August 15, 2011

So I am loving training Hermana Perez. She is from Lima, Peru. She reminds me a lot of me when I first started my mission (in a lot of funny, ironic ways). I´ve realized that I´m actually not too bad at this training thing, better than I thought I would be, anyway. I think I´m actually better at (and enjoy more) teaching/training other people how to be missionaries than actually being a missionary. I hope that makes sense. I´m learning a ton from the new training program and I´m really glad that I have the opportunity to use it.

We´ve been sick all week. My ear drum popped again in the plane, and my zone leader told me he thinks I have strep throat because I´ve had a fever for the last 4 days, but it seems as if things are looking up in the weather down here, so hopefully we´ll be back to 100% soon!

So something that I was thinking about this week... When I was on the bus up to Osorno, I heard some of the Elders talking about something or other and they mentioned, in context to some Elder in their zone "He´s a fariseo" (I´m saying it in Spanish because I forgot how it is spelt in English haha). I thought about that though, about how the fariseos are so concerned with the details of exact obedience that they miss the big picture. I started to wonder if I´m like that. I know missionaries who aren´t as obedient as I am, but enjoy so much more success and happiness in their mission because they seem to just love everyone and have a great time. I wondered if maybe that was the key, if maybe I was missing the big picture and being too concerned with the small stuff. However, I then thought that there is no way that the Lord would want me to compromise my obedience. It´s just not something He would want. I thought about the phraze "return with honor." It doesn´t say "return having had a great time and tons of fun" or "return with visible results" it says "return with honor." I know that the way that I will be able to be an honorable missionary is through sticking to that obedience, so that´s my plan.

Yeah, sidenote, let me just tell you about the torture of today. We went ice skating again, even though I didn´t skate because I needed to rest, but they played 3 consecutive songs from the GLEE season 2 soundtrack, followed by "Here We Go Again" by Demi Lovato, then came about 4 or 5 Jonas Brothers songs, and we left just as Selena Gomez came on, I was dying not being able to sing along. Haha. Oh well. It´ll just make it better in 6 months!

Greetings from Antarctica!-- August 8, 2011

Well it´s that time again... cambios. This one will be a little different. I´M TRAINING! I´m super excited! I don´t know who she is or where she´s from yet, but I´m flying up to Osorno tomorrow to be trained in a new program that the church just came out with about training new missionaries. Wow.

Also, our Mamita finally returned! Her husband is a police officer and works on the Chile/Argentina border, so for 30 days at a time he lives in a compound there. The family went to visit him and got trapped in by the snow for a week and a half! We were orphans! Haha. Anyway, she´s back now and we´re very pleased about that.

We found an absolutly amazing investigator on Monday. He looked kindof sad so we went to go talk to him. He said his car had just broken down and he was walking to look for a mechanic. We told him we were missionaries and he said something to the effect of: "That´s amazing, I am looking for religion, what have you got?" We invited him to come with us to the Bishop´s house right then and he accepted. We had a family home evening with them, gave him some folletos and a Book of Mormon and asked him if he would prepare to be baptized by someone with the authority of Jesus Christ. He said yes right then and there. He left the next day to visit family in Santiago, but we called him the other day and he said he´s reading a ton and used the word "spectacular" to describe how it all seemed to him. We are really excited for when he comes back later this month.

Well, that´s pretty much all there is to say for now. I love you!

-Jamie

So here we are in August... August 1, 2011

This week has been much better than last week. I´m still feeling kindof stressed, but I feel like that just comes with the territory, the sacrifice is far worth it for the blessings.

Yesterday I had a realization. I was thinking about all of the ways that I´ve grown and the things I´ve learned in the mission and I realized that this time has marked me far more profoundly than I even realized. I remember one time Brother Phelps telling me about how when he was realeased from his calling as a missionary, he felt an overwhelming sense that the Lord was satisfied with his efforts, and that he had completed what he was sent to do. That has been my goal ever since. Everything I do here has that hope in mind, that when I have to end my time as a missionary, I will have the assurance that the Lord is pleased with my efforts, and that I completed what I was sent here to do. I am not the "I don´t care about obedience as long as it´s not TOO bad or I don´t get caught" missionary. I am not an "As long as I´m here it doesn´t matter what I do" kind of missionary. I´m an honest and striving to be 100% obedient missionary, I am a missionary with a great desire to serve and help and build the kingdom, and I feel good about that, but I also realize that there are a lot of things I lack. There are missionaries that I see here that seem to have an undying excitement to go out and work for hours and hours, which I will admitt right now is something I have yet to achieve, and there are missionaries here whose focus is centered completely on their investigators and nothing else, also something that I can´t say I have gotten down perfectly. I have a constant insecurity hanging over my head that those things are holding me back from being/doing what the Lord sent me here for, but I also feel a sense of hope and optimism in the future and that I´m doing alright and that everything´s going to be fine. Never in my life have I felt a greater desire to repent of everything I´ve ever done wrong in my entire life, I think that comes with the Spirit, so everyone can be expecting an appology spree at some point.

Anyway, I´m out of time, so I´ll wrap this up now.

Love you!

-Jamie

July 25, 2011

First things first, we had a sleepover in Ovejero last night and Hermana Moss showed me the CD "The Nashville Tribute to Joseph Smith." Go buy it right now! You´ll love it. It´s amazing.

So it has been snowing quite a bit here, but yes, I´m still loving it. I bought ear muffs today, so don´t worry. I´ve been staying nice and warm. I´ll try to send pictures if I have time.

We moved houses this week, we are finally in our own house. It´s really pretty... really girly... but pretty and nice. Not as warm as the other house, but we´re getting by just fine. 

So funny story, the other night we stopped in a store to get some empanadas. The man that works at the store felt bad for us because I guess we looked cold and asked us if we wanted some of his soup that he had just made. (A lot of times the stores here are attached to the houses of the people who own them). My companion, who had been craving soup all day, said yes, thinking that he was going to pour some into a cup and send us on our way. No. He pulls out the entire pot of soup, puts it in a plastic bag, and sends us on our way. We we walking around with a pot of soup in the street. Luckily a member took pity on us and let us leave it there until it was time to go home.

There was a winter carnival this weekend. There were more lights, music and costumes than the Las Vegas strip. It was crazy, and kind of like looking in from the outskirts of Babylon, but also kindof cool because we were able to do something like 50 contacts a day on the corner leading to the plaza where it was held.

Ok, I´m ending this here so that I´ll have time to send pictures. Love you and I hope you´re enjoying your vacation!

-Jamie

July 18, 2011

Happy late Birthday Grandma Lynn! I thought of you all day on the 16th! It is our mission president´s birthday and also Elder Pugh´s birthday, so there was lots of celebrating all the same! I was secretly celebrating for you though!

So when I was on an intercambio, Hermana Moss showed me a CD she has about the pioneers. There´s a track on it that lists off the names of a bunch of the pioneers and one of them was Mary Jane Mount. I know how much you love to look at your family history, so you can have fun with that. Maybe we have pioneer ancestors!

So this week was pretty good. Not a whole lot happened, but we are steadily moving forward in the work. We had an intercambio on Friday and Hermana Moss came to my sector and I had to lead. We got lost a lot, but it was still fun! Funny story. We had contacted this guy, Juan Pablo, and he told us to come by to share with him and his family. We went by a couple times, but they were always really busy and told us to come back later. We went by on Friday with Hermana Moss, and he basically told us that he talked with his parents and they want to stick to being Catholic. Just at this very moment as we were talking to him in his doorway, two Jehova´s Witnesses come by. One of them says to him "Juampy!! (that´s a nickname for Juan Pablo) It´s been a while! When can we come by?" to which Juan Pablo replied "Anytime man!" The Jehova´s witnesses then walked away, Juan Pablo turned back to us and said... "As I was saying... we´re Catholic and we can´t really share with anyone else..." Hermana Moss and I laughed the entire afternoon about that.
Oscar´s report date to the MTC was delayed 6 weeks. His family was really bummed out, but I got to share with them about how I was about to go to Russia to teach English, which is a great goal, but I ended up not going and it turned out that I met Bekah the very weekend that I would´ve left. We talked about how the Lord works in ways that we sometimes don´t understand until we can see it in retrospect. It was really cool to get to recall the miracles that I´ve had the privilege of witnessing! It made me think about how we are all so privliged to be a part of this work. Missionaries always talk about how awesome the mission is because they get to see people´s lives change, but that´s not exclusive to missionaries! I was so blessed to have the opportunity to help people know the Gospel before my mission, and I know I´ll have the opportunity to continue doing so after. I´m not so convinced about this whole "Best two years" thing. We can always be doing missionary work and enjoying the miracles that we see in the lives of others!

Anyway, that´s it.
I love you all!

-Jamie