Being artsy and all that jazz

¡Bakan!

Bakan is a Chilean word which, strictly translated, means super-incredibly-amazingly-awesomely-really-really-cool.  I believe that´s the formal translation.  Trust the Chileans to have a word like that.

This week, we were about to go home, when my companion asked if we could knock on one more door.  Although it was pretty late and normally people aren´t really receptive when we do this, we decided to knock on one more door.  A girl of about twenty years opened the door and we explained, nosotras somos misioneras de la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos Dias, estamos compartiendo sobre el evangelio de Jesucristo y como puede bendecir su vida y fortalecer su familia, our little opening line, and she told us to come right in.  MIRACLE.  Truly.  She and her fiancee were about to leave but they both stayed to listen and we taught them the first lesson and it was really really great, they were asking questions and everything and were very interested and wanted to meet with us a couple days after.  Which is a miracle people.  We have our second lesson with them today, I´ll let you all know how it goes.  

Also, a less active family who I´ve been working with for my entire time here, and who I´m really close with has started reading the Book of Mormon and are now coming to church and are working together as a family to go be sealed in the temple.  I cannot tell you how happy I am about this because when we found them, they told me they didn´t even know if they believed in God and were so bogged down by so many of the bad things in the world.  And now it´s so much different in their home.  

We also went to Lago Ranco again today and it was incredible, the pictures don´t don´t do it justice.  I will have to send more pictures and write about all the ton of other stuff that happened this week next week because I have no time!! I love you all!!!!!!! Ciao!

Fotos

WHOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOO

So being the enthusiastic missionaries that we are, my district has started an activity every Saturday called Puertas Abiertas, where we all go to the churchhouse in the more commercial center of La Union to give tours of the church house.  The church is right on the same street where they have the ferria, which is basically an awesome farmer´s market.  There are lots of people walking along the street, so we decided this would be a great way to help me know more about the church, see the salon sacramental, la pila bautismal y estaciones de las organizaciones in the church.  Lo siento that that´s in spanish but I truly cannot remember the words in English and I have very limited time.  ANYWAY, this program has been very successful in other countries with the members and missionaries, and it was written in the Liahona, so we were all very gungho.  Bueno, we´ve actually had some people enter!!!! Although it´s difficult to get members to come help Saturday morning, pero bueno.  The most difficult part is to get the people to enter, this last time we were all outside with a table full of pamphlets, pass along cards and pictures of Jesus.  In the ferria, the people always call out what they´re selling, like LECHUGA or LECHE, so we started calling out EL EVANGELIO DE JESUCRISTO, GRATIS!!!!  Which means, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Free!!! And apparently people anywhere in the world are all about free stuff, and we had a lot of people who came and chose a few things, and even a few who entered the church and got the full tour, YAY!!! Anyway, halfway through, it started to rain a bit and it was quite windy, but we stuck it out like the Spartans we are, and we were all holding down all the pamphlets on the table so they wouldn´t blow away and it was so awesome and fun and freezing and I´m sure the people here think we´re crazy, which we are, YAAAY!!! 

Also, this week was the Primary Program and I played the keyboard for all of them and it was the cutest thing ever and I just cried through the whole thing because the attendance rate here is 17%, but it´s amazing to see all the members here who come faithfully every week.  And it always means we are constantly teaching less active families and it´s great because we are constantly finding new ones.  It´s amazing to see the power of the Book of Mormon when they start reading it.  That book has power.  My suggestion for any area that is not having success in the missionary work is for the members to read the Book of Mormon together in families.  It´s powerful.  I love you all!!!!!!!!!!!!

Emma's baptism  

Lago Ranco 

If you're thinking about serving a mission, do it!

This is one of the hardest things I have ever done, but I have never learned so much, so fast.  About myself, about my potential, about my Heavenly Father and about my Savior.  Every day I come back, and barely have the energy to change and drag myself to bed, but it is worth it because I know who I am serving. 

This week was transfers!! I am still in the same sector, but I finished my training (the first three months) and I got a new companion.  Her name is Hermana Bennet, and yes, she´s una gringa (which is actually what they call us here - for some reason I was under the impression only Latino cowboys in old Western movies used this word).  She´s from Utah, and very nice. She´s been in Chile for six months as opposed to my three, so she speaks and understands Spanish very well.  We don´t speak English to each other, which would be weird anyway, I haven´t spoken English in three months.

This week was also my first week leaving in the morning (during training we only proselyte in the afternoon and night) and my very first day leaving in the morning, we found a miracle.  We were trying to find a member to accompany us to one of our appointments, but she wasn´t home, so we decided to knock on the door of her neighbor. A young woman, looking very tired, answered the door, and immediately told us to come in. We were quite surprised because this rarely happens.  We began to teach her the very first point, that God is her loving Heavenly Father, and she began to cry. She told us that she was going through a very rough time, and had been contemplating ending the suffering.  She said the last time she felt this low was several years ago, but she remembered that right after she thought this, two elders knocked on her door.  She let them in, but had to leave her abusive husband before the could finish teaching the lessons.  She says she´s going to take this as a sign that God is still there.  We have an appointment with her this Wednesday :)

We also saw another miracle in one of our other investigators.  She has been wanting to baptized for ten years, and has been through quite a few missionaries, but the father of her three girls (a member), who she is living with, needs a divorce from his first wife so they can get married and she can be baptized, however, his ex-wife has refused to give him a divorce.  We began a program in our branch and in all the branches in our district to read the Book of Mormon together and we will all finish at the end of December, and me and my companion encouraged this family to start this program too, and we promised them blessings.  They have tried to read the Book of Mormon before, but never could start.  This time however, they´ve been reading and the last time we visited them, we learned that his ex-wife contacted him and wants a divorce. After ten years of not relenting, right as they finally are progressing in the Book of Mormon as a family, she wants a divorce.  Blessings people.  Listen to the missionaries!  And read your scriptures. 

The photos attached are of Emma´s baptism (the shawl I¨m wearing her sister crocheted for me) and the other is of Lago Ranco which we went to with my zone.

I love you all!!! The gospel is true!! Do missionary work, read your scriptures, attend church and pray!! WHOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOO 

Not even a hundredth part can be written - CHILE!!!

A couple weeks ago, our branch president asked my companion and I if we coudl bring a less-active teenager to seminary.  She lives in the elder´s sector (we share our branch with a companionship of elders), but they can´t walk with her alone, so he asked if we could bring her the next week.  (Seminary is for two hours after school every Friday here.)  So Friday my companion and I went to go try and find her house, which, we were told, was at the end of some road.  So we began walking down this dirt road, but after we had walked rather far out into the country side amidst the cows and horses and fields we realized we were a bit lost.  So we turned back and a llittle ways down the road, we found a wizened old man pushing the things he had bought at the market in a wheel barrow down the road to his farmhouse in the distance.  We asked directions and finally found the house.  When we arrived, we discovered the reason that we needed to bring her was not because she didn´t want to go, but because she is paralyzed and in a wheel chair and her mom doesn´t really want to walk her all the way down for seminary.  So we got her fixed up, and with her mom´s permission, we began pushing her wheelchair down the long dirt road through the countryside to the church house.  It was a very simple thing, but at that moment, as I pushed her wheelchair down the dirt road past the fields, I felt an incredibly strong feeling that I was pushing the Savior along in this wheelchair.  I knew that this was His daughter, and that I was in the exact place that I should be.  In that moment, I gained an incredibly strong testimony that when we are in the service of our fellow men, we are only in the service of our God.

This week also, Emma (the woman who lost her son), was baptized!!! It was absolutely incredible.  This has been a long road to get her here, and we´ve had serious trials along the way, but it was worth it.  So very worth it.  She was baptized in between the sessions of conference in the churchouse in centro because everyone comes for conference there and lots of people stayed to watch!! I gave the talk on the Holy Ghost, and just like my mom did for me, I gave her (and another nine year old who was also being baptized) diaries to write spiritual impressions.  Her nephew (who was the one who started this all by bearing such a powerful testimony to her in the first place) was the one who baptized her and she gave her testimony after the baptism, and it was so incredible!   We´ve had so many incredible spiritual experiences with her, and of course difficult ones too, But as she says, she feels completely transformed and like a new person.  And she is.  The depression and other infirmities that she arrived with, she says, are almost all healed.  Her and her sister and her nephew feel like my family here, with the amount of hours I´ve spent in their house.  One day, when we came for an appointment, we found that she had locked herself out of her house, so I climbed the fence in front (all houses have tall fences with spikes on the top), climbed in the open window and found the keys.  I´m not totally sure if this against the rules, but we needed to teach! Her nephew won´t let me forget it now.

Today was our P-day, and since it´s the end of this transfer, we went to Lago Ranco, and hiked up this mountain.  It was absolutely breathtaking and on the way down, (we went with my zone) we all sang hymns in Spanish. 

I´m trying to send pictures but my camera is not cooperating right now.  If I can´t, I will send lots next week.

But I want to leave you all with a commitment.  I hoped you all watched Saturday Conference, but if you didn´t, go watch it.  Your commitment is this.  If you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, pray every day for an opportunity to share the gospel.  If you are not, I invite you to find out what we believe.  Ask a member or the missionaries, not the Internet.  That has an incredible amount of wrong information.  I promise you that this gospel can answer the questions of the soul.  

It appears that my camera is not cooperating, but I have a lot of AWESOME pictures, so hold your breath until next week and I´ll send a lot!!! 

I love you all, and I´d love to hear if you complete the invitation I´ve extended Ciao!