Monday, December 31, 2018

Ciao 2018!



FELIZ 2019!!!! I’m not that excited personally about it because its officially the year I come home tomorrow, so that stinks... PSYCH, I’m still pumped. President gave us permiso to be out until 11, stay with members for 3.5 hours, stay up to 1:30 and sleep in until 8:30!! I know that sounds totally lame to the rest of you, but in mission life, that’s gonna be TOTALLY CRAZY! 
2018 was one of the best years of my life, but something that I’ve realized as I’ve thought about it is that it has not been an easy year... at all! That just shows that challenges really are good for us, they are really the things that make us progress :). Not much happened this week, Hna Retamal went home on Saturday morning ;( that was sad, but I got to stay here with Hna Ramos my second comp from Brazil! That’s really fun. Here in the office, the culture mix is really interesting. There’s one gringa, four Brazilians, and one Italian... ha-ha. It’s kind of fun though because nobody’s first language is Spanish so we are all sort of lost all the time. This week we were able to see Raul, the guy we are teaching who will be baptized on January 19! He’s super prepared! I’m sorry I really don’t have much else to say! I hope everybody has a great new year! 

Love you all, Hermana Stanley







Monday, December 17, 2018

I WON'T Be Home For Christmas!


Merry Christmas!!!!! Many of you will have heard, but this last weekend, we realized that something was seriously wrong with my foot. I was still in a lot of pain, and so on Wednesday, they took me to get another x ray and see what’s up! I realized that if they told me that the bone was crooked, going home and surgery, if the bone was just taking a long time to heal, going home, if they couldn’t figure out what was wrong, going home. There were no good options and I just said "God, please fix this. I’m not ready to go!!" And you guys, God really heard my prayer this time, because when my X ray came back, they told me that my fracture looks great! The pain I was feeling was caused by too much time in the boot, and that it was time for me to take it off and start to walk without it, and that over the course of one more month, I was going to be walking like a normal missionary again!!!! So even though I love you all a lot, and I miss you, I’m sooooo happy to say: I WONT BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS WOOHOOO!!!!!! I really got scared there, but no!!! 

I can get the HECK INTO WORKING AGAIN, I’M SO HAPPY!!!! I’m just full of joy. I just can stop saying it, I’m going to be a missionary again!!! 

I am really being pushed as far as piano goes this week. I ended up having to learn how to play "O Holy Night.” I had about an hour to get it performance ready, and I ended up sight reading in a choir rehearsal, Far Far Away on Judea’s Plains.... in F sharp. Jajajjajaj, it was not that pretty let’s just say, but I lived through it. 

Today, I went and made gingerbread houses with the hnas in the zone, except without gingerbread cuz that’s expensive!! Super fun! I have the best time ever with my trio!! Yesterday we left to work for only like an hour, and we ended putting a baptismal date with a Venezuelan named Rafael, who happens to be a family member of a Venezuelan family in el conquistador  who actually were the ones who gave Valentina, one of my converts, as a reference! And now they live in my new sector!!! Woohoo!!! We went and did a service project with the zone where we visited and sang to old people, and I met this little old lady named Lucy who was a super adorable, and I got pics with her! 

We ate Colombian food this week. it was good, rice with roasted peanuts, chicken, and carne mixed together, with like lettuce wraps and this sweet honey sauce!! yummmmmm! 

Love, Hermana Stanley

Lucy



Monday, December 10, 2018

Lots and Lots of Referrals!


Hola hola hola! este es bien!! 
There was a Haitian guy in Monumento who only knew how to say that in Spanish, so we always used to say it, jaja!  

First thing to tell this week is that the Christmas choir that Hna Woodward put together finally started performing! We performed three times this week, twice in the feria, once on the corner of a university, and once in this gigantic park in Santiago called Parque O Higgins. I’s like the equivalent of central park! The first time, in just two hours we got 80 referrals! The second time also, the third time 70, and the last time a grand total of 115 referencias!! Wooohooooo!!! I love singing in these things. Funny story though, we have this piece called "Peace, Peace!" and it’s all slow and pretty about peace on earth. As we started singing it on a college campus, all of a sudden, the carabineros (police officers) SWAT TEAM parks their van in front of us, and a whole bunch of officers jump out in all of their gear, with these gigantic full body shields, and they start running up and down the street. Nobody could keep it together, jajajaja. I was in tears, I was laughing so hard. Luckily, it’s a short piece. When we got through it, we all just started laughing and we went to look what had happened. In Chile, we are having lots, and lots, and LOTS of protests, because some police officer in the south killed a mapuche (mapuches are the native people here). Anyway, the protests are really scary because they let off these bombs that don’t really do anything bad but they smell terrible and they hurt your eyes really bad (I think it might be tear gas but I don’t really know what that is sooo). Anyway, it was a small protest happening nearby but not anything too scary, don’t worry. :) 

Also, this weekend, we had a wedding and a baptism planned! In the end, only the wedding happened. Hna Miller and I felt impressed to have their baptism not so close to their wedding so they can focus on the promise they’re gonna make with God :). But the wedding was a total success. The only failure was that I didn’t get a pic with the bride and groom because I had to leave early to go sing! But I left my camera with my comp so she took pics!  

And the bad news as far as the baptisms goes is that.... I won’t be there!!! because I got transfers :/  This cambio, I’m going to be back in Esquina Blanca, which is the ward right there in the office, and my comps will be Hna Retamal (Chilena, who I already spent all last cambio with, and who suffers from her spine, though nobody knows what she has, she was supposed to go home but the area won’t let her for another three weeks) and Hna Ramos (BRASILLLLL and I have always wanted to be her comp, we’re like BFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFS. She has a herniated disc, and will probably be going home this cambio! :( ) but yeah, I’m stoked. I really, really love both of them and we are already good friends! Anyway, we are going to be in the office like full time, all day every day I think because both of them are worse off than I am ha-ha :) But they both have such good attitudes, it’ll be fun! The other fun thing is that, the two APs are from Brazil, and one of the two secretaries is too!! I’M GOING TO LEARN SO MUCH PORTUGUES! Last cambio, I finally made some serious progress on my Creole, so now I’ll be able to keep that up and remember that Portuguese I’d learned.

Love, Hermana Stanley 


Referrals!

Christmas Choir