Sister Training Leader

Well, a new transfer has begun and I am now serving in Chañaral!! I took an 8 hour bus ride and arrived about an hour ago. Chañaral is another smaller town like Caldera. It's on the coast, so I am currently dying from humidity. Hopefully, Iy will be able to get used to that soon. I am also what they call a sister training leader now, so that should be fun. I basically have to keep track of the girls in my zone and do exchanges with them. Plus every month we go to the mission office for training with the president and eat Papas Johns Pizza (real american pizza!!). I am hoping that this will be fun:)

Besides that not too much is new. We were able to put two baptismal dates with some investigators in Calama, but now I left,  so Hna Crum will have to take care of those for me. Also, on a not so great but then great note, I got rid of my pinworms, so thats fun. Oh, my new companion here is Hna Arenas from Peru. She seems really fun and nice. she is going home in May, so we will probably be together for two transfers.

Hopefully, i will have some super exciting news for you guys next week, once I start to get to know the sector. I am super excited to be here. It feels like a great place. (wel, l not the hot sticky part,  but spiritually speaking:)

Love you guys, 

Hna biggs

saying good bye to hna crum

"Lotion" The Musical

This week seemed to be a little long, but I think it was mainly because we suffered the effects of the biking trip for several days. I can finally sit down normally:).Plus I think the heat exhaustion has ended. It was still a fun trip though. This week we decided to take a little break and we went bowling. I havent been bowling in forever, but I guess I have some natural ability. I got 9 strikes in 3 games. Impressive I would say! It was a ton of fun too.
 

We found two new families this week to teach. I am super excited about them. We found one lady walking slowly along the street and stopped to ask if she needed help with something. She said no, and turns out that she was heading to the a less actives house whose husband had died last week. We too had just stopped by at the less actives house, but she hadnt been home, so we told the lady so that she wouldnt have to continue walking on. We got talking and she said that she wanted to come to church on Sunday because she was suffering a little depression since her son died. We set up an appointment to come and teach her. She was super sweet, and really liked the Book of Mormon. While we were in the lesson with her, four of her families came over to visit. We didnt share a message with them, but we did get all of their addresses! Yesterday we stopped at the home of two of the relatives and met even more people living there! We talked about the restoration and the older lady was so cute. At the end, we asked if she would say the prayer. She replied, "yes, but I dont know how". We quickly explained the steps, and she went about praying perfectly. It was adorable.

Also this week as part of the training with Hna Crum we had to watch some missionary videos. They basically just show how we can be better teachers and such, but we love them. Sometimes the missionaries are awesome, but its super funny when they make those mistakes that we all do. Well, the training is about to end and Hna Crum wanted to she what videos we hadnt watched yet. We found a 20 minute clip intended for mission presidents about how conferences can go. Basically, they just filmed a conference with some mission president from Texas I think. He was teaching the missionaries about inspired questions. The missionaries then had to practice teaching investigators and asking inspired questions one with another. The mission president went to a group of Elders that were talking about the Book of Mormon. He said,"ok, ask an inspired question". The elders were nervous but started talking. At one point the president stopped them and said, "Elder, youre talking too fast. Go to Heaven. Ask an inspired question." Hna Crum and I couldnt stopped laughing because he just cut them off and said "go to heaven".

However, that segment has been in my mind this whole week. After he stopped the misisonary, the elder thought for a moment and asked a way better question then his original comment. It was amazing to see that with just a few moments of thought, something actually inspired could come into his mind. I had been struggling with really knowing if I was listening to the spirit. We were having good lessons, so I assummed that maybe the spirit was just working with me. However, I think the spirit needs his time to communicate the perfect message to us missionaries so that we can then communicate to the investigators. I tried paying attention to myself and I felt that many of my conversations and lessons were filled with good things to say. They were socialable conversations, but when I took the time to think "go to heaven" if you will, I could feel a difference. I wasnt just saying something that made sense to say like " oh thats too bad that your son passed away" to something from the spirit like "how has Heavenly Father helped you through your sadness?" They're just little changes, but that led the conversations distinctly. It was really inspiring to see how if I just thought for a minute about what the spirit really wanted me to say and not what I figured I ought to say, the tones of the lessons changed.

I feel like every week I am getting better at the missionary thing. Its a long preocess, but thats the point of this life: to keep progressing always. I am glad I can always be learning something new.

I love you guys. Apsen, have a great birthday.

Hna Biggs

The Key

Thats awesome that you celebrated Three King´s Day! In Chile they dont celebrate it. They say its a Bolivian tradition, but I know Mexico celebrates it as well because we did it in Spanish class once. Our teacher even bought one of the Jesus breads from Food City. Sister Ames gave me some gifts last year for Three Kings Day to open when I was at the MTC, so I was refreshed about the holiday. 

The family pictures are adorable. I love them, and of course bragging about all of you guys and your cuteness to the Chileans. Sorry I am writting super late, but we went to San Pedro today and the cibers that were available didnt have internet, so we had to wait until we came back to Calama. We are super exhausted, but had an awesome time. 

San Pedro is a little city about 1 hour 30 minutes from here ( I had gone there about a month ago if you remember). We traveled at 7 am in bus, and then rode bikes to the Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley). It was super fun and the views were incredible; however we ended up biking 16.5 miles and walking about 4 (there were little trails and tours). Needless to say we were dying by the time we got back and we have some awesome bruises on our rears to remind us of the trip. 

We had a super uplifting experience while we were there. When we rented the bikes, we recieved helmets, bike locks, a spare tube, and a little bike pump. After biking about 11km we got to the ¨canyon and caverns¨so we parked the bikes and started walking to check them out. They were super pretty and we walked around for about an hour before heading back to the bikes. When we arrived, I relized that I didnt have the bike lock key in my bag. I silently prayed that I would be able to find it as I dumped out all of the contents of my bag. In the end, nothing!Hermana Crum and I decided to say a prayer and then retrace our steps to look for the key. We got up and went about trying to find our footprints in the sand and remember every place we had stepped and stopped. Interestingly enough a few nights before we had been talking about faith. We both are struggling a little bit (in different ways), but revolving around faith. I find that I normally trust in my self a little more than the Spirit and for that dont always feel that I receive answers to prayers. I also have a hard time trusting in that what I ask for can actually happen. Hna Crum had talked to president about her struggles and told me that he said that sometimes our doubt in ourselves prohibits that we see and make miracles occur. Well, now we were really in a tough spot. We desperately needed the bike key, but I couldnt stop thinking that it could have easily been covered with sand or fallen into an unspotable place. Plus we had walked so far, it would be easy to walk right passed and not even notice it. Everytime that those thoughts came into my head as we searched, I just kept saying a prayer. I was really reminded of the  father in the new testament that brings his son to be healed before Jesus and Jesus asks him if he has faith. He responds yes, but then says help me and my unbelief. In the end, we found the key! It was truly a miracle, and I could but cry when we prayed to thank Heavenly FatherI love you so muchHna Biggs

Champagne and Burning Men?

We did have a good new year ourselves! We had to be in our apartment at nine oclock, but we still celebrated inside. We made "mormon champagne" which is a Chilean drink with 7 up, crushed pineapple, and pineapple icecream. It was delicious, and we ate it with pizza. Then at midnight, theres a tradition here that you make a man out of all of your old clothing and bad memories and then burn it. We helped a family make one but obviously couldnt be there to see it burn, so we decided to make a small man out of paper and burn him in the shower. It was pretty hilarious because the dang thing wouldnt burn, but still it was statisfying. Then we did hair cuts and went to bed. It was a fun start to the new year. 

Hermana Crum with her champagne and the burning man.

Hermana Menay from the ward with our beautiful man made of old mission clothes and stuff found in our apartments. PS Say goodbye to the Vera Bradley:( It served me a good year but the metal hooks snapped just in time to make this man:(

Other burning men we saw in the streets

We had a great fast Sunday. The spirit was really strong in the meeting, and so many families came that  hadnt been in a while. It was fun to see all of them there. It was really an answer to my prayers as well. Hopefully we can keep them coming back. We had also fasted that day that we might be able to find new investigators for the rest of the transfer, since now a lot of ours are leaving town for summer vacations. We started our fast on Saturday, and the very first house we went to was a contact that we had made a while back that never had time for us. This time however, she let us in and wasnt busy!! Then we were going to start the lesson and she invited her family in (they were reluctant but she said just for the prayer they had to stay). Obviously we werent going to let them escape! We were able to share the restoration and commit them to read the Book of Mormon. It was great and gave us almost half of the number of new investigators that we had been fasting for. I felt like our prayers were answered immediately. 

 

Overall, it was a good week:) Love you guys

Hna Biggs