Dec. 12th, 2011

BIG NEWS this week! Claudia got baptized yesterday!!!! It was the best day in 3 1/2 months. She is so cute and was so happy. Everything went wrong though, her husband didn`t come but left the car for her to take but then he left with the keys in his pocket. So she calls 15 min before church starts and says she is waiting for the bus, which passes about every 1/2 hour. So then she gets to the church late, after walking super far in the hot hot sun and 5 months pregnant, poor lady. But everything goes smoothly until we get to the baptism part and we are all there waiting for her to get into the water and we are waiting, waiting. Turns out they can`t find the keys to open the font. So they finally get it open and then the water was too hot so we waited a little longer while they put cold water in, and then finally, she got baptized. The Bishop baptized her and he said that when she came out of the water, she started crying and was so happy. It was the best! The only sad part is that her husband and her daughter didn`t come, but she did have her oldest daughter there so it was good. We are hoping she is our next baptism :) We were joking about when her baby gets baptized when he is 8 he can really say that he got baptized 2 times.

 

As far as Christmas goes, we are getting really excited!! We have been singing lots of Christmas songs and are planning on going caroling to the members. Also, we are excited to see you! I am going to see little William for the first time, yay! And if I`m lucky I`ll get my friends wedding announcements too :)

 

I feel super lame because I don`t have anything else to say, the only exciting thing of the week was Claudias baptism. We helped this old guy that goes around to the stores collecting boxes and junk and puts it in a hand cart and goes around the neighborhood. We always feel so bad for him because he is soo old but he is so cute. So we helped him pull his cart all around town. We didn`t understand a lot of what he was saying becasue he only has about 1 1/2 teeth. But it was fun to talk to him and he said we could come and visit him and teach him. He lives in Elders area but Hey, it was a good time.

 

Are you all getting excited for Christmas? I can`t believe that its here already! It`s going to come and go and it will feel like it never even happend. Just another day in the mish :) but I hope you all have a great week and I`ll be talking to you soon!

 

LOVE ALWAYS

Steph

Claudias baptism yesterday, Obispo Urra, me, Claudia, Sister Bramwell (my comp from Rigby area) and Claudias daughter Barbara

After the bapism, the member we were going to eat lunch with forgot so we went to our apt and made PB and nautella sandwiches to celebrate. We found them for the first time in a long time and we decided, Hey it`s Christmas, we are going to buy us some PB and nautella. It was delicious!

Our presents under the tree. We may be ghetto Chileans but, we are loving life

  Abunch of sisters last week when we had a sports day.

 

 

Hope you enjoy them :)

Dec. 5th, 2011

Good morning, well it`s morning where you are at at lesat :) How was your week? We have been busy here but doing good. Good news, we found a place to skype for Christmas. I will be on at 9 am Sunday morning and can talk for 40 min. This family is great! So, it will be fun! They have a bunch of Christmas decorations and a big tree, its about the only place here that I feel like its actually Christmas. And we are spending the 24th with them (because that is when they celebrate here) too! So, we will just be best friends after being together for 2 days.

So some funny things that happened this week, we were walking from church to lunch and this family was in the plaza and the guy said ¨Come here please¨ (when they say please in their little accent you just have to go.. haha:) He was drinking but I figured, Hey, why not? So we were talking to him and his little one year old son started playing with and licking his beer bottle. His wife starts laughing and says ¨look, look!¨ after we walked away I was thinking, you`ve got to be kidding me. That`s how they roll here in Chile town :)

One night we were walking to our house and  these 2 teenage boys came by on a bike and whistled at us, it was so funny because they were sharing the bike piggy back style! I`m not too sure if I would be so proud of that. But then they get off and they are walking with the bike trying to get our attention and they ran into a sign. We coudn`t help it and busted out laughing. Then in the morning we left the house and we didn`t get 2 blocks away before a guy on a motor cycle yelled the B word at us (in English because I don`t know the swear words in Spanish... haha) and then some teenagers threw paper and stuff at us... haha:)  You never know what is going to happen out here :)

 

Claudia is doing good. If everything goes as planned she will get baptized on Sunday. We are so excited and she is so ready. She had a baby shower this week and was so cute. (Baby showers aren`t very common here, it`s kind of a new thing) and then yesterday we went with the presidency of RS to see her so everything worked out good. This week was the Telethon here, its a orginization that has a big 2 day fundraiser for kids with disabilities. EVERYONE watches it and they go to the bank to give money. You know at that time that no one is going to come out of their house because they are too busy watching the Telethon. But it`s pretty cool that they do it.

 

That is pretty much all that has happened this week. We are just living and lovin everything. I hope things are good there in the northern lands and that you are all enjoying the holiday season :)

LOVE YOU

Steph

Nov. 28th, 2011

It sounds like yall had a good Thanksgiving weekend. It seems like a lot of stuff went down throughout the week. My week wasn`t quite as exciting as yours but it was a good Thanksgiving. We cooked a pretty good meal. We went to the fair where they sell a bunch of food and made mashed potatoes and bought some chicken but when we took it out and cooked it, it wasn`t very chickenie. It was falling apart and what not but we ate it and in the end, it wasn`t too bad. It wasn`t chicken but at least it tasted kinda like chicken :) But both of us have been a little sick this week with head colds so we didn`t celebrate too much.

Monday was kind of a bummer because we went to the country with this family (who are members) to have  FHE with our investigator who was going to get baptized yesterday and when we get there found out that she got in a car accident and was in the hospital. It was with a big bus but nothing to serious happened. She is 5 months pregnant and started having contractions so she had to be in the hospital for a day and now she is on bed rest so she coudn`t go to her interview or get baptized yesterday. But everything is good and she is going to get baptized on Dec 11. 

Then as a Zone Saturday morning we had a turkey bowl where we played football Americana for 3 hours in the blazing sun. It was hot but fun. But now we are feeling it. Our whole body hurts but it was fun to do something different. Because usually we just play soccer. Every Sat at 6:30am, every zone activity, soccer soccer soccer. But my skills havn`t gotten any better because the Elders are ball hogs... haha:)

Yesterday was the primary program in Sacrament. It was good but I missed our programs. Here, there are only about 15 kids in the whole primary and none of them did anything funny. But it was a really good program. All of the older kids wrote their own talks about different subjects and it was good. But I am excited to go to our primary program to get a few more laughs. Oh and we were teaching a lesson with a member and we heard a crunch outside... It was another car accident! Luckily, the member who was with us is studying to be a doctor and so he was there to help this kid whos head was split open all the way across. We decided, that is why he had to accompany us :) So we had a week of excitement with car accidents. 

Thats my week for ya. We found a lady who is so confused. She is catholic and all that jazz but she watches this stuff on TV about how scientists say that they can`t find evidence that Christ lived and another says he lived but that he wasn`t perfect, he had sins because it`s impossible to not sin. And she just believes everything she hears. So it`s always interesting to hear what she is going to say.

Have a great last week of Nov and I`ll be talking back at ya in a jiffy

LOVE
Steph

Sergio, he writes music about God and wanted to give us a little flavor, every time we watch it, he makes us laugh

Our delicious Thanksgiving lunch

Hermana Bramwell and I sending our Thanksgiving love