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
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment