Week 6: Curico, Companion, Cold

31 July 2017

 

Hola familia y amigos! 

I am currently in a place called Curico. My companion and trainer is Hermana Tapiero and she is amazing! I am learning Spanish really fast, literally. Chilean Spanish is sooo fast. People tell us it will take a couple months to start understanding everything, so I am not extremely worried, but my companion is from Colombia and speaks a lot slower, which is good for learning. 

Hermana Eibert and Hermana Tapiero on 25 July 2017

Our assigned area is very big as it is usually has 4 missionaries, and now there is just us two. We have bikes and we bike a lot. I think I am quite the sight for the Chileans here, me in a skirt or dress on a bright blue old bike desperately trying to avoid packs of dogs and cars zooming by. Haha, its really fun. 

It is also FREEZING here. And no heating systems at all anywhere. So I live in my coats. Multiple coats. But it is better than the extreme heat at least.

I love, love, love my zone, district, companion, the ward, all the people here! They are so kind and sweet and welcoming. We also have had so much success in teaching and serving people this week. We have 8 investigators and all 8 of them attended church with us this week. 3 of them are Haitians too, and their Spanish is limited. I use a little bit when communicating with them too!  It is crazy how many Haitians there are here!! I might end up having to learn Creole too! 

The Chilean are funny people, which is very fitting for me. But when they are pulling my leg or just trying to mess with me it is easy to play dumb right now and pretend I can't understand them. But I feel incredibly blessed with how much I can understand and communicate. 

This week with our investigators we've been serving, we have focused on sharing the fact that we all have a unique and true identity. 

We are all children of a God, our Heavenly Father, who loves us all individually and perfectly. We have our spiritual identity. Something I have been pondering on this last week is the idea of spiritual DNA. I don't know if that makes sense completely, but I think with our souls there is something that recognizes truth and eternal truths ring true. 

I loved the video, you should all go and watch it, called Our True Identity, by Dieter F. Uchtdorf. It is amazing. 

I love you all and thank you so much for your prayers, thoughts, and emails. Have an amazing week!!

Con amor, 

Hermana Eibert

 

ps. Please forgive my grammar and English in general; it is difficult with a Spanish keyboard and the qualitiy of this keyboard is not great.... hahahaa!



MTC Roommates

Last P-day in the CCM with companion, Hermana Knight, enjoying empanadas in Santiago, Chile.

The Arrival in Rancagua, Chile on 25 July 2017

First Meeting in Rancagua as new missionaries

New Missionaries with their trainers and President and Sister Harris

 

 

Week 6: The Official Welcome to Rancagua, Chile from President and Sister Harris

Week 6: Arrived in Rancagua on Tuesday
25 July 2017



President and Sister Harris with Hermana Eibert

La Misión Chile Rancagua

Casa de la Misión,  Los Girasoles 1720, Rancagua, Chile

Oficina de la Misión,  Alcalde Eduardo Melero 883, Casilla 2-C, Rancagua, Chile

 

 

July 25, 2017

Dear Family of Sister Ashley Camille Eibert,

Sister Harris and I just finished welcoming the missionaries that arrived this week to serve our Lord in the Chile Rancagua Mission. Here is a photo for your family.

We want to help each new missionary become very dedicated to her calling. We will help her learn how to share the gospel with the Chilean people, and she will come to love Jesus Christ.  This great work of the Savior will make her happy, and the Lord will bless her for her service.

 

The people in Chile are very kind, and the missionaries have opportunities to share the gospel every day. Thank you for the support that you provide. A weekly newsy letter of encouragement and uplifting thoughts will be a great help to your missionary. Letters with excessive details of family events and happenings at home can be distracting and make it difficult for your sister missionary to focus on the missionary purpose, especially in the first few months of the mission. Your loving support of your missionary is important to her.

Sister Harris and I love our missionaries, and we will take care of your missionary during her time here. We ask for blessings from the Lord for all of you.

 

If you are interested, Sister Harris has a blog site, with photos, etc. Here is the address:  https://harrisesinchile.wordpress.com

Sincerely,

President and Sister Harris

 

 

Week 5: Perfect Love Casteth Out All Fear

 

Hola from Santiago for the last time!! 

 

We head out to Rancagua early this coming Tuesday! And my pday/writing day will then switch to Mondays. It will probably be a week and a half before I write next, just so you all know!

This week it snowed in Santiago! The first time in over 20 years! I am pretty sure I just bring this kind of weather with me wherever I go--haha! It was so beautiful and I loved watching the Filipino elders in my district experience snow for the first time! It was so cool! 

 

We are finally going to try street empanadas here in Chile today! I am so excited and were going to enjoy our last bit of time with the people here before we head out! 

I am SO excited for the people! I have so much love for them already! ¨Perfect love casteth out all fear. And I am filled with charity, which is everlasting love.¨ Both God and Christ have so much love for us. Perfect and everlasting love. How beautiful is that?? I want to have that same love for them and for the people of Chile. I have made an effort to study Love this week specifically in my personal study with the scriptures. I especially loved 1 John 3, in the New Testament, if anyone wants to read it. Charity is the pure love of Christ and I am working so hard to develop charity and understand it more fully.  The love I have in my heart for the people here is what is going to keep me going. It is so hard to be a missionary, but the people are worth it! Faith cannot co-exist with fear. Pressing forward, steadfast in our faith, will make all the difference. 

I also have been studying ¨Living Water¨ which is referenced all throughout the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and I absoultely love it. Without God in our lives, we are missing a huge piece of a grand puzzle. We have a thirst that no worldly thing of this life can satisfy. But when we come unto Christ, we will thirst no more. It goes along with Christ being the bread of life. We need Him, we need his love, charity, in our lives. 

 

Sorry this email is shorter this week and really scattered. Things are crazy. I LOVE you all so much. I hope we all can come to recognize the Lord´s hand and His Love in our lives each and everyday. I know charity never faileth and I know I am where I am supposed to be-with the people of Chile. I know that we need truth in our lives. We need that constant support and nourishment provided only through our loving Heavenly Father and Christ. 

 

Until Rancagua!!

Con amor, 

Hermana Eibert

Week 4: What, a month??

 

12 July 2017
Buenos Dias familia y amigos!!

 

Today marks 4 weeks or 1 month! I cannot believe one month has already gone by. Holy cow--it went by so quickly. 

This week was so incredibly hard. I learned a lot though. The language is coming and I am overcoming my fear of talking to people. Lots of progress! We went out proselyting for the first time this week in West Santiago and the people of Chile are so humble and kind. The Chilean hospitality blows my mind. They don't have doorbells or anything like we do, so when we get to the people's homes, we stand outside their gates and holler ¨Hallo¨and then they come and let us in. And there are so many dogs. SO many. Makes me miss my dogs, but they are definitely not as cute. Actually, they are kind of scary sometimes--haha. 

 

Funny of the week: One of the Hermanas in my district really has limited Spanish and easily forgets and confuses words. She, in all seriousness, told an elder this week "Me gusta su cuerpo"...which means "I like your body."  We about died laughing; definitely not what she was going for. 

One a different note: 

I have been thinking a lot this week about adjusting and progressing and I've come to realize, more fully, that the only real control we have in this life is self-control. We can't control the circumstances and situations around us, we can't always control what happens to us. We can't control what people say and do and feel. But, we can control how we think, how we act, how we feel, how we react, how we treat others and so on. We choose our attitude and our attitude really does determine our altitude.

So things may get rough and the burdens of life may seem heavy, but ¨we do not run alone in this great race of life. We are entitled to help provided by Christ and through God's love.¨ (Elaine Dalton). 

 

Earth really has no sorrow, no pain that heaven cannot heal. I know great periods of personal growth often come during trying times. I am choosing to be happy and love God and that makes all the difference. 

I love you all and I hope you all have a great week. 

Con amor, 

Hermana Eibert

 

PS. Not only is a friend from my BYU ward here in the MTC, she is one of my roommates!! Feeling pretty blessed! 

AND, the picture with 3 of us, is my companion, Hermana Knight, and Hermana Volpi, one of my teachers and I absoultely adore her!! 

(That is Snow on those Chilean mountains!)

Photo courtesy of Hermana Rachel Leyvas--taken on 12 July 2017

Week 3: Newbie Missionaries and CCM Pros

 

Hola everyone!!

 I hope you all had an amazing week!! Mine was pretty great! 

 

Quick note:

My english and grammar sucks because I am still learning to work the Spanish keyboard. 

ALSO, I'm so sorry if I don't email back right away. Limited time to email and it's hard getting to everyone. BUT I so so so appreciate the emails and love and support! I take pictures of the the emails with my camera and read them later too and I love it, so thank you!!

I have learned so much and grown so much these past 3 weeks. Spanish is such a  fun and beautiful language and the people are just as awesome. My favorite part about Wednesdays, besides getting to write home, is being out in the city with the people. It is so much fun talking with the people and most people are patient with us and our broken Spanish. Actually, I am becoming more and more convinced we are learning Chilean, and not a language called Spanish--haha. Spanish is different down here. I also love being recognized on the street too, church members who get to excited to see the Hermanas, they are so sweet. 

Happy 4th of July everyone!! I missed seeing fireworks, but Presidente Brady and Hermana Brady took good care of us. There were only 19 missionaries in the MTC yesterday, most of which were Americans. Most of us were wearing red white and blue and our President special-ordered Applebee's' ribs for each of us and surprised us with a big party including games and rootbeer floats. Rootbeer is almost non-existent down here too, so they really went all out. It was so sweet and made me miss home. 

Every 3 weeks this MTC gets a new wave of missionaries. All the newbies arrive today and we are so excited to greet them. But new missionaries arriving means sending the others away. It was a bittersweet farewell yesterday as we said goodbye and wished them luck for their work in the field. I am going to especially miss my Guatemalan roommate (who is like half my height--haha), Hermana Rodas. Even though I was born to be a gringa, she has been helping me and encouraging me with the language and she was so proud my rolling r's had gotten better. 

We had a devotional this week that was really amazing and touched my heart and changed my perspective a bit. Our MTC President, Presidente Brady started by showing us parts of the world, like the Himalayas and such. Little by little we zoomed out and looked at the Known Universe. It is absolutely huge and incredibly stunning and beautiful. We can see so much, star systems and galaxies far, far way (HA), and there is so much we can't see too. Space seems infinite and full of so many possibilities. And knowing that and seeing how small Earth is and we are, in the scheme of things, it is a little daunting. It is easy to think we are small and insignificant. Sometimes we feel like we are unimportant. But the most glorious and beautiful thing is that the same Divine Being, our Beloved Heavenly Father, that created this universe and has the very stars numbered and named, knows each and everyone of our names. He knows us individually and loves us perfectly. This same God that created this earth, the stars, the moon--He is the same one that called me on a mission, here in Chile. I am endlessly in awe with how much this beautiful world, this beautiful life testifies of that and the love He has for us. What a incredible knowledge to have. 

Our perspective of everything changes everything. We have never lived a moment of our lives unloved.

I hope you all have a wonderful week. I love you all.

Con amor, 

Hermana Eibert

 

 

 

 

Mom,

 Please tell the bank I am in Chile for the next 18 months. They need to know. By the way, think of the time I am gone in fast sundays. One fast sunday down, 17 more to go. The power is sketchy here and has gone out a few times, and it's weird in some places you can't flush toilet paper. The water is techincally safe to drink but they have water stations in those filter things everywhere in the MTC. But the shower water is DESTROYING my hair. Seriously sucks. My beloved hair is dying. A lady also does our laundry which is weird, but she is super nice and sweet and she cleans our rooms sometimes too. 

We are literally all waiting and expecting and wanting an earthquake. Apparently they are normal and happen all the time, once or twice a month but no luck yet. Nothing scary just a little shaking here and there. 

Yes that is a star wars pun in my group email. Enjoy it, cause I did. 

Please send Come Thou Fount lyrics too please!!!! Today before I get off too if possible. All the lyrics. I shouldve brought some piano church sheet music too. 

I am definitely learning patience here. 

I missed the fourth of July. A lot. I want fireworks--hahaha. How did the dogs do with them last night? We got a surprise for dinner last night because yesterday morning all the lationo missionaries left, leaving only 19 missionaries in the CCM for yesterday. All of us, besides the two filipinos, are American. We walked in to the dining hall and Hermana and President Brady were standing there, dressed in red white and blue, with the place decked out. We got a full rack of Applebee's ribs each and loaded baked potatoes and rootbeer floats and blueberry cheese cake. SO GOOD. Sang the national anthem and did trivia games and such. Was so fun, and just short of fireworks. They are so awesome. 

Turns out max capacity is actually closer to 60 and we received about 40 new missionaries today. AND Amanda Shields, my friend from my BYU ward, was assigned to our room!!! So after email time I get to go meet her and welcome the newbies. Hermana Knight and I got the room to ourselves yesterday which was really nice. Sad to see the other Hermanas go, but excited for the new ones. We also have Grace Weaver in our room who is the one that changed her MTC date with the language evaluation and is also going to Rancagua. She is the one I met at BYU. 

I am sorry my typing and spelling sometimes are bad. Spanish keyboards makes it really difficult to type in English 

Teaching and talking to people is easier in Spanish. No trouble at all really. 

Did I have Spanish on my class list for you for BYU after?? If not, I need to add it. Which is 4 creditss...so shifting will have to happen. 

Hug my dogs for me. 

Love you.  

Love, Ashley

 

 

 

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BABY BROTHERS!! Happy 17th Birthday to Nathan and Cameron. Miss you a bunch and have a great birthday this week!!