It´s my birthday! Im the luckiest to have my birthday on a pday. I
will write more later when I´ve read all of your letters, but it´s been great so
far! Correo de Chile has been under strike for a month now, so I only got
the package from Kara, but that´s okay! I also haven´t been able to send
anything either. Literally NOTHING is going through.
I made sure to tell the entire world last week that my birthday was on
monday, so I got plenty of greetings and a few families invited us
over for cake. :)
I love you all so much! Mom, stop telling people to write me short
things- I print out the emails so I have all the time in the world to read them.
Haha. ;)
LOve you!
CATRON (22 years old)!!!
will write more later when I´ve read all of your letters, but it´s been great so
far! Correo de Chile has been under strike for a month now, so I only got
the package from Kara, but that´s okay! I also haven´t been able to send
anything either. Literally NOTHING is going through.
I made sure to tell the entire world last week that my birthday was on
monday, so I got plenty of greetings and a few families invited us
over for cake. :)
I love you all so much! Mom, stop telling people to write me short
things- I print out the emails so I have all the time in the world to read them.
Haha. ;)
LOve you!
CATRON (22 years old)!!!
Trying real hard to get you all pictures but the memory card is the worst.
We had a conference with Elder Viñas! It was kind of like a giant
palo, but it was way cool! It was a palo because it has been hard for a
lot of missionaries to change to the new vision of the President. Not that
it´s SO different, but it´s different enough that many people struggled.
I am adapting to the new vision. From President Bruce we learned to
have a passion for what we are doing. The ONLY correct answers to the
question ¨Why are you here?¨ was ¨to baptize¨or ¨to save souls.¨ We all thought
of baptizing, dreamed of baptizing, everything. We loved it and we were
happy. However, now we are learning to be a lot more humble. No more
Top 10, no more banana bread for the top missionaries of the month etc.
Haha. But it has been a great experience for us. Elder Viñas
talked a lot about being humble and about how it´s not US that´s doing the
baptizing, but the Lord who is allowing us to pariticipate in the baptism.
We talked a lot about the Doctrine of Christ which was way
good.
We have a lot of really good investigators right now, but we´re struggling
to help them progress. We got an awesome reference from my old DL in
Copiapó of a girl that I actually met when I was there at a baptism and she is
great! Her name is Majo (Maria Jose) and she went to church with us on
Sunday! It was a little rough though because the bishop took
the entire sacrament meeting and it was a little bit like another church that I
won´t mention by name that ¨helps¨ their congregation ¨feel the spirit¨ through
jumping and yelling and fear. Not that he did any of that, but it was
rough times for everyone. We had a couple families that were supposed to
go and I ended up being very okay that they didn´t hear that sermon.
We ate lunch in the ¨Southern gardens¨ (the most cuico part of the city)
and afterwards the hermana gave us a tour of the gardens (huge houses) and we
saw the mission home! It was crazy. That hermana is way cool because
she is a lawyer for the chilean army. She showed us all her suits and
everything. She´s just like Tom Hanks in that one movie. I can´t
remember the name now.
Our stake president is an amazing person. He lives in our ward and is
a surgeon. Nuñez told me a story that I loved. First, he always
says a prayer before every surgery with all the people that work with him.
But one time, as he was performing an extremely delicate and complicated
surgery of a woman who was pregnant, he stopped and said that the surgery had
gone past what he knew to do. He stopped everything for a moment, and
knelt down in the middle of the room and offered a prayer to seek guidance.
After the prayer, everything went 100% smoothly and both the baby and the
mother were fine. I was so touched by that story. He has a son who
has 100% left the church and it´s beliefs and so he and his wife work incredibly
hard in the church so they can qualify for all the blessings. They are an
incredibly humble family that I haven´t really gotten the chance to know yet,
but I can feel the spirit so strongly when they talk.
One of our friends got his call today and it was the cutest little
experience! He is the only active member in his family and just cried and
cried.
Today we went and played basketball with like 30 missionaries in
Antofagasta. It was super fun. Then I bought a skirt. Woohoo!
There is a TON of chilean merch right now because the national day is
coming up. There are some little girls dresses that are sooooo cute and I
want to buy one for my future daughter or something but I´m afraid to ask the
price. haha.
I love this gospel. I am in 3 Nephi right now and Jesus Christ is
about to come to the Americas!!!! Woohoo!
I love you all! Congratulations to everyone for all your awesome
news! Thank you so much for all the birthday wishess!
Catron
We had a conference with Elder Viñas! It was kind of like a giant
palo, but it was way cool! It was a palo because it has been hard for a
lot of missionaries to change to the new vision of the President. Not that
it´s SO different, but it´s different enough that many people struggled.
I am adapting to the new vision. From President Bruce we learned to
have a passion for what we are doing. The ONLY correct answers to the
question ¨Why are you here?¨ was ¨to baptize¨or ¨to save souls.¨ We all thought
of baptizing, dreamed of baptizing, everything. We loved it and we were
happy. However, now we are learning to be a lot more humble. No more
Top 10, no more banana bread for the top missionaries of the month etc.
Haha. But it has been a great experience for us. Elder Viñas
talked a lot about being humble and about how it´s not US that´s doing the
baptizing, but the Lord who is allowing us to pariticipate in the baptism.
We talked a lot about the Doctrine of Christ which was way
good.
We have a lot of really good investigators right now, but we´re struggling
to help them progress. We got an awesome reference from my old DL in
Copiapó of a girl that I actually met when I was there at a baptism and she is
great! Her name is Majo (Maria Jose) and she went to church with us on
Sunday! It was a little rough though because the bishop took
the entire sacrament meeting and it was a little bit like another church that I
won´t mention by name that ¨helps¨ their congregation ¨feel the spirit¨ through
jumping and yelling and fear. Not that he did any of that, but it was
rough times for everyone. We had a couple families that were supposed to
go and I ended up being very okay that they didn´t hear that sermon.
We ate lunch in the ¨Southern gardens¨ (the most cuico part of the city)
and afterwards the hermana gave us a tour of the gardens (huge houses) and we
saw the mission home! It was crazy. That hermana is way cool because
she is a lawyer for the chilean army. She showed us all her suits and
everything. She´s just like Tom Hanks in that one movie. I can´t
remember the name now.
Our stake president is an amazing person. He lives in our ward and is
a surgeon. Nuñez told me a story that I loved. First, he always
says a prayer before every surgery with all the people that work with him.
But one time, as he was performing an extremely delicate and complicated
surgery of a woman who was pregnant, he stopped and said that the surgery had
gone past what he knew to do. He stopped everything for a moment, and
knelt down in the middle of the room and offered a prayer to seek guidance.
After the prayer, everything went 100% smoothly and both the baby and the
mother were fine. I was so touched by that story. He has a son who
has 100% left the church and it´s beliefs and so he and his wife work incredibly
hard in the church so they can qualify for all the blessings. They are an
incredibly humble family that I haven´t really gotten the chance to know yet,
but I can feel the spirit so strongly when they talk.
One of our friends got his call today and it was the cutest little
experience! He is the only active member in his family and just cried and
cried.
Today we went and played basketball with like 30 missionaries in
Antofagasta. It was super fun. Then I bought a skirt. Woohoo!
There is a TON of chilean merch right now because the national day is
coming up. There are some little girls dresses that are sooooo cute and I
want to buy one for my future daughter or something but I´m afraid to ask the
price. haha.
I love this gospel. I am in 3 Nephi right now and Jesus Christ is
about to come to the Americas!!!! Woohoo!
I love you all! Congratulations to everyone for all your awesome
news! Thank you so much for all the birthday wishess!
Catron