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
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