Mission Adventures of Hermana Lauren Jennings: Missionary Splits

April 22, 2013

This has been a crazy week full of lots of different experiences and I learned a ton! My Birthday was Great!

My Companion and I at my Birthday Lunch.

My birthday party with the sisters in my zone

1. Splits with Hermana Silva

So the start of the splits has begun! My first spilt was with Hermana Silva, she is from Columbia. She is a funny person full of life and smiles. We had a good time together, and we taught some great people. The experience that really stuck out to me with Hermana Silva was when we visited one of her recent converts Luis. He has so much faith and a huge desire to serve the Lord. He was introduced to the church through one of the senior Elders here and he now spends his Mondays working for the church for free. He said to us, “This week I got paid and I got paid a lot and it is way more than I need so I have decided to work free for the church every day all week.” Wow, what faith what true devotion to God. I don’t know if I have ever thought that way before. It really taught me a huge lesson. Life is so not about what you make or what you have. He truly has the right perspective because the Lord comes first in his life. 3 Nephi 13:26-34 (http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/3-ne/13?lang=eng). I love learning from people every day and just learning ways that I can become a better person because this gospel is about changing every day to be more like Christ!

2. Sometimes we Make Mistakes and Things go Wrong......

Spanish is going along great but one of my problems is I always get 6 and 7 mixed up because they sure do sound the same. Of course sometimes I mix up the numbers but this time it was an inconvenience to someone else. We were planning a Family Home Evening around an inactive member, Andrea, who has a son who is three, Andreas, and she is a single mom. There is a sister in our ward, Miranda, that has just moved from DC with her husband and she has a son the same age as Andreas so we had a family home evening planned with both families. I called Miranda and told her it was at 6:30 and of course it was really at 7:30 so her and her husband showed up at Carmens house an hour early and we weren’t there. I felt so bad but there really was nothing we could do about it. Then we went to get Andrea and she was sick so she couldn’t even come. oh darn.... yep pretty much everything went wrong! But you know we really can’t be perfect at everything and sometimes things happen and all you can do is try to make the best of it and try not to let the same thing happen again. I am sharing this story for anyone who has had an experience like this so that ya’ll can see other people make mistakes too! For those who weren’t at fault you just need to just shrug off others weaknesses and love them anyways. Miranda did this and was not upset about my language limitations and forgave me. Life is all about learning and growing from experiences so don’t let a bad one ruin all the good ones! hahah Cause you will come out just fine! Just remember the gospel is the most important in the end.

3. Splits with Hermana Chavez

Hermana Chavez is from Peru and she really is the sweetest person ever. I loved being her companion for a day. It was an adventure because we both have the same amount of time in Chile but she speaks Spanish, but she is still trying to get to know her sector so we got lost a few times. I think she did great cause I am in the same boat as her trying to learn el golf (el golf is so huge we walk about 12 miles every day yep fun stuff!!) We had some great experiences. It was neat how some trials I have had in my life were able to help out some of our investigators we taught that day. By helping them out it also helped me out too to heal a little bit more. We contacted a lot and usually my comp does most of the talking but I did most of the taking with Hermana Chavez because she is a little shy. It was crazy because I was able to do it all by myself. I have never done that before and it was a miracle how the Spanish just flowed. We had the opportunity to go to her Stake Conference. I loved it so much. The Stake Patriarch spoke and talked about how one day he had a strong impression he needed to go on a vacation to the south of Chile he was like that is kind of a weird impression but he went. When he got there he stayed with some members and the members in this area lived in a district that didn’t have a Patriarch. Some of them asked if they could get their Patriarchal blessing (http://www.lds.org/topics/patriarchal-blessings?lang=eng) and before he knew it the branch president was called, then the district president and he was able to give blessings to members who had been waiting for a long time. For 2 days straight he gave Patriarchal Blessings to member in that area, it is amazing how the Lord answers other peoples prayers through His other children. So listen to those promptings because the Lord has work for you to do. Another cool story is that I got a reference for someone in my sector when I was in Hermana Chavez’s sector. Right before we were about to leave to end the splits we were walking and I saw a lady and I felt like I should contact her. I looked at her and was like there is no way she will want to listen, but I was like ok why not. I said, “Hola mucho gusto”, then she started to talk and I was thinking, “What are you saying?” My comp Hermana Chaves then said in English, “Where are you from?” Then the lady responded in English, “I am from France” Yes that explained why I couldn’t understand her. It was so neat because she is only here for 3 weeks but she said she would love to learn more but said, “I can’t read the Book of Mormon because yours is in Spanish. What was neat was that the Sisters in that area had a random French Book of Mormon. It was so neat because we got her information and they are going to bring by the French Book of Mormon to her. I learned that I definitely should not judge a book by its cover and that contacting in English was hard. It was funny cause I kept accidently talking in Spanish and it was weird to switch my brain to English because I always talk about the gospel in Spanish. haha I love talking Spanish!!!!