Hello family!!

To start out I have to tell you what just happened.... it was so funny.  So this lady walked into the internet place and she had a baby stroller and I kept hearing a dog whine, it didn’t really mean anything to me until my companion started laughing right next to me. I looked over at her and there is the stroller with a dog inside of it. I looked around at the lady to see if she had kids... nope! Her dog was her baby and she had strapped him into a stroller to take him shopping. SOOO FUNNY!!! I was dying laughing. 

I’m doing good. It’s getting cold here and we find spiders in our house all the time, I hate spiders. BUT yesterday we totally had the most amazing miracles happen.  WOOT WOOT!!  In the morning we got ready and we were studying and we needed to leave somewhat earlier and ended up leaving at 10:25 to go look for investigators. We went to look for Brandon and he was ready and came with us. 1st miracle. 2nd miracle is that my companion was saying Hermana we need to go get Jaun Raúl (a new convert that is 89 years old and can’t walk very fast or very much so you have to go in a car). I told her that we didn’t have anyone to come get us in a car and I didn’t want to go because we were going to be late to church. Well we ended up going to see if Jaun Raul was ready and we passed by. Yep he was sitting in a chair in the doorway waiting for us and when his daughter saw us she started yelling they came, they came!!! He got all excited, it was like seeing a little kid on Christmas and that tore me apart because I had not wanted to come. Then when we got him out the door I asked how we were going to get him to church, by walking or by car. and my comp said by car/taxi. Sundays and in the morning are almost impossible to find a taxi and especially one that is empty-just a side note. So we started waiting and calling people to come get us but no one could. 2 taxis passed by but other people took those.  I said to my companion no one is coming to get us?  She said no. Right then a taxi passed by and saw us and we flagged it down, it came over and it was empty. He helped us in the car and get to the church. When he got there it was 10:55, church starts at 11. I got tears in my eyes as he pulled up and helped us to the church.  When we walked in to church a member of another ward told us that someone was looking for us and she walks with a limp, the only person we know that walks with a limp is Monica. miracle 4, Monica and her daughter came to church for the first time!!!! We had 5 investigators in church yesterday and each one of them was a miracle that they were there. 

Brandon loved primary and wants to come next week. So does Monica. We didn’t have anything else happen yesterday because no one would answer the door or listen to us, but it didn’t matter because we had some really amazing miracles happen. My companion taught me to trust more and have more faith in God, I was doubting almost the whole time that something would happen, but she taught me to be more faithful. It was a really amazing experience I won’t forget. Well family i love you all. I’m happy. I’m doing good and I love my mission. Things are hard, but they are also so good that you forget the bad moments. Everything will work out for the best, I know that.  I love you all and hope you have a great week! Be safe and do what is right, in this there is safety and peace :) LOVE YOU!!

love,

hermana Tycksen

Hola!

This week all of our appointments fell through.  We have 4 investigators that we are really focusing on to come to church so that they can be baptized but... we have not been able to find them ALL week!! It’s terrible. We have 5 sundays this month and one down with a big fat zero investigators in church as of yesterday. So 4 weeks to really work my bum off and get people coming to church on a regular basis.  This week has been a week of learning for me. And I have learned a lot. Let me share these few things with you. :)

We got a little letter from the Area Presidency of Chile to all the mission presidents and we were asked to read it.  I have been trying to put everything I learned into practice, like talking to everyone that I see about baptism. So that’s my focus right now. I want to baptize. I am always thinking about it. It’s what I want to achieve.  I always wanted to baptize but I’m making it even more of my focus so that other people when we teach them, know that we want them to be baptized and if they don’t accept it and don’t want us to come back. it’s ok.  It’s the best way to find the people who are really going to put forth the effort to complete with baptism.

As of yesterday we´ve had some great success. We contacted this lady and she was really awesome and then started to talk about her family and we talked very briefly about the gospel and then asked if we could share more with her and she invited us in. We went in and started by singing her a hymn (I am a child of God) which she loved soo much that she started to cry. It was perfect to invite the spirit and totally set up the lesson. We talked about Faith, Repentance and Baptism briefly and she liked it so much she told her sons friends to come and listen to us (while we were still talking about faith). So one of the friends came to listen (he´s never been baptized). They were really great and really special so we are going to be passing by for them again this week. But the thing that got me was when we were finishing the lesson and we prayed we were preparing to leave and the lady asked us to sing I am a child of God again for her and her son’s friend. So we did and she thanked us and said she´ll be waiting for us to come back again on Thursday. Awesome!! :)

This week we had interchanges. I went with Hermana Isaacson from Orem and we went to her area. She´s companions with Hermana Paz so that was really fun to be able to see her as well.  We did a lot of contacting and almost all of the contacts we did were really great and they are going to be passing by for them again. I learned a lot from Hermana Isaacson. She was companions with one of the Hermanas from Mexico that was really amazing and she passed on a lot of great advice of how to do contacts and teaching, etc. So when we do the contacts we focus more on them than getting inside to teach them. We get to know them for like...2 min and then start to ask to share more with them. It works really well so that you can enter into the house and start to teach them. If someone comes up and just says we´re missionaries and we want to teach you a message about Christ, a lot of the time here and especially in our area they say they are Catholic or Christian and don’t need to hear a message of Christ because they already know Christ or are with Christ, etc. The point is to first get their confidence and then ask to share a message. To show concern for them first and their lives and then they feel ok to invite you inside.  If I just say we want to share a message, even though they are doing a lot of things to get ready for school or cooking or with kids, etc., it’s stressful, so instead of doing that I ask to come back another day when they are less occupied and they then feel respected and tell you the day and time you can come back. That was really long to explain that but it’s just something that I’m trying to put more in practice. 

I love you all and I hope you are all doing well and are happy :) stay strong and do what is right, always :)

Con amor,

Hermana Tycksen