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 

Stephanie got baptized!

Hey there! I bet you are all just sitting there in front of the computer right now waiting anxiously for my email to arrive, right? Yeah, that´s probably right.

Hey guess what! Stephanie got baptized! She is just so cute. She is sixteen and so incredible that she read all of the pamphlets we gave her like three times before her baptism interview and is already sharing what she learns about the gospel with her friends! WOO HOO!!!! It went really well! Her family who are non active members and non members even came to support her and you could tell she felt really good. Now we are starting to teach some of her family, so we´re really excited about that! We´ve been especially teaching her aunt Maria Ines who is twenty five. She is practically like Stephanie´s sister, the way they act together kinda reminds me of how me and Misty are sometimes. Sometimes I just start laughing at them. Just keep their family in your prayers, they are seriously incredible!

I really already love the ward here, they are so awesomely amazing! We have been looking for opportunities to help them and just have been serving them like crazy! Non of the missionaries in the ward have been here for more than a cambio so we have had to start from square one to gain their confidence, and let me tell you it has been working! A little bit of service goes a long way. This next week we are going to initiate the sticky note plan and I have no doubt there will be miracles.

Well, I feel like between Christmas and now everything has been said! It was great to see you and talk to you! You´ll be hearing from me again about this same time next week! Love you!

Loveth, Hermana Woodenburg

It's almost Christmas

Hey guess what! It´s almost Christmas! I actually kinda forget that alot because it´s really just way too hot to be Christmas time. Every time I sing a Christmas song I think "why am I singing a Christmas song in the middle of summer?" It honestly has me a little weirded out. BUT HEY I GET TO SKYPE YOU GUYS!!!! :D

Alright I sure you are all DYING to know about my new companion and area, so I will just tell you about it! My companion is......... drum roll, please....... Hermana Canchan, from...... another drum roll, please....... Guatemala! I am also living with two other Latinas, so goodbye English for me! AND one of the other Hermanas just happens to be Hermana Garcia (yes, this is the same Hermana Garcia that trained me)! Sometimes I just like to make up words and see if they understand what I´m saying.

Sometimes when I am walking around this area I almost feel like I´m in the United States. I almost expect people to start talking to me in English. Most of the houses have TWO STORIES here, and I havn´t even seen one shack. Maybe I´m used to being in the ghetto, but I almost forgot that places like that exist. People even sing on tune at church!

We have an awesome investigator named Stephanie who is getting baptized this Friday! She is super cute! She is sixteen and her dad is inactive, she actually had no idea he was a member until after she started taking lessons with the missionaries!

We had a Christmas Conference this week which was pretty great. I was part of the "special choir" that sang for it and I sang the alto part in a trio as well. It was fun to be able to sing in a choir again.

Anyways, I just want to let you know that I wish you all a Merry Christmas, and that plums a yellow here. Love you guys!

Con amor, Hermana Merrissy

I´m going to Talcahuano

Well, I finally got out of that green mold box and now I´m being transferred! I´m going to Talcahuano which is still pretty close to Concepcion. I forgot my companion´s name, but I do know that she is Latina and that she´s been in the mission as long as my daughter so I will be finishing up her training! It´s going to be really weird not to be in Chillancito anymore... I´m actually a little bummed I won´t be here for Christmas. Oh well, I know I will love the people in Talcahuano too!

Hey remember Hector? Yeah me too. Well on Tuesday we met with him after he had gone home for a couple days and apparently his family is VERY Catholic. He told his parents he wanted to get baptized and they told him they would have preferred it if he told them he was gay over that he was meeting with the Mormons, and prohibited him from meeting with us again. Chuta. So we asked him what he thought about it, and he said that after he talked to his parents, he decided to pray about it and ask if he should keep meeting with us, and then he read eight chapters of the Book of Mormon and it gave him a really peaceful feeling despite what was going on with his parents. So he decided that he was going to keep meeting with us! He´s got some nerve! Then later this week we met up with him, and when he saw us, the first thing he said was "I got my answer!" With a big smile on his face. He had been reading a pamphlet we gave him that has baptism in it, and once he was done he went to wash his face, and his catholic necklace with a cross on it fell off of his neck. He thought it had broken, but the latch on it was completely intact, and the only way it could have fallen is if someone unlatched it! He took that as a sign that he shouldn´t be Catholic anymore and he needs to get baptized. Incredible right? Who is this guy? Why do I have to get transferred right now??

Merry Christmas from Chillancito!

Loveth, Hermana Woodbury

WE MOVED!!

I am happy to announce that the move was a success! We are now living in an apartment building. Instead of annoying fluorescent green, we have a nice soothing lavender color on our walls! No mold, no spiders, no slugs, and enough space so that I won´t go insane! I am now living in luxury!

Okay I just really want to tell you guys abut this super awesome investigator we found this week! His name is Hector! The first time we went to his house was a little awkward, but he committed to prepare for baptism and read the pamphlet about the restoration and pray about it. Yeah, well just so you guys know, almost everyone commits to do all that stuff... They just don´t. So we go back the next day and he had read the whole thing AND highlighted things that caught his attention AND had questions! WHA???? What world are we in? I was so shocked I didn´t even know how to respond! I´m pretty sure my eyes were bulging out of my head and my mouth was hanging open, maybe with a little bit of drool dripping out of my mouth or something. So then he pretty much taught US the restoration. Now he has been reading the Book of Mormon and he highlights all the scriptures he likes and marks the pages with sticky note tabs! AND after his first time at church yesterday he stayed after for ward choir practice! Who even does that?? AND he was asking us about missions the other day! Future missionary! Sorry, I feel like that was just about the most confusing thing I´ve ever written, but I am just so baffled. WOO HOO!

Well this week we finally put together a Thanksgiving ward party! Only a week late but every one loved it! No one knows what Thanksgiving is here so they liked to experience something from a different culture.  We basically played games, shared a message and ate pie! It was great. Don´t worry, Hector went to that too.

Well, That probably just about sums up the week! I´m happy to hear that is snowed! Now you guys can go skiing and do cool tricks off the jumps! Don´t be too crazy! Love you guys!

Loveth, Hermana Woodbury

I'm moving!!!!

Alright, I have big news! The Hermanas of Chillancito are going to move to a different house! This might not be very significant to you, but trust me it is a big deal. I have been living for the past six months in one of the worst houses in the mission, I will proceed to tell you why..

• It´s TINY. I seriously don´t know how I have survived for so long enclosed in such a tight squeeze with four or more people living there. I always feel like the walls are closing in and it is impossible to plan without being interrupted in some way by the other hermanas, considering that we are sitting two feet away.
• Bugs. Considering that our doors have a half inch gap above the floor and there are cracks in the ceilings, windows, and doors, it is quite easy for little critters to find their way inside. We sometimes wake up with weird looking spider bites, and kill an average of three spiders daily.
• Slugs. The cracks in the windows and doors also permit huge nasty slugs to come in. Since they are nocturnal, we usually only see them at night or early in the morning. Sometimes we find them on our food when we wake up, and since Hermana Phelps hung her rain poncho on the door, it is now covered in nasty slug slime. We even have a frozen one on the back of the fridge that no one is brave enough to clean out...
• Plants. They grow like crazy one the out side AND inside of our house. Since we don´t have any thing to cut the grass, the out side of our house looks like a jungle. No to mention the little plants that keep growing up from the bass boards. It is impossible to grab THOSE up by the root, so no matter how many times you pull the out, they grow back in a couple days.
• The shower. Our gas system doesn´t work very well in order to turn on the hot water, so in order to have a hot shower you have to... turn the hot water knob on and off four times in the kitchen and knock on the wall, then the person in the bathroom turns on the hot water knob to shower and knocks on the wall, then the person in the kitchen turns off the kitchen water. I mean it´s simple enough, but sometimes I just miss turning the knob in the shower and having it work.....
• Mold. It´s such an old house, and Chile is so humid that there is mold every where. We had a cleaning party and scrubbed the mold off the walls and ceilings, but there and still lots of stains and it grows back quick. Not to mention the mold that sometimes grows inside of our suitcases and all the stuff inside....
• The walls. They are a hideous fluorescent green color with crimson red doors and floors. I might as well be living in a Christmas tree. Too bad we will be moving right before Christmas...

I mean things could always be worse, and I have definitely enjoyed all the adventures of our house, but maybe moving will be a nice change... And now that we are almost out of there I thought it would be fun to let you know where I live!

We really learned why it´s so important to work with the bishop this week. We dropped in to his office Tuesday to see if he needed help with anything and he told us of a less active member that he wanted us to visit. We dropped by the less active members house with a member the next day, and during our lesson she started to cry and say that our visit was exactly what she needed and she knew she had to return. We´ve been having a lot of great spiritual experiences like that with less active members lately and I know that it is the will of God that we find them and help them have the desire to return.

We found another less active member that wanted a blessing for her sick grandma that lives with her. So we called a bunch of members to come give her a blessing and seriously NONE of the men that lived near by and had a car could. So then we remembered of a couple RMs and called them up. When they came, she was seriously glowing. It just so happened that the were the exact two guys that had befriended her when she became a member. It was so meant to be I couldn´t even believe it! Just one of those simple miracles that God shows you when you are diligently dong all you can to help someone. 

We have actually been doing a lot of work with less actives lately, and have found some incredible people. It is amazing when someone realizes that they´ve left behind the biggest blessing they have ever had in their life and start coming back to church. I just love it!

Well, hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving weekend! Time to whip out the Christmas stuff! Love you guys!

 

Loveth Hermana Goodbury

 

p.s. pitanza means doorbell ditch