Note from President Arrington

Dear Families of the Best Missionaries in the World,
 
We are so excited to be here in the Chile Concepcion Mission serving with your sons and daughters. We wanted to take a minute and introduce ourselves. We are Kent and Michele Arrington. Our home is in Clinton, Utah, a small town where we both grew up. We were blessed with two daughters and one son. They are all married and have blessed us with eight of the cutest grandchildren a grandparent could hope for. Kent was employed by the church, working in the temple department. We are so excited that a temple has been announced for here in Concepcion. It will be such a wonderful blessing to the members in this part of Chile.
 
We have had the opportunity to meet all of the missionaries serving in the Chile Concepcion Mission.  What an impressive group of young men and women! We have felt of their testimony and love for the Lord and for the people of Chile. They have welcomed us with open arms. We are very grateful for President and Sister Humphrey. They did a magnificent work. We are excited to carry on and to serve with your sons and daughters. We love them and pray for them.
We moved into our new mission office this week.  Please use this address now when sending packages or letters to your missionaries:
 
Mision Chile Concepcion
Castellón 1063 Oficina Norte 
Concepcion, Chile

President Arrington

I teach SEMINARY

First of thank you so much mom and dad for the examples you have been to me all my life. Because of you I have been able to see what blessings a family can have by being able to be sealed in the temple. Remember that awesome couple we are teaching? Well, I was able to share my testimony with them this week about how I have seen the blessings of having an eternal family and they decided that they want to have that in their life. I am just so blessed to be teaching them! They are seriously incredible. All of the ward members ask us about them and want to invite them to their FHE so that they can get to know them. They always want to know more about the gospel, and they told us how they just feel so much more joy in their lives ever since getting to know the gospel. I JUST LOVE IT SO MUCH!!!! The only downfall is that they probably won´t be able to get married til September, so I am way scared I won´t be here for it. I just want to stay in Chillancito for the rest of my mission! I love it here!

Remember Maria? :) Yeah she came to church again. She really likes it, she just doesn´t understand anything! Also, her daughter is an inactive, and SHE came to church too! :D Technically, Maria has enough church attendance to get baptised, she just is lacking everything else... We teach her, but she is just still very evangelic...

I will have to thank my parents again now for always making sure I went to seminary.... Because now, I teach it. In Spanish. Apparently, the teacher hadn´t shown up to teach for about three weeks, but the youth always went, so the bishop asked us to teach it. Well, can´t say no! This week was our first week teaching and it was pretty great!

Hope all is going wonderfully!

Loveth, Hermana Woodbury

PS. panaderia means bakery

I dreamed in Spanish!

I HAVE THE BEST NEWS EVER!!!!!!!! I DREAMED IN SPANISH!!!! I actually can never remember my dreams, but Hermana Bollet (from Peru) told me I was talking in my sleep the other night, so I asked her if she could understand what I was saying and she said, "Yeah, you were spealking spanish." WOOOO HOOOO!!!!! That doesn´t mean that I always know what´s going on though...

We have the BEST investigators right now! How about I just tell you guys about them! Their names are Yanett and Sergio! They are a super awesome couple, and they have three kids! Two of them are grown up and out of the house but the other is just 15 and still lives with them. They aren´t married though. That´s the only thing... They used to be married and them they got divorced a couple years ago, and now they are fixing things up in their relationship and living together again. But they are so awesome! The other hermanas had a baptism this week, and they went to it and just had a great experience, and said that they are excited for their baptism! They seriously already just fit in with the ward already, they stayed at church ALL THREE HOURS and it was their first time attending! All of the members just already love them. We have really had some powerful spiritual experiences teaching them, and I just love it so much. I think I am just going to be a missionary forever. Yeah, that would be great.

Hey remember Maria? Yep she is as crazy as ever! She is just a very confused lady and has some strange ideas. We were trying to figure out what we could do to help her understand things, so we prepared a lesson to help understand why prophets are important, and we found the big problem. She thinks WE are prophets. She was like, "you guys are prophets because you teach the word of the Lord, and I´m a prophet because I can feel the influence of God in my life." We tried to teach her the difference between having personal revelation and being a prophet, but it just didn´t go very well... She really just still thinks I´m a prophet. The good news is that she talks a lot quieter when we pray these days!

This week we had interviews with the Mission Pres. It was cool because we got to go to his house for them! THEN today we got invited by his wife to come over and cook with her and then we ate lunch with them! It was way great. I just really liked it.

Well that´s all for now! Love you!

Sincerely, Hermana Woodita

ps. iman means magnet

My first BAPTISM!!!

Photo: Farewell to President Humphrey

What a week! Evelia got baptised! I really was pretty crazy, since it wasn´t announced in church, we were told by the ward that she couldn´t get baptised this week, because they like to have everything organized... Well what kind of excuse is that when someone´s salvation is at play? Yeah right! She was SUPER ready for baptism. So, we talked to the bishop about it and he said he would rather have it more organized (of course) but he would let the decision up to us. We were seriously freaking out because no matter what decision we would make would have a huge effect, and you know how I am with decision making.... Not the best. But luckily, we don´t have to make decisions by ourselves! We prayed and just really got the feeling that she needed to get baptised this week, and when the spirit says something to both you and your companion, you know it´s right. So we pretty much organized the baptism ourselves, and called everyone to invite them individually. It ended up being a really great experience. She is the first person I have found and taught all the way to baptism. It is so cool to see how much the gospel can help people in their lives.

I don´t know how much I´ve told you about Evelia´s friend Maria, but sometimes we teach Evelia at Maria´s house. Maria is hard core EVANGELICA. Like to the max. She whispers WAY loud when we pray, but she´s very supportive of Evelia´s decision to get baptised. the first time Evelia came to church, Maria came with her so that she would have a buddy, and then she went to the baptism And came to church for the confirmation, and stayed for the second class! It was quite a treat to have her at the church! I was sitting by her, and every time we were about to have a prayer I would say something like, " They are going to pray, so it´s really important to listen to what they say" in hopes that she wouldn´t talk during the prayer, but nevertheless she gave her praises to the Lord every time! The opening prayer, Evelia´s confirmation, the sacrament prayers, and the closing prayer. I was honestly just trying not to laugh. Some of the ward members definitely commented to us about it later on, but they´re used to it because there are a ton of evangelicos in Chillancito. 

So last P-Day we got a surprise visit from the Mission President! It was crazy, me and Hermana Gonzalez had no idea he was coming, and when we enter our house we have to hit the door way hard to get it open, so as is tradition, we just hit it with all our might, and to our surprise, Pres was inside talking to the other hermanas! WHA??!! He had this shocked look on his face, and it took me a minute to realize that it can be a little frightening when someone breaks down the door if you aren´t expecting it. Oops. He ALSO came to have a family home evening with us and the other sisters of Chillancito. He seems like a really humble guy, just really down to earth, which is super great. And of course poor Hermana Arrington just never has any idea of what´s going on. We really have been privileged to be able get to know them a little bit.

Well, I did take some pictures at the baptism, but it looks like I forgot my camera again! The APs sent us some pics of our mission conference with the Humphrys though so I will send those! :D

Love, Hermana Merrisa

 

 

BODY SLAM

Time to write my weekly email again! Hey guess what! Tomorrow is my three month anniversary for when I arrived in Chile!!!! (I´m think that sentence makes sense.. Right? It took me a while to write it because I was confused about how to say it. Geez I seriously can´t speak English or Spanish!) I really can´t believe how fast time has been going I still feel like I just got here like a week ago. 

Remember Evelia? Yeah she got up and bore her testimony in church yesterday! Yeah she´s seriously awesome. The only problem is that our bishop said we have to talk with her son because he doesn´t know anything that´s going on and he doesn´t want that to become a big problem because as of right now it´s a bit of a problem... Keep her in your prayers please!

This week we got to meet President Arrington! He seems pretty awesome. I felt kinda bad for his wife because she doesn´t really know Spanish, so she couldn´t really talk to the Latin missionaries. It actually kinda reminded me of when I first arrived...

Remember how it rains a lot here? Yeah, well because of the moisture, the door to our house swelled up because it is made of wood, so every time we want to get in we have to like body slam it! It is seriously hilarious. One night we couldn´t get in for like half an hour and I was really worried we would have to sleep outside in the rain! Oh the mission!

Some times when we contact we just have really great responses from people, my favorite this week was this man who opened his door and we´re like, "Hi! We´re missionaries!" (or something... I don´t actually remember... It was probably way different from that) and gave him a pass along card or something, and he says, " I don´t want to be Mormon." Well, there you have it! We´ll just leave now! 

Hermana Woodbury

p.s. permiso means excuse me..... But they use it here for just about everything they do. If you´re about to say a prayer, you say permiso first. If you are going into some one´s house, permiso. Like seriously they say it for everything and I really am starting to love to say it. Sometimes I even say it when I cross the street just for fun.

Sing with all Your Might and Soul!

People of America! Happy July 4!!!!! Almost.... For some reason they aren´t going to have fireworks here for the Forth, I really don´t see why they don´t celebrate it. ;) 

We´re teaching some pretty great people these days. One is Evelia. She´s just a super cute old lady, who just LOVES everything we teach her and loves going to church. We introduced her to a member who lives close to her who is about the same age, so it´s just super great! The only obstacle we have with her is her son. If he is at her house we can´t visit her because he drinks and gets really angry so we usually teach her at her best friends house (where we found her the first time, but her friend is VERY evangelica (Evangelica= different sects of religions that go to their church on the corner. You never actually know what their beliefs are, but they all whisper during prayers.) and always has to put in her word about her beliefs so we like it better when she isn´t in the lesson with us.) or at the members house.But Evelia is just super excited to get baptised and is reading the BoM and praying and everything! Yeah.

The five missionaries sang in church yesterday. It was interesting... The bishop wanted up to sing the song "My Soul Hungered" in Spanish. It´s really a beautiful song, but the translation to Spanish just didn´t fit all that well with the melody. And who knows if they could even understand because I´m sure our accents were just terrible! Everyone said it was good but that´s what people always say at church..... A lot of times though people think that we have the most amazing voices just because we can sing on tune. Not many people can do that here, but they just sing out with all their might and soul whether they can sing on tune or not! It´s so great! I just love it!

Well that´s really all I have to say right now.... I haven´t met our new mission president, and I forgot his name.... Hopefully that will change soon :)

Loveth, Hermana Woodbury

PS. I´ll send pics next time! I almost promise!