the day of Domitila's baptism! the first picture is me and hermana hamblin cleaning the baptismal font... we started filling it and there were little fuzzies in the water so we had to get in there and clean it out. good thing it was rainign that morning so we had our rain boots on! the next is a picture of us with domitila and her family. domitila is the one with her hands on my shoulders. happy baptism!!!

Playa and package!!

Well hello my devoted fans,

I am doing juust great. On Tuesday I got a package from my wonderful Mommy, anddd EIGHT letters from friends!! Ay yi yi. I was so surprised, and felt so loved. Thank you everybody for your love and letters!! My whole zone was jealous, they said that I got more letters than everyone else in the zone combined (I don't think they were exaggerating). Hah, so thank you everyone you all are so good to me.

Toooday, for P-day, our zone went to the beach!!! (la playa) This place called Puerto Saavedra if anyone wants to look it up. It's pretty! We walked up to the top of this bluff and took pictures, I will include a couple in another email. But it was really fun! The bus ride was like 3 hours there and 2 hours back haha.. We only spent like 3 hours with the beach and lunch, but it was worth it. Obviously we didn't go swimming, but the elders played football on the sand and Hermana Hamblin and I went for a walk down the beach and took some sweet pictures. I was feeling artsy. They came out really good. Anyway, it was fun. Then we went to this little restaurant and had empanadas, classic Chilean food. Good day!

So Hermana Hamblin and I have a lot in common. Actually, we say and think the same things often too. It's fun. We are on the same page, which is greeeat. Funny sometimes too, when we say the same things at the same time and people look at us weird :) Love her.

Funny story from Sunday, we were having lunch after church at one of our favorite member's houses, and we were talking to their 5-year old Franco. We were asking him what he learned in church, and we asked him if he was a child of God. He said yes. We asked if we were children of God too and he said yes. Then we asked what about your abuelita (grandma), she was there eating with us too, is she a child of God too? And he said no, she's the abuelita of God. Hahahahahaha. Sooo cute. Aw, Franco. Abuelita Lela loved that. Hahaha. So funny.

We visited this sweet inactive lady, she loooves to talk. She gave me a pair of her shoes! What the? Soo cute. She is adorable. Her name is Eliana and she's probably close to 75. But she said she never wears them and she wants me to have them. So, cool! They're a little bit tight but I will try them out to see if I can use them! We do a looot of walking, so I might need them eventually!

So I think I mentioned that while we were teaching Domatila before her baptism, her other deaf/mute daughter got all excited and wanted to be baptized. Well, we have been teaching her, and let me just tell you it is such a special experience. We go from English to Spanish (in our heads), then it goes to sign language of her family to Delila. But. The most important language, the language of the Spirit, is what really teaches her. I can feel the Spirit sooo strong in those lessons, really the Spirit is there and He is doing the teaching. It is so so neat.

Another quick experience, we had an appointment with an inactive family but they were busy so we decided to knock their street. We met this lady named Jessica and we were just talking to her at her gate, she was saying she believes in God but doesn't believe in religion and doesn't like how all the churches compete with each other.. For some reason I was prompted to tell her that we don't get paid for our missionary work, rather that we pay to be here. She was shocked. And then she let us in her house. She has had a hard life, and doesn't have much, but she is a great lady with tons of faith. She prays all the time and she says she can feel the Holy Ghost telling her things are bad when she does bad things. Like when she says a bad word or smokes a cigarrette, she says she can tell the Holy Ghost is telling her no. She says she prays for forgiveness every night and that God gives her answers to her prayers in her dreams. We had a really great lesson with her about the Restoration of the Gospel, and about the Book of Mormon. She was like, ''How do I get one of those books?'' And we were like this one is yours, a gift! She was like so excited, and we invited her to read it and pray about it. We have an appointment to go back and teach her today, so we are really hoping she is there and that she has prayed!

I know that the church is true, it's soo true it's ridiculous. It's so simple and beautiful. And I KNOW that anyone who prays with a sincere heart will know that it is true as well, by the power of the Holy Spirit. I know the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only way to truly follow Jesus Christ, and I know that when we do our best to follow Him, our lives will be blessed more richly than we can even imagine. And that is why I am here in Chile. To share these wonderful news with others of God's children who need it. :)

Well, that's all for this week. Love you all so much. Thanks for all you do.

Hasta luego,
Hermana Danielle Marie Anderton

My First Baptism!!

(Sorry this was from last week!)


Oh hello everyone!!

So we had a baptism this past Saturday!!!! Domitila got baptized, and it was so beautiful. She is 80 years old and so sweet. She calls us her grandaughters. She is so cute we love her. When we were planning her service there was a little bit of drama from her daughter, who wanted only certain members of the ward to participate and ended up making us change some things... It was annoying, but we asked Domitila if a certain person was okay and she was like, ''I don't care, I just want to get baptized!'' Haha. She's great. At the service there was about 35-40 people, which was great. A lot of her family came. Some are members and some are not. We also had good support from the ward. It was great! I totally cried. I am so so happy for her. She is just excited and happy that she made the decision to be baptized. We are helping that family one person at a time :) It makes me so happy.

I think I did mention Miguel once, he had a baptism date for the 28th also, but we haven't been able to find him since that first weekend when we met him :( he doesn't have a house, don't know if I mentioned that before... Or a phone. So we're bummed because he was so sweet and had a desire to learn more. Oh well.. Hopefully we'll find him again someday.

A little miracle this week- we saw a young lady with her son, he was probably about 6 and they were playing on a little playground. We started talking to her and she thought we were Jehovah's Witnesses or something but Hermana Hamblin had a Book of Mormon in her hand and the lady saw it and she was like ''Oh, you're Mormon!'' Yes, yes we are. She then told us that two weeks ago, she found in the trash, a Bible, Book of Mormon, agenda, and a couple other things de un Elder in our mission! His name was engraved on everything but she didn't have money to call any of the numbers in the agenda. But she knew they were important so she kept them in her house. Well we got her address, she didn't live in our area but we told the Elders in her area to go visit her. They called us a few days later and said that the Elder got his stuff stolen and I guess the thief threw away all his scriptures. But he said it made his day to get his stuff back. So that was fun that we got to help in a little miracle. :)

Another little cool thing, earlier in the week we were talking to this man named Larry. He didn't live in our area either (Temuco is a big city, and we're in the center of it, so a lot of people come here to visit and shop and stuff but live out of town). He worked with a Bishop years back, and the bishop talked to him a lot about the church and gave him a BoM. He lost his BoM when they were moving, so we gave him a new one and got his address to give to the elders in his area. Well, Saturday after the baptism we were contacting in a plaza and talked to this couple. The girl gave us her address to stop by, and it sounded really familiar to me. I looked back in my agenda from a few days back and she had the same address as Larry! I was like ''Do you live with someone named Larry?'' and she was like shocked, and told us it was her Dad! Nooo coincidences. I thiiiink Heavenly Father really wants this family to have the gospel, if we contacted two of them not even near their house. Pretty neat.

A little miracle for us, this guy, Rodrigo, showed up to our ward yesterday. One of his friends from work invited him to church but his friend lived in a different ward. Usually the person would just go with their friend but he came to our ward cause he lives over here! It was cool. He's done a lot of research on the church and knew quite a bit. We taught him a little lesson during Sunday school and he stayed for 3rd hour. Well every 5th sunday we have combined Priesthood and Relief Society so that was a little different. Hna. Hamblin and I taught for the beginning like 15 minutes, and then another man taught the rest. His lesson was good, but some of the members of the ward were just talking way too much and about random things. We were like ugh, shhh we don't want to freak out our investigator! I leaned over to Hna. Hamblin during this and said ''This is like if you're dating a guy... you want to make sure he really likes you before he meets your family... Our ward is like the family, and he's meeting them before he really likes us!!'' Hahah, it was funny. Thankfully he still wants to date us (kidding, wants to meet with us for missionary lessons) even with the crazy family. :P

Another funny thing this week is WE got contacted by some 7th day adventist missionaries. That was different. Haha.

Umm, so, yeah, life is awesome and I LOVE being a missionary!!! We are teaching some families right now which is the BEST. We are hoping to start preparing them for baptism soon.

I know this work is the work of Jesus Christ. We have too many miracles and incredible experiences for it not to be- I know He is at the head of this work.

I love you all so much!!! Thank you for your prayers and letters and love. :)

Con mucho amor,
Your favorite Missionary in Chile :)