Getting Colder

Hello everybody! This week in the life of Ashlee down south, we´ll watch as she struggles to fight the absolutly freezing temperatures that are starting to plague her, teach with the spirit when she still has no idea whats going on, and all around just have an honestly awesome time.

This week for me was definatly a week of diligence. At first I thought my problem was a lack of more patience. I hate being told what to do. Haha mom and dad, you guys know this very well. Most of the time I have great intentions. I want to be exactly obedient. But sometimes I get a little chueca (disobidient). One day I quit excersizing 10 minutes early, and was sitting in our room eatting cereal with yogurt (delicious!) when my companion came in and told me that I should be excersizing the full 30 minutes. Not gonna lie, this rubbed me the wrong way. Hermana Flores is very unafraid to say exactly what she´s thinking. My problem is that when someone tells me what I should be doing, even if I know its good and I should be doing it, I immediatly get rebelious. You can´t tell me what to do! Haha it´s a problem for sure. Things like this were happening the whole week and I was getting pretty annoyed, when finally I heard my companion talking with our district leader. He asked, what christlike characteristic would discribe this week? She answered, diligence. And as I thought about it, yeah, that´s really what my problem is. It´s not that I need more patience to do deal with my companion. I need more obedience! Why get annoyed, when all she´s trying to do is help me. Really, she is so awesome and teaches with such a powerful spirit. I want to be able to teach like that, and the secret is living worthily of having the spirit constantly. Her and I really do get along really good, and even better now that I´ve figured out this problem. Haha, a great week!

We didn´t find Pablo, which was disapointing, but we saw a ton of other miracles too. Everything, every little contact and moment in our missions is a part of God´s plan, and I know that even if Pablo doesn´t progress or get baptized while I´m here, I played my part in God´s plan for Pablo, and I did what the Lord wanted me to do.

We have an awesome investigator named Julia. She is the sweetest! She´s 12, but she has an awesome testimony and is coming to church and activities and reading and praying on her own! The only problem was her mom. When her mom was 19, she already had two kids, but was taught by elders and made the decision to be baptized. However, she has no testimony or understanding of the church, and was super apprehensive to accept a date for baptism for Julia. Finally, this past week, we had a super intense lesson with her, explaining that Julia needs her mom´s example to really be able to make this actual change in her life. We pleaded with her to go to church, learn more about the gospel, and accept a baptismal date for Julia. And she did!! Julia is getting baptized the 23rd of April!!!! Can´t wait to see whats going to happen!

We also are teaching a super cool family. They´re some of the most well of people I´ve seen in Gorbea. Their house is huge, and Gorge has a ps3 that he´s playing Minecraft on. It was the best day of my life to walk in and see minecraft again. I´m feeling deja vu. Did I already tell you guys about them? Maybe, but they´re so cool it´s worth writing about twice. We´re working with them to get them to attend church. They have a car and so it makes it waaaaay easier.

Have a great week everybody!!! I love you all and your letters! Even if you´ve got nothing to say, just write something! It lifts my spirits so much to see your emails every week =) Love you!!


Sister Ashlee Bowling
♥ from Chile!

Note from Karen: I'm not correcting her spelling because I think it's fun to see how spelling devolves as her spanish gets stronger.