A New Transfer

Dear All, Well today marks the first day of a new transfers. Due to circumstances in the mission transfers will actually be Wednesday, but we were informed of if we were staying or leaving Saturday, however, I have already lost my companion! Haha, That means I will be staying here in Illapel! Elder Pereira left yesterday to Viña because he was called as the new assistant to the president! haha. He should enjoy his time there until we go home in May. Turns out my new comp will arrive Wednesday and he is actually who was the zone leader during my second transfer here, Elder Reyes from El Salvador. In his absence of one transfer he went and opened up an area (Canela) that was closed for at least 4 years and they were able to finish out the transfer with two baptisms! He is a great missionary and I´m excited to be able to work with him. Other than that we had a part member family attend church. Katy attended with her 2 daughters, one of the which is 10 and so we´re starting to make some ground to help her to be baptized. Unfortunately the father of the family is not a member and they aren´t married. The good news is that it seems that he is really interested because while he was gone for 7 days for work he took the Book of Mormon and read over 120 pages! haha, awesome. We´ll be seeing them this week and hopefully we´ll be able to help them make some plans to get married and the father and daughter baptized. Well that´s pretty much all the news! Crazy to think I´m down to 12 weeks left in Chile! I just barely got my Chilean ID today! haha, but hopefully I´ll be able to leave a lasting change in this branch and be able to find people that will be able to step up and be the future leaders here. In the branch this week we helped the new first counselor direct his first sacrament meeting and we made a list of people interested in getting their patriarchal blessing so a patriarch will travel to come give blessings for our branch. Marcelo Saldivar, my convert, passed the sacrament for the first time. He is doing great and his grandma should be getting baptized this month with the help of the other elders here. Sometimes it is a lot of pressure to be here as a Zone leader and in leadership in the branch, but it has been great and all I can say is that I love this work! Gotta keep working while I have time. haha. Love you all! Enjoy the pictures!

Week 6

All, Again we are at week 6 of a 6 week transfer! This Saturday we will find out about transfers. I´ll be sure to let you know what happens, we´ll have to see if the Lord wants me to be here a little longer or if I get sent elsewhere for the remaining 3 months of my mission. I feel like I´m ready for either option at this point haha. I don´t have much else to say at this point, we have a few investigators we are working with, but their progression has been relatively slow. It looks like we´ll have to just keep finding. In other news there was a miracle baptism in the zone yesterday! A long term investigator showed up at the Elder´s house after church yesterday saying he wanted to be baptized and so the District Leader interviewed him as they filled the font and he was baptized! It´s so great when people finally follow the Spirit and take the steps necessary to follow Jesus Christ. The Lord is great with me and I´m enjoying the time I have left, it is really weird to think it is all winding down, but everything happens at the time it needs to. Love you guys! Have a good week and I invite you to visit someone in need and let me know how it goes! Love!

Una Semana Mas

Dear all, This week was a pretty good week, we were just a little short on time because we lost two days in traveling and going to a Zone Leader Council in Viña on Friday. We traveled Thursday after lunch and arrived that night. We promptly went to Lider (a supermarket that was bought out by Walmart a few years ago) and bought tons of cosas gringas (american stuff) like marshmellows, peanut butter, cookies, bbq sauce, etc. Then we went to the apartment where I actually started serving here in Chile and ordered Papa John´s. It was nuts. haha, it was really fun and the council was great the next day. President is trying to raise our vision a lot higher. When he arrived in July he made an emphasis that the Lord expects every companionship to baptize monthly, but now he is setting our sights to be able to baptize weekly. According to statistics we have to find 15 new investigators for 1 baptism and so he changed the standard of excellence (what we should be going for in the long term) to find 15 new investigators weekly. So anyways, looks like my tongue might fall out by the end of my mission talking with so many people. haha. But it´s good. Other than that at church we had 2 investigators, the mother of the branch president and the ex boyfriend of a member. Both are slowly progressing, but say they aren´t ready to prepare themselves for baptism. We´re going to keep working with them and keep looking for more new investigators! Should be good. Not this Saturday, but the next we find out about transfers. From what we were able to get out of President in interviews it looks like Elder Pereira will be leaving. I think I might just serve my whole chilean mission in tiny little Illapel! haha, we´ll see, but I love it here so I´m willing to continue. haha. That´s it for this week! Thanks for the words of support those who wrote! Love you guys! Have a good week and enjoy the pictures.

Baptism of Elsa Rojas!

Dear all, We had a pretty great week this past week, our dear friend Elsa was baptized. She is really funny and the Spirit was great. She asked Elder Sheffield to baptize her which was good for him as a young missionary as well. Everything went great. It looks like her godmother who was recently baptized looks like she will soon be called as the second counselor in the relief society. They´re a great little family. Other than that, we´re working a lot with the mother of our branch president and his cousin that lives with her (basically an adopted sister for our branch president). We should be completing the branch presidency this coming week as well, the branch is starting to come together quite nicely. haha. Today we had a zone activity in Los Vilos where we played Futbol (soccer) and ate french toast and choripan (chorizo and pan, sausage with bread) and afterwards the Bowens took us (Elder Pereira and I) to the beach and it was awesome. Loved it. I love the mission! It is great. This week we have Zone Leader Council in Viña so it should be fun to travel a little bit, hopefully missing two days doesn´t affect us too much. Anyways, enjoy the photos! If you haven´t seen the mormon message from President Uchtdorf´s talk I invite you to watch it! The blessings of the gospel are available for all and it is so easy to receive them, we just need to be obedient! Enjoy http://youtu.be/vV2YlnbXgAs :) Love you all! Until next week! Take care and I´ll be expecting emails from the siblings other than colesters!!!! haha