Week 37

This week was absolutely wild and soo good!!!

ALSO....HAPYY BIRTHDAY TO REBECCA TOMORROW!!!  I love you so much Rebecca!!

I said goodbye to Hermana Canales this week and then had to stay in the bus terminal with the Elders for the rest of the evening.  Hermana Hyland got here super late so we got home and went to bed.  But the last few days have been so fun and we have worked so hard! Hermana Hyland is great!  She is from Sandy Utah and she was studying at BYU for a year and a half before the mission.  She graduated high school the same year as me and actually knows a lot of my friends. She is such a good person.  Kind, full of faith, and willing to work and learn.  The mission is really lucky to have her!  She has a great attitude, but like with all missionaries is a little frustrated with the language.   But she doesn’t let it stop her and we are working hard!  She is enjoying it here and isn’t too stressed.  But when there is stress we take care of it and keep going.  She is awesome!!

This week we put goals for our sector.  We felt like if we work really hard and have a lot of faith that in these next two transfers we can see several people accept baptism. So that’s what we are working for.  We want to help our investigators come to church every week.  We also put a goal for finding a lot of new people, but then after a few hours the Spirit helped me see you have to actually retain people.  Hahah that was kinda funny because we were just so pumped and then realized that was actually a bad goal.  This sector is so easy to find people.  If you contact 7 people, most of the time 6 of the 7 will tell you to come by.  Then out of those six, like 5 of them will keep sharing.  So the need right now isn’t really to find, because we have soo many people to work with we can’t really find time to teach them all.  So we are going to be focusing on retaining and helping them stay and progress.

But, even though we put goals, we realize that these represent people.  They represent our brothers and sisters who have real lives and real struggles and real problems, and they need the peace that comes from Jesus Christ.  That’s why we have put those goals, that’s why we are on missions, and that’s why we get up and work hard everyday!!  To help our brothers and sisters "find peace in this life and eternal life in the world to come".  I LOVE being a missionary.  There is absolutely nothing better!!!!!

Have a great week!  Keep reading the Book of Mormon everyday! I love you all!

--Hermana West

Week 36

Hey family.  Soooo I should probably get my life together and give you all a huge update hahah.  Sorry for the craziness.
We just got transfer calls last night and.... I'm going to train.....hahaha.  I’m pretty humbled.  I feel like I have lots of weaknesses but maybe that's why I get to have this opportunity--to force myself to improve hahah.  I know that she is going to be able to teach me more than I can probably help her.  But it is interesting to see how Heavenly Father prepares us.  This whole cambio I have felt like I might train and Heavenly Father has put people in my life to prepare me and given me experiences to prepare me.  We are just going to follow the Spirit, look to Christ, be obedient, and work hard!    Anyway...that's about it hahah.    Oh, she’s from Utah and her name is Hermana Highland!

Elder Christofferson came to speak to us along with Elder Bragg this week!  So we traveled to Puerto Montt for 5 hours on Friday and stayed with the Hermana Leaders, then the next morning got up super early and traveled to Puerto Varas for another 2 hours. And then after the conference we had to do it all again.  The mission has taught me to not love traveling hahahaha. 
But the conference was soooo good!!!  The whole mission traveled to be there. So it was really powerful.  But Elder Bragg talked about the importance of bringing people to church! Taking the Sacrament every week is SO important!  SO important.  That's probably one of the biggest things I've learned in the mission.  Elder Christofferson echoed the words of Elder Bragg and then gave us some other training on being missionaries, but among other things, he talked about love and faith.  We each need to have love.  Something he said that I loved was that "If your love for the people is sincere and the pure love of Christ, they are going to feel it, and they can’t deny it."  So really the only way to help people change, the only way to see any progression in anybody, is through love.  Then he spoke about how if we are working hard and doing our part we can leave it in the hands of God.  We have to recognize that He is God.  We are His children and we are in His hands.  Just do your part and put your trust in God.  That applies to all aspects of our lives. 

 The people here in Juan Soler are great!  We found a family of Colombianos through a miracle.  Elder Becerra and Elder Oliver were calling a menos activo and accidentally dialed the wrong number but ended up setting up an appointment with this family and then passing the reference to us.  They are goldennnnn!  I'm so excited to see what happens there!
We have one investigator with a baptismal date right now, named Fernanda.  She will be baptized on March 10th.  She is 11 years old and her mom is a menos activa.  Fernanda is so full of faith and she has lots of desires to learn about Christ.  We are trying to make sure she is really converted to the gospel before she gets baptized, so we might postpone her baptismal date depending on how we feel this week!  But she is so incredible!!  We are also visiting 4 other 11-year olds and we are going to start bringing them with us to the citas.  It will be great because they will have friends and they can be involved in helping others learn the gospel too!!  This group of 11-year olds are soooo golden!!!

Also, we have been working on changing houses for the past transfer because of a lot of reasons, but everything finally went through and we are going to change March first!  The weather here is getting cooler, but we still have days where we die of heat. 

Anyway, there’s my update!!!  I love you so much!!  Have a great week!
--Hermana West

Week 35

Hey fam!! This week was pretty great!!  We went to see penguins today so I don't have a ton of time to write (sorry).  But I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!!!  

Some exciting news that I think I forgot to mention...Elder Christofferson is coming to speak to all the mission on Saturday!! I'm so excited!!!

Hermana Canales was sick with the flu a few times this week so I had a lot of time to study!!!  I want to testify that the apostles and prophets are really called by Jesus Christ himself.  This is His church and he is still guiding it today!!  I'm really so sorry I don't have more time to write (there were a few complications but we saw lots of miracles this week).  Anyway, I love you all!!!!  I'm doing well and still praying for each of you everyday! Thanks for all you are doing!! Keep studying Christ and trying to become more like Him!!  He is the only way to lasting peace and joy.  Love you all!!  Talk to you next week!!

--Hermana West

Week 34

Helllooooo Family!!!

What a great week!!  We have had lots of good experiences.  We went and visited a really pretty waterfall this morning and I felt like I was in the jungle.  (plus its super hot and humid right now so that helped with the jungle feel) It was super fun!!  hahah buttt apart from it being superrrrrrrrr hot, we have had lots of great experiences like I just said.

This week we had interviews with president!  Afterward, he came to visit a house that we want to change to (there are some problems with our house situation right now).  Anyway, the lady who owns the house hasn't been to church for a looong time but she is a member.  While we were there we got an appointment with her for the next day....and....HER DAUGHTER WANTS TO BE BAPTIZED WHOOOHOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Im so happy!!!!  And on top of that, her mom, the menos activa, hasn't been to church for YEARS.  I asked her to pray at the end of the lesson.  She paused and stared at me and her daughter.  In my head I was thinking..."I know that look...shes going to say no and then we are going to make her promise to say it the next time".  But NO!!  To my surprise, she said bueno...but I don't know if I will remember how.  Then she said one of the most sincere prayers.  There is nothing like hearing someone speak with God after a lot of time.  At the end of the prayer, she was super emotional and smiling.  She told us that she hadn't said a single prayer for YEARS.  I leaped up and gave her the biggest hug!  I was sooo happy for her!!!!!!  Basically we have been seeing miracle after miracle!!  

Another cool experience we had was we were trackting and knocking doors when I randomly had the thought to visit a member from the ward.  We went and visited with her for a bit.  On top of it being a really spiritual experience, she was telling us about her son who isn't a member.  He is married to a lady who is less active and their daughter isn't a member.  I felt really strongly that we needed to get to know them, and turns out, they live in our sector!  She said they don't want to share with missionaries, but we are going to be sneaky and I'm just going to introduce me and my companion and we will just have a good interaction with them.  From there we will slowly start seeing them more and hopefully be able to share.  Anyway, the point is that we felt like we should visit them.  The next day, Sunday, we were eating lunch with a member from the ward.  I felt to share with her a scripture in Mosiah 27 about how  the prayers of Alma and others were heard and an angel visited Alma the younger and the other guys because of the prayers of his dad and others.  She then proceeded to tell us about her daughter that is less active and lives pretty close.  I felt really strongly that we needed to visit her.  After talking for awhile, we realized its the SAME lady that is married to the son of the member that we visited the other day.  The same family and I had no idea!  the spirit is incredible.  Apparently this family needs to be contacted right now and we are really excited to see what happens!!!  

Anyway, that's basically been my week!!!  i love you all so much and pray for you everyday!!!  Have an incredible week!!  I love you!

--Hermana West