We got the view but not the smoke.

Well i´m still alive despite all the volcanos erupting around us.  this one was actually super cool, we were walking back from los arbolitos (the village of people in the middle of nowhere)  and i saw this huge mushroom cloud of smoke.  it was so cool!  But unfortunately i couldn´t take a picture at that perfect moment because we were contacting someone (i was obviously very focused on this contact......)  we discovered later that I saw the volcanic eruption right when it inicially exploded.  we didn´t know it was a volcano until later that night.  but turn out its volcan calbuco, the volcano that i visited my last week in puerto montt only 2 months ago.  not scary at all...  but somehow the ash hasn´t hit us at all.  i don´t understand it really, the ash has hit santiago, buenas aires, punta arenas,  basically all the cities super far from the volcano but hasn´t hit the 3 cities closest to it. but hey, i´m not complaining.

oh, before i forget, so mothers day, i have no idea when i´m gonna call, so yah, i know thats a lot of help.  i´ll let you know next week...  when is mothers day exactly.....? the second week of may right?   

Patricia came to church!!!!!!!  all 3 hrs! :D   i couldn´t believe it.  seriously its so hard to get people to come to church this is the first golden investigator that i´ve seen come to church.  thanks for all your prayers.  It seems like a dream, after disappointment after disappointment every sunday it doesn´t seem real.  She´s progressing a ton and truly wants to be baptized :)

So with that, the bad news.....our other investigator victor who also was progressing a ton and i was thoroughly conviniced was gonna be baptized leaves tomorrow for the north of Chile to work for who knows how long. :/   so we´re continuing on with the faith that we´ve planted a giant seed that will continue to grow.

Oh wow, hardest thing of my life....teaching in english.   We had intercambios on tuesday so i went with Hna Palma to her sector.  it was inspired really because it was my turn to stay in our sector but the Hermana leaders said they felt i needed to go to their sector.  And it turned out to be a day of english.  We helped the kids of  2 different families with english and then taught a lesson in english.  there´s this girl from wisconsin living here and going to school.  This lesson ridiculously hard and spanglish.  I literally was praying for the gift of tongues so that i could speak english. it was just plain incómodo. 

I figured out why everyone asks me if I´m from Germany. yesterday we´re walking down the street and see this blonde girl waiting for the bus so we went over to talk to her. she´s my twin but German!  

You know you´ve worked hard when you and your companion fall alseep during daily planning session and wake up 20 min later sprawled out on the ground....

well its been a great week, i love you all a ton! take care :)

-Hermana Hebdon la segunda

this was our view.  this was 1 hr after i first saw it, by this time you can´t see the whole mushroom thing like i could at the beginning but hey its still cool.¨I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun..........¨

Well I'm still Rabi-less!

Hola familia, 

First thing, Happy be-lated birthday Andrew!  i didn´t forget your birthday i simply just chose to write you 2 weeks late...  I hope you had a great birthday and celebrated with caramel cake :)

so, for my week...

There is a reason for everything.  honest to goodness, i´m thoroughly grateful for that dog that bit me because we went to the hospital 3 times this week for my other vacinations.  The night the dog bit me as we were heading home we discovered that one of our less-actives that we´ve been working with had been hospitalized (he has some disease in his muscles) and they´re not sure he´s going to survive.  so on tuesday when we returned to the hospital we were able to visit with his family (we couldn´t see him because its so bad they don´t want anyone to visit him with the risk of getting him more sick) but it was good to talk to his wife and kids.  Then on saturday we went back for my 3rd vacination. and just so happens that one sister in the ward just had her baby! so we got to go visit her :)     so basically, it was worth the pain cuz if the dog hadn´t bitten me we wouldn´t have had the excuse to go to visit those members in the hospital. 

I got both packages this week! muchas gracias!  hahah but i died, dad why did you tape pictures of the virgin mary all over the package? hahahahah, all the missionaries were so confused seeing me carrying it around.  and i was all ´´only my family´´ :)   i love you so much. hahah.   oh and i understand the flea collars and all (thanks a ton for everything!)  but why did you send a bunch of earplugs? hahaha

Ok, Butch the second is starting to drive me crazy.  Last night he scared us to death, we´re talking on the phone with the elder when we hear this pounding at our door.  we live behind 3 houses all surround with a gate so its super secure and private. but recently 2 older-ish guys moved into the house next door and both hna santillán and i have been a little weary.  so with this pounding at the door we were freaking out a little.  yeah so after opening the door practically with malets in our hands we find Butch sitting there perfectly content.  this is the second time he´s followed us home. the first time he got locked inside the gate cuz our landlord didn´t know he was there and he ended up barking/pounding the door down from 1am-4:30am when we finally had to get up and let him out.  its a bit ridiculous and i´m about to disown him.

Well, there´s really not much to say....we had conference with presidente this week and started the next day with a ton of animo, ready to conquer the world and ended up walking for 3 hrs straight in the pouring rain with cupfuls of water in our boots.  And last night i don´t think i´ve ever returned to the house so tired.  But we´re working hard. Our investigators are going to attend church next week sí o sí and we´re going to have días blancas.  You recieve no witness until after the trial of your faith.  We´ve had the trial of our faith so soon we will recieve the miracles i know it!  :)

I love you all! take care!

-Hna Hebdon la segunda

My mom and my daughter, a family reunited!

Butch is fired ( the dog)!

Butch is officially fired as my guard dog!  when i neded him most he was asleep in the bushes. gracias por nada.   so the other day all our appointments were cancelled so we decided to go to los arbolitos (a small sector super far away in the middle of nowhere in our area).  so we´re contacting peopleand we´re knocking on this gate while their dog is going crazy with its piercing bark.  the lady´s kids came out and were talking to us and one decided to leave, so opening the gate this dog darts out and goes right for me, so jumping out of the way his bite only scratched me.  so the owner contains the dog and puts him back in teh4 gate. so we´re talking with this lady and one of her kids opens the gate again and teh dog escaped, once again darting right for me and this time i wasn´t so lucky. as i lept back the dog´s bite got my leg.  so once again the owner got the dog back inside the gate and so laghing it off we just kep talking with this lady as i´m wiping up a bunch of blood and the lady totally rejected us!  seriously, your dog just took a chunk out of my leg the least you could do is listen to our mesage! :P  so we leave and run into our investigator who told us that all the dogs here carry infections and i needed to go to the hospital.  so reluctantly, with instructions from our district leader, we went to the hospital and gues what? they gave me an anti-rabis shot and told me i have to go back 5 times for more.  whohoo, i just love shots :/  the good news is i´m alive and rabi-less.  i honestly was surprised i didn´t need any stitches, one side was pretty deep and bleed for 4 hrs straight....but hey, no stitches i´m fine with that! :)

so i´m super intelligent sometimes.  my conversation with the doctor :  ¨what happened?¨ ¨a dog bit me¨  ¨when?¨ ¨at 5:00 today¨ ¨where?¨ ¨in los arbolitos in collico¨   ¨.....no, where on your body?¨   haha smart.

so other weird story... so we went to bed the other night and i´m sleping so soundly but suddenly i woke up to find the light on, so i look down from my top bunk to see Hna Santillán praying.  so confused i´m trying to remember turning my alarm off.  so i look at my clock and it says 12:00.  so with my mind still half asleep i sit there forever wondering if we normally wake up at 12:00, it took me 5 min to realize that no, we don´t wake up at 12, so, still confused, i wait for my companion to finish her prayer, she stands up and walks over to the heater and i ask what in the world she is doing and she´s all ¨i´m turning on the heater...¨  and i´m all, ¨hna its 12:00 in the morning¨   haha, i have no idea how or why she woke up and thought it was time to get ready for the day.

i can´t even contain my excitement!  transfers were this week and gues what, Hna Rhees got transfered to Valdiva! She´s in the other zone but i´ll get to see her, and because Hna Palma is my mom in the mission and now my Hermana leader it gives me certain priveledges and Hna Palma is organizing for us to have lunch today with Hna Rhees and her companion who just happens to be my companion´s trainer, so it benefits everyone :)  life is good!

Well, i hope all is well, i love you all!

-Hna Hebdon la segunda

Miracles!

Happy easter! i´m glad to hear you all enjoyed it :)  i love the staycation idea dad, that´s so fun.   So general conference was my present for easter. seriously, its what i´ve been needed. a good spiritual recharge so i can go out and conquer the world preaching the word of God.  But did make sure to have our traditional golden rod, so i made it last night and ate it to my heart´s content :)

So news for this week...

i just love rainy days. ... at least i di.  it poured rain al day the other day. so we´re walking fo rhours on end in the rain. and i discovered our sector´s not the best place to be when its raining.  its one giant road that huge trucks fly by at 60mph and when it rains the road floods.   so you know in movies when that poor unfortunate soul is walking down a road and a truck drives by splashing them with mud/water?   yup. that definitely happened to my...to the extreme! twice.  it was literally a waterfall.  i was drenched from head to toe, and when we got home 2 hours later and took my boots ofr i dumped a cupful of water out of each one.

random fact, we keep finding GIANT slugs in our sink.  i have no idea where they´re coming from.  we learned the hard way to do our dishes the minute we use them cuz you never know what surprises you´ll find when reaching in the sink to wash a bunch of dishes...

I´m so excited for this new cambio.  we have 2 golden investigators who are progressing a ton!  patricia moved the other day to live separately from her partner and victor attended general conference!  we´ve seen so many miracles this past transfer. we literally had no one to teach the first week and now we have 10 families and 3 people with a baptismal date! God hears our prayers and is a God of miracles!

well i love you all so much. i hope you all watched general conference because every talk was amazing and we can apply every talk to our lives. i know sometimes we think that what they´re saying is not for us in our situation but really, we can take something from every one of those talks and improve our lives and change to become disciples of Christ!

-Hermana Hebdon la segunda