(Mom's Note: No pics this week due to technical difficulties, but found this picture in an Asian grocery store today. Lots of fun finding products with your daughter's name on them! )
On Monday we went to the beach with the Ruiz family. It was the best! We stopped by the biggest museum of trains in the world. It was cool because you could climb up into the engines and take a bunch of pictures. There was a restaurant in one of the booths but we didn´t stop to eat there. When we got to the beach, it was breath-taking! The sky seemed to roll on forever! And to the right, there was a big cliff about 50 ft tall that was beaten smooth by the waves. We took cool pictures on the beach then climbed to the top of the cliff and snapped photos of the skyline, the mountains and rivers. Apparently barges from Japan pass by at times but we didn´t see any when we were there.
Despite all the pictures we took, I´m afraid I can´t send any......the cyber cafe erased all of my pictures while I was transferring them from my SD card to my pendrive! Nothing was saved... I´ll see if I can find some pictures from my companions.
On Tuesday, we travelled to Concè (Concepcion) for Return and Report. It`s a conference for all the newbies and their trainers to see how they`re doing and how they`ve progressed. It was great to hear the experiences of other trainers; their concerns, joys and questions. I realized they everyone worries if they`re doing a good job training. I want Hermana Bentley to have the best experience ever and help prepare her the most that I can in the last 4 weeks that we have together. For lunch we ate Hawaiian Haystacks (YUM!). President Bluth and his wife drove us back to our sector after Return and Report. What a blessing because we didn´t have to suffer through the heat of the bus for 5 hours! We reached Padre Las Casas in time to visit a few investigators.
The other day we were walking in the street and a drunk man was walking down the other side yelling ¨CHINA! KUNG FU! HAI-WAAH! and sending flying kicks into the air. Chile never ceased to amaze me!
I was reading a little book of inspirational stories this week and I found one that I would like to share with you all it´s called ¨The Starfish Thrower¨
Once upon a time, there was an old man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach every morning before he began his work. Early one morning, he was walking along the shore after a big storm had passed and found the vast beach littered with starfish as far as the eye could see, stretching in both directions.
Off in the distance, the old man noticed a small boy approaching. As the boy walked, he paused every so often and as he grew closer, the man could see that he was occasionally bending down to pick up an object and throw it into the sea. The boy came closer still and the man called out, “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”
The young boy paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean. The tide has washed them up onto the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves,” the youth replied. “When the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them back into the water.”
The old man replied, “But there must be tens of thousands of starfish on this beach. I’m afraid you won’t really be able to make much of a difference.”
The boy bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned, smiled and said, “It made a difference to that one!”
Sometimes we think that we can´t make a difference; that our efforts won´t change anything and there are too many things we have to do. But every small act of kindness has an impact. Every person has been given the ability to shape your future and the future of others. Maybe on a world scale it doesn´t feel like your act of kindness has accomplished anything but in the world of the one person you helped... it makes all the difference.
Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God and by small and simple things are great things come to pass!
Love you all <3
Hermana Jakob
Needed that sweet story ! Miss our Hermana Jakob!
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