Sunday, June 2, 2013

Conference, Fleas and Ice Cream- Email 4/8/13


Well hi there family! Just so happy every single week. We are really having a great time here in coronel. 

Conference was definitely the highlight of our week. I went in with a few questions and like always, the answers were SO clear. i just wish everyone in the world could listen to those talks. Seriously, this conference was so powerful. I was grateful to watch it in ENGLISH this time, because last time it was in spanish and i about died trying to figure it all out. Well actually i just fell asleep, but thats besides the point. This time i understood everything and had really cool experience. It was such a good weekend. Anyway, we didn't have all the people there that we wanted. We had some people who came but of the 10 people we had committed, 2 came. Kind of frustrating, but still good. Like thats 2 people who heard a PROPHET and now know Gods love for them through his prophet.

One of them is Domitila. She is Paola´s mom and she is getting baptized on the 20th. She is just so incredible. She literally feeds us SO much that we now have to lie and tell her we are fasting so she doesn't give us more stuff. So then she just tells us to take it home for later. The other day, I literally walked around for 4 hours with a PIE in my backpack. a full 14" pie. Like what in the world was i supposed to do with this?? haha it was so sweet of her though. we really love her. She is so excited for her fecha and just cant wait to get baptized. We really wanted her to get baptized with her husband but he is super lazy and just isn't putting forth the effort. She said that with time he will see her example and want to follow. So we are excited because we know she will make a great contribution to the ward and be a great example for many people. Cool stuff. So ill send pictures of that in a couple of weeks!

Other things from this past week...we are still working with Joaquin and claudia. Joaquin is so incredible. We had a lesson the other day all about Alma 46. Basically we related everything to his role as a father in protecting his family. I talked a lot about you, dad, and how looking back i ALWAYS knew that you would never, ever ever let something that was spiritually poisonous or dangerous happen in our lives. You always protected us so much and helped us to become the best people we could be. We were all in tears as he said "It hurts me that i cant offer that protection right now to my family, but it makes me so excited that i can be worthy to do that soon." its amazing how once we change our perspective on the WHY, it doesn't matter what the WHAT is. Is it worth taking a sip of alcohol if i truly understand that my ability to feel the CONSTANT companionship of the sweetest peace of the spirit, would it ever be a question? Joaquin acknowledged if it was a physical army, he would defend his two little girls of 8 and 1 to giving his own life. So would we not do the same for spiritual danger? I have been really intrigued by that this week. A lot of people, investigators, lost sight of the "vision" and thus struggled. They get caught up in worldly things and forget that this life is preparing us to be with Heavenly Father one day. We are really trying to focus on that this week so that teaching commandments, baptism, any principle, people understand that it will give them the BEST gift for their life. Kind of hard to make people catch a vision sometimes though.

Anyway, we are still cranking along. Our goal for this month is still 8 baptisms. We had a spiritual moment this morning as we realized we had lost some faith after people hadn't come to church. But there are still families who can get baptized at the end of this month and we realized Heavenly Father needs 100% of our effort and love if we are going to get them there. So we will be working hard. Keep praying for us and we will be doing our best to bring families to church this week!

Im sure most of you who read this read mary´s email as well. She arrived in Hong Kong last week and is so incredible. I can't imagine living in conditions like that and learning a language so hard. Mary you are incredible and the Lord will bless you so much for all of this! So funny that the people are calling your Barbie. Also, sad to comment that people also call me "Ken" here all the time. Like they start with barbie until they remember how to say the guys name. So from two opposite ends of the world with two languages that couldn't be ANY more different, we are still rocking this together. #BarbieandKen keep it up mary! You'll see miracles as you keep trusting in the Lord. Those first few months of the mission are the toughest. But now I'm in the fun stretch where i just love EVERY single day and cant even remember what i did BEFORE i was a missionary. I sure love this.

Elder Overson is also doing great! I have been sick all this week which has made it hard for us to practice the language and stuff because I am just dying haha, but he is doing awesome. I love serving with him because he just has so much faith. i think he has trained me a lot more than i have trained him. I heard that sister overson reads these so just know your son is an absolute STUD! All the missionaries are jealous. he is my kid. what of it...#royalbloodline #myfirstborn Also, i made him join the team i support here in Chile. So he is a chuncho just like i am. Go u de chile!!! 

Love you all so much. I'm sure there is a lot more i forgot to talk about, but thats good for today. I'll write it down for next week. 

Elder Tengberg

oh! during the break between conference, we went and bought ice cream and cones. Only problem, is that we didn't have SPOONS to scoop it. Only had soup ladles. Its a really good thing my average portion size for ice cream bowls (blake taught me perfectly) is like a half liter. IS that a serving size? Really big. I don't know...the cardboard container thing we buy at the store. GOSH IHATE ENGLISH. WHY DONT I REMEMBER THESE STUPID WORDS?!!! But the point of the story is that i was so excited to eat it so fast (mary knows i literally cannot wait to eat ice cream and eat it so so so fast) that I hit my head on this metal cabinet thing. Elder overson got an action shot. Tough life being  missionary here in chile, I'll tell you...

and this is my companion finding out what PULGAS are....fleas :) we have these bites every single day, and tiny spots of blood ALL over our sheets. And I couldn't be happier about this experience! So funny being on a mission.


No comments:

Post a Comment