Today we received 32 missionaries.   With just this group we doubled the number of sisters in Viña del Mar!! Welcome! 

Hola familia!

This week has been a good week. We get our travel plans either today or tomorrow!!! I'm so excited! We have a week left of hard core studying and teaching and then the following couple of days we just pack during study/gym times. We have one district leaving this coming Tuesday and we are all sad because we really do love them so much, they are like our older siblings to our massive family. One of them is Elder Guthrie. He is going to Provo, Ut Mission speaking spanish! His boundaries are all the way to the point of the mountain and south of there. I told him to try and find Alpine and teach Carlos :)   I told him to try and find you guys so you could have him over for dinner sometime!

On Sunday we had the district president come in and sit in on our district lesson we had. (He is over all of the spanish Branch president's and their zone's) I really really loved what he had to say about the Atonement. I learned so much and I really wanted to know everything he knew about the Atonement. So I have made that my study for the past week. I have been studying really hard about the Atonement because I want that knowledge about it that is so deep and comes through study. He talked about love and how the love God has is perfect. Someone said in the class that it makes them think that they do not really know what love really is.  President said "when we feel the love of God and the goodness of God, we understand what love really is. God loved us first and because of that we are able to understand what love is and able to love God back."  This week I have been putting a lot of time into reading Jesus the Christ and Alma 34. PLEASE read and study Alma 34. It's seriously amazing!! I have learned so much from it and I feel like there is still more to learn.

This week we taught Jacob. Hermana Agle and I were really nervous because he has not been responding very well to us and it seems like there is not anything there in the lessons. After our lesson last week, he told us that he feels like he needs something deep, and we really had been feeling we should teach him about the Atonement. So we went into the lesson and started asking questions about his life and related it to the Atonement and he responded so well with it. He was asking a lot of questions and really wanted to know more, we did not have a lot of time and asked if we could come back and teach him another time more about the Atonement. So that's where we are at now, He told us he wants us to teach him because he wants to receive help and believes that the Atonement can help him. I'm so excited! The Atonement is so powerful and I believe it will help him in his life, although we do not really know what he has done, we just know he has guilt he wishes he could get rid of. It was such an amazing feeling and after our lesson with him, our teacher came into the classroom and said “really, really good job hermanas”. We finally broke through to Jacob and I'm so excited! I finally feel like there is somewhere to go with him now!!

Thanks Breanna, Manda and Dad for writing me this last week! it was really good to hear from all of you!  I do see a lot of the people from LP and from our ward here. I have seen Alex Pranger, Chandler Dahl and Kyle Neagle. Chandler left so I do not seen him anymore. I love hearing from you Dad. It's always nice to hear the words of encouragement you have for me because I know you have been in the same situations and having the same feelings and frustrations I have. I love you!

Mom thanks for the package last week! I loved it!  It was really needed. The ear plugs are working beautifully thanks!! :)  Laura Dahl sent me some work out clothes and healthy food which was so nice of her!  They have been working out really great and I love them. 

I love you all so much! It's crazy to think that next week will be my goodbye from the States!! I'll let you know next week when I get to call home!! :)  I think we might be leaving early in the morning. A different zone going to Chile, Santiago East is leaving at 3AM. So i'm kinda hoping it's not that early. Have a great week and remember to serve someone!! Love you all.

Con Amor,

Hermana Tycksen

MOM!!

It's so good to hear from you guys. This week was about the same. I feel like the days all blur together, I can’t remember what I've been doing. The lessons with Jacob have been.... not terrible but not great either. He is hard to get through to because he just does not want to believe what we tell him, he doesn’t believe we can help him with his problems. We are still praying for him and searching for what we need to teach him but it's been hard. We challenged Rocio to be baptized and she said no because she didn’t know if this was the true church. So we asked her to pray again to know if this is the true church and then pray to see if she needs to be baptized and she said she would. We were going to teach her again today but my teacher Sister Pacheco came in and told us we have all now been transferred and Rocio is no longer our investigator. :( I was so sad!! I loved her so much and I was so excited to see how things worked out with her, but we now have a new investigator named Irma. She is a DOLL!! We taught her yesterday, again today and then again tomorrow. I'm so excited to get to know her. She is just super cute.

We have been doing TRC (where people come in and we teach them a short little lesson. It’s basically practice for us to get to know people and to work on our language, they are just volunteers from the area).  It's now my favorite thing to do. I love it!!  The people are so nice and it's easy to teach them the gospel because they are all members and come to feel the spirit and to gain new insight or whatever they need. It's amazing. Choir is awesome. We do sing for the Tuesday night devotionals but not on Sunday night. It's really nice because we get specific seats during devotionals on Tuesday nights, so when it's really crowded we already have a seat. People start lining up outside the building at 7:15 to get a seat. It fills up in about 10-20 min. It's honestly insane here. There are SO many people. Next wednesday we get 800 new missionaries and the next week we will receive 1000 new missionaries!!! They came into our rooms two days ago and put in the new beds. I'll have to take a picture to show you because it's too hard to explain. We did get two new sisters yesterday. They are both going to Canada, French speaking. They are such cute girls and we all get along really well already.  We tried to be as welcoming as we could and we were all laughing last night as we told stories of things that had happened here. 

I think I'm turning into Alyssa with how much I'm laughing here. It's really funny actually. I'm so proud of Alyssa and her diligence to do the important things. That's really an impressive thing about her. I'm so proud of her and Landon for going to the temple! Are they doing that ever week? I think I remember dad saying something about that? That's such an awesome experience for them.

I see Tayler's grandma like 2 or 3 times a week. She is in the same building as me so we see each other a lot. She came and gave me cookies from Jen last saturday I believe? It was so cute of her to do that, and Jen!! I still need to write her a thank you for them. Thanks for the Cupcakes!!  Hermana Agle and I were talking about cupcakes the day before and then you guys sent them to me!  I shared them with my district girls. They were so amazing, thank you!! It was really nice to have something other than cafeteria food.

AH, Gracie got baptized?!  What a great thing. I bet that was such a special day for their family! I'm so happy for her!  Uncle Wade gave me some really good advice about the mission before I left. I was really thankful for that. One of the sister's in my district is actually going to Quito, Ecuador. She is on a service mission as the nurse which is really cool. I love her very much.

I have seen Chandler like 3 times.  I can't believe he leaves so soon! That's crazy! My friend Tyler Belliston who came in the same day as me left on Tuesday. That was sad. I saw him during every meal and it was nice to have a close friend here with me so it was sad to see him leave, but I was really excited for him. 

I love that you have been reading the Doctrine and Convenios (i cant remember how to spell it in english). I've been reading from there as well just a little bit. I've been really studying the Atonement lately. I've started reading Jesus the Christ and Wow I would recommend reading it again Mom. I'm only in the second chapter but it's seriously amazing! I'm so excited to learn more about Christ and I've really felt this is a good way to learn more about him (other than the scriptures).

MOM!! We had the most amazing devotional on Tuesday night!!  It was given by someone in the seventy. He talked about missionary work (so applicable) and it was one of the most powerful talks I've heard here. The spirit was so strong. We have a district devotional after every devotional here to talk bout what we learned and the spirit was so powerful during that. I was bawling and really had some cool things happen.  He talked about how to teach people. He said that you have to be converted yourself before someone you are teaching will be converted. So it really made me step back and think if I'm truly converted, I know things are true but I think that there are things I need to really pray about and become truly converted to Christ. I've been thinking about that a lot this week. Also that conversion is a life long process. We have to question the gospel to be able to receive answers. Everyone always thinks you have to know everything and you don’t. Next point, he said you need to teach things until people understand them. You have to keep teaching and teaching the same thing over and over and over if necessary until they completely understand what you are saying to them. Then he talked about bringing them to sacrament. This is my favorite part. He said to sit with them on the front row because there are less distractions and they are able to really pay attention to what is being said. Then he said DO NOT BE LATE!! Don't be late to sacrament meeting because we go to sacrament meeting to take the sacrament and think about Christ and His Atonement. If we are late to sacrament meeting it shows how we feel about Christ and His Atonement. I will never be late to church again. I love my Savior too much to be late and make it seem like my time is more important that what Christ did for me. I challenge you all to not be late to sacrament meeting. It's like prophets said that if you’re not 10 min early, you're already late. Try to be ready so that you can be to church every week 10 min early.

He then talked about if we worry about investigators who were found before us or were baptized 3 months before we got there, someone will worry about ours that we baptize. He said that applies to everything. If we worry about someone else's family on the mission, someone back home will worry about ours. 

Well, I think that's about it for this week. It's such an amazing experience to be here right now. I've loved every second. When I got set apart I didn't feel an immediate difference of the spirit and being a missionary. But since I've been here, I've been able to really recognize the spirit in a lot of things like lessons and devotionals and just as promptings. Sometimes it's hard to know if it was just me or if it was the spirit that put a thought into my head, but I act on it anyway because if it's not a bad thought I can act on it. I can honestly say i don’t think I've ever felt so close to the spirit in my whole life. 

I love this gospel. I'm so thankful for everything in my life right now. I miss you guys like crazy, but I don't allow myself to dwell about home too much because I don't want to deal with the pain of not being there.  I'm so happy to hear from you each week, it's really nice and something I look forward to.   I love you all so much!

Con Amor,

Hermana Tycksen