January 23, 2012

Hello!

Well first things first, I have learned so much about miracles this week. It was a tough one, things kept getting worse in the work, it seemed as if everyone hated and rejected us, and it was just a rough start. However, even in that rough time I learned a lot about the love that Christ has for us. I looked at the people who were making fun of us or rejecting us or lying withpain not because of my own pride, but because I just wish they would let me help them! I just love them so much! That's one of the hard parts for me, feeling so much love for the people of Chile and seeing the weakness of the church in a lot of places here, it just makes me want to do all that I can to strengthen it, but many times I feel like my efforts have been in vain, I just keep trying to tell myself that the Lord has a plan and that it's not important that I see the fruits right now, it's just important that I do what He called me here to do and it'll all work out.

So in the challenges we were facing I decided that it was a perfect opportunity to exercise real faith, patience and diligence. The miracle comes AFTER the trial of faith, we just have to keep pushing and believe that the miracle will come. Joseph Smith had to fight off the adversary right before the first vision. I have always thought that greater opposition means a greater miracle awaits....

AND THEN IT HAPPENED!

I had been praying for some way that the people would be humbled, some situation in which we could show people that we would be there for them no matter what to help them out, that we really do love and care about them, that we're not just trying to get in their door to try to convince them to join our church. Yesterday, despite the fact that every day this cambio has been super hot, THERE WAS A HAIL STORM! I felt like Nephi! It was so awesome! We happened to be by the apartments so we hurried over to Cristian's house. It turns out he had just run home and we were able to find out that he's not avoiding us, he's just been busy, but he wants us to come by to teach him today. I love faith!

We still haven't seen Margarita. She says we can call her at a certain time to see if she's home, but when we call she hangs up. I'm not really sure what to do with that, but we'll keep on trying. We've found a few other really cool people who we're continuing to work with, but a lot of people just do NOT want to meet with us.

I'm trying to just show as much love as possible to everyone. I'm trying to be "a light (in) the world." I remember reading from a talk in general conference that showing love is the most important thing that a missionary can do. My only worry is that I'm showing too much love and trying to gain too much confidence that people might be seeing us as just friends. 

Anyway, that's all for today, see you in 6 weeks!

Love,

Hermana Gebara

January 16, 2012

NOTE: Jamie's letter got cut off because she had to change libraries halfway through writing. This is the half that we got.

a copy of what I sent to President! -

Review: We are having so many challenges with the miracles we found last week, but I'm not giving up hope!

Ok, we found another spot, so where were we? Oh right. Margarita. So she fasted with us and I felt like an awesome instrument in the Lord's hands for being inspired to help her use a challenge to teach a principle of faith, but we've called her every day since then and her son is in the hospital and when she's not there with him she's working and she said that she's probably going to have to keep up the same schedule even when her son gets out of the hospital. We went by to see if there was anything we could do for her and her landlady came out and told us she never wanted us on her property again. We offered to have someone from the church give her son a blessing, but she didn't answer any of our calls yesterday. We are just having a lot of challenges!

Even with Cristian things have taken a small turn for the worse. I know that they really need to feel the Spirit, so I fasted again to know what they needed and to have as much of the Spirit as possible for our lesson. We even coordinated to have our branch mission leader and his family come with us, and then he didn't even let us in because he said he had to leave! I fasted twice this week! Nelson and Yenifer finally said they would consider coming to church and that he was going to read the Book of Mormon, but then his dad got in a car accident and they couldn't. That's the bad news part.

The good news part is that I have a loving Heavenly Father who guided me to Doctrine and Covenants 35. The part where the Lord talks about how he prepares his servants for great things and that often they are preparing his way without knowing it has been a huge comfort for me. Perhaps I won't see any baptisms, but I'm going to keep trusting that my service in this year and a half has been preparing the way of the Lord. I also read in Alma 24 when it talks about the strength of the faith of the anti-nefi-lehi's. Perhaps it's going to be more of a challenge for these people to be converted, but the important thing is the strength of that conversion when it happens. I would way rather prepare the way of the Lord in truly converting them than see the baptism now and find out later that they went inactive.

Other than a bit of insomnia in thinking about our investigators, I've been doing alright. It's a good thing, though. This is what being a missionary is all about. I love that I'm so attached to these people that I worry about them so much, I love them! That's the most important part about being a missionary, right?

We have been finding a ton of new people, which I'm happy about.

The good thing about these challenges is that I've had the opportunity to feel a closeness and support from my Heavenly Father in a way I had never felt before. I feel so supported by Him! Again, I know I am SOOO far from perfect, and I know He knows that too, but I feel so grateful that He lets me know that He's in my corner anyway!

Anyway, thanks for all you do, I feel like I'm on a spiritual high and I really just don't want it to come crashing down so I'm trying my best to stay positive.

December 9, 2011

Hello!

This has been a long but AMAZING week, probably one of the best of my whole mission. Let me just start by talking about a few of the MIRACLES that I saw. The first is Margarita. We had set up a cita with her and her boyfriend in a contact, but when we went by they weren't there. The next day, I had the distinct impression that we should go by and visit them, so we did. She was there and as we got to talking she told us that she had always wanted to meet with missionaries, that she had talked to them in the street but that they had never offered to come by and she was too embarassed to ask them to come! She has a good friend that was recently baptized and is really grateful and excited to be learning about the Gospel. It was like the PME video about "How to Begin Teaching" with German, it was just so unbelievable. We invited her to be baptized right then and she was so excited to be able to prepare to be baptized on the 28th! We also had the great privlidge of literally seeing the moment that the Holy Ghost testified to her that the Book of Mormon was true. We were reading the last 2 paragraphs of the introduction, and when she read "We invite all men... to read the Book of Mormon..." she got choked up and said: "This is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read, I feel something in my heart just like my friend described to me, but I never thought I'd get to feel it too." Her prayers are so sincere and we are just so excited! She has a lot of challenges. She'll have to get married and her boyfriend is hesitant to change because of what his family and friends will say, but he supports her completely, it is also hard working around her work schedule, but she lives right in front of the church and says that she is excited to come this Sunday because she won't be working! I am so grateful that the Lord gave me the privlige of seeing this miracle, and equally grateful for the fact that He trusted me enough to give me the impression to go visit her because He knew I would listen!

We also found Cristian and Nicolas this week. We contacted Cristian near his apartment and shared a scripture about joy in 2 Nefi 2:25. The impression then came to me that I should give him the book, even though it was my last one, but I did and I told him: "This is a treasure, I want you to have it." He seemed taken aback but grateful. We went by on Sunday and he was there with a few friends, we got to teach them the Plan of Salvation and it was SO COOL! The Spirit testified so much. It's clear that they are living the lifestyle of typical jovenes, but they were so respectful and attentive and I could see that they really felt the Spirit. Nicolas prayed at the end that we would continue to teach them how to come closer to God. I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but I keep thinking about how excited I am for them to be future missionaries and priesthood holders! I always get my hopes up so high, but that's a good think, I think.

I've learned so much this week. At the beginning of the week I was feeling really down because this is a really tough companionship for me, and it has made me realize the gap that there is between refraining from saying the negative and choosing not to respond when someone offends you and actually loving someone the way that Christ loves them. I have gotten pretty good at the first part, but I'm still working on the second. It's good because I have needed to turn so much more to prayer this cambio, and I feel the blessings of the greater fervency of my prayers. I gained a new appreciation for the Atonement and that even when I'm afraid that I've messed up on my mission, I know I haven't done anything unforgivable and that Christ always provides a ladder for us to be ok again. It was a nice reminder.

I realized that if there's one thing I've done right on my mission, it is that I've allowed it to change me. Just like it talks about in "The 4th Missionary" there is a difference between obedience for minimums and obligation, and obedience for love and discipleship, I know that my obedience is motivated by the latter, and that's at least one of the successes that the mission has brought me.

This is getting really long, so I'll wrap it up now, but thanks for being great and doing all that you do!

Love,

Hermana Gebara

November 14, 2011

This has been a long week. We had a conference in Puerto Montt with Elder Cordbridge and Elder Snow (from the presidency of the 70). I translated for Elder and Sister Snow, it was cool. The night before we stayed in the house of the Hermanas in Puerto Montt, all 8 of us that had come up for the conference! In the morning the power went out so we were all blow drying our hair in the church. It was crazy. My zone is a lot of fun and I´m learning and growing constantly. I love you very much!

Love,

Jamie

October 31, 2011

This has been a crazy week. Last Sunday (not yesterday, but the Sunday before) Hermana Perez got sick and had to stay in bed. She continued that way until Friday when we finally dragged her to the doctor. It turns out she had apendicitis but her apendix had already burst so they had to take her in to surgery right then. It was crazy. She´s still in the hospital but will be leaving today. It was a crazy mess trying to get all of the paperwork done and talking to the office when there wasn´t any cell phone service in the hospital. I´ve been in there with her all week so I pretty much have no idea what´s been going on outside of that. Our zone baptized 10 people on Saturday, but I was in the hospital across the street so I didn´t get to be a part of the musical number. I found out today that I´m being transfered to Chiloé on Wednesday. Ít´s going to be rough to leave Punta Arenas because I just love it so much, especially because I haven´t gotten to see anyone to really say goodbye. The sector is basically stagnant. I´m going to be scrambling around today and tomorrow to try to get to everyone! It´s stressful! I´m glad the Primary Program went well! I´m going to keep this short for now because I have pictures to print and goodbye notes to write and souveneers to buy, but I´m alive and well, just so you know. Disappointed because I won´t be able to say goodbye to any of the other missionaries because they´re all getting together tomorrow and I´m not sure if I´ll be able to go. I´m stressed about leaving the sector so weak. It´s like seeing a bottle of milk tip over and get all over everything and just walking away never to return to help clean it up. I don´t want to leave. It´ll be ok though. I´ve learned that the stress of the mission is a good preparation for the stress of life, but what I´ve learned is that I do NOT know how to handle stress well whatsoever. Any tips?

I love you bunches and I´ll try to write more next week.

-Jamie

October 17, 2011

Hey!  

So this has been an awesome week. I´m really excited about some of the new investigators that we have. Ramon and Elizabeth are really excited and receptive, but I think the investigator I´m most excited about is Rodrigo. Rodrigo has a store that we pass by sometimes and he is always so generous and gives us free stuff from his store. It has always been hard to share something with him because he lives in the store and never has much time. However, when we watched the devotional from last Saturday (the 8^th) there was a video clip of people reading the Liahona in Santiago. For some reason it reminded me of why I wanted to be a missionary in the first place. I have such a desire to take people from their darkest places and help them embrace the light of this Gospel. I was inspired to find someone in a really rough time, and help them. That was my fast for that next day, to find someone I could help and fulfill the dream I had of being a missionary. That´s when the thought came to me that we hadn´t gone by for Rodrigo in a while, so we stopped by. Long story short, his wife (well, girlfriend) left him and he had basically hit a really low point. He started crying when he told us about everything that was going on. He was afraid of falling back into alcoholism for how he was feeling. In just this week, he has given up coffee, alcohol, bad movies, has gone from 3 packs a day to 1 every 2 days, and came to church with his son last Sunday. He´s already looking and acting like a new person. I´m so excited! I feel so blessed that my prayer was answered!

During the 50 years of the misión Chilena last Saturday, All of Chile put together a program and preformed in Santiago. We watched it via satellite. There was a part where they acted out being the armies of Heleman. They literally had 2000 young men out on the field (supposely literal decendents of the lamanites) and they played the song "Armies of Heleman" on flutes and drums as if it were in the Book of Mormon times. IT WAS SO COOL! Youtube it if you can. Ejercito de Heleman 50 años misión Chilena. I was really inspired and cried.

Thanks for all you do! Love you bunches!

October 10, 2011

We´re e-mailing late today because today is a holiday (I don´t know why) and everything was closed this morning. That means I´m more tired and have less energy to remember all of the things that happened to be able to write them. We´re celebrating 50 years of missionaries being in Chile, so that´s been cool. I love love love love love you. No seriously, I really love you.

Thanks a bunch!

Love,
Jamie

October 3, 2011

Wow, how amazing was conference?? I really loved President Uchtdorf´s talk about forget me nots. I loved when he mentioned that it is important not to forget the WHY of the Gospel. I would like to share with you all my “Why.”

I have always loved learning about history and reading stories and watching movies that make me wonder what it would be like to live in a different time, place or reality. It seemed so much more interesting and fun and always had some sort of appeal. I´ve gotten lost in music and books that have given me momentary feelings of being on cloud nine or that sort of thing. The trouble with all of that though, is that it isn´t real. The happiness that it brings doesn´t last. You can´t trust it to be there for you long term. There is only one source of happiness that is real and lasting – the happiness and joy of the restored Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is real. It is what we will have when all of the flashy fun things of this world are over. The pure joy of the Holy Ghost and the peace of living the Gospel are REAL. It is a happiness far beyond that which can be found in anything the human mind can invent. It is the happiness that is there for you constantly if you will live worthy of it. It is why I´m here. It is why I have the desire to serve my Savior; it is why millions of people all over the world are faithfully living this Gospel. It is pure, unadulterated, unbelievable joy.

That being said, I want to dedicate the rest of this e-mail to an awesome kid named Dylan. Dylan is 13 and was baptized in April. He has SUCH a strong testimony and these last few weeks I have been so blessed to see the power of that testimony. His mom, in an attempt to inspire him to improve his grades, told him that he would not be allowed to go to church, nor any activities, until she saw some changes. Dylan (remember now, this is a 13 year old boy) offered his laptop, offered all of his games and other privileges, offered time with his friends, offered any other punishment other than not being able to go to church. His mom agreed that if I come and tutor him that he can go to church. It was amazing to see the strength of a testimony when set against opposition. It is great to hear him talk about how excited he is to serve a mission in just 5 years (the age limit in Chile is 18). He wants to go to Egypt or Hawaii. It is such an inspiration to me to see the strength of the members here, especially the jovenes.

Love you!

September 26. 2011

October marks 50 years of the mission in Chile, so we're basically all going crazy inviting everyone to a broadcast that will be held on the 15th. Things are going well. Nothing too big to report. We see miracles everyday so there are too many to tell. I´m including a part of the e-mail I sent to President this week that reminded me of you. I love you and appreciate you for being a great mom! 

Being a trainer has given me a whole new appreciation for moms all over the world. I understand now what my mom went through in wondering if she wasn´t being strict enough and that I was going to turn out bad, then trying to be more strict and having me resent her for it and her wondering if she was doing the whole “being a mom” thing right. I understand now her worries about whether or not she´s giving me too much or not enough responsability and that she feels like all of the other moms (or trainers, in this case) are doing it so much better and that she feels like her daughter resents her and compares her to all of the other moms or expects her to be June Cleaver (or the hermanas from the Preach My Gospel DVD´s in this case). I get how she feels when she says that her daughter turned out well despite her. Those are all things that I feel.

All in all, I think the Lord is pleased with who I am and my character as a missionary, an that has given me a lot of peace and comfort, however I think that He would tell me to shape up in terms of the horario and learning to work harder. That´s a huge weakness of mine, I´ve never had to really work hard before. I´m working harder in my mission than I ever have in my life, but I know it´s still not as hard as most missionaries, at least from what I see. I´m trying to accept that it´s the weakness that has been dealt to me instead of challenges with the language or with teaching ability or family problems or whatever the more common missionary challenges are. I´m constantly hovering in the balance between accepting that I´m not perfect and feeling that I´m expected to be better.

 I'm going to use most of this time to upload some pictures from Torres del Paine because I haven't sent any in a while.

September 19, 2011

We went to Torres del Payne today and it was awesome. I have to go, but today was our p-day so it'll be until next week that you hear from me next! Love you tons!

September 12, 2011

Ok, today is a crazy day of getting errands done and taking care of my missing ID/no money situation, so I´ve completely blanked on most of what happened this week, but here are 2 scriptures that brought me a lot of comfort this past little while:

Matthew 10:38 - To follow Christ, we take His name upon us. Sometimes the path of discipleship has rough spots, but I wouldn´t trade being on the path in order to avoid them.

1 Peter 5: 6-10 - "will make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you."

My mission has changed and continues to perfect me more with every challenge. I love this Gospel, I love being a disciple of Christ, no matter the cost.

We had zone conference this week and the assistants made a super hilarious video that reminded me of how grateful I am to be a part of this family of missionaries that is the mission Chile Osorno.

Love you!

-Jamie

September 5, 2011

Please tell everyone I love them and Grandpa Jim that I hope he feels better soon!

It turns out our golden investigator went to a natioinal park for the week. He came back and went to church yesterday and loved it. We are really excited!

August 29, 2011

This week has been a week full of trials and epiphanies. Our golden investigators have been cancelling appointments or just not answering the phone aka avoiding us and we have no idea what happened. We found two new people this week, but after we talked to them for a bit, we realized that they were patients in a psychiatric care facility. One of them was a singer for 30 years in Argentina before she was hospitalized, so for service we´re going to go by and sing hymns with her! I´m excited about that. Also, I lost my wallet with all my money, my ID and both my credit cards running to catch a taxi. However, I´m deciding to stay positive. Trials happen, and I have a clear conscience so I have no reason to believe that the blessings aren´t on their way and that this is all happening for a reason. The quality of our teaching is improving leaps and bounds. I love this new training program! If only we could do more of it! A shining moment this week was that a kid came to church on Sunday completely on his own because he remembered going to an activity there when he was little and wanted to find out more. Awesome! Hermana Perez is awesome. That´s all for now because I´m out of time!


Love,
Jamie

August 19, 2011

Yeah, I feel fine now.

I flew back to Osorno with Hermana Contreras and two other Elders. Elder Galovich is also training this cambio so we both had to go to the training and then come back. The new program is basically an outline of what we´re supposed to be studying every week. They changed our schedule to have 2 hours of companionship study everyday instead of 1. Basically it´s that they´ve recently come out with "8 principles to improve teaching" and the new training program has to do mostly with helping the new missionaries learn and apply those 8 principles. Hermana Perez pretty much already knows what she´s doing so it´s not that hard, I was blessed =D. The new schedule is a little hard to get used to, but we´re doing our best, it seems as if there´s so much to study and so little time to do it! However, I came to a realization this week: Don´t sweat the small stuff. None of us are living life perfectly all the time, it´s all just a part of the "Endure to the end" process.

The new blog is www.chileosornomission-rappleye.blogspot.com

Hermana Perez was sick this week, so we spent Friday at the Mamita´s house and I got to help her get ready for the primary banquet Saturday. I learned how to make a cake out of vanilla cookies, bananas and manjar. It was fun.

We´re teaching a new couple, Coni and Juan. We´re really excited about them because they are really receptive and interested. We talked to them about the Plan of Salvation and the Restoration and the Spirit was SUPER STRONG. It was awesome. We´re going to have a family home evening with them at the Mamita´s house on Wednesday.

For our one year mark, Hermana Moss wrote me a little card about the ways we both have grown in the mission this past year. It was really sweet. One of the things she said was: "Don´t forget why you wanted to come on a mission." It made me think about the times that I was just dying out of a desire to be able to do contacts and knock doors telling people about how awesome this Gospel is. I need to stop looking at stoping people in the street as a chore and start appreciating that I only have authority to do it for 6 more months. That´s my goal for now. Hah.

Yeah, that´s all for now. Kinda uneventful, I know, but I´m doing well and I´ll look forward to hearing from you next week!

Love,

Jamie

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

July 9, 2011

In the mission I´ve found the key to happiness. I´ve found out what true happiness is and also how to achieve and maintain it. Happiness is a clear conscience before God and the way to achieve and maintain it is faith in Christ and continual and immediate repentance. There are a ton of other things I´ve learned, but I think that´s probably the most broad and all consuming.

  

Well as far as this week is concerned, not a lot happened. We pretty much don´t have anyone progressing. It´s really frustrating. We have a lot of investigators, but none of them are really progressing or excited about the Gospel. I think part of the problem is that we have so many that we´re spreading ourselves really thin and aren´t giving anyone the time and attention that they need to progress. I´m trying to do better at narrowing things down, but the changes aren´t happening the way I´d like them to. I´ve got to admitt I lost a bit of faith and had kindof a bad attitude this week, but I´m doing my best to be better and more positive. We went on divisions twice this week to try to get more done. It´s freezing here. It´s been snowing, which is really fun, but has also given me a bit of a cold. That reminds me, I have become hooked on herbal tea since I´ve gotten to Chile. Yeah, mom, don´t judge me. When I went on my first intercambio in Ovejeria, there was herbal tea and I thought to myself, well if the mission allows it, I´m pretty sure it can´t be against the word of wisdom. Anyway, I´m hooked now. It´s good though because with so much cold it´s hard to drink a lot of water unless it´s hot water. The herbal tea helps me stay hydrated.

Oh yeah! I almost forgot, Tuesday I went on intercambios with Hermana Moss! It was really fun to teach with her again and see how much we´ve each grown as missionaries since the MTC! The zone leaders said we´ll probably be doing it again this Tuesday, I´m excited!

OH! I just remembered. I don´t know if I ever mentioned Juan Carlos in Osorno. I think I was in my first cambio, maybe my second, but I remember walking down the street and saying... let´s knock this door. It ended up being Juan Carlos. We only got a chance to teach him a couple of times before I left, but I remember him telling us that he felt like he had faith that he never had before and we had opened a new window for him in his relatioship with God (He had told us when we knocked on his door, that he didn´t really have much of a concept of who or what God was). Anyway, through a series of phone calls, I recieved a call on Saturday letting me know that he was getting baptized that very day! That was a cool feeling.

One of the guys in our ward is headed to the MTC in Provo this week to head to Mosambique. We had a goodbye party for him on Friday. If any of you would like to follow his adventure, he has a blog. Oscargoestoafrica.blogspot.com

The other Hermanas, Oscar, Hermana Contreras and I are learning how to make a new kind of bread with our mamita today. I´m going to come home with a ton of bread recipes. That´s a big thing here.

I forgot my camera today, but I´ll be sending pictures of ice skating and us playing in the snow soon. I love reading Scott and Bekah´s e-mails and hearing about all of their awesome adventures. If you guys are reading this, I´m really proud of you and brag about you to everyone here all the time! Keep up the good work!

Love you all,

Hermana Gebara

June 27, 2011

Well, I never saw anything about the volcano, it was way way way far away from where I was, but yeah. Anyway...

I made it to Punta Arenas. What ended up happening is that Hermana Bertagnole and I took the bus down to Valdivia, where I met up with Hermana Baum and we took the bus to Osorno and spent the night in the mission home. It was awesome, but also sad because President and Hermana Lovell are leaving tomorrow so everything was empty. We drove down to Puerto Montt in the morning and took a flight down to Punta Arenas. Yes, my ear drum did pop, and I´m taking amoxicilin to make sure there´s no infection. So the housing situation is... complicated. We´re homeless. The hermanas here before me wanted to move, found a place, and terminated their contract for the house they were living in. However, they forgot to get the new place checked by the zone leaders. The zone leaders didn´t approve it, so as of right now we´re living in the Elders' house in another sector and they are living with another set of Elders somewhere else. We have been working on finding a new place to live a LOT this week. We found a woman who is in the process of gutting and fixing up a little side attachment that she has to her house, so as of right now that´s our most promising bet. I´ll be sad to leave the Elders' house though. It´s the best house I´ve lived in thus far in the mission. It's SO WARM and toasty and the bathroom is suprisingly the nicest of any of the houses I´ve lived in. Oh well.

So I´ve discovered I really like the snow. Who would've guessed that one? The houses here are heated by gas instead of wood, so they´re all really nice and warm. Punta Arenas is really different from the other parts of Chile I´ve seen. It feels a lot like Utah. That might just be because I´m associating it with snow, but all the same it feels like Utah to me. I love it.

Hermana Lovell gave me a pair of her boots to take down here, and it was a good thing too because just two nights ago some dog decided it wanted to follow us around all night and when we tried to lose it, it ran after us and all of the sudden I looked down and my ankle was in it´s mouth! I´m not sure if he was really trying to hurt me so much as he wanted to play, but all the same, I screamed.

I love Hermana Contreras! She is probably one of the sweetest people you could ever meet in your life.  I love the members here. I LOVE our mamita and her family. They have 3 kids. 15, 8 and 5. Damian just had heart surgery on Thursday, but is recovering really well. I´m teaching Tommy his times tables (yeah, I know, right?), and we got to help Reinato with his school project about birds. They are all awesome.

Anyway, I have to charge my batteries, so I´ll have to wait till next week to send pictures.

Love you!