Sunnny sunnny sunnnnyyyyyy!!!!!

Holaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!

Thank you for all the happy birthday wishes! We plan to go out and track in the beautiful country tomorrow...hopefully there us sun!!

This week was crazy!

One day we accidently locked our keys inside the house. Luckily our investigator knows quite a bit about breaking into houses so he helped us out a bit. At least he tried. It was raining really hard and dark yet he was climbing all over the roof...trying to break in from some point. I was a bit scared that he was going to fall and die and we would have to call president and say that we accidently killed our investigator. Anyways, turns out our house is a compound and he could not get in! Desperately we called the bishop and he came over and opened the door in about 15 seconds. He didnt let us see how he did it though...

Saturday we had a baptism! It was so so wonderful!! We had quite the challenge getting him there. 

And de verdad...I have NEVER seen anyone SO HAPPY as he was at his baptism. I wish I could have that experience every day. I´ve always known that the gospel could change people...and I have definitely seen it in different degrees throughout my mission. But this was the first 360 change I have seen. It was amazing to see. 

Sunday we had the baptism of sweet Annais. THAT was an adventure. She has a little sister of like 3 years who is CRAZY! She was running around the whole chapel screaming, laughing, throwing cookies in the air...trying to jump in the font. I just chased after her the whole time. But Annais also was SO HAPPY! and it made us SO HAPPY! So I already received the best birthday presents I could possibly get! 

Have a beautiful week! 

Hermana Orchard

P.S. one last thing:

ahhhhh...I just watched the birthday video!

wow. Thanks for making me cry!!

I have to say that everyone looks so white....with such blonde hair...and everyone has such nice teeth! 

I did not recognize Caleb or Anna. Caleb looks SO OLD!!! And I thought Anna was myself! Who knew Anna sang? And played that little instrument?

I especially enjoyed Charlee and Caden fighting during the song :) 

Thank you!!!!!!

Have fun eating all the food I like on my birthday! 

I will be eating rice....and probably completos. :)

The following pictures are from Linares...I am really behind (uploading)

Si hacemos un muñeco?

Well...

There is an unimaginable power in our choices. Agency is our greatest gift but we must be so careful in how we use it. Each of our choices are like little dots on a line...they can send us shooting in one direction or the other. Last night we sat down with our investigator that is having troubles quitting his drugs and all that. He started to relate to us his whole life story. He was a star student and athlete at his school. At 14 years old one morning he slept in  bit and was late going to school. This led him to walk past a group of kids that were outside doing drugs. That morning he just stopped to stop to them or something...then the next he did the same thing and so on..Years passed and his activities of this sort grew. At the age of 18 instead of being in college and following his plans...he was living in the streets. His family had kicked him out because he had been stealing from them to buy drugs. So he walked around the freezing dirty city and was the Captain of the drug crew there. This led him to do other things he never imagined doing. 

Now he is 22 years old and lives in a little dirt shack that floods everytime it rains. He cant get a job because he knows he will just use the money to buy drugs. All he can do is sleep. Thanks to the gospel he is making some huge changes. But to see the chains of his addictions is heartbreaking.I cant help and think of what would have happened if he had made a different choice that walk to school ten years afo. But now he has the chance to make another monumental decision. I wish we could learn to look ahead and see the ending results of our little choices. 

This week was a good week where we were able to see the fruits of our labors! Thats always nice and doesnt happen all that often. 

I discovered a new talent Chile has....it can suck all the water out from the ocean...and then rain it down on this little town with a force and duration that is incredible! Sometimes I wonder if I will ever see the sun again...or be dry. It just rains and rains and I keep expecting to see an ark or something to save us in! Half the city is already miserably flooded. The rain is so loud that it wakes me up in the night and I lay there wondering how long it will be before it breaks the house! I know...its just rain. But I´ve never experienced anything like this!

I mentioned to someone that my birthday is next week...they asked me how old I would be...I said 20. The moment the word came out of my mouth I wanted to take it back! It literlly hurt to say and tasted terrible!!!  How can I be twenty years old if just yesterday I was 11???  There must be some mistake! Pray for me to handle this awful ordel of growing up. Its the worst!

We have been eating lots of completos this week because we havent had money to buy anything else. But today my wonderful mexican companera taught me how to make corn tortillas and we made them into empanadas and all wonderful different creations!

One day when we were walking along the street we saw the weirdest creature that had fallen from another planet! It was dead so we poked around at it and examined its 20 legs and how disgusting it was. The next day guess what was served on our lunch plates? Yes people eat these strange alien spider things. They bite off the head and suck out the insides and put the legs in soup. I literally thought I was going to die. It was the first time I pushed my plate back and said no. I could hardly look at the things....screamed when it almost touched me...it would take a lot of drugs and therapy to get me to put it in my mouth,

Welp thats some of the adventures of this week. 

Love you all!!!

Hermana Orchard