Merry Christmas!

Hello... tanto tiempo! :)

It was great to talk to you all yesterday! It was great to hear from you all. Just remind dad that if we go to the zoo I am going to start talking in Spanish to him. lol I am glad that you guys had such a relaxed Christmas, but a bummer that Steph didn´t want to drive down for it. Hopefully she is doing well. I still think that is weird to hear about Zach and his girlfriend. How long have they been dating? So is Steph dating this guy in New Orleans or are they ¨just friends¨. It is going to be so interesting to meet all these people when I get back home.

So as I told you all on the phone last night we had another baptism yesterday. It was a boy named Ian. It was a good service and the other Hermanas had a baptism too so we had a double baptism. It was a really neat way to spend Christmas. Also there were a lot of activities that they had in our ward.

We taught the pastor Christmas eve and showed the José Smith movie and he felt the Spirit so strong that he changed..... AND he can hardly wait to be baptized next month. That man is like a walking miracle for us. I have never met nor taught a Pastor that was so humble and ready to receive the gospel. He is still teaching a lot of people at the evangelical church so we are going to see if he will let us start to teach them. :)

Other then that everything is going good. This is the last week of the change so it will be interesting to see if I get a new companion or not. I am hoping not. :)

I love you all and it was great to hear from you all!

Love,

Hermana Lichty

Christmas Week 2011

Well Christmas is coming fast here in la serena.. We can´t believe that it is this weekend! But we are excited. The package that you sent with the Christmas presents arrived this week. We are very excited and it is a huge temptation not to open them. My companion is really happy about it too. It is so good that you sent her a Christmas package too. It is the only one that she will have this year. Nobody sent her anything. :( But she has been talking about this present that you sent her and how she is going to write you a thank you card in English. She is so nice. So today we are going to do an interchange in the morning so I can go buy her a Christmas present, I am thinking of maybe filling a stocking for her or something. I planned it with the other Hermanas so that it will be a surprise.

The work here is going great. It is fun to be here during the navidad. There are a lot of programs that the ward and stake have been planing so that has been fun. And we have our Christmas conference tomorrow. It is so crazy that I have been in Chile for an entire year! I remember last year we had the Christmas conference three days after I got here and I didn´t understand anything! So this year it will be a very different experience, I am looking forward to it.

The ward here is doing good and we are having a lot of success as a companionship. I am really happy about everything that we are doing and the progress that we are seeing. We are planning a baptism for the 24th and two confirmations on the 25th. So that will be part of our Christmas. ;) And the pastor that we are teaching is doing so good! We had a stake activity Saturday that he went to were we watched a video with Thomas S Monson and did some Christmas things. Then the next day he came to church again AND accepted a baptismal date! SO crazy, but everyone is so excited about it. He is still teaching people at the evangelical church, BUT he is teaching them the lessons that we are teaching him. So this is going to turn into something great. :) My companion and I are amazed and so excited!

We have some other people that are progress too and one that should be baptized new years eve, so that will be fun. Our ward is huge so there are two companionships working the area. My companion and I have the smaller poorer part and the other Hermanas have the other part that is like 3 times as bigger and closer to the beach. But I really love our little area! The people and families that we have here are wonderful. Also we got a new ward mission leader that is so much better. So I know that is really going to make things easier for us.

Hmmm.... I am trying to think what else.. the weather has been getting hotter. I have never been in a place with so much humidity! I thought is was bad in Viña. In our house we have to been really careful because mold grows very easily everywhere because the walls literally get little drops of water, because of the humidity. And there are always clouds that surround our area keeping the heat and humidity hanging in the air. Sometimes it is a little miserable in the afternoon, but it only lasts for an hour or two. But I love la serena there is always something new to see and someone new to teach. :)

Do you have a lot of plans for Christmas? Who is all coming to the house? I was thinking you guys should make a list of questions again so we wont run out of time. They want us to plan on only talking for 30 minutes this year.. so we will see. I still need to figure out all of the details with the other hermanas but I will let you know sometime this week. Is there anything else happening this week or for the end of the year? How is Stephanie doing.. is she still dating that guy with the dreads?

Love you all,

Hermana Lichty

12-12-11

Hello!

It has been a really fast week! We are doing really good here in Brillador! I really like this area. We had a baptism yesterday of a lady named Mabel. It was so great to be able to help her. She was someone that the Elders had found almost 2 years ago but at the time wanted nothing to do with them, or any of the other missionaries that passed by. But with time she was prepared to receive the gospel through a lot of personal trials and things. It has been amazing to watch her change! I have never seen a change so dramatic before! It was very humbling to see her at all of the appointments because she was always changing and talking about her experiences reading the Book of Mormon.

Oscar is doing good. We had two really good lessons with him this last week and he is thinking about being baptized because he realized that he wasn't baptized with someone that had the authority. It is crazy because we are the first missionaries to teach him that although he has talked to a lot of them. But from the beginning when we first contacted him he was very humble and had a real interest. But the last appointment that we had with him he showed us pictures of him baptizing groups of people so it will be amazing if we can get him to fully understand and he can be truly converted. So I am looking forward to watching him progress more this change.
The training that we had this week was good. Very long but we are learning a lot of things that will really help us to help the people. My companion and I are doing really great together. I am harder to get along with then she is.. lol So I am working on becoming a better companion.

So Jasper is doing a lot better with his manners. lol I am excited to meet him because he sounds really funny. How long were his classes.. like 6 weeks or something? Is the weather getting really cold? I am really loving the weather here :)

The pulgas here are not too bad, although I think that I am just use to them now. lol They have really liked biting my feet and ankles lately but it could be a lot worse. There is a hermana that lives with us that has this oil.. its called thieves oil. It smells like Christmas and it is suppose to help keep all the bugs away including the pulgas. So if you see any of that I think it would be fun to use on my bed. We have lavender spray that we are using from that lavender oil that you sent me. It seems to work but I am kind of sick of the smell. lol

We have a conference on the 20th so I am hoping the mail gets here before that!

Well I have to get going but thanks for everything!

Love you all,

Hermana Lichty

December 2011

Hello Hello!

It is so weird that I already have 2 weeks here in La Serena and that it is December! Ahh it is going by so fast! I feel like that next time I blink I am going to be in my last change. It has been a pretty crazy week. First of all I would just like everyone out there reading to know how much I hate lice and I never want to go through that again! We were up until two in the morning last Monday treating our hair and cleaning out the pension and we just finished getting all of our stuff washed. We are all paranoid now and are starting to wear our hair up more. Now when I go into bathrooms the first thing I look for and have seen are lice combs. I have a feeling that it is something very common here, that a lot of people have because they don´t wash their hair as frequently as we do. But I think right now we are doing good.

My companionship has been going very well so far and we are having a lot of success. I have been so surprised at how many doors are opening and the people we are meeting. The people here in La Serena are great! We are teaching a Pastor from and Evangelic church and he came to Church with us this week. It was sweet and he is reading like crazy the book of mormón and taking notes as we teach. I am really excited to see how he progresses. Also we had the best contact and lesson the other day. We had received a reference from someone last week and when we found the house and knocked on the door a lady came out. We found out that the person we were looking for didn´t live there but we started talking to the lady. We have a card that has a bunch of questions on it so I passed it to her and said, ¨have you ever had one of these questions before?¨. She looked at it for awhile and then said, ¨I know the the answer to this one already... (Is there life after death?).. we just die and that is it. There isn´t anything more.¨ I looked at her and then I ask ¨Did someone close to you pass away recently?¨ Then she said. ¨Yes my dad died two months ago and I know that I will never see him again.¨ I then said, ¨As missionaries we share a message about this plan that our Heavenly Father has for us and part of that means that we will be with our families forever, in this life and the life after this. And in this book, called the Book of Mormon it can tell you all about it.¨ She just  looked at us for a minute and then wiped a tear away from her face. At the end of the contact we left the book for her to read about where her father is now and made an appointment to visit her. Yesterday we went to her house and she let us in right away. We sang families can be together forever and then started sharing the plan of salvation. At the end of the lesson we went back and focused on where her dad was right now. Then I asked her, ¨If you knew that these things we taught you were true, how would that change your life?¨ She paused for a minute or maybe two, it was awhile, and then said, ¨How would it change my life? It would be a joy so immense that I couldn´t even describe it.¨ Then I started to testify telling her that I know these things are true, that she has a Father in Heaven that loves her and because of that he created this plan so she could live with her dad again. And as servants of the Lord we promised her that if she prayed sincerely wanting to know if it was true she would have a huge feeling of peace and calmness come over her. When I finished testifying she started wiping away the tears again. When we left the house I said to Hermana Cárcamo that I think she(the lady) felt something in that lesson. Hermana Cárcamo said when I started testifying at the end, the Spirit entered the room very strongly and she could see it in my eyes. It was such a powerful experience, something I wasn´t expecting.

But anyway it has been a good week and we are expecting an even better one this week. Senor companions have a training this week for two days, so tomorrow and Wednesday Hermana Norton and I will be training and our companions will be out working. Did I tell you that we live in our area this change. I am so happy because for the last 7 months of my mission I have had to do A LOT of extra walking because we lived outside our area. So this pension and area have been a huge blessing in my life. :)

Well I have to get going! Love you all and I hope you are all enjoying the snow!

Love,

Hermana Lichty