Animo

Hola mi familia!  

so i´m sorry my emails have been a little pathetic lately, i`m getting a bit lazy...so here´s the update: i´m alive and well. and that about sums it up :)

actually i´m super bien right now.  we just got back from a trip to park Oncol and i don´t know what go into me but i had so much energy.  me and this other Hermana climbed the 1 hr trail in 30 minutes and ran down the whole mountain in 10 min, only to run back up to find the other hermanas and run back down again.  It felt so good. its been to long since i´ve hiked and i´ve decided trail running is one of my new favorite things :)   all my stress is suddenly gone.

The mission is a rollercoaster with really good days and really not so good days. this week consisted of them both, to the extreme.  just a sum of my not-so-good day, we went from a lesson with a super catholic who completely rejected everything we said to a lesson (more like a fight) with a super evangelico who´s thoroughly convinced that i´m going to hell (i´m flattered tha she was so concerned about my salvation.) i don´t think she could´ve been more bunt about what she thinks about us.  it was imposible to leave that fight, she wouldn´t even stop talking when we were talking. good grief. but yeah, no importa.  honestly its moments like that that i realize how strong my testimony is. so thank you super evengelico for those lovely, merciless words.

so as for my god day, we had a stake activity this week to present the new video gracias a que él vive.  the activity consisted of a talent show.  so in 1 day we prepared the coolest number of my life.  we performed a sweet version of if you could hie to kolob.  so the elders and i sang, i played the piano, one hermano played the drums and another on acoustic guitar.  i´ve never played the piano with drums and a guitar before, it was so much fun!  and then as teh show is starting this random guy asks me to sing with him in the show so last minute i sang a duet with him and it actually went really well.  but really that night was great.  it was as if all this stress that has been building in me just poured out as i pounded out the piano.

fail of the week:  i was preparing a plate of crackers and cheese adn picked up the plate to move it to the other table, so i turn around quickly and al the crackers fly off the plate and i´m left standing there with an empty plate in my hands, surrounded by broken, scattered crackers all over the ground.  (i still ate them, i was desperate)

i´m gonna have a fun time with english when i get home. i was trying to help my companion learn english.  so i say ¨we´re going to speak only english for 1 hour.  so in the noche..i mean noche...i mean....uhh¨ 

so thats my week.  its the last week of this transfer so we´re working super hard to achieve all our goals.  i don´t think we´ll have cambios but you never know. our sector is super small so i´m scared they´re going to close it....

well i love you all! take care :)

-Hermana Hebdon la segunda

Sorry for the pathetic e-mail

Ok, sorry, i have no time.  but not much has happened, so yah we´re good.

mom, thanks for the valentine package!  haha, yeah i think the easter package will get here in in a month or 2.  i think peru`s mail system is beating ours now. 

oh, so mom, i sent a letter to you thats for lindsey.  i know it doesn´t make any sense just accept that i´m weird and lazy and i lost her address again and i only go to the post office once every 6 months so it´d be faster to send the letter to you to forward to lindz. haha  (funny thing is its not only a letter i wrote to lindz but also the letter you sent to me that was for here in september)  so she´ll just be getting that a bit late, but send it all the same cuz i promised.  please and thank you. 

well i love you tons! sorry i didn´t have time to write an email for everyone today but know i´m alive and well and laughing a lot (i seriously had some pretty embarrasing moments this week)  :)

love you!

-Hermana hebdon la segunda

Our sector is right along the banks of the river. Look who I found, Butch!

Look! i found Butch!!!!  seriously he looks just like him, its weird.  and he follows us around everywhere as if he thinks i´m his owner.  literally, everywhere.  he sticks to us like glue when we´re knocking on doors and contacting and if we get in a house, when we´re done, he´s laying at the door step when we leave.  and during lessons on the street he´s always rubbing up against me trying to get me to pet him.  and he followed us home and somehow figured out how to open the gate so he could wait by our door.  hahah.  everyone here thinks he´s our dog.  Its actualy a bit of a problem but i´ll enjoy having a dog a again while it lasts :)

Just another crazy week in the mission field.

Hola familia!

we had interviews with presidente this week and basically he told me what i had figured out for myself...that we need people to teach.  literally this sector is struggling, its actualy a relatively new sector and for that we don´t have a lot of people. so we are on the hunt for new people but we have seen a lot of success this week as we had super bueno contactos y nuevos.

Awkward story of the week:   So we´re walking down this street on sunday and 3 drunk guys approach us (3 drunk guys who are our friends when they´re sober)  and al of them start talking about how beautiful we are and such so we just keep walking fast and my companion told them we´d talk to them when they´re sober. so we got out of there and starting knocking on doors.  so one guy answers and we get into a super deep conversation about the gospel and suddenly in the middle of the lesson one of the drunk guys walks up and gives Hermana Santillan a rose and starts confessing his love for her. So she takes the rose and suddenly a spider crawls out of the rose onto her hand. So she´s trying no to freak out as she´s trying to get the spider off her and get this drunk guy to leave as i´m just standing ther trying not to break down laughing (which i failed) and our contact is just standing watching this whole scene.  haha, life as a missionary, its great :)

so yup, that´s my life right now, knocking on doors, avoiding drunk guys and preaching the gospel. and i couldn´t be happier :)

Building houses.

Hola familia!

well, sadly i was not able to see the volcanic eruption or be rained on by a bunch of ash. the eruption was in villa rica, 2 hrs north of valdivia (the most north city in our mission)  but no, the ash and stuff didn´t reach valdivia luckily.  but all the people we visited had the videos of the eruption on the news when we visited them so i got to see that at least.  its pretty sweet. 

I´m honestly kind of overwhelmed in my new sector.  i love it and i´m excited to be working here because there´s a TON of work to do here.  this ward has a lot of problems (to put it lightly), i can´t really describe the problems in detail, just know there´s a lot of work to do to help this ward and their leaders.  So now the problem is knowing where to start.  but yes, i´m gonna be super busy for the next while.

we have a new investigator, Jasmine, who i´m super excited about, she has a million questions so our lessons are always super great.  

Random moment of the week:  as a member is trying to stop their dog from getting to me, i´m all ´´oh its ok, i´m used to it´´  and the next thing i know my whole arm´s in the dog´s mouth.  just kidding, i´m not used to my whole arm being bitten off by a dog.

So my sector reminds me a lot of Christy (for those of you who know that wonderful tv series)   so there´s this family in the ward that are building their house right now.  its super sad, they have only the foundation, walls and part of a roof.  they´re living in tents right now and had to send their 2 youngest kids to live with their grandparents.  so we went spent the whole day helping them on saturday.  they need to finish their house before winter hits or i don´t know what they´re going to do.  but their amazing, always smiling / laughing while they work.  So yeah, we helped build a house for a day. :)  i´ve missed that kind of work.  the dad was super hesitant to let us help but then i started talking about how i helped build the pool house with my dad. he was super impressed and so he let us help :)  i really do love that kind of work.  

whelp, that´s my life.  i love you all!

-Hermana Hebdon la segunda

Camios/Goodbye to Puerto Montt/Hello to Valdivia

 HI Its been an interesting week.  my heart broke into a million pieces when i said goodbye to everyone in puerto montt. and i think i left half the pieces there, seriously it was the hardest thing i´ve ever done.

So here´s my new life:   I went from painting gates for service to milking and herding cows.  quite literally.  we´ve already milked cows for some less active (i was surprisingly really good :), i ain´t gonna study at BYU when i get back, i´ve just gonna buy a bunch of cows and run a farm!

So yeah, its more of the country out here.  Blackberries literally line every street and i´ve constantly picking them while proselyting.  the people here are super different than those in puerto montt. everyone seems to know everyone and they all love to talk. i´ve super excited to work in this sector.  it seems like lindsey and just had a flip, she´s gone to the more rich side of town and i´ve gone to the poor side. 

my new companion, hna Santillan is great. she´s fresh out of her training but she knows what she´s doing. its just weird/hard to adjust to a new companion, especially because i´m used to doing most of the talking after training a gringo and now i can barely get a word in.   But we´ll learn how to teach together with time & practice.  Hna santillan´s accent is throwing me off. she´s from argentina and they say there ll´s and y´s super weird.

Hna Palma is my Hna leader! so i´ve talked with her a bunch :)  its a puerto montt reunion here, elder Vega (was in my 1st district) is my district leader.

I about died of happiness yesterday, 1st day in a new ward and i didn´t know anyone, and in walks Omar and Odette (aka, my favorite people from Puerto Montt)  best surprise of my life :)

so yup, life is great, just trying to adjust and meet a million people everyday.  but its definitely easier to do now than when i first entered the field cuz at least i can communicate.

love you all!  Thanks Sister Chard for the Pkg, i love it, it seriously means the world to me :)

-Hna Hebdon la segunda

I can´t even express how much i love Aaron, i was the craziest little guy, one day he followed us around as we were knocking on doors and when the people answered he would start talking before we could. haha

Professional cow milker! and i herd cows too!