05/01/23 Un Año (one year!!!!!!!)

 IM SO SORRY FUTURE ME, it's been two weeks and I have so many things to write about that I probably won't do any of them justice *sigh* 

Here's some things that happened, in no particular order 

■churros night: we made churros with members and had a huge successful family night with a bunch of recent converts. The churros were super yummy and now I know how to make them (wooo!!) 

■intercambios con hna Bateman, and the three more stories up miracle: the office hermanas came and did exchanges with us... we worked our tails off and went to go visit this one family but basically had an incomplete address, so we didn't know which of the 12 buildings she lived in, and the address was for the 6th floor of one of the 12 buildings (no elevators). So we did another contact that had the building number, and it was on the third floor and we decided, why not go three more stories up, aaaaand we found their house!! 

-conferencia de pte. Christensen: pte Christensen came to iquique and alto hospicio, and we had a zone conference which I thoroughly enjoyed, especially the focus on spirituality instead of tactics to get better numbers. They also had a conference for friends and members in alto hospicio which was super cool and completely focused on families. One of our member friends brought her non member husband and her three young daughters (6-10years old). At first her husband wasn't really listening and was on his phone or talking with the girls, but then they started talking about the duties of a husband and basically the talk was about the importance a father plays in the life of his children (especially daughters) and during that part he was zoned in. He denied it later, but we know he felt the spirit super strong, we could see the tears in his eyes. 

■another intercambio but w hermana smith: a very spiritual day, I met one of their friends and felt like I had known her forever. However, I probably won't get to see her again more than just at church, but she's a very special lady from Venezuela and is definitely gonna get baptized in the next month or two. 

■we found a really cool park. No further comments. For now. 

■tea party: we have some cool members who have a ton of old fashioned tea set things, and so we had a tea party with la hermana, her daughter, her sister and her niece. We had carrot and cinnamon and jasmine (or something?) tea with various types of sugars and fresh homemade lemon pie which was TO DIE FOR, she won't give me her recipe though the conversations were about Harry Potter and about random general conference talks. Así que, disfruté. 

■p day we hung out in the parkkk it was dope, the park has a ton of open space, and cooking grills and scenic places to sit in the shade and ping pong tables and a jungle gym and a play ground and it's huge and everything is made of cement. I love it. 

■everyone loves my card game... it's called Idiot. I'll teach you all when I get home in 6 months ;) 

■miracle of Francisco and Ernesto and Daniel: we were in a lesson with our friend Hermalinda and her husband (who was listening in secret the week before) came in and sat down and said, I wanna get baptized, what do I have to do to get baptized? So we explained some things and he said he'd do all of them, he's determined. So that lesson went way longer than we expected (and actually we weren't gonna do it in the first place but another lesson fell through and they were our back up plan... as a contact to invite them to church real quick) but it was part of God's plan because we left their house and crossed the street exactly on time to meet up with our other friends who were on their way home from work. We talked about baptism with them as well, and they were super curious. Even though we've taught them all the principles before, they don't quite get why they should make promises with God. But we were able to explain it to them then and there!! 

■another intercambio w hna bayolaaa: this was the next week, so 3 exchanges in 2 weeks. We got to talk about lots of fun deep topics and I enjoyed it. 

■we stopped by unannounced to a recent convert and woke him up (oops!!) But we were able to share a message with him that really seemed to have made his evening better... and then right at the end of the lesson, he remembered he needed to plan a lesson to give to the youth (that's he's calling), so he prepared it and showed up to church... aaaaand, fifth Sunday. Gets to save the lesson for next week! 

■hit one year on Tuesday... had twins born on Wednesday: two things that feel super significant. I officially have 5 sobrinos. 4 nieces and 1 nephew. And I've been a missionary for more than a year now. "A year??? For reals?? It felt super short!!" You might be saying... that's because you didn't live it  haha, but for reals it's kind of unbelievable that it's been a whole year since I got set apart and started in the mtc. Everything from here on is a repeat (mothers day, 4th of July, etc.) And when I get home my nieces will have 6 months  and ellie and dj will have 3 years ahhhh, and mo mo 8 months. They grow up so dang fast  

■met a really cool hermana who has been through some really tough challenges. She ended up telling us the whoooole story and she's been through some really really hard things, her name is Sonia, and I love her. I'm adopting her haha. She has a son who has one transfer more than me in the mission, and so she really is willing to love us and help us. On Sunday she gave us hand made scrunchies (when we went over the second time, she wouldn't show us what she was crocheting... and then on Sunday we found out it was because she was making those scrunchies for us ) 

■I ALMOST FORGOT WE CRASHED A FREAKING FUNERAL...

SO here's the story. We had a ton of lessons planned out, I was in intercambios w hermana bayola. At 6 we had a lesson with this dude in the church, to show him around and get to know him and allow him to get a feel of what we do in the church before coming the following Sunday. Well... he wasn't answering our texts or calls, so we go to the church to see if maybe he's already there, and there's some cars there... and then we enter the building, and there's a freaking casket in the chapel. Apparently, one of our members' dad passed away and we hadn't seen the invitation to the funeral in the chat... and the members were like, thank you so much for coming hermanas it means so much to us, it's really special that you came... so we were kind of obligated to stay for the rest of the funeral... which started more than an hour late, and they asked me to play the piano while people were entering... in other words I played the piano for like an hour and half for the funeral of a guy I don't know (#babysfirstchileanfuneral). The actual service was less than 15 minutes and they had a glass casing inside the casket, besides that it was pretty normal. They had cookies and coke in the back room, and a lot of people just kinda sat there pondering. I wanna say they do it differently most of the time, like in somebody's house instead of a chapel. Idk. We also arrived like a half hour late to a birt







hday party thanks to the funeral soooo... xd. 

■the weirdest lunch of my entire life. The lady sat us down and put unbreaded chicken nuggets with plain white rice and tomato slices in front of us (and tap water which we cannot drink), and then complained for an hour straight about ransom stuff, and didn't pause to let any of us get a word in edgewise. 

■another weird lunch, but I loved it. The hermana gave us lasaña and has Rio playing in the background for her granddaughter, and had the most infectious laugh. At one point her daughter asked me where I learned English (she meant to say spanish), and me being who I am, I said I learned English in my house of course, and the grandma (young grandma, fifty something) started absolutely laughing her head off, like tears streaming, knee slapping, head thrashing, almost peed herself laughing. Idk, but I love her. If her condominiums weren't such a pain to get into I'd visit her every day  

■A spiritual thing: 

Did you know it's taboo in the mission to talk about how many days you have left... well, right now I have 

•176 days 

•25 weeks 

•6 months

•4 transfers 

•1 general conference 

•0 things to lose 

I've been studying about the concept of change, and I've been thinking a lot about time. Because normally change comes with time, right? Doing good things over and over again bring good results (the first time won't necessarily do so), and doing bad things over and over again (won't necessarily do a lot of bad the first time) will bring bad results. But it takes time. 

However. 

Something that doesn't take time is the decision to act. And you have to decide every day to do the good thing, and not to do the bad thing, because doing the good thing will bring the good results. And if you decide really firmly at the beginning, the little daily decisions become way easier! 

With these 6 months I have left, I wanna choose to do the good things (study, exercise, work hard, etc.) in order to help those habits stay in place after the mission. Am I counting my days? Yes. Does that make me trunky? Emotionally, maybe a little, but in terms of work, not at all! It's motivating! I only have 176 more days to be a full time representative of Jesus Christ! To not have any other concerns in my life! 

It's that sense of urgency that helps me get out of bed every day. :) 

Anyways, life is good, even though alto hospicio is still just dirt, dogs, and traffic. 

Love u all! 

xo-hna griffin