Chile - Punta Arenas - Week 39 - No letter this week.. just pics..

And the gifts of course! They gave us socks....they were cute fuzzy ones =)

The party spread at Victor and Blanca's house! They are so good to us!

My comp and I. Her birthday was the week before mine,
so we partied together on Wednesday! 

!Cumpleaños Feliiiiiiz!

​Love these people so much! =)​

My pal Paloma made me a cake that looks like my green blouse that I wear,
with a chocolate name tag that says "Hermana Safe"! Super funny.
This was only one of the three cakes that I ate on my birthday! 

Super Cute! =) 

The houses here are giant. Totally  different experience here knocking doors than in Pucón.
This isn't even that big compared to some of the castles we have knocked.

Sometimes my comp looks like a terrorist when its cold outside....

Chile - Punta Arenas - Week 38 - The miracles come after the trial of your faith!

Happy 10 months! can't believe I've been gone this long!

This week was one of my favorite weeks of the mission, don't know why, but it was awesome!

We knocked a ton of doors again. One day we knocked probably 50 doors, only 15 of them answered and all of them rejected us. Doesn't sound like fun, but we had a good time. It felt good to give people the opportunity to accept the gospel, even though maybe they weren't ready for it at that moment. Every rejection is one step closer to finding those who are prepared! 

One day we went to eat lunch with a member and we asked her if she knew any less actives that lived close by. She gave us a few names and we decided we were gonna look for them! The first house we knocked, a man answered the door and told us we could come in! Awesome! We walked in and met a woman and asked her if she was Karina (the name of the less active that the member gave us), and she said "no, I'm her sister." Turns out the sister just got home from her mission 6 weeks ago and was here visiting! We talked to her for a while and then met Karina who came out to talk to us. She was really quiet, but receptive. The man who answered the door was her husband who isn't a member and not really interested either. When we shared a scripture with them, he left the room. We visited with both sisters for a while and invited them to come to church with us on Sunday, and they both came!

A few days later, we knocked the door of a less active family. The grandmother Erica, lives with her daughter Pricila and her granddaughter Safca. They have been inactive for quite a few years. I had only met the Grandmother, Erica, one time. She was really nice to us, but made it clear that she wasn't too interested in coming back to the church right now. That was about a month ago. Last week we knocked on her door again and she answered! She told us we could come in. Her daughter and her granddaughter were both there too! We talked with hermana Erica for awhile, Pricila and Safca left the room. I was kinda bummed but grateful we got to meet them at least. After awhile they both came back out and started talking to us! Pretty soon we were laughing and having a good time, and then Hermana Erica invited us to stay and eat. We had already been there for a long time, so we decided that maybe we should go and come back another day. She said "if you want me to go to church with you guys, you are going to eat my food." Alrighty then! We ate with them and then shared a scripture. At the end we invited them to come to church with us. Pricila was a little hesitant, she asked "do I have to wear a skirt?" we told her she didn't have to if she didn't want to. Safca said "I want to go back!" Pricila said "Well if you really want to go, I'll go with you, but I'm only staying for sacrament meeting." Deal! Everyone agreed to come to church. We asked them if they wanted us to call them in the morning, or pass by to pick them up. Pricila said, "no, we just need to go on our own." After that I kinda lost faith that they were going to show up. I prayed and prayed that they would come to church on Sunday. AND THEY DID!!!!!! all of them came, even wearing skirts and they stayed all 3 meetings!!!! They were going to leave after Sacrament meeting, but Safca wanted to stay and go to YW, so the other two stayed as well! In Relief Society we ended up talking about why we came to church that day. When Pricila and Erica had to answer they said they came because the missionaries motivated them to come back and that they did it for Safca. They both ended with a few tears. I seriously have never had such a big smile on my face! Pure happiness! At the end of the meeting hermana Erica gave the closing prayer! Afterwards we hugged them goodbye and thanked them for coming. They said "No, thank you for helping us come back." They invited us to come back and eat with them on Wednesday! Seriously one of the happiest moments of my mission. I love teaching new people, but nothing beats helping less active members come back and reminding them of the promises they have made with Heavenly Father!!  

 

This is why I am a missionary!

Hermana Segura

I'm still not sure what this is, but I ate it and it was delicious!
Some kind of giant crab thing! Super good!
This is what she served us when she said we had to eat it or
she wasn't going to come to church with us! Ha! 

And then this was our dessert! Was just as good as it looks!

Chile - Punta Arenas - Week 37 - Cambios, Contacts and the Cold.

Bueno, this week was kinda crazy! Wednesday we had cambios and my comp got transferred so now I am with Hermana  Mota from Brazil! She is super awesome! We have a good time together!

We don't have many people that we are teaching right now, so we dedicated our week to finding new people to teach which means lots of knocking doors. I actually really like knocking doors, you never know who is gonna open! Sometimes they are really nice, sometimes they aren´t, and sometimes you just walk away laughing your head off because some people are just kinda weird! Super great!

The hard part is when the weather is bad. It has rained so much here the last three days and we have been outside the whole time looking for people. Not super fun. And the rain here falls at an angle so it just gets all up in you boots and clothes and it's really cold.

The wind also doesn't help much. We have wind here up to 120 km per hour (not really sure about the conversion on that), but I feel like it's pretty windy. Actually I know it's windy because I was trying to walk in it and keep my companion from falling over, good times :)
Saturday was the worst as far as rain goes, and we didn't have one single appointment, just doors to knock. We had little hope that anyone was going to want to let us in all wet and ugly, but The Lord showed us otherwise. The second door we knocked Saturday was of a man named Geraldo. He opened the door, we told him who we were, and he let us in!

We started talking to him and asked him about his experience with previous missionaries. (we found his name in our area book and it said that missionaries had talked to him a few years ago). When we asked him, he told us that he didn't remember talking to missionaries, so we shared with him a little bit about what we do. He had a lot of questions! He couldn´t believe that my comp and I didn't know Spanish before we got to Chile, or that we walk in the street all day everyday rain or shine trying to find people to teach. He said that he respected that a lot! We talked to him about the restoration and gave him a pamphlet.

We asked him if he would read it and he said he would, with his family! Perfect! We have an appointment with him next Saturday! We are super excited! 

Little miracles like that remind me that the Lord is in charge and knows who needs us and who is ready to listen, all we have to do is find them! It's kinda like a treasure hunt! There is always a "golden investigator", we just have to listen and know where to look!

Here is to another week of "treasure hunting"! 

Hermana Segura

Hermana Snyder and I.  She left for Valdivia to be an Hermana Leader
with my old comp Hermana Wyatt.  I'm going to miss her.

Super awesome view! Love my sector!

​Another angle, just in case you didnt catch how cool it was.

When we end our mission, we have to send in pictures of us contacting people in the street.....
how we are supposed to do that?, not sure.
So we called Paulina and had her be our "contact" ha! Super cheesy.

My new comp Hna. Mota from Brazil, she's crazy! She makes me laugh so hard!
I speak English, she speaks Portuguese, and we have to communicate in Spanish....
kinda crazy to think about! super cool though!

Chile - Punta Arenas - Week 36 - I GOT MY PACKAGE!!! No letter this week.. just pics.

I GOT MY PACKAGE!!! thank you thank you! it was loaded with goodness!
I couldn't wait till my birthday so I just opened it!
Thanks a bunch for everything! I also got my other suitcase this week so now I'm good!

Like I said, loaded with goodness! =)

We had zone conference this week with Presidente! It was so good! I love zone conference!
This is a pic of the zone Punta Arenas! A lot bigger than my last zone! All super awesome missionaries!
It's been great to work with them, sad we have to have cambios so often.
The girl sitting on my left will be my new companion this transfer! 

My comp and I on the bus. Gotta love the bus.

selfie with Paulina! She was baptized just over a year ago and now wants to go on a mission too!
She is awesome! she comes to lessons with us a lot!

Last Monday we had a movie party with all of the Hermanas!
We went to one of the churches and hooked up the projector!
We were all on the floor with our blankets eating cake! it was great!

A little dark, but here is all of us! Love them! Its so cool to be with girls from The U.S., Chile, Brazil, Uraguay, Costa Rica, and still get along so well and have so much in common!
We laugh so hard and have so much fun together!
I´ve realized what an awesome opportunity it is to meet people from all over the world! 

A better view of Punta Arenas! Its beautiful of course! 

Punta Arenas and the Ocean! I don't know if you can see the island out there or not
but that is called La Tierra del Fuego!
Lots of history and legends out there. that is where the Indians live!

Chile - Punta Arenas - Week 35 - Que hermosa la mañana!

Another lovely week here in Antártica! (almost Antártica).

I want to share a quick experience that we had this week!

Saturday there was a baptism in another sector so we invited our investigator Cristian to come and watch it! He drives taxi, so he asked permission to park the car for an hour so he could come with us! He came and then right before it started he got an emergency call and had to go pick someone up. He said that he would be gone for ten minutes. We told him that he should be fine because there were going to be a few talks and everything, but that he needed to hurry! Long story short, he missed the actual ordinance by like 2 minutes. We were so sad! We were so excited for him to watch it and he just missed it! But we still got to show him the font and talk a little bit about it. We told him that there would be another opportunity to see a baptism and he said, "yeah mine!" Ah! Yes!!! He is so prepared!!

Later that night we had a devotional with all of the missionaries in the stake! There was a choir of just us missionaries and we sang and showed videos about the restoration! It was so awesome! The spirit was amazing. Cristian came to that too and when we asked him how he liked it he started to get all teary eyed! He said that he loved it and he was so sad that his wife and daughter didn´t come with him to see it. It was so awesome to see how the spirit touched him. The message of the restoration is powerful. Don't be afraid to share it!

Hermana Segura

 

Las Hermanas de Punta Arenas! menos 3...
We like to hang out on mondays! Here we are at the mall at the food court! =)

at Juan's house eating lunch after church on Sunday!
His parents are loaded and their house is huge.
We are eating pecans from their pecan trees...it's fine. 

The obra misional in our ward! Elder Espinoza (next to me) got transferred early to another sector
so we went to go say bye to him before he left.
The fruit in the furry jacket is Juan, our ward mission leader.
He reminds me of Nico/Steven Segura.

The other part of missionary work that people dont see. lots of papers...
We we were up until like midnight.

Always an awesome sunset here at the bottom of the world!

The moon is huge here! This pic doesn't do it justice.