Hola family!!!

Wow ok so this week was great. There is so much to tell and so little time. Well to start off, Anais never came to church... but we found this guy named Hernan. AH!! he came to church on sunday and is preparing to be baptized! He has all of the lessons but the commandments and he doesn’t have any problems, he understands it all. Finally, I needed someone who is just ready to take that step and we are working hard with him to get him ready for an interview this week with our district leader! 

Alyssa, I’m glad you got to go to efy.  Be happy for the experience, the kids here have to work really, really hard to be able to go because they don’t have the money. They have to pay about 120 dollars which is a lot to send your child to go do something for 5 days. The whole ward pitches in and does bake sells and tries to raise the money for each of the youth to be able to go. It´s awesome. 

Hermana Stott and I got to have an interchange together!! Wow seriously like the best 24 hours ever hahaha.  We laughed so hard all day and she was saying that 5 years ago she would have never thought we would be having lunch together in Chile.  It was so fun to be working with her and I loved every minute of it. She told me that she is going to try and do another one with me sometime soon, I´m hoping that will work out. We worked really hard and she really is such an amazing missionary and example. I had a pretty cool experience with her that when we were teaching Hernan, all of the sudden I had this feeling that I was teaching Hernan with Sara. It was literally the most unexpected feeling ever, but I literally felt like Ashley was Sara teaching with me, that she was my companion for that day teaching with me. I told ashley about it as well. 

We also went to teach a less active member and ended up teaching her and her aunt. Her aunt told us that it was exactly what she needed to hear. I was talking to Hermana Stott afterwards about it and she said that she didn’t even feel the spirit very strong and the sister started to cry and we were both a little stunned.  But when she told us that she needed what we came to share, we talked about how great that is and amazing that we are able to be here and have those kinds of experiences. That we can teach the people for the things that they need to hear, and even though we didn’t feel the same spirit as her, it´s not about us.  We are here to teach and listen.  Ashley told me that her bishop here in the mission said that the reason we came to learn spanish is not because we need to be able to teach the people but because we need to be able to understand them and listen to them. We are just a guide and to bring the spirit. Yes, we teach the lessons but we listen to their problems and apply the gospel to it. They have the responsibility to teach themselves and burry themselves deeper into the gospel, thats why it´s important that they keep their promises and do their reading and praying and going to church.

Hermana Baldeon is doing good, we have a lot of great moments together and we talk a lot. Oh Elder Salvidar and his wife came to the pension the other day and they told us that he likes me best so he chose me to be the person to do the experiment with heated blankets. Everyone is freezing at night and so we are doing an experiment and it´s totally working, I was so glad that he chose us to do the experiment. Also oh!!! I totally forgot to tell you that we had our interviews with President this week!  He came to the pension in the night around 8:00 with his assistants and Elder Salvidar and had inspections and interviews. It went really well and he is such an amazing President. I really am so thankful for him. He told me thanks for what I´m doing here and he knows that we will have miracles in this area. As a man of God I know that he can receive that revelation for us and this area and I´m excited to see the miracles happen here. 

Also, we have an activity de zone today and I´m really excited. We get to play volleyball, watch 17 miracles and then eat ice cream. 3 of my favorite things so I´m excited to do that today. 

How is Landon doing?? I heard about the accident in Spain and I was worried a little bit because Landon and Brooke are both there and I didn’t know where it was only that it was in Spain. So I´m glad to hear that they are ok. That’s amazing about that Elder. He really was protected by the Lord in the train accident. 

Well family I love you all so much and I hope you have a great week! Work hard and I´ll talk to you next week!!

Con amor,

Hermana Tycksen

Hola Familia!

Thank you for the letters and for the picture. We worked hard this week and my companion is still learning the mission and I´m still learning to be patient with her. We really get along so well so I´m so thankful for her everyday. There are just a few issues with that she will get tired in the night or really cold and beg and plead with me to come home early. It´s a temptation for me every time because I´m feeling the same things but somehow I find the strength to say no and tell her we will not be going home early. She gets a little upset but I don’t want to be disobedient. 

This week we had a lesson with Anaís which was really good. She is awesome but she is having problems with doing the things we were asking her. We had a really, really awesome lesson on Repentance and just focused on explaining it the best we could to help her. She had some questions which we explained and in the end of the lesson we asked if we could kneel and have a prayer that she would offer. She finally (first time we could kneel) said yes and offered the first prayer ever out loud. It was short but I was so happy because I knew that if she would not pray in front of us, she wasn’t praying on her own. We were happy about that. We committed her to come to church and she told us yes but that we couldn’t come get her because her sisters would get mad, they don’t really want anything to do with us right now. But then she didn't come!!! AH!  So frustrating. We are trying to do everything we can for her and she wants to be baptized and KNOWS she can’t be baptized if she doesn’t come to church and then she doesn’t come. It´s been a constant struggle with her but I know that she can do it and overcome the temptations of satan not to come to church.

Last monday I was in the store shopping for food and I ran into Hermana Stott and another sister from my district in the MTC! They are companions!! They are also the sisters that do interchanges with us so we have interchanges this friday. Hermana Stott will be coming to my area and we will work together for 24 hours and then change back, but I´m so excited to work with her. It’s so funny that we are both here in the same mission and could be companions one day.

We had an activity of the Branch on Saturday of Sweets. And I made chocolate chip cookies and brownies. It ended up being really good and there was a ton of sweets that we all ate. It was really awesome and we had a joyful time there with the members and investigators. We actually ate a lot and when we went home I felt a little sick because of too many sweets in one night. Oh, so yesterday we had a branch conference which was awesome! They had a choir (of members) which was good (the people here really can’t sing and sometimes it’s really funny). But they sang a song about love and as I was sitting there looking at each of the sisters in the choir singing and I felt an overwhelming love for each of them as well as for each of the members and investigators here in this area. I started to cry and I had a thought come to me that I will be leaving this area in this next change. I’m not sure if that will happen that I leave but I know that at sometime I will be leaving this area because I have been here 4 months now which is a decent amount of time to be in an area. But I just really love these people so much. It’s such a tender mercy to feel the love of the Lord for His children here in Chile. It breaks my heart when there are people that we find that don’t believe in anything. They don’t believe in God because of all the wickedness and sadness in this life and they say how could there be a God that loves us with all this stuff happening. A loving God wouldn’t let children suffer and it´s so awful that they can’t believe that God loves us. But I have learned it really is how you look at life. If you look at all the evil and sadness of this life, obviously you could start thinking how there couldn´t be a God but if you look at all the amazing and happy things there is no way there could not be a God that loves us.

Family, I love you so much and I pray for you each every night. I hope that you have been having a great summer and enjoy the rest of what is left. It´s been really, really cold here but we are doing good. I´ve been using my sleeping bag at night now because it´s so cold . 

I love you all and I hope that you have a great week! Keep working hard!

Con amor,

Hermana Tycksen