Making Fire

6/25/2007
Hola to all.
It seems like everything is going great at home with lots of heat, I World love the heat right now. It is so stinking cold. We are freezing our behinds off but I am a pro at make a FIRE. I make a FIRE like twice a day. I have burnt myself a lot to. It snowed here the other day. It is supposed to be a very very cold winter.

It has been an interesting week. My comp is great, I am not living her a chance because I have been missing my other comp a ton. It is so hard, the changes are sooo hard. Every time I make a great friend, she leaves or I leave, it stinks but I know it is supposed to happen. I know she is great I just want to be with her. My comp is kina of in the same shoes, she didn’t want to leave where she was. But we will be great. She gave me a hugeee give today. We are in pto varas because i have to buy boots because mine are broken and they talk and the water passes through. So she let me call Alejandra and she is coming right now to come and visit me!!!!!!!!!!!!! Her husband is getting baptized at the end of the month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, miracle!!!! Seriously I can’t tell you how happy I am!!!!!! It was theeeeeee biggest shock. She is sooooooooo amazing!! So I am very thankful to my companion for letting me get together with her. She is happy for me also. I was a little nervous to call her, we went by her work and all but she wasn’t there. I am so excited to see her. Yeah, i am so pumped for her.

Oh yeah, happy birthday nana, sorry I forgot and happy father’s day dad, sorry I forgot. I know I am bad but I didn’t ever remember that there was a father’s day.

We have a baptism t his Saturday!! I am so pumped. It is cool because I was able to find her, be there for all the teachings and now i Hill be here for the baptism. I have seen her change so much, it is awesome. She is so much happier. In church she was like, yeah i am getting baptized, she is already stressed about being a visiting teacher. I love it. It is so awesome. It makes me sooooooooooooo happy. My Alejandra from punta arenas told me that she is getting baptized as well. I don’t have to be there for their baptisms but it is awesome to think that i really helped someone.

yeah, okay, so i am at alejandra´s house and I don’t really want to write, i am sorry. but I will write the next week. i hope that everything is going great, seems like everything is going well.

love ya all. peace out.

Sad Sad Transfers

6/20/2007

Okay, where to start, it has been a few interesting days, as it always is. It has really been a sad couple of days to tell you the truth. Hna monsalve left this morning for punta arenas, my old sector. We were sooooooooooooooooo sad. Seriously, we became suchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh good friends. We had such a good friendship, she told me everything about her life that had ever happened. We were seriously so so close. It seemed like we had known each other forever. We worked awesome together, we got along great, we taught great together, we were perfect together. She is one of the best friends that I have ever had. So it has been really hard. I have never felt so many contrary feelings in my life before, like on the mission. Ones of happiness and true sadness. I don’t know when I will ever see her again, I would do anything for her. We had the hardest time saying goodbye to each other. It sucked. So I am not going to lie, I am a little sad today. I know it is what the lord wants, I know it. But it is hard. I am here in frutillar with my other companion, hna Molina, she is from chile, from Rancagua, I think is what it is, it is south of Santiago. I am always with these Chileans. They are great. Hna monsalve and I had worked really really really hard this last week to give it everything we had to be able to see the miracles and show god that we are worthy of his blessings and sure enough we saw a lot of great things happen our last week together. This part of the mission really does stink a lot. It is just that you are with someone for so much time, all day, every day, for months and you get connected to them. We loved to talk we couldn’t even sleep at night because we would stay up talking. I truly felt the spirit strongly with her and truly felt god’s love. We made a great friendship and felt the love of Christ within our companionship. I feel so very very privileged to have been with her and gotten to know her. I thank my heavenly father for that experience. More than anythingggggggggg else we wanted to stay together. I was happy for her, she is in my old sector, I sent a bunch of letters with her to the people I know down there. I had fun thinking about them and what happened to me there, the people I met and all. It was awesome, I love punta arenas, it seems sooooooooo far away.

Lael, congrats on the baby, I hope everything goes well this next week with the babe, oh I guess I will probably write before you have him.

The cambios just stink because right as I really start to love someone, get really close, be friends with them, I leave or the lord takes me away from them. It is the way it needs to be, it just is a little fomeeeeeeeee. Such is life. Well, really that is all about me. I don’t have anything else to say really. It is freezing here, with a lot of wind. I know I have to step it up this cambio and be a great example being senor comp, she has been out for 9 months now. I will be completing a year on the mission this next week, crazy I know. I do love the mission. It is such a blessing to be here and get to know the people here. You truly to learn to love the people you share with and to really desire their salvation. I am known as the nosy one in the group because I am always asking questions and getting to know people. I love it, It is fun.

Thanks family for everything you do, for your help, support and love. The latinos here don’t have what I have had in my life. I feel very blessed. I feel blessed that god has trusted me with bringing the gospel into people’s lives. I love it. I hope all is well at home. Take care. Love ya all, hna pratt

Birthday Greetings

(It is so funny to see fall in June)

6/11/2007
Happy birthday to Chan and LeAnne tomorrow. I hope they have a great birthday and party it up, well with in it’s bounds. I hope it all goes well..

Lael, congrats to your brother josh for the wedding. That is awesome that he got married and they are totally happy. I bet you are nervous, you will be having your baby soon, ahhhhhhhhhh, crazy, and yet i have yet to see one single picture of you being prego, maldita gringa. Ay ay ay.

Bueno. I can’t believe that everyone is out of school already, that is soooooooo crazy. I don’t have a sense of seasons or time because I have been in the cold since august, it is never ending, and i will be into it until the next year when i am at home for the summer. A long span of cold.

Well, i translated the letter that my companion wrote to you guys, here it goes.

Hi, how are you, well I am hna monsalve, from santiago, chile and you daughter’s companion, hna pratt...well I have heard a lot about the Pratt family and good things. When I met hna pratt, to be my comp when we saw each other, i felt the spirit so strongly with her, and even more when we started to teach, you can feel teh spirit very strongly. I want you to remember always that hna pratt is a great missionary, comp, and friend. I feel like i know her from way before, i don’t have any doubt that we were friends in the pre-existence. I always ask her about you guys and she has a lot of love for you guys, she always tells me that she is very blessed with the family she has, then, one day i asked her how she shows that love for them and there was a minute of silence, she said she had never told you. So she has a job, i just felt the desire to describe to you guys to remind you that she loves you a lot and has the best of desires and intentions so that you are always happy family and eternal. I hope today you have your fhe and we will be reminding you. Hna pratt has a privilege, you guys are members of the church. My dad isn’t a member and doesn’t want anything to do with the church and my mom and two bros are inactive. But i am here sot hey also receive blessings and can feel the spirit, it is all i can do for them, so keep serving the lord as members of the church. There is nothing more beautiful than keeping the commandments and then be closer to divinity. Well we have to go, take care, lots of love sent your way and thanks for what you have done for hna pratt. I don’t have any doubt that who se is now is what you guys have done so she can have the success that she has in her life.

Yeah, okay, it was kind of long, but that is what she wrote. She is a good kid. We have become really close. And this time of teh cambios really stinks because this next week are teh cambios. So we may only be together another week, you never know. It sucks a lot that part of the mission. You really start loving the people and then you leave or your comp leaves and then you have noooo clue when you are going to see them again, none whatsoever. So that kind of stinks. But such is life.

So, we were laughing the other day, there is not one single stop light here in frutillar, i am sure we are in a town like Biggs but with more people, but stores wise, like Biggs. It is fully.

So the other day, we went by a menos activo. He is a drunk but his wife always goes to church but she got really sick and was in the hospital. We stopped by and he was drinking quiet a lot but didn’t have any food. He hadn’t eaten in days, since his wife had left. We talked with him and tried to teach him a few things. We left and at the same time we both decided that we were going to go buy some bread for him to eat. We went and bought a bunch of bread for him, they don’t have bread like we do, well some but not much. They sell their bread like buns or rolls. We went back and gave him the bread and i have never felt so good to help someone so much. He started crying, the look on this man’s face when we returned with food for him. He was so happy. We went by a few days after when his wife was home and he said that he thanks god for us everyday, the love that we showed him, the desires we showed to help him. That nobody had really ever tried to help him so much like we did. It is interesting because we did it and then totally forgot about it. We forgot that we bought him food. It was just something we did. It was something so incredibly small and the bread here is sooooooooo cheap. It cost like a dollar to buy him a ton of bread. It is interesting how the smallest things go such a long way.

So, we have a lady that is wanting to get baptized, we found her when i had been here for like two weeks about. When we first knocked on her door she wanted to listen but only for five minutes. She never had time for us, always working, never would read, never had time to pray. She was very closed and a little pesada, a little rude. But we kept going because she kept receiving us. The day that hna agurto was here with us, we taught her and hna agurto got her to commit to going to church to do a few things. After that day she changed. She has been going to church. We go into her house and she is happy, her kids are happy, she talks she cries with us, she does it all. She asks when we are coming back, she makes bread and shares it, makes jam and gives us some, best jam ever...blackberry, i loveeeeeeeeeeee it. She has invited us over for dinner. The works. We went over the other day with the branch pres and his counselor to give sonia a blessing. It was the most amazing experience. The spirit was sooooooooooooo strong. The blessing was amazing. Sonia cried during the entire thing. She is so ready to be baptized. She is soooooooooooo much happier than she was. She loves church and before she hated the churches. Like 20 years ago members would invite her to church but her husband never wanted to go and so she never did. 20 years later she was ready to accept the gospel and is ready to go. It is so awesome. The thing that sucks is that if i leave from frutillar i wont´ be able to see her baptism, but that is okay, i feel like she will be my first real convert on the mission, where i was blessed to find her and see her change and really gain a testimony of the church. She say that she is sure, she is down. I love it. We are so happy for her. It is amazing.

We are having problems in the branch but i think things are calming down. We are getting a lot more help from the members. The work here is really going forth. As missionaries we have a lot to improve. My comp and i have to stay focused, because being such good friends we get side tracked easily, i know everything about her life before being a member. Let’s just say that miracles are possible and changes can be made if the person really wants to make the changes. She is amazing and is so strong and has overcome so much. She makes me laugh all the time, i have almost wet my pants way too many times. We are seeing the lord work in a lot of people’s lives, we are really seeing how the gospel blesses peoples lives and i love it. We are finding a lot of people, teaching a lot, but we need to do better. The zone leader called us out on a few things the other day but it was something we already knew, had talked about, and set goals to do better. But still, it is always a little embarrassing. But he is a good guy, i have been with him my entire mission but one cambio, so we know each other fairly well. But anyway, that is about it.

Remember that next Monday i won’t be writing, you will here from me on Wednesday of the next week to know where i am and with who. We hope that we stay here together. We want to stay together. Hna monsalve is amazing.

Thanks for everything that you do for me. Thanks for looking for the rain jacket, thanks for always helping me, I really appreciate it. It is really cold here. But we are okay. I am so grateful to be on the mission. I have learn and seen so much, things that i do and don’t want to do. I have been happier than ever and felt more pain than ever. But it is always for other people, i love it. I love to be able to share these experiences with these people. There is no better way to get to know someone than through the gospel, to form a friendship based in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is amazing. I love it. I try everyday to get to know my salvador jesus cristo, so that i can have the desire, feel the need to share with everyone and see them as children of god.

Good luck with all for this next week. Love ya, hna pratt

We have moved to warmth!

6/4/2007

Well, it has been a very interesting week here in frutillar. We packed up the other house and moved into a cabaña, it is like a condo really. It is really nice and we have a wood stove and we have been making fires every day and we have burned ourselves a bunch of times already but we loveeeeeeeeeeee it. It sucked moving. It way bad, plus, justo, I got sick and that day we had to move. So we have been sick and moving and not working a whole lot with our investigators which really sucks. Never helps much. But we are in our other house and loving life now, it is awesome, we are so warm, it is heaven.

So we had a miracle happen that was way awesome. We went to teach someone for the first time, a 19 year old girl. I happened to be carrying my dvd player with me and so we decided to watch the restoration with her. By the way, what ever happened to the videos you sent, weren’t you sending me the testaments and stuff, I way want itJ but anyway. So the movie is like 20 min long. Five minutes into the movie the player starts flashing the light saying that it is out of batteries, I about died, because when it does that two minutes later it dies and done, I didn’t have the charger with me, so I was so nervous. We both started praying like crazy in our heads. I have you know, that the battery didn’t die for 15 minutes and it died right as the movie finished, just when the movie finished. It was awesome. It was a huge miracle, when god wants people to learn about the true gospel, he makes it happen, it was so awesome. we were stoked. So, we are having some problems here in frutillar, the branch is so small, there aren’t very many members that go to church everyday. We are having a unity problem amongst the members. Lets just say that sometimes, testimony meetings are the worst. Luckily, we had no investigators that showed up yesterday. We are having a hard time knowing what to do and not get stuck in the middle of it all. It is something that has gone on for years. And everyone talks to us, tells us everythinggggggggggggggggg, always. So, it is hard to bite your tongue and remember who we are and not get mixed up in the mess. We did kind of make things worse by moving but we had to move, we were getting sick and way to cold. But, the lord won’t let anything bad happen with his church. He will take care of it. Oh the letter was from my comp, she wanted to write you, I don’t know what it said, you will have to send it to me in Spanish so I can read it and translate it, I will look at the other and tell you if I can and let you know next week. Iu got a letter from Alejandra, she is doing well again, things have turned around and she has worked things out. She is awesome. Her husband is reading the bom everyday, that is so awesome. I love it. I pray that all will go well. The people here take care of us so much, members and the lady from whom we rent, will pass by our house and see if we have dry fire wood and if no, they will leave us some, they are so nice, they are way taking care of us, it is great. They are so kind. So, we have really really really been thinking a lot on how we can strengthen the members testimonies, because when it comes down to it they are losing their testimonies because they don’t read the scriptures everyday and they aren’t praying as a family and all that good stuff. We came to a conclusion, I have thought about it a lot. This is our question, how many of us really really really really know jesus Christ. If we know Christ we are going to obey and do everything we need to be doing. How many of us can feel that deep love for him that we should feel. I feel a deep love for people but they are people that I can see, feel, touch, talk to face to face, in person. How much harder it is to love someone that you have never seen. I lack this love, I know I do. I want to be able to feel this deep love for Christ, even though I can’t see him. Like mom, I imagine you can feel a love for dad that is so much stronger and different than the love you have for just anyone, or for me too, J. No, but can we feel this love for our savior. When we really truly begin to feel this love we are going to obey without doubting, we are going to do with out asking why. We are going to love our neighbors, help people, fulfill with all of our duties as members of the church. We are going to live righteously. We were sharing this with a family yesterday our thoughts one this. As I began to share this, I began to really truly feel this love in my heart. It is something so difficult to develop. But only we can have it if we study, pray, and do all the Sunday school answers, but they really are the only ways to do it. There is no substitute for these things. When I begin to have this love for Christ, being to feel it, I will be able to help my brothers and sisters better. I will have the desire to share the gospel with every single person, I will be able to love them for who they are, not mattering who it is. Because I will better understand the pure love of Christ, I will better understand the atonement, I will better understand what Christ has done for me and what I have to do to be able to be happy and obtain the salvation. The eternal life isn’t´ free, the immortality is free but we have to fight for the salvation. I am so far from having this love for Christ but I want to have it. I want to understand better. I want to be able to live in a manner that shows that I love him, that people can tell I am a member of Christ’s church and my actions show it, that I truly am a representative of Christ. That not only my plaque tells people who I follow. The little things are the things that make all the difference. We are working so hard in improving that but it is so hard, but do able. Well, that is about me for the week. That is what I have been thinking a lot about, what we have been going through. Time is going by sooooooooooooooo fast. I can’t believe it but last week I completed 11 months on the mission. It is going by way to fast, it makes me sad to think that I will be finishing around the corner. How difficult that will be. Times are hard, days suck but it is amazing how we are always happy. I love it. I hope all is well at home Love ya all, hna Jamie pratt, or as they say here, besitos

thank youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu for everythings, i really really really appreciate it, all that you do. thanks for raising me in the gospel, and blessing me with the example to have a strong testimony and be able to jsut live the gospel and not have to question why, just to know it is true.