¡Ciao, Pescado!

Oh my goodness.  I cannot believe that this day is here.  This is my last email from the mission field.  Totally unbelievable.

I can't wrap my mind around the fact that in just two days I will be a "returned missionary."  Somehow I never imagined myself fitting into that category.  Well, not sure that I will "fit" into it now, but I'll pertain to it, anyway....

I just have one thing to say, really.  I love Chile.  It is as much a part of me now as movies and Harry Potter and tap dancing and trees and running and chocolate chip cookies ever were.  It's home.  I have it written in my heart and I will carry it with me always.  I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father for blessing me with the opportunity to know this place and these people.  I know all returned missionaries think that ther mission is the best in the world, but I invite each and every one of you to give Chile a try.  You will all soon be in agreement with me that la misión Chile Concepción es ¡la MEJOR MISIÓN DEL MUNDO!

And now that I will soon be starting the "best phase" on my life (this is what everyone tells me when I blow a raspberry and give them a thumbs-down sign when they ask me how I feel about going home, but I am not convinced), I want to invite you all to stay with me in keeping up with our commitments to read and pray every day.  Last night a few families from the ward put together a little surprise gong-away noche de hogar, and they shared with me 2 Nephi 32:8-9 and D&C 14:7 and we talked about how it is essential that we endure to the end (return missionary or no), and that it starts with the simplest of things - scriptures, prayer, and church attendance.  So that is my invitation to you all for this week and for all the weeks to come.  Let's endure to the end together!

I love you all so much and I am so grateful for all the love and support you have given me for this past year-and-a-bit.  See you all soon!

Lovelovelovelovelovelovelove for the last time from Chile,

Hermana Burgess

Charity Never Faileth

A pretty normal week.  I am trying to think if anything really interesting happened....  Yes!  One day a drunk man started talking to us and he said something about how I was "rubia" (which means blonde, but here they use it to describe anyone whose hair isn't black), and I agreed with him.  And then he said, "Why do you have green eyes?"  I told him that I didn't have green eyes, that it was he who had green eyes (because he did).  And then I told him that my eyes are brown.  But I may or may not have used the wrong word for brown and accidentally said that my eyes were purple.  My companion is never going to let me live that one down.  But it isn't my fault that the words for brown and purple in Spanish are just not all that different - morado (purple) and márron (brown).  Well, so they are pretty different.  But they start with the same letter at least. Anyone could confuse them, right?

We also had interviews with President this week.  We got a nice surprise when the office gave each companionship a shiny new portable DVD player.  Normally these DVD players are only given to companionships that are doing the 12-week training program, since they have to watch a lot of Preach My Gospel videos, but for some reason now they have decided that each companionship will have one.  One of the assistants, when he gave my companion our DVD player, was explaining the features to her.  He said that it plays CDs as well as DVDs, and it has a USB port so you can also look at your pictures.  And there is a remote control, so if you happen to be a few steps away from it and you want to change the song, no worries!  Then later on when another companionship of sisters received their DVD player, one sister asked my companion, "Is this so we can watch Preach My Gospel?" and my companion said, "They didn't say anything to me about Preach My Gospel.  I heard 'movies, music, and photos.'  That's what this must be for - music, movies, and photos."  It was pretty funny.  Interviews went well though.  President and Hermana Arrington are really amazing.  They love us a lot and take really good care of us.  I am very grateful for them.

On Sunday the obra misional was in charge of sacrament meeting.  And since we are the newest in the ward, Elder Klepinger and I were asked to speak.  I didn't want to give one of the normal missionary-guilt-trips-the-ward-into-accompanying-them-to-lessons-and-giving-them-references talks.  So I decided to speak on charity and love and how we can develop more charity.  I figured that at the root of everything is missionary work is whether or not we love the Lord and whether we feel His love for us and share it with others.  Hermana Lovell taught me a lot about that.  She would always say that we should just let the love of God fill us up and then we should take that love and give it away to other people.  She was really good at it too.  I, however, still have a lot of work to do in that department.  But the talk went well, I think.  I talked about how we can develop charity first by asking for it in prayer (Moroni 7:48), then by serving others (both by the things we do for them and by refraining from judging or sharing negative thoughts or feelings that we may have towards others), and then by sharing the gospel with them.

So I invite you all to read Moroni 7:45-48 (Those of you who are reading the Book of Mormon with me will be reading that as part of your scheduled reading this week anyway!) and let's work on being more full of love and charity together.

Also, keep on reading that Book of Mormon every day!

Lovelovelove you all,

Herman

Déjà vu

Hola,

Today we got to go to President's house in the morning and make Peruvian food (Hermana Gamboa cooked and it was great) and I made Snickerdoodles (since shortening and cream of tartar are only to be found in President's house).  It was the four of us from Tomé, Hermana Snyder and Hermana Ayuso, and Hermana Call and Hermana Oldroyd.  And President and Hermana Arrington, of course.  They are totally awesome.  I love to cook in their kitchen.

Also, this morning a cute little jovencita from our ward here in Tomé left for her mission in Recife, Brazil. So last week there was a lot of missionary-prep buzz in the ward, along with a lot of "saying goodbye" moments.  We had a ward activity on Friday and they like showed a little slideshow of her and everything as part of it.  She didn't speak in sacrament meeting the way we usually do, though she did bear a short testimony, but one thing they did do was they had planned a little setting-apart devotional for all her friends and family.  After the Stake President had gone to her house and set her apart, everyone gathered in the church on Sunday evening and they had short messages from her parents, her aunt and uncle, her sister, and a musical number from her other sister, and Loisse also shared her testimony.  It was nice.  You could feel the Spirit really strongly, it was special.  She is very special too, though barely 19, and I worry a little about her apple-cheeked innocence because the reality of missionary work is oh, so much harder than anyone could ever imagine.  Many of you know.  You have been there.  You just can't describe how hard it is.  I am very happy for her and I am sure she will do well.  I know that the experiences that she will have - as hard as they may be - are going to help her become who the Lord wants her to be.  Though I don't know her well I love her already and I am excited to hear about how things go for her in the mission field.

But all this leaving-on-a-mission stuff with Loisse was a little weird for me, because it made me remember so vividly how I felt in those weeks and days before it was time for me to go.  I was absolutely terrified.  For me, there is just something so horrifying about the unknown and the things that I can't control.  And there were many moments when I wasn't sure I could actually go through with it.  But I knew it was the right thing to do.  I knew that it is what the Lord wanted for me and I had to let that be enough.  Many times that is what has carried me through, when sometimes things don't look as bright as I'd like and I wonder what in the world ever made me think coming on a mission would be a good idea - I just try to remember that it is the Lord's will, and I try to let that be enough.

And when I really think about it, being here is more than "enough."  I have had so many wonderful experiences.  I have met the most wonderful people.  I have learned to love them and their culture and thier food and their public transportation and their sense of style and (though I am still working on it) their language.  I am so very blessed.  These are experiences that I would not trade for anything, andI know I would not have been able to have them any other way.  That is the Lord's plan.  If there was "another way," He would let us take it.  But there isn't.  There is one path.  One gospel.  One plan for each of us, and His plan is perfect.  I have probably shared this with you all before, but too bad because you have to hear it again anyway.  When we were getting ready to leave the MTC, Hermana Frandsen wrote me a note that said, "When things get tough, try to step back and see the big picture, because He has promised that the big picture is beautiful."  I know that she is right.  The Lord has painted a beatiful picture of each of our lives, but sometimes we can only see parts of it.  And sometimes those are the parts that are painted gray or black.  But not very many paintings would turn out beautiful if there wasn't any gray or black at all.  It is all part of a bigger picture - a beautiful, beautiful picture.

I invite you each to try to see the beautiful picture that God is painting of our lives this week.  I know that I definitely forget sometimes to do that, and I would like to try to be better too.

Also keep reading the Book of Mormon every day.

Lovelovelove,

Herman

Meet My Great-Granddaughter

Last Monday it just so happened that Hermana Lyons and Hermana Johnston (her trainee) had to be in Conce for a doctor's appointment, and Hermana Morán had to be in Conce for consejo, so we decided to take advantage of the only chance we had to take a four-generation photo.  Hemana Lyons had the genius idea that we should act out which generation we were.  So that's what we did.  It was awesome.  I am the great-grandma, Hermana Morán the grandma (though she looks more like a teenager in the picture I have, but that's just Hermana Morán for you), Hermana Lyons is the mom, and Hermana Johnston the baby.

And since all the Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders were in Conce for consejo I also got to see Hermana Frandsen and Hermana Chavez for what might be one of the last times before we go home (since they are stinking far away in my beloved Chillán).  So we took pictures too.  I love them lots.

Tuesday night was New Year's Eve, of course.  It was kind of a slow night for us since everyone was having family parties.  And then we went home and planned and took pictures in our New Year's garb that some members had gifted to Hermana Martinez and Hermana Gamboa and then we were in bed at 11:30.  I think I was still awake when the New Year came in, but I didn't hear too much noisy partying so I can't be sure.  Apparently in Chile you are supposed to go out in the street at midnight and hug everyone you see or something like that.  But we didn't do that either, of course.

Wednesday morning Hermana Gamboa and I went out to run in the morning and that was quite a humorous experience, because there were still lots of leftover beach party-ers (how do you spell that word?) straggling through the streets.  One group of young adults that we passed started whooping when they saw us and even followed us for a bit, while a drunk man leaning against the wall next to the church cat-called for about two minutes straight.  And there were still several people left on the beach (and lots of champagne corks) after the all-night revelry.  It was kind of humorous.  But I ask myself why it is so attractive to celebrate the coming of the New Year in that manner?  Maybe it's fun until midnight, but stumbling home hung-over and disheveled and covered in sand at 7:30 in the morning just doesn't seem like a very positive start to a new year to me....

One thing we did to start the new year out right was we rearranged the furniture in our apartment.  We had the two bunk beds in one bedroom, the Hermanas study room in the other, and our study space out in the living room, which just wasn't very functional.  So with the help of a set of little L-shaped Allen wrench things that we bought for a buck at a ferreteria, a pair of pliers borrowed from the neighbors across the hall, and a little brute force (we had to turn one bed upside down and jump on it to get it to disassemble) we were able to get the house rearranged.  Now all four beds are in the living room and the other bedroom is our study space.  It isn't as pretty, with a living room full of beds, but it's a lot more functional.  We also have a little closet room which had mostly been serving as a storage space for Hermana Martinez's dirty clothes, but we tidied that up too (we bought her a little collapsible cube with a cute cow on it for her to put her diry laundry in) and hung some laundry line in there so that we would have a place to dry any clothes we washed by hand.  In the bathroom it took days and this little room is real sunny, so we have been pleased with those results as well.  It was a great New Year's project.

This week I did a

mini cambio one day with Hermana Suarez.  I hadn't really worked much with her before, but she was also in Hualqui and she is going home just a little before me, so we have a lot of our mission in common.  We know all the same people (For example, there are very few hermanas left - four, if I am not mistaken - who ever knew my trainer.), even taught some of the same investigators, and are in the same phase of our mission, so it was interesting to spend a day with her.  She was one of the missionaries who found and baptized Aracely, that awesome recent convert from Hualqui who was always accompanying us.  Hermana Suarez is from Argentina and she was introduced to the Church through the people who owned the gym where she trained (she was like a professional weight-lifter or something like that), which is a neat story.

And this morning we had a zone activity.  We went on like a little hike (though it was pretty much flat and therefore nothing compared to the hills we climb up every day) to an old tunnel which was super dark and even though you could usually see light from one end or the other, you couldn't see right in front of you or where you were putting your feet or anything like that.  It was cool and pretty and then afterwards we ate Churrascos.  Much better zone activity than going to the church and playing soccer, if you ask me.  Thanks Elder Rhodes and Elder Klepinger!

Anyways, it's a little boring but that was my week.  Not too many crazy adventures and we haven't run out of matches so we aren't in any danger of burning the place down.  Though, on a lack of matches side note, Hermana Snyder told me that in their house they have to even light the calefont with matches in order to get hot water and that one very desperate Saturday night they resorted to putting metal in the microwave in order to generate a flame for lighting the calefont.  A little dangerous, but they took precautions (a bowl full of water standing nearby) and it was effective in the end.  So I guess being a missionary is never too boring.

And how are we all doing with our Book of Mormon reading?  I have read every day this year so far - except for today, the zone activity threw off my study schedule, but I promise to read when we get back to the house.  I invite you all to keep on reading EVERY DAY.

Also, another commitment:  write to a missionary!  It doesn't have to be me, I was just thinking about how awesome it is when we get mail and/or emails and I thought it would be a great thing for you all to do this week - brighten a missionary's day!

Well, love you all and hope you have a g-reat week!

Lovelovelove,

Herman

The New Nephew

Hi... Danielle again,

For those of you who don't know, Jordanne's sister, Shannon, has a new baby boy.  He was born on October 31 (yes, he's our little spook!)  Jordanne has been referring to him as "Charlie" but his name is actually Jet Robert Shields.  He weighed 7 lbs 12 oz, was 20 1/2 inches long, and he's absolutely adorable!!

Who Needs Fosforos? (December 30, 2013)

Quick recap of this week:

Monday was P-day, obviously.  Not too much to say about it.

Tuesday, Christmas Eve, we were invited to have Christmas dinner with the Alarcón family in our ward.  So we went with the other two hermanas and had a good old time.  I taught the little girls the dance for Cotton Eye Joe and they totally loved it.  Here they eat late at night and then wait until midnight and open all the gifts then.  We had to be in the house at 11:00, so no Viejito Pascuelo (Santa Clause) sightings for us.  But it was still fun.

Wednesday we opened up our gifts in the morning (the girls in my house are thrilled about all the American chocolate I got) and then in the afternoon we went into Conce for the mission Christmas activity they were having.  There was so much good food and most of it was American - chips and guacamole (okay, so that is not really "American" but they don't eat it here) and pasta and frog-eye salads and ranch and ceaser salad dressings, and chocolate chip cookies! - and I got to see Hermana Call and Hermana Snyder and a lot of my other mission friends who are in the "in" zones right now.  I loved it.  And then after that, of course, we Skyped our families, which is always fun.  My family is crazy.  But I love them.  I got to meet my nephew Charlie.  He was asleep, but he seems pretty cool.  I think we'll get along if he likes sleeping too.

Thursday morning I found myself with a few minutes of extra time and so I took down the little Christmas tree that we had.  The other hermanas kept asking me if that was some kind of an American tradition - to take down the tree immediately after Christmas.  I told them no, that normally we leave it up until after the New Year but I knew if I didn't do it right then I would be too lazy to do it later.  Then that afternoon my companion was sick with the flu so I put her to bed despite her complaints and she felt better that night.

Friday was the first "regular" day we had last week, so the week felt pretty short.  But we did as much as we could Friday and Saturday and Sunday to move the work along.  Saturday we went to visit some of our investigators and the husband, José was getting ready to go play in some kind of a performance with his church "band."  He plays the violin, so when he heard that I could play he went and got it out and insisted that I play.  Well, I really can't remember all that much and that violin was SO out of tune and I couldn't really tune it because the pegs were like super-glued and I was pretty sure the strings would break if I tried too hard.  So I had to just place my fingers in different places on all the strings in order to get the music to sound right.  It was strange, but it kind of worked.  Hermano José has basically no training and his technique is quite different, but he played a nice little ditty.  And then he asked if I would teach him a couple of lessons.  I am quite skeptical about that, since I can't exactly speak music-Spanish.  Also because I don't think a violin lesson would count for one of our key indicators....  But it was fun to get to play again for a minute.  I guess there are a lot of violins in Tomé.

Once again I failed to get a picture of the beautiful views of the ocean that we have every time we climb up one of the enormous hills here in Tomé.  I remembered finally to bring my camera yesterday but then I didn't remember to use it.  Boo.  Someday, I promise, you can know what it is like here.  Hermana Gamboa and I went running on the beach on Saturday for our exercise.  It was awesome.  I had never done that before.  We had a great time!

So when I got to Tomé I was super excited because there is a real stove and an oven here.  That is not the case in every mission apartment, so I was pleased.  But everything is gas and you have to light the stove with a match.  Anyway, one night when we got home we were really hungry but we had basically no food in the house since nobody had shopped during cambios.  Well, we did have some corn flour and so I asked my Colombian companion to make some arepas, which are like little corn pancake things.  Super delicious!  Well, she said, "no tenemos fosforos," (fosforos are matches) and I didn't fully understand her or wasn't listening very well and I thought she was referring to the corn flour.  But I had some of that, so I told her not to worry, that I had some, so I went and got it out and she made some arepas.  Then when it came time to cook them, she asked me for matches and I was like, "I don't have any."  And she was like, "I told you we didn't have any and you said you had some - that's why I made these!"  Then I felt really silly and really sad because now we had arepas that we couldn't eat because we couldn't cook them.  So we fretted about it for a minute and I started looking everywhere for matches when Hermana Gamboa comes in and says, "Do you want fire?"  We were both like, "YES!" and I assumed that maybe SHE had matches, but then she points to the hot water heater thing and says, "Supposedly when someone takes a shower this lights a flame."  WHAT A GENIUS!  So we turned on the hot water and rolled up a piece of paper and stuck it up inside the calefont (that's the hot water heater) and lit it on fire and then we were able to light the stove and eat our arepas!  It was awesome.  And we lit the stove that way for over a week (since we forgot to buy matches last P-day) until I found the matches that Hermana Vieda had said she thought Hermana Rane had taken with her.  They were in Hermana Martinez's closet with her jewelry and whiteboard markers.  So now we have matches.  But if we ever run out, no worries, right?

Anyway, that's the report for this week.  Also, mission time warp side note - this week as the year 2013 closes, it will be a complete year that I have spent in Chile.  So after I get home if you ever refer to anything that happened in 2013, I probably won't know what you are talking about.  Isn't that strange?  But I hope you all have a very Happy New Year!  I think it's gonna be a good one.

New Year's Resolution for all of you - READ THE BOOK OF MORMON EVERY DAY!  We all have the opportunity to start out this new year right and we can have a perfect year where we don't miss a single day of reading - even if we only have a chance to read one verse, I know that we can do it!  It will be a challenge for all of us, but I also know that we will be greatly blessed for our efforts and our sacrifices.

Wellp, love you all.  Hope you have a great week and a lot of fun with your New Year's activities!  We'll probably be sleeping when the New Year comes in, so make sure y'all celebrate it nice a good in my honor.

Lovelovelove,

Herman

I Shall Have the Beach for Christmas (December 16, 2013)

Hello All,

Today we had cambios.  President says I am to go to Tomé and be companions with Hermana Vieda.  Hermana Martinez (who I lived with in Chillán) is also in that house, and she will be finishing the training of Hermana Frandsen's companion from last cambio, Hermana Gamboa.  This will be the first time I live without gringas since Hermana Fajardo and I were alone together for those five weeks in San Javier.  However this time it is not 50/50, but three against one!  I am a little worried about that.  I can teach a lesson and communicate just fine and stuff, but I am just not very funny in Spanish.  But I hear that Tomé has hills (good for getting in shape after flat, flat, flat sectors my whole mission) and ocean!  I have yet to see the beach here in Chile except from afar during mini-cambios in Penco and Lirquen.  So that will be fun.

Hermana Frandsen and Hermana Chavez are going to be companions, as now all the Sister Training Leaders will be in companionships, just like Zone Leaders usually are.  I can't believe how good they have it.  They were my first and second choices for companions and instead of being with me they are going to be together.  So unfair!  We were surprised to learn that in Hualqui not only are they NOT sending elders this cambio, despite having made all the arrangements with lunches and the new house and everything, but they are also closing my sector and having just one trio of hermanas there.  Hermana Razeira will be joined by Hermanas Martos and Meyer, and Hermana Call is getting sent to Collao to open a new sector with her new Sister Training Leader companion, Hermana Oldroyd (they were companions in a trio in the MTC along with my "hija" Hermana Holland, so that's interesting).  Also of note is that this cambio I am becoming a GREAT-GRANDMOTHER in the mission.  Hermana Lyons ("daughter" of my "daughter," Hermana Morán) will be training!  AAAAAH!  I am SO OLD!!!  I will not be able to take any more pictures of myself during the mission because now my hair is all white and I am all wrinkly and gross.

Sorry about all that cambio talk.  I know it is probably super boring for all of you, but I find it absolutely fascinating, the way these things work.  I always want to know as much as possible about where everyone is every cambio.  Probably my propensity for gossip feeds that need.  But I think that being curious about cambios is one of the more acceptable way to appease my gossip monster, so it's a healthy outlet, at least.

Today was a really hard one because I had to send Hermana Haymond home.  She has been pretty sick over the past couple of weeks and after a lot of prayer and many blessings, she and her family and her stake president and President and Hermana Arrington decided it would be best for her to go home and get better rather than try to stick it out here.  They took us with them to the airport.  It was sad.  And super stinky.  But I am looking forward to hearing about how she progresses in the Harry Potter books once she gets home.  The "Very Important Vocabulary Words" that Hermana Call and I have been trying to teach her haven't been sticking in her brain very well yet.  So far the only one that has stuck with her is "muggle."  Probably because, unlike me, she is one.  It is because of that that wizard vocaublary is just harder for her to grasp, I think.

Anyway,  lots of other stuff happened this week, I am sure, but I can't think of anything else to write about.  Except that this ciber is playing really lame techno music.  I wish I could shut my ears off.

How did it go last week with the commitments?  We are going to finish Alma this week - hurrah!  Helaman kind of bums me out, but it is exciting to get there, right?  So KEEP ON READING!  And also, watch this awesome Christmas video:  The Nativity  I could watch those things all day long.

Wellp, gotta go now!  Hope all y'all have an awesome week!

Lovelovelove muchly,

Hermana B

The Importance of a Film Education (December 16, 2013)

This is just a quick one to tell you all about an experience that Hermana Haymond and I had a few weeks ago.  So Hermana Haymond had never had her ears pierced.  I guess the rule in their family is that you have to wait until you are 14, and by the time she got to be 14 it just didn't seem all that important to her.  But here in Chile EVERY woman has pierced ears.  In fact, even every little baby girl wears earrings.  They do it in the hospital before they even send them home, if I understand correctly.  So anyway, earrings are a big thing here and you can buy them on the street for like 50 cents.  It's totally awesome.  So Hermana Haymond decided that she wanted to have her ears pierced.  We asked María Graciela, since she could explain it best in English, and she and her mom told us to go to the "clinica" because they knew we would need to do it someplace safe.

Well, after thinking about it for a while, Hermana Haymond decided that she trusted me to pierce her ears just as much as any Chilean CNA, so she asked if I would do it.  I wasn't originally completely sold on the idea.  Nor did I think she was very serious.  But the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to do it.  And so though I was still reluctant - and frankly freaked out - I agreed, with some conditions, of course.  

We figured that since we'd seen "The Parent Trap" with Lindsay Lohan, we had a pretty good idea how a successful home ear-piercing could be carried out.  So on P-Day the following week we went to a jewelry shop and picked out some sterling silver (we think) earrings.  I wrote up a contract for her to sign which relieved me of all liability should anything go wrong or should she just decide she didn't like them or what have you.  Also verbally included in the contract was that she never, ever say anything about it to the mission nurse, Hermana Balden, since she'd probably freak out.  (Those were my conditions.  Also that she didn't scream too loud if it hurt.)  So Hermana Haymond signed the contract and I had Hermana Razeira sign as a witness (which she did as a good sport even though she didn't really want to be involved in our crazy scheme).  Then, following the steps we'd seen in the movie, we sterlized our needle with flame (and alcohol), used an ice cube (well, ice pack, really) to numb the ear, cut up an apple to "catch" the needle on the other side, and got the earrings ready to go.  Oh, but first Hermana Haymond selected some theme music, "Humble Way" from Saturday's Warrior.  And then we were ready to go!  Wahoo!!!!

So it turns out that the movie wasn't quite as accurate as we would have liked.  (You know, we think we are all educated and informed because we've seen things on TV and in movies and then it all turns out not to be real at all - what is that even about???)  It was SUPER HARD to try to get the needle through her earlobe.  We had to keep restarting the theme music and stuff.  Hermana Call was filming and I think the first ear took like five minutes or something to do.  The apple was totally useless, so we ditched it after about one second.  Then I tried with the needle for a minute or so, until Hermana Call suggested I just push the earring straight through, since then I wouldn't have to try to replace the needle with the earring.  So that's what I ended up doing.  And finally the first ear was done!  And Hermana Haymond didn't even scream at all.  She said it didn't even really hurt.

Well, we expected the second ear to be a little easier, since we had the technique down and everything by then, but it actually took us longer than the first!  Like seven minutes or something.  At the end, Hermana Call cued up the Hallelujah Chorus.  But then Hermana Haymond had earrings!  And she liked the way they turned out, so I was relieved.

So if any of you need an ear piercing after I get home, I'm pretty much a professional now.  Though the contract did come in handy later when Hermana Haymond's piercings got a little infected....  She took them out for now  to get rid of the infection, but says that she will have them redone once she is home, because she did like having earrings.  I think for sure we wouldn't have to worry about infection if we'd been a little more sure about the quality of the earrings and maybe a thicker needle....

Anyway, that was our crazy P-Day a few weeks ago.  I know you can probably believe though that I wouldn't say it was the craziest P-Day I have had.  Just the most experimental!

Lovelovelove you all,

Herman

Prayer. It Works. (December 9, 2013)

Hello Everyone!

Guess what?  We found out that there are two ELDERS coming to Hualqui next transfer.  Crazy.  I have always liked having elders and hermanas in my sectors, though, so it will be good for Hualqui to have both.  Most of the priesthood holders in Hualqui work "afuera" (at least a half hour drive away from Hualqui) and get home pretty late, so it will be nice to have priesthood available all the time, at the very least.

I don't really know what to say about this week.  It was hot outside a couple days.  When it gets really miserable and hot I try to remind myself that last summer in Chillán was MUCH hotter.  But I think I have blocked those memories out, because sometimes it seems impossible that I could be any more uncomfortable.  We're all getting tan and my hair keeps getting more and more blonde.  I hate that part.

But there are flowers everywhere and lots of trees and it is really still impossible for me to believe that it is December.  Christmas just looks so funny in the summertime!

So besides it being hot and everyone giving us ice cream for dessert at lunch (no complaints here!), the main thing that happened this week is I learned some things about prayer.  Mostly that it works.  I mean, I knew that before.  But I just experienced it differently this week, I guess.

The truth is that I have never been real great at prayer.  Before the mission I almost never had a real consistent habit of doing personal prayers, I would get anxiety when I had to pray in public, I usually didn't recognize personal revelation for what it was, and I didn't know how to turn my prayers into something very real.  But throughout my mission, I have felt strongly that one thing I needed to learn to do here was pray.  I still struggle with it a lot, and I have to really concentrate on it and make a concerted effort, but I am starting to notice a difference.

One of the struggles I have had with prayer in the past is that I didn't feel like I very often received answers.  Or at least, I didn't know how to recognize them.  I am learning that this is because 1. I have a wild imagination and so anything less than a grand gesture (which, as we know, is not the general format for answers to prayers) is generally lost on me, and 2. I have a tendency to overthink things, so I would manage to talk myself out of the answers I received or rationalize them as being my own thoughts or desires.

So throughout the mission I have tried to improve my prayers and to be more attentive to personal revelation, though I have not always had much success and at times I have been frustrated and felt alone and unanswered, after such experiences my "prayer cycle" would sink back down into its "vain repetition" phase.  But there have been a few times when I have been able to break through those barriers and feel that my prayers were sincere and honest and that I could be at peace through having received an answer - or at least knowing that one would come.

This week I had two cool experiences with prayer - neither of them miraculous angels-descending-from-heaven-to-beat-you-over-the-head-with-the-answer experiences, but miraculous and special in their own way.

First of all, one day we were out working and we ran into one of our investigators, whom we hadn't seen in a while.  She is the daughter of a menos activa and takes care of her two little siblings while her mom works.  So we saw her out in the street and when we went to talk to her we found out that her little brother (who's about four years old) had gone missing and that she was waiting for the police to come and help her look for him.  We offered our help as well and started scouring the neighborhood for a little boy in green camoflauge sneakers, asking all the little kids if they knew him or had seen him.  After a few minutes of searching, we remembered that we had told Andrea that we would pray and that we had not yet done so.  So we stopped there in the street and said a quick prayer and then completed our rounds of the población, with no luck finding the little guy.  We went back to Andrea's house to see if the carabineros had arrived yet and no one was there.  I wanted to call, but I didn't want to interrupt if maybe she was giving a police report or something, so we decided to keep working and keep our eyes open for little Vicente.  Then a few minutes later, down the street walks Andrea with Vicente by her side.  She and the carabineros had managed to find him just a few blocks away from home.  We were so grateful that our prayer had been answered.

The other experience I had was one that blessed me greatly.  Many times throughout my mission I had been invited to ask Heavenly Father a specific question about how He feels about my missionary service.  And though I had done it before, I had never really felt that I had received an answer, so I just didn't really bother to keep asking.  Well, this week in an interview with President Arrington  he challenged me to do it and he looked me straight in the eyes (darn mission presidents that just look right into your soul) and made me commit to do it in every personal prayer until I got an answer.  So I said I would do it, though I didn't have a lot of faith in the experiment.

Over the next couple of days I tried really hard to take President Arrington's challenge seriously, and I would try to wait and "listen" for a response after I prayed, but I still didn't really feel any different than before.  But I said I would do it, so I kept doing it, and hoped that someday the answer would come.

Well, Thursday morning I started thinking a lot about Hermana Snyder.  Worrying about her, really, and I wanted to know how she was doing.  But as she isn't in my zone or my sister training group, I don't really communicate with her on a real regular basis.  A quick email once in a while and sometimes we see each other in the office on P-days, but that's it.   We aren't really supposed to call other hermanas just to chat, but I just felt so strongly that I should and I just couldn't ignore it.  I just kept thinking about her and wanting to talk to her and so after lunch I decided I was just going to try to get a hold of her.  By complete luck, we had in our phone the number of the companionship of hermanas that lives in her same house, so I called Hermana Taylor and she had Hermana Snyder come talk to me.  And I was so glad that I did.  It turns out that she didn't really need anything from me - my "worrying" about her was just a way to get me to call her, I guess.  Because as we talked, she communicated things to me in a way that no one else could have done.  Only her personality and our relationship could have resulted in that conversation, and it was an answer to my prayers.  We are often taught that the Lord sometimes answers our prayers through other people, and so it was this day.  At first I was tempted not to call the experience an "answer," but the more I think about it and remember it and reflect on it, the more I realize that that is what it was.  God needed to use Hermana Snyder to tell me things that I wouldn't have been able to hear or understand in any other way.  And I am so very grateful.  To her and to Him.

This week I want to invite you all to take the opportunity to focus a little more on your prayers.  Talk sincerely and openly with Heavenly Father, and He WILL answer you.  Maybe not now, and maybe not in the way you think, but the answers will come.  I know because they have come to me.  And they are so special.  I know that God loves me very much, and I know that He loves all of you as well.  So talk to Him!

And how are we doing in the Book of Mormon?  I know those war chapters are a little tough, but we're getting down to the end of Alma - hooray!  This week I was excited to read about when Zerahemnah gets scalped by one of Captain Moroni's soldiers.  I don't know why, but I get a real kick out of that story every time.  Anyway, keep on reading!  You can do it - EVERY DAY!

Well, it's seriously time for me to go now.  I love you all and hope you are all very well and happy!  Talk to you again next week!

Lovelovelove,

Hermana B

Sed Agradecidos (December 2, 2013)

Happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday to all y'all!  Hope that your day of gratitude was just great.  We had a good old time out here in Hualqui.

On Wednesday it was Maria Graciela's birthday, and she had asked for pumpkin pie, which she hasn't had since she got back from her mission in DC two years ago.  And since her birthday so conveniently coincided with Thanksgiving, I was more than happy to make a "pumpkin" pie for her.  (Pumpkin does not exist here, so I had to use squash.  It worked, though.  I was even lucky enough to find a mesh strainer in the house which I was able to use to turn it into puree.)  She was very pleased, even though it wasn't very pretty.  (Guess what?  When the only thing you have to use as a pie pan is a silicone round cake pan your pie crust has a tendency to collapse in on itself and on the pie while it is baking.)  We stopped by her house for a bit to drop it off and eat some choripan (best thing ever!) and tell her happy birthday, of course.  She said that after we left they ate the pie and everyone loved it and her sister-in-law asked for the recipe.  I'm more than happy to give it to her.  I just don't know how good my Spanish translation skills are when it comes to recipes....

Thursday was Thanksgiving, of course, so I rolled out the remaining pie crust (cut open some grocery store bags and stuck it in between them and used the glass we use to dry silverware as a rolling pin) and poured in the leftover filling and made our pumpkin pie.  This time I got a little smarter, though, and placed the silicone baking dish inside a springform pan that we had in the house, and it didn't collapse on me!  Hermano Eric, our ward mission leader, brought us a lemon pie at correlation, and then at night we had our own little Thanksgiving "dinner."  Hermana Haymond and I had bought some slices of deli meat turkey at a negocio and some frozen pre-cut french fries, so with our turkey and potatoes and pumpkin pie we were totally set!  Hermana Call and Hermana Razeira donated to the feast as well.  We used Hermana Call's barbecue sauce to dip our fries in (along with mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup, and ají - which is hot sauce) and we all threw in a little of our junk food, so we also had some chocolate cupcakes, mini chocolate bars, Crystal Light-type juice that we found on one of the kitchen shelves (for making toasts, of course), M&M's, and mini Reese's cups.  It was awesome.  Probably better than real Thanksgiving.

And then on Friday we had a ward activity about gratitude.  At first all the members were confused about what it was and why they would want to come.  But we told them it would be like a Noche de Hogar and that there would be food.  So they came.  I basically duplicated the activity we did last year in Cordillera, where we made lists of things we were grateful for in certain categories, and then we played a "Do You Love Your Neighbor" type game, where someone would say something they had written on their list and everyone who also had that on their list had to stand up and switch chairs, but there was one chair short so there was always someone left standing in the middle.  It was a hit.  And we had a coloring table for the little kids where they could draw pictures of the things they were grateful for.  We hung them all up on the bulletin board and they look so cute!

Something else that happened this week is that we found another house to rent in Haulqui.  The assistants called Hermana Call a couple weeks ago and asked that we find another house (and quick!) because they are bringing another companionship of missionaries into Hualqui in this next transfer!  Whoa!  We all love the new house we found, though, so there may be some shuffling around houses once we know who's going to be here next transfer.

I barely remember the rest of the week, but those were the basic highlights.  We had many opportunities to give thanks, and it was fun.  How did it go last week with your gratitude commitment?  I hope you were able to recognize how much Heavenly Father loves you all as you thought about the things you are grateful for.

This week you have two commitments.  One:  Keep reading the Book of Mormon every day!!!!!!  Two:  Read, watch, or listen to one of the talks from this most recent General Conference.  It's been two months now since we heard them, and I know I am ready to review.  We are just barely getting our Conference Liahona here, though, and right now we only have it in Spanish, so it will be a real learning experience to read them until the English Liahona gets here!

Anyway, that's all for now.  Except to say that we have a Christmas tree in our house and we put it up on Friday!!!!  It doesn't have a stand, so we kind of had to improvise a little, and we haven't decorated it yet, but it's still awesome.  Hooray for Christmas!

Love you all.  Hope you have the best week!

Lovelovelove,

Herman

Suffer the Little Children (November 25, 2013)

Hi Again.

This week was children's week in Hualqui.  Or rather, children's weekend.  On Saturday Hermanas Call and Razeira had a baptism.  A 9-year-old boy named Juanito.  His great-aunt and uncle are members that live in Conce, and after his dad passed away recently they told him that if he got baptized he would be able to live with his father again in the next life.  So of course he wanted to get baptized!  He lives with his grandmother, who is very Catholic, and who supports him fully but was not interested in hearing the lessons for herself.  But we are VERY anti-baptizing-niños-solos (without their parents or other support) in this mission, because those sweet little kids just go inactive because there is no one to go to church with them.  All of my "hijas" have had to raise their right hand to the square and swear that they would never, ever teach or baptize niños solos.  But Juanito was really committed and really wanted to get baptized, and Hermana Call and Hermana Razeira could feel that the grandma would come around eventually, so she didn't want to tell Juanito he couldn't live with his dad after death just because his grandma didn't want to get baptized yet.  So they made arrangements for his grandma to go in and have an interview with a member of the bishopbric to give her consent and commit to make sure he is in church every week and that he can get to the activities and things.  And she is totally on board.  So Juanito got baptized on Saturday.  It was a really, really special baptism.  The Spirit was so strong there and you could definitely feel the presence of his dad and his other deceased family members supporting him, and you could feel how happy they were.  His grandma really felt the Spirit too.  I think she was even crying.  It was such a nice day.  Juanito is going to be an amazing missionary someday.

Then on Sunday we were treated with the annual Primary Presentation!  It was also very special, and full of that same special Spirit that we had felt in Juanito's baptism.  I loved the theme this year, "I Am a Child of God," and how all the songs and scriptures had to do with our relationship with our Heavenly Father and the plan that He has for His children and their families.

All the kids did really well on their "talks" and the music went pretty well, too.  There were a couple of kids who played the recorder, a cute family that sang "Families Can Be Together Forever," and for the grand finale, the BISHOPBRIC sang with the Primary kids on "Teach Me to Walk in the Light."  I thought that was genius.  If I was a Primary chorister I'd definitely try to get the bishopbric to sing with us for the Primary Program.  Something else really neat that they did was all the kids dressed kind of color-coordinated.  Everyone in white tops (or a white jacket or sweater or vest over a top of another color) and the boys had these royal blue bowties and the girls had blue hairbows.  And they all had a sticker that said, "Soy un hijo de Dios."  It was really cute.  I was really happy to get to see it.

Being Hermana Haymond's companion has been great because we just sing all the time.  In the house, in the streets, in the church, wherever we are.  It's been a real long time since I sang so much.  But we have tons of fun!

We are starting to get excited for Thanksgiving around here!  Right now our biggest concern is whether or not we will be able to make something that resembles pumpkin pie....  It will be my biggest Chilean baking challenge yet!  And then once Thanksgiving is over we are going to put up our Christmas tree!  Hooray!

But anyway, what are you all grateful for?  Your commitment this week (along with reading the Book of Mormon every day, of course - we're about halfway!) is to write a list or a letter or a blog or journal entry or email or a Facebook status or what-have-you about what you are grateful for.  Try to think outside the box and you will feel really blessed.  As the beloved hymn states, "Count your many blessings, see what God hath done."  For example, today I am grateful for copy machines, safety pins, a seat on the bus, the ability to read and write and type and spell (mostly), crazy coping mechanisms, alarm clocks, earplugs, and the good taste in music that they have at this ciber.

Anyway, that's all for now, folks.  Next week I'll report on whether the pumpkin pie turned out and fill all y'all in on another week in the life of the crazy Hualqui hermanas!

Hope you are all well and happy.  I love you all sooooo much!

Lovelovelove,

Hermana B

Holiday overload!

This is Danielle.  So, over the holidays I got WAAAAAY behind.  I'll be posting all of the letters that Jordanne has written since the end of November. Bad missionary Mamma that I am.  

Big new, though... we have a release date!  She will be leaving Chile on January 28th and should arrive in Salt Lake City sometime on the 29th.  Not much more time!!!  We'll be happy to have her back home.

OK... here come the letters.

Some Stuff That Happened

¡Hola mis seres queridos!

So I was chastised by my grandparents because apparently it slipped my mind to tell you all some vital statistics about my companion.

Hermana Haymond is from Santaquin, Utah (but she was born in Logan!), and she is now in her second cambio in the field.  She spent six weeks in the MTC in Mexico City and honestly it just freaks me out that our MTC experiences were so wildly different.  I keep trying to tell her stories about the MTC and the locations of things and the cafeteria food and things like that, but then I remember that she is not familiar with any of it.  It's just strange.

This week Hermana Lovell called me and asked if I was up for a two-day mini cambio with her.  Thursday afternoon, all day Friday, and then switch back Saturday morning.  I said I totally was!  She is going home in two weeks :( and so I was really glad to get a chance to do one more "mini" cambio with her.  She came to Hualqui and we had a great old time.  I always have so much fun with her, and she is an amazing missionary and really knows how to make you feel good about yourself (I think I have probably said that before).  She isn't trunky, but she is getting a little bit more loose-cannony as her departure date draws near.  It's funny.  She takes pictures of some pretty strange things, but how else is she going to be able to remember what Chile was really like?  On Saturday morning before we left we spent a few minutes doing a photo shoot of her in my huasa dress, since she doesn't have one.  It was great.

Sunday was the day of the elections, so we only had sacrament meeting.  That was kind of strange for us as missionaries.  But we used some of our "extra" time to make peanut butter cookies with mini M&M's and took some with us to the family giving us lunch.  We found out today that our favorite for Senator, Navarro, WON!  WAHOO!!!!!!  The President still isn't decided, but it has been narrowed down to two candidates (Michelle and Evelyn) and there will be a second round of elections in December, if I understand correctly.  This is my second Presidential election on the mission - the first in November of last year, when Obama was re-elected, and then this one.  It was interesting to see the differences.

Today some of our friends from the ward, Carlos and Maria Graciela, took us out to lunch.  It was awesome.  They are so good to us.  This ward is really amazing, and especially the members who work with us in the obra misional.  And Maria Graciela is one of my favorite people ever.  We normally aren't allowed to go to the mall, but they wanted to take us to a certain restaurant that is part of one of the malls here, so I called President and asked him if it was okay, and he said that it was.  But of course no shopping allowed!  There was one moment where I wished I could have gone shopping - there is a Gap in that mall.  But really I would have been more tempted just to go in and feel the Gap feeling and smell the Gap smell and unfold and refold some Gap clothes.  I know that doesn't sound very fun to any of you, but I worked at Old Navy for three years, so it would feel like home to me.

As fate would have it, several of my companions have been seriously under-educated in the film department.  If I quote something or am reminded of something I am often surprised by what they don't recognize.  It was really bad with Hermana Lyons.  Her movie list is so long.  Hermana Haymond's is shorter, but mostly because she just has different taste.  Isn't funny how Heavenly Father works?  They needed some serious film education, and so He gave them to me as companions so that I could help them out when we all run out of missionary time.  I knew I had this special "gift" of cinema madness for a reason!

Also today we went shopping at Líder (WalMart) instead of Jumbo and we got some American peanut butter and some more garlic pills (anti-flea!), so that was great.

All in all it has been another crazy but good week here in Hualqui and in the Misión Chile Concepción (the best mission in the world!).

How are we all doing on our Book of Mormon reading?  I am not necessarily getting BETTER at reading in Spanish, but I am still doing it!  Oh sea, reading in Spanish and pronouncing the words and stuff isn't that hard for me.  I just don't always get anything out of it....  But even if you are in my same boat, KEEP GOING!  The Lord will bless you for your efforts, even if you struggle to understand sometimes.  I know that I have seen that on the mission many times.

Well, it's time to go now.  I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Lovelovelove,

Hermana B

Boo!

This week was Halloween.  How much does that day rock?  I was Hermione.  Again.  Third year in a row, but as a missionary you have to accept that your Halloween costume choices are going to be pretty limited.  Though I did have a chocolate frog and the most amazing wand that Hermana Lyons and I found on the ground about two months ago.  I got pictures.  Hermana Lyons made an awesome costume out of a Post-it and her placa.  She was Hermana "Frandsen."  It will make more sense when you see the pictures.

So Halloween does exist in Chile, but it is kind of a newer thing, so not everyone celebrates it and a lot of people are frankly scared of it.  Several people asked us if it was true that Halloween is the devil's birthday and there were some religious groups hanging fliers up everywhere which warned people about the dangers of Halloween and invited them to come to church instead.  What a bummer.  Halloween has always been like my second-favorite holiday (Those of you viewers at home who guessed "birthday" as my favorite holiday just got TEN POINTS!), so I was just a little bummed that my Chilean friends were so wary of it.  But the Primary threw "The first annual spring party of the Hualqui ward," and it was a hit.

Then the day after Halloween was Day of the Dead or "All Saint's Day" or I don't know what they really call it here because I don't have a real Chilean calendar, but it was a holiday similar to Memorial Day and the cemetery (just about a block from our house and set in a little "valley" so you can see like all of it at once) was brimming with people.  And right outside the cemetery?  Brilliant entrepreneuers selling churros filled with manjar (totally overpriced or I would have bought one), those water-gun looky thingies that actually make bubbles, mote con huesillo, and flowers.  And baskets to put the flowers in.  Seriously, they are so smart.  Anyone who lived within a one-block radius had turned their house into a completo restaurant.  Next Memorial Day I'm totally setting up a snow cone stand right outside the local cemetery.  It's genius.  I'd sell mote con huesillo but I have a feeling it wouldn't be quite as popular as snow cones back in the states....  Bummer.

One day we counted all the dogs we saw.  169.  Just in case you were wondering.

And to finalize this lovely fall report (or spring if you are in Chile where the seasons are backward), today we had cambios.  Guess what?  I am going to be companions with yet another one of my "granddaughters!"  Totally weird, but I am staying in Hualqui and going to be finishing the training of the lovely Hermana Haymond!  Sad news.  No more Hermana Lyons.  She is going to Coihueco (super campo sector in my first zone in Chillán) to open a new sector with Hermana De Leon.  How funny is it that Hermana "Lions" and Hermana "Of Lions" are going to be companions?  We're totally cracking up over it.  Also they are separating me from the beloved Hermana Frandsen.  She got transferred back to Chillán (well, to Bulnes, but it is in the same zone as Lib so she'll see quite a bit of Chillán at any rate), is opening a sector, training, and she got made a sister training leader.  She's a bit overwhelmed, but I know she'll be great.  Also I will get less fat because nobody will sabotage my diet with homemade bread and Nutella cookies.  This week I'll eat so many vegetables.  I hear Hermana Haymond really likes them.

I am super sad to be losing two of the most awesome people in the world all in one day.  But I know Hermana Haymond will be a great companion.  And I love training.  You get extra time to do practices in companionship study and extra language study time.  I could use both of those things, and this is my fourth "hija," (Who is also my "nieta" since she was trained last cambio by Hermana Morán.  That "I'm My Own Grandpa" song is finally starting to make sense to me!) so you'd think I'd have some of those things figured out a little by now, but no such luck!

Something else.  When I was in the office today I saw a stack of manuals for the new missionaries coming tomorrow, but they were a different color from the "First Twelve Weeks" manual that I have been used to having, so I went over to check it out.  Turns out it's called "Adjusting to Missionary Life."  Wish they'd had that a year ago.  Maybe I'd be a little more well-adjusted....  Hahaha.  :)  Also now that I have long finished my training (and trained more than once) they have finally finished the "Stress Management" portion of the online training segments and come out with a "Twelve Weeks" manual for the trainer.  I am so ahead of/behind the curve on this whole new wave of missionary work thing.

Another thing.  Blonde jokes don't translate that well into Spanish, at least in Chile, because anyone who doesn't have black hair is "rubia" or "blonde."  It is very difficult to try to explain that when we say "rubia" in the joke, we refer to someone with hair the color of Hermana Frandsen's, not mine.  And as I tried to relate a blonde joke this week while we waited for lunch to start, I may or may not have (I did.) "inadvertently" told a little Chilean boy that blondes don't have a "cerebro."  Oops.  Hermana Frandsen may or may not have been (she was) a little upset with me for that one.

Here is the English translation of one of my favorite Spanish jokes.  Hope you haven't already heard it:

Why couldn't the Lamanites eat dinner?

Because the Nephites had the plates!!!!  :D

Okay folks, that's really all I have time for for now.  Love you all lots!

Your commitment this week may or may not be (it is) to keep reading the Book of Mormon EVERY DAY.  And report back!

Have the most fantastic of weeks!

Lovelovelove,

Herm(ione)an