again even though she stopped believing it years ago...we were amazed and realized we need to be kind and loving but also direct and call people to repentance sometimes. haha

i dont know if it was in the ensign too but the Liahona did an article on the church in chile last month and one of the pictures is of my teacher in the CCM and one of the statistics said 1 in 30 chileans are members..we werent surprised because we meet people on the street all the time that say they were baptized years ago..many stopped attending right after they got baptized though and everyone has faith in Christ here but no one wants to go to church...ive had to learn more about the purpose of church and such..

but Hno Borquez, one of the men we reactivated recently, is awesome and we have decided to set him up with Hna Silvia, another recently reactivated woman who is super awesome now. They are both separated but have killer testimonies and we had her accompany us for a lesson with him and they hit it off and now we are all making French toast tmrw night and she is super excited...lol maybe we cant baptize anyone right now but maybe we will help create an eternal marriage ;) lol that adventure madefriday extra fun :P

also i have been called fat or pregnant twice now by people on the street and its been a joke of ours for a while until this week when the same thing happened to Hna Osterloh, twice in one week! lol now we are even and we are going on a diet this week :P lol these people are just super honest..lol and its not offensive to call people fat here, so people do it all the time.

anyway, it was a good week :) glad all of you guys are doing well too!

love and miss you!

sunsets here are amazing..also sunrises when we are running every morning! crazy cool with the Andes in the background and i guess the ozone is thinner here or something so the skies are awesome but we also get sunburnt super easily... and a house with some creepy statues we took a picture of, but thats what the houses we knock look like. and my district before the last change...

Week 12--October 20, 2014

Week 12--October 20, 2014

fun to hear from everyone :) sounds like all is well and everyone is busy and having fun..also cant wait to see pictures from halloween from everyone! :)

my week was good, we had the change meeting today (every 6 weeks) so it was a marking point for me. i made it through my first change and my companion is on her last! haha its kind of hard to not think about home and normal life thought when she is on her way out...oh well

our water heater broke this week so we have been taking ice cold showers every morning..part of the adventure i guesss :P

we found some new investigators this week but we have been having trouble holding onto them, they keep disappearing. we will see what happens though...we had a ward talent show sat night and Sara (the investigator who is basically a member but needs to marry her ¨husband¨first lol) brought Omar (her partner who has never really been interested but is now listening in on some of our lessons with her and has come to a few activities!) and this guy we found knocking doors showed up and i ended up talking deep doctrine and teaching the entire first lesson and discussing all his questions (he has read a TON about religion and had a bad experience with the church before but told us we were the answer to his prayer the day we stopped by and has been happy to talk with us so far) while we waited for the activity to start..haha kinda crazy. we sang a few hymns in the show and it went pretty well! sorry my emails are crazy scattered..it all just comes out stream-of-consciousness style and sometimes its all over the place, also i forget what ive said in past emails :P

but ya so saturday night was good. also jocelyn is our investigator who came with Ornella, the daughter of the menos activo family to church when Ornella brought her pelolo and she has a son who is about 4 but she didnt really like church cuz it was so long and she has problems with depression so it was really hard to track her down and help her and teach her last week and we almost lost her i think but this week we stopped by and she was so much better! we invited her to baptism again and she said no right now but maybe later on and she wants us to keep visiting :)

we also found a lady this week that was super interesting..her name is pamela and she basically told us her house is haunted and she is very sensitive to spiritual things, such as the bad energy in her house and she has had some crazy spiritual experiences in the past. she was pretty receptive and we are hoping she will be able to feel the power of the book of mormon and start praying again (she is scared to becasue in the past when she prayed scary things would happen to her daughter). it made me think about how one time dad and i discussed how Satans tactics have changed since the time of Christ and how now he mostly just tries to convince us that there is no devil and therefore no God and that is why there arent possesed people anymore or something..but i guess people like Pamela are common here and i realized its probably different here since everyone already believes in God. Satans tactics can be different. its a little scary to realize how real the power of evil is..but we are excited to see what happens with Pamela´s family.

the family that came to the english class was the one who said they arent really interested (at least the mom who has family that are members), but maybe the husband and daughters (the ones that dont know english and are in our class) will become interested. the daughter is the one who gave me the bracelet she made...they are so sweet. i really want something to happen with them...

also i dont know if i already told you but we have 6 missionaries in our ward, 4 elders and us. its crazy to be in a ward with so many missionaries and the members know the missionaries well since there are so many, not like our ward where there are only two..

ok im going to finish reading emails now and such but im glad everyone is doing well :) love and miss you all!

ashley

ps...i lost my camera cord but took more pictures this week..will try to get a new one or find it and send some next week,..it just takes like 10 min to upload them on this comp, so i might just print some and send them...