Week 39 (Buin w Hmna Arias

HEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!

Another great week FULL of mini-miracles! The Lord has been SO good to us! 

The exciting news this week is that Valentina went to mutual for the first time and immediately made friends with the youth there.  Then 2 days later, she went with the youth up to Santiago on their temple trip! She and a few others, waited outside while the youth did baptisms. We invited her to pray and ask if the church was true/if Joseph Smith was a prophet, etc while she was at the temple AND SHE DID!  She said she felt REALLY good and it was so adorable watching her try to describe the feelings of the Spirit for the first time.  I LOVE THE TEMPLE!  She is so awesome! This week we are planning on putting more of an emphasis on the mom and the brother so that they can all progress together.  The brother, Felipe, normally runs and hides when he sees us coming or doesn't participate much in the lesson.  He's a little rascal haha but the other day we had a lesson with him and Cristofer.  We read in the Book of Mormon (when Moroni and his troops trapped the army of Zerahemna in the valley and forced them to surrender and one of the soldiers ended up scalping Zerahemna etc, etc) with them and used it to explain the importance of having faith and depending on The Lord.  At the end of the lesson, Felipe said the closing prayer and he asked the blessing that we could come and teach him lessons every day. lol  The other day during our lesson with Luz (the mom) and Vale, he fell asleep in the chairs UNDER the table!  It was so funny I took a picture.  I'll try to send it. lol 

ANA IS GETTING BAPTIZED THIS SATURDAY! AH! She is so so special! We are soooooo excited! She is nervous, but SOOOO ready! It's going to be great and we'll send pics next week. :) :)  Other than that, we are doing GREAT!  I love my companion!  She may not be a blabber mouth, but when she does talk, she often makes me bust up laughing. 

Fam bam, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!  Send me letters pretty please with sugar on top! LOVE YOU, LOVE YOU, LOVE YOU!

PS: you never told me what YOU want for christmas.  You better tell me SOMETHING or I'm sending coal for Christmas ;)

Week 38 (Buin with Hmna Arias)

¡HOLA!
This week was a good one! It's starting to get hot! I'm glad you got my letter! that was fast! I sent it like 3 weeks ago I think. BTW, you never told me what you want from ME for Christmas.

This week we have been working a lot with Ana and two other families.
Ana keeps doing REALLY well and little by little we are seeing miracles with her spouse because he now likes to come sit in and listen to us when he's not working and each time he talks less and listens more. He has some of the CRAZIEST questions, but we just try to take the advice from "Preach My Gospel" and use the Book of Mormon to respond to his questions, and we always invite him to pray and ask God. This week we gave him a Book of Mormon and he read the introduction and the testimonies of the 3 and 8 witnesses and also of Joseph Smith. Whenever we bring videos to watch with Ana, he enjoys watching them. This week he told us that he is studying the Book of Mormon to support Ana, and to be able to be there and talk about these things with her for when the day comes that we missionaries aren't there any more, ¡tan tierno!  [so cute!]  Haha the cool thing is that we know and understand the power of the spirit in reading the Book of Mormon, so we are excited to see the miracles that come with him studying (as long as he doesn't harden his heart against it). They may be slow in coming, but if he really comes to feel and recognize the truth of these things he will be a very devout future member.
The other two families we are working with is the family of Viviana and Valentina's family, she is a jovencita [young woman] that started listening to us when we were trying to teach a very disordenado hijo [disorderly son] of a menos activa [less active member], she came along distracting him (she's his ex-GF) so we invited her to listen...hoping to help keep the distractions and what not to a minimum (the very first thing we showed them both was a short video on the law of chastity LOL but they kept listening! hah).  Then she started reading the BofM and fulfilling her commitments etc., so we put an emphasis on her and ended up meeting with her Mom and her brother and now their whole family is listening to us (them 3). The mom is super great too!  The biggest challenge for these 2 families is getting them to church at this point, but we are giving it all we've got and are just excited to work with them and to see ALL the many miracles the Lord is blessing us with.
LOVE YOU FAMILY!!!!  Cuidense MUCHO!  [Take GOOD care!]  Un poquito mas que un mes hasta que puedo hablar con ustedes por skype! :D [Just a little more than a month until I can talk with you on Skype].  but whos counting right?? ;) estoy animada para hablar con usted daddy (en Español) y por el resto de ustedes, espero que estén practicando su español ;) ;) [I am excited to talk with you (in Spanish) Daddy and for the rest of you, I hope that you are practicing your Spanish].
Hna trujillo went home today, more tears! We already have our plans to get together though! haha
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO write me letters pleeeeease :)

Week-37 (Buin with Hmna Arias)

HEY FAM!!!!

I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!

This has been another great week, we found another new family and a great great new investigator named Coni, she's 21 and so prepared and special! The only challenge so far is that she works sundays, but it's something fixable :) 

Ana has been progressing so well! She really has been prepared by the Lord, she recenlty told us that she quit smoking about 6 months ago and that she did it because she felt like the Lord was preparing her for "something". However the adversary has been working very hard against her, throwing every thing he's got. She hasn't been able to get to church the last two sundays, for example, yesterday she was waiting IN the bus stop all ready to go to church when something happened in the house and they called her and she had to go back. We are going to go out to her house again this week Sunday morning to come WITH her to church.  She has a very interesting husband. He has studied a LOT of different religions and has some very interesting opinions, but luckily, despite the fact that we always disagree with him on points of doctrine, le caemos bien [we get along well]. Let's just say we gave him the name of Zeezrom.  Yesterday we watched the video on Joseph Smith's life and he stayed and watchd it with us, and afterward said it was "really well done".  AKA he liked it and felt the spirit! lol 

Also Viviana's family (the less active that introduced us to her children explaining which ones hadnt been baptized yet) is doing well!  We can only see them on the weekends, so that makes progress slow and hard to measure after just 2 weeks.  But yesterday we did a FHE with them and even though her husband supposedly doesn't like religion and didn't want to listen, we roped him in to listening and he ended up participating and saying the closing prayer!  Also, their youngest son Jesús, who is 9 was their last night, he is the ONLY one of the family who read the home work we left them in the Book of Mormon, but he is so involved and anxious to learn its adorable! Especially because his attitude and manner of speaking etc¡ es mas flaite! (wanna-be Chilean gangster).  When we were watching the video of the first vision, in the part at the end when Joseph Smith hands the finished Book of Mormon to his dad to read Jesús stood up in excitement right in front of the tv and his mom had to sit him back down, it was so cute!  Also, their oldest son (that we didn't get to meet last week), the "lost cause" was their last night and although he didn't listen to the lesson and went and his in his room, apparently not wanting anything to do with us, he did come out in the part where we played games and he got SUPER involved and opened up.  It was super fun and funny!  So hopefully this next weekend he will be willing to listen to us too!

Lots of mini-miracles and special experiences! The Lord has been TOO good to us recently! It's amazing! 

LOVE YOU FAM! take care this week! 

Week 36 (Buin with Hmna Arias)

HEYYYYYYYY!!!!! 

Things are great with my new companion.  She is a lot like Hna Rojas - quiet and de repente [all of a sudden], she throws out a funny comment that's like WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?!?!  We are good but this week was kind of a rough one! But I'm back in the swing with my "animo" [enthusiasm], it's been one of those weeks where your testimony is strengthened even more; especially in the principle that the witness comes AFTER the trial of your faith. 

This week we felt that we had to drop two of our investigator families... Viki and Waldo... and Vivi and Victor. 

Viki and Waldo had stopped progressing because Waldo at first couldn't make up his mind if he wanted to get married or not, but now he's in the not part, and they weren't coming to church very consistently so we sat down and had a heart to heart chat with them about why they are taking the lessons and what it is that they want for their family etc, etc.  It turns out that they had been doing a lot of things (coming to church for example) just to please us and not let us down; and Waldo hadn't received  any answers (because he hasn't been fulfilling his commitments) and even though we KNOW and have pointed out several times to Viki that she has gotten answers, she too is in doubt and is thinking about returning the la iglesia evangelica [evangelical church].  It was a rough one because they were really confused and not understanding the gospel even though my companion and I had taught them every thing more than once, to the point where they DID understand, but what happened was they didn't put it into practice and weren't doing their part, and no matter what we do, we can't do their part for them (even though you KNOW we would if we could because these are people we have been working with and serving for over three months and that we love SO much).  We got the answer that we needed to let them go in the middle of this chat we had with them and it was ... fuerte [strong].  I started crying infront of them, and they just started to feel bad thinking I was crying because of what Viki had said about liking la iglesia evangelica better... it just brings to mind and to heart how the Lord must really feel for example in Jacob 5 when He asks what more He could have done for His vineyard and how it pains him to have to lose even ONE tree. 

Then later in the week, we received the same feeling about Vivi and Victor, bueno, ellos están en otra onda ahora, y aun que hemos hecho todo lo posible y hemos tratado de enseñar las lecciones perfectas para ayudarles a despertarse y hacer de su parte, no había nada mas que hacer.  [well, they seem to be on another wave (or troubled) right now, and although we have done everything possible and have tried to teach perfect lessons to help wake them up and do their part, but there is nothing more that could be done].  It was the same situation as Viki and Waldo, try as we might, we just CAN'T do their part for them, it's all part of the Plan that we each have our agency...and even though we love them with every thing inside us for the time we spend with them, the many prayers, hours raking our brains in study time, planning, service projects, etc, etc.  Until THEY take initiative again, there is nothing more we can do.  To each family we just explained to them this much, that we love them, and that their Father in Heaven loves them even MORE, but that we had done everything we could, but now it all rests on them to do THEIR part, and until they do so, until they ARE ready to take the next step, there was nothing more we could do for them. 

Hard as it might be, the Lord blesses us for our obedience, and this time isn't our own, but it's the Lord's time and He knows how He needs us to be using this time that is so short and so sacred.  He has investigators that are waiting and READY to recieve the gospel, we just have to put our faith forward and look for these people. And that's what we did!  It was kind of a rough couple of days with out having lots of lessons because we had fewer families and fewer investigators, and the answers and blessing didn't come right away, or as they say in Chile, al tiro, [directly or right away], but they DID come AFTER the trial of our faith.  We found a GOLDEN family this last Saturday, someone we had found from our list of less actives that we persistently passed by and even thought many times they weren't there, or the appointments we'd made with them fell through "SOMETHING" (The Holy Ghost obviously) kept nagging us to go back.  So, FINALLY, Saturday night we got in the door and one of the VERY first things the mom did was make sure that we are the  MORMON missionaries, and when she was assured, she immediately points out her 3 children over the age of 8 and explains to us that they haven't been baptized yet.  SO, we cautiously asked, not wanting to get excited too quickly, "And, would you LIKE them to be baptized? And would YOU personally like to come back to church?" She explains to us that, YES, she wants her children baptized because she has seen the difference between when children are raised inside or outside the church, and that she too would like to come back and that she's always wanted to but that things always got in the way or as she said, in the Chilean saying "El diablo siempre mete su cola [the devil always sticks his tail in]". So the lesson with them went TOO good!  Four of her five kids were there.  Four of them are over the age of eight, although according to the mom, the oldest one (16) is a lost cause as far as religion goes, but we'll see what happens ;)  But each one of them committed to read the Book of Mormon (we left them a chapter to read as a family) and to come to church next week (they couldn't yesterday but the mom said that she would definitely be there next week) they are so set and ready to go! All they need is a little help or un empujón [push].  We are super excited to work with them and help them overcome the trials and difficulties they have to come back to church! 

Don't you just love the way the Lord work these wonderful mini-miracles? I SURE DO!

Well fam, love you tons and tons! Miss you tons as well! be good! take care of yourselves... WRITE ME LETTERS! ...love you! 

Your favorite oldest daughter and biggest sister in the whole wide universe,

Hna Davis