Pratt, Betsey

(Serve, live, and survive) Does anyone know if a dead cat outside your window is bad luck? Asking for a friend. Winter started last week, and in case you haven't been keeping up with Chilean news, Chile is flooding. We'll parts of Chile. Luckily not the part I'm in, but keep us in your prayers.  I didn't mentioned this to my mom, but one of my rainboots has a hole in the bottom, but hey what else are plastic bags for!  We did some service this week and painted some walls bright blue, the only casualty being my black jacket, but it mostly washed out as we walked home in the rain.  I hope everyone was as excited as we were to hear that there is a second edition of Preach My Gospel! I want a physical copy and I'd like to read the whole thing, but for now the digital version will do!  They also changed our planner app to be under the same name, so me and my comp have had a fun time pulling out our Preach My Gospel book when anyone mentions something about the app.  ...

Woah we're halfway there, Woah livin on a prayer!  9 months as a missionary, and I can't imagine my life without all the things I have learned and lived!  This week feels like a blur.   A little backstory.  We met Jorge in April in the house of a member. He did a little bible bashing, and we could tell he wasn't interested. We looked in our list of people and found that he was marked red.  There are different colors with different meanings, blue for member or convert, yellow for interested, green for progressing, gray for not interested, and red for do not contact. So of course we didn't continue contacting Jorge.  To our surprise we saw him at church on Sunday. And every Sunday. He has been coming to church for over a year to support his friend Natali. 2 weeks ago we heard from Natali and the elders quorum president that Jorge wanted to be baptized. We talked with him and heard his story about how he didn't believe in the restoration or the churc...

I'm staying in Yungay with Hermana Condori! I don't know how we pulled that off, but we get 6 more weeks together!  We started off good. We had some fries that weren't as good as they looked, we had ice cream that was as good as it looked, did a lot of service, and walked in a lot of rain.  Service this week included doing laundry, helping roll out sopaipillas with beer bottles (good makeshift rolling pins), setting up for a 7 year olds birthday party, and returning a lost cat to its owner. What can I say, we love to serve!  We got front row seats to watch a small house burn down, that was a little scary, but Chilean firefighters are really good at their job and I don't think anyone got hurt.  We had a lesson with our amigo, Jorge, this week, and out of nowhere he's decided to be baptized! Well not really out of nowhere, he's been coming to church for over a year to support a friend, but recently realized that he's felt the spirit and wants to take the next ...

Please share a few successes and/or challenges from your efforts to fulfill your missionary purpose this past week. Jorge quiere ser bautizado! el era un punto rojo quien asiste cada semana, no era nada en nuestro parte, solo vimos este milagro y ahora estamos ayudando a prepararse, pero el es listo! Carmen esta orando por una fecha por el 24, estamos planeando lecciones mejor para tener miembros y estamos buscando referencias de miembros que son preparados. a pesar de la lluvia y frio, estamos haciendo un buen trabajo y podemos ver muchos milagros What is one area you can focus on this coming week to more closely follow the principles in Missionary Standards for Disciples of Jesus Christ? estamos muy enfocados en bautismo esta semana y quiere leer y mejorar y tener un bautismo este fin de semana Who did you participate in exchanges with? How did the exchange go? Is there anything happening at home or with your family that you would like to share? (Optional) Is there anything else you ...

This week was one of the best, just miracle after miracle!  We ate cake! And I now have a growing collection of those Chinese cat things.  We had a crazy district council, our STLs couldn't make it, so the zone leaders didn't come, and one district leader was sick, so we ended up as a mix matched set of 6 missionaries, we called it district Quiyunpihues (key-yun-pea-ways).  We held hamsters, ate ice cream, saw the cutest mushrooms, and winter has more or less started in yungay.  It was the last week of the transfer, and we saw so many miracles, some of them thanks to the heavy rain! We put 2 friends on date this week! After not having a single baptism in the 7 weeks we've been together, we are now planning two!  Carmen felt the spirit so strongly, especially after the relief society councilor sang "let the holy spirit guide" as an unplanned musical number in our lesson. It rained the whole lesson! Then the next day a lesson had canceled literally as we walked up...