Excited to be Together 9/15/14

Hola Todos!

This week has been a really great week! My companion Hna Landon is an awesome missionary. We are really excited to be together because both of us are determined to work really really hard this cambio. We are always thinking about ways how we can have more success in our sector. We are praying that we can find someone who will be able to get baptized in October. We know that if we do our part, the Lord will put someone in our path who is ready. 

This week, we had to be in the house early because the 11th of September is a day in Chile when many pèople do protests and it's dangerous for the missionaries to be out super late. My companion has uno cards with her so we played uno and I decided that it's probably best for me not to play uno in the mission because it brings out my competitive side... Also it just wasn´t the same as game nights with the fam and friends. The stake also had a noche folclórico this week because next week is Chiles independence day and it was super cool. Each ward did a traditional dance from chile. The culture here in Chile is super cool. I am super excited for the 18th this week, everyone says it's just the best.

 

This week, I was studying in preach my gospel about repentance and how missionaries we have to invite our investigators to repent. I had never done that specifically in the mission until this week. This week we taught two lessons on repentance and at the end we invited them to repent of their sins they had committed in the past and they were two of the most spiritual lessons that I have had here in the mission. I learned this week that repentance is one of the greatest gifts that God has given us. And more than it is just saying sorry, its a process of change, everytime we sincerely repent, we are changing to become more like our Savior. I love Alma 36, its now one of my favorite chapters in the BoM because it talks about the joy alma recieved from repenting and it gives all of us so much hope that we can have that joy in our lives too. 

I love you all and hope you have a great week! 

Hna Ayre  

Receiving Hna. Landon 9/8/14

Hola familia!

How is everyone doing? This week was a good week! It was the last week of the cambio and tomorrow I will be recieving a new companion. Her name is Hna Landon. I continue with only gringa companions. All of the other gringas in the mission have only had one or two gringa companions and the rest Latinas. I don´t know why I haven´t been put with any Latinas, but hopefully one day so I can improve my spanish! 

This week I have really gained a testimony of personal revelation. I had a hard day this week and I was kind of just down. I went to our room and got on my knees and prayed and asked Heavenly Father to help me. I opened my scriptures afterwards and I felt like He was talking to me personally through what I read. I have a testimony that God knows us personally and He listens to our prayers. He is very aware of what each one of us is doing in our lives and He wants our happiness. He has a perfect plan for each and everyone of us. If we but just summit our will to His, we will be able to understand that plan better and we will find the happiness and satisfaction that we are looking for.

 

So I don´t know if I´ve told you all this before but we are teaching a menos activo right now who is a clown. We have taught him in his clown attire a couple of times now and can I just tell you how hard it is to concentrate?!

 

I love each and everyone of you and hope that you are all doing good. 

Love 

Hna Ayre 

Interview Time September 1st, 2014

Hola Todos!

Wow so many things have happened this week. We had interviews this week and I love being around President and Hermana Warne. They are some of the greatest people you will ever meet. In my interview Pres and I talked about the one quality that has most changed about me since I have been on the mission. I feel that in my time in the mission I have learned to rely on my Savior. President shared the scripture with me that is in D&C about how we should let our confidence wax strong in the presence of God. We can have confidence that God trusts in us and that is why he called us to this work.

So this week, Hna Butler and I went to get popsicles and we entered the store and I asked for two popsicles and the guy was like, sorry we´re all out of cigarettes... Haha it was super funny, how bad that must have looked for him that two missionaries came into the store to buy cigarettes.. We clarified very quickly that we wanted popsicles.

So this week, one of our investigators that has been studying with the missionaries for awhile now and assisting church called us and said that she wants to be baptized on the 6 of September! We were so excited for her! We went to her house and we put all of it together and the only thing she had to do was have her parents sign the permission form and show up to church Sunday. Well, she didn´t show up to church Sunday and then she was texting a boy in our ward and said she thinks shes going to wait till October. We were a little crushed. But we still have faith that she can get baptized this month, we just have to go talk to her and see what happened.

Other than that everything is good here. I still love the work and am growing every single day in my testimony that I know that God is our Father in Heaven and he knows each one of us personally. He has a perfect plan and all we have to do is submit our will to His and we will gain the most happiness in this life and a place in the Kingdom of God in the world to come!

Love you alll!

Con amor

Hna Ayre

Sopapillas 8/25/2014

Wow, this week has been a crazy week. Right now Hna Butler and I are working in two giant sectors. You could say by the end of the night we are ready for bed.

I can´t believe how much time I have now been in the mission. I´ve lived in a foreign country for 6 months now and it feels like I just left yesterday. I feel like every day I'm learning more and becoming little by little the missionary that the Lord needs me to be. I feel like the Lord has given us a huge job to do in Rauquén right now especially since we are working in two sectors and sometimes I don´t know how we´re going to be able to help all of these people with all that we have to do. But something that I am learning is that I just have to rely on the help of the Lord.  This really this isn´t my job or our job to do, it´s the work of the Lord and He is in charge and if we do our part He will make up for the rest. 

So story for the week. Here in Chile when it rains, all the Chilenos make sopapillas in their houses. Which are like scones but they have pumpkin in them and they put stuff like ketchup and mustard and mayo on them. It was raining Saturday really hard and we showed up to a menos activos house and her two daughters were making sopapillas. Her 8 and 10 year old daughter live the majority of the week in the house by themselves because she has to work every single day. But as such, the house was a little bit of a mess when we came. We entered and there was dog throw up on the ground and so the menos activos started to clean it up. Well, while she was cleaning up the dog throw up, her daughter came up and asked her is the consistency of the dough for the sopapillas was alright and she just stuck her hand in the dough to feel it without giving a second thought to the fact that she had been cleaning up dog puke. We ate the sopapillas afterwords. You know, here in the mission you just kind of stop worrying about stuff like that. 

I love you all and hope that you have a great week! 

Love 

Hna Ayre

Saying Goodbye 8/18/2014

Hola Everyone! 

Wow, what a crazy week. Hna Beeston left this morning to go home and it was so sad to say goodbye. I wish I could have had more time with her. We seriously were instant best friends. Even better we both wanted to work really hard. I am so grateful that I got to be with her because she taught me a lot about consecration. 

Our time here in the mission really is short and it is so important to give it our all even when times get hard.  This week we found an amazing investigator. She was walking in the street and she had a face like she wanted to talk to us so we stopped and talked to her and supposedly Hna Novoa and Buttler had taught her one time, but then she moved houses and couldn't get a hold of them. We put a cita with her and returned to her house and she is super interested in the gospel. Her husband was killed in Ecuador in April and she is now living alone with her son of 4. She has just been so sad but she called Hna Novoa and Buttler after our lesson and told them that she just feels so much peace when were in her house. She also came to church on Sunday. I know that we are going to be able to help her find the peace and comfort in her life that she is looking for. I´m so grateful that Hna Beeston and I were paying attention when we saw her in the street because I know God put us in her path for a reason. She really is so prepared to hear the message of the gospel. I am so excited to keep teaching her and have the ability to see the healing powers of the atonement take place in her life. 

I know that God knows us personally and is always there for us if we but only go to him. He lets us go through trials because He wants us to become like Him and we can only do that if we go through these trials and learn from them and improve.  And even more we start to understand what true happiness is.

 

I love you all and hope you all have a great week! 

Aug. 11, 2014

Hola everyone!

Wow, this week flew! I can´t believe that I only have one week left with Hna Beeston, Im super sad about it. I would have loved to have more time with her.

This week, my knowledge of the sector was put to the test. Hna Beeston and Novoa went to the temple with president leaving me and hna Buttler here in our two sectors. Both of us only have two weeks in Rauquen. We had to work in the two sectors for two days and we were sooo lost. You could say we put some miles on our shoes those two days. Hna Beeston and Novoa will be going home next Monday and we will work those two sectors for the next three weeks. We will have lots of work to do. Those two days that we were in divisions I was a little stressed at first because I still felt so lost in the sector but I read a general conference talk and there was a quote in it that I love. It says, all of the easy things that have had to be done in the church have been done, from here on out its high adventure. It made me more excited for the work that we will be doing because it will be an adventure and that we will see lots of miracles. 

So crazy story of the week. There is a menos activo family that we are working with and they are really awesome, but their story is a little bit complicated. The dad and daughter are members of the church, the moms not and is divorced from the husband, but they all still live in the same house, but in different bedrooms. But we started teaching the mom the other day and she was so excited and we even put a baptismal date. But then we went to go visit the dad and the daughter and Patricia told that she's resigning from listening to us, so we were bummed, but like ok. Then we passed by on Saturday night when we were in divisions and Patricia opened the door and she looked at me and said why do you have to keep coming to our house. She was really upset with us and told us that jehovas witnesses only come out once a week and that we should too. I told her sorry for bothering her and that we hadn´t realized we had passed by every day (because we hadn´t passed by everyday) and then she felt bad and was yelling at us to come inside the house to talk with her. I was like yeah we´re going to call next time we come over, nos vemos.

  

This week I finished the Book of Mormon in Spanish! My testimony has really grown of that book and of the importance of reading it every single day. I feel like I have really grown to know my Savior better through my reading this time.

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

August 5th, 2014

Hola Todos! 

Wow, this week has been a really good week. I miss all of the people in my old sector, but I already love everyone here in Rauquén. My companion is awesome. I am sad that I only get three weeks with her. She has been a really great example to me of dilligence. 

Something that I have thought about this week a lot is the changes that occur in yourself when you are in the service of the Lord. As a mission, every month we are trying to develop a different attribute of Christ, and it has been something that has really blessed my life. Besides the fact that the mission is amazing because you get to help others make changes and come unto Christ, you yourself make changes and come unto Christ.  I love this work and I love that I have this opportunity to be one of His servants. I feel like day by day I get more converted to this gospel. I love that the more I learn about Christ, the more I love Him and the more I want to help los demas love him and serve him. 

This week we had a really cool lesson with a menos activo. She is a really deep thinker and really ponders about what we say to her. But this week we read in Ether 12 with her. At the end of the reading, we asked her what she could do personally to strengthen and show her faith in Jesus Christ. She said I suppose that I shouldn´t deny him. And Hermana Beeston asked her and in what ways can someone deny Christ. And she didn´t understand the question so we explained to her how when her son doesn´t do what she asks him to do he is denying her. And it clicked in her head. It was so cool to see her understand that you show your love for Jesus Christ by obeying Him. She had never thought in that before. But once she did she couldn´t stop talking about how it finally clicked in her head. It was something so simple but yet so profound. 

I love you all! 

Love 

Hna Ayre