¡¡¡FELIZ DÍA DE INDEPENDENCÍA!!!
i so hope you are all having a rip-roaring blast right now for the 4th of july. just soak up the sun and have fun!!!
man, we have such an amazing familia!!! i am just TICKLED to hear how awesome our family is doing. patrick will be such an amazing missionary. caleb and seth are going to be comin up on that fast too! and lil hopey wants a sister... reminds me of how i was years ago... ha ha. that would be cool to adopt.
i really hope everything goes well when mecy goes. her family needs to pull together for her. but i am so glad that our family has grown closer. i like how mom said it has become a sweet experience. it is true! with the gospel, it really is sweet because we know that death is just part of the plan and that it is not the end. there is so much comfort in that. comfort comes for the knowledge that we have. i have learned a lot about the importance of knowledge and how important it is to gain knowledge in our lives. there is a scripture in 2 Nephi 30:15-16 that talks about the millenium, and how it will be such a better place because the world will be filled with the knowledge of the lord. how cool is that? knowledge is light and power. those who do not have knowledge cannot replace the darkness with the light and become as things acted upon, instead of acting for themselves. i love this topic of light and dark! i have just been diving into it and have a HUGE chain of scriptures and thoughts and quotes about it. and it is still going! me and my last three comps have been talking a lot about it in our studies. it is so cool how much you learn and how much light is gained on the mission! and it is available to everyone whether they are on a mission or not! just like dad and mom and their crazy scripture chases. i just got a letter from dad about his studies and all these scriptures he looked up. ¡LEGITMO!
--and now a bit of randomness--hielo means ice, (pronounced as yellow) and i put it in the subject box because it has been quite the topic around here. there is ice everywhere because it has been more cold than usual. when we get up in the morning everything is white because it is covered with ice. hmmm.... a change in the weather? and when i say weather i mean, climate?.....¡¡¡¡¡¡ :S !!!!!!!! it has been nuts! i have never been so cold in my life. good thing we are going shopping today so i can finally get some socks and leggings. i have been sooo cold. it was so cold this weekend that the water in our lines froze and we couldn´t take showers sunday morning. i went to church with slightly greasy hair.... yuck... when we get up in the morning we can see our breath. it´s bad. last night we left the electric heater on all night even though we aren´t supposed to because we just couldn´t stand the cold. but no worries, i just wear lots and lots of layers (i feel like i go out to the sector wearing my entire wardrobe!) and i have a hot-water baggy thingy i tuck in my sheets and we stay nice and toasty. ;D it´s just weird and everyone is saying that it is a lot colder than usual. burr! i guess i am getting a taste of what alex went through in russia for winter! ha ha ha. but in chile!!!! it is quite the adventure! but me and la hermana butler keep our spirits high. we were even out knocking doors in the streets at 9 pm last night in the freezing cold, but we were laughing and having a great time... and maybe some dancing... and laughing.... and jumping up and down to stay warm... and laughing some more. :D so we are doing fantastic! actually, yesterday was quite a day. we taught some good lessons, and one of them was a family whose mother is a jehovah´s witness. they are so hard core and they never ever let missionaries into their home and never listen to any other religion, not NOTHIN. but we went in and started out with small talk, and she busied herself in the kitchen acting like she didn´t want to listen while we taught her kids and her daughter´s boyfriend, but before too long, she was standing in the room watching, then pulled up a chair and started really paying attention. everyone listened with rapt attention. i don´t know what happened, but they were all so quiet and hanging on every word. we presented the first lesson and hermana butler recited the first vision... then silence... and the spirit FLOODED the place. it was so legit! we presented the book of mormon and they seemed excited to read it and had a lot of questions. then the mom started to speak and it was so amazing! by the end we gave a book of mormon to her kids and asked to set up another time that we could visit. it was funny because we said a time and the mom spoke up as if to say, "wait, that won´t work because i want to be here" and we looked at her and she stopped talking and waved her hands at her kids and said, "ah, nevermind. you two will be here right?" it´s like she wants to so bad, but it is so against her religion to listen to anything from other religions. so we will be teaching the 22 year old daughter and her boyfriend and her two siblings, and try --wink wink--- to be there when the mom is home so that she can listen without breaking the rules of her church.... we are just going to see what we can do to bend them.... muah ah ah!
so we are doing pretty good! i just don´t have any legit pics to send. sorry. my camera is officially out of commission. i have had it for 4+ years, and i knew it wouldn´t last, but i thought it would last till the end of the mish. dang. the battery has been going out on me because i would charge it and it only lasted for about 10--20 minutes each time. but it took a blow when it was set up on a table for zone pics for our last meeting in my last zone, and an elder was late getting into the pic so he dove over the table to get in just before all the cameras started going off and just knicked my camera at the end of the table and it crashed on the floor. :( it´s all glichy know and it´s just not even worth trying to mess with. so i´m out of luck. but cameras here are a lot cheaper than the states so i am going to see what i can do....
man, rengo is awesome. it is big, and we gots a lots of work to do. we share the sector with elders (again) kimbal (from utah) and torres (dominican republic). they are way cool. torres is outgoing and cheerful, a negro with really tight curls, and kimbal is a tall skinny kid who has more charity and love for people than i have EVER seen in a missionary. the two are just inspiring. just amazing. hey, side-note, you know a family with the last name spawn? kimball´s grandparents live in west jordan and he spends his summers with them. not sure where in west jordan... but he has connections there.
anyway, we have had quite the welcome here. apperently there haven´t been hermanas in rengo for some 20 years mas o menos. how crazy is that? and it´s a WARD. woot! my first time in a ward in the mission. they usually have just over 100 in attendance, usually 115. we had about 90 yesterday. that is crazy good for this mission. (sorry, al, just had to brag...) they have some really great members and they are all soooo excited to have sisters. almost over enthusiastic like they were swarming us during church. the hermanas from the relief society were just all over us. it was kind fun he he he. they love us and all of them want us to visit because they are all dying to work with us and give us references. it will be so great! the R.S. president, hermana gatica, actually went out with us on thursday and showed us around. we visited 15 families of members, inactives, and part member families. it was so legit. we have really good bearings in our new ward thanks to the elders and the awesome sisters in the ward. we have a new ward mission leader and he is really cool. for our first coralation meeting we made all these goals for missionary work in the ward with him and we are so pumped to just "shred the gnar" as alex would say. har har! AND my last hija, hermana hunsaker is in my new zone! i am in the rancagua zone, which was my first zone a year ago. it brings back so many memories. we have to travel for about 45 minutes by bus (crammed in there like sardines...) every wednesday for district meeting into the city of rancagua, and the church is by the centro where we always went for pday in my first sector. going back into the centro in rancagau just brings a flood of memories of my first few months as a newb. i can´t believe it was a year ago! that is just so wierd. i love it!
we are sthuper sthoked to be working. hermana butler is such an observant and caring person. she is very obedient but not pushy. just a chugger and a plugger! she is still learning spanish and sometimes turns to me during lessons to ask for help, but she is doing great. she came to the field in january, but she is fully adjusted and doing great.
MOM, thank you sooo much for helping me out with all the school stuff. i didn´t realize how important having a plan for after the mission would be until a few months ago. actually, every time we have had a special conference or something, the speakers (including elder richard g. scott when he came to santiago back in august) have always taken time to talk about life after the misison. i just have brushed it off until now, but the spirit has been nudging and prodding lately and i have been praying a lot about it because it has really been on my mind a lot. i finally have a plan after months of praying and thinking over it over time and i finally know what i need to and want to do. i know i need to go to school. that just always comes up when i pray. i know i need to study. i don´t have any money whatsoever, but i have recieved from the spirit and have made the decision to go to utah state. i don´t know how in the world it will work because i have no money and it will be difficult to plan everything while out here, but i just know and feel that it is what i need to do. so i am going for it. just everytime i think about it the promise i recieved before coming out on the mission comes up in my mind. i remember praying right before leaving SUU to ask if serving a mission was the right thing for me to do. i prayed for a long time before i recieved my answer. the answer was that the spirit was not going to tell me yes, i should serve, or no, i shouldn´t. i remember specifically recieving my answer that for me to serve a mission was a personal decision that i had to make, but i remember recieving a specific promise from the spirit that if i did choose to serve a mission that i would recieve great blessings that would be in no other way available to me and that when i finished the misison that all my personal affairs would just fall into place for my life after. i am sticking to that. i am taking a step in the dark with these plans i am forming for after the mission, but i don´t feel worried at all. i am 100% confident that i am heading in the right direction. i want to study part time, get a job, and live on campus. with time i can get a horse and keep it with uncle george and go over to care for it regularly. i want to get a cheap 4 or 5,000 dollar truck and work on up from there to start building a future for my dream of having my own little country home that i can add to and make it my own with my own land for gardening and horses. that is my dream. don´t know how i will get there, but from where i am i just know that things are already falling into place. and i´m still not even close to finishing my mission yet! wow. cool how that works, huh?
ok, this is getting to long, but i just wanted to that you, Mom, for being so willing to jump in and help whenever i have needed something. i hope i never ask too much. i love you so very much and am so grateful to you for helping me get all the school stuff ready and for the money to buy some warm clothes. you are the greatest. fur realz! i love you so much!
i love you all mi lil familia linda!!!!!!! take care!!!!!!
samsam
p.s. could you send me bishop wadley´s email address? we need it for our emergency info in the mish...