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!!!

Well dearest everyone, 

FIRST OF ALL HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY LOVELY LITTLE DARLING KATHERINE FLORIANNE NIELSEN WHO I WON´T BE SEEING FOR 2.5 YEARS WHAT WITH ALL THESE MISSIONS.  But I love her so much and can´t believe she is 19, that is all.

WEll, It is that time of year again.  CAMBIOS.  Transfers.  I will be staying right exactly where I am, BUT my lovely companion Hermana Lethco is leaving the beautiful city of Punta Arenas and flying out Wednesday.  My new companion is actually already here in Punta Arenas, but in a different sector.  Her name is Hermana Marín and is from Colombia.  I will send you all a picture in due time.  

Well, I had this nice lovely long email in my mind, but of course at this moment in time, I have exactly five minutes on the computer, so I will do my best and write all the rest the next time.  Also, the NEXT time my P-day will be on TUESDAY (only for this week)  because Elder Ballard is coming down to our mission TO GIVE A CONFERENCE AND EVERY SINGLE MISSIONARY WILL BE GOING!!!!!!! Except.... us.  Yes, so Punta Arenas is the ONLY part of the mission that will not be going to see Elder Ballard in this epic conference.  We will be seeing him via satellite.... ahhhhh well, that´s ok.  They keep telling the missionaries that they can´t ask to take pictures with him but we in Punta Arenas keep telling each other that we can take all the photos we want with him on the big screen.  So.... YA.  :)   Anyway, look for my next letter on TUESDAY of next week.  But only for that week.  

On other news, Roxana and Miguel are doing GREAT!!! That story for next time.

Also, profound thought that I had this week that I will fully expound upon the next week:  Miracles are true principles, correctly applied.

Fun fact of the week:  You have to be baptized to be a policeman in Chile.  I can´t even imagine the legal issues that would go down in the US if that was a thing there.

I love you all!!!!!!!!!  Pictures are of me and a less active we´re teaching and helping to read the Book of Mormon and me and my companion going to some famous little restaurant that apparently sells choris and leche de platano.  It was delicious

Hola mis queridos, hola del fin del mundo, 

They say you live about ten years of life in the 1.5/2 years that you´re on your mission, and I believe it, as every time I sit down to write about the week, I have a smallish panic attack as to how I´m going to fit it all in.  I´m also just going to use that excuse to explain why I have rather a lot of gray hairs for a 20 year old, as EVERY one of my companions and EVERY one else has kindly informed me.  My companion from Honduras taught me the word "canas" right off the bat, and when I didn´t know what it meant she said it was "pelo de abuelitos" - "grandparent hair"... muy bien.  

As more and more missionaries have started coming out, the Church came out with a booklet that they give to all the missionaries called "Adjusting to Missionary Life".  It has different sections with techniques in how to deal with physical, emotional, social, intellectual and spiritual demands.  We just call it our stress book.  When anything does not go to plan (so ALWAYS), we wish we had the stress book.  Unfortunately, it does not have a section for what to do when traveling preachers shout at you and call you hijas del diablo, or when 7 dogs start running at you barking madly or when you're trying to install someone´s washing machine and you forget to put the hose down the hole before it reaches the part of the cycle where it starts draining and it shoots out water all over you and the kitchen.  Although maybe those fall under "responding to stress emergencies".  Their advice for those is to take a few deep breaths and keep working.  I would expect nothing less from a missionary stress book.

Anyway, a lot of the work here is helping less active or inactive members come back, but there are so many of them and only about 50%, or less, of the addresses in the ward list are correct, so we´re always finding more that aren´t on the list and adding them on.  We´ve also made a huge list of addresses in the ward directory that we have to find to figure out if the people live there still.  So one day we were looking for one of these addresses and we knocked the door and a sister that we´ve seen a couple times in church answered the door (always a nice surprise).  We pretended like we had known that this was her house and she told us she would love to invite us in but her son was about to come home and she didn´t know if he would be too excited that we were there.  Well I didn´t understand/hear her very clearly (it was QUITE windy), and only heard the part where she said she would love to invite us in.  So I waltzed right in. 

So we were sitting at the table drinking some herbal tea with her when her son came in.  She told us he is also a member, but hasn´t been to church in years, so we were our natural, charming selves and got to know him.  A couple days later, we came back to visit them and he invited us right in.  We started talking to him and we got around to the fact that he knows the church is true, that he has a testimony of the church, but when he moved here, he felt that the other members were cold to him and not very inclusive and so he stopped going and from there lost a bit of control of his life.  I told him I had thought a lot about this, because there are a lot of people who say similar things.  I read him Alma 23:6 which partly says that "as the Lord liveth, as many of the Lamanites as believed in their preaching, and were converted unto the Lord, never did fall away."  I had always thought about this verse and wondered how I could help the people here gain this type of conversion.  Then I read him a quote from Elder Bednar that I had taped into my scriptures that says, "Note that the Lamanites were not converted to the missionaries who taught them or to the excellent programs of the Church.  They were not converted to the personalities of their leaders or to preserving a cultural heritage or the traditions of their fathers.  They were converted unto the Lord - to Him as the Savior and to His divinity and doctrine - And they never did fall away."  He was quiet for a few minutes and then he looked at me and said.  "Me dio algunos palos".  Which translated literally means I gave him some logs, but not literally means that I had said something pretty direct and straighforward to him... more or less.  He was quiet for the rest of the lesson but that as we got ready to leave he said "I just want to tell you how grateful I am for what you´ve said, it was good for me to hear and I would really like it if you would both keep coming back." He´s a very reserved person and this little speech that he gave was one of the most heartfelt things I´ve ever heard anyone say.  I wish I could describe how grateful I felt to be right there in that moment.  

Well my time is up, so I must go but I´ve added a picture of me and my companion with one of our piano students.  He´s quite funny.  

I love you all!!! Chao!!