Transfers

Mom, you kill me, you sent all my emails back to me for the past month? hahahahha, thanks, it was great to get an update on my life :)

so we had transfers this week, Hna santillan left for los lagos and my new companion arrived super late that day. Hna Sarceños (from Guatemala) had been in Punta Arenas (aka, the end of the world. the very very tip of Chile close to antartica)  and she had been companions with Hna Parkinson (aka my companion from the MTC)  so its been great to hear stories about how she´s doing.  Hna Sarceños is great. I feel like i´ve talked more the past 2 days than i have the past 3 months. She loves to talk! 

i gave a talk in church yesterday.  i realized i´ve completely changed.  so before my mission i always wrote, and rewrote exactly what i was going to say and still i couldn´t get my talks longer than 5 minutes.  and now i had only 5 points written down and somehow talked until the bishop handed me a note saying that my time was up and i need to sit down.  hahaha.  

Yesterday we had some interesting contacts in the street (al may or maynot have been somewhat drunk)....  So this one grandpa guy we walk past stops us and asks us to give him some counsel on how he can find peace in his home.  so bueno, we began teaching him a bit and he starts sharing his struggles and challenges in life and suddenly points at me and is all ¨she knows me, she understands.¨  confused i just nodded my head.  and then when my companion asked his name and where he lives he points at me ¨she knows, ask her¨  (in my mind i´m all what the goodness i´ve never seen this guy in my life!)  and thus continued the conversation with this guy who was 100% sure that i knew him and everything about him because every question we tried to ask, ¨she knows¨  uhhhhh. yeah, of course i know....?????

then directly after that contact another guy stops us and was super offended that we never passed by his house saying that we were liers because hna Sarceño who he apparently met 3 weeks ago said we were going to visit him. i tried explaining that Hna Sarceño was new here and just arrived 2 days ago and he just called me out as a lier saying that he talked to her weeks ago.  Then proceeded to ask me a million questions that i didn´t exactly know how to answer.  for example ¨why does this dog follow you?¨ ¨I don´t know , he just does¨ ¨no but why?!¨ ¨uhhh because he uhh...wants the gospel in his life?....¨ ¨and why are you wearing boots!?¨ ¨because its cold...?¨  ¨i´m going to come to your church and you´re going to tell me the truth! i don´t want you to lie to me, i need the truth!¨   so basically it was the weirdest conversation i´ve ever had in my life and everytime my companion tried to ask something he was all ¨no, i´m asking her!¨ pointing to me, and the problem was half his questions didn´t make anysense to me but he wouldn´t allow my companion to help me anwers them. hahaha.   talking to drunk people is quite entertaining sometimes....

So yeah, thats my week.  i´m super exited to work with Hna Sarceño, she´s amazing.

well i love you all!

-Hna Hebdon la Segunda

Cambios

I absolutely love all the pictures everyone´s sending.  Addie is adorable!!! i can´t wait to meet her.  and hey, that reminds me dad, just to keep in mind that it sure would be lovely to see/visit the whole family when i get back whether that means i get to travel around to US to see them or they come to see me...? i am gonna have 3 months before school starts... Cassi said something about going disney world, i was already planning on asking if i could fly out to see them in wisconsin but meeting up with them in florida would be nice too :)  just a thought.....

So we have transfers this week. still its not 100% sure but most likely Hna santillan is off to Chiloe and i get to stay here. but i have no idea who´s going to be my new companion.

So i thought i was finished with needles and shots and all but no, the grand finale, we donated blood this week for the mom of one member.  I´m overcoming all my fears in the mission.  Needles? yah no biggy.   after donating blood they told us not to do anything strenuous with that arm.  so what do we do? we go and build a house after.  we helped our new investigator whose house burned down 6 months ago and has been building his house on his own.  It was quite the challenge hammering down the floor with nails right after donating blood, my arm was patheticaly weak.

We saw many miracles this week. We had a special fast for Stefi, (the girl who got her mission call for chiclayo peru), her date to leave was being postponed due to some medical complications.  so the elders and us fasted for her that she´d be able to have her operation and leave on her mission.  She had a date set in June to have the examine to see if she needed the operation, 3 days after the fast the doctor randomly called her and told her she could have her examine the next day. so she went the next day and he told her that she didn´t need to have the operation after all.  so she´s set to leave on her mission!  God truly answered our prayers and fast!

the other miracle was on saturday, we had been walking in the pouring rain, soaking wet for hours without any luck. We were knocking on doors but our sector is so small we´ve seriously knocked on every door at least once.  So at one point my companion turned to me and asked me what we were going to do and i answered, ¨pray¨.  so in the pouring rain we prayed asking to know where to go and what to do.  when we finished Hna santillan said that we were going to visit one contact that lived in the opposite direction that we were headed. so we turning around and headed back. on the way back, we passed by this sector of houses that is always blocked by a locked gate. we´ve never been able to enter this sector, but when we passed by the gate was wide open.  so timidly (for its a private sector) we entered and began knocking on doors.  everyone recieved us. every single one of the houses.  I know that that was not chance that we just happened to pass by that sector of houses and the gate was open.  That gate is always locked and it was late with no one around, i know that it was God´s answer to our prayers.  He hears us and is aware of us.  He will never leave His children helpless.  

I love you all! thanks for everything you do :) 

Sorry I fail in my English.

'  well it was amazing to see you guys yesterday!  but seriously sorry i couldn´t really communicate.  i knew my english was bad but not that bad...  that was just sad.  But i´m glad to see you´re all doing great.  Eliza´s grown up a ton, she´s absolutely gorgeous. please stop growing my dearest sister.   I´m thoroughly grateful Maddy was there so someone could understand my spanglish :)  it was great to see and talk to her!

So thing i forgot to mention yesterday, i finally tried one of the typical dishes here in chile....Cow stomach.  I wouldn´t recommend it.

Hey so yeah i already said everything yesterday (quite literally everything, i realized after that i talked the whole time and you guys said practically nothing)  so there´s not much to say today....

one favor, you never did send the info/stories about grandma & grandpa Hebdon and i would love if you could send me it, please and thank you :)

Happy mothers day mom,  honestly there aren´t even words to describe how much i love you. you are the reason i am who i am, you are the reason i know what i know, you are the reason i´m here right now in Chile serving the Lord.  Your example has and will continue to influence my life.  thank you for everything you have done and do for me.  I love you with all my heart :)

give grandma Hebdon and grandma Green a big hug from me!  I love them both so much and they too have had a huge influence in my life and i´m forever grateful for the talents that they´ve shared and taught me.

honestly when i was talking with you guys yesterday i felt the same as when i first got to chile, super frustrated that i couldn´t communicate or express myself. haha.  but this time in english. 

Love, Aubrey

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​well I haven't died from the volcano ash so far! Here's a picture of the spider I almost stepped on.

Celebrating hump day with homemade brownies!

this about sums up my life here, walking down the railroad track with our 2 dogs at our side (i never mentioned that Hna Santillán has a dog too)

​My faithful dog I call Butch!

Just being silly missionaries!

just appreciate this grandmother tree

Half way done!

This week marks my 9 months in the mission!  9 down 9 to go.  how did that happen? seriously its flying by. slow down please

So, honestly we haven´t heard anything about mothers day yet.....so, i can´t really plan when we gonna call till we get the OK from our leaders. soooo, patience is a virtue. i guess we´ll just see eachother in 9 months. ;)  

I spoke too soon last week.  i literally sent the email saying we were ash-free, walk outside and we couldn´t see the hills from the haze of ash.  it was terrible, not in the sense that there was ash falling on us, it was in the air so it was bad to be outside a bunch breathing it. so we were confined to our house for 2 days unless we had fixed appointments.  So basically it was terrible in the sense that its hard to just sit around in the house, i wanted to be out working!  but now the wind´s changed so for now there´s no more ash.  but then again i say that and watch, i´m gonna walk outside after sending this to find the ash has returned.

So we´re entering winter and guess what, our water heater broke.  so we´ve been showering in ice cold water for the past 2 weeks. Lovely, 

I´m cursed.  the dogs hear are just out to get me.  so i´m in the middle of a contact when some dog comes up and pees on me. what the goodness?!  i don´t know which i prefer, being bitten by a dog or peed on by a dog....   haha, i actually died laughing, so much for that contact, it ended up with her telling me to go and change my clothes and me agreeing that that was a good idea.

So we´re walking down our drive way when i´m about to put my foot down and i see this HUGE spider, so in an attempt to avoid stepping on him i fell sideways into the gate.  seriously this was the biggest spider i´ve ever seen.  it was a tarantula just chilling in our driveway!  the video of my companion´s sad attempt of killing him cracks me up everytime.  her aim with her shoes was priceless.  so anyway, when she finally did manage to kill him, a million baby tarantulas started running in all directions. and that´s when we decided to leave, so we turned and ran.  great, now we´re gonna have a bunch of tarantulas running around our yard.

Yup, that´s my week.  i´m sorry i don´t know about mothers day yet, i´ll let you know when i´m gonna skype....somehow. .... :)

love you all!

-Hermana Hebdon la segunda 

this is Stefi, she´s my best friend here and just recieved her mission call to Chiclayo Peru in august, so i decided Lindz is gonna train her :)

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