Sister Jakob's Chile Concepcion South Mission Journal: Saying Good-bye to Teenagehood

Thanks all for the birthday wishes! Wow does it ever feel weird to be 20! I still feel like I´m a teenager and have the urge to say 19 when people ask me my age. Also...in the mission a lot of wrinkles have started showing up! WHAT HAPPENED I´M ONLY 20!!! #lifeofamissionary. Walking all day in the sun, stress and diet will do a lot.

Super excited to receive bday package from home! Thanks mom and dad! Canada, eh?

Micro SD card with loaded with EFY(approved) music and USB connector

Shoes! Yeah! I REALLY needed a new pair. This was so timely!

Can't live without Brookfield chocolate!.... and a bunch of other goodies!

On the 22nd, Hermana Lockling's birthday, we had lunch at the house of the Jarpa family. They had a cake of manjar (kind of like dulce de leche - so good!) and sang for us and gave us a pack of cookies with manjar (I´m going to have to bring some back home with me) as a present. The little miracle that we saw on her birthday is that we had a really spiritual lesson with Luis. We´ve decided that we needed to focus more on the Book of Mormon so we introduced it in a special way to help him apply it to his life. Then we shared our testimonies. He said that he felt the Spirit when he read it! Yay progress!

On the 23, the Jerez family shared a black forest cake (so good) and sang for us. There´s this thing that they do here in Chile on your birthday. You have to take a bite out of the cake after they sing. But...Hermano Yoni decided to push the cake into our faces! We got frosting all over our clothes and in our noses! Good thing that we live in the house next to theirs so we made a quick change after lunch.

On 23, it was rainy and the weather was really ugly. We were a little unanimated so we decided to pray in the street for direction to find someone that the Lord had prepared. We felt that we should knock on some doors around the house of an old investigator. We knocked on a door that I´ve knocked on probably 50 times in the past 6 months I´ve been here, and a blond haired, blued eyed women answered the door. We were a little surprised to see each other. She gave me a big hug and said ¨Una otra Rubiacita!¨(Another blondie!) She let us in and we began to talk. Her name is Edita and her parents were from Germany. She´s a very smart woman and had a lot of questions about how we interpret the Bible. We shared the Book of Mormon with her and shared our testimonies. She was very happy to accept it and said that she would share it with the rest of her family. We´re going to visit her again this week. I can´t wait to see how it goes. I know it was inspiration that my companion and I felt that this week we should focus more on the Book of Mormon. I also know that Heavenly Father listens to and answers our prayers.

Today we had an activity in Lota with la Zona (zones in) San Pedro, Coronel y Lota. It was great to see a lot of the missionaries from other Zones. I think about half of the missionaries from my first zone (Victoria) were there. We played volleyball, egg toss and other games (I don´t know what you call them). After, we ate a big BBQ with choripan (like a chorizo hotdog/sandwich) and steak!

Lota is really beautiful. It´s a port city built into the mountain side. It´s all hills (A workout and a half to climb), but I wouldn´t mind getting transferred there. Unfortunately I don´t have any pictures of the city. I couldn´t get good pics from the bus.