p-day # 9

dearest family. :)
         ah! can you believe that i will be in chile so soon! i can hardly wrap my mind around the fact that i have already been out for almost 9 weeks. but really, i am so ready and prepared to go out to the field. we had our in field orientation yesterday, and they taught us all about how to work with the members, and set goals according to the mission president's standards of excellence. and we also learned how to find people through the members and in other ways. we had the lessons like all day long, so i was super flooded with information when the day was over, but i feel like an energizer bunny all tied up in a cage. as soon as i get out there, i'm going to explode. haha. i am just so excited to start running all over chile and talking to peole. :)
         don't worry about me having iodine poisoning. haha. my filter in my own water bottle was broken, and i hadn't drunk out of it before, so even though the water tasted weird to me, i thought it was normal since it was the first time i drank from it. but the next day,i opened my water bottle up to fill it, and it about killed me because the scent was so strong. so i talked to the doctor and he said i'm
fine, there aren't any recurring effects. i'm all better and healthy, so no need to worry more. :) they gave me a new water bottle and everything. the president's wife takes good care of me. :)
        so about this week... it was such a great week. :) it went by crazy fast though. haha. so on sunday, we had a relief society lesson about how to teach families and family home evenings, and hermana nielsen and i were like all bouncy and excited because, as hermanas, we just have so
much more leeway to be all fun! i am so excited to be able to teach families and connect to mothers by talking about their kids and stuff. it was awesome. :) then on monday, we went proselyting. I actually got into a bible bash with an evangelist in spanish... haha. that was fun. i have
no idea what he was saying, but i bore real strong testimony. one of his sons is actually going to have the missionaries over sometime.haha. and we talked to a man who was just sitting on the side of the
road. we all crouched down and started talking... and seriously the spirit was crazy strong. i never thought that it would be possible to feel the spirit like that while sitting on a dirt road, but it totally
happened. and he also wanted the missionaries to come over later. he was so interested. :) i seriously testify that the gift of tongues is so real. even though our spanish is way less than par, we bore witness by desiring him to know what we did, and he felt it. it was incredible. and then my favorite experience of the day... we actually found a guy who spoke english. he spent a lot of his life in arizona, where he actually was arrested for drug dealing. haha. he learned the
missionary lessons in prison, and he told us that he loved everything about the gospel. he said that he'd wanted to be baptized, but couldn't because he was prison. and then when he got out, he was
immediately deported back to guatemala. until we stopped to talk to him on monday. :) at first, he was telling us that he has a lot of friends that don't like the church, but as he continued talking and we
directed his questions to help him think more about what he believed, he talked himself right back into the testimony that he had gained in prison. he accepted our invitation to be baptized, and told us that he wants so badly to change his life to include the teachings that the gospel entails. :) ah. it was incredible. i am so excited for the missionaries to start teaching him again!
        well my time is almost out, but i just want to close with my short testimony that i know this gospel is the truth and the way to eternal happiness. this work is so incredible. we are serving our savior in his name, and this is our only chance. i love being amissionary so much! have a fantastic week! hermana spencer