Tuesday, September 30, 2014

66th B-Day Hermana Talbot's Faith vs Fear

¡Hola mi familia y mis amigos!

Esta semana, voy a escribir mi correo en Español. :) Para que nadie me entiende. Jajaja. Mi mama probablemente va a usar GoogleTranslate para traducirlo pero ¡no puede hacer trampa! Jajaja. Nahhh I'll write in English, cause that'd be awful rude. :) The more and more time that I have here in Chile the more I realize that it's really amazing to know more than one language. Just hope I can keep it up after the mission.

We had a ton of people talk to us in English this week. It's so weird to talk back to them in English, especially in public. We had one guy in the metro who just kept staring at Hermana Tingey (that's normal) but had this look on his face of: "I wanna talk to you, but I feel so uncomfortable". So she talked to him to cut the awkwardness and he said he wanted to practice his English. Everyone just stared in the metro... But who cares. Then there was another guy in the street, drunk mind you, that came up to us asking if we spoke English because he wanted to practice talking. I feel so weird talking to them in English; it makes me uncomfortable and usually I end up speaking Spanish. Hahaha.

We had a special conference with President and Hermana Wright again this week. I feel like they really are trying to help us hasten the work. We spoke about many things, but the overall topic was "faith vs fear" base on an article written, this year, for mission presidents by President Uchtdorf. President Wright said it is the first talk he has seen by the First Presidency published to them on paper which also contained a world wide invitation for all missionaries to read. Hence, it has been a privledge in this mission to receive a copy and study it. Hermana Wright talked about a balance between having fear of baptizing future less actives (how terrible) and baptizing everyone no matter if they have a testimony or not. This balance lies in having the faith enough to baptize converts. Here in our mission we are more on the side of fear because Chile has an infinite number of less actives/inactives due to missionaries baptizing people without testimonies. Practically the talk by President Uchtdorf hit the nail on the head. In fact, the same day that Hermana Tingey and I read and talked about it, we had a trial of our faith. There are many promptings of the Spirit that you feel as a missionary. Sometimes they're as simple as needing to talk to someone. Well, we were walking past a park one day and there was a man sitting on a bench with his dog. We felt we needed to talk to him, but had already past the park. So we walked back a little ways, but then felt stupid because we had already passed him once...so we turned back around and walked away. As we were walking away, this talk came to my mind. Fear versus faith. Which one was I going to let win? .... Sometimes I wonder how many times fear wins in our lives? How many times do we worry about what others think of us before we're concerned about what God thinks? How many times are we discouraged and give up because we lack the faith to move on? How many times do we obey God because we fear Him not because we love Him? How many times do we feel overwhelmed or out of time to live the gospel on a daily basis by doing the basics of studying our scriptures, praying, attending church, and going to the temple? Anyway, just some of my thoughts of how I can do better while I'm here and also when I get home. Faith is action. May we all act in our confidence in Christ, so that we can further develop our faith in Him and not fear.

Invitation for everyone! This week invite a friend to hear the missionaries or come to church!!!! :) General conference is coming up! What a perfect Sunday to bring someone to hear a prophet's voice! If they say no, no harm done. If they say yes, introduce them to the missionaries. But if you never ask... what if they would have said yes, but you feared more than exercised faith...

I realized this past week how much I missed the smell of summer. Someone was mowing their lawn and I was breathing in to soak it all in. In my area now, there's grass, but people cut their grass by hand with clippers. So there usually isn't any smell. But anyway, I missed the smell of summer this week. :) Mom, this does not mean I love mowing the lawn..... I can enjoy the smell just as well if someone else cuts it. :)

Funny happening. We have a soccer field in our sector. There are always soccer games or practices going on. Always. Of course when we walk by, it's always fun to see them playing and having their friends and families cheering them on. Well, we passed the other day and there was a group of soccer players and the coach standing over another player laying on the ground. I was thinking, "I hope he's okay.". Then the guys picked the other guy up by the arms and the legs and started throwing him up in the air in order to kick him in the butt. Hahaha. It was hilarious!! We laughed for a while after. It reminded me a lot of the terrible things my brothers used to do to me (ie: Chinese torture, pinning me down, etc). So word of wisdom from the Chileans, if youre playing a sport and someone needs a kick in the butt, just start throwing them in the air and it's easier to do it. :)

As we were walking to the internet today to write you guys there was a very interesting person standing outside. Purple, huge mohawk, tattoos, smoking, piercings... ya you get the picture... He saw us walked by and he says to us "hey... hey... hey you!" We are ignoring him at this point because he sounds drunk.... he continues "hey!"... we turn around... he looks at us, points to his cheek and says "will you give be a kiss? just one... please!". I just shake my head, say NO, and we continued walking away. HAHAHAHAHHAA. Gotta love the experiences of Chile. =)

Dad. I am so glad to hear you are okay. You scared the crap out of me. It's the first panic attack I've had in my life when I saw that email from Brandon. Thankyou Brandon for keeping me updated and for taking good care of him. Thanks to Mom for finding President Wright's email. Thanks to Brett and Bryan for your part in all this to help him through. I am calm, worried of course, and content wtih the care he is receiving. =) Dad, you can do this! You're already up walking again and have far to go, but take your time and OBEY DOCTORS ORDERS. (Brooklyn's dad, Mark was in an motorcycle accident which resulted in a broken back and sternum)

Story time. So Saturday was the roughest, best day we've had in a long time. (1) I got out of bed an hour late (shhh don't tell President... well actually it was because I was literally exhausted due to being woken up the night before 5 times for a sick Elder which I ended up sending to the hospital. Good excuse right. Anyway, so I slept in because I literally couldn't function enough to wake up.) (2) We started out in the morning leaving the house late due to the need of studying an extra hour for special reasons. (3) We both felt really weird. Our spirits were down and physically we were tired. (4) A member Robert left with us for a few appointments, which all fell through. (5) Not a soul that we talked to was receptive. (6) Many people wouldn't answer their doors even though we knew they were home. (7) We were really hungry. (8) We came back to the house and ate a bowl of cereal [the solution to every life problem]... felt a little better. Score! (9) Called Alejandro, a wonderful investigator, to see if he could meet with us and he said yes - miracles never cease. (10) Had the very spiritual lesson at the Bishop's house in which we set a baptismal date! .... I tell you what, a super bitter day turned super sweet at 9:30pm. :) Endurance. Patience. Diligence. It really does pay off.


Kick someone in the butt this week, even it it's yourself.

Love you all.


Brooklyn

P.S. Go to this link and read this talk from Elder Ballard. It hit me straight to the core. He extended these invitations long ago for all members to be part of missionary work; now, he's following up. It's our responsibility to report our actions; and, if we haven't acted, I guess we should.

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2014/04/following-up?lang=eng

"Following up". May 2014.

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