Sandwich

Familia,

The Spanish Bible is available to the world tomorrow!!! I am pretty excited and Ben is too. I don’t like the format of the bible we have now. I have done a lot of marking in this bible though and it will be a pain to change everything over.

I am getting more and more worried about my English everyday. Yesterday we contacted two girls from Europe that are here with an Exchange program. They speak some languages from Europe, English, and some Spanish. When we parted ways with these teenagers I was super frustrated. First, because they are atheists. It is really hard for me to be patient and remain calm when I am talking to athiests. It hurts me a lot to hear someone say we don’t have a Heavenly Father. After we left them I said to Ha. Chapman that now I know a little bit of the pain and discouragement my mom felt on her misión. I can’t imagine serving there with cold people, that don’t even believe in God.

The second reason I was frustrated was because I tried to talk in English and it was so hard that I ended up talking in Spanish. I’m not sure why this was so frustrating, but it was. Spanish and English are two different mind tracks and I can’t do both at the same time. Maybe with more time. Hopefully I will have a North American companion before Christmas so that I can practice for a week before we talk on the phone. But be prepared to hear Spanish!

I want to tell you about Alicia. This is how we met her. She was standing by a swing set in a plaza, she is about 70 years old. We walked up to her and introduced ourselves, her response was, “Senoritas do you have a cigarette?” We said no and I said, “Alicia smoking really is not good for your health, do you want to have good health?” She said yes and we gave her a pamphlet about the Word of wisdom. We returned last week and taught her in the home of her sister. She talked about random things a lot, but she understood the lesson and committed to be baptized. She talked about her pension and how she wants to use her money to buy herself an outfit for her baptism. She also told us that she is addicted to food and we can see evidence of it because she always has crumbs in her mouth and on her clothes. We promised her that we can help her with her addictions and that Heavenly Father wants to help her too. We asked her if she wanted to say the prayer to end the lesson and she said yes, but she didn’t know how. Ha. Chapman taught her how to pray with the sándwich method. Prayer is like a sándwich we always have bread on top and bottom, but the middle is always different, full of the things we want. After this explanation Alicia was ready to say the prayer and we bowed our heads when suddenly she said, “Do I need to go get a sándwich before I say the prayer?” I laughed so hard and was smiling to myself all during her prayer. We returned to see her this week and she said that her sister is really mad that she met with us and she can’t meet with us anymore. Sad. But hopefully we helped her in some way and she thinks she will be moving into the house of her son and will contact missionaries there.

I loved the pictures that I received this week of Matthew and the trip to Disney World. I opened the letters in the collectivo on the way back to Los Andes from zone class. I passed the Pictures of Matthew back to the other companionship that was with us and said, “¿¡¿Tan bonito mi hermano, cierto?!?” “My brother is so cute, right?” Of course everyone agreed. I laughed a lot to hear that he got rejected at BYU for not shaving. I hope BYU is all that you were hoping for Matthew.

How is school Jonathan? What classes do you like? How is the zip line and all the fruit at the lot? How tall are you now? You are going to grow so much this year, sophomore year is when Ben really started growing.

Dad, I found out this week that the recent convert, Christian that can’t talk, is an Electrical Engineer. Interesting.

We had hot weather this week. 30 degrees Celsius I have no idea what that is in Fahrenheit. It was fun for about an hour and alter that I just kept thinking about how I am going to die when summer comes. I have started my tan.

There is a new program in Chile to try to fix the problem of inactive members here. There are 5 million members here and most of them are inactive. The records for 2 million are wrong or incomplete. We received a document entitled “Permanaced” or “Abide” and it talks about the power of god, our obstacle in life, how Christ overcame this obstacle, and how we need to abide in Christ for all of our lives. It cites John 15, the parable of the vine. It really is so good and there is a program that goes along with it. We received training Friday in our zone conference and part of it includes us visiting 10 less active members every week. I don’t think I have told you, but we have a standard in our misión of what we need to accomplish every week. The standard is 1 baptism, 1 confirmation, 10 people with a bautismal date, 6 people in Church, 15 lessons with members, 5 other lessons, 10 investigators progressing, 8 received referentes, 5 of these from members, 8 references contacted, 10 new investigators, and 5 lessons with recent converts. That is a lot of things to do in one week and when we heard that now in addition we have to teach 10 more lessons each week. Stress. But I prayed about it and I really think this is the way to fix this problema in Chile.

I am working on my accent. This week an Elder told me I need to work on my "r" because that is the first thing that latinos notice. It is hard, my tongue doesn’t want to touch the roof of my mouth for every r.

Have a great week. Give everyone hugs from me at the family party! Hermana Arnold