Mision Illapel Chile

Dear all, This week was decent, we only had one investigator at church, who is nataly, but she is progressing really well to be baptized the 30th. Her mom, Kathy, who is getting active again is doing well as well, but it seems like her live in boyfriend has lost interest and they´ve been having some problems. I wish he would just understand and listen for himself the message, but not so for now... we´re gonna keep doing everything we can so he can progress. As far as helping the branch.... we helped them set a goal to travel to the temple in May, as they haven´t done a trip in over a year... and we also have at least 10 people ready to receive their patriarchal blessings, which they will have to travel to receive in April. A less active that I have helped out a lot, John Paul, also received the priesthood after years of inactivity an is really excited to come to church early to help us prepare the sacrament, to pass, and to prepare himself to receive the melchizidek priesthood. It´s always amazing to see the miracles the Lord can do in the lives of the people if they just listen and act. Being a missionary is great! I am doing everything I can to take advantage of what I have left. I´ve always loved the talk where it talks about the furniture store that had a sign up that said, ´finishers wanted´ Love you all! Have a great week. Happy birthday to me mañana! haha. :)

Error

To all, Well first of all I have to say that the mission secretary along with the church travel department had an error and messed up on the plane tickets. My flight is actually the 21st of May after all. haha. I´ll be home in Texas the 22nd. haha. Eventually I suppose they`ll stop extending my mission. haha This week we were able to help two investigators to accept baptismal dates. They both come from part member families and we were able to help various less actives attend for the first time in years. There were 51 in Sacrament meeting on Sunday. Not too bad for Illapel. We also heard that president is going to give us another set of missionaries here! In fact they will be sisters and they`ll arrive for transfers! Anyways, I don`t have much time today because we had a zone activity of playing soccer, eating completos (hot dogs with avacado, tomato, and everything else), and watermelon. haha. It was fun and we had Zone leader Council last week so we traveled a lot and this week we`ll have Zone conference with president. Should be fun. haha. Anyways, I´ll try and include more details about everything going on soon or if not you´ll have to ask me when I get back... hahaha. Love you all! Have a most excellent week.

Woah

Dear All, I found out today in an email from mom that I´ll be arriving in Texas May 1st! haha... I had no idea, I thought I was leaving the 21st of May. That means I only have 9 weeks left... :/ haha... anyways, I still might talk to President Kahnlein, but I think that is probably when I´ll be heading home to Texas. Other than that we had some crazy changes at transfers like I commented last week. Elder Pereira left to be the new assistand and Elder Reyes who was my Zone Leader 2 transfers returned again and is now my companion. Check out- misionvinadelmar.blogspot.com to see all the new missionaries that arrived. We have 3 new missionaries that just arrived to Chile in the zone. 2 Elders and 1 sister, the sisters white washed (took out the elders and put in sisters) and one is being trained. they seem to have some good potential. We´re excited for what´s going on in the zone. Josh- Could you look into when I´ll be able to register for classes? I think it might be at the end of this month, not sure. It would be good to know. haha. Other than that we have one family progressing. We´ll have a family evening tonight, but the dad already has received a testimony that the Book of Mormon is true. They just need to get married and we need to keep working with the 10 year old daughter, because she is really nervous and leaves to her grandma´s house whenever we go over. haha, but they should be baptized at the end of the month. They are: Roberto, Katy, Natali, and their little girl Antonia. The mother is a returning member and is pregnant and due for June. They´re great and seemed to enjoy church though we´ve been having little attendance lately. There were 32 at church on Sunday. Hopefully we can get back up to 50 and upwards like we were at one point. President Cortes drove us around for 5 hours yesterday visiting the converts and less actives. It was great. Hopefully we can get more members on board to go out and visit the less actives and converts. Mission lesson learned: DO YOUR HOME AND VISITING TEACHING. It´s super easy and makes a huge difference in the lives of the people you visit, if you only worry enough to visit them once a month. So anyways, I invite you to get your visits done early this month. :) haha Love you guys! Have a great week. Until next week,

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