Ch-ch-ch-changes March 26

Hello hellooo!

Wow. Lots going on right now! First, yes I am being transferred. Tooooo Los Alamos! It's close to the beach. Yay. (Parents, if you're looking on my mission map it's close to Lebu. Farther up north.) I'm going to be serving in the campo this time so that should be different... I realize I always write campo cause that's what they call it here. But it means like.. out of town or in the country. So yeah. I'm going from the South, Temuco, which has 300 thousand people living in it to the countryside, up north. Actually Los Alamos covers 4 little tiny towns and we have to take a bus to get between them all. So yeah, super different! But I'm excited! Also, I'm actually not going to be in the trio. I guess President had some last-minute revelation about how cambios were supposed to be. But that's okay, I feel really at peace about it and I feel good like th is is where I need to be going and with who. Oh yes, my companion. Issss Hermana Gomez- a Latina! Yay! She's from Colombia, super short, and super nice and a great teacher and hard worker. Or so I've heard. Yay. Super excited. So far I've been blessed with hard-working, obedient companions. It's been great. I am very happy to have another one. I will let you know more about my area and my companion next week. She doesn't speak English though, so this is gonna be interesting. Ha, I'll for sure learn loads of Spanish!

So what's happening here? Well we finally found Jessica again and she hasn't read the Book of Mormon or prayed about it so nothing is new for her there. It's frustrating when we have these amazing lessons with the Spirit so strong, investigators crying and wanting to learn more. But then they don't come to church and don't read and pray about the Book of Mormon to get their answer about if it's true! Hellooo. Anyway we taught her last night and during the lesson we had an earthquake! Haha it was fun. It wasn't too big.. they're saying 5.8 I think. But it was cool. I haven't felt one in a long time. Anyway. Um, Camilo. So for some reason he's like lost a lot of excitement. It's sad! He's been to church 3 times, but he said he felt alone during the classes, because the other youth didn't really talk to him. Ughhh so sad. So we're still trying to help him get his answer but he just totally changed, he like doesn't feel like it's important anymore. So that's a bummer. Francisco is having more problems with his family, I think I told you all about how he tried to go to church last week but his wife wouldn't let him? Yeah really sad. And we've stopped by a couple times to teach him and he's reading the Book of Mormon and wants to come to church and learn more. His family is just giving him a hard time right now. So we're praying for him.

So with the cambios, haha, they're having the trio HERE! I think I told you all that we have a small house... well, I didn't want to complain, but now that I'm leaving I'll just tell you the whole truth- our house is the smallest Hermana house in the mission. Hermana Hamblin and I measured it the other day and it's literally 14x9 feet. With the bathroom and everything. I'm not kidding. Hahah, soo small. Still not complaining, it was fine, but with three there is no way they can do it. SO now we need to find a new house! Ahh it's crazy. They're going to have to move like ASAP and it's way stressful and we have no time to do this. I feel bad for them... Eek. It's really not logical, they could have put the trio somewhere else, (they were planning on doing it with me in Los Alamos)... but revelation is revelation, and if President feels strongly that the three of them need to be here in Caupolican, I will trust him on that one. But crazy.

I said bye to the ward yesterday, which was really sad. When I found out I was leaving I started telling a few families. My two favorite families are neighbors and they're soo so great. Love them tons. Well I told them and they asked who had us for lunch Sunday.. It wasn't either of them so they told us to call the other Hermana and ask if they could give us lunch. Hahah. It was soo sweet. So we had lunch both of the families together, we had barbeque and delicious food and everyone together. They did it all for me, it was so sweet. I felt so loved. I really love them they are so great. I definitely cried saying bye. I will miss this ward!! Especially because where I'm going is too small to be a ward, it's a branch so there aren't a lot of members. It's going to be different for sure, and I don't know how much lunch I'm going to get or how everything is going to work out. But like I said, I feel at peace about it and I know it's where I need to be. Sadly I won't be able to see Hermana Hamblin for awhile.. Unless I come back down to the South or she goes up to the North. Because with our conferences they break the mission up into 3 areas and do it 3 different days, and so I won't see any of my friends in the south anymore. Sad. But I know I will make new friends in the North and will do just fine.

General Conference is this weekend!!!!! I'm so excited I can hardly wait. I hope I get to watch it in English, haha usually in the stake center where all the missionaries watch it they have an english room. So hopefully they do that in Los Alamos. Watch it everyone!!! (Mom, Dad, you too!!) :) You will love it, I promise!

Well, time is up for today. Thank you, as always, for all your love and prayers and support. Can't believe I'm almost a THIRD done with my mission. Insane. But lovin every day of it. Until next week!

Hermana Danielle Anderton :)

''Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.'' -Proverbs 3:5-6

Week Full of Excitement! Mar 20

Hello everyone!!

Well, we just had a wonderful week! The baptism of Dalila was beautiful. The Spirit was so strong! Her brother came here from out of town to baptize her, and all the family came too. It has been just such a special experience being able to be a part of her baptism! I know I've said it before but really the Spirit is so strong in all of her lessons. Because she can't hear or speak (or read), the Spirit does all the teaching. It's so neat! She is SUPER happy and excited! Also we passed by to talk to them for a bit today, and Domitila is doing soo good too. She was feeling sad because her husband just passed away in June or July and she misses him a lot. Dalila saw that she was sad and gave her a bunch of Ensigns (church magazine) to read and told her to read them cause she'll feel better! Haha, soo cute! So when we came over Domitila had about 6 Ensigns on the table and was reading them. So happy. We told her I'm leaving and she's really sad. :( So am I. I'm going to miss her a lot! She is so great. They are definitely a special family. Attached is a photo with (almost) everyone from the family. I'm standing next to Domitila and then is her other son Herbert, then Dalila is the one looking down (she doesn't like pictures). Haha. But it was beautiful and I love baptisms. :)

Oh yeah, in other news, I'm being transferred. Ha. Found out yesterday! Like I thought for the past couple weeks. I am leaving my first sector, Caupolican. Ahh! Crazy! I don't know where I'll be yet or with who. BUT I do know that I am going to be in a trio!!! With TWO companions! Ahh so nuts. Gonna be super fun, that I know. But I am sure it will have its difficulties as well. I don't know who my companions will be yet either. I'll find out Saturday! What happened was we have one Hermana going home and two coming. So therefore we have an uneven number of hermanas in the mission... Trio. Happens sometimes. So yeah that's super exciting! But also sad, because I looove my sector here. The ward is sooo great! We had 17 lessons with members present last week. Which that is like super a lot. Not trying to brag or anything, but just so you all get the idea.. All the rest of the Elders in our zone got about 5-8 lessons with members. So, it's super awesome. I'm so happy that we've learned how to work with the ward. They are happy to help us and it is so great for the missionary work! The investigator feels more comfortable and already has a friend. It's awesome. So, for all of you at home, make time to go out with the missionaries!!! Just a couple hours a week, they would love you. And I know you will get blessings for doing it. So do it! :) Also I have gotten really close with a few families here. It's gonna be hard to leave for sure! But, I feel right about it. I know I will be where the Lord needs me. I feel at peace about it. Havin' faith that it will all be great! I'll let you know where I am next week!

Last week we also did intercambios (exchanges). Usually hermanas don't do it but we get to sometimes. I went to Victoria with Hermana Miller. We got up there around 6 and worked, spent the night there and the next morning we met back up with our companions in Los Angeles, because we had a surprise conference. We got flu shots and heard from a doctor and also a lady about stress management. Haha. Fun stuff. But the intercambios were great, I learned a lot and it was fun being in a different sector and with a different companion for the day!

Well, that's about it for now. I'm super happy folks. The mission is hard sometimes and I'm usually tired. But the joy that comes when you see your brothers and sisters coming unto Christ and making changes in their lives for the better, is worth every hardship and trial. I know that this is the work of the Lord, and I feel so priviliged to be a part of it! I know our Heavenly Father loves us, and knows us each personally. Life is good!!

Until next week,

Hermana Danielle Anderton

My first Chilean hair cut. Mar 12

Was a success! I was so scared because many people have told me that Chileans just cut off all the stuff that's not healthy. And that's like the bottom third of my hair so I was super nervous that they were going to make me bald. BUT. We went to the sister in law of a member in our ward, and she did an awesome job. It is shorter. especially in the front. She got rid of almost all the blonde that was left over from when someone (not gonna name names here) stripped my hair and ruined it. So now it's darker like all my natural color and it looks good!! I'm happy. :) It's healthy. Yay for good hair cuts.

We have our phone again. Hallelujah. We officially went a month without one, geez not fun. And this week the number of lessons we taught practically doubled. It's awesome. AND!!! We had a miracle!! Dalila, the daughter of Domitila (who was my first baptism) is getting baptized on SATURDAY!!!! I think I mentioned she had a baptismal date for the 25th of February. But they go to their house in the campo all the time, and she was there for her date and before and after! Ahh, we were dying. But she is back, and she's excited to be baptized!!!! She is the one that is deaf and mute and it is soo special to teach her. Literally the Spirit is so strong while we teach. We use pictures and also her sister helps explain to her. But we can feel the Spirit. He is the one teaching her, and we can feel that she understands. It's so great. Yay! Another baptism, soo excited. :)

Would like to give a shout out to my best friend, Happy birthday Erica!! Love you tons and hope you have a great one. Also to Erin Penrod- congrats on the engagement, send me an invitation!

Soo, we have cambios in 2 weeks. Normally it would make sense for me to stay because Hermana Hamblin has been here since November. But we both feel like I'm going to be transferred actually. I had a dream, so did that member that dreamt about me last month, and another member thinks Hermana Hamblin is going to stay too. Ha. Soo, I might be moving to a new sector!!! Ahh! Kinda scary because this is all I've known. But exciting too. I looove Hermana Hamblin. Seriously. I am going to miss her lots. But it will be another opportunity to have another great companion. I hope she's Latina!! Haha I love the Latinas. And I want my Spanish to get better and even though Hermana Hamblin and I practice lots, and do well, I know it will be much better once I get a Latin compañera. So, we will see! Transfers are the 27th but I will find out the 24th and I will write you all about it on Monday the 26th! We shall see!

This week we taught this sweet man named Francisco. We met him after lunch one day... He was in a wheel chair and trying to get up the little part in the sidewalk where it's a ramp. But he was having a hard time so I asked if he needed help and pushed him for awhile until we got to the grocery store where he was going. He gave us his address and said we could pass by. So we went with one of our awesome members, Hermana Ana Muñoz (the one that's had the dreams about me, she's soo sweet), and we taught him twice this week. He is just so sweet. He had a stroke 2 years ago and now he can't use the left side of his body at all. He can't work and his family isn't that nice to him about it, really sad. He is super receptive and kind and wants to go to church. So we're trying to figure out transportation for him. But anyway we love working with him and are hoping to share with his family too.

Camilo came to church again, but we kinda think he's a snake. This is a word we use here as missionaries when investigators are more interested in you than the message. Ha. Oh gosh. So, we're kinda bummed about that but we're gonna still teach him and we're hoping we can make it clear to him what our purpose is, and that he will still want to learn.

We were teaching a recent convert family, a mom and her 14 year old daughter this week too. They are so cute. At the end I felt like we should sing a hymn and at the end the mom's brother walked out. He asked if he could talk to us. We said sure and he sat down and started telling us about his problem with alcohol. He has a family but it seems like they kicked him out. Also he was driving under the influence and he has to sleep in the jail every night but can do stuff during the day. It was so sad. He was just crying and felt awful and wants help. So we shared with him about the Atonement and about how he can overcome anything with the help of Christ. It was really intense. It was just cool to see that the Spirit was there in our lesson while we sang, and he felt comfortable to share with us something so personal. We went back Sunday afternoon with Obispo (Bishop) and taught him again. Bishop gave him a Priesthood blessing too, to give him more peace and strength to overcome this. We have a couple members in our ward who were alcoholics before who are now awesome members of the church, we hope to bring them to future meetings with Carlos.

Well anyway, that is all I have time for this week. Things are easier this week and we had more success, but we still definitely had opposition. That is the mission, and life I suppose. But I am continuing to learn a lot, and I am grateful for it. Heavenly Father loves us so much, and He is watching over us every day. I know this to be true, because I can feel His peace comfort me when I am distraught and pray sincerely to Him. I encourage all of you to do the same, to know that He is there and that He loves you.

Until next week, :)

Hermana Anderton

We should win some type of award. Mar 5

For being the missionaries who've gone the longest without a cell phone! We just made it one whole month. Woo hoo! Haha, yeah, it's such a pain. Sorry to complain about it every week, I'm sure it's getting old by now (it's getting old for me too). But shoot, it just makes everything a lot more difficult. Oh well, I am definitely learning patience, which I wanted. And I will be much more grateful for the convenience when we finally do get one again. Which SHOULD be very soon. Haha. We'll see.

How is everyone doing back home? Let's do a little update on my week... Last Monday, we made bread at a member's house! It was super easy and super delicious. We also watched Megamind (with permission, obviously) and it was hilarious! Even in Español. I was shocked at how much I could understand (basically all of it). I speak Spanish guys! Haha sometimes I still can't believe it. It's crazy.

We are still teaching Jessica. She is great but The Book of Mormon is hard for her to accept because she's always just known the Bible. But the thing is she just needs to read it and pray about it and she will get her answer that it is the word of God. But we're still teaching her, and she is really receptive. We are praying that she will start to progress more, she is a really great lady and has had a really hard life. Things are still really hard for her. She loves the Lord and wants to do His will. We know the Gospel will be such a great blessing in her life, and we are really hoping she takes the time to find our for herself that it's true and continues in this path.

We are still teaching Camilo too. He came to church yesterday!! Yay. He's 13 and definitely has a crush on us. But he really does want to learn too. We think he has good intentions, and we are hoping we can continue to help him progress as well. He's a good kid.

So at a member's house, they have a little store with jewlery and some clothes and stuff. The Chileans love clothes from America. Well I need a sweatshirt or jacket so I was looking through them, and I found a Lakers sweatshirt!!! It is legit. Small, like for a kid, but it fits me and is old-school. Super cool. I will take a picture with it and send it soon. I bought it for 2 dollars! So now I have something Laker-ish to wear for next time I watch a game. Haha. :)

In other news, we have just been soo led by the Spirit it's insane. Like, soo crazy. There are some days where literally everywhere we go, every time we decide to take a different street or to walk a certain way somewhere, we see someone who we needed to see or who needed us. We have had many experiences where things have just worked out so perfectly that I KNOW there's no way it's all coincidence. I wish I could give you all the examples, but there are just too many. One that I will tell was a couple nights ago. We've been trying to see our investigator Paulina for weeks now. She is so cute and smart and loves learning about the church. She's really busy and every time we pass by she hasn't been home so it's been lame. And without our phone we can't call to see when she will be home. But anyway this one night when we were just led so much by the Spirit, we went to her house and were talking with her and sharing some scriptures with her to try to help her. Her aunt is dying and she's having money problems and her mother-in-law is moving back into their house and she really doesn't want that.. Anyway we were teaching about the Spirit and giving her some comfort, and right then the phone rang and her cousin or someone called to tell her that her aunt was on her way out. I started to cry and the spirit was so strong. We shared with her about the Plan of Salvation and invited her again to come to church to experience more of the peace that she needs.

Anyway, things are still hard but we are having tender mercies like that all the time. I know this is the work of the Lord. I know His gospel is the way to be truly happy in this life and to live with Him after this life. I felt so loved today to receive great emails from my mom and dad and my best friends. Thank you, everyone, for your love and support and encouragement. Even though I don't have a lot of time to write you all and I can't always keep in touch, know that I love you so much and am so grateful for you.

Love you all so much. Until next time.

Hermana Danielle Marie Anderton

Learning learning learning...Feb 27

Helloo everyone!

Soo yeah this was another hard week. We still don't have our phone. Ahhh. We're dying here. Not like I care about being disconnected from the other missionaries, or like I miss having a cell phone for the sake of having one. It's just reeeally hard to do missionary work without one. People forget we're coming by and so they're not home when we pass by, then we go to the backup plan and they're not home, it just wastes a lot of our time walking around without ever being able to call and check if someone is home or if they remember about our appointment. Blah. Also, we planned this big stake-wide activity for this past Friday. We've been working on it for a month. We had like an open doors thing with a church tour planned, so people could come to the chapel and see it and have an explanation of what we do in our church meetings so they wouldn't feel weird about coming to church. Then we had planned to watch The Testaments, which is a good movie about when Jesus Christ came to the Americas, we were gonna watch it out front because our chapel is on a big street in the central of Temuco. Lots of people walk by and we were hoping that people would see the movie and come in and join us. We were going to have popcorn and we invited all the other missionaries in our stake too. We made up an awesome invitation on the computer and made tons of copies, which we also gave to the other missionaries to hand out in contacts. We personally invited probably 100 people. And then it decided to rain. So along with the fact of us being worried if everyone was going to remember their jobs, the things they had agreed to do to help us, without a telephone to call and remind them.. We prayed a lot and hoped they would pull through. So yeah like I said, it rained. A lot. ... No one came. Okay I exaggerate, we had 3 investigators. But they weren't even from our sector. Hahaha. Two other sets of elders brought investigators. I felt like it was my birthday party and no one came. Oh, it was sad. But we have some super great members of our ward that helped with the tour, and it was great. I think it was a good experience for the 3 that came. Ha. We still watched the movie, inside. But yeah no one came. Just really disappointing, we were so excited to be able to have an awesome activity to help people come to church. Lame. :( But I am learning to deal with disappointments better. Ha that's one good thing!

Actually, there were lots more good things. I mention how the Lord blesses us with tender mercies, well I would like to share about a couple of them. I talked about this lady named Jessica awhile back, the one that let us in her house when she found out we weren't paid to be missionaries? Well we've passed by quite a few times but she was never home, and we couldn't call her because we don't have our phone (example of why it stinks to be without cell). But we stopped by again Thursday and she was there! Hallelujah. We had another really good lesson with her. She is really smart and really wants to know for herself if the Gospel is true. She has a hard life. She was having a really hard day when we stopped by and when she gave the closing prayer she thanked God that we were led to her house at that time to give her comfort and bring the Spirit. It was so sweet. We stopped by again Sunday (yesterday). She had just gotten back from the campo and she had these 2 liter bottles of milk, fresh from cows! She said she had to drink them all in like 2 days and she had 3 bottles, so she gave us one! Ha, so sweet. We use powdered milk here because it's cheapest. And we only put it in our oatmeal, we don't really use milk. So it was nice to drink real milk. Delicious. One of the members that I think I've talked about before, Hermano Alex, oh he is a saint. He feeds us every time he sees us. Like even if we come over for lunch, he will send us home with more food. This week it was a box of raspberries and a big thing of honey! That stuff is not cheap. Then the other day we went over because we were going to teach his friend and his friend wasn't there but he gave us more food. He is seriously awesome. More tender mercies. Tender mercies don't always come in the form of food...but a lot of times they do. :) Haha.

Something amazing, this familia that we've been visiting forever, this inactive family... Came to church yesterday!!! All of them!!! Oh, I was so happy. I had tears in my eyes when I saw them. It was so great to see them there and happy to be at church. :) Another awesome tender mercy to close with. We met this kid named Camilo on the street like a month ago. He said we could pass by but it seemed kinda like he was more interested in us than in our message. So we stopped by, his mom didn't want to talk to us and we invited him to church but he didn't come. Anyway we still had the reference he gave us of his grandma that we had to contact (go visit to see if she was interested) so we stopped by last night kind of spur of the moment. The grandma opened the doors, called us Elders, and told us to come in. Haha. Turns out she's a member, got baptized like 25 years ago and went to church for 3 weeks and then stopped. Bummer. But Camilo was home and so we taught them a little lesson about the importance of repentance and baptism to be able to receive the Holy Spirit and be cleansed of your sins so we can live with God again some day. She was like ''Camilo just told me this morning, Grandma I want to be baptized. I have done bad things and I want to be baptized.'' Oh my goodness! So awesome. Not a coincidence that we would be led to his house that very day. We are hoping to get permission from his mom soon so we can continue teaching him.

So, the moral of the story is, even if things are really hard, we can always always learn from them. I am learning a lot right now, and I am grateful for it. Always look for the good in every trial, and remember the tender mercies of the Lord are there if you are observant :)

Lovin the mission, lovin Chile. Lovin life. Ciao for now.

Love,
Hermana Danielle Anderton

Soy un Hijo de Dios Feb 20

Alright, so I have exactly 8 minutes to write this email, sorry everyone! An hour goes a lot shorter than you'd think. But. Would like to share some highlights.

Our convert, 78-year-old Domitila, is doing great. We stopped by to teach her about tithing again and she offered to count all her farm animals and pay tithing on them. Hahaha, she thought she had to do that. She has a house in the campo too, so they have some animals. But we were like no, you're good just pay tithing on the income you get from selling your apples and stuff. Haha. She is so great! She loves the Book of Mo

rmon and is getting a lot out of her study. Makes me happy :) She calls me her niñeta (granddaughter). Love her.

Jen Guard, thank you for the inspiring emails! I never have time to read them but I do print them out, and they are great.

For Valentine's day we bought some moras! (blackberries) on the street. They were delicious! The picture I'm sending is from V'day with our moras. We wore red/pink and the cute heart earrings Hna. Hamblin's mom sent us. And I wore a new scarf that I bought when we were in Puerto Saavedra the other week. But other than that nothing too exciting happened.

A member had a dream about me!! I was just saying to some elders the other day how I've always wanted like a random person to have a dream about me, and then we go knock their door and they like freak out that I was in their dream. Hey it happens, I've heard stories. But a member told me the other day that she had a dream about me!! Yes!! She said she just remembers like my testimony and my humility, or something. But it was sweet. I am excited haha.

Well, we are still without a cell phone which makes work harddd. I think I mentioned before but we walk to an appointment and then the person forgot, and then we have to go find someone else, and it's just less efficient and makes lots of things much more difficult. But. We are doing fine. I should stop praying for patience. Maybe then we'll get a new phone. Haha. We should get one in a week I t

hink. They had to take care of it up in Concepcion, in the office. So that's why it's taking a while.

Okay well I don't have any more time, but I want to share my testimony that I know I am a child of God. I know it, and I know you are too. We are truly His children, and He loves us so much. He has a plan for us and I know we can live in happiness if we follow it.

I love you all so much. Thank you for all your love and support. Keep on keepin on!

Love and hugs,

Hermana Danielle Marie Anderton

One cambio down! Feb. 13

Hello everyone!

Well, I have officially completed my first cambio (transfer) here in Chile! That was probably the fastest that 6 weeks has ever gone. We have been working super hard and having fun, I guess the combination of the two makes time really fly!! Crazy. So I am staying here with Hermana Hamblin in Caupolicán. Yay. I love it here! The new training program is 12 weeks with your trainer, not 6 like how it used to be. So if one of us had gotten transferred this cambio it would have been a huge surprise. Which, crazy things happen sometimes, but this time we are staying here. :) Yesterday was Hermana Hamblin's birthday! We got soo much food hahah oh gosh. The members here are great. Even without the food... They are just so loving (but the food just makes it even better). There's a couple families here that I'm really close to. Love 'em.

Honestly, this was my worst week in Chile. Nothing bad happened, we just didn't work as hard as we usually do... Let time get away from us in visits, just didn't use our time very effectively. And I felt really really bad. Ugh. It was just an awful feeling to feel like I didn't use the Lord's time as best as I could. It's hard here to keep visits short because the people looove to talk. They are so sweet, like if we stop by anyone's house they always always invite us in, and bring us like juice and cookies, or fruit, or something. Always. And it's kinda rude to turn down food, but we try to do it as nicely as we can. If we can't get out of it, we eat fast. Also this week our cell phone wasn't working so we couldn't call anyone to check up on appointments. So we would go down to an appointment and they wouldn't be there, and that happened a lot. So lots of wasted time. Sad. But I'm not trying to make excuses. We didn't do our best, despite all the other set-backs. But thankfully, Heavenly Father is merciful to us... Soo merciful and forgiving. We felt really bad and repented of our shortcomings. We asked for forgiveness and help to be better... Saturday was FILLED with tender mercies from the Lord. Oh my gosh. First of all, we had a lunch appointment cleeear on the other side of our sector. She has forgotten before and we wanted to call to make sure so we didn't walk all the way over there and she didn't have lunch... But we didn't have a phone. So we tried to use a pay phone but we couldn't get it to work. A man was waiting for the bus to come and he offered us to use his cell phone. So nice! The lady didn't pick up so we figured we'd still have to walk down there, in case she was waiting with lunch for us cause that would be really bad if we didn't show. But on the way, we stopped by the cute old lady who gave me her shoes last week. We didn't get a chance to visit her this week, so we stopped by real quick to see how she was doing. She told us to come in, she had empanadas. And we were like ahh we want to, but we have lunch plans maybe. So we told her we'd go down and see if we had lunch, and if not we'd come back to visit her. Well, the lady was not home, fome (lame). But it was okay, we went back to Eliana's house and she had empanadas for us! She is soo sweet. What a blessing. Otherwise we'd have to buy lunch somewhere. So that was the second tender mercy. Like I said, we didn't do super good work earlier in the week. We are supposed to try for 10 new investigators every week. Which means we have one lesson with them in their house and we have a return appointment. Well, we went to this girl Javiera's house after lunch. She doesn't really believe in God, but was interested to hear what we had to say. Well the rest of her family is religious, and just so happened that her mom, two sisters, and all the daughters' boyfriends were there. They had just finished lunch. We taught them a lesson and have a return appointment, so look at that we just got 7 new investigators at once! Wow, what a blessing. I seriously almost cried after that. Then we got to stop by a baby shower at the chapel for a bit. Normally we wouldn't but they needed us to take pictures because none of them have digital cameras it seems haha, but also a member told us about one of her friends that we can teach, and that lady was there. So we actually did have a valid reason to stop by, to meet our future investigator. But the baby shower was so lovely, there were like 30 people there and they played cute games and shared treats. The lady is supposed to have her baby this week, I'm so excited! But that was fun, we just stayed for like 30 minutes. Then we went to a member's house because he had a friend for us to teach (I'm telling you the members of our ward are awesome). We had a suuper good lesson with him. He is so awesome, his name is Ramon and he is just super ready for the Gospel. Another new investigator. After we stopped by the grocery store to grab a snack, and while we were in line we were contacting people standing behind and in front of us. I was talking to a cute couple in front of us from Santiago, vacationing here. They were Catholic and way nice. He saw we were only getting a couple things and he asked if he could help us. He bought our groceries! He said, for my new friends, you guys are doing a great thing. So sweet. Wow. Tender mercies left and right guys. Proof that when you are sincerely repentant for your faults and go to work to make things better, the Lord WILL help you! The day was just great and we did lots of good, hard work. I felt so good coming home that night. Exhausted and happy. :)

Like I mentioned yesterday was Hermana Hamblin's birthday. We had another good day. Lots of deeeelicious food, nothing tooo terribly unhealthy, so that was good. I have pictures but the ciber (internet cafe thing) that I'm at doesn't have the adaptor for me to plug in my camera today. Well, they have it but someone else is using it. So I will send pictures next week. But the day was good. We actually heard and saw lots of sad sad things though... For one this lady in our ward, Gladys, last Monday got her kids taken away from her by the government. :( She basically lives in a shack.. The kids have ticks and they don't have running water or electricity in their house... One room and cats and flies and oh, it is just so dirty. I understand why the kids can't live there, but it is really really sad. I totally cried when we visited her. She's only 27 and has 4 kids, age 9, 7, 6, and almost 1. Ah. So sad.. To see the conditions that some people live in... I just can't believe how fortunate and blessed I have been my entire life. We heard other stories of people's growing up years, just really sad things that have happened. We don't know why but yesterday was the day that everyone was telling us all these stories, for some reason, ha. Made me so humbled and grateful for my life and the wonderful upbringing I've had and the ridiculously amazing opportunities I've had and the things I've done. It's not fair. But that is a part of why I am here on a mission, to help others find the joy that I have. Because the joy of the Gospel and the gift of the Holy Ghost surpasses any earthly treasure. It's the least I can do.

Anyway, things are going well. We are going to work harder, like we usually do, this week. I'm trying to let this past week be a learning experience and not something that I feel bad about forever. Ha. I love you family so much, I pray for you every day. Thank you family and friends for all your love and support.

Till next week!

Hermana Danielle Anderton