This week was much better

7/23/2007

Well, this week was for sure different then the last week. We worked our tails of this week. We had to work really hard because we were going to lose a day because we went to pto varas for matthias´s baptism!!!!!!!!!!!!1 it was the most amazing experience ever. I felt so many special things that I was speechless, seriously, they all asked me why I was so incredibly quiet. I didn’t have anything to say, i was just so happy i felt things so amazing. It was such a miracle because he didn’t want anything. He has an amazing testimony, you could just tell by the look on his face, he applies everything to the gospel. He is talking about getting alejandra baptized so they can go to the temple so they can go to Utah to visit all the church stuff there. It is amazing. He just is absorbing everything, taking it all in, wanting to learn everything. It was so amazing.

It was amazing to see all of the members from pto varas, they were happy to see me. It was great to see how i was there for such a short time but yet they all loved me, you can connect with the people so quickly. It was awesome to see my friends from there, all of them.

Seriously, I don’t have words for everything that i have sent since Saturday. I have never felt a happiness so big in my life. Such an amazing feeling in my heart, my heart truly is full of joy. The best part is is that it is a happiness for someone else, it is just seeing how happy they are, for knowing that they are choosing the right and living how god wants them to live. This is what gives me joy. Being to know that they are happy, it is the most amazing feeling in the world. I love it. It is a feeling that I never want to stop feeling, i never wanted the baptism to end. I wanted it to last forever. I started thinking about it. In this life everything has an ending and a beginning. Everything. The good times and bad times will also have an end. But what god offers us when we are in the celestial kingdom is a happiness that will never end. Something so amazing here is no begining or end. He offers us all of his joy and happiness, and we can feel like i feel foreverrrrrrrrrrrr. How amazing is that, that really is what exaltation, eternal life. It is amazing. I understand it a little better now, can see what we fight for every day, I feel like a got a taste of eternal life and can only imagine how much better it really will be afterwards. If everyone could feel the way I feel everybody would want to get baptized, go tot eh temple and live righteously, it is so amazing, i love the mission, it has helped me understand so much about the gospel. Because really i wanted to stay with alejandra forever, I didn’t want to leave her. She started crying when we said goodbye again, it is one of the hardest things ever to do. But it is such a blessing to be able to see her. She pleads me every time that we won’t lose contact, I laugh at her and say a donde!!! J i love her, she is awesome. So these last few days i have been trying to treasure what i felt on Saturday, to keep those feelings with me because they are so sweet and true. I know the church is true, it is the church of Christ and the only place that can give us such a true happiness a true joy, there really is nothing sweeter. Little by little i can understand what the prophets in the bom are saying when they talk about there joy, like in dyc 18 too when it talks about the joy god has when one soul is saved, and ever greater is the joy when more are saved!!!!!!! I love it!!

So, i realized the other day, after the baptism we did something bad, we went to their house for a little bit to compartir J yeah, there was another family there and the elders. They were all talking about i was listening really. I realized that the only thing i had to talk about was the gospel. So i pretty much started a lesson there, we all started sharing testimonies with matthias nad giving him advise. I realized that i am going to be soo awkward when i get home. The only thing i have to talk about is the gospel, it is my life, I live eat and breath it. It is amazing. It was a little awkward because I didn’t know what to say to mattihas unless it was gospel related, i am conly comforable talking about the gospel, and what is worse I don’t have a very big vocab in Spanish if it isn’t gospel related so I can’t add to much to the conversation, it was funny. I always promised I would never be awkward when I get home but I think it is going to happen. Because the other things don’t matter to me anymore, just Christ, his gospel. That is it. It was amazing. When i left pto varas i gave alejnadra a bom so she could write her testimony in it and give it to matthias so he could start reading it. She did and he did. He never put it down after that. He was constantly reading it and so when the elders started teaching he already had a testimony and was able to accept everything easily. Everything. The bom is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo powerful, it is really the keystone to our religion, if it is true, everything else is true. I have seen so many miracles with the bom, I love it, I love to study and read it. There is nothing better. We learn so much, god can teach us so much as we read it, it is such a blessing that we have it. It has changed the lives of so many people. It has for me too. It gives me the answers, the comfort, everything i need. It truly is a book inspired by god. Written by his prophets. I know this is the true church, i have no doubt, i know we have the power of god to preach the gospel and we carry the truth, it is an amazing responsibility and privilege. I love it.

Matt Carlson is in osorno.

And a few years ago the area presidency here was excommunicated for being in apostasy, for that, the churches here in the south are so weak too and full of apostasy, it is incredible to see how Satan works within the members and the church walls. It ceases to surprise me. That is all i know about matt, hna faulkner told me he was there and that was it.

Hope you guys are all great, that grandma is okay, congrats to chan for passing her test. That is aweosme, she is a smart cookie.

Study the scriptures, live the gospel, there is nothing better, it makes us sooooooooo incredibly happy, i love it!!! I am so grateful for the mission, it is such a blessing.

Yeah, this next Monday we don’t have pday, we have cambios, so i will write on Wednesday to tell you where i am and with who!!!!


Love ya all
Hna pratt

Times are Tough

7/16/2007

happy birthday Allison, hope you have a great birthday. happy anniversary nana and papa, another year down and you are still kicking. that is great. good work.

yeah, so I officially had the worst week of my entire mission, it stunk, I have never been so bad, I didn’t want to do absolutely anything. I didn’t want anything with anything. I am having a really really hard time with my companion. I don’t know what to do, I have lost all patience I ever had. I have been on the mission for over a year and never had real problems with my companion until now. we have to have confrontations about every day. She has problems and I don’t know how to help her. she is self esteem problems and is always wanting all the attention and if someone gives me attention she gets mad. she isn’t happy. I had the worst day on my mission the other day and she was totally happy, it was her best day. Things like that are wearing me down. You all know that I am not a person that cries. I had an interview with the president the other day. he asked me one thing and I have kept it all in for three weeks, well I told my comp the other day everythingggggg I thought because she always tells me how I need to change and what I need to do for her so she can be happy. well, lets just say in my interview I cried for about a half hour with him. it stunk but he understands what I am going through and is sorry for everything that is happening. I know we have to be here together, I know the lord sent us both here, I don’t doubt that, I just don’t know what to do. she has got so many problems that he said that if she doesn’t change soon she is going to have to go home and we don’t want that. he said that for some reason the lord put me with her so I could help her to grow up and change her. I don’t know how to do it. I don’t have the answers. I have felt so lost, empty, and sad. hna monsalve wrote me and it put the biggestttt smile on my face and hna agurto, they are planning on getting married her and her boyfriend. it seems like things have folded in on me. I think it is time that I am transferred but i would love to stay here igual. we will see in two more weeks. who knows. pres has written me and tried to give me words of advice to stick it through s o that i do what is right.

okay, I am sick of being negative. and I don’t want to talk more about her. i just had a really really sucky week and am over it and felt really crappy, the first time on my entire mission.

so this satruday, matthias, alejandra´s husband is getting baptized, I am sooooo pumped for that. it is so exciting, the lord works miracles in our lives, I love it. I am going to ask to see if we can go, plus I will be able to see them, even better. i really do love the mission, I love being able to meet people and bring joy into their lives. share with them the love i have felt in my life and the happiness. there is nothing better. we went touring a little today with a family here, we went to puerto octay. it was really really pretty. I loved it. we ate with a family the other day that live right on the lake, it is sooooo pretty. it is so pretty here, I it is incredible,

I hope everyone at home is going great, you are all in my prayers. I trust that the lord is taking care of you all. sorry I am not full of great things this week but today is a new day and it will all be different. and i will be able to see alejandra and matthias will get baptized. yeahhhhhhh.

love ya all,
hna jamie pratt

More Miracles!

7/9/2007

Erica, first of all, i think you sent me the blog like two months ago and yes i enjoy hearing from you.

What misión is nana in, what is it called.

Why do you need a tractor again, help me understand that.

Yeah so this week i saw a lot of miracles it was awesome. We put some old folks with a baptismal date. We have been working with them since before i got here. They are sooooooooooooo awesome. They are the cutest little couple and have like 76 77 years. They are so cute. We are soooooooooo pumped, everybody loves them. It is interesting teaching oldies because they understand like little kids but they are so ready. He has read the bom already and she is suffering from depression, just like every other person in chile. But it was awesomeeeeeeeeeee.

Then i heard from alejandra, matthias has really surely decided to get baptized. It was a hugeeeeeeee miracle. He is ready and wants to do it and accepts everything. It was so amazing to be able to talk to her. She truly is someone special. She thanked me for all that i have done for her, she said that she is eternally debited to me, for what i have done she will be able to have her eternal family. She said she can’t do enough to repay me, she can only give me her eternal friendship. It has been soooooooooo amazing to be apart of all of the miracles that have happened in her life and that she still includes me in it all. I love it. I thought a lot about what she told me. And really it is amazing because i didn’t do anything. I just did what the spirit told me, i acted every singleeeeeeee time the spirit told me to do something. It is the most amazing feeling to be able to know that i really am an instrument the god’s hands, that he really is using me to bring happiness into the peoples lives, to help them to return to live with him someday. It is amazing to see the outcome because it is for sure it was god and the spirit that were leading me to do and say the things i did and said. Sometimes we have a hard time understanding what if it is the spirit or if we were just making it up. But the scriptures teach us that we have to do things sometimes and then look at the outcome and by the outcome we will know if it was the spirit or not, i think that came form an ensign actually. But it doesn’t´ matter. It is so true. We have to be able to have faith and trust in god and just do the things. I have done them and now looking at what is happening it is so awesome. It is amazing how much joy the gospel has brought into my life and it is joy because i have seen the true happiness that other people can have thanks to the true gospel. I have totally happy but not for what happens in my life but what happens in their lives. It is so amazing, i have never served, thought, or done so much for other people, but it is the most amazing thing in the world . i am so grateful to be on the mission. I thank god everyday for being here and being able to learn from them and help them and more than anything having them help me. I love it. I know we think a lot about the end of the mission, but i am starting to realize that it really is going to be difficult for me. I love chile, it feels like my home. I love the people, maybe not every single one but i am trying. I even love the drunks guys that are in the street all the time, how can i not, they always propose to me. I have never had so many drunk friends before. They are so funny sometimes. I love getting to know the people here and learn about what they have gone through and how different their lives are then ours in the states.

Oh, mom, alejandra asked about you and wanted to know how you were doing and says hello.

Yeah, so i am having a difficult time with my companion, it is really a trial of my patience but i am learning igual. I had a little chat with her and told her a few things, of course i did it with love, i am not a jerk like i was at home. But she is not happy here and not happy with me. Well she says i am not the problem but who knows. I have tried to help her in every way possible, i have tried to do everything. But such is life.

Yeah, so hna agurto has a boyfriend and i am pretty sure that soon with be her fiancee, she is soooooooooooa awesome.

And yes i miss hna monsalve a tonnnnn.

We had our conference with the pres and assistants this week, we went to pto montt. It was awesome as usual. The pres and hna faulkner gave me some words of advise to help my companion. Pres said that a lot of times the lord puts the strong with the weak to help the weak get strong, so that was a little encouraging, he said that i am not the problem, she just has problems. Such is life. It will all work out. I am not worried, i am happy, the days are just long sometimes is all. But it´s all good so don’t worry.

Yeah, mom and dad, you guys will be coming here and so you needdddddddddd to study some spanish, the basics at least, you have to at least be able to try to speak spanish while you are here, so study up. Please!!! Hna monsalve says that we have to go adn visit her wherever she is so we can see each other before i go home, and yes i want to go to punta areans.

Thanks for everything. I appreciate everything you guys do for me, truly. Dad, i loved the talk you sent from pres hinckley, thank you.


Love you all thanks for everything!
Hna pratt

Baptism's Are Great

7/2/2007

Looks like everyone has had an amazing week, things are going great at home. Will send my prayers to grandma. I am sure that she will be okay. But everyone else is doing great.

Conrats to lael with the babe, looks like everything went great and smoothly, that is a true blessing. Your family is growing a ton.

Mom, I can’t start classes the second block of winter semester? The second block starts in like February or march or something, I don’t remember. But too you can email my teacher. Maria zanandrea, something like that. She is the pe department. You can look in my hotmail account and there is her address or you can look it up on the byu website. She would be great to talk to about the whole thing as well, what I could do. I am sure you are doing great with it. But I want to talk to pres Faulkner about what i should do. I don’t know when my interviews are but when we have them i will talk to him about it. Don’t worry, I will keep you in touch.

Yeah, so we had a baptism t his week, everything went wrong to begin with. Everything. The hot water heaters didn’t have batteries, nobody was there to help. The members didn’t show up, everything was a mess. But it was so spiritual in the end. We sang a musical number and messed up, but such is life. It was a great baptism and she felt the spirit so strongly, she was in tears almost the whole time. Then yesterday in church when we were asking for help for people to go out and visit people with us she was one of the first people to raise her hands and volunteer to help so she can share with people what she has felt and how she has changed. It was very special. Her daughter, the youngest, was walking around with her missionary bag with a bom and with her plaque, it was so cute. They are such a happy family now. It is amazing what the true gospel does for the people. It was so cute. I loved it. You could feel the spirit so strongly and she is so grateful for the gospel and the love that she can feel while she is at church. It is so cute. I am so happy for her. i haven’t had many baptisms on my mission and haven’t had any for a long long long time. But it was so great to see her get baptized, it was like a dream. It was awesome, a little sad that hna monsalve couldn’t have been there but that is the way life goes. I just pray and pray that she will stay firm and strong in her testimony and never go inactive but that she can raise her kids the gospel.

It was suchhhhhhhhh a blessing last week to see alejnadra, it was amazing. She is doing sooo awesome and her family is doing awesome. It is so amazing to see how they have changed and how great things are going. It makes me sooooooooooooooooooo happy. She is so amazing. I love her kids, they are so darn cute. It was a huge blessing to see her after three months of not seeing her. Being able to know people like her makes me mission worth everything. If she was the only good thing that happened to me on my entire mission it would have been worth while still. There are more things goood that have happened but still. I was sooooooo pumped to see her, i had a perm grin the entire day, it was awesome.

Yeah, so my comp is interesting sometimes. She has a shrink that she talks to every Tuesday. She has problems, not like she is nutty but she is very very sensitive. We all know how i am with sensitive people, i loose my patience, but i am trying my best to help her and not be a jerk but it is hard when someone has problems like that and then is self absorbed. I am even more direct and blunt on the mission than at home and so sometimes my mouth gets going in telling people what to do. Sometimes it is good but sometimes no. So i have a lot to work on with someone so sensitive. She is not happy here with me or with the sector, i am trying to make her happy but she has to make herself happy as well. So we are trying to work through some things. Prayers are great. I have to lose a lot of pride i know, i know i am prideful. But we will get through it and work it out, i am not worried.

It is interesting how many people have depression here, my comp last night told me she has depression, and i don’t know how to deal with that, i don’t understand people with it because I have never had it. But everyone here has it. Who knows.

On top of it all i realized how much weight i have gained since i have been here. Don’t worry, i will lose weight before i get home, it is a have to do.

So with all that is going on i have to say that still the lord is blessing us and leading us to people through miracles. We found a menos activa by accident because someone lied to us and gave us the wrong number and she was so needing the gospel in her life, ti was perfect, it was a miracle that we found her. It was absolutely amazing. The lord really takes care of us and it is amazing to see how he works. I know he works miracles in our lives everyday. That he has everything planned out so perfectly. That really as missionaries we are here to help people when they need it the most and god puts us in their path even when we don’t know what we are doing. It is amazing as missionaries we can’t be sad, mad or never can have a bad day. The people depend on us and never ask us anything about us. We are here for them and we have to have the spirit for them. I actually really love that, i love being there for them. My problems go away when i start worrying about them and how i can help them. I have learned so much about loving people on the mission. I know it has been really hard for me since my other comp left, i closed up again because i get sick of hurting or missing the people here but what blessings i have had to be bale to know them and without leaving i would have never known the other one. The mission is amazing. I love it and feel so blessed to be here, cold and all. The people here are amazing in frutillar i love it, i love being here, there are a tonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn of problems in the branch but i still love it!!!!

I hope you are all great. Thanks for your letter. Love ya all.
Hna jamie pratt