Monday: We had our zone activity where we played water volleyball and mafia and games like that. Our zone is literally like a great big family. We in this zone are made up of Elders from Lota, Coronel and Camilo, and then the four hermanas from Arauco. We all get a long but just splendedly, and it reminds me of my first sector in Gorbea. The zone over there was also really unified and super fun, and its been one of my favorite cambios and sectors so far. Afterwards we ate completos, flippin sweet, and I got to sleep for an hour! We then went and visited... umm people. Hahaha I honestly don`t remember anything I``m sorry!
Tuesday we had our district meeting, which was really Chill. My district leader is Elder Bausserman from Virginia, and this is his first time as a district leader, and he`s knocking it out of the park. His old sector was in Los Angeles where an ex president of the mission was in the ward, and it seems like he did a number of capacitations with the missionarys over there. We played mafia again, which I think is THE best game missionarys can play. Its funny how racisim is a little bit of a joke here in Chile. Not just among the missionarys but the culture. People aren`t offended when you ask them where they`re from and stuff like that. It`s a breath of fresh air to be far away from "political correctness" and stuff like that. Anyways, back to the mission haha. We got some really cool contacts and visited a lot of less active familys. Something I`ve learned here in the mission is the importance of being an active participant in the church. Going inactive is just the worst thing. You miss out on so many blessings. And there`s a lot of people here who could use the blessings the church brings.
We also got stopped in the street by a young man who asked us if we were mormons. He told us he had been a member since he was 8 years old and that lately he had been feeling a lack of spiritual experiences in his life. More than anything he also remembered that the Elders who used to visit their family gave him a few priesthood blessings, and that he would like to recieve another one. Miracles! I really do love working with less actives. So we visited with him and invited him to come to church and he said he would!
Wednesday: Intercambio! Hermana McGreggor came over and she is just the freaking best. I saw her when she started the mission and it`s cool to see how much she`s grown. She`s a contacting machine, and we met a really cool family that have been experiencing a lot of death and saddness, and we were able to tell them about the hope and joy the restored gospel brings to familys and how it can help unify them and explain the purpose of our life.
Thursday: We took a bus down to curanilahue to help out some of the sisters with their sector. The investigators they had been focusing a lot on turned out to not progress and they ended up without hardly anyone to teach. We went on splits again and I and hermana Guibarra from Bolivia went a serchin´ for needy people. We met a few cool people and got a lot of good contacts. And I got to see Elder Sanchez again! He was in my first zone and we started the mission at the same time! He`s a zone leader now! Ugh, they just grow up so fast.
Friday: Not much happend friday. A very sweet old lady named Ema passed away thursday night and in Chile, the viewings are normally held in the houses. The husband of the sister asked me to sing, and so I stood in their livingroom and sang hymns while the visiters quietly conversed. It was kind of funny. Funny in the sense that it was uncomfortable.
Saturday: We went to the funeral of Ema, and I was again invited to sing in front of a crowd of about 150 people haha. Really awkward again, but I did it because the family is really special and they love the missionarys a lot. Hermana Ema was paralized from the earthquake in 2010 and although understood and was perfectly sound mentally, didn´t have the ability to do anything for herself. She was around 85 years old.
Afterwards we went and visited a couple of less active familys. Really, being less active is the worst! I also got to know a really cool lady that hermana Abalos and her old companion were visiting before, who said that she was looking for the one true church of God. This is something really rare and awesome! Satans lie here in South america is that all the churches are good and lead to Christ, no matter where you`re at. It`s just what people prefer. We as members of the church know that that is not true and that we need to complete covanants through god`s priesthood to be able to live in Gods presance again. So we invited her to pray and ask God if what we`re teaching is true.
Sunday: Yasser Sebastián who stopped us in the street on Tuesday came to church and recieved a blessing! He said that this is what he had been missing from the last few years of his life. He was taking pictures and audio and all kinds of stuff and sending them to his mom haha. Kind of funny. We also went back to some contacts we`d made and got to know Miguel! Miguel had been having doubts about the church that Christ established and what happend to it. Another miracle! I love when people actually think about things because if they thing long enough they`ll begin to realize that there was an apostasy. A period of time when revelations and prophets and priesthood power ceased to be. We explaind a bit and afterword he told us that that was the best and most clear explanation that he had ever heard, even from pastors in his church. That really stroked my ego haha.
No pictures again! I^M SORRY! I KEEP FORGETTING THE CABLE TO MY CAMERA BUT WHEN I SEND PICTURES BE SURE THAT YOU´LL BE GETTING A TON.
A bit of info:
The branch of Arauco has about 40-50 active members, but hundreds of less actives. We have a ward mission leader who just recently, about 2 months ago, returned from his mission in Mexico. Our branch president is Guierrmo Brand, (he served a mission in New York, in the gangster part with Queens and all those places, and speaks very gangster english). We have an awesome relief society that come with us to visit people often and a lot of love and support from the branch. Our sector inclues three little pueblitos that you can only reach by bus: Carampangue, Laraquete, and another one to the south, don`t remember como se llama. ALL of our money goes towards locomotion, taking buses and taxis to get to the outer hard to reach spots of our sector. The chapel is about 3-4 blocks from the beach. We`re literally right on the edge of the pacific ocean and Arauco is a well know tourist spot. The cheese here is famous. There`s quite a few returned missionarys in the ward, and the members are wonderful. We`re going to move our house soon to a sector a little safer and a lot closer to the main part of town. Curently we have to walk about 30-40 minutes to get to our house on time at the end of the day. Arauco has, I think 50,000 people, including all of the surrounding country.
Have a great week! I love you all so much!
Sister Ashlee Bowling
♥ from Chile!
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