The One With The Earthquake

For pday we cleaned the house and bought our groceries and wrote our families. Then we went to Nayade’s house. We talked for a while, and then she taught us how to make cheesecake! She was pumped because she learned how to make a dessert from the United States, so it was fun getting all excited together!

                When we were baking, she looked at me and asked if I would be sad if she told me we weren’t friends anymore. Of course I said yes. She said, “Well I have to tell you that we aren’t friends – we are family.”

               We had a service with the 4 elders in the house of the Gomez family. They asked us to shovel dirt from one corner of the yard to the other… I have no idea what we accomplished, but we did as we were commanded. As we were shoveling and digging, we started getting lower and deeper. And all of a sudden we started to hear this sound coming from the grounds. It was like that wheezing sound it makes when you squeeze a rubber toy. We all stopped and looked at the ground way closely where the sound was coming from. Then Elder Jorgenson lifted up a piece of wood and on my goodness – THERE WERE 15 BABY MICE SCREAMING! It scared me so bad. I jumped so fast and screamed and it was so gross. I almost threw up. The elders started collecting them and putting the mice in a rubber bowl they found. Ewe oh my AND THEN the little Gomez boy ran and told his dad and they came back out with newspaper. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, they decided to BURN the mice. WHY? It was honestly the saddest, grossest thing in the world and I’m still not over it…

                But in other-much happier-news, we had an amazing lesson with Juan Pablo. He said something that really stuck out to me (I love it when the investigators teach the missionaries). He said that we all have our role models that we try so hard to be like. For some, it is athletes. Like Christiano Renaldo. People buy their jerseys, watch every game they play – some people even cut their hair to match what he looks like. People are willing to put in a lot of time and effort to prove their love for certain role models. Why don’t we put that much energy into becoming like Christ? Why don’t we sacrifice a small part of our weekend to worship the greatest role model to ever walk the Earth? Why don’t we strive to learn every little detail about who He is by studying His precious life in the scriptures? We easily change to copy world-known athletes, but we are slow and shiny when it comes to changing to become like the Son of God.

                After he explained that this is what comes to mind when he hears “take His name upon us,” I was LITERALLY speechless. It’s so true. In that moment, I sat there, looked at my plaque (I considered giving it to Jan Pablo since he could teach people much better), and I realized that here I am as a REPRESENTATIVE of Jesus Christ. Am I acting, thinking, saying, and doing exactly what He would do if He were here?

                This morning, all of our plans fell through so we decided to say a prayer and find someone new. After the prayer, we didn’t really feel a huge push to walk a certain way or anything. We just decided to keep going in the direction we were headed. We passed the house of a member, and as we passed by, a memory came into mind. A split second memory when this member had mentioned something small about her neighbor. I turned and looked at the house and thought that maybe we could see if they were interested. I turned around to ask my companion what she thought – but before I could ask her anything she just pointed to the house. We both knew that we needed to contact this house.

                It turned out to be a dad with his daughter. The missionaries had visited them a few years ago and they had gone to church a few times, but then the missionaries stopped visiting for some reason. I guess it wasn’t their time then. We set up a family home evening Monday night with them!

                There was an Earthquake! It happened at about 1:20 and so since it is Friday, we had weekly planning in the morning – so we were in the house about to head out the door to lunch. It felt so cool, like things started to shake a tiny bit, and then the whole house was shaking. It only lasted a few seconds so it wasn’t too bad. They say that the epicenter was in Curico, at a 7.0, but here it was only like a 6.4. All day, everyone was talking about it. It was so sweet when our DL and ZL called us to make sure all was well. But yeah not much happened, but all day people were a little bit shaken up. (lol didn’t even mean to be funny J.

                Also we were able to see Eylin again. She talked about how stressed she feels in her job and she can’t do everything. She was on the verge of tears for a while so we decided that it was time to prove the power of the Book of Mormon. Together we opened up to a story and started reading. Literally after 2 minutes she stopped and said, “Okay, I know this might sound crazy, but I honestly feel so much better.” It was so amazing to see and feel the power of the Book of Mormon. She promised to read it- even just one verse – every day.

                Oh and the cutest thing happened! We were riding our bikes to a lesson and my companion behind me said, “Hey Hermana, look!” I turned and looked and she put her feet up on the bar in between her legs. Her bike cruised for like 2 seconds before she got scared and put her feet back on her peddles. I smiled and cheered her on and told her good job. She got so excited and asked me, “wanna know how I learned it?” I said yes and she said, “One night when we were riding home, you did it. I’ve been watching you trying to learn how you do it. Now I can too!” I LOVE the lesson she showed me. That we are always examples. There is always someone watching us. Through our example, without even knowing it, we can teach, encourage, and help people become better at something or try new things. That’s why God said, “Be an example of the believers in word, conversation (behavior), charity, spirit, faith (actions), and purity.”

                We had 5 investigators in sacrament meeting and 4 less actives! Oh my Juan Pablo is so golden. He answered questions in principles of the gospel and I swear he is already a member. It’s amazing to see him progress.