one last time

May 18, 2015

Welp, this is it.  I finally made it to this point.  I can´t believe my time is up.  It still doesn´t feel real.  I hadn´t been telling anyone here that I was leaving, I didn´t want to seem trunky, but yesterday when we were in church I started to say goodbye to people and let them know that I was going.  In branch council in the afternoon, someone announced that it was my last Sunday and everyone was really sad.  I´ve been here for four months, my longest time in any sector, and they all were sad to see me go.  The Relief Society president asked us to go to her house that night to help her with something, and when we were running late since the elders asked for our help, she was calling and calling and calling until we got there.  We were a little confused as to why she was so persistent, when supposedly she just needed help pronouncing the names of the Apostles and the First Presidency, when we got there and realized they had made me a dinner and had invited some of the members over to bid me farewell--all last minute.  I was so touched and completely surprised, because I just wasn´t expecting it.  I really love the members here, and I´m so sad to have to leave them.  I feel right at home here.  I´m so grateful for the opportunity I´ve had to be here in Catamayo, it really is a special place.  All my mission I´ve met some truly amazing people and have learned so much.  I don´t know what kind of person I would have been if I had never gone on a mission.  It´s really the best decision I´ve ever made.  

But I am excited to see my family.  I love you all, and I wanted to ask a special favor.  This Sunday I´m going to be speaking in our ward in Temecula, and those of you that will be attending to see me speak, I wanted to let you know that the church meeting is not just that first hour; there are two more hours that are special classes that they have to instruct and help us learn and grow spiritually.  After the sacrament meeting (the first hour), I was going to stay to attend for all three hours, but I´d like to invite all of you if you can to stay as well, so that you can see what they are like and so that you can learn and grow as well.  It´s just an invitation, but I would be really pleased if you could stay.  

I love you all so much, and I´ll see you this week!

Love,

Hermana Iverson

Just Two More Weeks!

May 11, 2015

Well, this week was a little more exciting.  More traveling, again.  It was the beginning of the month, so we knew that there was going to be Consejo in Guayaquil, but normally we travel Sunday afternoon to be there Monday morning.  Saturday night we still hadn´t heard anything, so we thought they weren´t going to have it.  I was a little bummed, because I wanted to go one last time.  I was also worried that maybe they were going to release me at the last minute so that I wouldn´t have to go so soon before I´d have to be traveling to Guayaquil anyways, which is something that often happens.  So here we made some plans for things we were going to do last Monday, when at around 8amthe zone leaders call to say that we have to travel that day to Guayaquil because Consejo was going to be on Tuesday, so we just had a few hours to get our stuff together, try and buy some stuff really fast, and then travel to Loja so that we could catch the bus.  The zone leaders from the other zone almost didn´t make it; the bus had started moving to leave the terminal, and they came running up 5 minutes later.  If there hadn´t been several buses leaving at the same time and blocking our bus, they would have missed it and not made it to Consejo.  So that was intense.  But Consejo was really good, Presidente talked about the Sabbath Day and how we have to put more of an emphasis on it in every aspect--in how we teach it to our investigators as well as in our own lives.  That´s why he officially changed Consejo to Tuesday, so that we wouldn´t have to be traveling on Sunday.  I really liked it, because I´ve actually been thinking a lot about the Sabbath Day recently here in our sector.  

We ended up not getting back to our sector until about Wednesday, and we´ve just been going with our newest convert, Adela, every day.  She´s been a big help.  She´s been so excited to help us and will present us to her friends all the time, and will just share her testimony with them without us needing to ask her.  It´s been really nice to see how happy she is.  

On Saturday we had a branch activity that us as the missionaries and the mission leader put on, and it was really fun.  A lot of people came, and everyone had fun.  My companion and I were in charge of this one game where there were some donuts tied with a string and hanging in the air and they had to eat them without using their hands.  It was pretty funny.

Mother´s Day was a very, very busy day.  We almost didn´t have time to do anything.  We had church at 10am, and then afterwards we went to eat lunch, and then my companion called her family, and when she finished we had to go to branch council meeting, and then we had to leave so I could call, and then we tried to have our correlation meeting with the branch mission leader, but the elders were still calling their families so that didn´t happen, so at the end of the day we just had half an hour to go visit Adela, since she was sick and hadn´t gone to church that day, so we went to see how she was doing.  We made a few little cards for some of the sisters in the branch for Mother´s Day, and they turned out really cute.

Welp, this is officially my last week here in Catamayo, so I´m going to do everything I can to make it count.  See y´all soon!

Love,

Hermana Iverson

Some good news!

Katie with Adela and Gabriel

Well, the biggest news this week is that our investigators, Adela and Gabriel, FINALLY GOT BAPTIZED!!!!!  They had a lot of obstacles to get to this point, but they were determined to follow Christ.  We were really happy to see them get baptized, because we´ve grown very close to them.  She really became truly converted.  We saw how she just trusted in God and she received a confirmation that these things are true, that the Church was restored and that the Book of Mormon is true.  She started accompanying us since last Wednesday to visit people, before she was even baptized, because she was so excited.  We would go to invite her friends to her baptism.  She faced a LOT of opposition in this time, but she remained firm.  It was a good last baptism.

And last little note, Happy Star Wars´ Day, today!  (May the Fourth be with you, tehe)

Love,
Hermana Iverson