Week 69

Hello Friends and Family!!

Well, first of all, we had a week of miracles!! One of our investigators, Alejandro, decided that he wants to be baptized and we set his baptismal date for December 19th! Right before Christmas! :) Whoo!!  We are so happy for him! 

I was teaching my companion how to make bread this week and decided that it would be fin to turn it into a language study session at the same time... so I sat on the couch and just told her step-by-step what she had to do and she followed my instructions.  I saw that she didn't exactly understand how much oil to use and I watched her put a LOT... but I continued with my instructions anyways and saw that she was having difficulty kneading it because it had waay too much oil so I began to give her instructions to make biscuits instead of bread because I knew it wasn't going to turn out too well.  I told her to roll out the dough and put it to cut it out, put them on a cookie sheet and to poke holes in it with a fork.  She asked me if we should put egg or butter on them and I said no, it has plenty of oil.  Then I look over at her and realize that she was pouring oil onto a fork and spreading it over the top of each biscuit... I asked "Hermana Medeiros... What are you doing?" And she said, "I'm doing what you told me to do!" The word in Spanish for holes is "hoyos" and apparently, to Hermana Medeiros it sounded a lot like "oil" sooo she thought that I used a word in English in the middle of my sentence and was telling her to put even more oil on top of her oily mixture and to use a fork to do it.  And the funniest thing as that she did it! She listened to me! Wow... that is a trusting companion right there :) So I showed her how to poke holes in her "bread" and it actually turned out pretty good! :)

Aaaannd now for the biggest news of this week... drum role please.... I sprained my ankle! Okay... here´s what happened... So Hermana Medieros and I were on our way to an appointment and were extra happy so we were skipping through the street when I stepped off the road a little bit into the dirt and herd a loud crack and felt a strong pain in my ankle.  I immediately knew that something serious had happened and began to scream and cry.  At this point, Hermana Medeiros said that she thought I was just joking around and I was just going to say "I'm soo happy" because she says that I always do that but then when she heard me start yelling "I don't want to be sent home! I don't want to be sent home!" She knew that I wasn't laughing.  A couple of the young men of our branch just happened to be walking by so she called them over to help and they carried me to a nearby member's house.  The called a taxi and took me to the hospital where they checked my ankle and told me that it was broken.  The doctor said that he could feel the bone move when he pressured my ankle where I said that it hurt and that they didn't have X-rays there so they would have to send me to Puerto Montt to know how bad the break was.  Soo they gave me an IV for the pain and then a member came and picked us up to go to the clinic in Puerto Montt. Before leaving, I received a priesthood blessing from my mission leader of our branch and then we headed off.  When I finally got my X-rays taken, the doctor looked at them and said that my bones were perfectly fine. There was no fracture and that it was just a sprain!! It was a MIRACLE!! President Obeso called me in the morning and said that the mission nurse had called him and told him what was happening and that if I had a fracture, I would have to be sent home because I wouldn't have enough time to heal on my mission.  I know that God wants me to be here on my mission right now and that's why he spared my ankle so that I will be able to finish strong! I feel sooo blessed!! I know that this gospel is true and I am going to use this time that the Lord has given me to the fullest!! I just have to wear a boot for about a week and then I'll be good to go! :) 

I love you guys!! 

Hermana Harvey

Yup... I sprained my ankle.... It happens, ya know?

I got my package!! THANK YOU!! :)

Another Picture posted online by Hermana Medeiros's mom. :) 

Week 68

Hello Friends and Family!

This week was amazing!!  We have been finding new people to teach each and every day!! EVERY DAY!! It is amazing!! It's like the Lord just wants to literally pour blessings upon us every day.  I have felt the way that the Lord works through us in a very special way this week.  

We were teaching Hugo yesterday (YES, WE FOUND HIM AT HOME AGAIN THIS WEEK!) and he still has LOTS of great questions!  We were able to teach him in a very simple way the truths that he needed to answer every question and doubt that he had.  It was amazing how the spirit worked through us... the spirit was so strong as we were speaking and we had no idea what to say until the words just started coming out of our mouths.  You could see it on his face as he went from not even knowing for sure if God exists to feeling the spirit testify that God is his loving heavenly father.  We felt the power of those words as we testified to him that his father in heaven loves him! I know more than any other moment in my life that God is literally my father and that he loves me! 

Do you guys remember Juán? I don't know if I have already told you about him but he is one of our investigators who's wife passed away about 9 years ago and has had a lot of trouble accepting commitment because the rest of his family has a thing against the Mormons and he is afraid of losing the rest of the family that he has left.  Well, after an amazing lesson about the Restoration and how through this restoration, the authority of Christ is on the earth again so that we can be baptized and make it to heaven to be with our loved ones again, we invited him to be baptized on November 28th and he accepted!! We are soo happy for him!! One thing that I have learned on my mission is that we are not helping people to become better.  We are not helping good people to become better and bad people to become good... we are opening the door for these people to have eternal happiness... to make it to the celestial kingdom or what is more commonly know of as heaven. Where we can live in eternal happiness. And i know that it is only through this message that we share... the restoration of the church of Jesus Christ... that we can be with our families for all eternity.

I love you guys!!

Hermana Harvey

Week 67

Hello friends and family!!!

Hermana Medeiros is such a sweetheart!! I love working with her!! :) But you would NOT believe how crazy our first day together was!! I felt so bad!! haha I had to explain to her liike 15 times that it wouldn't be this way every day! Sooo.... here's what happened... First of all, we had lunch with President Obeso and all of the other missionaries that are either starting their missions or training a new missionary and he spoke to us and everything and then we got on a bus to head back to Puerto Montt.  On the bus, we recieved a call that Hermana Medeiros had left a bag in the church that had her Book of Mormon, along with some other things, inside. So she lived the first few days of her mission without a Book of Mormon (she has it now, thank goodness ;)).  Then, when we got to Puerto Montt, we went to buy her a backpack because she didn't know she could bring one and only had a little purse that didn't hold much of anything.  It was a beautiful day so I took of my jacket off and we headed off to go shopping :)  THEN we got back to the bus terminal, got all of her suitcases and everything together and got on a bus headed to Llanquihue.  When we were just leaving Puerto Montt, I suddenly realized that I didn't have my jacket.  I had forgotten it in the bus terminal! I thought, oh well, it's okay, I'll just call the elders that were there and I would get it back later.  When I went to reach for the cell phone and realized that not only was our cell phone in the jacket, but so were the only keys to our house! As we got on the highway headed to Llanquihue, we had to tell the bus driver that we had to get off NOW because we had forgotten something.  He looked at
us as if we were insane then a man helped us take out all of our suitcases that Hermana Medeiros had brought and they left us stranded on the high way.... We had to walk all the way to the nearest bridge to cross over to the other side where we could take another bus to get back to Puerto Montt... By the time we got back, we were sweating like pigs and looked like we were about to die and obviously the Elders thought it was the funniest thing in the world as they watched us walk the last few steps to retrieve my jacket that I had forgotten.  (I don't even know how we made it back. It was a miracle.)  When I got my jacket, I looked in the pockets and WE FOUND THE HOUSE KEYS!! But the cell phone wasn't there.... :( haha so we wen't about 4 days without cell phone or Book of Mormon until the Elders could bring us a new cell phone and bring us Hermana Medeiros's Book of Mormon. Whoo. What a week.
But the rest of our week went really well!! :) We're doin' Good here in Llanquihue!! And it looks like we found a new apartment that is going to be gorgeous!! I'll send you pictures when it's finished!! :)

I love you guys!! Have a great week!!

Hermana Harvey

Week 66 - A Week of Change!

Hello Friends and Family!!

This week, everything has been changing! But most of all, I think I have changed a LOT this week.  It is amazing how much you can learn when you dedicate your life to the service of God!  I had a couple months in which I was a little depressed because I have just been overly stressed with all that we have to do as missionaries.  I went through a couple of months of little or no desire to get up in the morning and was doing everything that I have to do because it is my responsibility as a missionary rather than because I wanted to do it.  I was not enjoying my mission the way that I had been for the first year or so.  But I didn't even realize how bad it had gotten.  I only realized when we went to a member's house for lunch and she was talking to us about when she served as the mission president's wife a few years ago.  She said that in this time, there was no mission nurse so all of the missionaries called her when they were sick.  She explained to us the signs that you can see when a missionary is overly stressed.  As she spoke, I recognized each and every sign in myself.  I was sooo stressed!! And so, that night, I was talking with my companion about it and everything just came pouring out!  Then, after talking for a long while, we got ready for bed and I began to pray for help.  I have never cried so much in a prayer before.  The next morning, after recognizing what was wrong, talking about everything that I was feeling with my companion and the Lord, and asking God for help, I woke up with desires to serve again!! I had energy and was ready to work!! I feel happy again!! Not that I was miserable these last couple of months, but I wasn`t as happy as I could have been!! But now, I can enjoy the rest of my mission to it's fullest.  

Osme got baptized this week!! :) We are sooo happy for him with this decision that he made!! In his baptism, his daughter Zulydela asked the primary to sing and they sang a primary song about baptism!! It was the sweetest thing in the world!! Before Osme got baptized, we decided to sing another hymn while he was waiting there in the baptismal font so that we could invite the spirit again! Haha so while he was there all soaking wet, we all sang "Soy un Hijo de Dios" or "I am a child of God." It was so great!! He invited a family from his work to come and they did! And his son also invited a friend and a member of our branch also invited a friend! So there were a lot of people who aren't members in his baptism!! That was a huge blessing for us!! :) And for them! :) He has the goal to go to the temple with his family in a year so that they can be an eternal family!! I know that they can be together forever and that this is made possible in the holy temples of the Lord and Osme knows that too and has that goal with his family!! :) We're so happy for them!

Lots of other things happened this week like... we had our Zone Conference on Wednesday in which we talked about what we can do better as a mission and set goals to be better and to see more miracles and we always leave sooo enlightened by the spirit!! And on Thursday we had exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders and I was with a sister who is going to be finishing her mission this next transfer and she was SUPER trunky thinking about her boyfriend who she left at home haha so that was fun! :) And I learned a lot from her about what I can do to be a better missionary! :) Oohhh... AAANNNNDDDD President Obeso called us last night... AANNNDDD.... We received our transfers!... Hermana Alvarez is going to be leaving this week and will still be inside my zone! So I will get to see her! :) And I will be training an hermana named Hermana Medeiro (I think) from Brazil!! So good thing I learned a little bit of Portuguese from Hermana Marinho! :) 

I love you guys so much!! 

Hermana Harvey

Lots of experiences with the.... Evangelics?

Hola familia y amigos!!

We found Hugo again!! We passed by his house yesterday and it was raining a LOT and we were soaking wet but he still let us in! :) He had even more questions for us and, honestly, the gospel of Jesus Christ has the answer to EVERY ONE of his questions!! I know that when people are really prepared to receive the gospel, God puts the right questions in their minds.  He read the pamphlet that we left with him and he also invited his mom (Who is VERY Evangelic to read it) and she said that she would! Wow!! But it was funny because when we met his mom, we were ending our lesson and were going to end with a prayer.  So I explained how we pray in the church of Jesus Christ, and emphasized that when we pray, only one person prays at a time and all of the other people listen and at the end, we say amen.  But I don't think she understood very well because she said "okay, you can guide the prayer then." and when I started to pray, she started praying too.  and when I finished praying, she said, "ohh! that was short!" Now I'll give my prayer and we all had to stop in our path as we were already packing up our backpacks to leave and listen to the surprise-prayer that she gave.  It was really funny. Even Hugo was smiling at us like " I know. My mom's funny. 

There are a lot of "Evangelics" (¿? I don't really know what they're called in the US) here so we teach a lot of crazy lessons haha another example of this is a lesson that we had this week with an investigator named Patricia.  Everything was going well until her husband got home.  haha He is VERY religious and when he saw us there, he went straight for his guitar! He sat down on the couch and, in the middle of us explaining the plan of Salvation, he began to play the guitar and sing very loudly about his love for God.  And, to our surprise, the rest of his family of 6 shortly joined in and our lesson about the plan that God has for us shortly turned into an evangelic worship service.  haha So that was fun :) We just ended with a prayer and left.  But it was fun!  There are about 2-3 "Evangelic temples" on every street here in Llanquihue soo we're going to have a lot of investigators like these :)

I love you guys so much!! Have a great week!!

Hermana Harvey

Sorry... no pictures because I had to write in another place today and I don't want to viruses on my SD card. 

Week 64 - The Weeks Are Flying By!!

Hello Friends and Family!!

The weeks are FLYING by!! Seriously! I feel like every time I close my eyes another week has gone by!!  Our branch is already getting ready for Christmas! The branch choir already started practicing!! The director of the choir isn't a member so we can participate too as we teach the director :)  We are singing a song called "Arrurru." It is so hard to sing!! Even the Chileans have difficulty because of all of the RR´s involved haha but it's super fun :)

This week, we decided that we were going to mix it up a bit and play a game as we knocked doors.  We played "Guess who lives in that house."  So we look at a house and, from the things that we could see about the house, we chose a name to ask if ___ lived there :)  It was fun!! At one house, we decided to ask for Juán and the man who opened the door said..."You don't know his last name?" And when we said that we didn't know, he told us that he asks because there is one Juán that lives right in front of his house and another who lives about 3 houses down! haha! So we received 2 referrals :P haha But this man's name was Hugo and he told us that he doesn't believe in religion because they are all just in it for the money. He questioned why there would not be just one answer to everything if there is only one God.  He also said that the "pastors" now-a-days just decide one day that they want to start a church and they do it... he asked "Who calls them to be a pastor?"  These are all questions that we as missionaries LOVE to hear!! We explained to him that he is exactly right! That the people on this earth today have changed what is now known as religion.  Jesus Christ had established his church on the earth when he was here and after his death, the human race began to change his teachings according to what they wanted instead of what God wanted for them.  That is why there are so many churches on the earth today.  People have been trying to get as close as possible to the truth, but can't do it without the authorization of God! So we shared with him what we know about the Restoration of the Gospel! We shared our testimonies with him that the church of Jesus Christ, the same one that he established when he was here on the earth, is here again! And that we can receive so many blessings from this gospel!!  I know that it is true!! Because I have felt these blessings in my life!  I don't know if we will be able to see Hugo again because it was a miracle that we found him at home when we did because he works outside of the city but I know that he felt the truthfulness of our words.

We are going to have an activity in our branch to help the members feel more comfortable going out to teach with us.  We made a funny video about all of the things not to do when you go to a lesson with the missionaries.  Things like fall asleep in the lesson, play on your phone while we are teaching, teach false doctrine, talk waaaay too much, cry every 3 seconds...etc.  The members that helped us in the video did such a good job!! It is going to be hilarious!! :) I'm so excited to see it in the activity! :)

I love you guys so much!!

Hermana Harvey

Look! Giant people in Puerto Montt!

We went walking in Puerto Varas and it was beautiful! We also saw some pretty interesting things :P

Week 63

Hello Friends and Family!!

We have had another great week here in Llanquihue!!  Osme has been doing great!! He is so excited about his baptism on the 31st! He's really committed to this day and we're already getting everything ready so that we won't be running around like chickens with our heads cut off at the last minute.  We have been teaching him ALL of the lessons to prepare him for baptism this week! Which are a lot of lessons! So it has been really fun to get to know him and his family better this week!! They live on a cow farm just outside of town and we love going there!! We get to cross the farm and talk to the cows every time we go to visit them :) It's rather amusing.  And it is GORGEOUS up there!!  One funny thing that happened up there is that Osme decided that he needed to cut his grass so he went and opened up the gate so all of the pregnant cows came onto into his yard and they ate his grass and left it perfect! As if he had worked for hours with a lawn mower.  And her wife, Mariluz told us that it works great because not only do they cut the grass perfectly but they also fertilize it at the same time! :) How convenient!  Then we had the great experience of watching as Osme did his job... he killed a baby calf...  and we watched the whole process. It was so sad!! But it was really interesting to see how it all works!

Yesterday in church, the primary asked us to come to help teach the kids about how to be a missionary and specifically how to talk to people in the street.  So we told them that, first of all, when you are a missionary, you have to say hello to EVERYONE that you see in the street.  Second, you can either offer them a pass-along card or you can offer your service if they need it.   (obviously, this was a very short version of what we do when we talk to people in the street).  Then, we gave each kid a pass-along card and went to work! :) We walked down the street with about 10 primary children all yelling "HOLA!! HOLA!!!" to every single person that they saw, no matter how far away they were or if they were inside of a bus or car :) They even yelled Hola at all of the dogs that they saw in the street :) And each and every one of them gave their pass-along card to someone! :) It was great!! THAT is how to do missionary work! :)

I love you guys lots!! :) Have a great week!! 

Hermana Harvey

The laguna that's about 2 minutes from our house (walking, as always).

I taught my companion how to chop wood :)

Walking to an appointment.... Ya know... just an every-day stroll through the cow farm.  Haha Osme, our investigator who is going to get baptized on October 31st lives on a cow farm in the country soo we get to come here often and it's gorgeous!

and this is the view from his house.  I looove the volcanos. Gorgeous! There are two volcanoes there... Osorno and Calbuco.  Calbuco is the one that looks more broken up because it errupted a couple months ago.

The city below from the cow farm

This is Osme's house.

He put up a good fight little guy...  but by this point, he already knew what was coming

Aaaand we looked away when he committed the crime.  

Mhmmm...

And he ended up here. Being smoked.

I know... I'm awful

Milagros en Llanquihue!

Hello Friends and Family!

So this week we set the goal as a zone that we were going to write down all of the little miracles that happen every day to be able to recognize them and feel more excited about our missions.  So we have been! And it is amazing how miracles just come out of the wood-works when you are really looking for them! We saw miracles all the way from dogs leaping out of their yards and NOT biting Hermana Alvarez's leg off to little old ladies working in their gardens who are interested in listening to our message.  (which you would be amazed how many there are here in Llanquihue)

One thing that happened this week that was super funny was that Hermana Alvarez is still learning how to contact people in the streets... So I decided that I was going to stop contacting every person and let her have a chance to do it for herself. Sooo we walked past a man who was sitting on his bike waiting for another man to leave his house and Hermana Alvarez stopped in front of him and just looked at him for a while (obviously waiting for me to say something) and then, not being able to think of anything else to say, she said, "¿Cómo se llama?" Haha I found it sooo funny that I almost couldn't control myself.  I couldn't even talk so I just waited and let her talk to him.  He smiled and told her his name then Hermana Alvarez invited him to General Conference and he said he might go. haha It was probably one of the most awkward contacts that I have seen but I am so proud of Hermana Alvarez and she was super happy with herself :)  So that was super fun!

We have been teaching a man named Juán and he has been progressing a lot!! We had a lesson with him and a sister named Hermana María and it went really well!! He is scared to be baptized because his family doesn't like the "mormons" and they all seem to be turning against him because he has been listening to us and coming to church with us... soo that makes it hard for him.  He also lost his wife a few years ago and she was Evangelic so he doesn't know how she would feel about him getting baptized in another church.  So we shared with him about the simple truth that families can be together forever and that it is only through the sacred covenants or promises of baptism that we can get to that point.  Hermana María then shared an experience of when her husband passed away a little over a year ago and she met the missionaries a couple of weeks after he passed away.  She explained that as soon as she heard the message, she knew that it was true and that when she was baptized and received the Holy Ghost, she was filled with a joy that she can't even explain.  She still missed her husband a lot because she loved him so much but she felt that the Holy Ghost was holding her up when she couldn't for herself.  That is what this gospel offers us.  We can have the strength to withstand the trials of this world.  And that is exactly what Juán needed to hear at this point in his life. 

We also had a lesson with Osme, our investigator who is going to be baptized on October 31st.  He is soo prepared! He told us that he wrote down the date of his baptism and put it on his door to remind him that he has to do all of the things that we ask him to do so that he can be prepared for that day so that someday he can be sealed in the temple with his family for eternity!! I am so excited for him!! His wife and two kids are already members. They got baptized a year ago in December and the time has now come for Osme also.

I love you guys so much!

Hermana Harvey

We bought firewood! Whoo!!

And we had to bring it all in ourselves.

It was a lot of firewood. 

Week 61

Hey Friends and Family!

Llanquihue is BEAUTIFUL!! I love it here!! And our branch (it's not even a ward) here is AWESOME!! It is more than twice as big as the WARD that I was in in Valdivia.  The members here are soo willing to help us! So not much change there haha but I am soo excited to work with the members here!! On Sunday, it was cool because we brought a calendar for the sisters to sign up to go out to visit people with us and we just had to hand it over to the Relief Society President and she told us that there is a sister in charge of helping us find people to go out and work with us! WHAT? How awesome is that?? And they have the goal in this ward that each of the sisters are going to think of a referral and that they not only give us the referral but they come with us to visit them! They introduce us and teach with us in the first lesson! I have never been in a ward with so much member-support and this is a BRANCH! I am so excited.

Our sector is HUGE and BEAUTIFUL!! I honestly feel like I'm in some sort of paradise.  There is a huge lake (Lake Llanquihue) and on the other side of the lake there are two huge volcanoes :) it's gorgeous! I cannot even close to describe how gorgeous it is here and the pictures don't get even close to capturing the beauty.  But I can tell you that I just feel super peaceful here.  Like you can feel that it's a good place and that there are lots of miracles waiting for us here. I'm so excited!

Hermana Alvarez is amazing!  She is so sweet and humble.  I love working with her!! She is from Chile!! Northern Chile in a city called Quintero.  So she is teaching me a lot!! :) I just know that I am going to learn a LOT more from her than she is ever going to learn from me!  It's refreshing being with a companion who is just starting her mission because she is so excited about the work!  We have been running around everywhere trying to find new people to teach and trying to get to all of our appointments on time in our HUGE area! :) haha It's great!

The other day, we went to teach a lesson with a sister in our ward named Hermana Carrillo.  She had a referral for us named German so we went together to meet him! Hermana Carrillo explained him why she wanted him to listen to us and bore her testimony about the way that this gospel has blessed her life and explained a little bit about our message and invited him to church and to keep listening to us! I can just feel that German is going to understand and accept our message!!

I love you guys so much!!

Hermana Harvey

So there are these awesome swans on the lake. I guess Llanquihue is famous for these swans.  There are two volcanoes behind me... You can't see them because of the clouds but they are gorgeous! And yes, they are active :) haha one of them is the one that erupted a few months ago.  But don't worry, nothing happened here when it erupted! Amazingly, the ash didn't even get here in Llanquihue.

These pretty wood sculptures are all over the place in Llanquihue.

More wood statues

By the lake. Gorgeous!

Walking the line by the lake! :)

Las Hermanitas!! That's us! This is a little store close to our house :)

Week 60 - Big News!!!

Hello Friends and Family!

Soooo... After spending all of 4 weeks in this ward, I'm being transferred! I'm headed to a little town called Llanquihue.  President Obeso called us last night to talk with Hermana Marinho and he told us that he needed to make a few changes in Holzapfel.  So Hermana Marinho is going to be senior companion (that's how they say it in English, right) and is going to have to teach the new missionary in the sector all about the area. I'm going to be headed to Llanquihue where I will be finishing my companion's training.  She has been in the mission for about 2 months now. I'm super excited because I know she's going to have lots of energy to work and to learn and I know that I am going to learn a LOT too!!

So, as many of you know, this week was 18 de Septiembre which is a huge holiday here in Chile in which there are a LOT of drunks in the streets all week long and we had the pleasure of talking with lots of them!  One of them was yelling "¡Rubia! ¡Rubia!" which pretty much means "Blondy! Blondy!" and following us as we walked by very slowly because of Hermana Marinho's bad knee.  The good news is that drunk men also walk very slowly because they almost fall over every other second and they get distracted super easy.  So after a little while of walking, he gave up and started following another lady who was walking by.  But the bad news is that Mamita Edith (my mamita from collico) saw us walking and began running after us to talk to us and was yelling "Harvey! Harvey!" sooo this drunk man learned my name.  He started following us again and he then was yelling "Harvey!! Harvey!!"  He obviously thought... hey... it worked for her so it better work for me too!  Hahaha soo funny!

As you also might have heard, there was a huge earthquake in the north of Chile this week.  It was pretty scary because we heard about it when it happened and they sent out a tsunami warning in our area.  Hermana Marinho always says that she just knows that something is going to happen here in our mission because she can feel it so I was a little freaked out.  Our leaders called us and told us that we had to prepare ourselves just in case something happened and we had to leave quickly in the middle of the night.  So, we decided that we wanted to be extra prepared so I made bread real quick and we made some hard-boiled eggs and put it with a bunch of other food and all of our other emergency kit things in a backpack and packed our backpacks with the things that are most important to us like our journals and cameras and our leaders also told us that we had to sleep in our work clothes (skirts) so that we could be ready to leave at any moment.  Hermana Marinho and I even did our make-up so that we wouldn't be too ugly if anything happened. haha sooo obviously, nothing ended up happening but it was super fun getting everything ready :)

I hope you all have a great week!! 

Hermana Harvey

Chilean flag with my companion!

 Cueca! Chilean national dance!! We saw a lot of Cueca this year!... It was hard to take pictures so sorry they didn't turn out very well.

Week 59

Hello Friends and Family! 

This week, as you know, Hermana Marinho wasn`t able to leave the house because of her knee pain.  So I had LOTS of companions!! :) I'll have to take pictures this week with each and every one of my companions because I had a different companion every day!! Like 6 different sisters! :) It was great!! We have seen lots of miracles while working so much with the members!! 

Cesar got baptized this week!!! :) The baptism was beautiful!! Cesar is a little bit different from the rest of our ward, his personality is just different, so we were all really surprised when he showed up to church yesterday wearing a SUIT!! It was amazing!! And he looked so happy!! He was nervous to be confirmed because he doesn't like being in front of so many people because he's very shy but he said that afterwards, he felt at peace and knew that he had made the right decision! He us now praying to know if he should serve a mission!! :) He's 23 so he still has time to decide!! 

We have also been working a lot with in-active members! It is awesome because all of the members who go out to visit with us know where they live and it's a lot more likely that they accept us in their home if they see an old friend.  So we visited some members that haven't gone to church in YEARS one of these families came to church yesterday and last week and another family that hasn't come to church in about 10 years came to Cesar´s baptism!! It was so great!! :) We are seeing lots of miracles here in Barrio Holzapfel and we will be seeing lots more!! :)

Hermana Harvey

Week 58

Hello Friends and Family!!

Everything is still going great with the members here in my ward! They're still super excited to go out and work with us and that is going to be a HUGE blessing this week.  We had one day that we had 3 members come with us to our appointments and also to talk with people in the streets and it was great! We were with members ALL DAY! And they were all different members! :) 

This week, we weren't able to leave to work for two days because Hermana Marinho was having a lot of problems with her knee.  It hurt so bad that she couldn't walk at all and she had to put all of her weight on me just to be able to get back to the house.  So we spent a couple of days in the house.  After two full days of pain, Hermana Marinho decided to call President Obeso and let him know what is going on with her and to ask for his help in knowing what she should do.  We then talked to the mission nurse and she told us that Hermana Marinho can't leave to work at all this week.  So I'm going to be working a lot with members this week while Hermana Marinho stays with our mamita and tries to get better!  I know that God has other plans for us lots of times, but lots of times, the plans that he has for us are pretty gosh darn hard.  But I know that we are going to be seeing LOTS of miracles now that we are ALWAYS going to be with members in order to work! :)

Other big news!!! We had a lesson with an investigator that the Elders had decided not to teach anymore because he wasn't progressing.  (We didn't know that they had decided not to teach him anymore because we came here in a white wash and we just saw his name in our area book and decided to pass by his house.) We talked about the Book of Mormon and how he could know if our message is true if he reads it and prays about it. Then he told us that he already knows that it is true.  He had received his answer little by little, but he knows that it is true.  We then talked a little bit about baptism and invited him to be baptized this month. He said yes! So we invited him to say a prayer right then and there and ask God what day he should be baptized.  (we were thinking maybe in 3 weeks.... or 4...) He looked up at us and said.. "I'm thinking Saturday...  Not the day after tomorrow but next week.  I think it's the 12th, right?"  I think we were in shock and all that we could get out of our mouths in this moment was "uh huh." Haha so we organized his baptismal interview and everything and he was interviewed on Saturday and will be baptized this following Saturday!! Wow!! He was so prepared!! He was just waiting for someone to ask!!

Have a great week!

Hermana Harvey

Hermana Marinho got to see the sea lions today!