First and foremost, a very happiest birthday to my dearest mother (feel free to send her dark chocolate and/or fruit trees), and a very very happy Father`s Day to my wonderful father, both whom I love very much.  Dearest familia, I have been sworn to secrecy with regards to my secret agent of cakes and rootbeers, at least until my mission is over.  You will all just have to wait six more months to find out.  

Anywho, since I was running low on time last week, I`ll share a little bit about what happened. FIRST OF ALL, as an early birthday present to me, we found the most GOLDEN investigator ever.  We received a reference from the mission office, and the same day we went to contact her.  When we knocked, her dad answered the door and told us that she wasn`t home, that she wouldn`t be home for a couple of hours.  Well a couple of hours later, we went back and she answered the door.  As soon as she saw us, she came right outside to open the gate for us and shy away her absolutely huge, man-eating dog that barking madly and spitting saliva all over us.  Well we went right inside and as soon as we sat down, she came over and sat down and said "I`ve been waiting so long for you to come!!"  Well people don`t say that to us every day, so my companion and I sat staring at her in silence for a few seconds (we`re so VERY on the ball), until we had processed that she wasn`t joking and that she really was excited to see us.  

She then proceeded to explain that her older brother, (she`s 18) had been baptized a couple years ago after he started dating a member.  He went to church once, and from there on out, started coming home every day with more and more books from the church in his backpack and reading and meeting with the missionaries until he was baptized a month later (also golden).  He`s now on a mission in Cordoba, Argentina and comes home next year.  She said she saw the huge change in him, that he stopped doing drugs, drinking, smoking, that he changed his personality and very being completely when he joined the church.  She said that he was always talking to her about the church and always inviting her to come (and once she went to General Conference) and showing her movies from the church, but that at this point in her life, she didn`t feel the need really to know more.  She said that it was only recently that began to feel that she really needed to know what he was talking about, as he has been writing her continuously throughout his mission.  At this point, my companion and I were sitting there dumbfounded, with our mouths hanging open.  We invited her to read the Book of Mormon and ask her Heavenly Father if she knew these things were true, and that if she came to know if they were true, if she would be baptized.  She said of course and immediately accepted a date.  My companion and I drank hot chocolate that night in celebration as we tried to dry ourselves off by the fire (that really wasn`t a fire because our wood is aboslutely drenched).  BEST DAY EVER.

Anyway, for my birthday, our Mamita, (the woman in the ward who we eat with every day except for Sunday and Monday) made an incredible cake for me.  She studied cooking and specialiezed in dulces y pasteles y tortas.  Oh dear.  The cake was a giant alfajor.  Which is something very chileno that I haven`t ever described.  An alfajor is a type of cookie sandwich with manjar (also something very chileno that doesn`t exist in the United States, but is one of the most delicious things I`ve ever eaten - a type of caremal sauce) in between to crackers made of flour and eggs.  I did NOT just describe that very well, but you can all look it up.  Imagine an alfajor but BIG and with lots of layers.  And that was my cake.  Very delicous.  I`m going to bring manjar to the United States and be a millionaire.

Anyway, this week we had our very last zone conference with President Rappleye and Hermana Rappleye, who finish this transfer.  At the end, they let us just ask them whatever questions we wanted, and at the end, one of the missionaries asked him what was the last thing that he wanted us all to know.  And he said, "that it`s true."  I wish I could express to you all, through a very rapidly-written email how much I know that it is true.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not simply just another church, nor is it the Mormon church, no matter how much it`s called that.  It is the Church of Jesus Christ.  Of that I am certain.  I know that God has called a prophet, just as He did in times before, to restore the same church that Jesus Christ established, with the same authority and power that was used to create the worlds of the universe.  I know that the Book of Mormon is palpable evidence that we have of this Restoration, and whoever reads it with the intention to truly know, and asks God to know if it is true, will receive their own answer.  If I can know, anyone can.  It is true, and no power in heaven or earth can change that.

In other, rather very important news, transfers have come again.  My companion, Hermana Estrada, will be going to another ward, and for the next three months, I will be training a brand new missionary here: Hermana Rojas from Bolivia.  In the same transfer that I begin training, my sister Kate will go to the MTC and start her own training in the mission field.  I will do my very best to train Hermana Rojas exactly as I hope my sister will be trained.  I`ll let you all know how it goes, and I hope you all have a lovely week.  

I love you all!!!!!!!!

Hello dearest everyone, 

These past fourish weeks that I have been in Alerce, it has been a bit difficult to find people to teach, and we have been constantly searching for those that Heavenly Father has already prepared to receive the Gospel at this time.  Well after a particularly rainy day, which we had spent outside the whole entire time, knocking doors, trying to talk to people in the streets in the moments when the rain would let up a little, and looking for addresses, I came home soaked, defeated and wondering what in the world I was doing wrong.  I had been asking in every single prayer that I had since getting here, that Heavenly Father would help us find the people that He had prepared.  The next day was Saturday, which is when we start our fast for Fast Sunday.  After lunch on Saturday, we say our prayer and then don`t eat until lunch the next day on Sunday.  Well my companion and I decided that we needed to fast to find the people that God was preparing, and I asked her if we could specifically fast to find a family.  Well we began our fast, and Saturday we found a 19-year old girl, who, after we had taught her the Restoration and asked her if she would be baptized if she knew these things were true, said that of course she would, and accepted a baptismal date and our invitation to come to church right away, and then said that she had been waiting to hear something like this for some time.  We couldn`t believe Heavenly Father had answered our prayers so rapidly.  Well the next day, Sunday, we visited a family that we had visited once before after we had found an old teaching record of their family from three years ago.  A member had accompanied us, despite the torrential rainstorm, and we had one of the most incredible lessons I`ve taught in my mission.  At the end of the lesson, after we had also explained the Restoration, we invited them to be baptized and the mother immediately said that she wanted to know if these things were true and that she wanted to be baptized if she did. The father then said that he thought that it was finally time for their family (they have three kids, one 17 years old, the others 8 and 2) and then they both accepted baptismal dates, as a goal to meet if they truly felt that what we had taught them was true, if they truly felt that this was the Church of Jesus Christ here on earth.  When my companion and I left the lesson, we maintained our calm until after we had dropped the member off (who was almost excited as us about the family), and then we started jumping up and down in the rain and hugged each other.  I still cannot believe the rapidity with which Heavenly Father answered our fast, and I cannot begin to describe the testimony of the fast that I have gained on my mission.  If we fast with faith, then expect the Lord`s will, we will never be dissapointed.  The Gospel and Restored Church of Jesus Christ is the most incredible part of our life and every day I learn more and am more and more convinced of the divinity of our Father in Heaven and His Son, and their love for us.

In case I had forgotten to mention, it rains AN INCREDIBLE AMOUNT here.  The pictures that are attached are of a road where we used to walk to get home, which is currently now a river.  The rain comes from all directions: from above, below, right, left, front, back.  From everywhere.  Luckily, I found rain boots that someone had left in the house, and although they are just a TAD bit large, I tied plastic bags around my feet, so it all works out very nicely and my feet don`t get too drenched.  This week, everyone was telling us that Volcan Calbuco (the volcano that is just behind the poblacion where we live, has been erupting puffs of smoke and there have been several earthquakes this past week.  They think it`s possible that it might erupt and that they might have to evacuate everyone from Alerce.  My sister, Myriam, will be happy to hear this, as she has always imagined me on my mission, escaping from an erupting volcano as I ride to safety on my llama.  

Oh and also on the fifth I`ll complete one year in the mission.  Downright scary.  And on the sixth 21 years of life.  Feel free to send chocolate. 

I love you all!!!

Hello dearest everyone, 

Due to the fact that this internet is very slow and that I spent almost all my P-day deep cleaning our house, my p-day is about to end and I (again) don`t have much time.  our house had (clearly) not received a good deep-cleaning for quite awhile, so my poor companion had to wait for me as i scrubbed the floors, the cielings (they had mold), and various other surfaces as well as throw out about threee huge sacks of trash of all the unecessary and gross things in the house.  i promised her that I was only going to do this once, and that all the rest of our P-days would be much more fun. 

This week, we found a less-active who hasn`t been to church in QUITE a few years (she`s 76 or something like that) but she invited us in and we had the privilege to listen to her life story.  It was asombrosa.  She had no fornal education, but got married very early in life and had children soon after.  her husband turned out to be a horrible person who beat her everyday and did not help her with anything.  To provide for her children, she started a small store out of her house (that`s very common around here), and would stay up until the wee hours of the morning making sweets and cookies and knitting and crochetting hats and socks and other things.  Well her little store started to grow and grow and she was able to expand until she, at one point, owned three houses and two cars and her "little store" was a huge business where everyone stopped by.  let me just tell you, you have to have a LOT of money here in chile to have three houses and two cars.  Well she just kept working and working, and one day decided that she wanted to live in a house a bit smaller, so she sold her three houses, two cars and her business and came to live in a quiet little house in our sector.  a few months later, she suffered some sort of attack that left the muscles in her face grotesquely mishapen and her arm and leg paralyzed.  For some strange reason that i didn`t really understand, her insurance didn`t cover it, so she used her entire fortune that she had gained to pay for the medical treatments, which saved her life and her face.  Now she lives in a rather barren little house and sells kindling which she chops herself, but she says she is so grateful to God for saving her and giving her the life and the will to keep on working.  It was an incredible testimony to me of hard work and i resolved then and there to enjoy the work that we are given and to ALWAYS find the way to be self sufficient.  Anyway, i don`t have more time, but I love you all!!!

Pictures to follow next week!

Hello dearest everyone, 

Well I am officially out of Punta Arenas (6 months later), and in my new sector Alerce III in Puerto Montt.  Puerto Montt is huge (twice as big as Punta Arenas) and there are three companionships of missionaries in our Alerce branch.  It´s a branch, but there are 90-100 people attending, so we´ve heard that it´s going to be a ward soon.  I really quite love the branch already because I´ve noticed that everyone there works incredibly hard in their callings, and you can tell the difference.  My new companion is from El Salvador and her name is Hermana Estrada.  She´s very low-key and down-to-earth.  My new sector is gigantic (We have to take a bus for about 15 minutes to get to one part of the sector) and very green and beautiful.  We can see two volcanoes from our sector, Volcano Osorno and another volcano who´s name I have not yet learned.  

A very happy mother´s day to all the mothers, and especially mine, whom I love very much.  As a public statement, I would like to say thank you to my mother for making me practice piano, even though I said for about 15ish years that I would NEVER say that.  Thanks for making me practice the piano.  There, now all the mothers who might be fighting with their children about practicing the piano can print that out and use it as factual evidence.  

Anyway, I don´t have much time left, so I promise to have lots of good stories the next week, but I want to share my testimony with all who might read this.  I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the most important thing we have in this life and that the most wonderful feeling in the world is the Spirit.  I know this is the Church of Jesus Christ, and I have no doubt about that.

I love you all, and murch more next week!! Sorry it´s so short!!

¡Chao mi amada Punta Arenas!

Well well well hello dearest everyone, 

As they have a way of doing, cambios have come again, and I will officially be leaving my lovely Punta Arenas.  When I turned in my mission papers, I NEVER thought I would be preaching the gospel at the end and tip of the world, but I will never forget how I´ve changed and what I´ve learned here.  I suppose I had to come to the end of the world to become the kind of person I wanted to be.  How expensive.  But completely worth it.  As a going-away gift, it snowed (but REALLY snowed) for the first time today, and as I stood in the plaza watching the snow fall around the statue of Magellan discovering the Magellan Straight, I teared up a bit.  But I´m pretty sure it was just because I had forgotten my gloves and it was ABSOLUTELY FREEZING.  Apparently I will be leaving as winter starts.  I´m not INCREDIBLY heartbroken about that.  

HOWEVER, I will be going a little bit more north (obviously) to the sector Alerce III, and I´ve heard that it rains A LOT.  Apparently there are THREE companionships of missionaries in the branch.  OUTrageous.  Alerce is right in between Puerto Montt and Puerto Varas.  I don´t know if that means anything to you guys, but I´ve heard that Puerto Varas is VERY beautiful.  yay!!! 

ANYWAY!! In other news, this week we had 44 people at church!!!! At the beginning of the cambio we had only 26, it was SO wonderful to see the progress.  And TWO inactive families showed up for the first time in quite awhile!!

My companion and I also started teaching a little boy named Leo this week.  His mom isn´t a member, but his great grandpa is an active member of the ward and his great grandma is our mamita.  He started going to church with his great grandpa about 4 months ago and now he goes EVERY week without fail, all by himself.  He´s 8 years old.  His mother doesn´t pay much attention to him so he wanders the streets by himself after school and he doesn´t really talk much to people.  But the first Sunday in the ward we met him and he came to watch me play the piano.  A couple weeks ago, he started coming to his grandma´s house when we came to eat lunch, and little by little we gained his confidence and now he eats lunch with us and little by little we´ve got him to talk to us!!! The last several weeks in church, he has followed me everywhere.  He comes and helps me play the piano during sacrament meeting and one week when I gave a talk, he came up to the stand with me.  He always sits with us during sacrament meeting and draws pictures in my agenda book.  I think he loves church because everyone there is so loving to him.  It´s his favorite place to be.  Well my companion and I decided that we had to help him, so we went to his house and asked his mom if we could start teaching him.  She didn´t want to listen to us but she said that we could teach him.  She went into the other room and carried the little telivision into the room to watch TV, but she never turned it on, and was completely silent the entire time we taught the lesson about nuestro Padre Celestial y Jesucristo.  When we finished, she came out and started asking us a lot of questions.  And she asked us if Leo got baptized, if he could also be a missionary.  We told her, of course.  She thought about that for a minute and then told us that she might be able to come to church with him one week.  Then she gave him a hug and a kiss.  Which I had never seen her do before.  

In other news, I got bit by a dog for the first time in my mission!!! Luckily it just attacked my foot and my boots are pretty thick.  The only damage was a sore and bruised foot and lovely teeth marks in my boot.  It was rather quite funny after.  If I had more time I would the tell the story really dramatically and with much more detail.  But it sufficeth me to say, I got bit by a dog.

I love you all!!!

i don´t know if you can tell, but it´s snowing in the pictures.

¡No puedo pensar en un título!

Well well well hello dearest everyone, 

When we started working here in Magallanes, we started with the ward list to go and visit those who are not coming, so we were knocking a lot of doors, and cleaning out the list at the same time by writing down if the people didn´t live there, or if they had moved,  or passed away etc.  Well we knocked one door and the woman there immediately let us in, we asked her if she was the woman who we were looking for and she told us that she wasn´t, but that she always opens the door to missionaries and after talking for awhile, we discovered that she also had been baptized when she was 14 and is a member of the church!  

She told us that she LOVED learning from the sister missionaries that taught her when she was 14 and that she participated very actively in the church until she moved away to Argentina to live with her mom, where she stopped going to church.  She said that now she really doesn´t remember anything, but that she remembered that the missionaries found her in a very critical part of her life and had helped her incredibly.  

Well, we have continued teaching over the course of the transfer, and lately she started saying that she would like to go to church.  We had been talking about the family as well because she just went through an incredibly difficult separation with her husband, and they´re deciding now whether they should give it another shot so that they can be a family again.  We talked about the importance of the gospel in the family, and she was always very touched.

The another night, we passed by to see if she had read the Introduction of the Book of Mormon that we had left, and she said she hadn´t, that she really didn´t remember ANYTHING about the Book of Mormon, so we told her we would read it together.  We took turns reading paragraphs in the Intro, and when we finished, we asked her if something had come to her attention, or something she had liked.  She looked up at us and tears were streaming down her face.  We were somewhat surprised because we had just read the Intro and we had no idea why she was crying, but then she said "I don´t remember much, but my heart feels like it´s swelling, and I remember this feeling. I´ve already asked my Heavenly Father if this book is true, and just reading this page and a half, I already know.  I don´t have to ask again because I know it´s true.  I´ve asked before."  

I know The Book of Mormon is true as well, because I have read it, I have thought about it, and I have asked.  The power it brings, and the importance it has in our lives is irreplaceable.  I encourage anyone reading this, to read the Book of Mormon, and then pray to our Father in Heaven and ask Him if it´s true.  He always answers.

I love you all!!!! 

Pictures of all the hermanas here when we had our huge tsunami warning sleepover AND... Torres del Paine, otra vez

Hello dearest everyone!

A very very happy Easter to everyone, there is nothing more wonderful to know than that Christ was resurrected. Because He lives, we will all live again and we have the opportunity to change to become more like Him every day. 

The Magallanes ward is small, as the ward has been dwindling over the years, and we´re at about 25 people every Sunday.  It has been hard for the few faithful members that remain, but their faith truly inspires me.  This week, my companion and I decided to plan an activity for the ward for Easter.  (Here, the missionaries plan, organize and execute the majority of all activities), and so we went to great lengths to plan something incredible for the ward that they could really enjoy.  We planned an Easter egg hunt with tons of chocolate eggs hidden everywhere in the church (those things are EXPENSIVE here) and some plastice eggs with questions about the live of Jesus Christ inside.  We started with the egg hunt and then after, we all got together and we played a jeapordy-like game with the questions.  It went incredibly well and a LOT of people came.  Normally the missionaries activities here have about 8 or 10 people, but FORTY people arrived for the activity, the majority of them less actives.  It was UNPRECEDENTED. And amazing.  My companion and I also decorated, and we decorated the door to the cultural hall as the open tomb of Christ with the stone rolled away with Kraft paper and the fake flowers that are normally in the sacrament meeting.  It looked quite good if I do say so myself.  Afterwards, the members came up to tell us that they had really enjoyed the activity.  At the end we watched part of the movie How to Find Faith in Christ about His death and resurrection.  It was incredible.   

Here in the ward, we have also enfronted many sad situations with people we´re teaching, as alcohol is QUITE the problem here in Chile, but I cannot tell you how it has strengthened my testimony in the commandments.  If EVERYONE could just keep the commandments, they would discover an indescribable peace that can´t be found anywhere else.  That is why Christ sacrificed His life and died for us, so that we have other opportunities to change and keep His commandments.  I know that He is our Savior, and that true and lasting happiness are found only through Him and His gospel.

In other news:  This week we discovered that 1) we have cats living in the ceiling and the stains on the ceiling that we THOUGHT were just stains from the roof leaking are definitely NOT water stains.  We can hear the cats little feet pattering around during the day, and sometimes they get in fights and we feel like they might fall through the ceiling one day.  And 2) we have rats living in the walls and sometimes they come out to sit behind the calefacción to warm up.  We´ve found little bit of crackers or grapes back there too.  MY question is: WHY the cats and rats can´t live in the same spot?! WHY must one live in the ceiling and one live in the walls and have NO contact whatsoever?! Really.

I love you all so much, and can´t wait until I have the opportunity to share my testimony with all of you with something longer than a letter that I have to write in 10ish minutes.  I hope you all had a WONDERFUL Easter and remember the sacrifice of our Savior Jesus Christ.

The first picture is of the tomb with the elders of our ward and also the Hermanas of another ward that we invited to the activity.  And the other is of me and my companion, I don´t know if I´ve ever sent a picture of us.  

Love you all!!!

From Sandy Point

Hello hello hello dearest everyone, 

This week we had interviews with President Rappleye, our mission president, who finishes his mission in June.  Our new mission president is named President Obesos, and he´s from Mexico!!  It will be extremely strange to have a different mission president.  President Rappleye is very business-like and direct and to the point, and has incredible stories.  He´s worked internationally almost all of his professional life, so he and Hermana Rappleye have lived abroad almost the entire time they have been married.  She is incredible and it will be sad to see them go, but if there is one thing that is constant in the mission, it is change.  We adapt.

I do not know how I ran out of time so quickly this week, but I want to send a few pictures, so next week it will be extra long. The first picture is with Angel and his family and the other is from Torres del Paine (it´s going to take a few weeks to get them all in).

I love you all!!! 

Hello dearest everyone, 

First and foremost, a most HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY birthday to my wonderful little smoochie poo Emma Louise tomorrow! I love you Emma!!

Well about 10:30ish Tuesday night, we got a call from our zone leaders.  Well actually they called the two other Hermanas with whom we are living because we didn´t have a cellphone as we had just opened our sector.  I think I might have forgotten to mention that my companion and I are living with another companionship of Hermanas.  Hermana Teeples from Arizona and Hermana Rodriquez from Peru.  I quite enjoy it although the house was REALLY not made for four people and we are sleeping in a room that was very recently a bathroom and we didn´t have beds until a couple days ago.  Apparently an alcoholic lived in the house before too and painted every available surface.  I love it.  Truly I do.  I´m going to miss the mission so much.  ANYWAY, our zone leaders called us Tuesday night and asked us if we had heard about the tsunami warning.  Well we had not since we are completely out of the loop with the news, and the elder, not wanting to scare us told us, "Well there isn´t one, but if you could all prepare emergency backpacks with clothes, food and water, that would be wonderful."  WELL, bien... So we started preparing the backpacks until Hermana Rodriquez said, wait a second.... isn´t it April 1st?  Isn´t that a holiday of jokes in the United States?  This has to be an April Fool´s Day joke.  So we called the elders to tell them HAHA BUT YOU CAN´T FOOL US, until they told us that it wasn´t a joke and actually the tsunami was predicted to arrive in the middle of the night and would come up until one block below from our house and that they really thought it better if we went and slept with the other hermanas in Patagonia for the night.  SO, much sooner than I thought I would, I returned to my lovely sector of Patagonia and all eight hermanas in Punta Arenas slept in the little apartment where I had just lived for five months.  Later we found out that the tsunami was going to be a repercussion from huge earthquakes in the North of Chile.  We are praying for these people, who apparently are still expecting more earthquakes, but we are all fine down here in Punta Arenas.  

Well, this week we have also found a lot of wonderful people and families, which I will have to recount to you all the next week.  But also, Conference was absolutely wonderful. The talks are becoming much more direct.  That means we should all start paying a bit more attention.  We are incredibly lucky to live in an age with living prophets and apostles.  I know they are chosen of God to give us His counsel for our days.  

I love you all!!! 

One day I´m going to send a billion pictures because there are just too many.

HOLA HOLA HOLA DEAREST EVERYBODY!!!

WELL, the last week we went to Torres del Paine, the eighth wonder of the world which was probably the most incredible thing I´ve ever seen in my life.  We also took the most express tour EVER because we had to get back by six to start working, and the tour guides who were driving the bus kept saying just so you all KNOW you´re not going to get to see everything, are you SURE you have to get back by six and WHY and are you SURE.  But we told them that sí o sí we had to get back by six, so we rushed around the park in our bus and when they would park so we could get out and take pictures, they would give us five minutes to do it, so we RUSHED out, frantically took pictures and would rush back into the bus. GO GO GO.  But it was so worth it and I hope with all my heart that I´ll have a chance to go back and go camping or backpacking there someday.  Absolutely incredible.  There is also a hotel there right in the middle of the most beautiful lake I´ve ever seen, but you have to be VERY loaded to stay there.  Maybe I´ll just work really hard here so that my mansion in heaven looks like that.  ANYWAY, many pictures to follow because I can´t describe it.  there was a LOT of wind, so there is not one single picture without my hair all over the place, but STILL.  The second picture is in Puerto Natales, a little town on the way to Torres del Paine.  I´ll be sending more pictures.

WELL this week me and my new companion, Hermana Palma (from Santiago Chile), opened a new sector in the ward Magallanes.  It was a very new experience as, normally, at least one of the companions knows where they´re going or what they´re doing.  But both of us were RATHER lost, but we printed out the list of members in the ward (the majority of which are less actives) and a map and went to find them all.  We were also just talking with everyone and knocking on doors and the whole shebang.  One day we didn´t enter any houses or sit down anywhere, but we taught more lessons in one day than I have in any other day of my mission.  All in the doors or the streets or through windows.  I came back rather frozen (it had suddenly decided to become really cold the last half of the day).  My companion just finished her training in the mission, so only has three months in the mission, but is quite a good missionary and very nice and so I have a feeling this will be a great transfer.  The ward needs an incredible amount of help because there just aren´t people there, but I have a good feeling about it, and lots of faith.  There were so many people who were so grateful that sisters had arrived because the elders can´t enter in houses with women alone, but we can, so there were a lot of really grateful women alone in their houses.  There was one woman (who has a little daughter) who was alone and told us that she has depression, and hasn´t been able to do much (I also believe she has another mental issue) and her house was a complete disaster, nobody had washed the dishes or changed the sheets or swept the floor or cleaned the bathroom in a LONG TIME, and she asked us if we could help her clean because alone she just doesn´t have the energy.  We did so, and it was a very long process, but she was so grateful and kept thanking us the whole time and the house looked MUCH better when we were done.  Truly there comes a joy through plain, hard work.  Thanks Mom for teaching me how to scrub floors, wash dishes, clean bathrooms and all that jazz.  Wow, now I´ve said thanks for that AND for making me practice piano.  What is this mission doing to me.  

Anyway, I want to leave you all with one of my favorite quotes and the reason why I´m on a mission sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ:

“The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of the people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. … Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature” - President Spencer W. Kimball

I love you all so much!!!!! 

Hola hola hola, so this week was a little bit different, and we weren`t able to write yesterday, and we only have ten minutes to write today, so this will be rather short, but I`ll try and fit it all in.  

SO Roxana and Miguel:  OH MY GOODNESS, so last Monday, the day before they were going to get married, they called us because Roxana had gone to ask about the issue with the house - whether they were going to lose the house if they got married.  Well, they told us over the phone, rather depressed, that it had not gone well at all and they we should come by the next day.  We stopped by the next day and Roxana told us that she had gone to ask, adn the man there said that, yes, she would probably lose the house if she got married.  She postulated for this house 12 years ago and the due date to give them the house is in ten months.  So they decided that they were just going to have to wait for awhile to get married and baptized.  Ugh it was one of the worst days of my mission.  Roxana said she had been crying the whole day because they both had truly wanted to start this new life together.  I had recently read a talk by elder Scott about making decisions according to eternal truths instead of circumstances and it was an incredible talk.  If we make our decisions based on what we know to be right and are obeying the commandments of the Lord, the Lord will guide us in the way we need to go.  If we make our decisions according to the circumstances we`re in, we will take ourselves away from the path God wants us to follow.  We talked to her a little bit about that, and she said that they almost decided to just go the next day to get married, but then she said she was overcome by fear, that she really didn`t know what she would do if they weren`t able to pay the rent and she didn`t have a house for her four children and told us that she was truly scared of what could happen because of hard things that had happened in her life before.  She had to be the mother for her little brothers at age six and was on the streets alone at age twelve.  It was so difficult.  But then she told us that the man that she asked about the house said that he could possibly give her a different answer in a little bit after the new president of Chile gets settled... It`s a little bit confusing the situation, but I`m still holding out hope that it can happen.  Their family NEEDS the gospel.  She told us that she hopes that her children can go on missions and be like us.  I love them so much and I hope beyond hope that their family can continue in the gospel.

BUT, we also have transfers.  And it turns out, I will be leaving my lovely Patagonia.  HOWEVER, I will still be in Punta Arenas.. I`m actually just moving to the sector right next to where I am.  The ward where I will be going, Magallanes, before only had missionaries, and me and my companion (Hermana Palma, from Chile) will be the first sister missionaries there.  We will be dividing the sector with the elders and opening that sector together, which means that we will be starting completely from zero.  The President of the mission called me the other day to talk to me about the ward, and he said that this ward needs lots and lots of help.  The assistance is really low and almost all the members are over 60 years old.  They also need a different bishop, because the bishop who is there right now became a widower the last year, but there is not one other man in the ward who is fulfilling all his duties as a priesthood holder to receive the calling. President Rappleye told me that we need to really find young families to help the ward.  Sounds like a challenge sector, but I have complete faith in the Lord that he will help us do just that.

ANYWAY, also the reason we didn`t write yesterday was because we went to THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD.  REally, it was recently voted that.  the Torres del Paine National Park.  It was the most incredible thing I have seen in my whole entire life, I was absolutely in awe.   We left at three in the morning to get there, and to return in time to get back at six to start working again.  But I`ll have to describe it and send fotos the next time because I have no more time, but I love you all so much!! a more cohesive letter the next time!!!!

WELL WELL WELL, hello dearest everyone, an incredibly INCREDIBLY stressful week this week.  Sometimes I feel like we have to be in ten different places at once doing ten different things, but that´s how you know you have an incredible sector when you wake up in the morning wondering how you´re going to get it all done.  

SO, Roxana and Miguel decided they were going to get married and then baptized and they told us they were just making some arrangements and would let us know when the date was.  Well the end of this transfer is the 27th and I have a feeling that I´m going to be sent to another sector because I´ve already been here three transfers, almost five months.  Somehow Roxana and Miguel found out that I might be leaving soon, so last Monday, Miguel went early to the Registro Civil to ask for an hour in which they could get married and while we were here writing, they called us and told us they were going to get married the 18th.  We were so excited we jumped out of our seats and possibly shouted a bit.  

WELL, they told us that, to get married, they first had to go to pre-marriage session thing with a judge where they sign papers and the judge explains the law to them y toda la cuestion.  Anyway, to get married, they also needed two witnesses, so they asked Hermana Marín and I to be their witnesses.  It turns out that if you have your identification (your carnet) that you live in Chile, it doesn´t matter if you´re a foreigner.  The only other requirement is that you are not mentally handicapped, you´re of age and that you understand and speak Spanish.  SO we met all the requirements.  The day of this pre-session we arrived at the Registro Civil and I toold Hermana Marín that I was semi-worried that the judge would ask me a question with a word that I didn´t understand and I would be thrown out for not sufficiently understanding Spanish.  SERIOUSLY STRESSFUL.  I think I was the most stressed of everyone there that day.  ANYWAY Hermana Marín told me that if I didn´t understand something I should start coughing and she would try and divert the attention of the judge.  Have we taken this too far yet?  Anyway, we went in to the office of the judge with the huge desk and the four chairs awaiting us and the big Chile flag behind.  At this point I was RATHER stressed and nervous.  Roxana, Miguel, Hermana Marín and I entered and in a couple minutes the judge came in.  She started the process and I hung on every word, just in case.  At one point she started going on in legal jargon which is where my Mock Trial years came in handy as I semi-recognized the words she was using.  My lovely companion was so worried that I wasn´t going to understand something that, when the judge started telling stories that didn´t have anything to do with the process, Hermana Marín started repeating everything she said in a really loud, animated, slow voice.  "Su HIJO" or "La COCHE... WOW!!!!" 

ANYWAY, the only problem is, the judge started telling Roxana and Miguel a ton of reasons why they shouldn´t get married.  One of these reasons was that, Roxana had postulated for a house from the government, and they had been waiting nine years for this house. (all six of them sleep in one little room together and their is only one other room and then the bathroom).  The judge told them they could possibly lose this house if they get married.  This really worried Roxana and Miguel and they said they´re going to ask about that today.  If it´s true, they´re not going to get married and they´re going to wait a year until they receive their house to get married and baptized.... my companion and I have been praying and fasting a lot so that that won´t happen.  We´ll see what happens.. we should know what´s going to happen in about an hour.  like I said, a very stressful week, still very stressful.

BUT I love it, I know the gospel has changed their lives, we have seen incredible miracles in them, especially Miguel, the photo is of one of the kids, Lydia (age 7).  She said she wanted to be a misionera, so she went and put on a skirt and tights and boots and a backpack.  We gave her a plaque and she went and found the book of mormon they have.  I hope they always stay in the gospel, I can´t imagine how wonderful it would be if their kids served missions.  Truly the gospel is the way to change lives.

I love you all!!!!! 

SO, winter in Punta Arenas has almost set in.  We had about two weeks of lovely summer with sun and less wind y toda la cuestion, PERO, this week we witnessed a torrential rain pour with top speed wind.  It was ABSOLUTELY FREEZING, but thanks to a wonderful family, namely the Smiths, I have a beautiful, warm coat that even says Patagonia, which is what my sector is called.  It was meant to be. But anyway, my companion left in the torrential rainpour and the wind was so strong it pushed us along and I thought, here we are walking around in the freezing cold, nobody´s here to make us do it, and we could really just stay in the house wrapped up in blankets, so why are we out here? And I realized, my true motivation comes purely from my desire to serve my Savior.  I know He has asked me to bring the gospel to His children who don´t have it and the real reason I am outside every day is for the love that I have for Him and for His children.  So bring it on Punta Arenas.

ANYWAY this week was the baptism of Angel.  I don´t think I´ve even mentioned anything about him in my letters because I´ve been talking so much about Roxana and Miguel, but his story is incredible.  He´s been investigating the church for two years and when I got here, he had a testimony of the gospel and a desire to be baptized, but he had to get married first to Joyce, who is a less active member who has been slowing returning to church as the missionaries have been teaching them.  The thing was, many, many missionaries tried to help them to make the decision to get married and Angel wanted to, but Joyce always had a problem, she knew she wanted to, but she had suffered from depression as well as obesity and all of these difficulties pushed her farther away from this decision.  As I said, when I got here, Angel already had a testimony and a desire to be baptized.  Who really needed help was Joyce and after years of missionaries, I think it really helped her that sister missionaries arrived because she could confide in them her problems and difficulties a little bit more.  We helped her start reading the Book of Mormon and we saw a complete change in her, Hermana Letcho and I especially saw a great change in her, she had more energy and she was really committed to changing her life and starting to complete with the covenant she made at baptism.  Well they had set many dates for marriage and baptism, but this last week, they finally finally finally got married and we scheduled the baptism for Angel.  

His baptism was one of the most beautiful baptisms I have seen.  He´s very quiet and doesn´t say much, but I could see how happy he was.  During the baptism, I had decided I was going to ask all the elders in our district to sing with me and my companion and ask the five year old daughter of Angel to sing with us.  She´s not his biological daughter but he´s raised and cared for her since she was born.  Anyway, as we were teaching them, we also taught Vania (his daughter) Soy un hijo de Dios.  She would always sing it when we came.  So for the baptism, we all went up to sing and she stood on the little pedestals with all us missionaries around her and we sang Soy un hijo de Dios.  At one point as we were singing, I looked up to see Angel sitting in the front and I saw that he was crying.  I have never seen him cry before or since.  

Well, he was baptized, and then after his baptism, we had a little reception thing in the chapel afterwards to celebrate his baptism and their marriage.  One of the sisters in the ward who had accompanied us to some of the lesson had connected with the missionaries who had taught Angel over the years and who had returned home through Facebook and asked them to send videos.  So many of them sent videos and then during the little reception thing, she had put all the videos together along with a video from us and she asked for everyone´s attention and told Angel that there were some people who wanted to be here with him, but couldn´t, and they she played all the videos with Angel and Joyce standing in front watching, and at this point, Joyce started crying.  After the videos, Joyce came up to me and gave me a big hug and whispered "thank you for everything, it was all worth it."  I think that moment I will always remember.  I know everything she had gone through and I knew how long Angel had waited to be baptized, and to see them all there in this moment was incredibly beautiful.  I have no time to describe how beautiful it all was.  And with their other little son running around laughing his head off.  Ahhhhh this is what life is all about.  The next day Angel was confirmed and after church we went to their house to teach them and they´re already preparing on going to the temple to be sealed as a family.  its very expensive to go from Punta Arenas to the temple and they don´t have a lot of money but I told them if the remained worthy and worked hard to lograr esta meta, the Lord would do the rest.  That´s always how it´s been.

ALSO I HAVE NO TIME BUT ROXANA AND MIGUEL JUST CALLED TO TELL US THEY´RE GOING TO GET MARRIED THIS WEEK AHHHHHHHH!!!!

i LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!!

photos of Angel and Joyce and us and also the elder in our ward who baptized him.  best day of my life. i have a lot of them

SO continuing the stories at top speed with the ten minutes I have left! 

So Roxana and Miguel were progressing really well and we knew that we needed to teach them the law of chastity because if a couple is living together without being married, they have to live in different places or get married to be obeying this commandment before baptism.  Bueno.  So we taught them, and they were a bit apprehensive about the whole thing, Miguel especially.  We told them we would leave them to think about it and talk for a couple days.  A couple days later, we taught them the plan of salvation and it was an incredible lesson.  This sector in Patagonia has really become sacred ground for me because I have really found a lot of confidence here.  Here I have really understood the power and authority I have as a representative of Jesus Christ.  I have learned how to listen to the Spirit and testify with the words that the Spirit has given me.  In the blessing I received before I left on my mission, I received the promise that I would find great beauty in the Spanish language and understand the concepts of the gospel and internalize them in this language.  At first I wondered how that would happen, but being here I have really found my style of explaining the gospel.  Because I am speaking Spanish, I have to say the things directly in the way that I know how.  And I have found such beauty in speaking very straightforwardly with the people.  They need to know exactly what they should do, and if you tell them with love, it really touches their heart.  ANYWAY, returning to the story, Roxana told us she wanted to get baptized but that they decided they weren´t going to get married for a while.  Well this week every thought that I have is thinking about them and thinking about how we can help them make this decision.  A couple days ago, we were fasting for them, that they would make this progress, and we went to visit them, and Roxana said that she had been talking to a member who we had brought to some of the lessons and she was showing her pictures of people getting married in the temple.  She said that she wants to be sealed to her family and we were talking a little bit more about that and we were explaining to miguel that, and he told us that he had been thinking a lot about it, and that he had realized that his eyes had really been opened through what we had taught him, and that if Roxana wanted to, he wanted to get married and baptized.  an absolute miracle.  I was so happy.  I love their family so much and I just want to see them happy and united.  We will have to work with them a lot to complete this goal but this was a complete miracle.  When we found them, two months ago, Miguel had abandoned the family two days before.  That´s what I call progress.  The picture that I attached is of all the family at the birthday party of the emely, the little baby, who turned one.  the other is of a service activity we did pulling weeds.  yay!

Oh also we have a baptism this week, another miracle that i´ll have to explain the next time.

love you all!!

Penguins on the pier! 

WELL hello dearest everyone, 

So, false alarm about my P-day being on Tuesday, it turns out that the rest of the mission is going to have their P-day tomorrow because they all have to travel to the conference with Elder Ballard from all around the mission, but we just went to the chapel and watched it by satellite, so we didn´t have to spend too much time traveling.  It was very cool, the only problem being that we had quite a few problems with the sound and the quality of the picture, so it was extremely difficult to hear and understand.  But that´s ok, the basic message was that we have to talk to more people if we want to teach more.  Also, we have to internalize the doctrine.  If we truly understand the lessons that we´re teaching, we would know how to approach people and talk to them about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.  Amen to that.

On other news, ROXANA AND MIGUEL.  We first found Roxana because the elders contacted her in the street and passed her name on to us.  We had passed by her house several times trying to catch her at home, but she was never there, until finally, on New Year´s Eve, we decided we were going to stop by one more time.  When she answered the door, she let us right in and we got to know her a bit.  She told us that the father of her children had just left and that they were passing through a really difficult time.  At times like these it´s always difficult to know what to say, but we we offer the only thing we have to give, and we told her, as missionaries, we invite others to come unto Christ and promised her that true happiness comes through understanding the love He has for us and living His commandments.  We continued to visit her for about two more weeks and she always let us in because she told us that we always left their house with a peaceful, tranquil feeling.  Well one day we knocked her door and a man answered it and when he saw us, he called back and said "Roxana, it´s your friends from the Church!" Well we were very confused, but we went on in, and discovered that her pareja had come back.  We continued to teach like everything was normal, and he was INCREDIBLY receptive.  He told us that he had made a huge mistake and that he wanted to change the relationship they had as a family and that he felt like listening to us was the way to do that.  Also, he understood the Great Apostasy really well.  Always a good sign.  

Anyway, we continued to visit them and a couple days later when we came back, they told us that they had made the goal to read the Book of Mormon and pray together as a family every night, without us saying anything!!! Incredible.  Anyway, every time we came back, they would tell us about the differences that they had seen in their family since they had started listening to us and ALWAYS of the peace that we would "leave" in their house after we left.  Anyway, I have one minute left, so I´ll continue the story next time BUT

Locura de la semana:  So there are wild dogs EVERYWHERE in Chile, but especially in Punta Arenas, and this Sunday, two dogs followed my companion and I all the way to church and when we opened the door to go in, they raced in, one dog chasing the other and raced right into the sacrament meeting just as they were starting the meeting.  They ran around the room barking madly so I had to race after them and I managed to grab one of the dogs by the scape of the neck and the other dog with my other hand (they were huge and gross and very smelly) and I hauled them outside as I heard someone say "Hermana! you brought investigators!" Muy bien.  Just another day in the life of a missionary.

Anyway, the picture is of Roxana and Miguel and two of their kids.  To be continued!!  Also me and my new companion Chao!!!