First Cambios (Transfers)

Hola familia y amigos!

So today was my first day of cambios!  I haven't even finished my training and they're moving me!  

....Just kidding!  I'm in Curacautin for another 6 weeks at least.  

Not much has happened since Wednesday.  I have some pictures of our zone and district as well as pictures of some of the members here!  

I've decided to make my companion a good home made meal every Monday.  She can't cook very well and making food for other people is something I enjoy.  Today, we made what's called "Papas de Pastor"  The potatoes here are so good!  Well, all the produce here is amazing and super cheap. On the main street there are fresh vegetable markets everywhere.  And the veggies are local too!

We have another baptism this weekend!  Her name is Gloria and she's almost 14 years old.  I thought she was at least 16 when we first met her.  She's been waiting for a little over a year for her parents to give her permission to be baptized.  Hermana Rimmasch and I were praying and fasting that the hearts of her parents, specifically her mom, would be softened.

This past week, Gloria's mother asked her what she wanted for her birthday.  Gloria said she wanted to be baptized and her mother miraculously agreed! It's amazing to see that the Lord is mindful of everyone, even a 13 year old girl.  I know that He hears and answers our prayers. You should never feel insignificant because Heavenly Father loves you more than you know.  Pour out your worries, fears and questions to him.  I promise you, He will respond.  He will help you, guide you and comfort you because God really is the perfect father.

Scripture of the week:  Matthew 7: 7-11

 7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
 8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seekethfindeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
 9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?
 10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?
 11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

Word of the week:  Negocio - a little store in the front of a house.  It's kind of like a corner store but all of them sell pan (bread)

Love you all!  Have a good week!  

Love,

Hermana Jakob

XOXOXO

We can cram 16 grown missionaries into a normal sized van!

Our district

Our zone

This is Natalia. She was baptized 8 months ago and is super amazing.  She comes out to teach with us about 3 times a week.  We´re helping her learn English.  She´s planning on serving a mission (she´s hoping Peru) and her family wants to go to the Salt Lake temple in August.

Going freestyle!

Hermana Ruth and her daughter Daniella and her first grandchild.  We´re currently teaching Daniella

Crazy Busy Week!

Hola Familia!

So this week has been super busy!  We had a zone conference on Thursday and then had to take the bus 5 hours to Concepción right after to attend Return and Report on Friday.

Return and Report was great!  It´s when all the newbies in the mission that came in at the same time, get together and have a conference.  President Bluth and his wife talked about how we can be better compañeros (companions) and how to get the most out of your mission.  I loved what Hermana Bluth said. She quoted `Choose what you love and love your choice´ (ie. mission, spouse, occupation,etc). We choose what we love, and things don´t go as smoothly as we expected and we sometimes forget that the path we chose was our decision.  We need to remember why we originally made that choice and think of all the blessings that came as a result. `The secret to contentment is being grateful for all your blessings.´

On Satuday, we had a baptism!!!  It was an amazing experience.  It was the first baptism for both of us (Hermana Rimmasch and myself)!  The Spirit was so strong during the baptismal service.  Hermana Maria Christina is friends with Ramón and brought her family to support him. She was crying tears of joy the whole time. 

Ramón is really special.  I knew he would make this life changing decision the moment I met him. I don´t know how, but I just felt it.  I remember when Hermana Rimmasch and I were sitting outside while out district leader was interviewing him for the baptism, I was praying in my heart that Elder Contreras would be sensitive to the Spirit and that Ramón would feel the comfort of the Spirit. As I was doing this, in my mind I saw a picture of Ramón dressed in white baptismal clothes and the verses of scripture in Doctrine and Covenants 18 ran through my mind. I felt a true and heavenly joy for him in my heart.  I imagine it was like what Heavenly Father feels.  

`If it so be that you should labour all you days in crying repentance unto this people and bring save it be one soul unto me, how great will be your joy with him in the kingdom of our father.´

I´m so grateful for this opportunity to be an instrument in the hands of the Lord in helping to bring his children back to Him.  It´s truly a sacred and marvelous calling!

On Monday we had an activity for the whole mission area (that's why I couldn't write until today)!  It was super cool to see every missionary in the Concepción sur (south) mission.  There are about 240 of us.  They held the activity in Triguien about 1 hour 45 minutes away from Curacautín at a school.  The school was cool because it was set up like a log cabin summer camp campus.  

Each zone had to create a banner and a gritar (cheer) for the competition.  We called our district the ¨Victoria Vikings¨ and sang La Bamba. There's a video of it.  I´ll send it if I can get my hands on it.  Each zone received a t-shirt too (great for memories!) with the name of our zone, the motto and the symbol for Concepción Sur.  Our shirts are pink :p

After the competition of gritars (cheers) we played a bunch of sports.  The first was a volley ball game with water balloons and towels.  It is SO MUCH FUN!!!  You should try in our ward with the young women!  Tambien (Also),  we had a game soccer base ball.  Unfortunately, the ball we used for it was shaped like an egg after all the punting and abuse it had been through.  It added an unexpected spin on the match.

We also had an epic match of dodge ball. One sister from Columbia couldn´t believe it was a really game. She had only seen dodgeball in the movie `Chicken Little.´  An Elder on the opposite team is nick-named `Samuel the Lamanite.´ I now know why. Near the end of the match, it was down to 6 of us and only him.  I don´t know how he was able to avoid all the bombardments of balls and pegged us off one by one until he ended up winning!

(The story of Samuel the Lamanite is that of a prophet who as he was preaching on a city wall, those launching arrows at him from below could not hit him or harm him.)

For lunch they fired up the BBQs and we had burgers and completos (hot dogs)!  Mmmm!  I love barbeque!  

For a surprise, we watched `Conozca a los Mormones´ or `Meet the Mormons.´ If you haven´t seen it, I suggest you watch it.  It´s super cool and explains a lot about our beliefs and values.  I´ve also decided to move to Costa Rica someday!  One of the families in the movie lives there!  It is SO beautiful! Hermana. Arce was sitting next to me during the movie.  She´s from Costa Rica and she started to cry when she saw the mountains and the sea. 

It was a wonderful opportunity to get to know the other missionaries in our area. As well, it was a reminder for me that as missionaries, we are not alone in this work.  I loved it when everyone sang `Called to Serve.´  I felt a great unity between all of us.    

Well, I´m running out of time.  Wish I could write more.  The Spanish is coming along.  Es mas mejor que al primera día. (It's much better than the first day)

Love you all!XOXOXO

Hermana Jakob

Look at all those Sisters... and President Bluth photo bomb!

Ramon at his baptism.  What an awesome day!

Elder Averado and Elder Lopez, myself and Hermana Rimmasch and Ramon's friend, Hermana Maria Christina.

 The kid in elder Averado´s arms is Rafa. He is 9 years old and is the son of Maria Christina.

Amazing fun water balloon volleyball towel toss!

Playing sport games on the field

Mmmm!  BBQ!

ALMOST A MONTH HERE!?

Hola mi familia!

So...I´ve been in Chile for almost a month!  How crazy is that? Where has the time gone?  It honestly feels like time has flown by!

I have amazing news!  RAMÓN IS GETTING BAPTIZED THIS SATURDAY!!  We are super excited!  When I got here, my compañera (companion) was thinking about no longer teaching him.  He wasn´t progressing and avoided a lot of appointments but I felt really strongly to teach him about the Plan of Salvation.  It´s just fantastical looking back at how some of our  investigators have grown spiritually and realizing that finding them was a miracle.

 I ADORE Viviana.  She´s the 17 yr old I talked about the other week.  She is a jem.  She asked if we could study chapters of the Book of Mormon that she´s read to help her understand. We read 1 Nephi 2 and analyzed the family of Lehi.   In order to understand something spiritual, we need to ask the source of all spritual knowledge--Our Heavenly Father--through prayer. Even the son of a prophet had to gain a testimony for himself by asking. 

We ran into some Jehovah Witness missionaries in Victoria when we were walking to our District Meeting.  They were super nice and had an Acer tablet! They shared a video with us right there in the street.  It was pretty cool.  We in turn shared about the plan of Salvation and gave them a pamphlet.  The one girl had great interest in the Book of Mormon so we gave her one of those with our phone number in it and planned to meet with them a week later. We´ll see what tomorrow brings! I´m super excited!  

This week, I woke up in the middle of the night to find a mouse scurrying down my bed!  EEK!  We decided to give the apartment a good clean-out today. It´s pretty much impossible to buy mouse traps here.  They just poison the little vermin.  So we bought some of that too.  Fingers crossed that helps.  It make sense that we´d have mice though.  Our neighbours sell animal food and right below us is a grainery!  

This week we read an amazing talk called ``The Fourth Missionary´´ by Lawrence E Corbridge.  This guy is amazing!  It talks about the different kinds of missionaries there are.  In reality, the only difference is thier attitude. It really changed my view on life as a whole.  I encourage you to read it. I think it not only applies to missionaries, but to members and everyone else.  Your attitude can help you get the most out of life.

(Link to the talk mentioned above in case you're interested.  Could be applied as a metaphor for life.)

https://www.freelists.org/archives/ourlunchgroup/11-2013/pdfdQPoSP5qZl.pdf

BTW -  I don't know if I´ll be able to email you next week.  We´re having a mission wide activity on Monday about a 2 hour bus ride away.  By the time we get back, the Cyber (where they email home from) will probably be closed.  We might be able to email a different day but I´m not sure.  

I promise I´ll send picture from the baptism!

LOVE YOU ALL! Les Quiero! XOXOX

Hermana Jakob

Panoramic view towards the mountains

Sorry.... there was one more picture but it failed half way through the upload to home!

A New Year!

Happy New Year!  I can´t beleive that it´s already 2015.  It´s kinda weird to think that I´ll be spending the next whole year in Chile but I´m super excited that I get to have this experience.

I´m not sure what to write this week.  It was a little slow because a lot of people had gone to Temuco to visit family for the New Year.  That or they had visitors so our investigators would cancel their appointments.  

For New Years Eve, we stayed in our house for the night.  We didn´t have any citas (appointments) for dinner so Hermana Rimmasch and I decided that we would try our hand at making sopiapillas (which are pretty much dough that you fry.)  Our first batch was terrible!  They were as hard a rocks but we kneaded the second batch of dough more and they turned out fine.  We like to eat sopaipillas with mustard and hot sauce or manjar (dulce de leche). After, we stayed up reading Jesus the Christ until midnight.  When 12:00am struck, the town´s fire alarm blasted for a whole minute and the people living downstairs broke out in a patriotic song. Hermana Rimmasch and I wished each other Happy New Year and promptly went to sleep. #missionarylife 

They whole New Years Day was a P-day. We made pankekes for the Elders at the capilla (chapel) and they taught me how to play ping pong.  It was a nice, relaxing day.

God led us to a 21 year old girl this week named Viviana.  She is super amazing!  She´s Catholic but has a lot of doubts about it.  She has an amazing knowledge of the Bible.  We gave her a Book of Mormon and she loves it because she says it helps her clarify teachings in the Bible. She had a lot of questions about baptizing children too. (and why we wait until 8 years old to baptize)

Today, we went to a little town called Collipulli (pronouced Co-je-pu-je) for a zone activity.  The main attraction for this little town is this huge yellow bridge.  It´s super high and super long!  Really cool! After taking pictures and walking across it, the Elders from the area took us to some caves. It was so beautiful!  It kinda reminded me of Webster´s Falls in Dundas, ON !   The first cave was super cool because the roof was held up by three pillars.  It kinda looked like someone had built and formed them but it's totally natural!  The rock here is a little different.  It´s not solid bedrock like we have at home.  The cliff and cave faces look like a bunch of round rocks mortered together.  It would be super awesome to go rock climbing!.  There was a cascada between two of the caves. I have a bunch of pictures of that.

I´m not sure what else to tell you...the weather here is a little wonky.  We´re finally getting into the warm part of summer.  It´s about 28 degrees here right now and I´m loving it!.  At night it can get really cold.  New Years Eve was about 12 degrees and super damp!  

Love you all!  Thank you for all of your support!

Hermana Jakob XOXO

(Mom's note - Whooot!  She got a new upload cable for her phone this week.  So as promised, lots of photos!!!)

Christmas with Hermana Rimmasch in their house.

Looks like packages and letters from home!

Now that's a way to make completos! (hot dogs)

These are the "successful" sopaipillas

The long yellow bridge @ Collipulli with the elders from her zone

The name tag's there somewhere under all that hair!

Trekking towards the caves

Inside the caves @ Collipulli

Enjoying the beautiful Chilean greenery

Inside the caves with interesting rock formations

A little bit of history from Wikipedia...

SOPAIPILLAS

In Chile, sopaipillas (or sopaipas) are known to have been eaten at least since 1726. Although Traditional Chilean sopaipillas (made in the central part of Chile) include zapallo (pumpkin) in their dough, it wasn't typically used in the South of Chile. Depending if they are served as a pastry or bread Chilean sopaipillas are traditionally served with either pebre (a sauce of onion, tomato, garlic, and herbs) or chancaca sauce (and then they are called sopaipillas pasadas). They are also served with mustard, ketchup, hot butter, guacamole, cheese or manjar. In Chile sopaipillas are traditionally made and eaten during days of heavy rain. Chilean sopaipillas are round and made flat by holes, usually made by forks.

CHILEAN SOPAIPILLAS

INGREDIENTS

9 oz zapallo- can use sweet potato, sugar pumpkin, or any orange squash (you want ≈1 1/4 C when mashed)
4 C flour
1/2 tsp soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 Tbs sugar
½ C butter

Cut squash into ½” cubes and boil over med-high heat until soft and easily pierced with a fork, ≈15-20 min. Drain (reserve liquid) and mash with butter. Mix flour, soda, baking powder, salt and sugar in a mixing bowl. Stir in squash mixture and knead dough on lightly floured surface. (add flour or reserved liquid as needed) Cover with a towel and let rest 10 min. Roll dough to 1/8-1/4” and cut into circles with a glass. Poke each one a few times with a fork. Heat vegetable oil in a skillet over med-high heat, cook until browned on both sides, 3-4 min. drain on paper towels.
*to decrease fat simply add less butter to the dough

In Chile they eat sopaipillas with ketchup and mustard, but they also serve them sweet dipped in spiced syrup- it's quite good if you want to try it:

SPICED SYRUP

1 C brown sugar

2 cinnamon sticks
3/4 C water
1 teaspoon cloves
1 whole orange, sliced in 4
Bring all ingredients to a boil in a saucepan, simmer 5 minutes. Strain syrup and keep warm. After draining sopaipillas on paper towels dip them in the warm syrup and serve hot with extra syrup on the side.

http://www.just-cook-already.com/2010/12/chilean-sopapillas.html

Christmas Week!

Hola!

It was so nice to be able to talk to my family on Skype!  I just wish that it had behaved a little better than it did (We had technical difficulties!).  Such is the life of living in a little rural town!  I will admit, when I saw all your faces I got a little teary eyed.  I was so happy to see you there Steph and Uncle Phil and Aunt Katharine! 

Steph - I hope my family treated you well and Uncle Phil didn't scare you off! Hahaha!  

Aunt Katharine - don't let Uncle Phil guilt trip you into sending me a package.  You guys have done a heck of a lot for me already and I really appreciate it!  

It was so strange talking to you all.  It felt like I had left just the day before and we were just Skyping to say good night...or something like that!

During Christmas Eve, we had dinner with Maria-Christina's family.  That was the family that came to the rescue during our Skype crisis.  They're honestly the best!  We baked brownies for them and Elder Alverado made Gnocci.  After that, we had a big feast!  It was delicious! I don't know how they cook their chicken but it is sooo good!   

We had to take a taxi back home.  That is the rule if we want to stay up past 10:00 at a member's home (it is the culture in South America to gather later at night).  But...the taxi didn't show up until 12:30am!! All of us were seriously overtired.  The ride home was hilarious though!  Elder Alverado was in the back making buzzing noises into a Christmas mug. Elder Lopez contacted the taxi driver at 12:30 in the morning! I don't think the taxi driver was very thrilled. Diligence and dedication!  

I received mom and dad's and grandma and grandpa Jakob's package and all the letters from the ward right on Christmas Eve!  The AP's (assistants to the president) dropped by in their mini-van wearing Santa hats.  They really were like Santa's elves.  Thank you so much for the gifts! I think my favourite is the slinky!  Gracias for the cards and the words of ecouragement.  I consider everyone in the ward my family.  I love you all! 

I love see our investigators progress!  We are teaching a man named Ramon.  When we first contacted him, he was pretty depressed.  His kidneys are failing him and he's waiting for a transplant. He just has a lot of health problems. With every lesson we've taught, I've watched a light enter into his eyes, he seems happier and he has a desire to learn more for himself.  I think a big turning point for a lot of investigators, especially for him, is when they attend church and feel the peace it brings.  

Viviana, Antonio and Barbara are another beautiful family.  I love them so much!  Viviana, the mother, loves learning English and is super good a it.  She studied tourism and traveling in university and practices her English every moment she can with us and she helps us with our Spanish! It's great! She doesn't like most churches because she feels that, oft times, they act like a store.

She really opened up to us this week though and told us that she had a 19 year old son that had committed suicide and how she couldn't understand why he would do that.  When I heard her story, I felt such sorrow for her that I started to cry (how embarrassing) and we started to teach her the Plan of Salvation.  She said she liked what she learned and that she would come to church because she could feel the love we had for her.

This is why I'm here!  Because I want to help my brothers and sisters, the people of this world, find true and lasting happiness in this world and in the world to come.  

BTW mom, my Visa Debit card isn't working right now.  I don't know if it's because of the technology here or if it's a problem on that end. I feel like it might be a problem on your end because the master and visa cards worked fine...though, my Master Card has been locked up after paying for the entrance fee.  It's quite frustrating but I'll live with it!  

For this reason, I haven't been able to purchase a new cable for my camera (cause everything uses cash down here and I can't withdraw anything with my cards) I'm really really sorry.  I'll send triple the pictures when I can!  Promise!

(Mom's note:  No worries folks!  We've got it all the banking stuff under control.  Some of these problems are just due to inexperience and communication!  The bugs are getting worked out and she is being well taken care of.  So sad there will be no pictures this week from Chile... :( )

I'm running out of time!

Love you all XOXOX

Hermana Jakob

(Seeing as there are no pics again this week, here's one from home.... a blog just has to have pics!  This is the kids' bunny Chester.  He's been sick recently but is much better now.  He's a real sweet heart.  This was taken during our Skype session with Hermana Jakob)

First Week in El Campo!

So this week has been a whirl-wind of activity!

I left the CCM at 7:00pm on Monday night and didn't get to the mission home until 2:30pm the next day.  I was so tired because I hadn't really slept in more than 24 hours but that went away as soon as we got off the last plane.  

We went straight to the mission home and had a lovely dinner with president Bluth and his wife.  They really are the sweetest!  We went around the table and all the newbies introduced themselves.  I was so nervous because in Mexico, I could get the gist of what most people are saying.  When I first arrived in Chile..... I'm going to quote The Best Two Years....."Elder, that's not the language they taught me in the CCM!"  Everyone here talks SUPER fast and cuts off their words!  They also use the vosotros form (not common or taught in high schools) and add "po" at the end of some of their sentences.  For example, when they ask how you're doing they say, "Como estei-po?"  

Heavenly Father has really blessed me though.  In less than a week, I'm able to get the basic idea of conversations and make small talk.  My mom (trainer) is really good too.  She helps translate for me but doesn't do it in english.  She'll just say it using simpler words so I'm constantly learning and improving. I just want to understand and be able to speak so I can help these amazing people!

My blonde hair has been helping us get contactos!  It's pretty funny.  A lot of people want to talk to us because of it.

BTW - my trainer's name is Hermana Rimmash.  She's from Utah and I'm her first daughter!("mom" and "daughter" are the terms they use when a more experienced trainer whose been out in the mission longer, trains a newbie who just came out)  She's been out for about 4 months but her Spanish is really good!  She started her mission in a costal town called "Lota" 

I'm currently in a little rural town called "Curacautin" about 4 hours by bus south of Concepcion.  It is SO beautiful!  They town is right next to a couple volcanoes and I can see the snow capped peaks of one of them right outside of our apartment window!  There are apparently hot springs a couple kms from here.  If I have time after my mission, I really want to visit them.  The landscape is a lot like Canada actually.  They flora and fawna is almost identical.  In fact, in this area of Chile, it's practically one big tree farm.  They plant trees, let them grow for about 15-20 years and then harvest them for pulp and wood products.  

There are a set of Elders here too.  One is from Argentina and the other is from Columbia.  None of them know how to cook, including my companion, so I'm going to cook a big meal for everyone on the 25th.  

I love being here!  I love the culture, I love the people! I had no idea I could come to love complete strangers but I do!  I just want to help all of them receive happiness in this life and the next!  The other day we were making contacts around a neighbourhood.  It was kind of depressing because we had had no luck.  We were tired and downtrodden but I was fervently praying in my heart that we would be able to find a beautiful family.  On the very last door we knocked on, a man opened the door.  At first I was a little leery because a lot of the men here don't like us for some reason.  Anyways, he ended up being a really nice guy and invited us in to talk to his family.  What a beautiful family!  They didn't have much but there was so much love between them!  The wife was very intuitive and asked a lot of good questions.  It turns out that they had a son too but he passed away when he was very young.  My heart went out to them!  I bore my testimony of how families can be together forever and did my best to comfort them. We left them with The Plan of Happiness and asked them to pray about it's truthfulness. Were going back on the 24th to talk some more to them.  I want to share the happiness this gospel brings to my life with them!

Sunday was great.  I introduced myself and shared a little spiritual thought with the members.  I don't know if they understood but it's all good!  Our branch is small here.  There's about 25 people in it.  They members are super nice!  We're going to be having a Fiesta de Navidad on Tuesday.  I can't wait to taste some Chilean food and experience Christmas here!  We don't get many dinner invitations because there aren't many members.  

So I won't be able to send anymore pictures this week until I buy a new uploading cable.  I forgot it :(.  So sorry!  I'll send a lot next week!

Lots of love!  Feliz Navidad everyone!

Hermana Jakob

XOXOXO

Mom's note....

Some pictures of Curacautin and area from Google images because she can't send any this week!  A teaser of the beautiful landscape...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ulysalis/8624018277/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curacaut%C3%ADn

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3748833

Email and Mailing Address

Mom's note.... I've had some questions about whether or not it is alright for people other than family to email Hermana Jakob .  Yes! We strongly encourage you to share news from home and great positive experiences.  Missionaries thrive on news and love from home!

You can email her @ eden.jakob@myldsmail.net

(I'd make this address a link but she doesn't need spammers to pick up on this!)


Please be mindful that the missionaries only have about an hour each week of computer access to email home during which time they need to read all the week's emails and respond to them personally and/or generally. That is why we keep a blog, to help her cut down on the time it takes to write friends and family in the hour that she has.  Usually I hear only the news that's in the blog unless there are some personal matters that she needs us to take care of for her from home.



If you can, please take the opportunity to write the snail mail way.  Missionaries LOVE actual letters and pictures from home.  Letters can come in the mail any day of the week and can be read or reread anytime, anywhere.  Hermana Jakob has mentioned that she LOVES snail mail!  So if you have a moment and feel so inclined, grab a pen and send her your stories and thoughts on paper.  

Keep in mind, good ol' Canada Post will charge you $2.50 to mail that letter under 20 g (that's about 4 or 5 lined pages) and $3.60 over that weight to 50g.  So please be mindful of the charge, especially if you plan to send a picture or two for her photo album.

Her Mission Home Postal Mailing Address is:

         
           Hermana Eden P. Jakob
           Chile Concepcion South Mission
           Castellon 1063, Oficina Sur
           Concepcion
           Bio-Bio
           Chile



Packages cost an arm and a leg and half a kidney to send!!!  The address for packages is slightly different as it needs to go to the equivalent of a PO box.  If anyone really wanted to send her something despite my warning, then please message me @ juliejakob7@gmail.com and I'll send you that address personally.