Well WOW. What a week. Haha first things first,somehow i am still a little bit sick. I had a random crazy relapse tuesday and i just threw up straight for like an hour, but then i was good and we went out to work and had a great lesson with Estefania, and all was good. Haha but then our mission mom called us and had a little panic attack, so she made me go back to the doctor again. Where i then proceeded to have blood tests, urine tests, and an ULTRASOUND! Needless to say i was just cracking jokes the entire time. I was laughing so hard, and the stupid guy taking the ultrasound was laughing and kept shaking the little machine. I kept saying "I feel it kicking doc! Is it a boy or a girl!?" and he was just like "can you PLEASE just breathe in and hold still?" So needless to say i am enjoying it, especially because i dont feel sick anymore. But we will be going back to concepcion thursday to see the results of my baby-check and then we will know what kind of baby im holding in my extremely angry stomach.
Estefania got baptized this sunday! We had an awesome baptismal service, and she just had an incredible week. Even last week we were really doubting whether or not she was going to get baptized, but she took some huge steps forward in faith and the answers started coming as soon as she did that. We found her at church one day because she came with some other girls, and then we started teaching her! So its not like we really did too much which is why you havent heard too much about her as of yet. But she is 17 years old and is really eager to learn. her parents arent members and her mom was the reason why she hadnt had the missionaries over before, but the mom seemed to have a change of heart lately because some stuff happened in the family. SO anyway we finally got to go teach her in her house and it just went off like crazy from there. But yeah i got to baptize her and it was really cool! It was my first time baptizing someone a little bit older, so it was cool being able to relate a little bit more to how they would feel. As we left the font, I made sure to ask her how she felt, and it was just so cool to see the tears in her eyes as she told me she felt so clean. Its crazy the changes that the gospel can make in our life. Sometimes we are scared to take steps, and sometimes we dont always see the need, and other times we just plain dont want to, but heavenly father is never going to let us do something that will HURT our life if our intentions are trying to follow him. I know for a fact that any time we take a step forward, with that step being guided first by prayer, heavenly father will carry us 100x further than we ever could become on our own.We all have different steps, we all are in different situations, but the gospel is the only universal help. It doesnt matter what your problems are, the gospel helps in EVERY single way. And thats why i love beng a missionary! Because my life is seriously just helping other peopls lives become better. Its so incredible and i really hope she continues to make some great changes and choices in her life. She is already really ingrained in the young womens program so hopefully that helps to keep her strong.
Something else I learned this week, and gained a testimony of when i applied it. Last week Mary sent me a quote in a letter that said something along the lines of, "I am learnign not to stress the little things because God will ALWAYS take care of me when i am being 100% obedient." I think that is the most perfect, deep insight on faith and obedience. Thats the whole reason that we are obedient and do the little things that God asks us to do. Thats why these Chileans want to get baptized, want to show god their faith, want to obey the commandments. Because when we do EVERYTHING we can, we have no reason to doubt that god is protecting us and guiding us. The scary times are when we KNOW that we are lacking something, because then we know that we cant legitimately ask Heavenly Father for help. Its a terrible feeling. But when we are 100% obedient and 100% dedicated to him, we have absolutely nothing to fear. he has no reason not to bless us. I have loved seeing this week the reality of that. SO many investigators have grown to understand that our obedience in life allows us to deserve gods help, and its really cool to see the blessings that do come from it.
Also, last week i was person number 59 on a bus of 28 seats. That, my friends, is the Chilean transit system.
Lastly, Happy thanksgiving to all! I had an awesome thanksgiving. I made reeses peanut butter cup cheesecake with another elder (oh mom i got your package on tuesday! Thank you so so so much! It was so awesome. reeses lasted a whole 2 days!), then we had thanksgiving dinner at an AMERICAN ladys house on sunday. how lucky is that? From american fork, utah. We had turkey, biscuits, stuffing, apple pie that was SO good but not quite as good as dudleys danish apple nut (cmon we´re danish, who can beat that?), and ate WAY too much to be humanly healthy.The one picture is of Guillermo and Fabiola Brand (the younger couple who are both chilean, same age as matt and jennae and same age kids! haha i feel at home) and also Jeri and Nivaldo Lepillan-Tucker, with little andrew at their feet. We all had to make pregnant bellies....well i told them all to, because thats how my stomach actually looked, and i didnt want to be the only fat one. Haha but it was so awesome.
I think thats all for this week! We have another baptismal date for this next saturday that we are praying SO hard for. Its a 20 year old kid named Carlos who has been meeting with missionaries for about 8 months, but has never been able to quit smoking. but we had a really powerful lesson with him the other day and he committed to stop. Then the next day he called and said he relapsed, but it made him sick and he never wanted to again. and he hasnt since then! so we are really hoping it goes through.
The work is going quite well in Arauco! this very well could be my last week with elder ramirez, because cambios are this upcoming tuesday. But we will find out saturday so ill let you know next p day. I will be very sad if it is. He is a great friend and we are so excited to stay in touch for a long time. He is such a stud missionary and i dont know what ill do without him in Arauco! But the lord knows what is best for all of us, so i cant worry.
Love you all so much.
Elder Tengberg
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