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

Otra semana más

To All, This week went by really fast! Our investigator named Elsa passed her baptismal interview yesterday and so she will be baptized this week! We are really excited for her. She is really prepared and has a lot of support from her Godmother who was baptized a few weeks ago. Other than that we had a good branch party. It was themed tropical juices and so everyone took some fruit and we made lots of luicuados (fruit smoothies) and sang karaoke. haha. It was good. This week we should have our interviews with President Kahnlein, our apartment and everything is ready! Everything is going great! Just gotta keep finding new investigators to have potential for February! The branch is slowly getting better as well which is good, hopefully we'll get a young mens president and a 2nd counselor in the branch soon. Love you guys! Thanks for all your support and love! Enjoy the photos.

Week 2

All, Man, this week has been super hectic! haha, we basically remodeled our nasty apartment, found a new apartment in another area in the zone and got the contract done, fixed an unrecorded ordination of an elder so that he could baptize his daughter, fixed all the addresses in the branch member list, and a lot of other MLS errors. It was crazy. I'm actually out of time today, but Maigdel was baptized by her dad and she asked me to confirm her! It was great. Their family is awesome. I'll try and send the pictures next week. Love you all! Thanks for you emails this past week, it's like all of my siblings got back from winter vacation. hahaha. Have a good week!

Transferred!

A Todos, Hello everyone, this past week was pretty crazy! On Saturday I was advised by my zone leaders that I would be transfered, but how it works here they don't tell you where or who or anything. So I was like.. ahh man... I have to leave my convert Marcelo and everything we've accomplished here... but then... that same night we received a call from Presidente Kahnlein and he asked me if I was willing to accept the assigment of being a zone leader and I said yeah and he said, well you won't be going far, you'll be with Elder Pereira (one of my zone leaders). hahaha, I just said, are you serious??? and he said he was, and I just said I was really excited to stay here. It was great. So anyways now I am working in the downtown area of Illapel! On Sunday our little friend Maigdel passed her baptismal interview and so she will be baptized this Saturday, her dad was interviewed and Presidente Cortes said that he is prepared to do the ordinances as well, so we are really excited for the family and the progress of the branch here. We had a rough situation happen last week where some members got involved in the personal lives of other members and it looks like some were offended and Presidente Cortes asked to be released but the counselor of the mission came on sunday and interviewed him telling him he would have to man up. haha. So anyways, there is plenty of work to do and the district president hasn't helped at all... looks like the mission will intervene in his absence. Hopefully everything turns out and the members can learn a lesson about charity and loving your neighbor. Other than that I don't have much else to say, we are pretty much remodeling our apartment and so far it has improved a lot. Here are some pics of the farewell and of my new comp Elder Pereira who is from the south of Chile in a place called Constitucion (which also happens to be the name of my first area in Buenos Aires). Should be a good transfer. Love you all! Don't get trunky and endure to the end! hahaha

Week 6 of the transfer

Aloooo, Well hello everyone. This week was a decent one. It went by super fast and I felt like there just wasn't enough time for everything I wanted to do! I did a couple of exchanges with the other elders of the district, they're really struggling and they are seeing a lot of problems in their branch. I had the opportunity of attending their Priesthood Executive Commitee meeting where they set goals for this year and it was sad. It was just us 4 missionaries, the branch president and his counselor who was the branch president before. Their goal for the past year was 6 and they accomplished 8. Now the Lord has doubled the amount of missionaries and yet the branch president wanted to put the goal at 8 and complained about retention and saying that 2 baptisms really don't count because they came from 9 year olds. It was just a meeting lacking any type of faith or vision and there were no plans made. It was kind of frustrating and I tried to help them see, but the branch president had already made up his mind before the meeting, and really it was just a presentation of goals rather than a discussion to set them. They told me I didn't know the "reality"of Salamanca (the town). The missionaries there are pretty frustrated, I think we'll see a lot of changes there next week for transfers. Anyways, the good news of the week is that Marcelo was confirmed and was able to receive the priesthood. He is really excited and says he wants to serve a mission, especially in the United States. Haha. The problem is that he is behind in school and so he has at least another 2 years of school before graduating. Haha... poor guy. He's so awesome though! He went to an interview with president Cortes on Friday so that he could receive the priesthood sunday and then everything went well on Sunday and then he went to a family home evening with us with some other member families. It went really well and I think he is adapting well to the "mormon way of life." haha. We also had the opportunity to help out in the Aaronic Priesthood class this week. 2 weeks ago we did the first class that had been done in at least a year for young men and president cortes said he would like us to keep helping out. This week we had a great class about why Jesus Christ is important in our lives and we watched a great mormon message- http://www.mormonchannel.org/mormon-messages-for-youth?v=1795507066001 I recommend it. Anyways, not much else to say. I love being a missionary! I got a really trunky email from the mission today asking about what airport I'll be flying to, I put either McAllen or Harlingen. Hopefully that's not a problem. So crazy! haha, weird that my mission might actually end. Anyways, transfers next week. I have mixed feelings. I hope I can stay for Marcelo and to keep helping the branch, but at the same time I feel like I might be transferred. haha transfers are so lame! Anyways, it would be great if mom or dad could get me an email address or something for my convert Nahuel Aponte, I want to write him and try to help him to come back out to the mission (he went home cuz his mom was diagnosed with cancer). Let me know if you can get anything from him on facebook or something. Maybe David Fernandez (my trainer) could help too. Anyways, I love you all! Have a good week and try and do some missionary work this week (other than the 'rents and nicole... haha). Love!

Feliz Navidad!

To All, Merry Christmas! I hope you all are doing well and are excited for Christmas! Apparently I will be calling by Skype at 12 noonish tomorrow in our time here or 9 in Texas. Dad said that should work out. Anyways, this past week was great! Finally we had 5 investigators at church. It went really well, mostly because we gave the Gospel Principles class and we also used the second hour to do the first Aaronic Priesthood class that has happened here in at least a year. There is no YM presidency. Everything went well and I believe our investigators really enjoyed church. We are doing everything we can to help our investigator Marcelo, who is 17, to be baptized this Sunday. He has the desire and lacks almost nothing of teaching, but his mom is hesitant to give him permission so far. We´ll see how this week turns out! His little brother and sister also attended church with him this week and we also had an older lady named Nadia and a miracle named Maigdel. haha, yes, her parents did make up that name. On Thursday we decided to pass by some people on the ward list that nobody knows and we just so happened to find a family in the which there is a 9 year old daughter who hasn´t been baptized and they had a strong desire to return to church. So we set an appointment Saturday, and put a baptismal date with the girl and on Sunday the family came to church! They should be great. Anyways, I´ll be talking to ya´ll shortly so I don´t need to write too much, right? I'll also include a picture of the huge hill we climbed today, I guess I got pretty burnt- don't worry mom, I'm putting on sunblock at least once a day... haha. Anyways, love you all! Hope you have a great Christmas! I should be there for the next one! haha. Turns out Elder Sheffield and I are 5th cousins now that we did the calculations!