Re: It´s a small world after all

Hna Ibarra cual es el nombre de la hermana que conoce todo ese grupo.de hermanos, pues entonces tambien la debo conocer yo.
Me alegro de todos sus esfuerzos y la felicito, por el exito del Senor por medio suyo.
La Amo voy para donde Sherlyn  la esta semana pues tenemos reunion de misioneros que estuvimos en Vina del Mar con Pte Gillespie , tambien voy para la Conferencia General.
Cuente con mis oraciones
Hna. Rodriguez

On Sep 30, 2013 11:28 AM, "Gladys Ibarra" <gladys.ibarra@myldsmail.net> wrote:

So before I dive into this week I`ve gotten several e-mails from friends saying they`ve sent me Dear Elders and asking if I`ve received them. I don´t know if their lost in cyber space or if people aren`t putting the right address or what, but I haven`t received a letter, hand written or in Dear Elder form probably since April, soooo if you`ve sent me something since then know that I love you and am not ignoring you, I am a very devoted pen-pal and honestly haven`t received letters from anyone, so please resend them and make sure to check off the little box that sends it directly to the mission office, you can also e-mail it to me at gladys.ibarra@myldsmail.net just incase to make sure it gets to me!!!

So this week was a great week, we were constantly busy and exceeded most of our weekly goals, Hna. Broadhead and I are just biking our rears off all over Curacavi and teaching and visiting and talking to as many people as we can, there`s a lot of work to do, the members are actively involved in missionary work and are constantly giving us referrals and making goals to have investigators at church, it`s so great!!! Heaven on earth for a missionary, no joke! It`s lightyears away from the other branches I was serving in and I thank the Lord daily for the blessing of serving in Curacavi. 

So a couple cool stories:

1. We were trying to look for a referal and asked a random guy we saw on the street if he knew where she lived, his name was Jose Miguel aka Mickey haha, and well we contacted him and set an appointment for monday to teach him. Monday rolled around and we called a member to come to an appointment with us, but she said she couldn`t cause she was gonna have an FHE at her house and a member from the ward was gonna bring his friend. So we shrugged it off and were trying to think what other member could join us, when we got a call from Jose Miguel. We confirmed the appointment but he said he couldn´t meet with us cause some friends from his job had invited him to a family home evening and that`s when we put two and two together that HE was the friend going to the member`s house we had called earlier to go out with us! We called her back and pretty much invited ourselves to the FHE and later that week taught him the restoration with his co-worker friend who`s a member.He believed instantly in the restoration and said yes to a baptismal date for the 20th of October!!! He said it was so crazy how everything happened last week but that he had been looking for guidance and that he was so grateful we approached him and that the entire week he`s had dreams with us and his mormon friends from work and has been thinking about getting baptzized and that he knew it wasn`t coincidence and that the Lord is calling him. What a miracle! I can testify that the Lord hears and answers prayers and will put you in the path at the right moment to guide and bless the life of others, all we have to do is fear not, open our mouths, invite others to activities, FHE, church, or to talk to the missionaries to be blessed with this opportunity. So many people are willing to make the change if someone would just simply invite them to.

2. I was eating lunch with a member who the 1st time we ate lunch with was happy to hear I was from Miami because she lived there a couple years in her YSA years! But as we named people we knew we didn´t have any friends in common so it wasn`t that cool anymore and I just thought, well she`s a couple generations older than me so we won´t have any connections. But this time she mentioned the name opf President Ayaviri (who now lives in Utah with the Bolivian clan: The Mondacas and the Noriegas) and we started talking about more families we might know when she mentioned the Zenteno´s and the Lopez´s. That`s when I flipped and said YEAH! The Lopez´s are my family! My brother married one of their daughters! We started talking about all my brothers and sisters-in-law and what they were upto now a days when she brought up that her friend Harold married Nahomi, and I was like I KNOW! HAROLD IS MY BROTHER!!!! We both just started screaming and freaking out and she instantly pulled up facebook and sent a picture of me and my companion to my sister-in-law Natalia to send to my family and it was just toootttallllyyyyy crazy! I can testify that the Lord calls us to serve where we are needed and to come in contact with specific people during the mission to make the experience just that much better. It is such a small world, so that makes 2 people I´ve met in Curacavi that have some kind of weird connection to my So Fla roots, haha! Awesome!

3. We taught a kid who claimed to be a catholic atheist...go figure...in reality he was a communist and kept saying how faith is ilogical so I read him Alma 32: 17-18 and peaced out, some people just have NO CLUE what they`re talking about LOL

Anyways, family and friends I love you all, thank you for your love and support and letters (although I havent gotten any I don´t doubt you´ve sent them) until next week...GENERAL CONFERENCE!!! WOOHOOOO!!! It`s better than christmas for a missionary :D

Spiritual Cookie: D&C 35:13 "Wherefore, I call upon the weak things of the world, those who are unlearned and despised, to thrash the nations by the power of my Spirit;"

xoxo,

Hna. Ibarra

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

It´s a small world after all

So before I dive into this week I`ve gotten several e-mails from friends saying they`ve sent me Dear Elders and asking if I`ve received them. I don´t know if their lost in cyber space or if people aren`t putting the right address or what, but I haven`t received a letter, hand written or in Dear Elder form probably since April, soooo if you`ve sent me something since then know that I love you and am not ignoring you, I am a very devoted pen-pal and honestly haven`t received letters from anyone, so please resend them and make sure to check off the little box that sends it directly to the mission office, you can also e-mail it to me at gladys.ibarra@myldsmail.net just incase to make sure it gets to me!!!

So this week was a great week, we were constantly busy and exceeded most of our weekly goals, Hna. Broadhead and I are just biking our rears off all over Curacavi and teaching and visiting and talking to as many people as we can, there`s a lot of work to do, the members are actively involved in missionary work and are constantly giving us referrals and making goals to have investigators at church, it`s so great!!! Heaven on earth for a missionary, no joke! It`s lightyears away from the other branches I was serving in and I thank the Lord daily for the blessing of serving in Curacavi. 

So a couple cool stories:

1. We were trying to look for a referal and asked a random guy we saw on the street if he knew where she lived, his name was Jose Miguel aka Mickey haha, and well we contacted him and set an appointment for monday to teach him. Monday rolled around and we called a member to come to an appointment with us, but she said she couldn`t cause she was gonna have an FHE at her house and a member from the ward was gonna bring his friend. So we shrugged it off and were trying to think what other member could join us, when we got a call from Jose Miguel. We confirmed the appointment but he said he couldn´t meet with us cause some friends from his job had invited him to a family home evening and that`s when we put two and two together that HE was the friend going to the member`s house we had called earlier to go out with us! We called her back and pretty much invited ourselves to the FHE and later that week taught him the restoration with his co-worker friend who`s a member.He believed instantly in the restoration and said yes to a baptismal date for the 20th of October!!! He said it was so crazy how everything happened last week but that he had been looking for guidance and that he was so grateful we approached him and that the entire week he`s had dreams with us and his mormon friends from work and has been thinking about getting baptzized and that he knew it wasn`t coincidence and that the Lord is calling him. What a miracle! I can testify that the Lord hears and answers prayers and will put you in the path at the right moment to guide and bless the life of others, all we have to do is fear not, open our mouths, invite others to activities, FHE, church, or to talk to the missionaries to be blessed with this opportunity. So many people are willing to make the change if someone would just simply invite them to.

2. I was eating lunch with a member who the 1st time we ate lunch with was happy to hear I was from Miami because she lived there a couple years in her YSA years! But as we named people we knew we didn´t have any friends in common so it wasn`t that cool anymore and I just thought, well she`s a couple generations older than me so we won´t have any connections. But this time she mentioned the name opf President Ayaviri (who now lives in Utah with the Bolivian clan: The Mondacas and the Noriegas) and we started talking about more families we might know when she mentioned the Zenteno´s and the Lopez´s. That`s when I flipped and said YEAH! The Lopez´s are my family! My brother married one of their daughters! We started talking about all my brothers and sisters-in-law and what they were upto now a days when she brought up that her friend Harold married Nahomi, and I was like I KNOW! HAROLD IS MY BROTHER!!!! We both just started screaming and freaking out and she instantly pulled up facebook and sent a picture of me and my companion to my sister-in-law Natalia to send to my family and it was just toootttallllyyyyy crazy! I can testify that the Lord calls us to serve where we are needed and to come in contact with specific people during the mission to make the experience just that much better. It is such a small world, so that makes 2 people I´ve met in Curacavi that have some kind of weird connection to my So Fla roots, haha! Awesome!

3. We taught a kid who claimed to be a catholic atheist...go figure...in reality he was a communist and kept saying how faith is ilogical so I read him Alma 32: 17-18 and peaced out, some people just have NO CLUE what they`re talking about LOL

Anyways, family and friends I love you all, thank you for your love and support and letters (although I havent gotten any I don´t doubt you´ve sent them) until next week...GENERAL CONFERENCE!!! WOOHOOOO!!! It`s better than christmas for a missionary :D

Spiritual Cookie: D&C 35:13 "Wherefore, I call upon the weak things of the world, those who are unlearned and despised, to thrash the nations by the power of my Spirit;"

xoxo,

Hna. Ibarra

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

A day in under interogation at International Police

Soooo sorry I didn´t write yesterday, my companion didn´t have her passaport copy with her and I forgot my carnet (aka chilean ID) at home and we were interrogated by the carabineros (chilean police) and detained by them at PDI (Dept of International Police)!!! After a long series of questions and showing them my ministerial card and explaining we were missionaries we were finally allowed our one phone call and called our mission president to save us, it was a crazy day and most of our p-day was spent in a jail cell with 10 other women who were there for prostitution & drug abuse among many other things. What was super cool though was that they let me take my Book of Mormon with me, they confiscated all of our other things, so my poor companion who was on the verge of tears at this point, took advantage and started teaching these women! It was the coolest teaching experience I´ve ever had!!! 

HAHAHAHA so all that up there was a total lie, what REALLY happened was I was one of 2 people in the mission who had some kind of weird glitch with my e-mail account and I couldn´t log on yesterday so I had permission to go on today. I did not get arrested, nor did I teach convicts in a jail cell all though that´d be a cool story to tell.

This week was a tough week to be a missionary, why?! Because it was "El Dieciocho" aka Chile`s Fiestas Patrias aka Independance Day. Even though no one was home or wanted to let us teach them and we only had a total of 8 lessons all week we did party hard (missionary style) and ate A TON!!! We had a ward activity AND a stake activity, both of which had a variety of delicious chilean cuisines such as but not limited to: asado (BBQ), choripan, mote con huecillo, empanadas, helado, ensalada, etc. I ate until my eyeballs popped out of my head, after all, this was going to be my one and only dieciocho in Chile so I had to live it up. They also had games and performances of traditional Chilean dances, the most popular being Cueca...oh my heck! It is sooooo pretty!!! A member is going to teach Hna.Broadhead and I how to dance it next p-day and I`m super stoked! Even though el 18 is only one day Chileans take the entire week off, soo pretty much these people know how to party, which is probably why I get along so well with everyone here!!!

Something cool that happened this week was that we went to go meet a recent convert who hasn´t been going to church lately. She`s the only member in her family and when we went over her younger brother wasn`t really interested in joining us. When we started talking and getting to know eachother I mentioned I was from Miami and she asked where and I said "Pembroke Pines, but no one knows where that is" that`s when Jessica´s brother Arnoldo poked his head in and said "did I hear pembroke pines?" at this point I was totally freaked! Turns out they used to live in Pembroke Pines when they were younger on 63rd street near the FL Turnpike, WHAAAAAAAT?! We all freaked out and they instantly pulled out their laptop to Google Map the house, I gave them my address and turns out we lived 25 mins away from eachother, and to think we came to meet eachother on the total otherside of the planet, how crazy!!! So now that we have the So Fla connection Arnoldo wanted to talk to us and said he`s had a lot of doubts about which church is true and that he`s between the Catholics and Mormons (that`s an easy one to solve) so we taught him and he came to church sunday with Jessica which was soooo awesome! Seriously, the place you are called to serve is SO inspired, the Lord knows why you`re here and he transmits that to his apostles that give us our calls. 

We had the incredible blessing of having 4 investigators at church this sunday, another was Cesar who wants to increase his Faith in God, and Monica and Cristobal  who were a referal from a recent convert. Monica is going through a depression and felt soo much peace when we taught her the Plan of Salvation, she was desperate to have her 17 year old son Cristobal hear us, too. Cristobal is in a wheelchair and has had several doubts about God truly being there for him. But the young men at church fellowshipped him immediately and invited him to mutual friday and for the first time in a while his mom said he has been smiling. She called us today to tell us that Cristobal liked what he read in Young Men`s and asked us to bring him his own copy of the Book of Mormon. They are so special and I have no doubts they will be getting baptized! Also this week my companion felt her first quake in Chile, she was so excited! This morning there was another one, those always make the day more exciting!

Well family and friends it`s been a great week in Curacavi and I`m praying we stay here a long time to help our brother`s and sisters come unto Christ!

Spiritual Cookie: "May Peace be unto your Soul. We will not be tempted beyond our ability to withstand. Our detours and dissapointments and the straight and narrow path to him." -Pdt. Howard W. Hunter

xoxo,

Hna.Ibarra

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Re: Curacavi aka reunion in the rocks

Mucho ojo con el chupe de guata en cualquier lugar, dos misioneros en Vina del Mar estuvieron bien enfermos, seguramente no la hirvieron lo suficiente.
Yo disfruto cada semana tus aventuras y logros, definitivamente eres muy bendecida con: sabiduria. espiritualidad, companerismo y sobre todo el espiritu de Dios.
Me siento prgullosa de ti. Disfruta tu mision que sera un recuerdo para toda tu vida. Ojala yo pudiera volver a otra mision , pero regrese muy enferma de la columna.
Te quiero y oro por ti, le he escrito a Sherlyn y no me contesta
Hna Rodriguez

On Sep 16, 2013 6:53 PM, "Gladys Ibarra" <gladys.ibarra@myldsmail.net> wrote:

So tuesday I went to the mission office to pick up my new companion I´ll be training. As usual all the trainers were sitting in one room and our trainees in the other, both anxious and nervous to meet our new companions. We stood up and sang Called to Serve as they filed into the room one by one and I lead the music. There was such an intense vibe in the room as we looked into eachother`s faces and thought "that could be my companion..." The day before someone showed me a picture of the 4 sisters that were coming and one in particular stood out to me, a tall blonde, who I had actually seen walking around the temple grounds a couple weeks back when I went with our recent converts in Santa Maria! As I looked at her picture something inside me just knew she`d be my companion. President Essig and his wife bore their testimonies about how after picking his A.P.`s the next thing he picks out is who`s going to train. They said that we were sitting there because we are the best missionaries of the mission and they wanted to give them the very best start. Their words impacted me a lot and I am just so so grateful for the trust and confidence not only our mission president, but the Lord has put in me to train again, I don´t feel like I´m anything special compared to other missionaries, but the Lord has blessed me with many talents and strengths to hasten his work here in Chile. Finally the time came, and when they called on the tall blonde the name that immediately followed was mine!!! AAAAHHHH!!!! I just knew it! I ran over and gave her the biggest hug! So my new companion is Hermana Broadhead from Draper, Utah. She´s 19, so part of the new generation of missionaries coming into the field and it has just been the funnest week together, we get along super great and have very similar personalities. We couldn´t be more blessed to be in our new area, Curacavi! First of all, our house is super cute and we have a washer machine, woohoo! Second, after 7 long months in branches I´m finally in a ward, not only that, but we have the full support of the members, we have ward missionaries and the ward leadership is organized the way it should be and they have just been so loving and welcoming, I feel like I´ve known them my whole life already. Third, we have awesome investigators that the previous sisters we´re teaching and I am positive we´re gonna have a baptism this transfer, this place is a gold mine! We jumped right into it, we`re on bike, and everyday when we come home I´m completely exhausted but with the total satisfaction that we are on the Lord`s errand and being diligent so he can bless us accordingly. Fourth, we have district meeting in Santiago so we are close to the city so it´s the best of both worlds since Curacavi is campo (country).

A funny story this week is that we taught a gypsy man named Roberto who thinks he knows english but really the only thing he can say is "wait one moment pleade" and "yeah baby!" hahaha" Hna. B and I were trying soo hard not to bust out laughing during that lesson! He gave us food and my companion got her first taste of "chupe de Guata" aka cow stomach...yummmm! (but really I vomit in my mouth) Anyways, I guess that´s all for this week! Many incredible adventures ahead, stay tuned!

xoxo,

Hna.Ibarra

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Curacavi aka reunion in the rocks

So tuesday I went to the mission office to pick up my new companion I´ll be training. As usual all the trainers were sitting in one room and our trainees in the other, both anxious and nervous to meet our new companions. We stood up and sang Called to Serve as they filed into the room one by one and I lead the music. There was such an intense vibe in the room as we looked into eachother`s faces and thought "that could be my companion..." The day before someone showed me a picture of the 4 sisters that were coming and one in particular stood out to me, a tall blonde, who I had actually seen walking around the temple grounds a couple weeks back when I went with our recent converts in Santa Maria! As I looked at her picture something inside me just knew she`d be my companion. President Essig and his wife bore their testimonies about how after picking his A.P.`s the next thing he picks out is who`s going to train. They said that we were sitting there because we are the best missionaries of the mission and they wanted to give them the very best start. Their words impacted me a lot and I am just so so grateful for the trust and confidence not only our mission president, but the Lord has put in me to train again, I don´t feel like I´m anything special compared to other missionaries, but the Lord has blessed me with many talents and strengths to hasten his work here in Chile. Finally the time came, and when they called on the tall blonde the name that immediately followed was mine!!! AAAAHHHH!!!! I just knew it! I ran over and gave her the biggest hug! So my new companion is Hermana Broadhead from Draper, Utah. She´s 19, so part of the new generation of missionaries coming into the field and it has just been the funnest week together, we get along super great and have very similar personalities. We couldn´t be more blessed to be in our new area, Curacavi! First of all, our house is super cute and we have a washer machine, woohoo! Second, after 7 long months in branches I´m finally in a ward, not only that, but we have the full support of the members, we have ward missionaries and the ward leadership is organized the way it should be and they have just been so loving and welcoming, I feel like I´ve known them my whole life already. Third, we have awesome investigators that the previous sisters we´re teaching and I am positive we´re gonna have a baptism this transfer, this place is a gold mine! We jumped right into it, we`re on bike, and everyday when we come home I´m completely exhausted but with the total satisfaction that we are on the Lord`s errand and being diligent so he can bless us accordingly. Fourth, we have district meeting in Santiago so we are close to the city so it´s the best of both worlds since Curacavi is campo (country).

A funny story this week is that we taught a gypsy man named Roberto who thinks he knows english but really the only thing he can say is "wait one moment pleade" and "yeah baby!" hahaha" Hna. B and I were trying soo hard not to bust out laughing during that lesson! He gave us food and my companion got her first taste of "chupe de Guata" aka cow stomach...yummmm! (but really I vomit in my mouth) Anyways, I guess that´s all for this week! Many incredible adventures ahead, stay tuned!

xoxo,

Hna.Ibarra

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Chicha de Curacavi!

Soooo we had transfers this week and after 5 1/2 long months in Santa Maria I´m finally heading out. It was seriously so hard and sad to leave the branch and all the members who have been able to touch my life in such a special way. It was pretty much a sob-fest between the Relief Society, recent converts, and us. But truly Hna. Cottle and I feel we have done great things here, we`ve been able to touch the lives of so many people and most important of all here is where we learned to be missionaries. Hna. Cottle will be in Putaendo (yes, that´s the name of a real place LOL) and I´m going to Curacavi in the San Pablo Stake. No idea where it is, but it´s on the way to Valparaiso which is the coast and it´s campo, and I`m excited to finally be in a ward!!! Not only that but I´ll once again be training a greenie, FUN! I´m seriously super excited for the new adventures that await and am ready for this next chapter in my mission.

 

So here´s a funny story from my last week in Santa Maria. We visited a refferal called Cristina who is very religious and believes in the bible. She has talked to all kinds of missionaries from different churches and basically had her opinion of the mormons and wasn´t gonna change.We taught the restoration and had her give the closing prayer and in the middle of the prayer she stops and says that something is troubling her and looks around super weird. So after the prayer my companion went to the bathroom and I sat there talking to her and she said that she feels something weird in the room with me, something bad and that it wasn´t me but that proably I brought something from outside with me, some sort of evil spirit...I was like Oookaaayyy this chick is crazy, where is my companion so we can get the heck out of here! Then she says she was gonna do a prayer and basically did an exorcism on me asking God to cast whatever evil spirit was with me out of me and out of her house...I just sat there trying not to bust out laughing! Me? Posessed?! Hahaha, no way! You just meet the craziest people on the mission.

 

Also, this week I finished reading the Book of Mormon for the 2nd time in my life, but for the 1st time with true meaning and understanding. To be honest I´ve never prayed to know if the Book of Mormon is true, I just always felt like it was and that I didn`t need to ask cause that´d just be dumb. But as I read and contemplated on the stories and charachters there were some things that I´d read and question and there are still many things I don´t really understand (like in Eter 9:19 where they talk about Curelomes and cumoms...what the?!). But I decided to follow Moroni´s invitation in the end. I knelt down by my bed and prayed, for the first time ever I prayed and asked to know if the Book of Mormon was true, if these things really happened, if Joseph Smith truly interpreted this ancient text through the power of God. The overwhelming feeling and burning in my bossom I felt cannot be described, but I received an answer, I know it´s true, I know that if we apply it´s teachings to our lives it will bless and guide us. And I invite anyone and everyone who has not yet done so, who hasn´t read it, prayed and asked to do it. You don´t have to read the whole book to ask, read a couple chapters and kneel in prayer, cause to know a cake is tasty you don´t have to eat the whole thing, but just taste as slice. I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to share this testimony with the people of Chile and for how much it´s blessed my life and family. Seriously guys, THE CHURCH IS TRUE!!! :D

 

Also the mails not on strike anymore so hit me up with some letters!!! Love you all!!!

 

xoxo,

Hna.Ibarra

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Earthquakes, kids with knives, and black beans

This week was pretty eventful as we approach the last week of the transfer. For our last p-day we went to the stake president´s house with all the sister missionaries in our stake and had lunch and played and had a good time! There´s about 15 of us and it´s so fun that there´s so many sister missionaries now cause we can het together and do more than just play soccer like the elders lol This week there were a few quakes, they always seem to be early in the morning while we´re sleeping, they´re tiny but enough to wake me up. So far in Chile I´ve experiences 7, they´re pretty cool as long as no one gets killed. The other day we were walking with our recent convert Javier who´s now the Deacon´s president and one of the young men´s counselors to visit innactive young men when a kids, literally like 12 years old, was in the street cussing and making a huge show and harassing some other kid on the other side of the street with a knife. Everyone was staring at him and it was pretty crazy, Santa Maria is pretty calm cause we´re not in the city, but the area where Hna.Villota and I work in is "flaite" aka ghetto and there´s a lot of drug abuse. It´s funny because I feel perfectly fine walking around there, even at night, but people are constantly asking us, "Aren´t you guys ever scared?" and try to warn us. But I know we´re lead by the spirit of the Lord and his angels are round about us protecting us wherever we go. (But of course we´re still cautious) Friday we had lunch with an Hermana who lives a bit far, but she´s so nice and recently got endowed and has plans to be sealed to her husband. She made black beans and rice (which doesn´t exist in Chile, well the black beans) oh man!!! I almost cried tears of joy, I had never been so happy eating a plate of food. It´s crazy how something so normal like food can bring so many memories and feelings. I was super happy about that! So here´s a cool story, we´ve had an investigator Delfina and her 14 year old daughter Jeimy who we´ve been teaching for 2 months if not more and they read and pray and everything, but it has been a struggle to get them to church. We were at the point where we were gonna drop her because she wouldn´t be able to progress if she didn´t go to church and this was gonna be the last chance lesson. She had never prayed to know if the Book of Mormon or church was true, and so I asked her if she had prayed like we asked the last time we visited her and she said yes! Not only that, she got an answer and felt that she should continue to meet with us and learn and that she wants to go to church and get more into it. We we´re so happy! She opened up completely and told us her whole life story, which was really sad, but she shared that she´s married to another guy that isn´t the guy she lives with now (which is pretty common in Chile cause divorces are complicated) and that her husband wants her to get divorced so they could get married! Luckily, a few weeks ago in district meeting we learned how to handle divorce cases and told her the church had a lawyer that has helped tons of couples get divorced and that we were gonna helo her out and she was so happy! And we were too because she needs to be married in order to be baptized so it was such good news that her partner actually wants to get married cause usually the Chileans don´t want to commit. It was a tender mercy from the Lord! Lastly, Anabella was confirmed this sunday and bore her testimony all on her own and by her own free will, it was so special. She´s so grateful for the gospel in her life and the family the branch is for her. Next week is transfer´s so next time you hear from me who knows where I´ll be, I´ve been in Santa Maria so long it´s hard to imagine myself anywhere else, but I know that I´ll have to move on eventually and have been mentally preparing myself for that moment for a long time now. Anways, love you all!!! Shout out to all my cougs starting out the new semester, live it up, party hard, hit the books, and go to devotional every tuesday :)

Spiritual Cookie: "A religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things

never has the power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and

salvation." -Joseph Smith

xoxo,

Hna. Ibarra

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.