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