November 12, 2012 - 100 Wonderful Things #3-#16

Freak out freak out...

I am having a freak out. Today are transfers. I was feeling nice and calm thinking that I would just stay with my wonderful companion for one more transfer. Plop! Surprise...you are training. Aaaahhhh!!!

This will be my first time training a new missionary...I finished the training of my current companion, but she is Latina and already knew what she was doing. There is a good chance that my new missionary will be from the states...that means she won't know ANYTHING. I know because I've been there. When I got to the mission I seriously couldn't talk, eat, or walk without my companion, where to go, what to do, what to say, I was like a little child. It is a huge responsibility, and I am obviously super nervous. BUT I trust that the Lord is giving me the opportunity to have this kind of experience for a reason, and I know that it will be wonderful (once I get over the initial shock).

100 Wonderful Things

Remember my 100 wonderful things about the mission? I forgot to write them last week, but here are the other 14 that you haven't heard yet:)

• 3.  Seeing members of the church share their testimonies with their friends.
• 4.  Being a soldier in the army of the Lord!
• 5.  Receiving answers to your prayers.
• 6.  Opening the eyes and minds of the people you teach to the truths of God (and the simple counsel of a loving and inspired leader).
• 7.  The companionship of the Holy Ghost and when others recognize it.
• 8.  The humbling of a heart.
• 9.  To see families living in righteousness.
• 10. The courage of young people.
        There is a young man in our ward whose whole family are members of the church, he really wants to come to church but feels alone. But he comes anyway. We are doing a ward fast and his parents can't fast because they have diabetes, but he said he would fast with us, it will be his first time fasting!
• 11. When a total stranger invites you into their house, feels the Spirit and truth of your message, and accepts the invitation to be baptized.
• 12. Seeing the great potential of God's children, and seeing parents fight for their families!
• 13. Giggling on a rainy day and seeing the tender mercies of God.
        We got a big surprise this week....it rained...a lot. One night I woke up about four times and every time I could hear the rain pounding on the rooftop. The first day it rained we didn't think it would rain really hard so we took our raincoats and rain boots  but not an umbrella or the rain skirts. well we made a grave mistake. by the end of the night we were soaked...more my companion who repeatedly was wringing water out of her skirt. Nevertheless we waled around with smiles on our faces. We tried to enjoy ourselves even though it was pouring and there was no one in the street. We say the tender mercies of the Lord as doors opened and people let us in to teach them!
• 14. Hearing the testimony of a new convert:)
• 15. Making mistakes.
        I taught probably one of the most horrible lessons I have ever taught in my whole mission this week. It just didn't go well. Well  this haunted me all night, I thought for sure that the woman we had taught wouldn't want to come to church, nor listen to us anymore. But Sunday there she was with her husband at church. Sometimes as a missionary I feel like I can't make mistakes...but it's inevitable. The beautiful part is that as we make mistakes we have the opportunity to repent, be better, and be forgiven by the people we teach.
• 16. Seeing true conversion!
        We are teaching a man who truly wants to change his life! He has stopped smoking, told us he is going to read the Book of Mormon before Christmas, looks forward to going to church, and wants to start his family history:) There is nothing more amazing to see than the changes that are taking place in him!

It has been a good, but hard week! It is amazing that the same things that at times bring you the greatest sorrow are the same things that bring you the greatest joy. I love the mission...it is one of those things. I have felt the worst I've ever felt in my life on my mission, and I've had the most wonderful experiences ever in the mission. And those moments of pain and sorrow, make the good experiences even more precious and special.

Till next week. Love, Hermana Bowns
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November 5, 2012 - In the Right Place

My comp and I
on Halloween.

Haloween

On Halloween, like I said, my companion and I dressed as twins. It was subtle...but not. The first person we passed by in the morning was a young man, I didn't notice, but my companion starts busting up laughing because she said the kid had a look of confusion as he looked us up and down and took in the matching purple shirts, black skirt, black nylons, black shoes, same braided hair, and purple backpacks and black nametags:) We even had matching earrings! But he was the only one the whole day who noticed.

I was wrong that no one celebrates Halloween here. On Wednesday we worked in a part of our sector where the houses are a little nicer, it is a more secluded neighborhood, there aren't fences, and there are more families with young kids, and at about 7pm people started coming out of their houses with kids dressed up. by 10pm the streets were full of kids with their parents trick-or-treating! It was so fun to see, especially because my companion had never seen that!

We are in full summerness now! It is getting hot...finally!

Some Chilean cultural tidbits (it has been a while since I wrote some):

There is a holiday seriously every month. The Catholics celebrate Saint days and some of them are nationally recognized. Also the Evangelicals have some national holidays...so at least once a month there is a three or four day weekend. This weekend (the 1st of November) they commemorate their deceased relatives, it was a four day weekend and everyone went to the cemeteries to visits their loved ones who have passed on. I think it is a great tradition!

Chileans are great at "shooting the breeze." I´ve never met people who are so content to just sit and chat about whatever. (Some of them are really detailed story tellers too, they include all the details:) We were talking with a lady the other day and somehow we got on the topic of how someone tried to give her kids away and she had to go get them. We got all the details from who said what, what everyone did, how they looked, why they were where they were, how they felt, etc!

People don't take family pictures here like we do. In the states it is very normal to have a family portrait taken every couple years. Here when I show the picture of my family that we had taken 8 years ago every asks me why all the gringos have photos like that. I guess the photography and portrait studio business hasn't really taken flight here yet.

In the Right Place at the Right Time

One of the most gratifying things about being a missionary is when you appear in the right place at the right moment. We always try to be guided by the Spirit, but you never know if you arrived in the precise moment if no one tells you. And it is a humbling experience to have someone tell you that for some reason, when we passed by, they opened the door and let us in, when normally they wouldn't have, and that we came at a time in their life when they needed something like what we have to offer!

Also this week we had a really special experience. We visited a young mother who has three little kids. She knew we were going to stop by and told us that before we knocked on the door she thought, ''oh I hope they don't come, i'm really busy today''. Then when we knocked she didn't really want to let us in but somehow there we were sitting in her living room, and when we started teaching she said she felt like we were accompanied by something or someone. And that she felt a peace and calm. Well, we know that we did go accompanied...by the Holy Ghost. And we had the beautiful experience of explaining that to her.

The Spirit will be with us and guide us when we let it, and when we let it we can have such amazing and priceless experiences of blessing the lives of other people and being an answer to someone's prayers.

With love, Hermana Bowns

The girls I live with on Halloween
(we ate popcorn and watched a 10 minute video from Together Forever, about families:)

October 29, 2012 - 100 Wonderful Things

Happy Halloween!!!

People here don't celebrate Halloween that much. Everyone says it is an "American" holiday and just for commercial revenue (all the candy sales). But there are still some people who dress up, etc. But there aren't pumpkins here like there are there, and it isn't autumn...it's spring, so it just isn't the same. Nevertheless, I am determined to celebrate a little bit. My companion and I already have planned to dress like twins (we have the same shirt and earrings, and are going to do our hair the same, etc.) on Wednesday and at night after we get back to the house and do our planning we are going to eat popcorn and Manjar covered apples (our substitute for caramel covered apples).

This week was a great week! We made some plans to improve, and we improved! There is no greater feeling than that of progress and growth. We are learning to teach better together, and as we gain more confidence teaching, God gives us more opportunities to teach. Every week we have the goal to talk to 140 new people, this has always been hard for me because it requires that you are always talking to random people in the street and everywhere, but these past couple weeks I've actually gotten better at talking to people! How great...after 15 months of being a missionary, I'm finally getting better at the most basic thing we do...talk to people:)

Don't think I'm getting trunky*...because I'm not...what I'm getting is freaked out thinking that one day my mission will end...so I am trying to prepare myself: I officially have 100 (more or less) days left here in Chile. So I decided to start making a list, one thing everyday of 100 wonderful things about the mission to help me enjoy every last minute I have here :) I started on Saturday, so here are the two I have so far

1. The feeling you get when someone you teach starts to understand the Restoration of the Gospel and what it means!

(I wrote this because we had a really neat experience this week: two weeks ago, one of the couples we are teaching came to church, by the end of the three hours I was convinced that they hated it! The husband looked visibly uncomfortable, and we were not able to talk to them after. For two weeks we couldn't find them in their house, nor get ahold of them on their cell phone. The horrible thought haunted me that maybe they had had such a bad experience at church that they never wanted to talk to us again! How horrible!

Finally we stopped by their house one more time to see if there was any chance of seeing them or talking to them...they were home! They told us that they had liked church, but that it was a little long. But the husband had read the whole Gospel Principles book and told us the more he reads the more he starts to think this may be true. It had called their attention that during the testimony meeting so many people had said the church was true. We taught about the Restoration of the Gospel and Church of Jesus Christ to try to answer why people say that. The husband understood what we were saying and said that it made sense to him!!! Yay!!!! They communicated to us that they think there might be something to the Church of Jesus Christ :)

2. The sweet experience of sharing the right scripture at the right time to someone who needs it!

(Yesterday we stopped by to visit a member of the church who is having some difficult trials in her life. After listening to her situation I felt a little helpless about how to help her. I don't have any answers of how to solve her problems, but a scripture came to my mind, D&C 6:13-16, we shard that with her, and my companion added verses 19 and 20 substituting the member's name for Oliver's name in the scripture. The sister shed tears after reading the verses. The scriptures had spoke to her and brought her a little comfort and understanding. It was a sweet and edifying experience and strengthened my own testimony that in the scriptures we can find help, answers, and comfort.)

Well, that's all for now. I hope you all have a wonderful Halloween :)

Love, Hermana Bowns

*Trunky means homesick in mission-speak.
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