TRIO

Well here comes a trio! That´s no joke! We had cambios today and my companion is leaving me in the dust and I´m going to have TWO companions! It actually makes me a little bit nervous to be in a trio... BUT luckily I know both of my new companions pretty well, one is actually Hermana Bollet from Peru, she lived with me for like four months in Chillancito! My other companion is Hermana Alverez and I´m pretty sure she´s from Honduras, she was in my old zone for a couple cambios. Looks like I´m still the only gringa in the house! Pretty crazy stuff!

So last Monday a family in our ward took us around Talcahuano a bit to see the sites!

 

 

Yeah, THAT IS TALCAHUANO!!! Isn´t it so beautiful! Actually when the earthquake hit in 2010, a tsunami came after it and destroyed a lot of the city of Talcahuano. The family we were with showed us some spots where everything was just wiped out, but a lot of rebuilding has already been done so that´s good news! (The Hermana doing the peace sign is my companion Hermana Canchan).

 

Talcahuano is pretty much fishing central. If you want to buy a fish, you can just ask this guy who is still in his boat with his fresh fish and he will cut off the fins for you! The family we were wish bought a couple...

 

And then fed it to us on Wednesday when we had lunch with them!

I don´t have much more time but things have been going great. I hope that everyone´s doing well! I´ll send a couple more pics. Love you guys!

Love,

Hermana Merrisa Woodbury

Our investigator Claudia

Hey all! Well things are going pretty well, We did a TON of service this week! And I am very happy to say that non of it involved funerals! It was actually pretty neat because we had the chance to help out one of our investigators! Her name is Claudia. She was moving houses (within our same area) and we always kept on telling her that if she wants any help to let us know. So she called us up one day and asked if we knew anyone with a truck that could help move the stuff, so we found a couple members with trucks and a bunch of members from the elders quorum came to help! She called us this morning (we were really happy because it´s a rare occasion when the investigator calls the missionary) to just say how grateful she and her family are for our help! It has been tough to be able to teach her because she has been busy  looking for houses and looking for a job and stuff but now things are finally settling down a bit in her life so we are really hoping to be able to start teaching her again because she is AWESOME! She seriously has the face of a relief society president! It´s bound to happen!

 

Another service we did this week was help a member with her back porch garden. I had the job of racking the leaves. I thought it would be easy, but all she had to do it was a shovel and all of the leaves were plastered to the ground in dried dog poop. I don´t even know how to describe it... I used to like dogs, but in Chile there are just way too many and every one just lets there dog wander around where ever and they don't ever clean up after them! Some times I see a really gross looking dog and I think it´s a stray and then I see it enter someones house... 

Hey remember Andres? Yeah well he is totally avoiding us. I am convinced that he knows it is true but he just doesn't want to give up things in his life and he knows that is he keeps meeting with us he´ll have to change...

One of the members here had a bunch of church magazines and materials that they were getting rid so he offered all the stuff to us and the other ward members and I found an awesome Ensign from 1991 in English! It is so great, it honestly has some great messages. It amazes me how revelation from God never changes. It always applies to our lives no matter when it was given. The principles of the gospel never change, they are the same today as they were in 1991, and they are they same today as they were when Christ himself was on the earth. We are so lucky to have this truth in our lives!

Love you guys hope all is well!

Love, Hermana Merrisa Woodbury

death week

I won´t lie, this week has been interesting. We started off with the goal to serve the members in any way that we could, and we definitely got the opportunity.... just not in the way we expected. The morning of January 1, we had an appointment with the bishop to help him with his garden but when we arrived he was talking on the phone and when he hung up he said, "Well, we started the year off bad. An hermano passed away." So instead of gardening, we cleaned the church to get ready for the funeral. Thankfully it wasn´t much of a surprise because he was a really old guy and he had been in the hospital for a while. 

The members didn´t really get time to recover from that one because the next day we got the call that another member passed away. This time it was a little more extreme because she was only forty years old and she died suddenly in a car crash. We definitely ended up spending a lot of the week helping members and helping the bishop. From cleaning the church over and over to visiting members in need. I´m just kinda hoping that this week is a little more normal?? Please?

On a brighter note, we have a pretty cool investigator named Andres. We just barely taught him for the first time on Saturday, and he came to church on Sunday! That´s good when that happens. He really seems to have a lot of potential!

With all of the crazy drama in the ward this week and everything I have really learned how important the Plan of Salvation is in our lives. The sister in our ward who lost her daughter bore her testimony yesterday about how grateful she is for the covenants she has made because she knows without a doubt that she´ll be able to see her daughter again. That is really something that not everyone believes, and we are super blessed to know that there is a life after this one. I just love this Gospel so darn barn much!

Hope everything is going well and that you guys didn´t do anything TOO crazy for new years! Love you!

Cariños, Hermana Woodbury

p.s. pachucos means skinny jeans