No Title

Alright! So have I got the story to tell. I don´t know what I did right but we have been so blessed this week with just pure miracles. The following I wrote in my journal the other day:

We had been planning to visit the main teacher for English in the high school here for quite some time, but the appointments kept falling through, and honestly, I wasn´t that excited to teach her. She seemed not very interested and I wasnt dreading per say the lesson, but I was not excited about what I imagined would be an awkward encounter. What happened was that we went to the high school yesterday to teach the adult class, but they had cancelled. She, Valeria, couldn´t call us to tell us before because she didn´t have our number. We worked out all the logistics, but right before we left, my incredible companion asked when we could visit her. Valeria promptly answered that tomorrow would be good for her. So today, we went to Katy´s house (a member, super capa) so that she could come with us, and we walked the few blocks over to Valeria´s house. When we knocked, first a little boy answered, which suprised me. Then a man answered which suprised me even more. We asked for Valeria, and she did indeed live there, but had left some time ago and he didn´t know when she would come back. I was feeling pretty down about the whole situation, because like I mentioned before I didn´t really think she would be interetsed in listening. We were ready to go when the guy pointed and said ''hey, here she comes now!'' We looked up the sidewalk to see Valeria walking hand in hand with a little girl. My spirits picked up a bit and we were told to come in. Their house is beautiful!! I took note immediatly that the boyfriend, Manuel, was an awesome dad. Both the kids were his and he was very, haha American in his way of taking care of them. Valeria came to sit down and we chatted for a bit, and then everybody, all four of them, came to sit down and pulled up chairs and everything to listen. Sophia, the five year old sat in the lap of Valeria and Vincente on the floor by his dad. We talked for a bit and then Manuel said ''when Valeria told me you guys were coming, I honestly thought 'good. I want to raise my children on the principals of God'. The truth is that I want to have religion as a bigger part of my life.'' That pretty much set the tone for the whole lesson. After the opening prayer we asked if they had any questions and Manuel said without hesitation, ''yeah, basically, waht do you believe, how did your church start, do you believe in Christ? Things like that''. 

It was hard for me and my companion to not stare mouth agape. That NEVER happens. People NEVER are intersted like that from the git go. It was amazing. They´re honestly the most American/Utah family I´ve run into here in Chile. The kids are well behaved and you can just feel the unity they have. They need to get married obviously, which may prove to be a challenge, but they are so incredible. I one hundred percent burst into tears after the lesson. 

We saw a ton of miracles and the protection of the spirit incredibly strong this week. We found another family too, and they went to church and want to get baptized! I´m out of time to say everything right now but just that you all know, i´m doing awesome. Love you all! Have a good week!

Chile Concepcion South Mission

Castellon 1063, Oficina Sur

Concepcion

Bio-Bio

Chile

-- 

Sister Ashlee Bowling

♥ from Chile!

Two weeks in one

Sorry I didn`t write last week! We went to the bigger city up north for a medical appointment and so I only had about 30 minutes to write.

Suprise! I had a baptism this Saturday! His name is Manuel Sepulveda! He`s a little abolito and is just a great guy. So that was a good time. Not much to say about it, except that it was a really cool experience. His sister who is super catholic came to his baptism and said she really liked our way of baptizing. She came to church the next day too! So we`re going to start teaching her and hope that she`ll follow Manuel`s example!

So, I have some kind of weird sad news. Our golden investigator, Pablo from a few months back, I found out last week that he passed away in Santiago from cancer. It was kind of a horrifying shock. It made me realize how cynical I can be; the whole time we were calling and he wasn`t answering or would answer but wouldn`t come to his appointments with us, I was thinking he was purposly avoiding us and making up excuses when he said he was sick. It really made reflect on the lack of compasion I have, and that I don`t know the situation of these people. I have to hope for the best of them and think the best too. I really think the progress he made and the things Hermana Kleinman and me taught him will help him out.

We`ve been offering a lot more service lately! The other day we dug up the front yard of an office so that they could replant the grass. WOO!! Jeans and hats! It`s so fun to get the whole zone together *cough* ten people *cough* and help out the town like that. We`ve also started volunteering to teach english in the high school, and have been doing that for about two weeks. Good stuff. The kids are honestly little butt heads but it`s fun making fun of them.

I am not lying or exagurating when I say I loooooove the mission. I love my companion and my little town Gorbea and the people we`re teaching and the other missionaries and the ward members and everything. BUT. I have a problem that I have had my whole life; the grass is always greener problem. I had been enjoying the mission but not as much as I cuold have been, mostly because my mind was always thinking about the future. The next cambio, the next companion, when I get home, that`s when my life will REALLY start. ANd I expressed this sentimiento to my companion, who told me I should read The 4th Missionary. It talks about how a good missionary, a great missionary, can go home unchanged and dissapointed with their mission if they only are obidient to the rules with their might and strength but hold back their heart and mind. The simple trick is to stop thinking about home. I have not once been home sick on the mission. I really do love Chile and I can pretty easily adjust to new situations, but my thoughts of the future kept me from focusing on the now. I have a bad habit of counting time (for example, I have 146 days in the mission today). And this is another thing that`s really holding me back from forgetting myself and going to work. But this week, my attitude really changed. I started to be happier in the street. I started to look forward to knocking on doors late at night, becuase I`m here on the lords errand. I`m here doing the most important, sacred, concencrated work on the planet, and I flipping love it!

I love all of you guys and wish you the best! Have a great week!

Sister Ashlee Bowling
♥ from Chile!

I LOVE YOU ! I DONT HAVE ANY TIME BUT Yeah I`m loving the mission and you guys and Taylor and Holland and UGH! HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

Cambios! Otra Vez!

Soooooooooooo! I am still in Gorbea! I`ll have close to 5 months here by the end of this cambio, and if I end up staying for another on it`ll be close to 7 months. Not gonna lie, I don`t really want that to happen! Hahaha I love Gorbea but I want to see other parts of Chile too! One of the girls in our mission only has 3 areas. She spent 6 months in every single one. Noooo! But really, I know every cambio is super inspired. There`s obviously more that I can do here. There`s always something I can do. So this is an awesome opportunity to work here more and help out crazy Australian man. Really though he`s a great investigator. We also have a pretty secure baptism lined up for the 21st for a guy named Manuel. He can`t read, and so his progress is a little slow, but he really does have a good testimony of everything we`re teaching. I just want to make sure he`s ready, so it`s possible we`ll move back his date to the Saturday after.

My companion, Hermana Flores, is leaving for Lebu! Pacific Avenue! So she`s pretty excited for that. I really want to go to Lebu too. I hear it`s georgeous. My new companion will be Hermana Pintus from Argentina! I said one time to Hermana Kleinman how I wanted to be companions with her and here we are! Heavenly Father and I are pretty tight I guess.

So something crazy that happened. The other Hermanas had a baptism last Saturday for....................................................... a 96 year old woman! Hahahah! It was so cool! And there was a ton of opposition! The baptism was at 5, and we went to the church at 4 to start getting everything set up, when we looked in the font.... and nobody had come and started the water. It takes about 5 hours for the font to be full enough, and so we were absolutly freaking out. But we started the water anyways and started calling members that it wasn`t going to be at 5 and we were just chickens without heads. To add to that, the water was coming out brown with bugs and dirt and leaves and all kinds of stuff. So the other Hermanas jumped into the font to clean it out a little. But the miracle of the day was that the font filled up in about 2 hours, the water wasn`t suuper dirty, Maria (the 96 year old cutie) still wanted to get baptized, and everything worked out okay. Maria can`t bend her spine back, and so there were two men in the font to lower her down without bending her backward. And it all worked out great! She is seriously so cute. Hermana Curtis told me that when they taught her about Temples she started to cry and wish that she had known about the Gospel earlier. It really was a miracle.

Hermana Lockling finished her mission yesterday! It was hard to see her go but I learned a lot and know she`s going to have an awesome time. She also gave me a bunch of her clothes! So that was pretty sweet!

Love you all! Chao!

Sister Ashlee Bowling
♥ from Chile!

Australian Man??? part 2

So where was I. Basically this australian man started talking to me and it was an awesome time! It was good to talk in English! So we wrote down his phone number and everything and then right as I finished writing his number the bus came. It was so perfect, the timing of everything. We were meant to find him for sure. Especially with an extra week in and seeing how great he is. But yeah, we caught the bus to Quitratue and went to our cita. Raquel! She is so prepared and amazing! We had an awesome lesson with her! She´s 20 which is the crazy part to me. Its hard to imagine young people wanting to listen to us or thinking about religion at all, so it always takes me by plesant suprise to find youngins interested. But yeah, she says she´s been looking for a church to belong to and feels like this one is true! WHAAT? She´s so cool! And shes reading the book of mormon and the pamphlets! I´m freaking out because it´s so rare to talk to people who actually keep their promises and read what they said they would, but she´s doing it and you can really see her testamony growing! So that was super cool! And then something else cool happened but I don´t remember. I think we bought cupcakes or something. But yeah, it was an awesome day and such a testimony helper to me to see for myself that Heavenly Father is so aware of us. With every difficulty we´re going to get even more miracles. }

But yeah, this week was really cool because Gorbea opened up the plaza it had been constructing this week and there was a huge celebration! It´s cool how much history and tradition Chile has. Also we found a cat that looks just like Bucky! And I asked a stranger to take a picture of me on a bus! Awkward!

I love all of you and I wish you the best! Next week we find out cambios! I might leave Gorbea so I´ll let you all know next Monday!

Oh yeah, Benny is great because he´s very interested in Religions! He´s also coming to activities that we have in the church which is suppper cool. He has a lot of doubts but it´s fun to help him learn. He´s here for 5 months teaching English to middle schoolers, and so we don´t have very much time to talk before he goes back. Here´s hoping something happens!

Sister Ashlee Bowling
♥ from Chile!