Week 30-February 23, 2015

Week 30-February 23, 2015

so this week im trying to send all the pictures i can because i took lots this week since i was saying goodbye to everyone and im terrified that my camera will get another virus. but its working right now and i paid 20 bucks to print out a bunch of the pictures, so hopefully ill have some  kind of record of my mission :P

anyway, our sector got white washed so it was pretty stressful to prepare everything and leave maps and notes and everything about all the people and say goodbye and such and it was sad that hermana flores left. we cried. but now im going to the countryside! going from a high rise apt to a house in the countryside! :P and my companion is hermana damian.

cool story for this week, we went to visit a nemos activo that we always visit to help her with the old woman she takes care of (she bathes her feeds her everything) (shes just her neighbor that she took in!! ). she is awesome and we sang for her and the old woman and for the first time ever, ortencia, the old lady looked at us and smiled (usually she doesnt really react to anything). she was really THERE and appreciated us being there and was happy ..it made us feel fantastic. ill send a picture. it made me think that im really just here to learn from people like hermana emerita who has sacrificed so much to take care of ortencia full time. ive never even done that for my own family! crazy..

anyway, love and miss you all! also the baptism of miguel fell through cuz he had a dream and was scared but i think he will do it next week so i cant wait for pictures!!

pablo. lol he doesnt look super happy but he loves us and came to church  just for us :P

hermano borquez.. it was sad to leave him 

peña family. love them so much...the little girl is the one who got baptized like two weeks ago

our ward..haha taking this picture was an adventure but here it is...

with Hermana Flores

​my new companion :)  Hermana Damian

Week 29-February 16, 2015

Week 29-February 16, 2015

so this week was pretty awesome! a few crazy stories..

so wednesday we went to teach this 21 year old guy we contacted and seemed interested and we ended up explaining all of lesson 1 and such and talked to him about his concept of God and such and he told us he believed us because we didnt look like people who were lying and that he felt peace. that was pretty cool. the funny part was that in the middle of it he was smoking a cigarette (everyone smokes) and we were testifying and then we noticed that the plant next to us in the patio was a marijuana plant. a big one. lol wish i had a photo.. when he left to get something from his house we looked at eat other and busted up laughing. turned out to be an interesting lesson cuz we told him our first names cuz he was bugging us about it and he decided to keep calling me ashley and it was pretty weird to hear. haha then he asked us if we were his spiritual guides and we said yes. lol oh goodness but we will see what happens with him. his name is pablo

other story, so we had a bunch of divisiones again this week and one of them was with two missionaries from the coast who were spending the night at our apartment so we split up and worked separately with them in our sector. hna flores and one of the hermanas went to teach one of our investigators, Patricio, and taught him the Law of Chastity and read alma 39 about coriaton and the harlot Isabel. He kind of freaked out apparently and got super depressed about not being able to live the law of chastity (we knew he had problems but we didnt know any details, he just said his weakness was women). two days later we taught him again, this time together, and ended up talking about the Atonement and repentance. then he opened the scriptures to alma 39 and showed us where it says  ¨^la ramera isabel^ and told us that is why he freaked out. the day they had taught him he had been having problems with his wife and the fact that they came and taught the law of chastity struck him super hard (he believes strongly that we are messengers sent from God to him). but also that he freaked out because apparently the woman with whom he is cheating on his wife with (as far as we understood) is named isabel..haha crazy how the Spirit works..haha made me think about the poor harlot isabel who is now one of the very few woman named in the book of mormon and now is always used as an example to teach the law of chastity because of a few errors she made..someday in heaven id love to meet her. 

anyway one of our investigators, Miguel, hopefully will get baptized this next sunday!!!!  super excited. he is awesome. super humble and has so much faith. also a miracle because he doesnt smoke, drink, and is married!! hopefully all goes well until sunday..

also i might be leaving the sector monday, we dont know, but its very possible..

which is why i bought a new memory card today :)

also apparently i make awesome pan amasado (bread here)! :P all the times i attempted to make bread with mom paid off! thanks mom! haha

also if you guys ever send another package,  i sure wouldnt mind exercise videos (p90x, insanity, hip hop abs. etc). i have one from hna osterloh but im getting pretty sick of doing the exact same thing every morning when we cant leave the pension..

love and miss you all!!

 on "divisions"

Week 28-February 9, 2015

Week 28-February 9, 2015

wow sounds like lydias party was a success!!! :)

the decorations look super cute, too!

i got your package this week!!! thanks for everything!! you guys are the best! it made my day..

also just so you guys know, the seaweed only works if you send it in the original package because otherwise it absorbs water from the air and gets stale :/ also everything chocolate melts..

but seriously, i needed a boost that day and was super excited to get the package and lydias letter :) love you guys

this week i learned even more about how i should never get married. haha one of the families we have been visiting the parents got separated this week and we have to listen to the mom cry and when she asked if we understood we told her no but that we were here to help her. i just dont know what to tell these people.. she was pretty hurt that we didnt really comprend what she was going through but for goodness sake! we are 20 year old missionaries who have never been married or even had a serious relationship!! we arent marriage counselors and dont ever want to be! oh goodness..haha but anyway, men are bad and you can never trust them :P

but sunday a daughter of one of our menos activo families, the family peña, got baptized because she turned 8 a week ago. it was cool :) also ortencia came to sacrament meeting!!! which was awesome of her because all her kids didnt want her to go but she said she needed to go to recieve an answer from God, and she came!! we were pretty excited. also the man we invited in the street and who came for all three hours but doesnt live in our sector came again, for the third sunday in a row. haha he doesnt want to go to his ward but he wants to get baptized! haha so we called the missionaries where he lives and hopefully they can persuade him..

oh also this week we got to do divisiones with the missionaries in the CCM! that was fun..they were awesome and it was fun to remember when i did divisiones during the CCM..i was terrified after :P i hope they were more excited than terrified.. haha

anyway, have a great week everyone and love and miss you all!

 

Week 27-February 2, 2015

Week 27-February 2, 2015

wow sounds like everything is great! way to have a fhe and invite people! who are anthony and vanessa though? also happy birthday lydia!!! sounds like you had a good one :) i thought about you yesterday and hope you got my letter!

thats crazy that mom and dad are going to germany! with aunt sonja!! super cool!

and taylors leaving in may?? cool im just happy we will get to talk on skype before he leaves!

also dont worry mom, the cream helped a little but my feet are still a disaster lol but its ok im not sufffering they r just ugly :P and i bought new shoes today!

this week was good, full of miracles as always! haha hna flores was sick the last weekend and all this week though so we spent some time in the house (i coooked and decorated packs of cigarettes with scriptures instead of cigarettes inside for an investigator and such while hermana flores slept). she had a fever and a cough so bad she couldnt sleep much until we found a magic medicine thing that a member gave us. funny cuz the mission rule is not to accept medicines from members and such cuz they might give us all kinds of weird stuff, but the mission doctor couldnt do anything except tell us to find a super sketchy pharmacy where they would sell us some medicine with codine to help her sleep (you need a prescription technically but the mission doctor cant give us one because she isnt a doctor in Chile), which we never found. haha so turns out the members were a lot more helpful...

also our apartment flooded this week so that was interesting. also flooded three apartments under us, which is a big bummer. thats kind of a long story, but the short of it is that our floor is damaged now, which is a big bummer. 

but as for miracles this week, we taught a contact we did named Mauro this last week and he was awesome!!! we had a member come with us (sometimes that is the most frustrating part of missionary work.the members lol) and it was fantastic! then he came to church this sunday!! and the members were awesome and sat with him and invited him to play soccer tuesdays and such. we were super excited!!! we have a lesson with him tonight.oh and funny story, like i said we always invite to baptism and set a date the first lesson, especially if its a good one, so of course we invited him to baptism on the 22 of february and he said he wanted to come to church first, so we said ^^ok but if you know its true by 22 de febrero will you be baptized that date? can we set it as a goal?^^ , like usual, and the member after he left the room was like ^¨haha i forgot how direct and persistent you guys are!^¨ haha she was kinda shocked that we had invited him to baptism and i thought about how dad said that other time that he was suprised that the missionaries invited the family you guys had a fhe with to baptism too. haha seems pretty normal to us now, although i was pretty scared of doing it before. 

also in answer to dads questions, patricio didnt come to church this week so we went to his house after and had a super direct talk about his priorities and such haha and ortencia is pretty scared of being baptized and doesnt reaally want to go to church so we might have to leave her...and ya we teach lots of old ladies but i always feel weird cuz we are supposed to be looking for young families and priesthood and old ladies dont really fit in those categories :P and sometimes i think they are just being nice to us because we are in the street haha

anyway, all is well! have a great week! my camera has a virus or something so i may never send pictures again..:/ we will see... love you all!

Week 26--January 26. 2015

Week 26--January 26. 2015

wow congrats to sam for his call the rancagua! my comp from the mtc is there right now! maybe if we go to the temple at that time we will run into him..

and thanks mom for the info on athletes foot haha im not sure what it is but my feet are a disaster lol oh well

ya javieras baptism was great, also i got to go on divisions again this week and meet a woman whose husband i contacted while on divisions with the same hermana the transfer before. she is getting baptized next week! cool to meet her :)

so many divisions are crazy and we are never together in our own sector but its fun to teach and be a part of everyone elses sector too :P

also Alfredo ( the nine year old) is awesome but his grandma has been out of town this week so we havent met with him in a while. but we cant baptize him anytime soon since hes only 9 and his family doesnt want anything to do with the church. he will hav to wait a few years at least :P oh well. i am trying hard to have more faith in everyone and its working :P Patricio came to church and told us he feels like maybe he does need to be baptized, Ortencia has started crying in every lesson and tells us the things we teach ¨´llegan a su corazon¨´ and that she feels a peace when we are there in her house. pretty cool to hear... also yesterday was church and we found a guy in the street on the way to church who started talking to us and we invited him to church and he came for all 3 hours and loved it! unfortunatley he doesnt live in our ward... by the way ortencia is an investigadora that is like 80 years old and Patricio is a man with 58 years that we have been taeching for a couple transfers now. he has lots of questions but felt the Spirit in the sacrament this week...them and 2 others have baptism goals for 22 of febuary. lol sorry im writing in english but with spanish grammar...

hope lydia has a greatbirthday!!! (and gets my card)

congrats mandy on her gymnastics ruotine! and natalie with her 4.0!

and cool story about the vaughans...looks like all the visiting teaching mom did really helped change some lives..

anyway, love and miss you all!

Week 25-January 19, 2015

Week 25-January 19, 2015

wow sounds like the most exciting thing this week was taylors mission call! haha and why didnt he skype while opening it? haha oh taylor... 

but i hope natalies bday was awesome!! glad she got my card!! send one today for lydia...hope it gets there..

anyway i fought with my camera for like 20 minutes today during our time in internet so now i have less time to write AND it still isnt working to send pictures...oh well. maybe you guys wont see any more pictures of my mission., :P 

also the guy next to me keeps asking me stuff and complimenting me so thats awkward and distracting. especially when i cant understand young men very well... haha one of the sisters said one time that she doesnt try to look good anymore, she tries to look more ugly because then less men yell at her. lol me too. i never do my hair anymore :/  also im offically blond. the man cutting my hair told me so. but i guess its nice to know that no matter how much weight i gain, there will still be people here that shout things at us in the street...lol

this week was a little harder for me personally. ive been pretty frustrated about the lack of baptisms in this sector and trying to figure out what we are doing wrong. also i never realized how much a mission would try my faith and testimony. when we listen to people tell us it doesnt matter what church we are a part of, they are all the same, or that men are imperfect and so no church is right and such its hard to not let it get to you when you hear it 100 times a day. nobody actually understands our message or they listen to the first lesson of joseph smith and such and then tell us its no different that any other church.. what?! God came down from heaven in our day! haha. but my testimony is just fine, dont worry. haha just a little frustrating so i had a mini breakdown the other night and hna flores had to testify that YES there are prepared people waiting and suchy. but all is well now. sunday was a sunday of miracles! we had a inactive man named Juan come that we had randomly found the other day and he was so happy to see us and come to church again. we also had one of investigators come and he liked it! that was super cool. also we went to the baptism of Javiera (the girl i helped on divisions) and it was super awesome! the Spirit was super strong and she was so happy. 

so in the end, it was a good week :) 

anyway love and miss you all!

Week 24-January 12, 2015

Week 24-January 12, 2015

hey everyone! sounds like everyone is doing well :)

this week was interesting for us. it was great and busy. but i like being busy, so it was good :)

today was change meeting and it was in English! haha that was fun. but president decided to call me out for something i had written in my email to him last week so that was interesting. the past few weeks weve had quite a few tests of our obedience. they say ¨obedience brings blessings and EXACT obedience brings miracles^ so we have been trying to be obedient with everything but it seems like the Lord is trying us to see how obedient we are willing to be...but we are excited because if we pass the test hopefully we will see some miracles in this sector! we certainly need some...

anyway we had a few experiences that left me wondering if we had done the right thing because our obedience had left a member crying and the elders mad at us and i ended up asking the president what he thought and he decided to answer me in front of the entire mission and to thank hna flores and i for our obedience. i wanted to hide and then afterwards i wanted to cry. it was an interesting experience..haha but we have been asking everyone about their ideas on what exactly is the ¨´spirit of the law´when it comes to mission rules. many people claim to follow it but hna flores says this is apostasy.haha pretty funny. anyway, does dad have an opinion? or mom? haha just curious...

but also, funny story, the other day in the street a man came up to us while we were contacting another man and shouted at me ´tu eres pobre?´¨ haha i was like, what? no! why? haha so he went on to tell me i didnt look like a gringa beacuse my shoes were viejos.he told me i couldnt be from the US because i was poor.  lol super funny. i guess my shoes are more of a disaster than i thought..haha he offered to give me shoes and i turned him down saying, no no no i have money i just like these ones! haha also im pretty sure i have a weird disease on my feet or something.maybe mom could look up athletes foot and how to cure it for me? haha

also im trying a new diet of mate, which is a weird herb drink they drink in south america that i really dont like but am forcing myself to get used to becuase it helps you lose weight :P we will see what happens..

also the other day was crazy because one of the menos activos that we visit had a panic attack and we had to leave in the morning from our pension because she posted on facebook that she was alone and needed help. it was kinda crazy. guess she had an arguement with her husband and was so stressed out about everything in her life than she collapsed. luckily the members beat us to her and were already helping when we arrived. it was super funny because all the ladies helping were like, sisters dont worry marriage is a good thing!. haha we decided God is trying to teach us something about men here or something. one of the main things ive learned in the mission is that men are bad and marriage is trying. haha

also im in the sector for another change with hna flores, so we are excited about that! :)

but anyway, glad everyone is good! love you all!!! miss you!

also if taylor gets his call someone needs to video it on their phone and send it to me!!!