Monday, January 19, 2015

Bautismo and Trunky Papers - Sister Hannah Avery

Written by Sister Hannah Avery, serving in the Chile Vina del Mar Mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, speaking Spanish.

Hermanas Avery and Moreno - Chile Vina del Mar Mission
Hey family and friends!

Well, we have had a VERY eventful week this week! It went by SUPER fast and well, I have no idea where to begin, but here it goes!

First off, we found two new investigators this week who are AWESOME! One girl is named Ca** and is the girlfriend of a boy in our ward. She is 18 years old and is reading the Book of Mormon, working on her Personal Progress, and praying. She wants to come to church, but her parents won't let her come. She told us last Friday that she wants to talk to her parents this week about letting her go to church without ruining the relationship with them in the meantime. She is amazing, we just need to get the "go-ahead" from her parents so that she can come to church and get baptized! :)

The other girl that we found this week is C**, a referral that we got from our Zone Leaders. We had a heck of a time trying to find her house, but in the end, we found it and she was more than happy to let us in! She has been going to church with her friends in La Serena, which is about an hour from our area here, and has been to church more than eight times! She came to church in our ward yesterday too, and is going awesome! We tried to schedule a baptism date with her for the 1st of February, and she said that she will think about it and let us know :) So, we will see her again this week and (hopefully!) have another baptism soon! :) Please pray for these girls!!

Okay, next, we had Ba**'s baptism yesterday! He was super happy, and was soooo nervous in the font, that when he came up out of the water, he came up really fast and bonked his head on the wall of the font really hard! I was like "OH MY GOSH!! Is he okay?!?!" and he just looked at us and started to laugh....sweet kid. He is totally fine though :) He is doing really well, and even brought his grandma, who is devout Catholic to the baptism and she really liked it! Maybe we will get to teach her soon too :)

So... I had a kind of freaky/scary thing happen to me this week! We were walking in the street on Wednesday afternoon and I looked down at my arm because it started to itch WAY bad all of a sudden. I realized that I had this HUGE bite on my arm. It had a black dot in the middle of it and a big red spot around it. Anyways, I disregarded it, thinking it was a mosquito or something, and kept walking along. Well, by Thursday morning, the bite was about the size of an small egg and had a LONG (like 4-5 inches) line growing out from it that itched WAY bad too! So, I started to get worried, and called our mission nurse, who is 5 hours away in Viña del Mar. She told me to go get antibiotics right away because she said it was possible that I had been bitten by a spider and got blood poisoning from the venom.... I was like, "what the heck is going on?!?!"

We ran to the nearest pharmacy to get medicine. When we got there, the pharmacist looked at my arm and said, "No, this is an allergic reaction to some bug." He told me to take Benadryl and put an ointment cream on the red spots. So, I did that Friday and received a priesthood blessing, and by Saturday morning, it was just a light pink color and MUCH smaller in size. Now, its completely gone :) Anyways, it was scary to me at first, but I'm glad to know it wasn't as bad as our mission nurse thought! :) And, I am not going to lie, that Benadryl made me sleep better than I have my whole mission! haha!

My "trunky papers"
We also had Zone Conference this Wednesday. It was good, and they had me give my "last testimony" to the missionaries. That was a weird feeling. After the conference, the zone leaders handed me a white envelope filled with my "trunky papers," also known as the "you got home soon and need to start packing" papers. Everyone was like, "AWW, Hermana Averrrrrryyyy.... pobrecita"..... hahaha! Yes, poor me, poor me.... I love these people so much haha! (Missionaries use the word "trunky" as a way of referring to packing their bags or "trunks"... getting ready to go home.)

Okay, another crazy story.....we were looking through our area book this week, trying to find some old investigators to teach from other missionaries who were in our area before us. We came across a lady named Bl**, who is about 60 years old and was an investigator for about a year and a half. For some reason the missionaries before us dropped her, but didn't say why. So we decided to go see her and find out why she stopped coming to church, didn't get baptized, etc.

We got to her house, and she let us right in! So, we are thinking, "wow, this lady is getting baptized then! She seems great!" ...WRONG!! We walked in, and she started to tell us about how she likes to meet with the missionaries because she likes to learn more about Jesus, but that she is Evangelist. Then, she started to tell us some really creepy things.... the Spirit totally left the room, and I was getting freaked out!

She told us that after she got baptized in the Evangelist church, she came out of the water and felt like her hands and feet were burning in the same spots as Christ's nail marks in His hands and feet. Then she said that ever since then, she has been able to "heal people" and make miracles happen. She told us that she had risen a baby from the dead, and even told an evil spirit to leave a possessed person's body, and it left through the top of their head "like black smoke."  By then, I was really getting freaked out, so I told her about the power of the priesthood, and how it is received. I explained to her that miracles DO happen and exist, and that people CAN be healed, but only when done by the proper authority. Well, she didn't listen to me.....

So, remember how I told you guys about my arm this week? So, we visited that lady on the day that I was going to get medicine for my arm, and she asked me if she could look at it. I looked at my companion with this horrified face, and she started to freak out too. We were both thinking that she was going to try to heal me! Anyways, she didn't, but she did tell me to go to the doctor, haha. So, no, we aren't going back to her house any time soon. Satan can mimic the real and true things of the Gospel (like priesthood power), and make people think that those fake things are of God, when really they are of Satan....scary stuff!

Okay, last thing for this week! This was a MIRACLE! :) We were walking in the street and I hear, "HERMANA! HERMANA AVERY!" I looked behind me and saw Al** and Ni**!! They are the people we were teaching in Ovalle over a YEAR ago who lived in front of our house! They recently moved here to Tierras Blancas in August, and invited us to come over! They have some plans now to get married, but not a date yet. We are SUPER happy, because maybe this is their chance to get baptized! It is a small world for sure! :)

Well guys, that is all that I can think of for this week! Sorry that this email has been all over the place, but I wanted to tell you everything I could think of :) haha! Anyways, I hope that you have a great week and I will talk to you all next week! I love you!

xoxoxoxo Hermana Avery

Training and "Just Havin' Fun" (January 12, 2015)

I Don't Know About You, But I'm Feeling 22!  (January 26, 2015)