I love Radimadi!

If you went to Olympus you'll understand this shot...but Emily seems happy holding this "breathtaking" (Seinfeld reference) baby...

WHEW.  It hasn´t rained for like 2 months and I´m drying up!  Absolutely gorgeous! A giant call to repentence goes to all those dating my immediate family members who haven´t written me. But a giant shout out of love goes to Tiffany Andrews (you sound AMAZING...I´m praying for you slash happy birthday in Sept!), Blob....best emails ever, and my family....thank you thank you thank you!

People, I really love you all, but I officially won´t be writing any more handwritten letters home because I just don´t have time.  I´ll see you all in a matter of weeks anyways....baaaaaaah.  Lame.  It makes me nauseated to think of it.  Moving on.

I absolutely love Radimadi.  Why is it that we love the places where we give the most?  It should seem contradictory, but it´s not...it´s just how God works.  It is the smallest sector in the mission in the middle of cow fields, but I´d honestly be content to die here (aka...finish my mission).  We had district conference on Sunday and Prez and Elder Amado came and talked about La Union becoming a Stake!!! The prospects are very exciting, but there is still a LOT of work to be done (like getting more than 30 people active in the rama (branch)).  I just don´t want to learn a new sector and people and problems and everything.  I LOVE RADIMADI.  Which is funny because from the first day of my mission I did not want to come here (It was THAT sector).  But I´ve always loved a challenge and we are seeing beautiful progress.

We went out to campo on Saturday to help our Mission Leader move from his slanted, old house into a teeny-tiny one in the ¨city¨ and it was awesome.  To get to his house, we had to take a collectivo 10 minutes out into these fields and then walk 30 minutes on a dirt one to get to his house.  We got all the furniture and mattresses out......(oh man, a Dr Dre song that I used to ski to just came on and flashbacks of moguls and trees and powder crept into my mind....(cue the music) Soy un hijo de Dios! anyways)...we were moving everything out of the house when I went outside to ask Alexis something and saw him break the neck of the chicken that was in his arms with his bare hands and he began to brutally rip the feathers out of the still moving body.  Then he chopped it up and made soup out of it and fed it to us....it. was. awesome.  I love the campo.  He is really a great guy...he was going to be a catholic priest when the missionaries found him, he got baptized, served a mission, married in the temple, and moved out here.

We´re just getting ready for Halloween this week (my comps favorite holiday...of course!) and we bought big bags of little candies to hand out to little kids so we can contact their parents.  Bwah ha ha! Who said missionaries weren´t diabolical?  The people around me are looking at me weird becaue Ï´m humming the tune to soy un hijo de dios to avoid any worldy involvement ) Alas- I´m an hermana.

 

This weekend at conference, Elder Amado and Prez talked about Zion.  How it´s not a place we move to...but a place that we create starting with every one of ourselves.  We look at ourselves and the beams in OUR eyes and fix that.  Then we purify our hearts and that´s the part I can´t get out of my mind.  I´m reading the Bible and in Ezekial 36 I think it talks about God taking out our heart of stone and replacing it with a heart of flesh.  I LOVE THAT.  I think Elder Renlund or someone gave a talk about it.  But the way we do it is Helaman 3:35.  We fast, we pray, and through the atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ, we are purified...we are firm in our faith.  I LOVE IT.  

I feel like that is how my mission has been...a refiner´s fire that has been slowly heating up for a year now and right now its at a degree that would´ve burned me a year ago.  It´s like when Shadrech and his buds got thrown in the furnace....they weren´t burned because the Savior was with them....I feel like I´m walking in fire alone a lot of the time here...but oddly enough, I don´t get burned....I probably smell like smoke...but I¨m being refined.  Enough with the fire analogies...you´re all probably cold enough with all that snow.

 

Well, I love you all.  Thank you for the prayers and the emails and packages and support.  I need all of that stuff I can get! Please pray for my investigators and the sector of Radimadi.  BE GOOD!

Hermana Bourne

 

CHI-CHI- CHI-LE-LE-LE CHILE!!!!! 33 miners rescued!!!!!!!!

A balmy day at the Straits of Magellen

Lookin' fine, feelin' toasty in the Penquin sweater!!

An historic day for Chile!  The world watches as 33 miners emerge after two months!!

Hell-(o)

Bueno, shout outs first of all.  Paulina Dowdle and Breanne Shaw!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Congrats on the eternal companions and Breanne, thank you for writing me! It was really great to hear from you and I couldn´t be more thrilled that you´re getting hitched.  You´re a fantastic person and he´s a very, very lucky guy.   Paulina...I am living in your motherland...write to me!!!!

**my address is

Hermana Bourne

Casilla 7-0

Osorno Chile

Well, cambios came out this morning and me and Hermana Herbert are staying together another cambio here in Radimadi. (ouch) I really, really love the sector and I´m so happy to see so many wonderful changes happening in the branch and with our investigators.  We meet in a house that was converted into a chapel and we build a fire to stay warm during the meetings....its all wood on the inside and I play the broken electric piano that doesn´t have a pedal (yesterday, I started playing the sacrament hymn and the piano has this ¨rock beat back up¨ that started playing the second I started.....really brought the spirit.... For some reason, Heavenly Father is blessing this sector with a lot of success recently...this week, we reached the standards of the mission for lessons with member and nuevitos which hasn´t happened for I think 2 years.  He is blessing us with a lot of people to teach and the members are starting to help out a lot more.  I honestly don´t think I´ve ever relied on the hand of the Lord like this in my life. Ever.  And I think for that, God is blessing us.

I have blatant and 100% confidence that this is where God wants me to be and who He wants me to be with.  I feel happiness to know that with every hard thing I do, my spiritual muscles grow, my capacity to serve grows, and my heart is softened.  Hard things are really hard to do (especially looking forward at them)...but I know that looking back, I will be and I am grateful. 

 Love you all! Thank you for writing to me and praying for me and being my friends....I really do love you all.

Hermana Bourne

 

Baptism!

Me and my "peeps"...

Attention! My next Pday is this Saturday....write to me before then!

LUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUZ and JESSSSS! Congrats on the upcoming eternal companions.....I´m DYING down here! Send more pictures Liz, and Jess send me SOMETHING! CONGRATS!!!!!!!!!! I´ll be there in Spirit and I´m sure in really creepy cardboard cutout form :).  I want pictures people! (Jess, I´´ve never even seen this Peter fellow, but I´m positive he´s awesome to be marrying bigfoot :) ).

Big shout out to liz and jess and their future spouses....weird slash AMAZINGLY AWESOME! (For your wedding gifts, I´ll try to baptize someone.)

Well people, (insert scream) this last week marks one year of missionarying (I´m not counting the MTC...that place is like the Celestial Kingdom).  I love it.  On the 7th, I walked down the street at my normal missionary pace (with my comp huffing and puffing behind me....speed walking in the next Olympics here I come!) and just had a giant, toothy grin all day.  I love to serve God.  Even though it hurts...even though it´s hard.  My bones were kind of creaking and my knee caulouses felt super unfeminine against my thermals...my hair-which has absolutely no color or style-was blowing around all over the place, my dinosaur toes were hurting a little and I think my pasty white skin blinded a contact...but I am happy.  I fall asleep every single night with pure exhaustion, but with pure contentment and an inner peace.  I love this.  Kathy Jones wrote me and said that she hopes we´ve become spiritual babes because we aren´t counting on the physical.  Love her. But seriously people, serving a mission is the best thing anyone can do. Love it.

Shout outs this week go to LIZ and JESs, Grandpa Hal, the majority of my family and Noah...who apparently IS part of my extended family.  Creepy.  You are all phenominal.  I love your advice and encouragement and stories.  All of you should have letters coming!

The work moves on here in Radimadi.  The biggest yogurt and milk factory in the south is down here.  It´s called Colun.  (pronounced coloon....not colon.  Even though I´m pretty sure dairy would be good for your colon...)  Suffice to say...we have a lot of fields and even more cows.  I´m in a really beautiful area and we have about 20 really active members.  But some little tiny, wonderful miracles are happening.  We had a new matrimony move into the ward...they are young and both RM´s so I´m jut tickled about that!  I´m sorry I do not have a bazillion things to write about this week....truthfully I´d rather be out working than writing this.  Sorry!   I love you all and still mean what I said in my last entry but I¨m going to go now because I´ll see you soon enough.  Be good!

Hermana Bourne

Seriously people! WRITE TO ME!!

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope you didn´t get all trunky for me during Elder Oaks talk when he talked about Chile and then the missionaries in the world.  I got trunky for myself. JOKE!  Okay, so I was going to start this week´s email with a giant call to repentance to every single person to read these words (except mom, dad, Katie, and Tiffany Andrews)...BUT, the prophet´s talk keeps playing through my mind...so I think I´m going to call myself to repentence and express my gratitude that I have for every single one of you.

I realized that I don´t thank you all nearly enough.  Sometimes, right before a rabid Chilean dog goes for my calf or a drunk man tries to kiss me, my whole life flashes before my eyes.  You know what I see?  I see twenty two years of pure happiness.  Sometimes YOU will come to my mind...musicals, trips, adventures, pranks, funny songs we wrote (or music videos), long talks, devil study sessions in the library, going out to lunch, family parties, mission farewells and homecomings, hiking, family prayer with Baron, the softball team, service projects, young women´s camp, goals we set, talking at the counter, bus rides, running around Spain, figuring out Punta Arenas, swim parties, barbeques, boating, our freshman dorm, weddings, testimonies shared, babysitting your children, sleepovers and the grandparents, Christmas, piano recitals, midnight movies or diners, skiing at Snowbird or Alta, letters we´ve written.  Every single one of you reading this is reading this because in some way (big or small...and the small ways are usually really big) has had an influence in my life. Thank you for your righteous influence, your helping hand, or your loving word.  If I am in any way good or a success it is because of all of you.  I have an overabundances of YOUs in my life who I love with my whole heart...who I pray for constantly and consistently...and who I would do just about anything for.  How sappy am      I? I really do love you all.

Well, I slept through ANOTHER earthquake this week. It was 5.9 or a 6.0 which isn´t THAT big down here...but it´s enough to make the house shake a lot. I sleep like a dead log every single night....bueno, except for these last few days...I came down with a ginormous ear infection and couldn´t sleep right because it was gooeing and draining all night, every night and it hurt like the dickens. Luckily, I´ve been on some monster antibiotics and the pain is gone but I´ve been completely deaf in my left ear for about 5 days now...I feel like my mom.  (but if we look on the bright side, every time I turn my whole head and say ¨EH?" because I didn´t hear right...I think of you mom! LOVE YOU)

Dad, good to hear you are in Japan and happy.  My comp loves Japan and wishes all the Chileans were Japanese...enjoy them while you have them!  I´m glad to hear conference went well.  I absolutely loved and relished and felt the Spirit in every single session.  My favorite´s were of course Holland, Eyring, Bednar, the Prophet, and the ¨you stupid cow¨ man.  I feel refocused and ready to improve and get a whole lot better.  The more time I have out here, the more I realize how much I really do not know or understand and I realize just how bad I really am.  There are an infinite number of ways to improve and change and repent...sometimes I don´t even know where to start.  But I have faith that God qualifies who He calls...and He has called me at this time and place with this companion and He has called me to repent and get better...so I trust He will provide the way to do it.

  

Speaking of hilarious, drunk, two-toothed contacts (we do 20 in the street every day at least)...I contacted such a man...he called me ugly and so I told him to repent.  He said okay, but I was still ugly.  As long as you repent hermano...

So I sing hymns all day in the street because I do.  I was having a very hard, heavy moment when "Come Come ye Saints" came into my head.  The line ¨and should we die, before our journey´s through...happy day, all is right¨ came out in the freezing Chilean night and we just died laughing...such a good hymn.

People, I love you.  Thank you for all you do and all you are.  Please write to me.  my email isemily.bourne@myldsmail.net.  I want to hear about your life and adventures and experiences.  LOVE YOU.  Choose the right.  Go read your scriptures.

Hermana E Bourne