Sunday, June 2, 2013

Abunduncia de MILAGROS- Email 4/22/13


HOLA FAMILIA!

i have just barely skimmed over your emails, but i printed them out and im going to read them on the bus later. It sounds like you all are doing so well. i sure love you all! Dad great work on climbing mt. palomar, you would love chile. just pure hills EVERYWHERE. and they are literaly vertical. im talking worse than that part of bandy! Just so awful. haha but we happen to avoid those places....cant imagine why.

Great job on auntie gin coming down to SD too! IM sure that was a hard move but i promise yull be taken care of.

Well this week has literally been insane. Just spiritual highs, spiritual lows, and everything in between. A few miracles, a few sicknesses, what else is new? just an average week in the mission.
also congrats to MARY for having a baptism next month! That is seriously the coolest thing ever. i cant even imagine how hard it is to find people who are interested over there. i cant even imagine asking someone if they believe in god and have them saying "No". its happened twice in my whole mission. haha you are incredible mar, im excited to hear more about how christopher is doing.

Coronel....where to even start. This sector is incredible. I really hope i can stay here 5 or 6 cambios. I feel like i am really connecting with some people here, really starting to understand the basic problems of the branch, everything. We have SUCH a good relationhsip with our branch president and since he is just 23, we are really trying to help him more. Poor guy is studying, working, trying to find a wife, and has a branch of 40 members active but 500 on the rosters. kind of a lot to put on his shoulders.but we talked with him for about 2 hours last night after he came by our house, and he just told us how much he appreciates all our effort. We were so grateful to hear that, and are super excited to really work more closely with him and the leaders here in the church. Its just hard because they dont have a whole lot to work with. Like when you have 3 men who actively come to sacerdocio, where do you start? Hey all lets go home teaching! Like its just hard. But we realize where some of the main problems are and are going to try and force these members to work harder by just visiting them more and challenging them more. Good stuff.

Anyway...week of amazingness. FIrst of all, Domitila got baptized! It was yet another INTERESTING coronel baptism, complete with cold water and me having to SPRINT the mile back to our house form the church (probably ran it in 5 minutes, no joke) to get my baptismal pants because i forgot them....like seriously? after all that? after 4 weeks of teaching and challenging and planning and reading, and i forget my own baptismal pants. cmon tengberg. But she got baptized all perfectly and is actually giving the talk next sunday. pretty cool. we are super happy about her and really glad that she has taken this step. now its just time to push harder with her husband so that he can take the same step too. SO keep praying for oscar and lets hope he gets it together.

But the MIRACLE for the week has been Claudia. You all who read this (all 5 of you) know that we have been working so hard with this family. Joaquin and Claudia have now come to church two sundays in a row with their whole family, which is so special. but we had a miracle this week! Wednesday i had to go to conce with elder wray because we had a meeting up there, so elder baez (elder wrays companion) was in coronel with elder overson (my companion). they had a good day, and went by claudia and joaquin that day. but i didnt know that because we had both the phones. So as i came back from conce with elder wray, we were so inspired from listening to Elder Zwick (he knows gary sabin and also is the brother of sister jergensen if i understood correctly! VERY good man. seriously incredible) and just prayed for a miracle. He said elder holland said in a meeting "go get astonished". or basically, go look for the miracles that the lord WANTS to give. So we did. We prayed in the bus, and i just felt so strongly that we should pass by claudia. SO we went by, sat down, they told us the other elders had left not even an hour before, and we taught. We basically read a scripture about baptism, and were just like "Claudia, we know you know this is true. You have felt the spirit so strongly testifying to you, and you have seen the power of the change this message has brought to your family. Will you follow the example of jesus christ and be baptized on may 4th with your daughter?" and after about a minute of painful silence, she started to cry and said yes. It was SO incredilbe. Joaquin was just like dumbfounded. Haha it was so awesome though and one of those sweet tender mercies the lord gives us. It was really cool for me to be with elder wray too, we had a great time teaching together again. So yeah, May 4th will be Leyre, Claudia and also Miguel! Haha kind of crazy. But this is just a great process for that family. They have their eyes set on the temple, and are taking the steps necessary to get their family where it needs to be. Just such a cool miracle. 

Miguel is just a beast....has accepted everything we have thrown at him, reads, comes to church before the members do, is so happy. He gets baptized on the 4th as well. 

Romina is another lady we are teaching right now too. She is the mom of Bastian, a joven that we have taught a couple times. She works in the hospital so she hasnt been able to go to churhc becaus they just call her in randomly, but she is SO amazing. She feels the spirit so strong and is just looking for something to help out her son. She is a single mom, has a 13 year old boy who is a little crazy and needs some guidance. like there is just nothing more perfect than the gospel. it makes me so happy to see her taking these steps and while i have no idea when she will be able to get baptized because she has a hard time going to church, we will work with her either way. We are just so happy to see this success right now in Coronel. There are people who are changing their lives, and the lord is just DUMPING blessings on us right now that we in no way deserve. I am so grateful to be a missionary and couldnt imagine a more satisfying life than this. If you have friends (blake sorry this wont apply to you) SHARE THE GOSPEL WITH THEM. Invite them to church. be persistent. All my friends reading this, im teaching you what i teach out here when i come back. talk to a missionary. people, share the gospel with your friends because you cant even imagine the CLOUDS of darkness that people have in their lives. pray, choose three names, and invite them to church this week. tell them you have been thinking about them, you love them, and you want them to come with you to church because it is the happiest thing in your life and they need it too. The gospel is real, and everyone needs it. Look for miracles and follow the spirit!

I sure do love being a missionary. I am so so so happy and love coronel. VAMOS CHILE!

also elder zwick showed us the picture of the conce temple! SOO pretty. its way better than santiago (sorry taygoe) and we just need people to fill it now. But its in the works. haha so pretty though! i sure hope im here when its built on or opened. if not, we are taking a road trip down here because i want to be a part of it!

 Elder Tengberg
  
this week: mini ping pong DESTROYED our language study time. so fun. who sent this to me? whoever did, i love you. so fun.
we got shots. not fun.

baptisms. also fun.



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