Courtney's Week #18

Guess what! I had my four month mission anniversary! Crazy!!! Granted
I only have two months in Chile, but it is still totally crazy.

So this week, oh my goodness. So my companion and I share the ward and
the house with the other companionship of Hermanas. This companionship
had already been together for 4 months and they were starting to get
on each others nerves so one day they snapped and totally jumped the
line of authority and called president. They went to Santiago for
emergency interviews and all of that, he told them that there was
another companionship of Hermanas that was having problems and that he
would probably give them a transfer. Anyway, so when they found out
the other companionship that they would probably change with, they
realized that they were much happier with their current companion, and
they had a few blissful days of happiness and working really hard, but
they ended up changing anyways. I think that this is all super funny,
and I hope they learned their lesson about complaining about things.
Because now they both have really awful companions.

Anyway, so the new Hermana that lives with us is Hermana Amonzabel
from Bolivia. She was companions with my companion Hermana Martinez
just a few cambios ago and it was really bad. Sometimes there is a lot
of contention in the house with this situation, but I just remind her
that we are not here for anybody but our investigators and she is fine
until the next annoyance occurs. Personally, I just find the whole
situation a little bit funny. But I can respect that not all people
do, so I am trying really hard to be sensitive to the feelings of
others and not offend anyone.

But as for the work, we have a family of really great investigators.
It was super funny though because my companion thought that the name
of the mom was Claritza, and so for weeks she has been reporting to
the ward as Claritza, but when I came I asked her her name, and her
real name is Larissa. Super funny because the ward mission leader bore
his testimony yesterday and announced to the whole ward how great it
was to have Claritza and her kids there. So then the whole ward
started calling her Claritza. I am just really glad that she doesn´t
get offended easily.

This sector requires a lot more time in the street. Before we had to
run from cita to cita, but here we are in the calle knocking doors a
lot. Last week we fasted as a zone to find new investigators and we
saw a little more success. This past week we had 4 nuevos, which is a
lot better than the 0s that we´ve been having, but our nuevos really
aren´t golden and have a long long ways to go before baptism.

One thing that I have learned in the past few weeks is that the Lord
really is happy with my work here. I was really discouraged in the
beginning because I felt like such a failure as a missionary. I kept
praying for the golden investigators to fall into our laps like they
did in my last sector. But one thing that I have learned is that this
isn´t what I needed to pray for. I needed pray for help to find the
way to improve our contacts so people would want to talk to us and for
our lessons to be better and all of those good things. But what I
learned is that even though we are not teaching like crazy, I am doing
everything I can to constantly better myself and my companionship and
as I do this we are seeing more and more success and I know that the
Lord is satisfied with my work. We just have to always remember to
move upward and not be satisfied with where we are, because if we are
not growing we shrinking. Don´t ever allow your testimony to shrink!
Always do more than you did before!!

Anyways, this is my random thoughts for today. I love you Family!! I
miss you a lot!
Hermana Evans

Random funny fact. My companion can´t say my first name. Hee hee.