Week 52 ***1 YEAR MARK*** (Rancagua, Zona Tupahue 1 w/ Hna Rojas)

HEY FAM BAM!!!!

Another good week!  The FANTASTIC news is that it's FINALLY starting to cool off here!! hahaha ...but you know I'll be missing the heat by the time winter rolls around.

This week we found 2 new FAMILIES to work with!  The first we found knocking doors and the other was a reference we contacted from our recently called lider misional [mission leader] (he is AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME, it was one of those too good to be true moments in sacrament mtg yesterday when they called his name as new ward mission leader).

I don't remember if I told you about Karina yet, but she is a yound woman (18) that we found my first week here and she is awesome!  We had divisions this week and my comp told me when I got back that they had already set a baptismal date with her and that she was already reading The Book of Mormon and praying to know if it is true (this was only our 2nd appointment with her). So we are super excited about that as well, the only stinky thing is that she committed to come to church this week and was going to bring her boyfriend too - who is evangelico but from the sound of it is pretty interested in what we teach as well - and wanted us to come get her Sunday morning, but when we passed by her house in the morning her dad came out and told us she was in Santiago for some reason... but hey, there's always next week!

What else? oh, so yes, I saw and visitted with Micaela Irrazabal and Samy last Monday and it was pretty much the best p-day in my entire life!  I had forgotten how much I LOVE THOSE GIRLS!!!! They are so so amazing, and I can't even describe how good it was to see Hna Irrazabal again, she is such a great woman! Such a great example to me!

Back to my sector:

I think our biggest challenge right now is lecciones con miembro [lessons with members], we have a lot of people willing to help us but lately, it seems like EVERY time we have a member planned to accompany us the appointments fall through OR when the appointments don't fall through, the member calls at the last minute because they have some emergency or something and can't come.  It's almost comical how often it happens, but we are just trying to work with it, trying new ideas and new strategies.  I'm sure it's just a phase that will pass, like any trial really :) we WILL over come haha

Week 51 (Rancagua, Zona Tupahue 1 w/ Hna Rojas)

Sorry, I'm going to be short this week because SAMY AND HNA IRRAZABAL ARE COMING TO VISIT ME! They are here in Rancagua right now waiting for me to finish writing so we can get together for a second before p-day ends! Can you believe it??  I'm so happy!  Hna Irrazabal (Micaela) came to visit and is staying a couple days with Samy so, yeah, they're coming down to see me this afternoon! 

This week has been great, I am LOVING my new sector!  It is actually a WARD inside of a STAKE, how cool right??? ...AND inside of OUR ward we have both the Patriarch AND a member of the 70!! Tomorrow we have lunch with the 70 and his wife (Elder Svec). ¡Que nervios! [Scary!] haha 

Anyways, I have been meeting a few of the members and everything and they are so great and strong! I'm REALLY excited to work with this ward! 

It has actually been REALLY great working with Hna Rojas again.  Since we have already been companions it was easy to find our working and teaching groove, now we are just working on improving it day by day and "raising the bar". She has been super patient with me in learning everybody's names and remembering who people are (because I'm actually kind of terrible at that), and also because our sector is HUGE and it's city so I get lost SO quickly! I feel like it's going to take forever to learn my way around! haha but it's ok! more adventures right?  LIKE I SAID, I'M EXCITED ABOUT IT.  

Mom, the day you called the office was the day of our district meeting and we were there in the same building.  So after we finish our meeting my comp wanted to go turn a few papers into the office, we walk in and Elder Dougher, the AP says, "Hermana Davis! I just talked to your mom!... literally like 2 or 3 minutes ago!" so I laughed and asked why and he told me why and I said "Awwww, my mom is so great!"  then one of the comisario, being funny says, "Nice job, Elder! Trunky for the day!" So I laughed and gave him a "as if!" look. jajaja so that was funny. 

Anyways, gotta fly!  Love you all!  Tell Zoe and Trent I'm working on their letters still 

XOXOXOXOXOXO 

hna davis

Week 50 (San Fernando 2 w Hna. Casteñeda)

Week 50 (San Fernando 2 w Hna. Casteñeda)

 AHHHHHHH!!!! ME CAMBIARON OTRA VEZ! 

 



SO today has been kinda nuts and I still have to finish packing. This transfer they closed me sector AND the Elders sector, so now the branch here goes form having 6 missionaries to having 2. Hna Castañeda is going to Molina in Curico which is NEXT DOOR to Lontué. I am going to Rancagua, zona Tupahue 1 and my companion is going to be.... drum roll please.... Hna Rojas... AGAIN! I was kind of a shock at first, but now I´m excited about it, obviously we have some more work to do together, but now in Rancagua instead of Lontué. I have heard only good thing about the branch there, I suppose it will be a little bigger than the one here. I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that I'm leaving! This is record short for me! I'm used to going to places and getting settled in, but not this time! I love the people here they are super great. I´m going to miss them a lot, but at the same time it´s almost easier, because I didn't form ties AS strong as I did with the people I spent SIX months with in Buin, so it´s not AS hard to leave.

 

 

One fun adventure we had this week:

The sister missionaries from the other branch in San Fernando called us to pass us a reference of a lady who had just showed up all by herself 2 Sundays back that lives in our sector. She lives in a place a little ways apart from the rest of our sector called puente negro (it´s this awesome little place up in the foothills of the Cordillera-the Andes, if I did the math right between meters and feet I THINK its at about the same elevation as our house, asi que me sentí en casa). SO we call her and she tells us how to take the bus out there and where to tell the bus driver to let us off. First day everything goes smoothly, with out a single hitch, and she is GOLDEN by the way. Second day, not so much! So we tell the bus driver to let us off in Villa Cordillera, and he tells us he will let us know when we get there... soon enough we start seeing things that look really unfamiliar, like we'd never passed it before, and all of the sudden the pavement stop and we´re heading along in a bus full of people on this little dirt road. At this point I remember thinking... hmmm... weird! there must be more than one way to get to VIlla Cordillera because I've never seen this before. Then the bus stops and EVERYONE gets off... so we ask the bus driver... "How long till we get there?" and he looks at us and says "OH NO! I FORGOT! We passed it a LONG time ago!" SO we had to get off the bus there and wait for him to go up to another place higher up in the Andes and come back to get us. Turns out where we got off and waited was a camp ground in a place calles Las Peñas, and it´s SUPER GORGEOUS! It was kind of a blessing in disguise. SO long story short we waited for him there and rode back down with him to Villa Cordillera and when we got off the bus and our investigator, were worriedly waiting for us reprimanded him for getting us lost hahaha. 

 

Well, love you tons and tuns, EVEN THOUGH you bought a puppy with out me ;). TAKE CARE! XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Hna Davis

Week 49 (San Fernando 2 w Hna. Casteñeda)

HEY FAMBAM!

So this week has been a good one! It kind of flew by, as did the cambio! I can´t believe we are going to know the cambios already on Saturday! But something we did find out already is that Hna Garcia (love her SO much) finally got her visa, so she will be heading out either Friday or Tuesday for VENEZUELA. She was originally called there but since visas there take 500 years she got called to this mission in the mean time, and the cool thing is that I saw her "be born" in the mission and now I will see her leave the nest of Chile Rancagua hahaha we are all very sad she is leaving US but very happy for her and happy for the people there in Venezuela because Hna Garcia will do amazing things with them there, SHE is amazing. I'm gonna miss her LOTS!

AND with that pending we are wondering what they are going to do with our 2 sectors.  It wouldn’t be surprising if they took advantage of the fact that hna Garcia is leaving, transferred either me or my companion to another area and put the 2 sisters that stayed here together, thereby closing a sector. IF that happens I'm hoping I'll get to stay here with Hermana GIles, she´s great! But really we don't know so this is all just speculation hahaha.

This week in our zone meeting we talked a lot about finding new investigators, because apparently our WHOLE zone has had problems lately with finding new investigators, and they challenged each companionship to find a certain number of new ones this week and committed us to do so, AND it was a higher number than we had had in a while, so we committed but were nervous about it. BUT the cool thing is that, that very day we did a lot of passing by contacts that we has made previously and seeing how they were doing and we ended up finding that number of new investigators IN THAT VERY DAY. It was really cool for us, and SUCH a big blessing and tender mercy of the Lord because we had been working hard and doing everything we could think of to find new people but hadn't been seeing great results, when all the sudden... BAM! All in one day hahaha then more throughout the rest of the week! Like I said, SUCH a big blessing!

OH! and that reminds me, when we passed by one of our new investigators, Cynthia, she let us in and we start talking a little bit asking her how she´s been with work and everything when all of a sudden her kid comes bursting through the front door saying there's a house on fire. Meanwhile we are thinking, Yeah right! we just passed by like 5 to 10 minutes ago, BUT sure enough we go  outside and about half a block away there is a house just going up in FLAMES. Talk about a pit in your stomach! And the WORST and scariest part was that in that part of town all the houses are built together, like they share walls, almost like condos or apartments, so the house next door is starting up too AND there are huge trees all around the house and with ONE gust of wind one of the big tree also goes up entirely in flames. It was crazy! (now I understand the whole mountain fire/santa ana winds situation... yikes!) Standing there awestruck, feeling helpless and not knowing what to do or how to help. Luckily someone had already called the Firefighters and they were on their way. When they arrived we watched as they set up all their gear and one man climbed up on  the roof of the neighboring house and started chopping at the roof with a pick ax trying to break through and create a gap between the two houses so that the fire wouldn’t keep spreading. I remember thinking how hot he must have been because he was standing there in shorts, with out a shirt on, and even from a block away we could see the sweat pouring down his back. It was all very intense. SO... after a little while there really wasn’t much more that we could watch and nothing we could do so we went inside to say a prayer (because our investigator was very shaken up) and try to teach a lesson.  It actually went really well, considering the circumstances, because we just did our best to tie her concerns and everything in with the principles we