Trick or Treating in April...

Family,

A. Katie! You look incredible and happy and wonderful.  It´s funny the physical changes that happen when you make changes inside.  You know that creepy glow that returned missionaries have?  I was looking in the mirror a few months ago and noticed that the color of my eyes have changed and they are creepily clear.  Also, I am now creepily white.  Ps, guess which sister is me in that photo.

B. Haven is the most beautful child on the planet.  Well done Mike and Ash!

C. CALLIE WHITE! I got your wedding announcement this week and just died of happiness! Congrats my love, you have a letter coming!

D. Dad, what the heck? You HAVE to write me a letter next week. Not a talk. A Letter.

E. Lizzie, you would. Have the best time in Europe...SLOW.  Keep your head, follow the Spirit, do the right thing (like always) and wait at least until March to wed! :)

F. Jess, I busted out the Sasquatch this morning for my comp and we died laughing. I love you.

G. Mom, you are the best. I love you and thanks for the updates and the pictures.

H. Hilarious thing happened yesterday.  We went to the Twilight Zone.  It's a really dead, but rich area and we were searching out a less active.  It looks like Holladay down there.  There were crunchy leaves on the ground, red and orange trees, menacing clouds and a light breeze.  I turned to the McCllelster and said, ¨Compi, it´s Halloween today, just look at these trees.¨ At that very moment, we both looked, and a dog that was right in front of us turned to look at us with one milky eye that was at least twice the size of its other eye.  We died laughing and then ten seconds later a creepy man pushing a wheelbarrow crossed us muttering to himself. Then we contacted two devilish people.  It only helped that we were going from door to door ringing doorbells.  Trick or Treating was fun yesterday!  The whole ¨opposite seasons¨ (we´re in fall in April and May) is throwing me for a big loop. I´m expecting Christmas in June.

I. We´re baptizing the cutest 9 year old named Tamara this weekend.  We reactivated her parents and her dad is going to baptize her. It´s amazing what a little obedience to the commandments of God, reading the scriptures, and going to church can do.

J. GRANDMA! I got your incredible package.  The best part was that I finished the LDM in Spanish a few weeks ago and have been really wanting to start it again.  I got your package during zone conference and I´m officially doing the Bourne Family Challenge. Count me in!

K. Hal, te quiero igual.  ¿Porque me escribiste en Espanol? siendo gringo....eres muy blanco, cierto? Ojala que Liz y Clarkie se casen en Marzo para que podamos estar alla juntos. (juntos para siempre = worlds best video).

L. Someone get me Sam Spafford´s address, I´ve been wanting to write him for quite some time now.

M. Everyone reading this, drop me a line! emily.bourne@myldsmail.net

N. Sorry this email was kind of lame everyone, but I love you and know that this gospel will go forth to every corner of the earth (including mine!)

O. Bouchdial, Send me the wedding invite!!!!!! I´m so happy for you two.

P. Chao! Hasta la proxima semana.

Q.  If anyone is contemplating serving a mission, DO IT and thank me later.  Best few months ever. Not a sacrifice at all. I find joy here every single day.

Hna Bourne

FALL HAS ARRIVED IN CHILE!

Family/Friends...You're all family...!

BAPTISM! Melisa is the best person on earth! The baptism was beautiful.  She wore the temple dress of her neighbor and when she came out of the water we just cried together and shared a big, wet, hug and she thanked us for bringing this to her.

Short this week, but we have zone conference.  Well, fall has arrived...I smell wet dry leaves and it gets dark at 5 now.  I wear at least four shirts, a sweater, a jacket and then my parka to stay alive and we are LOVIN iT!  You know how when Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith and he described him as being above the whiteness of the snow?  I´m pretty sure Moroni lived in Punta Arenas.  We are translucent here.  I´m gonna go out on a limb and say I´m pastier than Sophie (love you honey).  Happy birthdays to dad and Adam Case and Tanner!  Way to go everyone!

Katie, thank you for your emails...Loved them.  Ummm...advice about getting answers to prayers.   I had a hard time with this at the beginning.  How do we know when its us or God speaking? What if there are 3 great options and we´re confused?  What I have found is to stop worrying about it, DO what is right (aka, pray, study the scrips, serve), and in the course of being a good person, God will lead you for your good.  Obviously, we have to actively SEEK the answers...but in the meantime, be a good person...keep your covenants and you will be led for good.  The Spirit is the most delicate thing in the entire world.  OH! I have a good example.  We are teaching this 9 year old daughter of a less active family who´s returning to church.  We spent hours studying and planning and worrying about how we were going to teach her a specific concept.  We came up with about 7 analogies, stories, examples, or pictures and prayed and went in there not knowing what or how we were going to teach her.  Right after we said the prayer, my companion started with something completely different than ANYTHING we had even planned and I suddenly knew where to take the lesson.  It ended up being one of the best lessons we´ve ever taught and she´s ready and prepared for her baptism.  Yes, we didn´t use ANY of our planning, but it wasn´t wasted.  I believe that our preparation QUALIFIED us to have the Spirit, which then showed us what to do.  Whatever you are planning on doing this next year....think about it, pray about it, talk to mom and dad about it and then just live right (or, be qualified to receive the guidance of the spirit, of light!.  You´ll be great.  God expects us to create our own lives (check out D and C 58) and to do many good things of our own free will.  Use what you learned in Jerusalem as a jumping board to now make these next four months even better.  You´ve obviously experienced a lot of improvement and wouldn´t want to lose any of it.  keep going at this pace!  I´m really proud of everything you´ve learned and how you´ve changed and whatever you choose to do (I secretly hope a mission) will be just wonderful.

Fam, I love you all.  Lizzie, remember you promised to wait till March :)  Mom, I will be fasting on the 22nd for Bette and she´ll be in my prayers.  Just remember everyone that even in times when we don´t understand what´s going on or why, there is a living and loving God who does and sometimes we just have to rely on that. Love you all! Keep up the good work!

Hermana Bourne

Mom, I´m praying for you and love you so much.  Dad, have a blast in LA and happy birthday...I baptised the best convert I´ll ever have here on the 17th and she was confirmed on the 18th. I don´t know where the time is going.  I want to slow it down. I have 7 months already and I have interviews with president tomorrow so we´ll see who my new comps going to be.  LOVE YOU BOTH.  Ps, james, that painting was phenominal.....was a bit of a shock to see a naked man as a missionary, but you are ridiculously talented! Love you all!

PICS FROM THE LAST 6 MONTHS IN CHILE!

CONFERENCE WEEK!

(pictures coming next week...)

And the best mom award goes to........ (drum roll).....MOM! Best package EVER! You are so sweet...thanks for thinking of me!  Thank you SO much.  The thermals came just in time (it is FREEZINGer than ever and it´s started getting dark at 5)

Thank you Mikey and Ashley for the emails and the pictures of Havey baby...she is just beautiful and already starting her career as a baby model.  Haven...so hot right now.

Well people, week three of the cambio is over and it was a DOOZY!  Melisa (our evangelical turned hard core Mormon baptism this weekend...(happy birthday DAD! That one´s for you) got up in testimony meeting and called the whole congregation to repentence and then bore a powerful, but very humble witness of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.  This woman has the whole Bible memorized and yet has humbled herself to listen to two gringa missionaries and acutally ACT of the promises we´ve made to her.  Every time we come over, she thanks us profusely and asks when we can visit her again.  Now we are just working on her husband and two kids (temple bound family!!!!) and we are just dying with excitement all the time for them!  She´s getting baptizled on the 17th and confirmed on the 18th.

I just can´t believe how beautiful it is day after day to be a missionary.  Me and the McClellster are working really hard.  Yesterday, they asked me to play the piano for sacrament meeting and it didn´t turn out very good.  EVERYTHING was against me. The pedal is broken, they made me play songs I´ve never played before, AND the latinos love to make up how songs sound...so when I played it right and they sang it wrong...I was in the wrong.  But, as I sat there and looked over this faithful congregation of people I´ve loved, served, listened to, and taught...I almost exploded with gratitude and joy at the absolute blessing it is to be here.  I just can´t believe the joy that sharing the gospel brings.  I didn´t know about it before my mission and I still think I don´t understand it completely now.

Anywho, everyone... I love you all, I really do.  It´s a blessing to be your daughter, granddaughter, sister, or friend (or niece, or second half-cousin or whatever I am)

Love, Hermana Bourne

HOLY SHRAPNEL, katie gets home from Jerusalem this week! LOVE YOU KATIE!!!!! 


(Email from last week!)

Say it with me people...HOLY SHRAPNEL. Good things are happening here down where the penguins roam and the wind blows you across the street.  All of it. All of it is just beautiful and wonderful and happy. It all started out last Tuesday when we sat down with the mamita to almorzar.  We started off the week with a big plate of sardines and onions--a combination for success if I´ve ever seen one...especially in close contacts.  (Dad, I thought you´d enjoy that..I finished off every last one).  This was followed by multiple visits to Jose Lopez who got a really bad cold from his freezing baptism (dad, at least he didn´t die like your little old lady....)

 ¨Then THAT was followed by Melisa (our golden woman) fracturing her foot in a big car accident but STILL hobbling into conference to sit on the front row and hear a prophet´s voice.  She has a cast but told the Bishop that she will not move her date to be baptized so we´re figuring that one out.  THAT was followed by Elder Ballard´s talk about mothers and daughters.  My comp and I caught each other´s eyes and just KNEW our mothers were dying thinking of their poor little babies all the way down here. 

 Then, P day comes and I am flooded with a ridiculous amount of incredible thoughts and hilarious anecdotes from the fam, rich, halsy, katie, and BLOB.  Thank you all for writing to me. BLOB, I am dying still. most. hilarious, letter. ever. You´ll have a letter coming for that one.

I don´t know people, I love the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.  I officially finished reading the BOM in Spanish out loud today and had such a beautiful little experience.  I have found that the Spirit usually doesn´t overwhelm us with big waves of emotion or tears.  As I read the words of Moroni out loud in a now-familiar language, I couldn´t help but feel that the central message of the Book of Mormon is the Atonement of Jesus Christ.  I closed the book and knelt down and sincerely, in the name of Jesus Christ, asked God if this book really would bring us closer to Him.  Nothing extraordinary burst from my heart, but the familiar feeling of peace came to me and the words "you already know this, every time you open that book you know it" passed through my mind.  I am grateful for the small, consistent, and beautiful feelings and confirmations I receive from the Holy Ghost.  These whisperings tell me that although there is so much I don´t understand or even know,  Jesus is who He said He was.  I think all the praises I could sing or poems I could write or testimonies I could bear could just be summed up in: Jesus is the Christ.  With that knowledge, I know that everything else is going to be alright.  That I can use the shield of faith to cover any other part where I´m getting hit by the adversary...that if I just stay in the strait and narrow, one step at a time I´ll arrive at eternal life.
 

I´m so happy to be in this state where everything is focused on the Savior.  I used to roll my eyes at the weird RMs (and I appologize if I ever did this to any of you), but I think I understand now.  To have the Spirit is a very delicate, but very real thing and we can loose it´s influence with one thought.  I´m thankful for the miracles I see down here, I´m thankful to be an instrument in the hands of God day after day, I´m thankful to see people humble themselves and accept the good news of the gospel...it´s really a marvelous thing a mission.

I had a few impressions from conference. One. That I´ve been blessed with two wonderful parents who love the Lord and their family.  Two. That my familiy is (right below God) the most important thing to me.  Three. That what I´m doing here is of eternal worth.  Four.  That I am scared to have to raise kids haha! Maybe I´ll just stay out here forever and be Hermana Bourne till I die!   I love all of you reading this blog.  The mission sharpens your memory (those of you who know me know my memory is worthless), but every once in a while one of you will run across my mind and I´ll remember something I learned from you or something I admire about you.  Keep doing what you´re doing, help the missionaries, pray with love, read with purpose, think of someone else and DO something for them, go to the temple, have a good laugh, eat a hot dog with avocado and think of me.  Love you all! Hermana Bourne

 

Mom and Dad,

 Every single talk during conference about kids or parents or the rising generation I couldn´t help but think you two did it right. I want to be like that.  Write a parenting book and give it to me please.  hehehe.  I really do love you two and during the conference I pictured you there in the conference and felt really far away for a little bit.  But really, the happiness of the work overwhelms me and I can't wait to get out and do it again today and every day. The time´s flying by too fast and I just want to relish every second, the good, the bad, the annoying, the stinky...  (there´s a LOT of that !).  Can´t write how much I love you, but I hope you feel it.  You two are the best and biggest influences in my life. Love you both.

Em