Don't let the bedbugs bite!!!

Good Morning world!

I heard its pretty cold right now in the states. Maybe you should all come visit Chile for a bit. We for sure have some heat and sun to share!

I will be honest. This week was probably the hardest yet on my mission. I thought nothing could beat my first few weeks here in Chile, but apparently there are harder things than first week culture and food shock, exhaustion and no communication skills. haha But that will have to be a story for another time. 

First of all...Happy Birthday Caleb!! I cant believe my little munchkin is 9 years old! I remember going to the hospital to pick you up- like two days ago. I arrived mad. Mad that you were a boy (and not the 3rd sister I wanted) and that dad had named you Caleb...completely disregarding that I had already picked out two very fine names for you (Lancer and Dasher). I held you and you looked like a little red monkey. But then you opened your eyes and they were so blue and big and clear. And I fell in love. So in love that I willingly changed every diaper of yours and held you in the middle of the night when mom just wanted to let you cry. And now that you are nine years old you can accompnay the missionaries every day! And read the whole Bible and Book of Mormon. Go ahead and start War and Peace too! 

Okay..enough about that. One day my companion pulled out a primary hymn book she had kept hidden for way too long. We were all so excited to sing a primary song...it felt just like Christmas!! At first we all just sang one..but then we each had to sing our favorite and then our second and third and fourth favorites. 50 favorites later we had finished the whole book! 

Just dont take your primary hymn books for granted. Those things are gold! 

So I didnt write about our beach activity last week. I will go ahead and mention a few things about that now. We went to this really precious coastal little town and hiked for about two hours to this hidden beach. On the way we saw some...I`m not going to spell this write....tarantulas? However you spell it...they were in all the bushes and crawling everywhere. The elders were all catching them and holding them and I was just trying to breathe and not faint. Then I looked behind me and who was holding one of those awful awful things? MY COMPANION!! I felt so betrayed. I also couldnt touch her for a few days. 

Eventually we came to a part in the trail where we had to walk through this huge dark tunnel. It went on for about 20 mins and was pitch black. It was pretty silent except for the elders who kept trying to scare us....and for the sound of huge spiders crawling all over the walls. It was like a nightmare. But...I survived! I survived one of my worst nightmares! I was very proud. 

A few nights ago we had a little scare. I will only tell this story if mom promises to stay calm. 

So we were in our apartment about ready to get into bed..when we had a knock at our door. We were a little surprised as to who would be knocking at our door at 11:30 at night (very few know where we live too). So we looked out our peephole and saw a nice strong man with some sort of mask on or something. I wont go into too many details....but we were all pretty scared. There was some yelling. More knocking...and banging. And bla bla bla. Long story short we piled our heavy metal bunkbeds against our front door and went and slept in the back room. Well...kind of slept haha. Eventually the police and others came and gathered the man. We happen to live across the street from the largest jail in Chile and sometimes things happen. Luckily since we are missionaries we are always protected!! Right mom? 

This last week we had some big cumplemeses in our house. Or monthly anniversaries. We celebrated in the best way possible...with food! (No that is not just your imagination in the pictures...my face really IS that much more chubbier). Anyways, since Hermana Tejerina celebrated 9 months she had to do the tradition of burning a skirt. But where does one burn something as large as a skirt? Not in the microwave? Not on the stove? Not with matches in the bathtub? No...there are some men that love to start fires in the field next to us. Just bonfires. So one night as we are trying to contact one of these men..out of no where comes Hermana Tejerina with a skirt and interupts our lesson with questions of how she can burn her skirt in his fire. A couple indian chants later her skirt was ashes. 

Our cute little family finally came to church this sunday! It was fast sunday and both Alejandro and Patricia surprised us by getting up and talking about their love of the church all ready....and all the changes they have experienced in the last month. And it was so sweet and sincere and wonderful...and me and my companion just sat there and tried to not completely lose it. Even their little 3 year old said something! Pray for my little family! They need prayers!

I have been thinking....there are few things that are worse than losing your respect and confidence in those you respect and love most. This mission thing is millions of miles away from anything I expected it would be. It is a billion times better....yet there are also things that have happened that I really never thought I would have to deal with here. Some of these things have kind of slapped me in the face this week. But I have learned some very important things. The first is that Satan will do everything he can do to stop this work. And we must be so strong. So very very strong. Any weakness has to be fortified. We are all fighting in this war together. Whether we want to be involved or not..we are on a team. And we fight and drag others with us one way or the other every day. We have so much influence, we have so much responsibility and we have so much power. And we HAVE to realize that and we HAVE to use that for good. And when we think our actions (even the tiny secret ones) dont matter....the results are devastating. The grerat ploy of Satan is to display such blatant evil that one could almost believe ones own secret sins dont matter. But they do! And as our world gets darker...we must move in the COMPLETE opposite direction and get lighter! EVERY thought and action of ours affects others for miles and miles. 

I know agency is essential...and I am so grateful for it. But sometimes I just want to take it away from people! Its truly heartbreaking to see others use their agency unwisely. 

God loves His children. Every one. And he wants all of them to return to Him. Help others find their way back to Him. We cant just stand here. We have to move forward or we will move backward. 

"There must be commitment. There must be devotion. We are winning. We will continue to win if we will be faithful and true. We CAN do it. We MUST do it. We WILL do it. There is nothing our Lord has asked of us in faith we cannot accomplish. Shall we not also in faith move forward? May we be faithful. May we be valient. May we have the courage to be true to the trust God has placed in each of us. May we be unafraid." Gordon Hinckley. 

If only we could all realize our potential. It is so great. 

Love you all! I promise next weeks letter will only be happy happy happy!

Oh....does anyone know how to get rid of bedbugs? I guess my blood is irresistible. 

Pictures..me and my companion with a sign for mi papi (her boyfriend)

Have a wonderful week!!

Hermana Orchard

I gave Hermana Tejerina a poster of Justin Bieber for her cumplemes. She really loves it. 

Don't get too excited now...

Hola Northern hemisphere! 

I wouldnt mind having a bit of your cold air today. But thats okay... I have blackberry pear juice!! :)

For the first time...I really dont have much to say today. Well I do...but not super positive things. So I think this week I just wont say anything at all. 

Better email next week. I promise.

For now...just remember to be obediant. And to be kind. And as long as you are those two things....everything just goes better. Without those two things...ahh its just bad.

Some days are really great...and some days are really hard. But every day we have the agency to react one way or the other. 

Use your agency for GOOD!

We did go to a cool beach today. So I will attach pictures of that. :)

Manjar, Manjar, Manjar de mi vida!!

Wellllll....

Another week has come and gone. 

Tan rapido this time is flying!

I completed 4 months this week! Can you even believe that??!

But

Transfers. 

This morning at 7:00 am. 

The phone awoke us to the reality of it. 

We answered. Well my companion did. I put my head under the covers as everyone ran and jumped into my bed. 

We didnt breathe as Elder Layton said..

Hermana De Leon....va quedar (breathe, breathe)

Hermana Tejerina ....va quedar (okay...this is good...breathe breathe)

Hermana Orchard.........va quedar (a rock is lifted from my stomach as I can finally breathe fully)

and then

Hermana Lees....se va ........a Lirquen

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just stayed under the covers and cried. Eventually we got over the shock and packed her up. And cried. And talked in as much english as we could (for the last time). And cried. And ate chips and salsa for breakfast. And cried. And tried to take a thousand pictures. And cried. And sat on the bus. And cried. And now we are in an internet cafe. Crying. Its going to be a long day.

Hermana Lee´s was the very first missionary I met in the Arizona airport that one day so long ago. We were together in the MTC and for (really hard!) transfer....and second (perfectly blissful and happy) transfer. But this is life. Goodbyes. I just dont want it to happen!

Luckily she isnt going too terribly far and we plan to have parties every p-day.

Ohhh this is so sad!!!!

I am just grateful for the four months we have had together. Anyways, At least I still have my wonderful companion and my favorite Tejerina still!

Okay, enough about that.

This week was great! We are in the process of planning three baptisms for next week!! So that makes me happy. 

A couple things that happened..

Our investigator Leonardo taught me how to start a chilean oven so I could make marshmellow chocolate cookies for english class! Unfortunately the pan we had didnt fit in the oven so we had to put it in sideways. And all the cookies slid into a clump on one side . But it was okay! Because they tasted really good and chileans dont know what cookies are supposed to look like anyways!

Our house has been infested with bedbugs and fleas again. I will wake up in a puddle of my blood after a night long of snacking from the little critters. Thats always fun. Im gonna come home with some scars. But today we plan on deep cleaning every thing with bleach and every chemical we can get our hands on. WE ARE GOING TO KILL ALL THE BUGS ONCE AND FOR ALL!!

Okay...so confession time. You would think that after 4 months I would be speaking spanish fluently. Well....no. That has not happened yet. In fact my spanish is still really, really bad. I can understand about 70% of what is being said. So that is good. But there is still SO much that I dont know how to say. And chileans are super honest people. They really tell things how it is. I love that,,,unless they are telling me my spanish is awful. Or telling me to go back to france (everyone thinks I am a english speaking frech person). And one day after a particularly brutal bashing on my spanish skills....I just came home and gave up. I decided that I was done learning spanish and done trying to speak it. So I went a whole day without saying anything (which is really hard as a missionary). Luckily I live with three amazing people who surprised me at night with new drawings, qoutes and letters all over my walls. And chocolate. And manjar. And sparkles. And then stayed up with me giving pep talk after pep talk until I agreed that yes...I could learn this language. And yes...I do need to be more patient with myself. And yes....being perfect is not necessary. And yes...I could still be a good missionary even if I cant speak super clearly. But...prayers for chilean spanish skills would be appreciated.

Also, if you feel like praying for anything else. My mission is struggling physically. Half the mission is sick and tons are getting sent home early due to illness. The majority with weird migraines that will just never go away. So just keep Chile Concepcion Mission´s health in your prayers. :)

We have developed an awesome system of eating all the food at lunch. We call it musical plates.  Its mainly just to help me. Let me elaborate.

I get my plate of food and eat a little...while Hermana Lee´s eats as fast as she can. Then..secretly...we switch plates. And I only have about half as much food on my plate.

Then...I will take some of the food and quickly swipe it onto Hermama Tejerina´s plate. My cup of soda is always swiped too. If I still cant do it we will all switch plates one more time. All in all I only have to eat about 1/5 of the food normally. Its still hard. But one day my stomach with adjust! hahah

So Hector (the recent convert) is an awesome song creator! I will just name a subject and he will make me a wonderful song about it! This last week I developed a new obsession with manjar. So he made me a song about it! I would write all the lyrics but that would take too long. (First part: Manjar, manjar, manjar de mi vida! Te amo te amo por siempre jamas!) So one night we came back to our apartment and started balcony singing. We will sing a song to our fellow missionaries on the third floor as they throw sparkles down on us. (Hermana Lees and Tejerina have been stuck at home because Hermana Tejerina has feet issues this week) Its a great new tradition.

We found an awesome family who hasnt been to church in 15 years. They have four awesome kids and came to church! And they are awesome. Awesome awesome awesome. A bakan family! And I am so thankful we found them. Because they- like everyone else- NEEDED the gospel back in their lives. Its amazing the difference we see in them after just one week!

Okay, this is long enough for this week.

I was thinking. I hope all of you are helping the missionaries out in your wards. Everyone should accompnay the missionaries at least once a week. Especially youth. Even Caleb. One of my favorite members to accompnay us is a 10 year old boy. He is awesome in lessons and everyone loves him! We even had him teach the whole Joseph Smith story one time. Caleb should definietly be accompanying the missionaries. Also....dont feed the missionaries so much.

Okay, thats all for now.

I love you all!! Remember to show your love for others and not just keep it locked in your heart!

And LOVE EVERYONE!!

Whoohoooo! Have a FANTASTIC week!!!!

Hermana Orchard

Smashing the cerros

Hooooollllllllllaaaaaaaaa Amiggoooosss!!!!

This week was such a blur of everything wonderful in this world. I know I´m not going to do it justice.But I´ll try anyway. 

First of all....I fulfilled a life long dream of mine and cut someones hair! We were all sitting in our tiny study room at night (eating cake with our hands) when Hermana Tejerina said ¨ready to cut my hair hermana¨?¨I have never been more ready for anything in my life! Or so I thought. It took a couple mins of me screaming and running around laughing hysterically with scissors before I was able to calm down enough to actually do it. Sidenote--WHO would trust me to cut their hair? Especially as I was practially crying I was laughing so hard. Anyways, I got started. After a while I realized its kind of a bit harder than it looks. Especially with scissors made for paper...and when I cut off some hair...I measured it against the others hairs..and it didnt match up. So I had to cut more. And more. And it didnt look so good.And I got a little stressed out. But dont worry. After some failed attempts I finally figured out what I needed to do and it actually turned out PRETTY GOOD!! WHHOOOOHHHOOOOO!!! Dont worry, I got lots of pictures of this wonderful acheivment. 

Someone asked me what my favorite part of the day was. Hands down it is night time as we walk home. Normally we have a crowd of people accompnaying us (the youth from our ward and an investigator or two and of course about 68 dogs). My companion is an INCREBIBLE beat boxer and will give me beats to dance walk to all day long. Its the best thing ever. Dance walking is the best thing ever too. Everyone should do it. 

Our english class is starting to just explode with wonderfulness!! I think its because we have started to bring pancakes and BREAD WITH MANJAR to it. We are getting pretty much all of Chillancito to come and learn this language that is surprisingly kind of difficult to pronounce! 

I have always loved summer but here it just takes on a whole new meaning. Mainly in the form of fresh watermelon juice. Theres not really anything better than that.And the fact that everyone stays up til 1 am blasting reggaeton and playing soccer in the streets. There is always endless music.I love it. For us missionaries summer has come to mean running to the panaderia every night to pick up empanadas and pineapple for our nightly snacks. We have also had an abundance of manjar cake lately....and pranks going on in our little house.Not going to stay who started that...

This last week we found so many WONDERFUL and amazingly PREPARED people! I will tell you about two of them.

The first is Patricia. We found her last week and visited with her twice.Then one night we randomly stopped by and her husband was there too! Which was great. They have the most adorible little niñita as well.Anyways, we taught them the plan of salvation and sang Soy un Hijo de Dios.During the song they were so cute. They just held hands and cried.Then after we closed with a kneeling prayer. Patricia said the prayer and talked about the peace we brought her and how she has never been so happy in her life. When she was done her husband wanted to say a prayer too! Then they both talked about how the moment we entered their house they felt a peace.They called it a peace and feeling of tranquility that they have never felt before. They said when we sang it just washed over them from their head to their toes. And I just thought how grateful I am to be part of this great work.For sure there is nothing better. It was also good for me to hear others express that we actually are helping and that we do carry a spirit and power with us as missionaries.Sometimes its hard to see and realize that.  So it was a tender mercy for me to be able to hear that.

I dont have time to write about my other favorite investigator. I will next week

Last night we had a little different FHE.We had brought an investigator with us to a members house for FHE but when we got there the mom was sick in bed.So we just had it in her room. We all sat on the bed around her and sang and read the scriptures.And I wish I had appreciated the scriptures more my whole life. I also wish I appreciated them as much as the people here do that cant read.When we read to them they just eat it up so fully. Oh if we could all just have a teeny tiny bit of that hunger!

Nothing else I wish to report this week. Other than we have been doing tons of divisions (splits I think in englsh) with the members and that is super fun and wonderful!

I LOVE this place so much

I LOVE Chile

I LOVE Chillancito

I LOVE my companion

I LOVE my roommates

I LOVE my ward

I LOVE the members here

I LOVE watermelon juice

I LOVE empanadas

I LOVE spanish (okay...not completely yet..but maybe one day)

I LOVE being a missionary

I do NOT love however, transfers.Which are next week and I feel sick about.

NOOOOOOOO I DONT WANT TO LEAVE!! And because I dont, I will. So this week I will get to practice accepting God´s will for me. A lesson that we get to learn multiple times in this wonderful life.

I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!!
Go be extra nice and loving to someone today.

Be an example.

Be kind and be a missionary!!!

Hermana Orchard

Pictures- me and some of the awesome graffiti thatcovers Chile

Some of my favorite people ever

And me on top of my sector

Viva la Chile!!!

Robbed by gypsies

Hola Hola!!

So I`ll start off this with an embaressing story of the century I decided to let you all in on.

Lately I have been trying every avenue to try and get people to feed me less. Hermana Tejerina said she would help me out and talk to the relief society president about it. I told her to tell the sisters that my stomach hurt or something so to not feed me much this week. So we are sitting in sacrament meeting when the bishop gets up to make announcements. I`ll try and and translate what happened here..."Brothers and Sisters, if you have the missionaries for lunch this week please do not feed Hermana Orchard much because she has been having problems with diarreah." uhhh....WHAT??? WHAT just got announced about me over the pulpit?? That is definitely NOT what I told Hermana Tejerina to say.

And its moments like those that I am reminded I am far away from America.  All I could do is laugh and cover my face with my hymnal as I had about 7 bottles of fiber pills handed over to me.

One day I was trying to figure out some of the cultural differences...like why it is totally okay to call someone fat and ugly as a nickname but stupid is a swearword. (Taylor Swift is playing in the internet cafe right now....I could die!! Its been so long!) It lead to an interesting discussion about the values of of our countries. I then asked why all latinas have such beautiful strong hair. She said that every baby at about 1 or 2 years has their head shaved! After its shaved the hair grows back thicker, stronger and shinier! If a baby doesnt have their head shaved they will have really weak hair. And I thought...who has the best hair in our family? Emily! Who had her head shaved as a baby!  I`m totally going to shave all my babies heads!!

Last P-day we had an unusual experience. There is a gelato place in the city where you can buy mountains of gelato for almost nothing. So we always go and get a scoop of everything and then eat it by this huge fountain as it melts all over us. Well last week we were njoying our gelato and sunshine when a woman came up to us and asked for money or something. We all just shook our heads no...well all of us except hermana Tejerina who is too sweet to deny anyone anything. Within seconds we were surrounded by at least 15 gypsies. They grabbed our palms and started muttering and rubbing them with sticks and clumps of leaves. One tried cutting off some of my hair. We tried getting up to leave but we had a tight crowd of them around us of chanting and other weird stuff. Finally we were able to grab our bags (which they had grabbed) and push through. They followed us for awhile saying we owed them money and were going to curse us or something. (In the last 20 mins I have heard like every one of my favorite songs played in here....I cant decide if this is a dream come true or Satanas tempting me) Then we realized that Hermana Tejerina wasnt with us but was still at the fountain surrounded by them...and with a womans hand IN her backpack rummaging through her wallet! We ran ovr and grabbed hermana and her backpack. The woman had grabbed 5 mil out of hermanas wallet and wouldnt give it back. So we just ran and ran until we were inside a more normal part of the city. I think it was the first time I have actually been really frightened here. We will not be going back to that fountain today.

My focus this transfer has been to get the youth in our ward involved with missionary work. So we  get them to accompany us everyday. They have learned to like it so much that they will accompany us the ENTIRE day! We normally have a group of 5 or 6 with ages from 14-19. They dance around us, singing, running and contacting for us. Its great. Its so much fun! I love them all so much and it makes everything worth it when they say they have decided to serve missions too! We are also teaching a ton more youth now! And our investigators have instant friends!

The days are too short. Almost before its started it over and I feel like time is just slipping through my hands way too fast. I want to stay here with these amazing youth and my incredible house of missionaries forever! Last night we had a FHE with one of my favorite families in the ward. They live on top of this huge hill that overlooks the city and it is so gorgeous. We had gathered quite a large group of youth to come with us and as we sat on the porch drinking mango juice these increible youth shared their stories of missionary work and talked about how they could be better example to their families and friends (most of them are the only members in their family). And I just thought...how could life get better than this? There are so many amazing people in this world....but I feel like the best of the best are here...in Chillancito. Living with me in our apartment that is so tiny yet feels like what heaven is supposed to be like.

We have been trying to help one of the young woman in our ward out. She said one day she didnt think she had a testimony. So we had her accompany us for a few days. We went and visited a less active lady and she gave us some hard story that me and me comapnion had no idea how to answer. So we just kind of sat there....waiting for some inspiration...when sweet Claria just started talking. She bore her testimony and cried...and we cried...and the lady cried...and it was so amazing. And after she said "I think I know this is true. I get it now!" And we said YES! It is true!! Now go on a mission and convert thousands!

I can't express how much I love the youth here!! Last night (after accompanying us the whole day) they walked us all the way to our apartment. The whole time skipping and singing and laughing....and laughing at my spanish haha. And then I realize transfers is in two weeks...and I cry. Because the day I have to leave this place will be the saddest in my life.

My companion is so amazing and supportive. She is an awesome missionary and teaches bomb lessons! Hermana Lee`s and has been the biggest blessing ever to me. I have learned an incredible amount from her and been entertained by her never ending energy and humor. And Hermana Tejerina...oh easily one of my most favorite humans in the world. I dont know HOW I got lucky enough to end up with her. Not only does she braid my hair everyday, give me endless back massages, teach me spanish grammar for hours on end (and endless pep talks too) but she is easily the funnest person I have come in contact with. I know we were friends before. In fact so many times I meet here...I just think...this is not the first time we have met.

I used to think I wanted to be in America on my mission. With no dogs, clean bathrooms, less food and mayonnaise and english. But I would not trade this for the world. These people, this place that is so unbelievably gorgeous and the opportunity to be a missionary!

I hope everyone has a beautiful day and remembers that each person we come in contact with is a Child of God and has amazing potential. Lets try and see the potential in others and love them for the person they can one day become!

Hermana Orchard