First, thanks for the letters and for filling me in with the babies dad! I loved hearing about how fast they are growing up! Mom, I counted my bites and I have 40 flea bites. They are awful. I finally talked to the elders and all of the sisters to see what I could do about them and one of the sisters gave me a flea collar, the elders gave me bug spray that is really intense and then the other elders said to get some spray from the grocery store here and that should help a lot. The problem we believe is that the fleas are coming from our mamamita´s house because she has a lot of animals that are always outside and then inside as well, so there is not much we can do about it. But as of right now I´m so prepared for them and I´m feeling like everything will be fine. :) Everyone here is so helpful so don’t worry about me.
This week was crazy!!! Ok so first off, we had intercambios this week which is new for the sisters because its usually only an elder thing but the first presidency came out with basically zone leaders for sisters and we can do intercambios now which is where we change companions for a day and work with someone else. It’s really beneficial. I ended up going to Viña with Hermana Sargent, who is awesome. I learned so much from her and how she teaches and how she contacts people on the street which was really great to see someone else do it because I have been feeling lost for the past 4 weeks. When I met back up with Hermana Castleton she said, you won’t believe what happened!! They had taught a lot of our investigators and set a baptismal date for one of them, I was shocked. When we got back together we went out and started contacting people and I can’t believe how well we did! We applied everything we had learned from our companions and we had more success in one day than we have ever had so far! It was incredible. It´s really amazing how the Lord works. We contacted a reference named Carlos Wilson (I thought that was funny). Well we started talking to him and he was super receptive and then he said, oh here´s my son coming from school. So we turned around and this kid comes up and he looked really familiar to me, the first thing he said is, hey do you remember me? Suddenly I remembered that last monday he had let me sit down on the bus coming back from central (it was really crowded and I had grocery bags in my hands and the buses are crazy). It was such a great act of kindness and it was so interesting that we found him! Well, his dad (Carlos) wife died so there are only men in the house and we can’t go in without a woman. So we told him that and that we would come back another day with a woman and Carlos said that his daughter lives close by so that he would invite her as well. We were like GREAT! That would be awesome. So we are going to bring a member and then be teaching all three of them. They are GOLDEN investigators we are so excited!!
I wish I could tell you everything that happens everyday but there really is not enough time!! Two days ago was a bit of a hard day for me. It poured all day during intercambios and then the next day I ended up having a cold so I have been a little bit sick, but I´m fine. I kinda broke down two days ago because I was feeling frustrated. I talked to Hermana Castleton and she told me that the sister missionary she was with during intercambios told her that the two of us training each other rarely happens. That if she was in our situation in her second transfer she would not have been able to do it because she would not have been prepared or strong enough. She said to Hermana Castleton that she knows we both have been prepared and are strong enough. That really hit me and I never thought that I was really ready, but then Hermana Castleton and I started to think about all the miracles we have seen so far. Sometimes we don’t see the miracles in the moment but when we think back on the day we can see them.
One of the miracles is this woman named Maria. We were just walking one night and I saw her and just randomly thought to contact her because she was sweeping and I figured we could offer service to her. We went over and asked to help and she said no. So we just kept talking to her and getting to know her and telling her who we were and things like that. She would not really look at us and wasn’t interested at all (Hermana Castleton told me later that she just wanted to leave because Maria was not receptive) but then I kept talking and randomly asked if we could pray with her. She looked up surprised and asked you want to pray with me? We said yes and she said with my sister too? I said sure we can or we can just pray for her if you want to. And then she told us to come inside her house. We went inside and her sister was in a hospital bed and is handicapped. Maria told us that she was hit by a milcro (bus). It was so sad to see that and then we prayed with her and talked more with her and she wanted us to come back another day. It was such a miracle that we had found her. I don’t even know why I asked to pray with her but I realize now that it was the only way we would get into her house to teach her. She needed someone to care about her to pray with her and for her sister. So amazing!
Another experience is that we were contacting houses by our pension one night. And Hermana Castleton said, there is someone we have to contact tonight. Someone out here is ready and we have to find them. So we kept knocking houses and then we were right in front of our pension and had 5 min till we needed to be inside. We were going to go in and then I just knocked the house right in front of our pension. This guy answered named Juan. He started talking to us and was really interested in what we had to say. He told us to come back any other day and he would be happy to talk with us. It was so amazing. We had been out there knocking all night to find him and he was right in front of our pension the whole time.
I´m so thankful for Hermana Castleton. She really is an amazing person and I know we are supposed to be together right now to help each other progress and to push each other. I just hope that we can be together for another change because we have so much work to do here in Miramar and there are only 2 weeks left of this cambio! CRAZY!! time flies by so fast! I feel like there really isn’t enough time in the day to do the things I want to or the things I feel like we should do.
So also I have been reading this talk by Lawrence Corbridge, it´s called the fourth missionary. If you can find that I would highly recommend reading it. It´s for missionary work but I think it also applies to life in general. He said that we pay tithing and do things like that to repay the Lord but really we are not repaying him because he has already given those things to us. The only thing the Lord really wants because he does not have is us. It´s our will. Only we can be the ones to submit our will and our whole selves to the Father. He wants us because when we give ourselves over to Him, He can change our character and our hearts and our will to be His. We can have His character and His will and His heart. I was thinking about that and we came to this earth to be like our Father, so its the only logical thing to do to give our will over to the Father so that we can be more like Him.
I want so badly to be the fourth missionary. I want to give myself over to the Father and do His will. Brother Corbridge said that all we have to do to give ourselves over to the Father is to pray to Him and say "ok I give up, I surrender. I only want to do your will, make your will my will" and we can change just like that. We only have to strive each day to do the will of the Father. We are not going to be perfect and we are not going to be happy and cheerful everyday but we can have joy that only comes when we do the will of the Father.
We are going to be teaching our investigators Paz (peace), Jacqueline and Lucas on Tuesday and we are going to commit them to baptism. They have all come to church about 5 times now and so they can be baptized this weekend. We are so excited and praying that it will all work out and that they will want to be baptized!! Also we are still praying and fasting for a miracle with Yerko (who has a problem with wine) he is so close and I know that he can lose the desire to drink wine. I know that God can help him with this problem he has.
Oh! We had another night of postres! That was awesome and the postres were so good!! I´m so excited to make them sometime because I have all the recipes. We made a cake and it was so good. We made homemade frosting from the recipe Megs gave me before I left and it was amazing. The frosting went down in the middle and the cake was like a molten lava cake and it actually ended up tasting like the cake from P.F Changs (Great wall of Chocolate) We ended up winning the most chocolaty. I guess there was also an earthquake here this week... I was asleep during the whole thing and it wasn’t very big but Hermana Castleton said she had just woke up to go the bathroom and the house shaking.
Well family I love you all so, so much! I pray for you everyday and for your success. I hope you all have a great week and tell Mandy I’m excited to see the new baby next week! Be strong and do what is right and you will be blessed!
Con amor,
Hermana Tycksen
