Ignore the last e-mail I sent it too soon.
Greetings and salutations to all with in the sound of my voice (or with in the sight of my e-mails haha) I have officially been a missionary for a month, can you believe it?! I feel like it´s been much longer than that, but like I said before, once you´re on the mission you have zero concept of time. This week has been a lot better but has also had it´s struggles. Even though we got our new credit cards with money we couldn´t take money out of them because in til-til the only bank in this whole are doesn´t accept our cards. So we were living out of my companions earthquake emergency pack and were down to a bag of rice and 3 cans of peas ha ha! So we had to call the A.P. to save us and bring us some cash to hold us over until p-day. So today we´re gonna go to another city to take money out so we can actually do some gricery shopping and so I can also make my emergency pack which is super important. In fact I forgot to mention that on my 1st week here I think it was the 2nd night there was a little earthquake in the middle of the night, nothing crazy, but strong enough that it woke me up haha.
So Til-Til has been good, I am beginning to love the people and the members more as I get to know them personally. We talk to a lot of drunk guys on the street when contacting and some have even kissed my hand and it´s just so hard to not crack up laughing in front of them. The branch president is finally back after 2 weeks of being on vacation and me and hermana rodriguez has a looooong list of things we needed to talk to him about. Our main challenge is that the branch lacks unity and for this reason many have become inactive. People just come to church on sunday, participate a bit in class and then go home unchanged until the next week. A lot of the leaderds like the R.S. president and Y.M. president asked to be released and it seems like no one wants to make any effort in building the kingdom of God. But me and my companion want to organize some activities and make better use of the chapel to help the members actually get to know, befriend and love one another and we´re hoping that this will not only unify the branch but help the less actives return. But this transfer ends next week, it´s super short because of all the sisters and new missionaries coming in and so I´m not sure how it´s all gonna go down, but I´m prepared to stay and work hard to edify this little branch and amp up the members as well as to go somewhere else the Lord may need me.
I´m also loving Chilean culture and Chilean food! I know that was my primary concern "what do Chileans eat?!" But luckily during these past weeks of starvation the members have fed us and they eat pretty normal hispanic food. But I´ve also had some of my first traditional foods like completos, choripan, mote con huecillo (looks super gross but is yummy), cubos, and sopaipilla! You´ll just have to google this stuff to know what it looks like and what I´m talking about, but it´s all so good and I feel blessed that I´m not eating anything crazy.
I also have a couple funny stories, one of our investigators is a very hard working woman who literally works all day peeling onions and tying cardboard boxes to be packed and shipped. She is constantly on the go and doesn´t stop so we decided to do some service and help her peel some onions, we were super slow and bad at it in fact I knicked my finger and then our hands reaked with the smell of onions for days which made us super hungry cause we didn´t have any food haha But it was super fun and we still teach her while she peels her onions, she just doesn´t stop! We also had a rough day when we ate with a member who the entire time was telling us how depressed she was and all the problems in the ward and with themembers and drama and it just made me an my companion feel so discouraged, then all of our appointments were falling through, no one was home and no one wanted to let us teach them or hear us and on top of that we were starving, my companion had some coins and used it to buy un cubo which is basically a home made otter-pop cause it was all we could afford (125 pesos= .25) We were walking down the street to try to contact some referals cause it was the only thing we could do when all of a sudden I hear a "PLOP!" and when I look at my shoulder a bird had pooped on me!!! Me and my companion just started cracking up and it helped lighten up the mood, God has a sense of humor. Also this week we met with a members friend who´s name is Jose. His family apparently abandoned him, they found him in the street and took him in and take care of him. He doesn´t believe in God or anything really because of all the hardships he´s experienced and because he can´t believe in something he can´t see. We taught him that God is our loving heavenly father and that although we can´t see him we can feel he is real and his love for us. We taught him how to pray for the first time and his plee was simple "Heavenly father, thank you for the family that I found, I ask that you take care of them" and when I looked up tears we´re streaming down his face. I gave him a hand hug because I couldn´t give him a real hug but I was so proud of him and felt the love heavenly father has for him. I´m super eager to work with Jose and help him feel God´s love for him as a child of God. Welp, that´s all for now!!! Pray for me!!!
Peace & Blessings,
Hermana Ibarra
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