Week #9

Hey everyone,

This week has been really great our zone set a goal to have 15 baptisms for the 25th of October, meaning that each companionship would have one.  We are really close with several investigators and have one who wants to be baptized and is preparing for this date.  We are so excited and I know that we can reach this goal with the help of the Lord.  We are working hard to get our investigator Victor ready for this day, because there are a lot of people here who get baptized and then never go back to church. So our goal is not really to get a lot of baptisms, but to help people to get their own testimony and a strong relationship with the Lord, so they can grow strong in the gospel.  Because of this on the 25th, we had blue day where our whole zone wore blue and we had to contact every person and house with blue.  The houses are really colorful here so we did a lot of contacting that day.  We are having a red day on Wednesday as well.  This has been a fun thing to do, because it helps us to work hard to go more out of our way to contact everyone.

My Spanish is still not great, but I am finally starting to understand people here, where as before it was hard to distinguish single words out of the long strand of mumbled words people said.  I am so excited to be able to understand, and I know that I have had a lot of help from the Lord.  It is so cool because the Lord helps me to understand, whenever it is something important. And I can always speak when I need to in lessons, whereas I cant speak very much outside of lessons. The gift of tongues is definitely real. I have seen it first hand and it is amazing.

This week has been a little difficult because we have had some hard days were we haven’t gotten into hardly any houses and everything that could possibly go wrong has. But it is amazing to see, because it is these times that we remind each other that we just have to work harder and as we do we have seen some real miracles with finding new people to teach and great lessons with our investigators.  Sometimes the Lord tests us in order to build us up for something great.  It has been the days that have been the hardest and that I have struggled the most that I have grown the most.  I know that the Lord allows us to have hard times in order to help us grow.

This week we taught Victor twice. The frist lesson he accepted a baptismal date of the 25th and the second he agreed to keep the word of wisdom. He drinks and smokes so this is a really hard thing for him and we were really nervous that he wouldn’t want to, but he says he knows that this church his true and he has faith that the Lord will help him.  Please pray for him as we continue to work with him and help him to quit smoking.

Jacqueline couldn’t come to church this week because she didn’t feel good and she cancelled our lesson. We are really praying hard that we will be able to teach her this week.

We are teaching a new Jacqueline as well.  We found her one day while contacting and taught her a short lesson.  She lost her job and her boyfriend left her the other day and she has called us almost everday since. Because she is really struggling and just wants to talk to someone.  She has a desire to learn more about the gospel and we are really excited to teach her.

We are teaching another person as well named Eugenia, who my companion was teaching before. She has been out of town while I have been here.  She seems to have a lot of interest and I think that here husband does as well, because he joined in a little bit although he didn’t stay there for the whole lesson.  I am excited to get to know her and teach her.

One more thing about Chile. We have huge lunches here and they always give us so much food that I don’t even know what to do with, but we have to just eat slowly and try to eat a good portion as not to offend them. If you don’t eat a lot then they think you don’t like it.  For example we had this lunch the other day where we first got a plate full of fries and mini empanadas.  It was really good, but by the end I was full, but the Hermana brought out two full pans of lasagna for the 6 missionaries there. We were only able to eat one and part of the pan to make it look like we liked it. But I have never been so full in my life and after that we still had dessert.  It is crazy how much food they try to give us here.

Now to answer your questions:

*P-days in the morning we clean first usually for an hour. But our house is really dirty from previous missionaries, so sometimes we spend a lot more time than that.

Then we have until 6 to do whatever: email home, get groceries, and sometimes we have activities with our zones.  Like today we played handball and next week we are going paintballing!  I cant wait.  At 6 we go back to work just like we would on a normal day.

*I got the package today but I haven’t received any letters.

*Yes I get called barbie a lot by everyone here.

*When we first meet people and teach them for the first time we basically just ask questions to get to know them and go from there.  We just follow the spirit and every lesson is different.

*I saw a little bit of womens conference at a members house, in Spanish. It was weird though because they just turn up the background music during the songs because they don’t have them in Spanish. It was weird, but we will get to see it in English! Saturday morning, along with the rest of conference in our stake center.  I am so excited because they always show it in English in one of the rooms for the missionaries. We are really looking forward to Saturday and Sunday to be able to hear from the prophets. I am so excited for something to finally be in English!

Well I love you all so much, talk to you next week!

Hermana Stringham 

Dresses they wear to dance
their national dance the "cueca".