The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly- Email 5/19/14

First off happy birthday to my awesome momma! Your'e the best momma and I am sorry i couldn't be there, but I love you and I hope you had a great bday.

Well what a week here in Pitrufquen! I am heading out tomorrow morning bak to San Pedro but it was awfully fun being here this week. We had some good, some bad, some downright funny, some ugly, some trunky. A little bit of everything.

The "trunky" part was when President Martinez did his little last speech for the mission, he came to every zone and gave us "ideas for life". ughhh no! haha it made me realize how simple the mission is and how hard normal life really is. Like it's so nice here. We just study, teach, walk around, talk, people give us lunch, teach, etc. So nice. After the mission you have so many things to worry about. not excited. It had reverse trunky status because it just gave me some anxiety and made me cling more on to the mission haha. Anyway fun stuff. President is a very smart man and gave us some great advice.

But the week was good! I definitely learned a lot this week about trusting in the Lord. Saturday night we had one of our favorite families drop us because they got scared of some stuff their pastor told them....just lame stuff. We tried to clarify things but they didn't want to hear it. So it was really sad... feeling like we had worked so hard only to have them literally tell us, word for word, "We would rather remain in ignorance than have to pray if this is right than change everything right now to follow it" like WHAT?! haha it was the most ridiculous setting ever. Shocked me. But the good news is that we didn't lose our faith and that same night we got a reference to pass by a recent convert who hasn't been to church in a year and his wife who isn't a member. So, we passed by, and his brother died last month and it's been super sad. And they came to church on Sunday! So it was really cool to see that basically the Lord said "They aren't the ones to teach, THEY are!" and guided us where we really needed to be spending our time. I was very happy, so I feel like I'm leaving here on good terms. It's weird going through so many changes lately but its been awfully fun as well.

In other news...well there isn't much other news! Things are still going very well, I'm still very happy, I'm still working very hard. Things are great here in my little chilito. Love you all! I'll write you whenever I can again!

Elder T.

also highlight of the week, we made peanut butter and jellies with tortillas because we were out of bread! Not too bad to be honest. Not too good either, but necessity is the mother of invention!

Me Encanta Pitrufquen (Pee-True-f-ken)- Email 5/12/14

Haha hows that for a little tongue twister?

So I wont write too much because we just talked last night, but things are going great here in Chilito. I love it here so much. Love the people, the daily rain, the soaked feet and smiling faces when they hear the gospel. Nothing better.

It's been another long week. We have found so many people, so now it's just time to teach them all! Two in particular are just so unbelievably prepared...

Jessica and Kati. Kati is her 17 year old daughter who we felt prompted to contact one night when we were on our way back to our house at the hour. She was standing on a corner talking to her boyfriend and we contacted them (Its always hilarious to talk to the couples and interrupt them. It's like vengeance a little bit) anyway and we talked to her, and she said yeah come by my family one day. So we went by a couple days later, her mom saw us and started crying. She had just lost her older daughter who was 26 in a car accident, had been left with her little 3 year old grandson. Like just so sad. She was heartbroken and she said "How did you get here? How did you know?" and stuff. It was so touching. We taught them the plan of salvation and it was just beautiful to see the reactions of people when the spirit touches their heart. So prepared!

Next we also taught the Familia Alegría (which literally means family happiness, so perfect) and they are so beyond prepared. Like they just get it. They are great investigators, know what we expect of them, and were like "yeah we can do this." Its so cool to see how the Lord has been testing us for 2 weeks (no one came to church again) but we have just been preparing these beautiful families for now! So its been fantastic. 

in other news...it's my last week here in Pitrufquen! haha i know mom and dad i told you yesterday i thought i was going to stay here, but president actually informed me that i would be going back to finish my last 4 weeks with elder white and elder paris where i just was in San Pedro. So....back to there again! Haha its right though. i prayed about it too and definitely know its right. I think its time for someone else to come in here and harvest all the success we have been planting. My job was to come in and help out and suffer a little bit, and I've done it the best i could. It really has served as a wonderful experience to me. Like i really feel like I've learned how to give up my will in some things, to let the Lord make of me what i don't frankly want sometimes. So I'm very grateful for all the chances and opportunities I've been given to grow. The Lord sure knows me and knows what i need.

I love you all! thanks for everything.

Elder T.

here are the pictures of the house remodel! We bought a "welcome" mat on sale, a new shower curtain, we have been making fires in our little estufa all week (dad thats what it looks like so you're aware! All safe. except for the cracked glass but thats like a minor detail and we think its fine). And theres my comp! Elder Trudeau from Gilbert, Arizona. Awesome missionary. 

Another Week – Email 4/26/14

Well hellloo family! I sure do love you so much. I don't have a ton of time this week but last week i promised pictures so that's what I'm going to send this week! There are pictures of the four of us comps, me in the campo, us on the volcano, and a couple more. To be honest i forgot what i attached but it's all there! Haha sorry. The volcano was super fun though and it was a great memory. Anyway,  this week...

Well this week I was back in Angol again! I actually spent the whole week there working with the zone and doing intercambios with all the different district leaders. it was really fun. It was a good week and I learned a lot from a lot of people. One of my favorite things to do is to leave notes to missionaries after the intercambio is done. I remember when I was back in Victoria one of the assistants did it with me and I just thought it was the coolest thing ever, so I do it every time now. This week I had a really cool experience with an elder who I had kind of judged before but after working with him, I was shocked at how little I knew him. So at the end of the day, I wrote him a little card and hid it in his pillowcase and stuff, then when I got home I realized he had done the same to me! Sneaky little booger. Anyway what he wrote was one of the coolest things I have read and something I needed to hear so badly. I will share it with all of you because I frankly don't have any investigators to talk about or anything else. All I do is intercambios!

He said "Look, people in your life will always, in one way or another, let you down. I suppose that you're in the perfect position right now to practice how you want to respond when it happens (he was referring to a situation that I asked him for advice about with a missionary who with I had put various goals to improve on, and had completely thrown out all of them and didn't care. I was rather annoyed because he is a leader in the mission and was just completely ignoring his personal responsibility as such!). What's made me happiest is applying what Elder Holland said to my own relationships: ´Surely the thing that God enjoys most about being God is the thrill of being merciful, especially to those who don't expect it and often feel they don't deserve it´. From my own experience people change the most profoundly when we show them love and respect when they don't feel they deserve it. Try it out . It feels fantastic."

Wow, right? I was just in for a bit of humble pie, wasn't I? I think thats one of the most frustrating things I have come to learn...that in the mission I thought I would become almost perfect. Obviously not perfect but I thought i would come home with a lot less rough edges. But I feel like I've just changed from a rough jagged pointy rock to one that has one less jag on it - but it's still pretty awful and barely noticeable. I guess that's life though. In the end, none of us will ever justify ourselves in getting into heaven. We are all just trying our best and hoping that it will be okay in the end. But the consolation is knowing that God will, in the end, always forgive us, if we follow the teachings of his son Jesus Christ and apply the atonement to our life. I feel like, even though I WANT to be so different, so much better, that God just gets a thrill out of forgiving me when I certainly don't deserve it. He is pretty incredible. He must get so sick of hearing our constant "No but I PROMISE, I wont ever do it again!" and "God please help THAT PERSON TO CHANGE" prayers. He must just laugh. But I am awfully grateful for his mercy with me. I love the mission so much. I really do. I know this church is true and the gospel is our key to happiness!

Love to everyone at home! We have a couple of busy weeks coming up. Interviews, all wide mission conference, cambios. But, alas, a heavy train never jumps the rails. So, in the end, I am grateful that I have the chance to be stressed and busy - it's helping me progress.

I love you all.

Elder Tengberg

Volcan Llaima – Email 4/19/14

What a week! Still not quite sure what day it is, where I am. We have been all over the place and it's been pretty fun. Definitely some good highlights to the week though. This week we had Zone Trainings (I almost said capacitacions again but I remembered you all made fun of me last time!) so we were in the 10 zones, 2 zones a day. Lots of travel! But very fun. The mission is doing really well. 

My favorite part of the mission right now is being able to be with missionaries. I get to see so many attitudes, desires, goals, styles of teaching, attributes, etc. It's basically like getting to try every single flavor in Baskin Robbins or Coldstone (dang ice cream sounds SO good right now). This week I learned quite a few lessons - both from my own behavior and from the behavior of those I was with.

Thursday I was with a young missionary and it was arguably the worst day of my mission. He had so much pride, so much egoism, so much ridiculous attitude. I was frankly ready to just leave and go back to Concepcion. haha I was so furious. It was just so much lack of focus on the work - he cared about himself. The little problems that were happening, the people that were in his sector, the fact that they had to move houses - everything "made him mad". In fact, for the past 6 weeks "he has been really mad." Well, that's awful! 6 weeks mad?? I physically can't fathom that. I was baffled and called him out on it so bad and told him to forget himself, be humble and just serve everyone else. It was so sad to see that probably the same attributes that I started the mission with (and many times still have) impeded a young missionary from enjoying life: One thing I have VERY intimately learned is that happiness is not, in ANY way, circumstantial. It physically cannot be. Just like Mary's email said, we are the ones who decide how we react to things. When we forget that God loves us and forget our faith in him, trials start to look like punishments or unfair and stop looking like opportunities for growth. It's really cool to see first hand why faith is hope, because without faith we literally have sadness and problems. So...long ramble, but in the end, it was really, really frustrating to see how one missionary's attitude could impede an entire SECTOR from receiving the gospel. I'm confident there were people there that won't be found for awhile because God won't throw his pearls before swine. Does our attitude impede God from blessing us? I fear that in my case, many times it does.

And another experience that was SO cool. So we went to a volcano this week! We took our pday in the south of the mission and decided that since we were out there, we should visit Volcan Llaima. Absolutely gorgeous. We are in fall right now so it was already colder, but still a super nice day. And we got to see snow! I threw my first snowball in 2 years and I was happy as a clam. It actually worked out that I was with Elder White and it was so fun to be back together again and have time to talk. That kid has changed my life more than any other companion on the mission. I sure do love him. It was cool to reminisce on the mission and then to look out on our mission, almost all of it visible from the top of the volcano, and to just pray and thank Heavenly Father for it all. We knelt down in the volcano rock and dirt and snow and just said a prayer, and it was one of the coolest experiences of my mission. I felt so grateful for everything - for the time, lessons, experiences, people, food, scenery, nature, wards. LIke it was just an incredible experience. Then we did our best version of Lehi or Noah and "shouted repentance unto the people". We just shouted as loud as we could on top of the volcano. Pretty cool. And when I say top I don't really mean top, I mean more like base, but we had to hike 2 hours to get there so in my mind it's top. Photos next week!! In the end, we just ran around though and took a million pictures and had a blast. So fun!

I love you all. I'm so grateful to be a missionary. I love it more than anything.  Hope you all have a Happy Easter!  

Elder T.