IT IS SOOOO COLD

5/28/2007

Happy birthday to Justin, yeah, he is an old man, I actually have no clue how old he is now. No clue whatsoever.

So, yeah, we are moving ,we have been looking for a house, a place t olive because we are so incredibly cold. I am pretty sure that I have been way colder here than I was in punta arenas. We are trying to get moved in today but we don’t know if the mission is going to approve the place that we have chosen. So we will see. It is a pain to move but we have put up with a lot in two months. And the last two nights we haven’t slept because we have been so cold. They have said that it has been below zero, but that would be like 25 to 30 degrees for us. So it is a bit chilly but it is a very very humid and wet cold. But we are moving and now we are looking to buy fire wood so we can make a fire, that is the only way to survive here. But we are wayyyy happy today, cold still but happy.

So, as far as the work goes, we are doing great. My companion and i are great together, we get along perfectly. It is funny because we are together all day long and yet we still have a hard time going to bed on time because we start talking and then the next thing we know it is super late. But it is great. She is amazing and has so much faith. She is such a great example for me. We have been having a lot of success, finding a lot of people. We have put people with baptismal dates, one guy in the first lesson and now we can’t find him again. The other two, they aren’t willing to make sacrifices, like going to church. But little by little we are seeing amazing changes in some of the people. That is why i am here, that is what makes it worth while. That is what makes us happy, to be able to see how the lord blesses the people through us. We have found some awesome people here, with amazing hearts. It is amazing how the mission is changing me, it is amazing how I love small talk now, and hateddddddddddd it before the mission. It is amazing how i am generally interested in the peoples lives and before i couldn’t give a care .it is amazing how I want to do everything i can to help them to have a better life. It is amazing how i really know what we teach is true, it is soooo clear. All i want, from the bottom of my heart is that the people can understand so they can have the better life, we see what is on the other side of the fence, if they could just see it. It is amazing.
My comp reminded me today that as of today i have been out on my mission for 11 months!!!!!!!!! I almost had a heart attack, seriously. It is so crazy, i have left how much she has been out. the time has gone by sooooo fast. It is amazing, i have gotten to a point in my mission. My life has changed. My focus has changed .i just feel so blessed to be able to give every minute of my day to the work of the lord and to helping other people. We talk to everyone in the street, i have never had so many drunk friends before JJJ)J. No, but it is amazing how the things of the world don’t even interest me anymore. It doesn’t´ even phase me, they seem so trivial, what do they do for us in the scheme of things, in the eternal perspective. I can’t wait to come home and too see you all but it is interesting how it doesn’t bother me that i can’t go on the lake, i can’t ride my bike, it doesn’t matter. What i am doing is soooooooooooo much more important, these are the things that will last for the eternity. It is amazing how it is so clear, we just have to obey, i have been thinking a lot about the higher law, god’s higher law that we must live to be able to return to him someday. The spiritual law, like how much time do we really waste in our lives, idleness when we should be helping our brother and sisters, i was so good at being idle before the mission, wasting time. It is amazing how if we stop doing the small and simple things like not reading the scriptures everyday or not praying everyday, not doing it as a family, how it changes us, our testimonies can’t grow, we can’t learn or progress. How, if we don’t go to church every week no matter what, how we keep the Sabbath day holy, if we live all these things. They are so simple. But why don’t we do them, because we are more interested in ourselves. We don’t have faith that god will bless us as we keep his commandments. Do we really have a testimony of jose smith, that he was called of god and resorted Christ’s church. If so, why don’t we live the gospel. There is a talk from general conference that i loved, it is called, it is true isn’t, then what else matters. The church is true isn’t it, then what else in our life matters. Live it, love it, put everything into it. I have been thinking a lot about this stuff .i know the church is true, i know god lives, Christ is our savior, i know god called joseph smith as a prophet, i know we have the true church on the earth and within the temples we can do saving ordinances for ourselves and the people who can’t. I miss the temple sooooooo much. I would die to live at home, so close, an hour and a half away. People here sacrifice soooooooo much to go to the temple. Please, go to the temple. It is only something that is going to help you more than anything we can do at home. It is for our eternal salvatino to help out our brothers and sister. Please, set a goal to go once a month, and do it. I worry a lot about the family, and how we can never fall away, stay firm, but more importantly, keep progressing and never stop, never get lazy, never slack off. There is nothing greater than the gospel of jesus christ .i love it more now than ever. I love studying the scriptures and the basic doctrines, i have learned more with that then anything else. I know that here on the mission god puts us in peoples way so they can know their gospel and live it and change their lives. He wants us all to return to him but it is up to us. I am so grateful to be on a mission, grateful to be in frutillar and to have hna monsavle as my compaino, i am grateful for everything i have learned and how the spirit touches peoples lives through us. I always thought that my defect was that i never really had the spirit with me enough, i lacked the power of the spirit but hna monsavle says that she has learned from me how to teach by the spirit that he can feel it so powerfully when i teach. It was a reassuring feeling. She is great. We hope to stay together for awhile. J lvoe ya all. Please, follow Christ’s example in everything. He can take us through everything. Until next week. Thanks for your prayers, letters, and love. Love, hna jamie pratt

PS

don’t worry my comp found theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee biggest flea on me!! and then it jumped and hid in my hair!!!!!!!!!!!! i have so many fleas, i have flea bites everywhereeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Things are Turning Around in Fruitillar

Jamie Birthday Celebration

Compliments of Erica

5/21/2007

Well, hello to all. It has been an interesting week. I don’t really have a whole lot to share and am absolutely exhuastedddddddddddddd. I am so tired. So I don’t have a lot of energy to share a whole lot. Sorry.

Happy birthday dad, sorry I didn’t tell you last week, I got my weeks confused. Happy birthday last week and Jake happy birthday today. Hope all goes well and is fun.

We had our conference this week in pto montt. We were there almost all day Friday, we had to get up so early. We also had to get flu shots, my comp gave them to all because she studied nursing. My arm is still sore and the next day I was a little sick, but oh well. It is still swollen. I told her she was just taking her aggressions out on me. The conference was really really good. They are always good but the pres is a great guy. They sad matt is in Valdivia, they said he seems like a good kid.

So ever since my comp has gotten here things have turned around. We have been having a lot of success, finding a lot more people and the spirit is really really strong in the lessons. She is amazing. It is awesome. One day, I am not sure what happened exactly but I lost the spirit. It is amazing that after eight months of speaking Spanish and really if I don’t have the spirit I can’t speak. I had not one single word in my head. It really brought me back into focus again on relying on the lord and what he wants me to say. Really living my life worthily so that I can have the companionship of the holy ghost. The entire day, i didn’t have the spirit and we struggled in our lessons. We are finding a lot of people and it is great. I have learned a lot in this past week. My companion is absolutely amazinggggggggg. She is such a great example. It is amazing how close we have become in such a short time. We clicked right off the bat. We need to get better because we spend all day together and then we stay up late talking and it is killing us and not helping the work. We need to be better and go to bed on time because neither one of us can get up in the mornings. She has such a strong testimony and is so amazing. She has been through soooooooooo much in her life. It is amazing that she has been a member for 3 and a half years. I love to listen to her teach. We have really become good friends in a very very short time. It is amazing how an amazing companionship can really make the difference in the lessons and the work. We are gaining the trust of the member, of the investigators and we really are seeing eh difference that it makes. Because with out the members we can’t do anything with our investigatores. We have four people with a date for their baptisms, without the members the people aren’t going to be ready for baptism. We pray that their dates won’t fall through.

We also really really realized the power of Satan. Satan knows that with the two of us together the work will go forth very strongly. That we can help miracles happen and that we can help a lot of people to know the gospel. He worked on us slowly and surely and one day won us over and we didn’t realize it until it was too late. He is going to do what he can so we don’t do what the lord wants us to do here.
He is trying to tempt us as much as he can. But really, it is amazing how quickly i have learned to love and truly care for my companion in such a short time. She feels the same way. I am so blessed to be here with her to have this time together. We work amazing together. She has so many good ideas and teaches so well. It is amazing to be with someone like her. I am learning so much from her. I feel like I am being trained again.

Just imagine a town like Gridley, but smaller, that is where I am and things just are a little hard to come by. Well, that is about me for this week.

Love My New companion

5/14/2007

Yeah, no tengo mucho que contar, lo siento pero recien nos hablamos. Pero, erica, fue tan chistoso. Erica, it was so funny because the hermana said that she was talking so danggggggggggggggggggggg slow to you. She was talking as slow as she could so you could understand and then you told me that she was talking to fast. We all really got a huge kick out of it all. We laughed it up pretty good. But don’t worry, it happens to the best of us. It was funny. (Here is the story…as we called Jamie for the Mothers day call. We were worried about getting the wrong phone number and calling on time. We had been late in calling at Christmas. So when we called this lady answered the phone of course in Spanish and when we asked for Hermana Pratt she went off really fast in talking and she wouldn’t give Jamie the phone. So we just knew we had the wrong number..so Erica was trying to understand her so we could figure it out. She lays the phone down and is gone and we think she has gone to find someone to speak English. She comes back and goes off again. Then another voice comes on and Erica says Hermana Pratt please and the voice says Si Hermana Pratt, and Erica says Jamie and it was Jamie. Well I guess when we called a little early Jamie wasn’t there yet and the lady was trying to tell us that she was on her way and to hang on. Well it was funny but stressful because we just knew we had called the wrong number.)

So, hna agurto is writing me every week. She is so awesome. We really became good friends, it is said that she lives so far away. She is amazing.

Happy mother´s day to everyone. We went over to the familia rojas house because their daughter was going to leave with us and we wanted to come back. So we went back and they had once made for us, like super, and gave me a chocolate for my birthday. They are awesome, they were inactive, the parents, until their son just left on the misión when we first got here and now they are active again. They are great. It is awesome.

So, can i tell you my companion is awesomeeeeeeeeee. She is amazing, these hnas from santiango are awesome. She is exactly like hna agurto, I love it. But she is an amazing teacher and teaches so powerful. She has so much faith. She is inviting everyone to get baptized. We found a new guy last Light and in the first lesson we put him with fecha, with a baptismal date. It was a powerful lesson. We always say the first vision, we had to memorize it right. So i was saying the first vision and for the first time as i was saying it i totally got choked up as i was watching him look at the picture of jose smith when he saw god and christ, i could see that he was feeling the spirit and he wanted to cry. It hit me so hard. I know it is true, my voice started to tremble and i had to wait a minute. It was the most powerful experience. And earlier in the week i was saying the first vision and it was the same, to see in the people’s eyes that they are really feeling the spirit and it is saying that it is true. It is amazing. I love it. It is such a blessing. So in five days with my compainon we put 3 people with bautismal dates. We just have to do everything we can to make sure their date doest fall. It was so awesome. We are getting along great. She is so sarcastic, i love it. We teach really well together. She has only been on the misión for 6 months. I feel like she is training me, i have learned so much from her in such a short time. We killed ourselves the other day, we accidentally stayed up way to late talking, that is a goal we have, got to be on time because we are dying of sleep. It happened two nights in a row. But it is cool to though. She is so strong because her dad isn’t a member and her family is all inactive and aren’t even trying to go back to church. It is really sad. But she is way strong. I feel really blessed to be able to be able to be with her and learn from her. It Hill be a great time.

sorry, i forgot my cable to send you pictures of my comp, next week. and sorry on the phone, i really didn’t have a whole lot to say, i didn’t know what i could tell you. other than i am doing great, i have an amazing comp, second to my mamita, por su puesto. no one can compare to hna agurto when she taught me everything and took care of me so well. hope i didn’t bother you that i wasn’t real talkative, but what is new. so all the elders called us all morning wanting to know how in five days we put so many people with fecha, i just said, well, it is my companion, she is the one with the faith and the challenging fool. but it is awesome. we are so pumped. never in my life have i grown to love people so quickly like i have on the mission. we are such good friends already and have barely been together. she has already told me a bunch of things that really no one else knows. it is great. we will be awesome, hopefully we will be together for 2 cambios. hope all is well at home, send my love to all. happy birthday to jake, the day it roles around. cuidense! les quiero, hna jamie pratt

Horray! Latina Comp

5/9/2007

Hola a todos. So, yes, I am still in Frutillar and yes my companion went home, I left Her at the bus Terminal. My new companion is named hna monsalve, she is coming from pto montt with hna aros, my friend from punta arenas. She is from Santiago. She reminds me a lot of hna agurto, she is short and cutesy like her, so I got my Latina back. J so we just got here, I went to pto varas to go and pick her up. She seems like she will be awesome.

So, It is amazing to see how really timing is everything. God has everything so figured out. It is awesome, we have seen the lord’s hands in everything we do. We had a neat experience yesterday. We are working with an 18 year old girl, she is just like hna agurto. Her family doesn’t want anything to do with us and gets her In trouble and says all kinds of things because she meets with us. Her grandpa is a pastor of another church. We told her that she needs to pray to know if this is the true church, if everything that is happening to her is worth it or no, if their harassment is worth it or not. Well she said she prayed but waiting for the answer she fell asleep. The next day she had a dream. She said that when we first talked to her in the street, I just contacted her and gave her a pass a long card with the bom on it. She said this day has changed her life and will never forget it. So in her dream she saw as like she did that first day that we talked to her but this time it was different, this time we weren’t alone, there was someone with us, a man, a man in a white tunica, almost as if he were floating, but she couldn’t see his face. But there we were. It was so awesome to hear because really, we aren’t alone, the spirit is always with us and we have no idea. We have got company always, It was a neat experience.

Mom, can you send me those pictures that I told you I was missing. Thanks for the presents, and yes I opened everything early, thanks…J

Did you send that picture to alejandra?

Lael, kate was getting married or having another baby?

Han agurto was here this week, last Tuesday she went out teaching with us. It was awesomeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, just like old times but this time I could speak. It was amazinggggggggggggggg to see her and be with her for a couple of hours. She is amazing, but having a hard time adjusting to normal life as an ex missionary, even harder here in chile. I wish we lived a lot closer to be able to hang out after this mission, she is amazing. I love her. She made me remember who the missionary I was before and how I have slacked off and need to become the missionary that I was and even better. She always had such energy to work and go and do and do. She was an amazing missionary.

We also had our interviews with the pres. It was really good for me as well. I talked to him about how I don’t see too many results on my mission, they say if we have faith we will see baptismos, and so I guess I have no faith and aren’t seeing the results of my work. He told me that the lord measures results differently and we don’t always have to have the big grand results, I know all that but coming from him it always makes you feel better. He is a good guy and I don’t doubt his authority or calling, I know he does what the lord wants him to do. I talked to him abut alejandra and how it has been so difficult to leave her. We talked about the faith and love I had for her and how he says that my prayers now are more powerful than they ever have been in my life because of the faith and love I put behind them. I have learned more in this cambio than in any other. My testimony has grown more in the last 6 months than it ever has before. Of the scriptures, prayer, fasting, everything. It is amazing this cambio was for me, I don’t the pres if felt guilty, I feel like I have only done things for myself and it should be that way but he reassured me that this is my mission, these are my days, I am helping others and then helping me In the end. But if I could just take that faith and love that I had nad give it to all, it would be amazing. I pray that I can develop that for all the people.

We had some problems with the members this week, they seem to think that missionaries do allllllllllllllll of their callings, so we had some chatting with the branch pres and all. Got that all cleared up. People give their tesimtones about missionaries all the time, how they knocked n the door. How great will be the day when people give their testimonies and tell how their friend invited them, introduced them to the gospel, when the members do the missionary work like we are supposed to .when the new converts stay active because they have the members support. It will be an amazing day to see.

So I am wayyyyyyyy excited for my new comp, it will be great. She has been no the mission for 6 months. So fairly new still. I am pumpedddddddddddddddd, it will be amazing, talk to you soon.

Loe ya all,
Hna Jamie pratt