Bueno, no tengo mucho a decir

I can´t even believe another week has already flown by. Pobrecita Lindsey, its just days ticking down now. haha 

Well, we had our international food activity this week, Its interesting, but i realized we really do have a mixture of everything in the US, all the food they made is food that they marvelled at and i´m all, my mom makes that too! hehe, and that´s what makes the US great. un mezcla de todo.  They love to make fun of the US and our ¨typical food¨ they all laughed when the stand for the US presented hot dogs and hambergers but within 30 seconds (no joke)  all the food in the stand for US was gone, they secretely do love us. :)

Miracle of the week, So the first day i arrived in Coyhaique we went to visit a family that lives on the border of the town, next to the start of rolling green fields.  But, there are a few more houses before the country.  So ever since the first day i had the strongest urge to go knock on doors in those few houses, i thought it was just cuz i wanted to get closer to the view of the country, so this week finally i told my companion i wanted to knock on those doors, so we start walking to those houses and we see a lady weeding her garden (side note: did you know that dandelions are flowers here and the people actually love them? weeds? i think not! i like that idea, i´m never pulling dandelions out of our garden again)    anyway, so we see this lady and we both felt to walk over and talk to her, so we begin talking and present ourselves as missionaries, and she´s all ¨yeah i know, my daughter is on a mission in colombia¨  and we´re all ¨oh how cool, for what church, jehovas witness, catholic...¨ and she´s all no, for your church, the mormon church.   we were shocked cuz the ward told us a missionary hasn´t left from this sector in 15 years.  so we talked more with her and it turns out that her daughter left from her ward where she was studying, but returns in december, and her dad and little sister aren´t members.   we returned teh other day and met the dad, he´s super receptive and said himself he´s not sure why he hasn´t been baptized yet!!! 

wow, k, there was definitely a reason we felt so strongly to walk over to that sector and that we found this family.  they´re ready to be baptized.  that´ll be our gift to their daughter in Colombia, we´re gonna baptize her family before she gets back :)

whelp, i love you all tons!  

-Hna Aubrey Hebdon

P-Day Adventures

Well we had quite the adventure today. i´ve never been so exhausted!  So dad, i don´t blame you for forgetting your flight and all the other things that happened, cuz i think we´re on the same page here. haha.  so what were planning on doing today... we wanted to go out to the country and sit down in a patch of grass and read the book of mormon all day long (cuz we have a new challenge to read it in less than 3 months)  so it´d be a day super relaxing.  well, we made the mistake of asking one of the YW in the branch where we could go, she told us the best place would be the reserva that´s really close, she told us we could take a taxi up which would only be 1500 pesos (aka, about $3.00)  so we buy the stuff to have a picnik and take our taxi up, I gave him 5000 pesos to pay and as we arrive i ask for my change and he tells me its 5000 pesos to go to the reserva, so yup, we payed $10 to go to this place. and as we arrive the lady charges us each $6.00 to enter.  So we gave up the idea of just chilling and reading the book of mormon and decided to actually go on the round hike so take advantage of how expensive this trip suddenly got.  

So we start out on the trail and while we´re hiking we called a member to come pick us up at the end so we wouldn´t have to pay another taxi.  So she said she could and that she´d meet us at laguna verde, so we look at our map and laguna verde is on the complete other side.  So we had 3hrs and figured it´d be enough time to get to laguna verde, have lunch and chill a bit.  Sooo, as we´re walking we arrived at a look-out, took some pictures and started down the trail again, but the trail had changed to a road for cars, i asked Hna Sambranos if this was our trail and she assured me that it was. Well, to make a really long story a little shorter, it wasn´t our trail.  So what happened was without knowing it until the very end we had backtracked on another trail almost to the beginning of the trail.  and made a HUGE loop to get to laguna verde.  when we arrived, we found the trail we had been on and that we were literally 2 minutes away from our destination when we took a wrong turn and walked in a huge circle for 1 1/2 hrs.    We arrived right as the hermana arrived to pick us up, so we never did get our chill time nor our lunch.   F.A.I.L  but, i feel super great/healthy  (apart from the fact that i´m exhausted and sore)  but it was like the good old days going on hikes with dad :)

As for the rest of my week,  it was a week of opposition, Saturday all our appointments got canceled and people weren´t home because it was a beautiful day so everyone left to go enjoy it (i don´t blame them)   The one visit we did have was a bit depressing.  Manuel and Gabriela really are looking for the truth, they were attending church for almost a whole year but felt they hadn´t recieved an answer, so they started studying with the adventistas and other churches and are now super confused, so we taught them a super spiritual lesson but at the end told us that if we continue to pass by they only want to read and study the bible and don´t want us saying our church is true.  So we testified of prayer and that its the only way for them to recieve an answer and left broken-hearted.  Why are so many churches confusing the people!  it just broke my heart to see a beautiful family on the right path but the voices of the other churches was louder and they slipped away.

but after that discouraging day, God blessed us with the best sunday of my whole mission!  Everyone came to church! all the part-member families that we´re teaching, our investigators, it was a beautiful sight.  I about leaped out of my seat when i saw familia Vasquez enter. haha, i´ve never been so happy so see anyone at church before :)

Ok, i heard the best story every and i died laughing, we were teaching Nefi, a 10yr old who´s gonna be baptized in november and his parents told us a story from when he first starting visiting with the missionaries. hahaha.  So the elders were teaching him how to pray and they tell him you just have to say ¨Padre Celestial¨ and then say what you want...  well Nefi heard a bit wrong, and starts with confidence his prayer and says, ¨Our dear Padre Sebastian¨ ..... yeah that prayer didn´t last very long as there was an awkward silence and everone bursts out laughing.

Embarrasing moment of the week:  we were walking (big surprise there) and i was a bit bored so i started singing a song that Hna Oross taught me,  it goes likes this ¨i lo-lo-love to pla-la-lay on my-ly-ly banjo-lo-lo...¨ and that for the whole song, so after singing it for 10 minutes straight, we pass by a huge group of youth and i say all excited ¨Hola-la!!!¨   haha, yeah bad idea to sing that song....

well, life is great!  we had intercambios this week so we traveled to Aysen, its the prettiest route in the world!    

I love you all!!!!

-Hna Aubrey Hebdon

i don´t know if you can see this photo or not, but look!!! its Lindsey with Steffy!!! (aka, my best friend from valdivia!!!!)

Gringos

Hola!

Well, this week flew by.  We had conference with Presidente and the APs.  It was super weird.  I went from being in the biggest zone to the smallest.  So in the whole conference there were only 12 other missionaries.  But it made it more special/personal.  So the problem with that is that when president asked for a special musical number no one else plays the piano or sings.  So last minute i ended up singing a solo for the zone conference and playing the piano.  but it went ok (i was still recuperating from my bad cold so it was....interesting hahah)    

So random story, the day before conference our investigator randomly gave me a super cheap toy bike, so the next day when i saw Elder Fotheringham i gave him the bike with a note that told him i found his bike and to keep it safe from the police and from dad ;) he got a kick out of that.

This week i discovered the true opinion of Latinos about Gringos....and its not too good. hahah.  Basically as Americans (but they told me the missionaries don´t count haha)  we rob other cultures and have no sense of style and our language is corrupt and messed up.  haha,  it was quite an interesting conversation with this recent convert.  They ended up basically giving me lessons on how to be latina so that i´ll be more attractive when i get home.... i really don´t understand how the conversation changed from the lesson we were giving to that... that is the talent of Chileans.

The miracle of the week:  So Jorge as a baptismal date for the 24th of Oct, but he has to marry Veronica first. They want to be married but the government was on Paro (I don´t remember the word in english but basically, it was closed cuz the people are trying to change their rights or something,) so for the last week its been closed adn time is ticking down for the baptismal date, so for this fast sunday we all fasted for this. that same night the elders called us telling us the the Paro ended and that its now open!!!  God listens to our Fasts and Prayers! 

I Hope all is well!  thanks for all the emails! i love you all!

-Hna Hebdon la segunda

Happy, smilie face!

Hola Familia!

General Conference was amazing!!!!  That´s basically my week. just waiting and working until conference and thoroughly enjoying every minute of it.  I was so grateful, my ZLs gave me permission to watch it in english with them and my DL.  Conference is just one thing that´s not the same in spanish listening to the profet and apostles with different voices.   After the Sat. Afternoon session Hna Sambranos and I wanted to see the priesthood session, so we had our meeting with our Mission Leader and tried to stay for the priesthood session but the district president kicked us out. :P  so we went the Hna gomez´s house (who lives right next to us) and watched it with her :)   I can´t even express how much i love conference.    But i was doing so good at not being trunky until i saw conference. haha, Elder Holland´s and Elder Hale´s talks got me a bit trunky ;)  haha, but nothing i can´t fix.

I don´t understand how people can be so blind!  We have an investigator, the husband of one sister in the branch, and he told us that while meeting with the missionaries before he had a dream that a brother in the ward told him the church is true.  And he STILL thinks he hasn´t recieved an answer from God.  WHAT?!  I about died when he told us that.  for an answer to be so clear and a person to be so blind.  How in the world...  after that lesson my companion was making fun of my face when i was teaching because it was apparently quite obvious that i was dumbfounded that it just didn´t click for him.  haha.

 

The work is going great here.  we´re just enjoying every minute :)  there really isn´t much to say.... 

I Love you all tons! The church is true!

-Hna Hebdon la segunda

Hola from Coyhaique.

SS Ok, sorry i was so down in my last letter, i just wasn´t expecting transfers at all.  But i know that God knows better than us.  I absolutely LOVE Coyhaique!!!!!  its not like any of my other sectors in many different ways.

first off, I´m free from the rain!!!!!!! :D  whohooo!!!!  no more rain!  at least not nearly as much.  there´s actually sun here! and even though we´re super far south, the temperature is actually super nice.  but apparently the ozone layer is broken here or something like that so there´s a lot of radiation, so i might just return home with cancer, but its all worth it right? There´s sun, that´s the only important thing! and the weird thing is that the people told me that here during the summer the sun rises at 5am and sets after 11:00pm.  that´ll be a nice change :) easier to wake up and easier to work at 9:30 at night! 

Its sooooo pretty here!  its more out in the country (my type of place) :) surrounded by rolling hills/mini mountains.

The people here are so welcoming! I´m gonna love this branch that i´m in!

My new companion is Hna Sambrano from Peru!  from huanuco (no idea where that is in Peru)   but she´s amazing, i love her to death!  she´s trying really hard to learn english, so she´s also helping prep me to return home so i can actually communicate with you guys ;)

so today we went on a bit of an adventure to take pictures and such, so there was a beautiful look out, but i wanted better pictures so i climbed over the lookout deck.  went i went to climb back up, i swung my leg up and hit some weird metal thing that was there.  i didn´t think to much about it, even though it did hurt, and literally, while sitting here i just realized my leggings have blood stains running down them....uhmm whoops....haha  but the pictures turned out super cool, so its all worth it!

so a picture is worth a thousand words right?  right. so i don´t have to say much today cuz i sent billions of words with all those pictures i sent.

i love you all!  please stop going trunky on me! 

- Hna Hebdon la segunda

i don´t know if you can see in this picture, but my shoes completely died, they lived a good life

this was viviana´s house.....

(i think my hair´s grown a bit) ;)

I feel like this is a shot from the princess bride or something....

the hills are alive with the sound of music.  (i seriously sing that song 24/7 here)

This is my sector, its Huge!!! 

did you guys see the full eclipse??? (this is the best that my camera can do, but it was sweet!)

and this is the fail moment when i hit my knee on the weird metal thing

scripture power! 

she just radiates pure joy!

An unexpected and unwelcome surprise.

Well this week was full of extremes, super amazing moments and some very terrible moments too.  lets start with the bad shall we?

So, i was thoroughly convinced that i was going to finish my mission in puerto montt, so convinced i wasn`t even concerned (or even thinking) that it was transfer week.  So we recieve a call from my DL this morning telling me i`m off to Coyaique.  The city every one jokes about because its so south, so cold and the people there are .,....different (i`ve heard)   so, wish me luck.  i`m prohibiting my mind from thinking. cuz i don`t want to think about the sector i`m leaving behind.  just yesterday we had our weekly planning session and i was saying that i`ve never seen so much progress and never had so many people ready and excited to be baptized.  We were going to have a ton of baptisms this next transfer.  so i just need the faith that its not important if i`m there to see them.  So this time i`m shutting off my heart and mind so it doesn`t hurt when i leave.  It may just be better to leave without saying goodbye.  Why didn`t anyone ever tell me that the hardest part of the mission is leaving an area and people you`ve come to love so much?  I`m sure there`s a lot of success to be found in Coyaique  (i think i jinxed myself cuz in my last letter i prayed i wouldn`t have transfers cuz i have way too much stuff to pack and now i`m off to coyaique where i can only bring 1 suitcase. funny. :P)  

Ok, enough with that, you get the idea that i`m still a bit in shock.   so the other thing that happened this week, one morning as we`re getting ready we got an unexpected phonecall from viviana (my best friend from Portal)  telling us that her house started on fire and the majority burnt down.  Fires are common in Puerto montt but its never affected someone i know before, it was heartbreaking to hear her tell me this.  I`m mainly scared for the reaction of her mom, who`s emotions aren`t always stable and she was just starting to improve cuz she opened a bakery in her house, but yes, her bakery burnt down too.  so pray for Viviana and Rosa.  we got permission to go see them today so i hope i can help encourage and animate them.

and with all that, lets focus on the good....

It was the best week of my life!!!!!!!! :D  en serio!   Gina`s baptism was hermosa!  It was perfect she was like an angel dressed in white.  we sang her favorite song, how great thou art, and it turned out super good (God answered my prayers there cuz i was starting to get sick but gave me the voice to sing for her baptism, haha and next day i woke up completely without a voice)    But anyway, it was the best day ever, Gina was radiating with joy.  there just aren`t words to describe this moment that i`ve been waiting to see my whole mission.

after the baptism we had the big celebration for 18.  I LOVE CHILE!  why isn`t the US as cool as chile?  the party was so much fun, and the dancing.  Hermana Oross and I were dying that we couldn`t join in and dance.  

This week truly was a week of miracles, there might have been bad moments but opposition in all things right?  we saw so many miracles, i believe more people stopped us on the street than we stopped them, we have so many people that want to hear our message, that want to be baptized.  At least i know i`m leaving this sector stronger than before, that`s success in the mission.

My fail moments:

1. They asked me to conduct the music in sacrament meeting and without thinking i said yes.  so i get up and as i try to lead the song, literally nothing came out of my mouth cuz i have a super bad cold.  so i waved my hand in the air and mouthed the words cuz only weird groaning/screeching sounds came out of my mouth...

2. We were climbing the mountain of a hill to leave one sector and i slipped, catching myself with my hands on a huge rose bush.  so i sat there the next 3 minutes picking huge thorns out of my hand.

3. we ate 4 completos (aka, hotdogs with a bunch of toppings) for lunch, we were joking with the Hermana who gave it to us that we were going to start out diet.  then only 3 hrs later we had been visiting people with another member who decided she needed to buy something quickly in the supermarket and since we were with her and were going to go to another appt we went with her.  and we lost her in the supermarket.  so we were standing there awkwardly wondering what we should do so we decided to buy a thing of ice cream.  so as we`re waiting in line the hermana who gave us our giant lunch suddenly turns around asking how our diet was going.  haha.  we had to explain why we were there so she didn`t think all we ever do with out time is buy and eat food. hahah

4. we were leaving from an activity in the church and decided we wanted to run home.  so we started running and it felt so good i started running faster and faster.  So right as my companion yells out ¨be careful!¨  i hit a rock went sprawling to the ground.  I get up quickly and the same hermana from the story with the ice cream and completos was there watching with her whole family along with mario and graciela from the ward portal.   I was ok, my wrists were just a bit sore the next day, it was only my pride that was hurt. haha.

So yup, there`s my novel of a letter, mom, DON^T send me a package for Christmas, i`m going to be in Coyaique, i won`t recieve the package until the day i finish my mission. haha, 

well, i love you all, hope all is well! wish me luck.  i`ve learned not to question, just do.  If i question why i have to leave this area that i love with all my heart then i`m questioning the will of God.

¨If you want to make God laugh, show him your plans¨  that´s my motto.

-Hermana Hebdon

Shopping spree!

Hola a todos!

Well, i´m glad you survived Hawaii mom. haha, sounds like quite the adventure.  

so this week i don´t really remember what happened....it was so long ago...

well, dad, i was finally able to withdraw money! whohoo!  and it might have been a mistake. hah...uhm, lets just say i´m praying i don´t have transfers again cuz i have no idea how i´m gonna pack.  Angelmó has anything and everything and so we went there today to get a few souvenirs (cuz its better to buy now while prices are lower before tourism season).  it was the hardest thing of my life not to buy everything. but i´m done buying things for good.  (so this is a i´m already using the christmas money that i may or may not recieve... ;)

We went to Chiloé this week.  it was great, i love traveling way too much.  4 hrs there in a bus, i definitely slept the whole way there and back :)

On Friday the elders in Portal del Mar asked us to sing a special musical number for their baptism, so it was a wonderful excuse to go back to my old ward :)  Gina came with us with her son Franco and i got to see everyone there.  We took advantage when Gina was off talking to other members to talk to Franco (he´s 9 yrs old) to see if he has any desire to be baptized. he said yes, so we made a deal that he has to stay and listen to us when we´re teaching his mom. :)   

Gina had her baptismal interview and passed with flying colors :D  so everything´s ready for the 18th!   it´s going to be the best day ever.  the 18th of september is the biggest holiday here, its independence day for them.  so we´re gonna have Gina´s baptism in the morning and in the afternoon have the grand Sept 18th party for the rest of the day, its a pretty good way to celebrate her baptism :)

Its been amazing to see this change in Gina, how the gospel truly has blessed her life.  so no i have this renewed strong desire to help everyone we teach to have this change in their hearts, a change that truly brings happiness and joy into their lives.

whelp, that´s about it.  I love you all so much!