Awesome

Hello All,

Today I am writing you from Conce....  Weird!  I have never had the opportunity to spend my P-Days in Conce before just because I lived close enough to do so!  It`s cool though.  I don`t know my way around at all, but Hermana Frandsen and Hermana Lyons have both been "in" for a while, so they`ll help me.

So, Hualqui (Wall-Key).  Is awesome.  FREEZING COLD.  But awesome.

My companion is awesome.

Hermana Frandsen is awesome.

Hermana Lyons is hilarious.  We laugh all day long and then we get home at night and laugh some more with Hermana Frandsen.  She is from Reno and she was studying at SUU before she came on the mission.  (One of my few mission friends who doesn`t go to BYU - hooray!)  She has like the world`s most positive attitude and she`s really easygoing.  She even told me, "If I do something that bugs you, just tell me and I`ll stop doing it."  And I know that she would.  But I haven`t wanted to do that anyway because she`s great.  Very eager to learn and to change and improve and doesn`t make excuses for herself.  She just finished her training, but I feel like together we are still learning a lot about how to refine our "technique."

The ward is so neat here.  It`s the biggest one I`ve ever seen in Chile.  They tell me sometimes almost 200 people come.  Wow.  And the members are the best.  They are so willing to help us and so eager to do mission work, it`s really awesome to see.

Something else about Hualqui is that it`s a HUGE sector.  I thought San Javier was big, but in Hualqui there are parts of our sector we can`t get to unless we take a train.  It`s enormous.  And campo, campo, campo.  Obviously we have a grocery store and all that jazz, but generally it`s pretty residential/rural.  We just have to plan more carefully is all, otherwise we`d just walk for hours all day and never get anything done.  Hermana Lyons has been here for two transfers, but never got the chance to really learn how to navigate some parts of the sector, so she and I are learning our way around together (though mostly I just follow her) and there is one recent convert (Aracely.  She`s awesome.) who often accompanies us and we like to call her our walking map.  And one thing that is really awesome is that we are close to the river and close to hills where pine trees grow.  It`s a lot prettier than my other sectors have been and reminds me a little bit of home.  I love it.

Hermana Frandsen and I are still not sure we can believe that we are getting this chance to live together.  But we absolutely love it.  I told Hermana Lyons that maybe someday Hermana F and I would get tired of each other, but she told me she highly doubts it.  I doubt it too.  I can see that Heavenly Father really loves me because Hermana Frandsen has made my whole mission a much better experience than it could possibly have been without her.  And I am SO LUCKY to share a house and a ward (and lunch every day) with her and her awesome companion, Hermana Alvarez.

Hermana Alvarez comes from Nicaragua and we love her.  She doesn`t speak much English, so we have to make an effort to speak Spanish in the house so that she can understand.  But she is also eager to learn English and practices saying little phrases like, "I will bite you."  (Inside joke, sorry.)  But Hermana Frandsen says that it`s like she`s not even training her at all.  She said she came totally pre-trained and that she hasn`t really had to teach her anything.  She is awesome.

Anyway, we had a crazy fun week and had tons of crazy experiences.  And we only got lost a few times.  It was awesome.

Your commitment this week is to read every day in your Book of Mormon!  Wahoo!!!!  (Sorry that commitment isn`t too awesome.  I really need to use the restroom but my I'm trying to last until email time is totally up and I`m having a hard time focusing....)  DO IT and I promise you will be BLESSED!

Gotta go now.  Love you all.  Thanks for everything.

Lovelovelovelovelove,

Hermana B