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

Always an adventure.

Hola familia! 

Dad i got the pkg! thanks a ton, haha my reaction when i saw the candybars was priceless.   i got a letter from grandma! tell her thanks for me!  and shout out to the ashcrafts, thanks for th ewedding invitation i love it, sorry i missed it.  give them my congrats  and thanks for the note, i love you guys so much and miss you a ton!

so i wrote a novel last week so i´ll keep this short and sweet.

it was cambio week and it was crazy. so we got 1 new elder in our district and guess what, he´s from chiclayo peru!  small world. so i´ve been asking him all about chiclayo. his spanish is a bunch easier to understand than the chileans. so lindz has it easy up in peru.

we had an emergency intercambio this week.  2 hnas were having problems in their area. in short they were robbed at knife point on their way home to their casa at 10:15at night (thats why you follow the rules and return when you´re supposed to).  so anyway, they came and stayed with us and we went on divisions. i absolutely loved it, it gave me a chance to test how well i know my area and the people. and i actually did good at contacting! thats a first. 

so we made cinnamon rolls on pday last week.  it was amazing. they turned out super good to my surprise. i was sure it was going to be an utter fail especially when i opened the pkg of yeast only to discover it was the texture of playdough.  but they ewre amazing and the best part was everyone´s reaction, i don´t believe they´ve had anything like it before.

highlight of the week, our investigators evelyn and eduardo accepted a baptismal date! we´ve been teaching them since i got here and i have a lot of faith in them, so we´re praying really hard this´ll fall through. the only problem is they´re not married (this is the case with basically everyone here, i´m gonna be pro at teaching the law of chastity when i get back)  so we´re hoping they take the lesson on that well...

sundays are so crazy. so much for day of rest, for missionaries it consists of running around trying to get people to come to church.   i get to play piano for the primary program!

that awkward moment when you´ve been walking for hours and no one´s home so you start teaching a dog the plan of salvation only to find out that this just happened to be the 1 house with someone home and they´re staring at you like you´re crazy....

yup, so life is good. life as a missionary is an adventure thats for sure. but i love it!

i love you all, have an amazing week! 

-hna Hebdon la segunda  (aka Aubrey *cough*mom*cough*cough -i thought you might need a reminder ;) haha

I've completed my 1st cambio in the field!

I got letters! it was like christmas!  seriously keep sending them cuz they make my life so happy!

so mom, i hope you know that you sent Lindsey to Peru and not Chile, and that I´m (your daughter aubrey, remember me?) is in chile. hahah.  i totally knew this would happen. called it.  but yeah, tanks for sending me lindsey´s letter. it actually applied a lot to me so thanks.  but i´ll be sure to forward it on to lindz (but i´m keeping the picture of eliza cuz it made my life so happy! i honestly need pictures of the family please send me some physical copies).  your letter to liza made my day. i especially love the part wehre i quote ¨i hope eliza can be an orphan¨  i got a pretty good laugh out of that. eliza, i dont want you to be an orphan.   anyway, i just hope you didn´t send the pkgs to peru cuz that could be a problem. but yeah mom, just so you know, lindsey is in peru. i´m the one in chile. hahah

dad, i got my debit card. and i absolutely love the card you sent! haha its great.  is there anything i need to do to activate  my debit card or can i just start using it?

so i had no idea they didn´t have reeces peanut butter cups here until i gave one (that elder york gave me from his pkg) to camila (my best friend here). her reaction was priceless. so now i have this crazy great idea that you should send me a pkg of a bunch of reeces peanut butter cups!  plus i´m in need of just plain white long sleeve t-shirts (i should have a bunch in my drawer under the window seat). and also some more black and brown tights both sheer and thick warm ones. its hard to keep tights in good shape when the dogs keep biting holes in them ;)

Curtis- thanks for the letter! so i totally forgot i met hna teeples´ family. everone talks about her, they all love her. she was the sister leader so everyone knows her.  so what names are you thinking of for mindy jr???

Jenny - thanks for all the updates! how´s blake? is he talking any? oh and by the way you were toally right about the boots, you´ve officially saved my life by making me get those boots. i wear them practically every day. so thank you so so much!

Andrew - what´s going on? random fact, they play a ton of ping pong here and there´s a guy in my ward that is a pro ping pong player (no joke, he actually played pro ping pong)  and he teaches ping pong class ever sat. i´m trying super hard to get an investigator to go so i have a reason to go.  and elder york is super good, i´ve never seen anyone put spin on the ball the way he does, so i play with him whenever i get the chance. so watch out andrew, i´m gonna conquer you when i get home! ;)

Cassi- you alive?

ok so letters seriously are amazing so write me millions!!! por favor!  dearelder.com is super sweet so use it :)

so it may seem odd to be thinking about htis now but Hna westover gave me the heads up to plan way ahead so....christmas for skype...what time is your church?  and it would be sweet if lindz and i could somehow overlap 10 min or so so we can talk. i don´t really know how to work that out with her but dad you should learn how to do group skype calls so i can talk with the whole family. just a thought.

I´ve officially made it through my first cambio in the field!  so last p-day was so great. it consisted of rearranging the apartment, dominos pizza and cookies (cinnamon rolls are today it didn´t work out last week).   who knew they had dominos here? made my life happy when i found that out.  so we rearranged the apartment so we could be in a smaller room so we could trap the heat from our pathetic heater and actually be warm right, so we had to take the table apart to fit it through the door which consisted of me using a fork as a screwdriver (surprisingly very effective)  and so we finish rearranging and discover that the door to the room doesn´t close. so much for trapping the heat. hah. what are the chances? pretty good with my luck.

it was Hna palma´s b-day this week. so i made her brownies that morning (the one thing i can make here that´s actually good)  andn then that night the bishop surprised her with a small party.

so it rained a ton this week (big surprise) but honestly i find it super relaxing walking for hours on end in the rain and crazy (i mean crazy!) wind either deep in thought or attempting to sing disney songs in spanish. seriously, i love it!

english class and piano class are going great.  i´m learning to play piano in spanish!  the notes have different names so its tricky to teach cuz i don´t even know the names of hte notes anymore. and enlgish class was left solely up to me this week but it went super well, with my beautiful artistic skills i effectively taught the different parts of the body (i´ll send a pict later, its pretty great)

so i get super animated during study time. personal study time is my favorite time of teh day, then during companion study i get way too excited.  i never realized how ridiculous i am until the other day it occured to me that its probably not normal how i´m banging on the table, waving my arms around and practically shouting ¨how can they not believe? they saw an angel and still doubted!¨ (talking about laman and lemuel). yup this is a common occurance, my companion probably thinks i´m crazy, but at least i´m keeping her awake.

so funny story, we´re teaching one of our new investigators how to pray and he´s holding the pamphlet that gives the steps of how to address and close and such and so we ask him to pray and camila points to the box on the pamphlet of where the intructions should be and so we all kneel down ready to pray and he starts ¨the plan of salvation, many people wonder....¨  haha he was on the wrong page so camila had pointed to the wrong box. i was trying so hard not to laugh.  i guess we forgot to teach the most important part of how we believe in personal prayers and not recited prayers. whoops. 

so yeah its been a great week, i love you all, write me millions of letters! and keep smiling!

I'm starting week #6

Hola mi familia! wow the weeks really do go by super fast. i´m on week 6! what?!  half-way done with my 12 weeks of training in the field. 

ok i´m gonna combine emails now cuz email time is super stressful, so for the fam... that is so pathetic that you just got my letter from Mexico.  something is seriously wrong with their mail system. haha, well happy belated birthday i guess dad. hahah. thats pretty funny.  dad, that is one profound metaphor, thanks for that.  I´m glad ole and lexi get along, honestly i was kinda worried that ole would try and hurt any dog that invaded his space in our family after what happened with scotty.  So apparently it takes who knows how long for me to get my mail here. i don´t think it takes very long to get to the mission home but then it sits there until the zone leaders need something from the mission home and then they just grab as many letters as they can carry. not the most effective system but....i guess i´ll have to learn patience.  wait, olympus is doing cinderella? why?  hmm guess i´m not missing out on much, its not my favorite.  thanks for putting my name in the temple, i really do need all the prayers i can get. and i definitely have been recieving answers to those prayers. every time someone compliments my spanish i just say its not me. cuz its not. its completely the gift of tongues. the lord is definitely on my side.   we´re making the cinnamon rolls today, i hope i remember the recipe correctly....i think i do but i´m not positive... but also the ingredients here are different, the brown sugar is the texture of normal sugar, its weird. and i have no idea if the yeast is the same......i guess i´ll find out.  i really do want a good recipe for chocolate chip cookies so i would love you very much mom if you´d email that recipe. thanks.

Alright, week 5.  I had m,y7 first intercambio this week adn i absolutely lo9ved it!  pretty sure i made up for the month´s worth of no speaking english in 1 day. i talked so much.  hna westover pretty much knows my life story just cuz it felt so good to talk to someone and they actually understand.  and i loved actually having roommates with other hnas. its a bit quiet in our house with just me and hna palma.

k, so they have this thing with evil spirits here and it creeps me out. one member is telling us how her house has an evil spirit that she´s felt push her several times.  apparently missionaries hear this kind of stuff a bunch here. it gives me the chills.

spanish mistake of the week... i´m telling Hna palma about my experience with intercambios and as i try to say we stopped at someone´s house i conjugated the ver for stop (parar) wrong so what came out was ¨we gave birth at someone´s house¨.  my companions face was priceless.  parar and parir, their similar right? whoops. hahah

yesterday the teacher for sunday school for the ym yw didn´t show up so hna palma and i ended up teaching. it actually went really well. i loved it.  my spanish is actually starting to surprise me.  its great though, because as the members realize my spanish is better they´ve actually started talking to me a bunch more.  and i can hold a conversation, mainly cuz i´ve learned taht ¨bien, muy bien¨ answers practically every question they ask ;)  so just laugh when they do and say bien a lot adn you can have a great conversation with them.

we´re out of wood. sad day. the mission only provides wood for the winter months so we´re lñeft to freeze. so today we´re rearranging the house so we´ll study in a smaller room where we have a small heater that will hopefully keep us warm.

well that my week.  all is well, time is flying by and life couldn´t be better.  i love you all! have a great week!

-Hermana Hebdon la segunda