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