Courtney's Week #16

Okay the last week in my first change (area) there was a fair amount of rain, but in my old area we had to cross these things call posteros, which are big fields that people use to cross from neighborhood to neighborhood. They were so muddy.

The next day we climbed one of the hills in the area with the zone leaders and the elders from the branch next door it was so fun. I slid down half the hill. I didn´t get any really good pictures because we climbed it at 5 in the morning and it was still dark. But it was great!!

Me and Hermana Stevens and Hermana Jenny, our "mom" in Esmeralda.

Me and my new Companion

I did pictures first today because I really wanted to finally send out pictures and we are in a little bit of a better cyber today. By better cyber I simply mean that the USB ports work. It however would not pass for a business license in the states.

Here I am!! I am here in an area called Los Andes, more specifically in an area called Centenario, just in case you can find that on google maps. I didn´t realize how poor the people were in Colina or Esmeralda, my last area. I just assumed that that was how all of Chile was. But Los Andes is pretty much like the States, the people here are a lot richer and can afford things. Oh my goodness, people even have automatic gate openers, (just like garage door openers, but they don´t have garages, just gates). The first one scared me half to death because I was sure that conveniences such as this did not exist in Chile. It is kind of sad though. I feel like the culture has been lost as the people have been exposed to the conveniences of the world. I feel as if I am in the states, even the food is pretty much the same. I had Great Value Blueberry Pomegranate Ice Cream the other day in a members house--the same stuff that our family gets from Walmart, crazy! I am no longer eating rice, beans, and pan. The food is much more like the states.

Although it is nice to have a store where I can buy hot chocolate and other conveniences that I love it is kind of sad to be here among the richer people, things are so much more peaceful, but I really loved the poor people they were great. Oh, I haven´t been proposed to at all since I got here, this is quite sad. My self-esteem was so high when I recieved hourly compliments on how beautiful I was and occasional marriage proposals too. Now I am lucky if I get one a day. ¡Que Triste! (how sad)

Well I ran out of time, but just know that I am a happy missionary! I am picking up spanish super fast. I know that Heavenly Father needs me to speak spanish NOW and that is why I am with all the Latinas. I am meant to be a great tool in the hands of God, but first I need to be able to communicate with the people so here I am learning spanish.

To answer one of your questions Dad, technically I am still in training until the end of this change, but mostly my companion is just teaching me Spanish nothing else is really new other than insights and stuff like that.

I love you all! Thanks for everything!!

Hermana Evans

Walker's Week #22

Hello this week has been a lot like last week as in tuanis. Oh so I guess my companion has family in Vernal, its pretty cool. So I saw a movie the other day it was the one about the resteration. Yep Ivé only seen it like fifty times since I´ve been here. Its like the only one I´ve seen but you know. Oh I get to read books too. Right now I´m reading this one book called the Book of Mormon its pretty good you guys should, read it if you havn´t already. Oh so guess what I got sunburned today. That is one thing I don´t understand, I can walk around all day and not get sunburnt but as soon as I go play soccer for an hour I get fried. Yep life is good.

So this one time, as in today we were going to make ice cream but then we realized that we didn´t have enough money. It was great we found a member that had an icecream maker and every thing.

Oh so I didn´t change houses I´m still in Villa Hermosa in Alajuela, but in my house there is me and my comp, Elder Taylor from Salt Lake ish and Elder Dominguez from El Savador. they are the Zone Leaders. There is Elder Prince from Canada, and his comp Elder Cabrera from Honduras too. Its so fun. Yep, other than that my life is the same. So adidios
pura vida maes

Walker's Week #21

So changes were today. I have a greengo comp. His name is Elder Marsh he is from Riverton I think. I will tell you more after I know more about him.

I have found that the best investigators are the ones that find you. My best investigator walked up to me and my comp and asked if we study the bible. We said yes, then he asked if we new a scripture about repentance. So my companion told him one. We have found him three times and none of them were scheduled. One we were walking down the road and we saw him so we stoped and talked to him and he told us he had no idea why he decided to walk down this road he just felt good about it. The second, we went to a cita (appointment) with someone that lives nextdoor and they weren´t there so we decided to knock on his. The third, we had set up an appointment at the church. But he didn´t come so my companion called him but his phone was off. We decided to go to his house, and if he wasn´t there we would go to another place. So we went and nothing. So we started walking and I felt like we should return to the church. So we did we walked in and one of the members came up to us and told us that he had called the church back and was on his way. So if people are ready to receive the gospel god will help them.
Anyways thanks for the pictures, oh also Joe thanks for the letters. I do get them but I have to wait to go to San Jose to get them and we don´t go there very often, and yes I can drive a stick. Oh did you let Joe drive my car, what did he think of it.

Courtney's Week #15

Well, so changes were last night. I was told by many people that my companion and I wouldn't be getting a change because we had to finish the 12 week training program, but guess what. At 1:30 in the morning we got a phone call saying that I was leaving and that I had to be in Santiago with all my stuff and noon. Guess who was not a happy missionary. I was livid, mostly because they didn't tell us this until 1:30 in the morning! I got up and packed some of my things, then tried to go back to sleep for a little bit. When I woke back up I made the decision to be a happy missionary again.

 

So here I am, my new area is in a place called Los Andes; it is the furthest north part of the mission it is about two hours in a bus north of Santiago. But guess what the biggest news is, my new companion is Latina, she is from Mexico. Tambien (also) we live in the same house with the other Hermanas in the zone and they are all Latinas. I knew my companion was from Mexico last night, but I was not aware until we got to changes that I was going to be all alone in a country that does not speak my language. I had to fight really hard not to cry. I've heard of a few Hermanas that kind of sunk into a little depression when they have been with Latinas just because it is so dang hard to communicate and share stories and bond and everything like that, but I have determined that I am a big girl and a great missionary and I am just going to give everything I have to the Lord and everything will work out great and my Spanish will go through the roof and every good thing like that. But I am still very scared and so nervous. Nobody here comes from the same culture, and that is a very intimidating thing for me. Especially since I don't even have any friends from my old zone that came here with me. Just so everyone is aware, because I am telling all of you about my fear of going into depression, it means that you all have to write me really good letters!!

 

By the way, the reason that my trainer was taken away from me is because President wanted here to train another newbie. He wrote this super long email about how he is trying to get the best trainers to train the new people, so pretty much it just confirms how awesome Hermana Stevens is! I was so lucky to have her be my first companion she is awesome! She gave me a really good pep talk after I found out that I was going to be living with three latinas about how if I ever need anything that I shouldn't hesitate at all and that she was determined to keep me happy with strong doses of English in notitas and such. Anyways, I just love her, she is the best!

 

Oh so there was a whole bunch of rain and stuff this last week and so all of the little fields that we have to cross to get from neighborhood to neighborhood were absolutely horrific. I pulled a muscle on the back of my knee trying to walk through the mud, but don't worry, I was a diligent missionary and worked nonetheless and I am all better now.

 

So on Saturday my companion and I, the zone leaders that we shared the branch with, and another companionship climbed one of the big hills that is near our area. It was so much fun, but because of all the rain it was so muddy. I slid down about 20 feet of the hill and my whole bottom and back was just covered in mud, but it was a lot of fun.

 

I love you all and miss you. Thanks for all your updates, I love my Family!!

 

Hermana Evans

Courtney's Week #14

I love hearing about what´s going on, even if it is just the little things.

 

So my cultural spotlight for this week: Here in Chile they sweep and water their dirt. They sweep it apparently to get all the garbage and stuff off, but it just really makes me laugh when they water it. I think they water it to keep the dust down, but it is still really funny.

 

Second cultural spotlight of the week was brought to my attention saturday, when they had a ward activity to clean the church. We decided we would go help out for like an hour, my thought was that we could get the whole church clean in an hour, but no. First of all, Latinos in general are really bad about being on time. Even sacrament meeting starts at least 20 minutes late every week. So when we came half an hour after the alloted time, there was still hardly anyone there. But it was so funny, my companion and I started cleaning the chairs and I noticed that no one was really diligently cleaning. My companion explained that chileans and probably latinos in general just don´t have a very good work ethic. While americans tend to work as hard as they can so that they can get in and get out as fast as they can, the chileans prefer to just mosie their way through so that they can enjoy themselves. So point of the story we left after like 45 minutes but when we went back to pick up a member to take with us to a lesson 3 hours later, they were still "cleaning the church." It just made me laugh. Also the stuff that they gave me to clean the chairs was not actually cleaning. It was all greasy and stuff, so I felt more like I was oiling a bowling-ball rather than cleaning the chairs. But they were much shinier afterwards. 

 

This past week I went through serious sugar-withdrawals. I never noticed how much sugar and sweet things I eat, but apparently it used to be a lot. The chileans don´t really enjoy super sweet things, so I haven´t eaten a whole lot, but this week I exhausted the candy supply that I brought with me, and so one week I found myself searching for anything and everything that had sugar. It was pretty bad, but maybe I will be healthier when I come home. But if you could send me some more Mike and Ikes when you get a chance that would be spectacular, nothing like that exists here. 

 

On that same note, my companion loves coughdrops. So she gives her coughdrops to all the little kids as candy. I keep telling her that she needs to stop drugging all the kids, but if coughdrops have sugar, that may be where I will turn for my sugar fix as well.

 

So this last week we decided to set aside an afternoon and take our bicis out to explore the far ends of our sector. F is for Failure. It was pretty awful. We were so excited to take our bikes out because we had just gotten our brand-new cascos (helmets) from the office. My companion took the crappier looking bike because she is a better person than me. But we had to go find air for her tires. So we headed to a place that we knew fixed bikes, but they weren´t there so we asked people if there was another place to fill up our tires. The directions here go something like this: "If you go up its just down from the plaza next to the almacen (store)." This is not helpful at all, because first of all, who is to say which way is down and which way is up in a neighborhood. Secondly, there are quite a few plazas here and an almacen like every fourth house.

 

Anyways, we finally found air, and we went on our way. We took pictures with our happy faces and went off. I realized very quickly that my bike was meant for someone smaller than Sawyer, or like Hermana Stevens told me, a guatamalan. Also the gears were really messed up. I was dying on this little bike, but Hermana Stevens just thought I was a total pansy, so she offered to trade. I glady took this offer. Two minutes later she decided we were going home....So point of the story, my companion admitted that I am not just a pansy, she actually apologized for making me ride that bike for so long. We walked the bikes home. Funniest part of this story is that this adventure took two hours, and we didn´t even make it as far as we can walk in 25 minutes. This week we asked for bikes from the office instead of helmets.

 

As far as the work goes my companion and I are pretty much amazing, we teach a lot, but despite our best effort we can´t get anyone to accept a baptismal date. We had three with fecha, but they all lost their date last week because they stopped coming to church. We have been trying so hard, but we are just trying to get them to connect that having faith leads to action. So this has been a really big focus this week.

 

We do have one investigator with a baptismal date though, but it is not until August 18th. She chose this date because it is the same day that her husband was baptized. We were so excited, she has been investagating the church for a long time, and has had several baptismal dates before and has lost them all, so we decided that instead of feeling obligated to get baptized like she did with the other missionaries, she had to really want it. So we dropped her down on our list of priorities until we thought she was ready, when we went to visit her you could just tell that something had definitely changed, she was excited to see us and she just asked us, "Hey, I want a baptismal date on this day, is that okay?" Anyways, we are super excited for her. But we took the Relief Society president with us to a lesson with her this last week and she started talking about how many are called but few are chosen. And how she needed to ask herself if she is really chosen. We Really Really hope that it didn´t scare her off. The Relief Society president was really excited though and she set up another afternoon for her to come with us for the whole day, we are not so excited about this though. She is very intense. For example, I do not enjoy relief society at all here, because the announcements always turn out to be an argument. It is definitely not uplifting, and very uncomfortable when we have investigators there.

 

You should definitely send pictures though, it would make me quite happy.

 

Well, suprisingly enough, I am kind of running out of things to say and I still have fifteen minutes of email time. Maybe my typing skills are improving, which would be shocking because it is freezing in this silly cyber and my fingers can barely bend because they are so cold. A lot of the pictures that I want to send are actually on my companions camera because she is braver than me about taking it with her in the shady parts of town and about remembering to take pictures in general. But I think I might have to wait until next week to steal her camera.

 

So a little note about my spanish, I am doing pretty well if I do say so myself. I am getting better at adapting what I want to say to my vocabulary, and more than that, my understanding is almost three-quarters. I am just so grateful for the gift of tongues, it is pretty awesome. I still can´t say electrical engineering in Spanish though, it is always a struggle.

 

Changes are next monday, but I am almost 100% positive that I will still be with my trainer, because we have to complete a little 12 week program where we have an extra hour of companionship study. I actually don´t like companionship study too much just because it is the only time when my companion makes me feel like I am actually a trainee rather than just an awesome missionary. But that´s okay, it is only 2 hours of the day, the rest of the time we are more like equals.

 

Well, I am out of time, but I love you all bunches and bunches. Thanks for your letters. Oh just an update in case you were wondering, pouch mail and dearElders get here just like a week and a half after they were submitted. Which I think is pretty speedy. We get mail once a week during zone-class.

 

I love you!! Miss you all!!

Hermana Evans

Walker's Week #20

It has been decided that Courtney writes a whole lot about nothing.

This week was pretty awesome. We have an investigator with a fecha (baptisem date) this saturday. So we taught him yesterday. He is so awesome, he just kind of acceptes everything. like the other day we asked him if he had any questions about the Book of Mormon. He said "no it is pretty clear, I mean it all makes sense". Anyways yesturday we taught him agout the word of wisdom. He told us that he goes to bars all the time and gets water because he doesn´t like beer, but he drinks coffee every morning. And told us how that wouldn´t be any problem to stop. But after this he told us about how he had deleted his face book because he feels that it is a huge temptation because his ex-girlfriend keeps asking him to do stuff and he is trying to change his life. And we are like ok we explain the law of chasity to. Anyway, moral to the story is that he was prepared to recieve the gospel.

Courtney's Week #13

 

I am going to tell a funny story first today. So we had an appointment with a contact of a girl who was like 13 who we met on the street, we went to her house and just like sang a hymn and her uncle whose name is Luiciano came out to see what was going on. So the girl ended up disappearing to go play with her friends, but the uncle seemed pretty interested especially after we sang happy birthday in English for him for his 26 birthday. There is a rule that we can´t enter a house unless there is another woman present, and at first Luiciano´s sister was there just kind of cleaning around the house, but then she left like half way through our lesson, so we were just trying to finish up really fast and get out.

So as we were teaching this lesson, my companion asked, "What do you lack in your life?" It was so funny he looked at us and said, "Amor (love)." I was doing my very best not to laugh, but I was very impressed at the skill of my companion, because even though she knew exactly that he was hitting on us, she totally turned the situation around and was like "Oh, do you feel like you need more love in your family? That´s great, the gospel is for the family."  So funny. It actually turned out to be a really great lesson because he had a lot of doubts and stuff that we were able to resolve. But it was kind of crazy, he totally thought that we didn´t believe that Jesus died on the cross, and that we believed that he died on a stick and that is why our chapels have steeples and not crosses. We explained that Jesus really did die on a cross and not a stick. But that was something new.

So next funny story, we were walking through one of our posteros, which is just like an empty field full of garbage that everyone uses to get from neighborhood to neighborhood and we realize that about 30 feet in front of us standing directly in the exit was a huge huge pig. I think it might be a warthog, except for the fact that it didn´t have horns. This big was probably the size of a small cow. It was huge and muscular. Anyways, we just kind of had to wait until he decided to move, because neither of us felt like being eaten by a pig that day. I wish I had had my camera, but my area is too dangerous to carry our cameras with us all the time. But it was crazy.

So this week we had intercambios or divisions with the other sisters in our zone. Hermana Taggart, my companion from the MTC came and spent the day with my companion and I went to spend the day with her companion. I learned a few things that day, I am a good missionary, and I have the potential to be a great and spectacular missionary. I know that sounds like I am bragging, but it was just really cool to see how much potential I have and that I need to step up to that. The Hermana I was with, we will call her Hermana X, just lacks a lot of people skills and ultimately missionary skills, even though she is over half-way through her mission.

So we contacted this person in her area and he was really interested and wanted to learn more, but there wasn´t another woman around so he invited us to just sit on his porch. This man was curious and so he started asking questions. Hermana X was like talking about all the rules of a mission and stuff, and I was just thinking to myself, "what are you doing, this man´s salvation is on the line." So I totally directed and gave the first lesson, and every time she talked I felt like I had to bring things back to the lesson. Anyways, it was really cool to see that I could actually do that. It also made me really grateful for my own companion and how great she is.

Anyways, so at the end of the lesson I got a return appointment and Hermana X was marking a chapter for him to read in the Book of Mormon. As she was doing this I started bearing my testimony of how important it was for him to read and find out for himself and how important the gospel was to me in my life. The guy was so enthralled in my testimony and the spirit was really strong, but then in the middle of my testimony Hermana X interrupts and says, "Excuse me, which color would you like?" She totally interrupted to find out what color of bookmark he wanted. I just thought to myself, "Are you kidding me, I am in the middle of saving this man´s soul, he doesn´t care what color." Anyways, so that is my story. I´m interested to see how her normal lessons go, I no longer wondered why their sector is really struggling though.

Today I would just like to end with an appreciation of all that people do for the church and how great it is that they really make things go smoothly in the church. The branch here is really struggling, no one really understands how the church should really run. For example, every week in relief society it is like a total argument for the majority of the meeting, and then there is a five minute lesson at the end. Sacrament meeting always starts at least 25 minutes late, oh and the primary is absolutely the crazy. Yesterday we were in Relief Society and the door slowly opened, and then you see these toy guns come through and one of the primary kids totally shot all of the sisters in relief society with sound effects and all coming from his plastic guns.

Anyways, I am going to try once again to send some pictures this week. The cyber that we´ve been going to the last few weeks is just really stupid when it comes to their usb drives and stuff and it´s really hard, but hopefully this week it will work. The first picture is my first day of rain in Chile.

Walker's Week #19

So this week was pretty great I guess. They all just kind of blend together but yea this week for p-day which is today my whole zone went to a country club, it was pretty great. We placed futball and football and ate lots of food. So this week we went and taught some hermana english. It was so awkward cause she was like flirting with me the whole time. But on a brighter note we found some one the other day that is just awesome. His name is Allen he is like thirty five and just messed up the four year relationship with his girl friend. (which we think means he messed up with a girl). So he is looking for repentance and stuff, he is really awesome. He has come to church this week and we have met with him like three times. Oh so we gave him a Book of Mormon and he just thinks its the coolest thing in the world. So I don't have as much time as Courtney so I have to go tuanis