¡Viva la Viña!: Achupallas. That`s a Name, Not a Sneeze..

May 11, 2015

Hola familia!!!

Fue super bueno a verles ayer!!! Se ven super bien!

So, as I told you guys when we were skyping yesterday for Mother's Day, I got changed on Wednesday and now I`m in Achupallas in a sector called Mirador. When it comes down to it, I really didn`t want to leave Chorrillos. I really really love that sector, but I had already been there 6 months so my time was up. But before cambios this week started out pretty crazy!....

First this one guy just randomly stops us in the centro and says, hey I want to be a missionary for your church, what do I need to do? And we`re like uhh.. what do you mean? He says, I have a friend on the mission and I really want to be a missionary too, what do I need to do? I ask him, are you a member of the church? And he responds no, I just want to be a missionary. We were like ok cool so we gave him a Book of Mormon and wrote down his address to pass to the elders where he lives and told him where the closet church was to attend on Sunday. He asked if it was a long process to be able to become a missionary. I tell him that from today it will take one year and 3 weeks (investidgadors need to attend church 3 times before they can be baptized) and he was like ok, I can do that. hahaha I really wish that he lives in our sector, I would love to find out what happened with him.

Then with our investigador Loreto who thought she was already baptized but when we searched her records isn`t, we invited her to be baptized on the 24 (my birthday!) And she was totally down! It`s crazy, she came to church once (hopefully yesterday tambien), and changed her work schedule so she wouldn`t work on Sundays. She`s changing! She`s aligning her life with the gospel and is just happier, I don`t know, that`s just the best way to explain it. I love when you can start to be able to see the changes in people. That`s honestly the best part of it all. So I`m really excited to hear what will end up happening with her.

Then on Tuesday we wake up early because we have a zone meeting to get to and we start showering and in our house there is this weird drain in the middle of the bathroom floor and well, it just totally exploded. It just started throwing up water ALL OVER THE FLOOR: It went through the bathroom door and was all over in the front room. Luckily there`s almost nothing in our house so nothing was damaged and we quickly put towels in front of the doors of the bedroom and study room but there was literally 2 centimeters of water all over the floor! But we can`t stick around and clean it up and try to fix it because we have the meeting to get to. And it`s early so the owners are still sleeping so we can`t call them. We call our Zone leader and he tells us to just mop it up and get to the meeting and we say, no elder, there is a lake in our house. You can`t just mop it up....But we were able to soak a lot of it up in towels and we called the guy in charge of our houses and he got everything worked out. I still don`t know what was wrong, but that was a crazy adventure... hahah

Then it was cambios and well you know what happened there. It was really hard saying good bye to a lot of the people there. I felt like I was leaving home all over again. When I said goodbye to Herminia, this sassy 81 year old recent convert, she gave me hard boiled eggs and bread, to take just in case I wasn`t going to be able to eat traveling to my new area. It really really touched my heart because she doesn't have hardly any money. She told us the other day that she went 12 days with only herbal tea and bread because she didn`t have money for food. The ward brought her over a bunch of food from the bishops store house and she cried. Then she told us that even though the Sunday wasn`t going to be a testimony Sunday that she didn`t care, she was going to stand up to express her gratitude anyway haha (the next Sunday was stake conference.. she didn`t really care. I wonder if she really went through with it or not haha) But then here she is giving me three eggs and bread. It really touched my heart how someone with so little is still so generous with the little that she has. I swear, the people teach me way more about being Christ-like than I can ever teach or show them.

So now I`m here in Achupallas (Aw-chew-pie-yas) I know, it almost sounds like someone sneezing... My compañera is Hermana Andrade. She`s from Rio de Jinero! in Brasil! We`ve already made plans for me to come and live with her after the mission! She`s awesome. I`m always worried about getting a crazy companion but I lucked out once again! We`re best friends already. She has almost 9 months in the mission and is pure power. We`re going to be baptizing up a storm over here, I just know it!

The sector isn`t as pretty as Chorrillos. No ocean view :( ... But I love it. Half of it is just pure apartment buildings so even after being here for 3 days I`m still way confused about how to get around and where everyone lives. One of these days I`m going to count how many stairs we climb every day. I feel like half the day we`re just going up and down stairs looking for apartments. And that`s totally fine, because I`m just so happy to be here and to be a missionary.

The ward is awesome. It`s weird going from a branch of 50 people to a ward with 125 people attending. I have A LOT of names to learn! But everyone is really nice so I`m happy.

Funny story: My first lunch here, we were talking about ways to clear up your skin or something with the Hermana and she says, ' what I do that works really awesome is I drink my pee. I thought I miss heard her, but nope that`s what she said!!! Then she just goes on about how good it is for you to drink your own pee. Bahahahahahahaha!!! It`s really not that funny but it`s just the way she was telling us, like she was drinking a natural fruit juice or something. But then she says, ' yeah but I don`t do it anymore, I stopped. I was like ok, que bueno, but then she says, but not because it grossed me out. And I honestly can`t tell you why she stopped because I got hung up on the it`s not because I was grossed out part. Oh man. Honestly nothing that comes out of Chileans mouths is surprising anymore haha.

Our investigador here Tito, came to church!!! He works during the night, 11 pm to 7am, but he still came to church at 10! It`s a miracle! He has a baptismal date for the 24th! I really hope that he follows through strong with the fecha. It would be the best birthday gift to have a baptism on my birthday! Keep good ole Tito in your prayers :)

Those are basically the highlights of my week...... I hope next week at this time I understand the sector a little better and am not totally lost still.

I hope you have a great week!

les amo

Hermana Evans