5 days front to cover

So we gave Richard a Book of Mormon this past Saturday and when we met with him on Wednesday he told us he had finished it. I had to ask him about 3 times before I believed him. He told us how glad he was that we gave him one and he now knows that it only testifies of Christ and confirms everything he knows about the Bible. He loves learning about all of the commandments we are teaching him to prepare him to be baptized on the 11th of April. And even if it was something new for him he is more then willing to start living that way now to be ready on the 11th and every day after. I can not remember if I told you all this but even before we taught him about the Word of Wisdom he told us he said "no" to his friends about beer because he needed to be ready for his baptism. 

This past Sunday at church the Bishop announced Richard and his baptism in front of everyone and Richard just stood right up without being asked and without fear. Afterwards the whole ward was rushing over to say hello. He has been participating in the classes and even bore his testimony in front of everyone :) that being at church that day confirmed even more that this church is the church of Christ and everything that he is doing every sacrifice and change is for the best decision of his life. I absolutely cried :) 

He is so easy to teach too because he does all of his assignments and so when we asked him what he learned before we start a lesson he teaches us perfectly about every principle. Please pray for Richard and the 11th of Abril. 

My trio is pretty fun. The other Gringa, Hna Shupe can recite every Disney Movie from start to finish. EVERY SINGLE WORD it is crazy and I do not know how she does it, but she gets us laughing with her character voices. Right now I am in the middle of the Lion King. We paused at the graveyard scene last night :) 

Chau Chau! 

My Trio!

Hermana Ponce, Hermana Shupe and Me

Temblores!!!

We had 11 tiny earth quakes in one day this past week! But one was big -it was 6.3! Super weird, super super weird but pretty cool too at least for the missionaries I know it really scares the people here after the last huge one. 

But the follow up on Richard Nixon! He is doing so so SO well. He works from sunrise till 6 and from 7 till 11 he has school in the university. So we thought it would be super hard to get a hold of him. But when we called him and asked if we could have just 15 minutes instead of waiting till the weekend he right away asked his boss for time off to meet with us and he got it. He accepted a baptism date! He is one of the most prepared persons I have taught. He loves to just talk and talk about English and all the cool things he has made with just his hands and wood but when we teach, he really listens and when we ask questions he answers and then even testifies how he knew there had to be truths like this. He connects everything to his prior knowledge and takes notes when we teach him. It is awesome! He can feel how true the gospel is and almost gets annoyed when we invite him to pray about everything we share. He always answers with an obvious tone that of course he is going to do it. And then he includes under his breath....I already know it is true. Oh and super cool I almost forgot. When we went to meet up with him at his work for the first lesson a co worker asked if he could sit in the next time because he liked ease dropping but would like a chair por lo menos! But Richard is THE BEST when we taught him about The Book of Mormon and when we parted he sat down next to two strangers in the park and started sharing the book with the them! 

But update on Genaro......bueno, when we called to confirm our appointment he told us not to waste anymore time with him and to never pass by again. That is hard but we are just going to be able to focus even more on those that the Lord is focusing on and preparing right now. 

Other news- I have not just 1 new companion but 2! Hermana Shupe from the States and Hermana Ponce from Mexico. We lived together in Lirquen for 6 weeks Hermana Ponce and I. Other than finding  one m

ore bed for the house we are good to go.

Richard Nixon Came To Church

WE HAD AN INVESTIGATOR COME TO CHURCH THIS SUNDAY!!!! So his name isn´t really Richard Nixon but it really is Richard and he likes calling himself Richard Nixon because he loves languages. He knows about 8 but struggles with English a lot. He was riding on his bike this past Saturday and we were running late to our plan because we had stopped to help this older lady fix her gate. So we barely crossed paths when we stopped to talk with him. He wanted us to come over right then and there but we did not have a member to join us to be able to enter his house alone and we had to get going to another appointment. So we told him that the soonest he could see us would be Sunday at 10 in the morning at church. We took down his number and I looked at Hermana Razeira and promised her that he was coming to church on Sunday. So we waited and waited for Richard but we finally had to head on in for the meeting. And right when I was giving a talk guess who walked in???? RICHARD NIXON! I had to avoid looking at him just to keep my smile down. He stayed for all of church and we have an appointment for him this week. He isn't free until the weekends but he is more then willing to see us all weekend long if he can.

Also! Our English classes are super successful. We had people that we contacted in our sector but live about 40 minutes to an hour away come to our class this past Saturday morning. Marico asked to hear the lessons in English if he can get to that point. We are sending the Elders to his place this next week to get started on that. But we will get to hear all about his progress because he wants to continue in our classes.

Not only that but we had a lot of part member families come to church this Sunday. Which we made a list of to visit and teach this week. It is the last week in the mission for my comp and so she will be brought home dead every night :) In the pictures are her sea side barriol with another Hermana.

So we are starting freesh with a lot of new investigatores but also having to cut the strings on our old ones. Pero asi es la mission.

There are two hermanas in our group who are heading home next Monday and wanted a proper sea burial. 

Happy Marzo!

Everyone says this is our last month of being hot and blond here in Chile and that a wet wet winter is coming right after. The mornings and nights are already super cold. We have to walk all day long with a big coat stuffed in our backpack just for the last freezing hour that we have on our walk home. But I started off this month literally falling into a hole. Like really. There are these huge ditches on the sides of the streets for the rain to run through. A family was walking behind us and I walked backwards to the side without looking trying to start a conversation and totally ate it in the hole. I was on the ground and my companion was too just laughing, but we were both laughing :) So from my ankles to my knee I have some pretty sweet looking bruises and deep scratched up my legs. But to go along with that - I have two pretty funky looking spider bites on my arm. But please don´t worried, I am healthy and have seen our nurse.  Ibuprofen and lots of water works for everything :) 

But more importantly......HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!!! I did not forget for one second! But I had no idea that March 8th is also the day of women. We got told, "feliz dia" all day long. But I hope my picture will do for this year :)

On Monday we went to Hauscar. It is this war boat from this big war between Chile and Peru. When Chile won they captured this boat. We went, all the girls in my Zone. It was pretty cool to hear about and see all the culture and even read some letters that women received when their husbands had died.  But what I really loved was the mountain of Sea Lions that were there too! They were ginormous. Always fighting and pushing each other off the dock and then throwing their head up in the air for the sun. It reminded me of always playing "King of the Raft" when I would go tubing with my family. Almost exactly alike...you guys are all Sea Lions :)

                                                                                                    As for the work....we are teaching more and we found Genaro. We are actually going back today to teach him. He is this giant old man who stays inside all day long. And when I say Giant imagine the biggest person you know and then imagine twice of that. He is hilarious. We did not mean to find him. We had planed to go see an Elizabeth in house 414 but turns out she had not lived there in years. He let us in and got us laughing in seconds. He saw us from the window. And usually when people see us from the window I get a bit nervous because we usually get just someone shaking their finger "no" but he was so excited to talk to us and get to know us. He shared a lot about his life and how his wife passed away and todo but there was a lot more that he wanted to share but just could not because he felt too much pain talking about it. We are going to do our best to help him come to church this Sunday.

Chauito,

Hermana Lance

Hermano Raul

For those of you who remember back in September we got to see Hermano Raul get baptized. Recently I found out that Raul passed away Friday the 13th in February. My old companion Hermana Garces gave me the news and shared with me about the service they held for him. She did not even have to tell me what happened. Just say she had news and I knew it was about Hermano Raul. She told me it was closed casket and that there was a photo of him out for everyone to see. I cut her off and said he had his blue hat on didn't he? And she told me yes. 

I came to know him so very well. He was very sick and couldn't do very much on his own when I was still in Lirquen. I remember always sitting right by him for lunch helping him cut his food and serving him and walking back and forth with him as support from one room to another. I remember how sad he was  the day he was not able to leave the house anymore and therefore not be able to go to church. He wanted nothing more then to be in church with his family. And I will always remember his happy tears as we would sing to him song after song after song, until he had heard all of his favorites. We made him a giant card one day and gave it to his son in law in church to read to him. Hermano Raul had everyone read him that card who walked in the door for the next full week. I am so thankful to know that he is resting and happy. He is my dear friend.