Faith and Diligence

Fasting works!! 

Hermana Dyer and I fasted for a miracle. And guess what happened? We had 5 less actives at church that Sunday!! They all walked in one after another! Hermana Dyer and I were literally spazzing out with joy!! 

Getting another investigator on date for the 29th of August! Paola, the little girl I told you about, she's only 13 years old. She's our other 13 year old investigators best friend! How cute is that?! They are so smart! And if she comes to church theses next 3 Sunday's, she will get baptized before that date! We plan on working with her family of 5 so hopefully.....we'll have a family baptism. 

Remember the old man who's a crack up? We had an amazing lesson with him and his wife with our ward mission leader and his wife, and they are super pumped to come to church this Sunday! Our next step with them is to put them on date! 

We had this awesome experience where me and Hermana Dyer both made a list of streets and then we would compare our lists, and the ones that we both put down , we tracked.  And we had an awesome experience with this German guy named Christian! Who is super prepared to get baptized!!! And he was glued as we spoke about the restoration! He loved it! Sadly we have to pass him off to English missionaries, but we will for sure be at his baptism! 

HAVING 3 INVESTIGATORS AT CHURCH 

 The joy!!!!! We worked HARD to get them there! We worked BOLDLY to get them there. We LOVED like crazy to get them there! And they LOVED it! It felt so good!!!! We literally woke up and went their house and said "hey are you guys ready for church?" And we were 15 minutes late,  but it got them there :) 

FAITH AND DILIGENCE 

I thought I knew what faith was till I got out here. And I'm still figuring it out. But there's a different faith that missionaries have to have, and it's weird.  Diligence, I love being diligent! It's hard to be diligent! But I have learned the past 6 months that DILIGENCE AND PATIENT PERSEVERANCE! Go hand in hand! 

For a moment I has getting a little bit discouraged because I was putting all of my faith out there, I was believing and having desire and I was working, and WE WERE GETTING SHUT DOWN, OVER AND OVER AND OVER again. And I know that's what missionary work is because this isn't the first time this has happened to me, but what was getting frustrating was putting all of my faith and energy into something, and not seeing the fruit of it. 

It was driving me crazy, and unfortunately losing my faith in the work. Especially faith in myself,  

But although I was a little weak in believing  , I didn't stop working, I didn't stop being diligent. 

But As I started seeing results, the more understood. The more I started believing that this area is about to bloom, we can literally feel it!!! And it's going to happen these next 5 weeks. 

I asked Hermana Dyer if she thought it would be a good idea to ask our district to challenge us with something every other day or weekly, so we can push ourselves and have more expectations for ourselves. She loved it, called up our district leader, and he loved it! 

I love being a missionary so much!!!!!

I'm so pumped for life! And I'm in awe with the gospel I have lived all my life!!! 

  

I love you all! Press on! 

We dyed a member's hair!

We went to the free zoo!! #brokeforlife

A member worked at the zoo and got to ride the carousel for free #blessings

This cutie tries so hard to pronounce my name, but we compromised and I'm Hermana C

We officially make salsa every Sunday with a family that feeds us every Sunday. It's our only job. 

Family home evening with punk teenagers 

  

Party, free slushies, and temple en español

Hello everyone! 

This week has been great! 

Highlights!

-having an awesome lesson with an investigators, he's this older man who is a crack up and has a lot of intense deep questions, (in my last area we ran into a lot of those people where I didn't know how to answer them) but all the studies I have done for people like is paying off!! 

He would ask the question with a look in his face as if we weren't going to be able to answer it. But BAM !  Me and Hermana Dyer caught him off guard caught him of guard. The spirit is so cool, the words  were coming out of our mouths to questions we didn't even know we fully knew. It was so awesome, we invited him to baptism and he said yes :) 

-people cancelled on us this whole week, so guess what we did? Oh yeah lots and lots of door knocking and passing out cards! I love missionary work!!!! 

- 7/11 , stopped at a 7-eleven for free slushies and contacted everyone in the store, the slushy was so good and contacting is so much fun that we might have stopped at more then one 7-eleven 

Hermana Dyer and Hermana Curapil

-doing a temple session in Spanish for the first time!!! :) 

-getting to go to a farewell for my two favorites girls, who both got called to the same mission, same report day and everything and their best friends! 

They threw a farewell Hispanic style, with a ton of people, food, and music, these people know how to party. It reminded me of my awesome home ward and how supportive and amazing they  are :) it also reminded me how that shower was more then 6 months ago.....crazy how time flies! 

Chicago Style Missionary Farewell

- SCARIEST MOMENT OF MY LIFE! catching my companion sleep walking!!! 

It was the middle of the night, when I wake up and my companion is just standing at the foot of my bed. I woke up confused and scared and I was like "dude what are you doing" and then she got closer, and I nudged her to wake up, and she woke up spazzing out and ran to her bed and said " ugh what just happened?" 

And feel back asleep, 

This mission is literally teaching me every single attribute of Christ. 

It's amazing how imperfect we are but how perfect we will be one day! 

The church is true! Love you all!!!! 

4th of July Week

[editor's note: blog was going to start from the very beginning of Sister Curapil's mission, but alas. Going forward seems to be the only option at the moment. Sister Curapil has been inspiring us from day one in the Missionary Training Center (MTC). If there is a way to post previous letters and back date them, then they will be added. - otherwise Let the  joy begin]

Is it Pday already? 

Man what an awesome week! 

WEEKLY HIGHLIGHTS

-BEING IN A PARADE TO REPRESENT THE CHURCH! 

It was awesome, as we went through the parade , we obviously got a ton of missionaries , some on bikes , some on foot, and with 1000 pass along cards. And awesome members!!! 

And their kids!! We were all on fire. We literally contacted 1000 people in less then 3 hours. 

The members loved it, and their kids didn't care whether people said yes or no to our card, they threw it at them anyways. It's was an awesome experience! If you go to a Facebook group called "lds missionaries testimonies" me and Hermana dyer are the cover page for it! :) 

 (Missionaries in the Chicago 4th of July Parade)

(It is now named the LDS Pass-a-long Parade)

-OUR 4th OF JULY PARTY in a park, it was full of food and music, dancing. My favorite part was the piñatas( which they get 5 and 1 is specifically only for missionaries) and the water ballon fight at the end, it was members vs missionaries/kids . It's apparently a tradition for every ward party that's at a park. I LOVE CHI 4! 

- We have this adorable 13 year old investigator who is the only one in her family that has a testimony and the only one ready to be baptized, what an example ! We were teaching her throughout the weeks and her friend Paola is always there. She was shy at first but then opened up and started asking all theses questions about baptism. She said she doesn't like how her parents baptized her when she was a baby because she has no sin. We explained that stuff to her. And she said she wants to "feel" that spirit in her life cause she knows she doesn't have it in her Catholic Church. We told her she can know if she should be baptized in our church if she prays and reads the Book of Mormon and asks if it's true. And Bianca just shared this beautiful powerful testimony about the Book of Mormon and prayer! She's 13 years old and reads the Book of Mormon everyday and reads it at school and at night and gets on her knees and prays all the time to know if it's true. And she said she always gets an answer. Paola said that she wants that too. Bianca's 10 year old brother was there with Paola's two brothers that are 10 as well. And we invited them to do an opening prayer with us. And they said yeah. And then they left, but then Bianca's little brother came up to us and said "can me and my friends do church with you" ( referring to the lesson) and we said of course. These 10 year old boys had open wide sparkling eyes as we talked about the Book of Mormon and testified about it. They all wanted one!! We gave  all of them one! And they all made a plan that they were going to get together and read from it! Me and Hermana dyer are hoping to do a family home evening with them and meet their parents and getting biancas parents involved. And then when we wanted to say a closing prayer, Paola asked if we could start the prayer and then go around in a circle and say something we are grateful for. These young kids mentioned the Book of Mormon, families, and missionaries :) 

It was so sweet. We then ended and they gave us the tightest hugs. 

It was amazing! 

So we found out that we should be back on Facebook. 

Let me remind you that we have to "clean it" out. We have to unfollow all of our friends from back home , so you can see my stuff but I can't see yours. And I will not be allowed to message any of you on Facebook messenger. 

Facebook is an amazing tool, we get in touch with people (members, less actives, investigators)faster and we have had baptisms come from people finding the gospel on Facebook, there's one case where someone from Africa saw the post and there was no missionaries, he messaged that missionary, and got authorized to teach him through Skype, and got baptized. 

Amazing right? I know technology will hasten Gods works as long as it is used correctly. 

And we are being disciplined on how to only get online with a purpose and look at things that will fulfill our missionary purpose. 

It's super neat! We are literally going to get in touch with millions all over the nations to every kindred and tongue, 10x faster then ever before. We just got the word that all European missions should be online soon as well. 

It's amazing! 

So far what I  learned is that with our smart phones and devices, we literally have access to everything in the world, it's up to us how we use it. And remember, we are the masters, don't let  technology rule over you.

One thing I am grateful for is that all the missionaries with iPads are not only gonna be super disciplined on how to use technology but we will know how to teach our kids how to use technology right as well. 

And in the end, I hope everyone knows. We are not iPad missionaries in an iPad mission. 

We are missionaries WITH  iPads. Some people worry it's not a good or real mission if we have iPads. 

But I can testify that missionaries who have iPads on their missions will come home more disciplined then ever. 

Yay for technology! 

I love you all! 

Hermana Curapil