Week 39!!!! Hump Day!!!!!

So these past couple weeks we have been doing these things that we like to call "invasions" where all of the missionaries and the members of the ward go to one sector and we knock on doors and talk to the people and set up appointments and find less-active members or people who were listening to the missionaries before and just help with the work in that area!! It is so great!! We have had soo much success doing that!! We have done it in 3 wards now and by the end of the night, there are always LOTS of new people that are interested to learn and we see so many miracles!! I am so excited about it because we're going to do it in our ward this Sunday!! :DD I'll let you know how that goes next week! :) We did some service painting a young woman in our area's room this week and now we are sharing the Gospel with her and her roommates!! She's 20 also and her roommates are 19 and 20. They are really receptive and said that they would love to come to church with us this weekend!! :DD So I'll let you know how that goes too! :) We've been focusing on working with the members of our ward this week and we have seen a HUGE difference in our lessons!! The spirit is more strong and the testimonies and explanations that the members give are a HUGE help!! We especially saw this in one of our lessons where we were teaching about the Plan of Salvation to one of the young women in our ward who was recently baptized (Araceli) and we invited another young woman in our ward who was recently baptized (Paulina) !! :) The spirit was SUPER strong, the lesson flowed naturally, Hermana Jenkins and I worked better together as a companionship in our teaching, and Araceli and Paulina both bore fervent testimony of the truthfulness of the message that we were sharing!! It was soo great!! I love working with the members!! It truly makes all the difference in missionary work!! I love you all so much!! Sorry I haven't sent any pictures lately.. I'll try to be better!! I take pictures.. just don't have time to send them!!! Hermana Harvey

Hermana Harvey's 20th Birthday

UN DÍA MUY FELIZ PARA NUESTRA HERMANITA HARVEY.

Posted by Víctor Leiva Vargas on Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Week 38

Hello Friends and Family!

Thank you all for the emails this week and all of the Birthday wishes!! I know I'm going to have a great Birthday tomorrow because my ward here in Punta Arenas is amazing and they spoil us even on normal days!! They even announced my birthday yesterday in Relief Society!! So I'm going to be well taken care of and Hermana Jenkins says that she is going to make me a cake! So we won't be having another cake fail for my Birthday :)

So, I remember that right before I left on my mission, my dad told me that I had to remember that the miracles always follow the trials (or something like that :))  These last couple weeks have been a testament to that statement. The week before last was one of the hardest of my life but this week we saw many miracles!! On Tuesday, we both received priesthood blessings for comfort and council and I could immediately feel the power of the priesthood working in me to help me overcome this hard time and we got soo excited about the work.  We felt a different power in our teaching and felt the guidance of the Holy Ghost telling us exactly what it was that we had to do!! We received soo much guidance from the Spirit and didn't do ANYTHING that we thought we should do... every time that we thought we should do something, we prayed and asked God and EVERY time (sad how we as humans have no idea how to make our own decisions haha) we were guided in another direction! Everything has turned out great!! I know that everything that has happened has happened for a reason and Gonzalo is VERY excited to be baptized on May 2nd!! :) That is going to be such a beautiful day!! :) We are sooo excited for him!!

Madeline and Gonzalo got married on Friday!!! :DDD They are so happy about this choice that they made to be married to keep the commandments of God!! They told us that they feel something different about their lives now... like it's a new start. Like everything is a first and that they can just start fresh!! We explained to Gonzalo that he will feel that same way but much more after he is baptized on May 2nd! He is soo excited and so are we!! :) It is so true that we can really only start to understand complete joy after we have passed through trials and the greater the trial, the greater the joy afterward!! That's what Hermana Jenkins and I are feeling right now!!! 

I love you guys so much!! Thank you for all of your emails, support, and prayers!! :) You guys are the best!!

Hermana Harvey

Week 37

Hello Friends and Family!

Sorry!! I already used the majority of my time writing my Mission President!! (see the email that I sent dad to have him help you with the translation :P haha)

We have some weeks that are harder than others here in the mission field and this week was one of those really hard weeks.  Our investigator, Gonzalo is getting married on Friday and should be getting baptized this Saturday but, as always, Satan doesn't like the idea of anything that will strengthen the family, which is very important and sacred in the sight of God and for our progression, so he throws whatever he possibly can at those who are ready to take steps to strengthen the family unit.  In this case, getting married and the baptism of the father and future priesthood holder.

So among the temptations and trials thrown at this family this week, some more personal than others, was a job offer to take a trip for 15 days navigating of cruse ship through all of Chile.  He just happened to run into two of his bosses when he went to the hospital to pick up medication for his wife and they offered him this trip.  What are the chances that they would BOTH be in this hospital at the same time as Gonzalo to offer him this job opportunity?  This just so happened to be the trip of Gonzalo's dreams and he would have to leave this FRIDAY!! The same day as their wedding!! Amidst other temptations that they were facing, this was a huge temptation but Gonzalo told us that he has a firm testimony of the importance of this decision that he has made to get married and baptized in the church of Jesus Christ and that this was more important than any job opportunity that they could offer him.  So he was still very excited and ready for his baptism.

The next day he had his baptismal interview to see if he is ready to be baptized and make sure that he is being baptized for the right reasons and that he really has a testimony that they church is true. Everything went great with the interview, we knew it would, because Gonzalo has a real testimony and it READY to be baptized!! But yesterday, because of our mistakes and weaknesses as missionaries in teaching and in verifying what we have taught, we had to tell Gonzalo that he will have to wait another week to be baptized.  This moment was a lot more devastating than it might sound.  Gonzalo was VERY frustrated and confused and told us that he didn't want to talk but that he just needed time to think and to pray. 

Sorry I can't explain better what happened to lead up to all of this but I really have no more time.  But the most important thing to understand is that Satan does not like the idea of forever families or anything that will strengthen and give support to the family.  We can see the fight that the adversary puts up when we are on the right path, this happens MANY times before people are going to make covenants with God.  Please keep Gonzalo and Madeline and their son Vicente in your prayers!! And Hermana Jenkins and I also that we might know what to do to help them!!

I love you all so much!!

Hermana Harvey

Week 36- Winter's a comin'!

It has been getting cooler here in Punta Arenas!! I feel like summer went by way too fast for a couple of reasons!! First of all... because that means that I almost have 9 months in the mission!! That's half of my mission!! NOOO!!! It's going by too fast!!! And second of all.... it's cold!!!! REALLY COLD in Punta Arenas.  It really wouldn't be all that could if it weren't for the fact that there is still a lot of frozen wind (but not quite as much as before) and a lot more rain/snow that blows in your face and down your jacket! Sooo Hermana Jenkins and I are preparing ourselves for winter!! We found out today that we will be together for another 6 weeks!! :DD whooo!! Which means that we will both be able to be here for the marriage and baptism of Gonzalo!!! whoooooo!!! :DD

So they have this think called churipan here in Punta Arenas which is chorizo (their chorizo is different here... less hot and more of an orange color instead of red...) and mayo on bread and it is delicious!!! One of our recent converts, Araceli, wanted to go to get some but we couldn't so we decided to make it! And it was a great success!! :) Not only did we make it but we made it ALL!! I made the bread and the chorizo and Araceli made the mayo!! I didn't even know that you could make mayo!! haha but it was really good!! :) I think it would be even better with the chorizo from the United States though :) AAANNND We got to share with her mom and grandma who are non-members and gain a better relationship with them and then share with them the video of "He Lives" (which is AMAZING) and talk to them about what it really means that Christ lives!! It was great!! :)  Hopefully we can share more with them in another moment!! 

We got to watch General Conference in ENGLISH!! :) It was great to hear the real voices of our prophet (even if we didn't get to hear much from him) and our apostles and other leaders of the church!! I loooove General Conference!! It's like Christmas for the missionaries!! :)) It's a little bit ironic that I had to watch it in Spanish 6 months ago when I didn't understand much of anything in Spanish and this time, now that I understand, we got to watch it in English.  The Lord works in funny ways.  It was great because we had a room FULL of missionaries from the United States plus three members from our ward who speak English!! :) Our neighbor, Bianca, who is 19 and studying to be an English teacher, our ward mission leader who is 21 and speaks English and German, and our recent convert, Niblado, who is from Kansas.  There are more English-speakers in this sector than I have seen in my entire mission!! It was great :)

Easter was fun :) We had lunch with a family in the ward and ate chicken and french fries and Bianca and another Hermana in our ward gave us chocolate eggs!! Fun fact about Chile... they don't dye eggs... a few people pain eggs made out of sugar with some special paint but no one even had any idea that we dye real eggs in the United States! They thought we were insane when we told them haha so funny! 

I love you guys so much!!

Hermana Harvey

 

Look!! We saw horses!! Just ya know... walkin' around in our sector... haha

Soooo... tried to make cake last P-day and this was the result... I burnt my finger trying to look at it in our little-tiny "oven" and dropped it!! :( sad, sad day.