Hermana Beck's Weekly Email - Have You Ever Seen the Rain?

First full week in Cerro Moreno! I don't think I'll ever get over the shock of seeing the ocean every time we leave the apartment. I've always been a mountain girl, but when living in modern day Desolation (the Atacama Desert) the ocean is pretty breathtaking. 

It's been pouring rain in the areas just south of Antofagasta, and I am absolutely green with envy. Supposedly it rained here a little bit too a few nights back. I slept through it, but when I woke up we had no water or electricity. Since it never ever rains here everyone was acting like a natural disaster had hit, and it made me giggle when I looked outside to see the sun shining and little baby puddles on the ground. I'm praying that the huge storms in Copiapó and Vallenar will make their way to Antofagasta. If you can spare a prayer, feel free to pray for that too. 

 

My airpods got stolen this week, and my $50 watch broke. Also one day we were teaching a lesson to a bunch of kids in the streets of La Chimba (that's the name of the city of tomas here) when out of no where a dog fight broke out right by us. All the people in La Chimba started gathering around, the druggies started beating the dogs with shovels, and then they pulled out something long and sharp and had one of the dogs held up in the air by it's neck- and at that point I forced myself to look away. Niether dog was heard from again. The kids were acting like this was just another Tuesday in la Chimba. They're tougher than me, I was disturbed. 

The elders had a baptism this weekend, but they showed up 30 minutes late so we had to pick up some (a lot of) slack for them. I took care of the music, and greeted all the people and made excuses to the leaders for why the elders weren't there. We also took care of Yolanda, one of the people being baptized. She's an older lady, very large, and we were helping her get organized with her clothes and everything after her baptism- and then she stripped down to nothing and asked us to help her dry off. I was not prepared, and I was just praying so hard that my face didn't show my reaction. 

For those who don't know, Sunday is not the day of rest for missionaries. Sunday is Game Day. Our Game Day yesterday was intense! Started out with no water or electricty from the "storm" and then we went to go run around la Chimba to collect our friends for church, and crap hit the fan. We had a ton of people that were for sure gonna come, and every single person had some sort of disaster happen at the last second so they couldn't. The craziest one was José Maria and his family. We had committed the whole family to come to church, but when we knocked on their door they discovered that they were trapped. They had a lock on the inside of the door, and their uncle had taken the key to work and wouldn't be home until 8pm. They wouldn't let us break the lock because they can't afford a new one. We tried everything. We said a prayer, and then me and my comp had to leave to go visit other friends, all of which had similar dramatic issues that meant they couldn't come to church. The Elders were having the same problem.

It was looking like we were gonna have zero friends and zero recent converts in attendance that day. I have to admit, Missionary Guilt got the better of me. I started racking my brain to figure out what grave sin I had committed to single-handedly cause this tragedy, because clearly it must have been my fault (my siblings/parents are shaking their heads right now, I know.) We went back to José Maria's house and the lock was open, they were getting ready to drive to church on their own. We asked how they got the lock open and they explained but neither of us understood their explanation. It was just a miracle. To make a very long story short, we had 17 friends in attendance between the four of us. It's not the 20-25 that the elders and my comp are used to, but I thought it was pretty darn amazing. 

We had hundreds of little miracles this week. A random bus driver telling us to get in for free and then dropping us off in front of a churro stand where the owner happens to be super interested, a new guard in our apartment complex who lost contact with missionaries 20 years ago but still reads the Book of Mormon and has been waiting to find us, a friend we stopped teaching last week randomly shows up at church for the first time and decides he wants to progress. A 15 year old boy named Joner prays about the Restoration and gets his answer that this is Christ's church and it is true. It's a great day to be a missionary. God is in the details, and the Gathering of Israel is in full swing.

And when I find out what huge sin I committed to almost ruin Game Day, I'll let you know ;)

Hermana Beck