Barrio Patronato

8 December 2014

For P-day we went to Patronato to go shopping. It was worth it just to hear a bunch of Chinese people speaking Chilean Spanish and selling the same things that Trendy Happens has. There is very little missionary appropriate clothing. I was looking at a shirt with sleeves on a manikin and a salesperson came up and said "This one's beautiful. Look at the detail on the back." What back? Never mind. I saw a mother shopping with her daughter who asked another salesperson if a similar shirt came without sleeves. I did buy a watch because I lost mine and what kind of missionary doesn't have a watch? And I found two shirts. I missed Utah stores and mostly my best friend and personal shopper.

Adrenaline! I woke up kind of tired on Sunday but after a cold shower because we ran out of gas and the adrenaline from spider hunting, I was wide awake for church. I had gone to the room where my suitcases are and knelt down to get something. The sun shone through the window and revealed the silhouette of the largest spider I have ever had the pleasure to encounter clinging to the other side of the curtain. I have already been designated as the spider slayer of the companionship because Hermana Nuñez has a phobia, but this one was too huge to squish. I had to show it to Hermana Nuñez just to see her reaction. It was a bad idea. She couldn't even stay calm if I was near it. We both agreed that she needed to be in the other room so I could concentrate and catch it. We may not have succeeded in bringing investigators to church this week, but we sure had show and tell covered. We brought it in a nutella jar to ask Angel if it was poisonous. It turns out that it's harmless, which is nice to know because it isn't the last one we have found in the house.

On more of a missionary work note, I've been trying to change the way we are working because we haven't been seeing a lot of progress. We make a lot of contacts and have more new investigators than we can keep track of but we need to narrow in on fewer people and teach them more frequently so they can progress. We need to involve the members so they can continue to progress after we are gone. Today after church all of our appointments were with contacts, who would become new investigators. After receiving some inspiration, we dropped all of our plans and decided to visit only members. 

First we had lunch with a family we visit frequently. We eat with them every first and third Sunday and I love their family because their kids are the majority of the youth in the ward. Throughout the meal the parents and the grandma were telling the teenage daughters to put away their phones. After we ate I told them we had good news for them and we needed them to get out their phones and visit the YouTube home page. They found the video which is being advertised by the church today. We read John 3:16 and talked about Christmas and how easy it is to share our testimonies of the Savior during this time because everyone is already talking about Him. We challenged them to share the video on Facebook and then we showed them the pass along cards we have for Christmas. We asked them how many they could give away and they accepted seven and asked for Christmas DVDs too.

  

The second family we visited had already shared the video and we left cards for them as well.

We did the same with our third visit to a sister who had already seen the video on Facebook and shared it. We are hoping to get some referrals from her because she lives in a gated area where we are not allowed to knock doors.

We didn't receive any referrals from our efforts yesterday but I hope that we can see some progress this week and understand how to work with the members. 

Love,

Hermana Eva VanCott