Chile con Grace-o: I'm Two Months Old! And Also Twenty Years--Yeet!

Heres my cute district! When you stop being distracted by my blazing white shins, you will notice a cake.
It says "Bautismo" on the top, which I like to interpret as "Happy Birthday Hermana Siebach, you rock!"

Hola Amigos!!

What a big week! Two birthdays at once! This week I turn TWENTY and my 2 month mark was yesterday! To celebrate, I cried. But what's new?? Learning a language is hard stuff y'all. And I feel like such a noob because compared to Chinese and Japanese and Russian and Norwegian and practically every other language, it should be a piece of cake, but holy nuts! Why am I not fluent already!! Good news though, I'm starting to be able to understand my old lady friends! So happy! Because they're my favorite, but also they're usually missing teeth and have given up on speaking real words.

Okay! Now! For my miracles that I couldn't share last week!

ELSA. Elsa is awesome. She's probably 60 and she's spunky and curious and awesome. She has a sister in the US who is a member. She went to visit, went to church with her, and came back to Chile ready and waiting to learn. And then we knocked on her door! Not really, we yelled outside her fence. That's how you do it here. We talked about how we can have eternal families with the gospel and she said "But my dad died without the gospel so I will never get to see him again" NOPE. Put that concern to rest! She came to church on Sunday and it was testimony meeting and the spirit was on fire and it was all around a great experience.

CRISTOBAL & IGNACIO! 16 and 14. Golden. They're getting baptized this month! They were also in church with us this Sunday. It feels like we have lessons with them every day and the days that we don't, they often call and ask us questions or ask for more things to study. WHAT? How does that even happen? Not sure, but I love it and I'm so pumped for the rest of their lives!

NELSON. Nelson is awesome. I can't remember if I've talked about him or not, but he is 30-something, single dad, Catholic, and loves talking with us. He doesn't believe the leaders of the Catholic church have the right authority. YOU'RE RIGHT. But we do. Check it out, yeah?

There's an elder companionship serving in this ward with us. One of them is a gringo and we have decided to teach an English class. We all asked our investigators if they would be interested and it was a resounding "SI!" So that's happening!. I think it'll be great because English is awesome and also it'll get people to the church! It's a great place! More people should come!

Today I made applesauce with apples that apparently have been in the casa for 3 cambios now. That's roughly 5 months. And they were decently alright. Hermana Navarrete said they might inject their fruit here with something to make them last longer. I think she might be right.

Ughhh, every week pday is loco! They like to schedule all the things for our pday so we don't actually have time to do anything! Today was slightly more normal except for the fact that we had to buy all our supplies and food for the next three weeks. I swear we spent 3 hours in the supermarcado! Cookie making has actually not happened yet ugh! I can't find brown sugar anywhere! But I am determined this week to make it happen. Also I bought a little notebook for recipes if any of you want to send me the easy ones!

Daily lunches with the ward Hermanas are awesome but they are without fail about 2 hours long! So so soooo much time, but the ward is struggling and we are trying to form good relationships with the members. Also, there is a special type of bean here that everyone feeds us and it expands in your stomach and makes you feel like you're going to explode--it's awesome!!!

Speaking of exploding, Sunday I was fasting. but when that was done, I ate all of Chile! I had my first empanada, first completo, first sopapilla, first donut looking thing, and first drink thing with oats and peaches and other things I'm not really sure. All after 4 PM. Thought I was gonna die, but it was gonna be a happy death.

I have a spiritual thought but as per usual, I am running short on time. So here is an abbreviated version. Family history work is so great and important and I am FUMING with my old self for not taking advantage of all the resources we have for it. Everyone should do it! Do your family history work. This is someone's salvation and eternal happiness we are talking about. But also leave a few names for me so I can do it when I get back :-)))

Love y'all with the whole part of my heart that's not taken up by the people of Chile!

Keep smiling and hugging the people you love!

HERMANA SIEBACH

PS--All my pictures are about food. Classic.