En el Fundo

So I have no time again! But really quick, this week.....

Part of my tooth fell out! So I`m going to the dentist today to make sure it`s all okay. I was eatting goldfish crackers when I bit down on something hard. Turns out one of the pointy bits of one of my back molars fell off. Hmmmm... 

One of the things I`d love to hear about from all of you returned missionarys is, what are some of your ideas to work well with the members? We have goals to have a certain number of lessons with members, but it`s a little hard because they don`t seem to be that enthused. What are some of the things you guys did in your missions to work together and help your investigators feel comfortable enought to come to church?

Dad, one thing I`ve started doing is singing " I love yooou! What more can I say? Believe me, there`s no other waaay." Haha my companion one day told me " I loove you" and it made me think of you and all the silly songs you sing. 

One of the things the mission has changed about me is that I am starting to LIKE talking to compleate strangers. It`s pretty crazy. But you never know who the lord is prepairing to find us. Gotta baptize them all! 

Love you guys! Have a great week! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HOLLAND I HAVE A LETTER I`M GOING TO SEND YOU =DDD

-- 

Sister Ashlee Bowling

♥ from Chile!

♥¡¡TEMUCO!!♥

So I`ve got quite a bit of news: I am getting transfered! I was only in Tolhuaca for 6 weeks! Our district leader called us Saturday night and told us he had a suprise for us. We were going to know our transfers 3 days early!!! With presidente Wilhelm, we got told the tranfers Monday and had to leave for our new areas Tuesday Morning, but with Presidente May we get to know Saturday night! Its a lot better in a lot of ways because we get the chance to tell all the members and wish them well, but it`s also a little hard because it`s the only thing I`ve thought about since. My new sector is called Fundo de Carmen in the zone Temuco Ñielol. I`ll be working right outside the big city! Not only am I leaving after only one transfer, but I`m going to train a new missionary! My new companion is Hermana Lopez from Peru. It`s crazy how fast time moves. Two days ago I compleated 7 months in the mission!

So Sunday in the morning I was feeling pretty down. We hadn`t had that much success with our investigators. Nobody had really progressed or accepted the gospel like we hoped for. I was feeling pretty down and wondering why I had even come to Victoria if we hadn`t had very much progress. So we got all ready to get to church, called all the people we had invited to come and headed off to the chapel. We got in, got started, and right as presidente gave the opening remarks, ALL 4 OF THE FAMILY WE INVITED WALKED IN!!!!! We`ve been teaching a guy named Fidel, right? He almost got baptized but didn`t pass his interview. But he lives with his grandson, Jhonny, and his girlfriend Nelly, who have a boy Juaquinn together. Nelly recently started reading the book of mormon and loves it! They`re super super special, especially because when Hermana Lobos with her trainer found them, Jhonny wanted nothing to do with us. But in these past 6 weeks he`s started to listen to us a little more and stick around and talk with us. We had invited them to come to church twice in a row but both times something happened that kept them from coming. We invited them one last time, knowing that if they didn`t come we`d have to stop teaching them. In the house next to Fidel lives his daughter Alejandra with her son, Diego. Diego also came to church! This kid is a freaking genius. And he wants to get baptized! We`ve been trying our best to help him come to church, but last week he and his mom moved from their house in the country to live next to Fidel. MIRACLES!!!! We visted Jhonny and Nelly in the evening after church, and Jhonny LOVED the church! He is very anti religion, but he straight up told us that he wants to be baptized in our church and is planning on always coming. It is a pure miracle. They`re not married (freaking Chile) but unlike other unmarried people I`ve taught, they want to get married, only that they`re waiting for a free house that Chile will give them because Nelly is a single mom. The end of September they were planning on getting married anyways. And so Hermana Lobos is going to work her best to keep them on track so that when they`re living the law of chastity everything else is ready for them. I`m sooo sad to leave such wonderful people, but at the same time so greatful that Heavenly Father gave me the chance to see his work progress. This transfer was the hardest of my mission so far, but Hermana Lobos and I have grown to be best friends and work our butts off to see people accept the wonderful changes the Gospel brings.

Thank you so much for you love and support! ¡Exito!

Sister Ashlee Bowling
♥ from Chile!

Semana Celestial

So this week was a HUGE week of learning for me. We had two intercambios which means that I stayed in my sector, and a missionary in a different sector came to my area for the day. It`s such an unexplainable phenomenon, but you learn SO much when you`re with other missionaries. 

It`s been raining like crazy here, but I honestly love it so much because the rain brings so many miracles. We found a ton of new people to teach this week and Hermana Lobos and I have really started to be on the same page. She`s an amazing companion and I love her to death. She`s loca, always cracking a joke, always messing around in some way and it keeps things fresh.

Next week is cambios, so I`ll let you all know if I`m staying in Victoria or not and who will be my companion. The last time we had a new mission presidente, the first cambio was absolutely crazy, so with our new president May, nobody has any idea what to expect. Wish me luck! Love you all bunches! 


Sister Ashlee Bowling
♥ from Chile!

Fast Time In Chile

Not much to tell about this week. We got invited to a disco by the family of an investigator. Haha that was pretty cool. A disco here means that they put a big metal disc over a fire and fill it full of chicken, steak, ham, and oysters with white wine and peppers and onions. It was suuuuuuppppper delicious. 

We also had our zone activity this week, with a relay race against the zone in Victoria. We almost won, but one of the activitys was to walk with an spoon in your mouth with an egg to the end of the basketball court where we were playing outside the chruch. One companionship of elders finished their part of the relay, and when they went to tag the other hermanas, he ran into her and made the egg fall, which was hilarious. 

It rained almost every day this week, and it even hailed at one point! One of the members bought us rain coats on the internet, which was the nicest thing ever. 

How´s summer vacation? What is everyone doing with their free time? Let me know how everything goes in Bicknell! 

Sister Ashlee Bowling
♥ from Chile

My Zone

My district

We were invited to a "disco"

¡La! ¡Laaaa! ¡La mejor zonaaa!

So here´s a cool story that happened. Yesterday I woke up with a monster headache and a really bad cough. To top things off it was raining. But we still went out to work. First we went to visit our investigator Fidel, who is going to be baptized this week! We went with him to church, and he´s super ready! then throughout the day, although I wasn´t feeling 100%, we kept working and visited all the people we had scheduled to see. Even though the day was super normal, I felt awesome. I´m starting to actually, really truly love the mission. Even when I have a cold, I´d rather be out in the rain and cold working than sitting in the house. But right now during this time of the year, it gets dark really early, around 6 in the evening. It was getting pretty cold and Hermana Lobos wasn´t feeling good either, and we had already visited all our apointments, and so we decided we would go home about 15 minutes early. As we were walking, we felt we should knock one more house. And so we did, and a middle aged man answered, and we had waved hi at him earlier that day! He told us to come on in, and we shared a little bit about oursevles and our beliefs, and they are awesome! At the last minute we found amazing people to start teaching! Heavenly Father will always test us but if we past the test and are steadfast and immovible, the law irrevocably decreed in heaven demands that we recieve blessings for our faithfulness! It really lifted our spirits a lot and we ended up having an awesome week!

Me and Hermana Lobos are doing awesome! We´re getting along super well and are trying to improve a lot. It´s hard becuase we both have less than 6 months in the mission (I have 6 months two weeks but the first 6 weeks were in the MTC), and so we really in a lot of ways have no idea what we´re doing. It´s a little bit hard, because Hermana Lobos has kind of an obidience problem. It´s nothing gigantic or difficult to deal with, but it makes me feel really responsible for everything we do, since I am the senior companion. So I´m trying to do my best to help us improve and be obediente without being commanding. Every week I love the mission more.

Thanks so much for everything you´re all doing for the church and for writing and supporting me! Love you all! ¡Hasta la próxima!

Sister Ashlee Bowling
♥ from Chile!

Happy 4th of July!!!

Hello everybody! This week we`ve been able to see a ton of miracles, but the biggest miracle of all is that I haven`t frozen stiff in the street. It is freezing here! One of the members told us that it was -4º (celcius) the other day. It`s really incresed the ferventness of my prayers to enter into a house.

I forgot my camera, but we had a ton of cool stuff happen this week. We`ve been trying to do things different than just knocking on doors, and so we`ve been trying to find ways of serving people and being more than a tape recording that we have "a special message to share with you." only the most chosen of the chosen want to listen to someone share a message así. So on Saturday we went early in the morning to the house of a memeber, who taught us how to make sopaipillas. we went into the center of Victoria with pamphlets and pass along cards and gave out the sopaipillas for free and contacted. It was super fun haha. We sung hymns, and there was also a stand of Jejovas witnesses to our right. It was really cold that morning and so we went over and gave them some of our treats and a pamphlet. They were super friendly actually haha. But it was cool to look through their pamphlets briefly. Something that I noticed is that every single one of the things we pass out has an image of Jesus Christ. Every point of our beliefs, what we talk about, what we have in the church is centered on Christ. But the pamphlets of the Jehovas witnesses talk about, I don`t know, nothing to do with Christ. One pamphlet talked about the origin of life and had a scientific timeline of the evolution of man and all kinds of random stuff. I don`t know, it`s kind of cool that that`s what they talk about in their church, but it was a testimony builder to me to see how our church really is so focused in the ultimate and most important truths. Everything else just falls into place.

We have quite a few people who are progressing wonderfully and we`re working really hard to be the best missionaries we can be. thanks so much for your prayers and help and emails. Love you all bunches!

Sister Ashlee Bowling
♥ from Chile!

I'm super white!

Sooo..... I`m officially here in Victoria! My sector is called Tolhuaca but I`m working in the actual down town part of Victoria. It`s pretty small, maybe like Richfield, but I love it a lot! It sure is a lot bigger than Gorbea! We actually have a grocery store! I`m also closer to the Andies, and so even though I`m a little bit more north, it`s a LOT colder! Our zone is also tiny! We have only 10 missionaries, again! The zones in San Pedro and Los Angeles have over 26 missionaries easily. I just I`ll always just be a small town girl.

My companion is Hermana Lobos from Buenes Aires, Argentina! Another Argentinian! Which is really funny, becuase the US lost to Argentina on Wednesday, but Chile won the Coupa de America Sur against Argentina AGAIN on Sunday! WOO!! So we had a great time in the house, with the 3 of us rooting for Chile and poor Hermana Lobos. The house is much more lively here in Victoria than it was in Gorbea; Hermana Lobos is a hoot. She`s always cracking jokes and lightening the mood, but she knows a TON about the scriptures. It`s really cool to teach with her. Her family and her are converts of about 6 years ago, they`re pretty much the golden family every missionary hopes for. They`re all active in the church and have callings, and the dad is even working for the church constructing chapels. The other Hermanas in the house are Hermana Fres from Santiago and Hermana J. Silva from Brazil! So i`m the only white girl in the house! Woo!

We have a bunch of incredible investigators that Hermana Lobos has helped to prepare. We`ve got a family of 4 that are progressing incredibly. The only thing they need is to get married: the trial of Chile. We`re working really hard to help them resolve the doubts they have. The dad, Louis, was married before but recently finalized his divorce, and he`s doesn`t want the same thing to happen again. But it`s good because the members here are absolutely incredible! The presidente of the rama is a super spiritual guy and a hard worker, and is very dis-positioned to help us out. So we`re going to try to have a lesson with him and Louis this week.

I`m starting to actually love the mission! It`s such a fun adventure to be here in a new place. I feel the responsibilities I have even more now that I`m the senior companion for the first time. It`s been a really cool experience, but even better because Hermana Lobos is super capa. I wish you all the best and love you all!

Sister Ashlee Bowling
♥ from Chile!

I saw Hermana Kleinman in Temuco!! 

Volcanos we can see from our sector.

Hermana Fres, Hermana Lobos, Hermana J. Silva, and me =D