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 :)