Jose Miguel`s Baptism!

So as most success stories in the mission go, pay day came around, and we had a baptism!!! His name is Jose Miguel (25). We found him our 2nd week in Curacavi cause we were  trying to look for a referral but wasn`t sure about where they lived (cause some people live in shack houses and don`t have a house #) so we contacted him and asked. He said we could go over and teach him so we set an appointment for monday. Monday rolled around and we called a member to come to an appt with us, but she said she can`t because another member, Marco, was gonna have FHE at her house and was bringing a friend. 15 minuted after that call Jose Miguel called us to cancel our appt because he was invited to a friends house for a "noche de hogar? or something" and it clicked that Jose Miguel was the friend that Marco was gonna bring! We called Juani and invited ourselves over and got to know him a little at the FHE and set up an appt to start teaching him the discussions cause he was super interested. We taught him the 1st two discussions that week with his friend Marcos and he eagerly accepted a baptismal date for 3 weeks from then and came to church that sunday. The following week he was working the afternoon shift from 4 pm-12 am so it was impossible to see him. Next thing we knew the baptism was the following sunday so we literally had to teach him like 10 other lessons in a weeks time plus the baptismal interview and plan the whole ocassion. I thought it was too little time and that it was gonna be too rushed and something was gonna fall through and Hna.Broadhead and I were considering pushing back the date, but the Lord prompted us to move forward and that day in our planning session we planned all the lessons and literally taught like 5 lessons combined that evening (the gospel of jesus christ, baptism and confirmation, obedience, prayer, reading the scriptures, and keeping the sabbath day holy). We kept doing these combinations the rest of the week and taught him everything just in time for his baptismal interview saturday with our district leader. He accepted the commitments without hesitation and it was amazing to see how the Lord had been preparing Jose Miguel before we even met him. He had stopped smoking and drinking tea weeks ago and he would even set up his own member present lessons and invite his work friends over when we were there! To say he is a golden investigator does not even BEGIN to describe him!!! It is truly one of the greatest miracles I`ve seen on my mission. He bought himself a desk and post-its and markers to study his scriptures, he also got a suit and came dressed nice for church sunday and goes to family home evenings with his friends all on his own incentive. It`s crazy because we really didn`t do much, we we`re just at the right place at the right time and the Lord literally did the rest! It was a huge confirmation to me that we are simply instruments in the hands of the Lord and we can`t do this great work without Him. Jose Miguel continually thanks us for talking to him that day, he was looking for a faith to help him turn his life around and we were the answer. He was going to go to Thailand with some friends, but recently cancelled the trip to save his money so he can visit Hna.Broadhead and I in the U.S. He says it`s the only way he feels he can repay us for what we`ve done for him and the joy I feel in my heart for this great blessing is without price. 

xoxo,

Hna. Ibarra

Locked out!

This week on...The Hills...haha jk

So this week in Curacavi things we´re a little cray. Things were going so well for so long and I was just waiting for something to happen, and it did, and it ALWAYS happens when an investigator is about to get baptized...without fail! It all started thursday when we got locked out of our house. I left the keys inside and our home has a gate that can´t be opened without the key so not only were we locked out of our house, but locked in our own yard without escape. We made several attempts at opening windows or sliding our BIP card (for the metro) to unlock the door without any success. 10 phone calls to the Pensionistas (a senior couple who are in charge of housing), our zone leader, the land lord and the local pizza place (we got hungry!) and 2 1/2 hours later the Elders in the office came to the rescue with spares and a camera to take embarrassing pictures! lol. Sadly we were never able to order our pizza because they thought my companion (with her gringa accent) was prank calling them and stopped answering our calls so we managed to use a stick to slide out our cereal boxes through a tiny window in our kitchen. All in all we had a good laugh and lesson learned, we won´t ever forget our keys again! 

The following day we got a phone call from one of our recent converts who´s friends son, Elvis, lives with her and is an invetsigator with a baptismal date for the end of this month. She said that Elvis, who´s been sober for 2 months, got drunk and hit her and took a knife out at her and broke a window. We biked over immediately and found her with stitches and a black eye. We had a lesson with Elvis and Maritza and her daughter Denisse the recent converts, one of which I´ve ever felt the spirit so strong. Elvis not only has drug abuse problems but is zchizophrenic (sp?) and Maritza took him in and has sought out professional help for him and has helped him so much with his problems. Hna. Broadhead we´re able to see the great love that she has for him to the point where she´d allow for this to happen to her and forgave him and doesn´t want to kick him out of the house cause she knows the street has nothing good to offer him. Elvis felt so sorry for all the damage he caused and we taught him about repentance. There were tears in both Hna. Broadhead and I´s eyes as we testified of the atonement and the ability it gives us to be clean of our mistakes. Neadless to say we might have to push back his baptismal date.

Our other 2 investigators with a baptismal date are Monica & her son Cristobal who is in a wheelchair. His mom recently found a wound on him from sitting for so much on his wheelchair and has had to go to a million doctors for the past week making it impossible fo rus to teach her and prepare her for her baptism and making it impossible for Cristobal to come to church since he has to be in bed-rest for 3 months. So we are also going to have to push back her baptismal date a couple weeks. But all hope isn´t lost because we still have Jose Miguel aka Mickey who we found contacting! He is super eager for his baptism sunday, has been coming to church, reading, and went to all 4 sessions of conference! He´s what you call a GOLDEN investigator. He works the evening shift everyother week so we haven´t been able to see him at all last week, so this week we have to teach him lessons 3,4 & 5 and have his baptismal interview and prepare everything for the baptism in 6 days, it´s gonna be hectic, but we´re gonna do it and feel so blessed for this miracle the Lord has given us.

Also, I thought it´d be funny to mention that I was trying to go after a contact that was running away from me (typical) when I tripped on the uneven sidewalk and totally biffed it! Luckily the person didn´t notice and just kept walking, but I scraped my knee (again) and slightly sprained my wrist. I just sat on the floor for 5 minutes crying of laughter with my companion, it was a pretty funny fall.

My last crazy story happened yesterday. Sundays we report our weekly numbers to our leaders. My companion and I had our planning sesh and started getting ready for bed when I noticed it was 11 and our district leader hadn´t called us. So I tried calling him and got no answer and the phone said the call wasn´t able to be completed so I made several attempts at calling other members with no results. I turned the phone off and back on and attempted again and this time it worked and our DL answered, he said he´d tried calling us as well as the zone leaders for the past hour and that they were super worried. Next thing I know the bishop is outside our house and then I start to get an explosion of phone calls from our sister training leader, the office elders, the AP´s, sister Essig and then President! I explained to all of them that our phone had malfunctioned and wouldn´t let us make and apparently receive phone calls and everyone had been so worried that president called the bishop to go check on us. I felt really bad that we freaked everyone out, but felt so comforted to know that  they truly care for us and that in a real emergency immediate action would be taken. I admire President Essig and ALL mission presidents for that matter for what they do to care for us, he is constantly watching over his sheep and is the last missionary to go to bed everynight.

p.s. Shout out to ma boy Ian Hatch who was in the Liahona Noticias de la Iglesia en Sud America for baptising a man of 108 years old in Uruguay!!! Way to be!!!

xoxo,

Hna.Ibarra

Best General Conference YET!

(note: Ian Patton! I got your postcard from Sweden, thanks so much it was cool! I want to write back but only have your FL address, it´s hard to keep in touch with such a free spirit, but tell malcolm to tell nathaly to tell me where I can send you a postcard, too)

Don´t worry folks, I didn´t get abducted by aliens or the international police this week, we had a conference so our p-day was changed to tuesday.This week was a spiritual banquet! It started out friday with a Leadership Conference we had in the mission, we got the amazing news that Elder Holland is scheduled to speak to our mission in November!!!! WHAAAA!!! I´m gonna be praying and fasting that it will happen fersure! Then of course was General Conference, I don´t know if it´s just the mission or what, but it was seriously one of the most inspired conferences I´ve ever heard! There wasn´t a single dull moment (I usually fall asleep during at least one of the speakers lol), the choir sang incredible songs (especially the one that said "Lord turn me not away" what a cool song), and best of all they talked A TON about MISSIONARY WORK! It´s so incredible to witness this hastening in the Lord´s work, so many missionaries have come into the field since the announcement just a year ago and to be a part of it all is the greatest blessing! The prayers given in our behalf were so heartfelt and brought tears to my eyes, you guys have no idea how much we appreciate those prayers and how much we need them, they strengthen us and help us get by during the challenges we face on the mission, so thank you. And well I hope you guys aren´t missing me too much but if you did there was the pleasant surprise of my Mormon Message being played right before the 2nd session started on sunday! It was totally unexpected and my cover was blown to the entire stake, and probably mission, as everyone started looking at me and pointing and all the missionaries in my zone were yelling "Hermana Ibarra!!! Eres famosa!!!" and the youth wanted to take pictures with me hahaha it was really quite flattering, but I just tried to be cool about it and slipped back into the gringo room with my companion where we were watching the conference in english with some of the greenie Elders. And lastly, we had Zone Conference with all the missionaries in our stake and the mission president. We learned about teaching with the spirit and how to improve our contacts, played games, ate a ton of food, and had a good time. My favorite but also saddest part is when the missionaries who are leaving share their testimony, it always makes me tear up and they always say the same thing "the time went by really fast", and it truly does. Next sunday I´ll have 8 months in the mission, I feel like I just got here yesterday, but it´s been incredible to see how far I´ve come in that time and how much I´ve improved spiritually, in my abilities as a missionary and in my character. But like Edward Dube said in conference "Don´t look back, look forward at the work that still needs to be done!" And that´s exactly how I feel, there is still so much more I need to change and accomplish on the mission, and time is going by faster than my mind can process!!! 

Before signing off, I want to share a powerful experience I had this week with conference. So I know I mentioned some time back that I had finished reading the Book of Mormon. Although it was my 2nd time reading it, it was the 1st time actually understanding the story line, characters, and what was going on. This increased knowledge and understanding of the Book of Mormon also brought increased questions and doubts about it´s validity. There were just things that were too similar to the bible, that seemed like the same exact stories only the names were changed or things that were just copied word for word. There we´re also small details I was fixed on because they didn´t seem humanly possible or realistic. Although I had prayed and received an answer that the Book of Mormon was true, I just couldn´t let go of those doubts I had and prayed for guidance. I went into conference with a prayer in my heart, that something in the messages shared would help me resolve my worries. That´s when in the saturday session when Ulisses Soares spoke and quoted a scripture in 2 Timothy, I missed the refernce so I was quickly skimming as he still spake and I stumbled upon chapter 3 verses 14-17 "But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; 15 And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16 ^aAll scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitablefor doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:17 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." I started to tear up (I´m such a cry-baby on the mission, who am I?!) and I knew that the Lord had listened to my prayer and was giving me an answer, "Gladys, you know the Book of Mormon is true, you´ve ALWAYS known! I´ve given you multiple answers, so why do you keep asking me?!" President Uchtdorf later said that we must doubt our doubts before we doubt our faith, and that´s exactly what I did. My questions and concerns are dumb, they don´t matter, they´re not important nor essential for my salvation. What matters is that the Book of Mormon is true, I know it´s true, because God answered my prayer, that it teaches us of Christ, of the precious truths that were lost for hundreds of years and the blessings we now have thanks to his restored gospel. What matters is that no evil man would write such a book, and no good man could without the power of God as Elder Holland said, and that man was Joseph Smith. I know the Lord answers prayers, because throughout my life He has mine, and I know He will answer yours as you strive to live within the bounds He has set. I love you family and friends!!! I hope you had experiences just as special as you watched and listened to General Conference, that the spirit confirmed some wonderful truth to your heart and that your faith and testimony was increased, if you didn´t then you need to ask yourself why.

Spiritual cookie: "That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we alive, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." Acts 17:27-28

xoxo,

Hna.Ibarra

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

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.

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

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