Long time no see.

well it was so good to see and talk to you all this week! and since i talked to you all i don´t really have much to say this week.  but i´m assuming there´s going to be a mindy jr this week so congrats curtis and mindy! send me millions of pictures!  

thanks again for all the letters and presents! i love them so much and it really means a lot! thank you ashcrafts, joyce, curtis/mindy, jenny/andrew and mom! :)

hmm i really don´t have anything new to tell you so i´ll just send a bunch of pictures today :) 

but it was amazing to see all of you, i love you all so much! i´ll see ya on mother´s day, only 5 more months! :)

Christmas dinner with the Elders at a members house.

Three more day before Navidad

OK family Dec 26th at 2:00pm (your time, 5:00pm my time) i´m skyping y´all so be prepared!  :D  again just in cas my skype name is aubrey.hebdon (very creative i know)  so dad, we´re not allowed to use google chat i don´t know why we just aren´t. so i believe the problem is that you have to pay to skype with multiple people. so if someone has an accout where they can pay to do this or if you create one or if you can just pay for one time i actually have no idea. so i really don´t know what to tell you, research it i guess cuz i don´t know that much about skype. but yeah so i guess i´ll skype you at 2 on friday and if you´ve figured it out great if not i guess i´m just skyping you guys....

we had a bunch of activities for navidad and they were all amazing! we had an activity with president Obeso and all the missionaries near puerto montt and we all sang in the plaza for over an hour. it was amazing :) but kinda difficult to sing with this cold.  then we had our actividiad de navidad for our ward. Hna rhees and i sang a duet for it. it went super well.  but the best part was, as i´m playing the opening hymn Maurisio (our new investigator with a baptismal date) walks in! :D  so we´re super excited!

i´m not gonnna write much cuz then i won´t have stuff to say on friday....

so my district leader elder gomez kill me. haha, he loves practicing his english on us which his english is actually amazing. so last night he´s talkin gto us and he syas ¨i thank you with all my lungs and throat¨   hahahah, i about died of laughter. for some reason he thought it was a saying we use. :)

well, i´m excited to talk to y´all on Friday!  lets pray the connection goes smoothly....

oh and thanks to everyone for the letters and packages! you´ve officially made my life happy :) 

-Hna Hebdon la segunda

can we just appreciate my mini christmas tree with all my lovely pkgs and letters? thanks again everyone for everything!
hah, my mission presidents and district leader, i seriously have the best mission in the world :)    this is our nativity

This is what happens when you do insanity (work out videos) every morning, i´m just too strong for my own good :)

Christmas time is just as crazy as a missionary.

hola mi familia!

so first off, thanks everyone for the letters and packages! we have a tiny little tree in our apartment surrounded by all your stuff and it just makes me super happy everytime i see it :)

k, for skype, what is your skype name mom?  and dad (just send me whatever skype names exist in our family just in case one doesn´t work)  and just in case my skype name is aubrey.hebdon so look me up and add me to your contacts or however that works beforehand.  i think i´ll send you the time next week cuz Hna Rhees hasn´t heard back from her family.

Mom, i have a huge favor, will you type up and send me an email with your sugar cookie recipe (the one with sour cream?) ASAP so i can make them before Christmas.  Please and thank you :)

life is so crazy. there´s a ton of stuff happening with christmas so we´re constantly running from place to place (quite literally)  and my immune system finally crashed so i have a super bad cold so my energy´s a little drained (more than a little, my brain´s dead pero bueno :)

it was a bit of a discouraging week bu7t no matter, we´ll just work all the más duro ésta semana.  (i tried to put that in english but it sounded super weird so it just makes more sense in spanish).  we lost all our good investigators.  one who had a baptismal date randomly packed up and moved to the country, i don´t know what happened to evelyn and eduardo but they´ve lost their desire and maria´s husband won´t allow her to be baptized. so we have some interesting situations but we´re pulling through it with God´s help.  i´m trying to keep up my animo (i don´t know the word in english so google translate it)  but its a struggle when it seems like every day we´ve lost another person. 

but just cuz it was a discouraging week didn´t stop me from laughing at my stupid moments.

     Quote of the week: ¨in the CCM i somehow became Asian!¨  :)  i was enjoying talking to my companion in english a bit too much i was saying 1000 words per minute without really thinking.

     then yesterday my mind was just dead and my head not clear with this bad cold and we´re knocking on doors and this lady answers and i say ¨mucha gusta!¨ hah fail. yah she slammed the door in our faces. but i just died laughing. 

so the ultimate test of whether you know spanish: ordering a pizza in spanish on the phone. seriously hardest thing i´ve ever done. it only took 10 different times of me calling to get it right. but it was worth the pizza :)

    talking about pizza, the elders in our district managed to spend all their money for this month on dominos pizza and now have half a month without any money or food. smart.

weirdest thing that´s ever happened to me:  we printed out a ton of invitations for the activities we have in the ward. and so we bring these beautiful invitations home and as i tap the papers together to get ready to cut them the ink literally plops off the pages leaving a pile of dried ink on the table with blank white sheets of paper in my hands.  how´s that´s possible? i have no idea....

so yeah, it was somewhat of a discouraging week but we still laughed a ton and enjoyed ourselves.  but i´m super excited for Christmas, even though it still doesn´t feel like christmas. i hope i get over this cold cuz i´m supposed to sing for the ward activity and in church next sunday so its kinda a problem.  anywho, i love you all!  thanks again for all the pkgs and letters! (i´m sorry mom, i crashed and broke into the candy you sent for christmas, it was just one of those weeks where you need sugar ;)

l love you all!

- Hermana Hebdon

P.S - MOM don´t forget to send me your SKYPE NAME or we´ll have a bit of a problem on the 26th  (and don´t forget the recipe too cuz i just need some sugar)

Well I survived !

ok, before i forget, so we now have a house to go to to skype you guys but its on the 26th so i´m sorry its not actually on Christmas but yeah... so 26th, is there a time of day that is better for you guys? we can go to her house whenever that day so what is better for you?

well my life changed this week. i´m now a trainer trying to run this sector.  its a bit stressful trying to remember everthing but i´m getting better.  i guess the Lord knows whats he´s doing cuz being a trainer has helped me in so many ways.  He gave me a Chilean companion to start with to teach me the language but then i learned the language and became lazy, leaning on my training wheels too much because its easy to let the Chilean companion take over every conversation because she could actually understand everything.  so He took away my training wheels and left me to learn to ride solo (quite literally since my companion can´t understand spanish at all).  So my spanish magically took off this week, mainly because now it really all depends on me. i have to listen, really listen, staying completely focused when i talk with people, and only throught the goodness of God and the gift of tongues i somehow can understand the people now.  and i´ve learned how to talk too. i had a bunch of practice this week....

the elders had a terible idea to have a cometition to see who could get the most contacts in one week (the elders may be my leaders but i´ve learned that they´re still elders and therefore are far from perfect and i shouldn´t always listen to them. (cuz competitions are strictly against the white bible)).  but sadly my competitive side got the better of me.  i contactedc the world yesterday, 91 people in 1 day. the only positive side to this is that now i´m a pro contacter. a week ago i was lucky if i could get 1 contact per day.

so anyway, my new companion, Hna Rhees is great.  she´s from Heber UT.  its super hard seeing her going through the same thing i did only 3 months ago cuz i know too well how hard, frustrating and discouraging it is to not be able to communicate or understand people.  i just want to protect her from the pain but i know its the only way to learn and grow.  but i have a feeling she´s going to learn super fast cuz she has the desire like i did but unlike me she has a ton more confidence and isn´t scared to try.

i´ve decided i like the cold better...at least as a missionary. walkin gin the sun is terrible. there´s nothing you can do to cool down!  and the sun here is weird something with a broken ozone layer?  i don´t really know you should look it up.. but the rays here are stronger so i actually burn here. great.

so anyway, i´m surviving and loving it.  we found an amazing contact that accepted a baptismal date on the first visit so that´s always exciting :)   but yeah, this work is great, i love you all. oh and i got your letters and a pkg from joyce and curtis/mindy, thanks a ton!!! (don´t worry i´m waiting for Christmas)

take care, happy holidays!

-Hna Hebdon la segunda

I'm done with training....now I'm in trouble!

So yeah, i´m officially done with training!  and guess what? i´m now a trainer.  i´m a trainer for a gringo from Utah.  and i am absolutely terrified!  how am i supposed to help someone learn spanish when i still can´t speak it very well?  and run the sector when i still don´t know a lot of the people and can´t understnad them completely?  so yeah, i´m terrified but 1 nephi 3;7 is my theme right now.  i know i can do this because God gives no commandments unless he knows we can accomplish what he has asked of us.  i can do this......we just might have a lot of awkward moments in the process.... pray for me, i´m gonna need it.

We just got back from Volcan Osorno!  it was so beautiful!  we went with a bunch of missionaries, oh goodness Chile is beautiful.  and i got my snow for the year, there was a patch of snow we hiked to and ended up sledding, and had a huge snowball fight.  it was super fun, and i´ve missed hiking so incredibly much.

so stupid moment of the week-- we had to pick up lunch the other day and bring it back to our house. so i carry this plate of chicken 1/4 mile adn literally one step away from setting the plate on the table i managed to dump the chicken juice all down me.  wow, smooth. haha

thanksgiving was great too, my companion and a family in the ward surprised me with a pie and we made heavenly trifle with brownies, pudding and raspberries. heavenly i´m telling you, it was amazing.

it was an amazing week with a ton of spiritual moments. the higholight was our visit with omar and odette.  omar is less active and odette is an investigator.  we didn´t even have to say anything, omar just started talking like he normally does, then started talking about his mission and the next thing you know we´re all in tears from his amazing testimony as he talks about the temple adn turns to odette and tells her he wants her to feel the same things he did when he went to the temple and asks her if she wants to go their with him someday.  it was super powerful, omar truly has had a change of heart and odette wants to be baptized as soon as they´re married.

so yeah, wish me luck this week, i´ll be fine. i know i can do this because God has trusted me to do this. my theme of the week,  ¨i can do all things through him that gives me strength¨ 

love you all, have a great week!

One week left of training.

i´m almost done with my first 12 weeks! which means less study time so its kinda sad, and we´re pretty positive hna palma´s gonna leave this area cuz she´s been here 6 months. 

dad, so all this stuff with family history is cuz they really stress using family history as missionaries to find new people to teach because it interests people. so to help excite them i thought it´d be cool to have an example to show them of collections of family history and such. (plus i realizied i know nothing of my relatives) so yeah, i´m super excited about this. honestly i didn´t know all that about grandma and grandpa green and i was so excited telling my companion everything and compiling it into my handy dandy family history book.  thanks so much for helping me with this, it means the world to me!

so, another crazy, yet amazing week.  i was exhausted every night when we returned to the house and i don´t think my back will ever be the same with all this walking with my heavy bag. but life´s good.

we had intercambios again adn i was left in charge of our sector for a day. it actually went super well, i loved it!

So we had an interesting-amazing visit with one investigator, Cony.  so she truly wants to be baptized but her situation with her husband (partner i guess cuz they´re not married) is super complicated and she leaves in December for 4 months so we´re trying to get her to accept a date for baptism before she leaves.  so we were hoping for a super spiritual meeting but it was crazy. there were 2 babies crying adn Cony´s trying to calm them down. so in the middle of this there´s really not much we can do to help. so as cony is trying to feed her toddler and rock the baby to sleep, both crying, i just started singing christmas hymns (i don´t know why)  but i sang until the baby fell asleep and the toddler was calm (a good 10 min). when i stopped it was completely silent and the spirit was so strong.  it ended up being one of the most powerful lessons we´ve taught.

Hardest thing i´ve ever done:  trying to maintain a straight face while teaching a contact as i see my companion being attcked by an overly friendly dog out of the corner of my eye.

it was the primary program yesterday.  it was super special.  i absolutely love playing the piano for the primary, can that just be my calling in the church for the rest of my life?  oh man, when the primary kids sang the first verse of families can be together forever and then their families rose and sang the 2nd verse the spirit was overwhelmingly powerful.

so yup, it was a great week, i hope all is well, have a wonderful thanksgiving. eat a bunch of pie for me cuz thanksgiving doesn´t exist here so my thanksgiving dinner´s gonna be an orange or something. :)  i love you all!

-Hermana Hebdon la segunda

Best week ever!

Seriously this was the best week ever!  we had a conference with Elder Russel M Nelson! so we woke up at 4am that morning and traveled to Osorno, all the missionaries went (except those in punta arenas cuz its a poco lejo).  so it was amazing cuz i goyt to see all my CCM amigos and meet an apostle of the Lord all in 1 day!  the conference was amazing and Elder Nelson took the time to greet us all personally!

after the conference was kinda crazy with a million missionaries trying to find people and such. but i got to talk to Hna Parkinson for a bit :) she´s doing great!   oh and i got to talk a bit to Elder Alder (aka Jacob alder from Olympus)  and more to Elder Solomon who gave me the sheet music to savior redeemer of my soul with spanish lyrics! he´s my hero :)   so after we returned back to puerto montt and ate lunch on the beach.  it just made my life happy.  summer´s coming so its been warmer with some sunny days! life´s good :)

the miracle of the week was our investigator Marta.  we went to visit with her half expecting that it was going to be our last time because she hasn´t been progressing for over 2 months now. But when we asked her how she felt about baptism she expressed that she truly does want to be baptized she is just discouraged because she hasn´t been progressing. so we set the 20th of December as her goal to work towards and she accepted! So the visit went quite opposite of what i thought would happen.

Random fact: a bunny ate a hole in my jacket...

other random fact: the word random doesn´t really exist in spanish and it makes me sad.

i´m officially the only gringo in my district. elder york returned home this week and our new DL is latino. so i´m now completely surrounded by spanish and have no one to speak english with. no more cheating and speaking english. 

so lesson learned for the week:  it is never a good idea to lift a dog over a gate. even if you do have 4 people helping.  its a long story why it was necessary but it just was.  so this dog is just a bit smaller than Ole so Hna Palma, Lucy and her brother and all in front lifting the dog up and over this tall gate while i´m just chilling behind them, and somehow they managed to pass the dog up and over their heads adn the next thing i know i´m the only one holding this squirming dog and we´re both going down.  ...at least i made his fall a little softer.

sad day, thanksgiving doesn´t exist here. and its just not right that we´re singing Christmas songs and we´re going into summer. it doesn´t feel like Christmas at all.

well, all is well, i´m loving every minute.  Have a great week, i love you all!

-Hermana Hebdon la segunda

Life just keeps flying by

Hola familia!

so explain to me how this makes sense, for p.day last week of all the things we could´ve done we chose to go for a 2 hr walk.  hah cuz obviously we don´t walk enough ever day.  yeah so we´re crazy but it was beautiful so it was worth it.

i was getting a little too confident in my spanish abilities so i was once again humbled. we´re eating lunch with mamita and her husband and he asks me what i heard as ´´how many baptisms have you had?´´  so without any hesitation and in a very confident voice i answer ´´none´´  then i hear mamita ´´wow how optimisitic´´.  yup, apparently he asked how many baptisms we´re going to have. haha, fail, not the best answer to that question.

district meeting is always the highlight of my week.  this week it consisted of Hna Palma and i trying to teach the restoration while listening to my favorite coldplay song and being pelted with ping poing balls ever 2 seconds.  the point of this was how can we teach with the spirit with all the distractions,....which i discovered is very difficult.

we had zone conference this week and i absolutely loved it!  so we ate lunch with the mission president and all the missionaries.  so i´m just eating and talking with people and this elder suddenly asks me if my sister lindsey left on her mission yet. so without really thinking i answer that she left before me and i just keep talking.  literally 5 minutes later it occured to me that its a little strange that this elder who i didn{t know asked me about lindsey. (haha, i{m just a little slow). so i asked him and guess what? Its Elder Solomon (aka, the YPM...the only YMP i didn´t know).  so yeah, that was random but i got to talk to him for a while.

so we desperately need new investigators so we{ve been walking a ton, knocking on doors and contacing in the street.  its kinda difficult to find people to teach. but somehow i´m loving every minute.  you know, its a talent to be able to laugh at yourself when you mess up or when people reject you or other unfortunate things happen, and its a talent i thankfully have (which is super good cuz stuff like that happens all the time to me. for example yesterday i literally took 2 steps out of our gate and managed to step in a puddle of green paint (how, i have no idea) and now i{m gonna have green shoes the rest of my mission, hah, that would happen to me (don´t worry  mom its not bad the shoes are still good)).  but seriously its important to just laugh things off and be happy. that was the point of all that.   Happiness is by choice not chance!  (thank you Ashcrafts that is my theme in life now)

well i love you all, take care, have an amazing week. and just keep smiling no matter what happens!

-Hermana Hebdon la segunda

Three months in the Mission field.

Hola familia!  can you believe its officially been 3 months since i left on my mission? crazy huh?

Mom- wow your diet sounds really easy, just don´t eat this this this and that and your good! hahaha, real simple. thanks for the tip ;)  i found a bag of popcorn in the casa the other day, that was a happy day. i miss our popcorn days.  thats really cool you got to see all your friends from escondido, i´m sure it was great to see them.

Dad - an intercambio (i honestly don´t know the word for it in english hah) but its when we switch companions for 1 day.  my spanglish is definitely getting worse, its pretty funny but yeah i guess its a good sign!  yeah the dogs are definitely our best investigators :)  

So it was a very unproductive week and therefore very discouraging.  we did a bunch of walking (so i guess it was productive physically, thats good right?)  we´re in desperate need of new contacts to teach cuz none of our investigators are progressing much.  but its really hard to contact people on the street when its pouring rain so we kinda need to figure out a new way to contact.  but i have faith this week will be better!

we did have a baptism this week, for 8 yr old fernanda.  i absolutely adore her and her family, her mom served a mission in temple square so she saved my life my 1st week here when i found out she could speak english.  so anyway, we get to the baptism and literally 5 min before it starts she asks us to perform a special musical number.  so I ended up singing & playing ¨Yo se que vive mi señor¨(i know that my redeemer lives)  (the version i arranged before i left)  for her baptism.  it actually went really well considering the fact taht it was completely last minute and i hate performing.  and i have a feeling that now the people know i can sing thats not going to be the last time i´m gonna have to perform. great.  the next day in correlation the leaders were saying how we need more spiritual sacrament meetings and they asked how and someone says musical numbers as everyone stares me down.  lovely. 

embarrasing moment of the week:  we´re eating lunch at mamit´as house and its this soup with a huge chunck of meat and half a corn on the cob in the soup.  so my companion takes another plate and puts teh chicken and corn on the cob on the plate to cut and eat it.  well i thought that was too much effort so i´m trying to cut the corn off the cob in the soup. next thing i know my corn on the cob flys out of the bowl along with half my soup and lands in my lap (and of course it was the skirt that i finally washed and got back that day)  smooth. haha, Hna palma and i were laughing so hard. and mamita runs into the other room, i assumed it was to get something to clean the soup off me, but not, it was only to get me a new piece of corn on the cob. haha.

so i´m learning that they gave us waterproof skirts for a reason. my companion told me to bring it one day and i´m all ¨no i´m fine¨, by our last appt my skirt was dripping as if i dropped it in the pool.  i felt bad that it was dripping all over their floor so without really thinking i stuff the ends of my skirt into my boots.  it was a terrible idea.  as if i wasn´t cold/wet enough having to walk home with wet feet was aweful.

mom, remember how i promised not to laugh during prayers on my mission? i failed.  i couldn´t help it.  we´re visiting with an investigator and his son (about 7) has 2 friends over. they were so intrigued that i know english. so to appease them and their questions and start the lession at the same time i offered to say the opening prayer in english which they were thrilled. so i start (i haven´t prayed in english in 3 months)  halfway through the prayer i realized i had switched to spanish on accident. so i´m all ¨por favor.. i mean por favor....¨ and an awkward pause as i struggle in my mind to remember what por favor is in english. haha. fail.

well all is going well here.  we´re working hard, i feel like a pioneer with how much walking we do.  Whelp, i love you all, take care!

-Hna Hebdon la segunda

Always an adventure.

Hola familia! 

Dad i got the pkg! thanks a ton, haha my reaction when i saw the candybars was priceless.   i got a letter from grandma! tell her thanks for me!  and shout out to the ashcrafts, thanks for th ewedding invitation i love it, sorry i missed it.  give them my congrats  and thanks for the note, i love you guys so much and miss you a ton!

so i wrote a novel last week so i´ll keep this short and sweet.

it was cambio week and it was crazy. so we got 1 new elder in our district and guess what, he´s from chiclayo peru!  small world. so i´ve been asking him all about chiclayo. his spanish is a bunch easier to understand than the chileans. so lindz has it easy up in peru.

we had an emergency intercambio this week.  2 hnas were having problems in their area. in short they were robbed at knife point on their way home to their casa at 10:15at night (thats why you follow the rules and return when you´re supposed to).  so anyway, they came and stayed with us and we went on divisions. i absolutely loved it, it gave me a chance to test how well i know my area and the people. and i actually did good at contacting! thats a first. 

so we made cinnamon rolls on pday last week.  it was amazing. they turned out super good to my surprise. i was sure it was going to be an utter fail especially when i opened the pkg of yeast only to discover it was the texture of playdough.  but they ewre amazing and the best part was everyone´s reaction, i don´t believe they´ve had anything like it before.

highlight of the week, our investigators evelyn and eduardo accepted a baptismal date! we´ve been teaching them since i got here and i have a lot of faith in them, so we´re praying really hard this´ll fall through. the only problem is they´re not married (this is the case with basically everyone here, i´m gonna be pro at teaching the law of chastity when i get back)  so we´re hoping they take the lesson on that well...

sundays are so crazy. so much for day of rest, for missionaries it consists of running around trying to get people to come to church.   i get to play piano for the primary program!

that awkward moment when you´ve been walking for hours and no one´s home so you start teaching a dog the plan of salvation only to find out that this just happened to be the 1 house with someone home and they´re staring at you like you´re crazy....

yup, so life is good. life as a missionary is an adventure thats for sure. but i love it!

i love you all, have an amazing week! 

-hna Hebdon la segunda  (aka Aubrey *cough*mom*cough*cough -i thought you might need a reminder ;) haha

I've completed my 1st cambio in the field!

I got letters! it was like christmas!  seriously keep sending them cuz they make my life so happy!

so mom, i hope you know that you sent Lindsey to Peru and not Chile, and that I´m (your daughter aubrey, remember me?) is in chile. hahah.  i totally knew this would happen. called it.  but yeah, tanks for sending me lindsey´s letter. it actually applied a lot to me so thanks.  but i´ll be sure to forward it on to lindz (but i´m keeping the picture of eliza cuz it made my life so happy! i honestly need pictures of the family please send me some physical copies).  your letter to liza made my day. i especially love the part wehre i quote ¨i hope eliza can be an orphan¨  i got a pretty good laugh out of that. eliza, i dont want you to be an orphan.   anyway, i just hope you didn´t send the pkgs to peru cuz that could be a problem. but yeah mom, just so you know, lindsey is in peru. i´m the one in chile. hahah

dad, i got my debit card. and i absolutely love the card you sent! haha its great.  is there anything i need to do to activate  my debit card or can i just start using it?

so i had no idea they didn´t have reeces peanut butter cups here until i gave one (that elder york gave me from his pkg) to camila (my best friend here). her reaction was priceless. so now i have this crazy great idea that you should send me a pkg of a bunch of reeces peanut butter cups!  plus i´m in need of just plain white long sleeve t-shirts (i should have a bunch in my drawer under the window seat). and also some more black and brown tights both sheer and thick warm ones. its hard to keep tights in good shape when the dogs keep biting holes in them ;)

Curtis- thanks for the letter! so i totally forgot i met hna teeples´ family. everone talks about her, they all love her. she was the sister leader so everyone knows her.  so what names are you thinking of for mindy jr???

Jenny - thanks for all the updates! how´s blake? is he talking any? oh and by the way you were toally right about the boots, you´ve officially saved my life by making me get those boots. i wear them practically every day. so thank you so so much!

Andrew - what´s going on? random fact, they play a ton of ping pong here and there´s a guy in my ward that is a pro ping pong player (no joke, he actually played pro ping pong)  and he teaches ping pong class ever sat. i´m trying super hard to get an investigator to go so i have a reason to go.  and elder york is super good, i´ve never seen anyone put spin on the ball the way he does, so i play with him whenever i get the chance. so watch out andrew, i´m gonna conquer you when i get home! ;)

Cassi- you alive?

ok so letters seriously are amazing so write me millions!!! por favor!  dearelder.com is super sweet so use it :)

so it may seem odd to be thinking about htis now but Hna westover gave me the heads up to plan way ahead so....christmas for skype...what time is your church?  and it would be sweet if lindz and i could somehow overlap 10 min or so so we can talk. i don´t really know how to work that out with her but dad you should learn how to do group skype calls so i can talk with the whole family. just a thought.

I´ve officially made it through my first cambio in the field!  so last p-day was so great. it consisted of rearranging the apartment, dominos pizza and cookies (cinnamon rolls are today it didn´t work out last week).   who knew they had dominos here? made my life happy when i found that out.  so we rearranged the apartment so we could be in a smaller room so we could trap the heat from our pathetic heater and actually be warm right, so we had to take the table apart to fit it through the door which consisted of me using a fork as a screwdriver (surprisingly very effective)  and so we finish rearranging and discover that the door to the room doesn´t close. so much for trapping the heat. hah. what are the chances? pretty good with my luck.

it was Hna palma´s b-day this week. so i made her brownies that morning (the one thing i can make here that´s actually good)  andn then that night the bishop surprised her with a small party.

so it rained a ton this week (big surprise) but honestly i find it super relaxing walking for hours on end in the rain and crazy (i mean crazy!) wind either deep in thought or attempting to sing disney songs in spanish. seriously, i love it!

english class and piano class are going great.  i´m learning to play piano in spanish!  the notes have different names so its tricky to teach cuz i don´t even know the names of hte notes anymore. and enlgish class was left solely up to me this week but it went super well, with my beautiful artistic skills i effectively taught the different parts of the body (i´ll send a pict later, its pretty great)

so i get super animated during study time. personal study time is my favorite time of teh day, then during companion study i get way too excited.  i never realized how ridiculous i am until the other day it occured to me that its probably not normal how i´m banging on the table, waving my arms around and practically shouting ¨how can they not believe? they saw an angel and still doubted!¨ (talking about laman and lemuel). yup this is a common occurance, my companion probably thinks i´m crazy, but at least i´m keeping her awake.

so funny story, we´re teaching one of our new investigators how to pray and he´s holding the pamphlet that gives the steps of how to address and close and such and so we ask him to pray and camila points to the box on the pamphlet of where the intructions should be and so we all kneel down ready to pray and he starts ¨the plan of salvation, many people wonder....¨  haha he was on the wrong page so camila had pointed to the wrong box. i was trying so hard not to laugh.  i guess we forgot to teach the most important part of how we believe in personal prayers and not recited prayers. whoops. 

so yeah its been a great week, i love you all, write me millions of letters! and keep smiling!

I'm starting week #6

Hola mi familia! wow the weeks really do go by super fast. i´m on week 6! what?!  half-way done with my 12 weeks of training in the field. 

ok i´m gonna combine emails now cuz email time is super stressful, so for the fam... that is so pathetic that you just got my letter from Mexico.  something is seriously wrong with their mail system. haha, well happy belated birthday i guess dad. hahah. thats pretty funny.  dad, that is one profound metaphor, thanks for that.  I´m glad ole and lexi get along, honestly i was kinda worried that ole would try and hurt any dog that invaded his space in our family after what happened with scotty.  So apparently it takes who knows how long for me to get my mail here. i don´t think it takes very long to get to the mission home but then it sits there until the zone leaders need something from the mission home and then they just grab as many letters as they can carry. not the most effective system but....i guess i´ll have to learn patience.  wait, olympus is doing cinderella? why?  hmm guess i´m not missing out on much, its not my favorite.  thanks for putting my name in the temple, i really do need all the prayers i can get. and i definitely have been recieving answers to those prayers. every time someone compliments my spanish i just say its not me. cuz its not. its completely the gift of tongues. the lord is definitely on my side.   we´re making the cinnamon rolls today, i hope i remember the recipe correctly....i think i do but i´m not positive... but also the ingredients here are different, the brown sugar is the texture of normal sugar, its weird. and i have no idea if the yeast is the same......i guess i´ll find out.  i really do want a good recipe for chocolate chip cookies so i would love you very much mom if you´d email that recipe. thanks.

Alright, week 5.  I had m,y7 first intercambio this week adn i absolutely lo9ved it!  pretty sure i made up for the month´s worth of no speaking english in 1 day. i talked so much.  hna westover pretty much knows my life story just cuz it felt so good to talk to someone and they actually understand.  and i loved actually having roommates with other hnas. its a bit quiet in our house with just me and hna palma.

k, so they have this thing with evil spirits here and it creeps me out. one member is telling us how her house has an evil spirit that she´s felt push her several times.  apparently missionaries hear this kind of stuff a bunch here. it gives me the chills.

spanish mistake of the week... i´m telling Hna palma about my experience with intercambios and as i try to say we stopped at someone´s house i conjugated the ver for stop (parar) wrong so what came out was ¨we gave birth at someone´s house¨.  my companions face was priceless.  parar and parir, their similar right? whoops. hahah

yesterday the teacher for sunday school for the ym yw didn´t show up so hna palma and i ended up teaching. it actually went really well. i loved it.  my spanish is actually starting to surprise me.  its great though, because as the members realize my spanish is better they´ve actually started talking to me a bunch more.  and i can hold a conversation, mainly cuz i´ve learned taht ¨bien, muy bien¨ answers practically every question they ask ;)  so just laugh when they do and say bien a lot adn you can have a great conversation with them.

we´re out of wood. sad day. the mission only provides wood for the winter months so we´re lñeft to freeze. so today we´re rearranging the house so we´ll study in a smaller room where we have a small heater that will hopefully keep us warm.

well that my week.  all is well, time is flying by and life couldn´t be better.  i love you all! have a great week!

-Hermana Hebdon la segunda

Life is interesting!

What have i gotten myself into??? i´m teaching piano lessons.....in spanish! i don´t even know how to teach piano in english let alone spanish. and its supewr difficult cuz its multiple people and they´re all on different levels. but everyone was so intrigued that i knew how to play and when i offered to teach a bunch of people got super excited.  So we decided to start piano lessons for whoever wants to come. we´re hoping it´ll be a good way to get investigators and help inactives to make friends and get involved again.  so it might end badly with my lovely teaching and spanish experience but its worth a try i guess.  so yup i´m teaching piano and english.  an now i´m doubting my idea to become a teacher, i don´t think its the right major for me.....

general conference was amazing! holy goodness, conference blew me away, it was exactly what i needed. i was able to watch half of conference in english, so Sat afternoon session was in spanish (hna palma and i had to compromise)  i didn´t get much out of it honestly. its quite hard to understand when you can hear some englihs words in the background with their lips saying english words but hearing spanish over it. super confusing. and of course right after watching the whole session in spanish we discover the magic of subtitles. wow, we´re super smart could´ve thought of that a bit sooner. haha.  but honestly the spirit is the same no matter what language.  It was great.

So i was super proud of my spanish this week, i´d say things and then i´m all i have no idea what the goodness i just said but the people don´t look confused so it must´ve made sense.  but anywho, i was feeling great until yesterday when it crashed and burned. and now my mind is just a pile of mush.  i´ve disdcovered that Chileans are not specific at all when they ask questions and they change topics faster than mom (which is really saying something haha) and in spanish when i´m trying super hard to follow what they´re saying it really throws me off when they suddenly change topics.  so the other day we´re talking to a Hna in the ward about playing the piano and she asks me ¨Sabe rollos de canela?¨ i´m all ¨es un cancion?¨(is it a song?)  everyone starts laughing. apparently its not a song.  yeah turns out she asked ¨do you know cinnamon rolls¨ how we got from playing the piano to cinnamon rolls in less than 5 seconds i don´t know.  so i say yes i know cinnamon rolls, thinking i´m simply telling them that i know what they are.  so yesterday i asked Hna palma what we were going to do for p day today.  here is a small piece of the conversation (translated of course)

¨what are we doing tommorow?¨

¨if you know we can do it¨

¨if we know what we can do what?¨

¨you said you know them¨

¨know what?¨

¨cinnamon rolls¨

¨uhh yeah i know cinnamon rolls, what does that have to do with tomorrow?¨

¨then we can do that tomorrow¨

¨and what´s that exactly?¨

¨We´re going to make them tomorrow with Hna Jacky¨  she looks as me as if its a question...

¨was that a question?¨

¨yeah, did you understand?¨

¨yeah i understand but how is that a question? thats a statement...¨  as she looks at me as if i´m an idiot.

welcome to my life of confusion.  this is a very common occurance.  the conversation continued for another 15 min as i tried to figure out what in the world was going on.  apparently when i said i knew cinnamon rolls to them it mean i know how to make them .  why they can´t jsut say ¨do you know how to make them?¨ i don´t know.  seriously this is my life right now, it takes me 10 min just to figure out exactly what they´re trying to ask me cuz their questions are so vague.

so besides my state of confusion all is going well.  i´m trying to have patience with my spanish but it can get very frustrating when you can´t communicate with your companion.  but i can´t learn spanish all at once. baby steps.

well i love you all, Hope all is going well with you. keep up the letters & emails, seriously the support mean everything to me. thanks for everything!

love, Hna Hebdon la segunda

I fail at life!

Hola mi familia! so it was a super sad week for numbers adn such but on the bright side i can actually ahve somewhat normal conversations with people. so there´s hope.

k, weather here is super bipolar.  seriously, one minute its completely sunny and the next its pouring rain and by the time you get your hood on its sunny again.  its ridiculous. and its super windy all the time.  best moment of the week...

        we had been walking and kno0cking on doors for two and a half hrs straight (with no luck) in the pouring rain. so naturally at a time like this i burst out into song. so i´m twirling adn skipping through the pouring rain adn singing ´´my favorite things´´ from the sound of music.  when we finally got into a member´s house my hair and skirt were dripping as if i´d just got out of a swimming pool. haha

so last p-day Hna Palma asked me to clean the kitchen, said the cleaning supplies were under the sink then left me to it.  so, i´m searching through the cleaning supplies trying to figure out which is which and not being able to read what the uses were for (cuz they´re in spanish) i saw a spray can of lysol, figuring lysol is a disinfectant and being the only name i recognized i chose taht one. so i´m spraying down the sink, stove, everything with this and wiping it down.  Hna Palma comes back in and in her broken english is all ´´that is normally for air´´  .....yeah i totally jsut cleaned the kitchen with the equivalent of febreeze.  at least the kitchen smells good!

I fail at life. hahaha, so we have an english class every week which is normally taught by Elder Johnson.  He was on an exchange so Elder York and I had to teach it.  i discovered why i was never meant to teach english.  so we were going to have everyone introduce themselves adn say what they like to do.  so elder york asks me to start.  without even thinking i stand up and in slow clear english so they´ll understand i say ´´hello, my name is Aubrey´´   oh gosh.   i hear a squeal from my companion as she breaks down laughing and i realized my mistake.  everyone was dying laughing, especially the elders.  real smooth.  i was laughing so hard i couldn´t even correct myself adn say ´´hermana hebdon i meant hermana hebdon!!!´´   hahah

anywho, yeah it was a sad week cuz none of our investigators are really progressing, but i have high hopes for this one family.  we´re walking back to our house one day and this little blonde childean girl (about 10 yrs old)  runs up to us and starts talking to us.  i don´t know if its our blonde hair connection or what but i love this girl so much (her name´s columba, both her parents have dark haird, its interesting)  anywho, so columbo invited us to her house adn when we went a couple days later she ran out and hugged us and brought us inside to meet her parents.  so we talked with them and her dad had all the questions that the plan of salvation answers. so i´m super excited about this family, there had to be a reason Columba randomly ran up to us that one day!

well, all is well in zion, i love you all. have a good week and enjoy General conference! its seriously the best time of the year being able to listen to the words of our prophets.   of course i´ll probably end up alternating watching 1 session in english adn 1 in spanish since there´s no other Hnas i can go on splits with so Hna palma and i are trying to compromise.  ...  anyways, i love you all, take care!

-Hermana Hebdon la segunda

I'm surviving!

Hey sorry i totally repeated myself in my last letter i totally forgot i wrote you at the mission home. whoops.

So i had to bear my testimony in church last week...it went pretty well but after this guy comes up adn tells me there´s no umms in spanish, it confuses them.  i didn´t even realize that i say it a bunch.  thats gonna be a really hard habit to break.

i stick out like a sore thumb here (which doesn´t make any sense cuz its not like sore thumbs are very noticeable now are they?)  but anywho, with bonde hair and blue eyes people spot me from a mile away.  some people stare me down as if i´m some alien.  one member who we were havaing lunch with was asking my companion if my hair was real.  haha. oh and my companion is always saying she´s super glad i can´t understand teh people we pass on the street...i don´t know how i feel about this....

so spanish is hard.  i never imagined it´s be this harad.  i´m understanding more, i can get general ideas when someone´s telling a story (at least i think i´m understanding what its about, either that or i´m just making up what i think they´re saying)  my companion always does most the talking and by the time i´ve thought of something to say the conversation has changed. they talk so fast, my mind only works so fast in spanish.  the people we meet with look at me like i´m some lost puppy.  ...(actually thats a bad comparison cuz there´s a lot of real lost puppies around here and no one looks at them twice...) anywho...

it was kinda a chill week. the dieciocho is a huge holiday here. its their 4th of july. but they celebrate it like thanksgiving.  i´m so stuffed full of chilean food!  fried empanadas are my new favorite food.  so the culture here is sweet. we kind of got 2 days off this week because of the hoiday (they celebrate it on teh 18th and 19th) and so many people drink a ton we weren´t allowed to be out on the streets much or visit with non members.  so on teh 18th we relaxed at member´s houses adn the next day there was a huge ward party.

       everyone loved showing/telling me more about chilean tradtions and such adn theyd ask about american culture.  dude, our culture is so boring.  they asked what our typical or traditional food is and i´m all uhhhh hamburgers?  do we have a certain food taht is signiturely american?

        K, chilean culture....they have teh cuecar dance in which they wear really unique pretty dresses.  for food they have empanadas (tortilla-ish idk how to describe it with meat adn onions inside like a calzone), alfajores (plain tasting cookies with manjar (carmel-like substance) in the middle)  they ahve this really good salsa-like stuff taht they eat on everything adn then this weird dessertish dish taht consists of rice-like stuff with a cooked peach adn juice (i don´t like it very much...)

so it rained almost every day this week. big surprise. completely opposite of lindsey´s situation.  puerto montt is apparently the rainiest city in the mission.  i feel like i´m adjusting to the climate here though, i think i just froze teh first week from the shock of going from mexico´s summer to chile´s winter.  either that or i´m just getting better at keeping a fire going in our house.  

oh so random story, yesterday we´re walking down the street adn there´s this huge puddle and i´m in my rain boots so i´m all why not? so i go to step in teh puddle and who knew but there just happened to be a hole in teh ground right where i stepped. so instead of the 4 in of water i was expecting i got a foot of water. surprise!

random fact, the people here are so intruiged with our family. my companion found out we´re all members along with grandparents and great grandparents and how our whole family´s served missions and she tells everyone and they all are so intruiged and find it amazing.

k, so i´m sorry lindsey for ever making fun of how many mistakes were in your emails. i understand now. i´d always ask why didn´t she use spell check? well guess what, the computer is set for spanish duh, so it marks every single word as wrong. hahah

anyways, i love you all!

love, Hermana Hebdon la segunda