Week 37-April 13, 2015

Week 37-April 13, 2015

im goinng to write first a little before reading. this week we have really been trying to help our investigators with baptism dates so we have been visiting them tons and Jorge came to church yesterday!!! it was awesome. he is totally going to get baptized. Veronica was out of town or something this weekend so we havent seen her in a while but we will find her pronto.. we are also teaching a woman who needs to get married and this week we have been visiting her every day and even her husband participated when he was there and she started crying in the prayer because she was so happy he was there. we told her last night about the law of chastity and such and she told us she wants to change her life and repent. shes awesome :) her name is Beatriz. we have two other families with lots of promise that we visited this week and planned family home evenings with them this week with other members and menos activos so we are excited for that! Hermana Arango is awesome. i prayed for a Latina companion and got a Spanish profesor! haha she is helping me tons and is great :) 

no i didnt get the easter card yet..just the package i think...

and no if we are actually dying we dont have to go out but i took a lot of ibuprofen and we had to go to some appts and coordination.

and i have taught joseph smith and the first vision at least 2 or 3 times every day for 8 months :P haha lots ...

and ya i think you found it in google maps..haha thats the limit of our sector. 

anyway, wow sounds like you guys had quite the adventure camping!!  love and miss you all!

Our district leader and the missionary he is training (the gringo)

part of our sector

downtown Santiago getting hermana damian's visa

our house

one part of our sector

la zona

reunion de cambios hermana arango

Week 36-April 6, 2015

Week 36-April 6, 2015

im going to try writing my email before reading you guyss because otherwise i dont have time and am not even thinking about the mission anymore and as such dont write much. 

by the way i live in Raul Fuentes Abarca 1043 in padre hurtado. cerca de peñaflor. cerca de la calle El Manzano and primera transversal. thats my sector. mapquest it :)

so here goes, this week was the last week of the change. today was cambios. my new companion is hermana arango from columbia. i prayed and wanted another latina companion to help me with my spanish and turns out she is actually a spanish professor!! im excited :P haha

but i just met her like an hour ago so that is all i will say about her right now.

as for this week, it was an interesting week. i got pretty sick, with a fever of 103. that lasted a couple days. it was pretty comical though too because at one point i even couldnt walk straight while working because i was so dizzy and started seeing things that werent there and hna damian got pretty worried. but i got better fast :) now i am back to normal. also hna damian has stomach problems and had problems this week too so we were both pretty bad during thursday. but we left in the morning to work and ended up finding an investigator we hadnt found in lots of time and teaching another investigator that told us that even her athiest son said he felt something different when we visited and when he talked to us at the gate. he said he felt an internal peace. its cool to be a missionary and hear people feel the Spirit through you. also we taught Jorge the word of wisdom and he accepted!!! he committed to live it and told us he does want to get baptized someday. we set a date for the25th of april :) then he said he didnt have work for semana santa and would come with us to the conference, but ended up going out of town or something and we couldnt get ahold of him by phone or stopping byhis house all weekend...bummer. but veronica went to the conference all day saturday, so that was awesome :) also veronica recently moved here from columbia so im pretty excited to have a companion from columbia here now. hopefully we can help her get baptiized this month :) we are still teaching the two girls and the boyfriend, but they didnt come to the conference so we hope they will come to church next week. general conference was awesome and so was easter :) i love easter. seriously the memories i cherish most from my childhood and that have impacted my testimony the most in my life are all the easter and  christmas traditions. especially the easter ones for my testimony. i have been studying lots to improve my testimony of the Atonement to testify to people and for easter i read the chapter on the resurrection in jesus the Christ and ive been and still am reading the new testament. its been cool to feel and see how much ive learned. i love studying the Savior and His life. also for conference i lucked out and the trainer of the pair of other hermanas that live with us (both gringas) wanted to watch the conference in spanish and therefore i did divisions and hermana mcnevin and i had fun watching it in english. its better in english. also poor translators, the apostles always use complicated words to translate, (for example, pickle-sucker) haha so that was pretty funny. we planned to go watch the sunrise in the country for easter morning but hna damian had to pack to we didnt...bummer.

also the biggest thing i learned from conference was that we should never abandon our faith or discredit our testimony because we dont understand something or have questions we dnt have answers to. this was one of my questions and like 4 different speakers talked about it. they said to go forward in faith, and CHOOSE to believe. its a choice. i liked that. we dont need to know everything and we dont need to have a testimony of fire like the prophet to be a disciple of Chirst. if God wanted missionaries that were perfect he would find another way. also i think to God even if i just walk around Chile talking to people and feeling the Spirit and learning from the people i meet for a year and a half and i leave a better person, its worth it to Him. so ill just keep working and striving to be better and be patient :) those were my thoughts of the week. 

love and miss you all! 

my favorite scripture of the Atonement : alma 7:10-13

have a great week everyone!

Week 35- March 30, 2015

Week 35- March 30, 2015

hi everyone! it was a relief to see your email this week. good to know everyone is safe :)

sounds like everyone is doing great. thanks mom and dad for your stories about tithing. no veronica didnt get baptized because she started working all day during the week and they wouldnt give us permission to visit her during studies, so we are still trying to help her progress to baptism. but she will get there :)

jorge is the other man we found and we ended up having a lesson with him and our ward mission leader (a21 year old returned missionary) and it went pretty well. he is praying and reading and wants to come to church but had to work this sunday. ive been trying to look for miracles everyday instead of getting depressed about our flaws and so here are the miracles of this week:

friday we were walking down a street and passed a woman on the side sitting down. we greeted her like normal and turned out she was an investigator we had visited last week. we asked how she was and she said mas o menos. so we asked what was wrong. she started crying and told us she had seperated from her husband sunday because they had fought. we gave her a hug and walked her back to her house and she told us all about how he comes home drunk and hits her and breaks things sometimes and we sang for her and talked about the atonement and she said she felt better. it was  a miracle t o me that God had put us exactly in that path to find her in that moment and help her when she needed a hug and a couple friends, even if she doesnt know us that well..

2nd miracle

we have been teaching two girls, connie and valentina (14 and 8 years old) and the boyfriend of connie who just reciently got interested (other miracle).they are AWESOME but hadnt come to church yet. but sunday morning we were in the capilla when up drives their mom and dad with valentina. they dropped her off and she assisted all 3 hours! she was always too timid to even talk in the lessons but came to church alone and loved it! that was exciting for us :) 

anyway, we have been teaching alot about the Atonement recently for Easter and im so excited for conference!! love and miss you all! happy easter!

Week 34--March 23, 2015

Week 34--March 23, 2015

so i cant find any emails from you guys..bummer. but my week was good. a little more difficult and depressing but we will make chocolate chip cookies today and everything will be better :) i am learning so much and we have so many awesome investigators. the only hard part is that everyone is willing to listen but not very many are willing to go to church. but its ok we have an investigator that has a baptism date this saturday and she is awesome so we are hoping for the best!!! :) her name is veronica and she is the neice of the bishop. she moved here from columbia recently and is 25 years old. she told us she knows she should get baptised, she just doesnt feel ready. so we testified and taught that all she needs is to have a desire to follow christ. she agreed to pray, read, and stop drinking until this saturday and see how she feels. if she feels good, she will be baptized this saturday :) we are excited. 

im learning alot about faith and the ability Satan has to make us feel badly or question our testimonies.

hope all is well. love and miss you all

Week 33-March 16, 2015

Week 33-March 16, 2015

good luck mandy in your competition this week!!!

haha oh lydia...boys have cooties!! 

and natalie, lasagne cupcakes?! haha cool

sounds like the trip to europe went super well!

this week i finally saw meet the mormons!!! but in spanish..it was super good!!! the missionary part was super dramatic though lol also the part about football made alot of us miss america..:P

my companion is from peru and her brother served in arcadia like 5 years ago!

also i got your package!!! thanks so so much :) love you guys! thanks for all the letters and the shoes and the  hip hop abs and the stuff for easter and the STARBUCKS HOT CHOCOLATE!! haha i had been craving it all week and one of our investigators works in starbucks and she offfered to bring us some but we cant really walk around with starbucks as missionaries so i was bummed but the next day i open your package and there it is!!  you guys are the best :P haha

miracle of this week., i was pretty bummed and frustrated this week so i decided to fast (although it was kind of impossible because i was forced to drink juice in a couple houses in order to not offend people-but i did my best:P) and pray alot. my companion cant fast so i have to do it alone but the next day after breaking my fast we knocked a door and found a man who let us in immediately and listened and understood the whole first lesson and even said he was in the same situation as joseph smith in that he wants to know which church is true!!! he accepted a baptism date and said he would read and pray an come to church! he didnt come this week because he was out of town but next week! also our investigator that is the neice of the bishop and that was going to move because of work found work here and therefore isnt going to move! we taught her and it was awesome! she is still interested and promised to read and came to church! while we read 1nephi1 with her she found all kinds of answers to her problems by herself and applied everything to her life without us even telling her! it was pretty cool. moral of the story, fasting works.

also i taught a lesson by myself in english yesterday to a couple who the wife is from the philipines and only speaks english and tagalog :) they were so grateful for our visit because she is so lonely and it felt awesome to be able to help them :)

anyway, im doing well. love and miss you all! have a great week!

also btw mom and dad, do you have any stories about times when you paid tithing or fast offerings and were blessed when you needed it? maybe when you didnt have enough money and had to trust God?

thanks!

also mom, any suggestions for how not to lose all my hair due to the water here? or the food? i dont know what it is but all of our hair is falling out...

Week 32-March 9, 2015

Week 32-March 9, 2015

haha wow sounds like the whole family is adventuring, the kids at home (i cant even imagine lydia driving..crazy) and mom and dad in europe!! crazy!!

thanks for the pics! and sounds like we have pretty awesome ancestors..

also thank you natalie for your letter!! was super fun to get!

i am doing well, this week was good. the biggest challenge in the language but it will only get better i hope :P my companion is great and to answer dads questions, yes i cried when hna flores left. and yes i like living with other sisters. one of them is brand new from colorado so its nice to have someone else in the house learning the language..haha

i keep meaning to take pictures of my sector to send but i keep forgetting my camera..sorry

and to answer moms question. i found socks for flats!! but garment bottoms of the cotton ones in petite.

funny story from this week, we lit a fire while cooking in our house..but it was just in the stove, so all is well now. one of the members told us we have to learn to cook if we want to get married to a good guy..lol looks like i have a lot to learn.

this week we did something called a mini cosechon. basically we went and worked in the other sectors of our district to help them find new investigators and they came to ours. we worked together in one sector for a few hours every day. turned out to be super fun. we found lots of new investigators in the sectors of the elders! it was also fun because as hermanas we can go in any of the houses with woman, unlike the elders, so we found people the elders wouldnt have been able to teach immediately. we taught a whole group of teenagers in one of the houses. super entertaining haha lots of questions about what we were doing on a mission, why didnt we travel all over chile, why didnt we go to the beach, etc. haha it was fun. anyway, gotta go but doing well and love you all!

Week 31-March 2, 2015

Week 31-March 2, 2015

wow!! crazy to think mom and dad are in germany!! 

cant wait to see more pictures]!

and wow sounds a little crazy that lydia is driving..but she is probably much more careful than i was..haha

but about my new sector, its super cool to have a new area to get to know, new people to meet, and such. but unfortunately nobody here understands me. so thats a bummer. dont know what happened between the city and the country but people here dont understand me so that was a little discouraging my first few days. but all is well, my companion has been practicing my pronunciation with me lots and im exciting to get a lot better at speaking spanish. i think i learned an accent more than i thought because i had a gringa as a trainer. but its ok. hope i have latina companions the rest of my mission!

also like 6 different people here have told me missionaries from california are the best :P apparently californians have a reputation of being more laid back and happy. basically missionaries are all from idaho and utah or california. hermana flores said that too about me. that im happier than other gringos. haha anyway californians are the best!  :P

also my companion has problems with her legs so she cant run or anything so every morning i make her stand outside while i run back and forth on the street. poor thing haha but i have to run or i go crazy. but shes a good sport :P we even did this in the rain and lightning the other day..

anyway, we live with two other sisters and our sector is a mix of parts like the city but with much bigger houses and parts that look exactly like the images and movies you see of south america, dirt roads, wooden shack houses, open fields, its pretty cool. haha but its a little more sketchy there and apparently theres lots of drug dealing and the other sisters saw someone get shot in the leg one time and such..

but its cool :)

its also a little cooler here, which is nice compared to the heat in the city. and we have some awesome investigators! one of them, named veronica, told us her house seems more iluminated when we visit :) and she accepted a baptism date as a goal this week (for the 15th)! :)

oh also funny story, this week we had lunch with a family with a bunch of little kids and they always have a movie playing so that the kids will sit still and eat. this time they had Frozen on and i was dyyyiinnng. haha luckily it was in spanish but i seriously was like, eat fast eat fast! and the rest of the day i was singing love is an open door...

anyway, i dont have pictures this week but i will try for next week...

love and miss you all!! have a great week and have fun in germany mom and dad!!

ashley