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!