Deciding moments

This week was another long, hot week. Monday it cooled down and we all got excited because we thought that summer was ending but after Monday, it was hotter than it had ever been before. Alright enough complaining.

Once again very few people were in there houses when they told us to come by. The others were in their houses but they pretended not to be there as we could see them sitting on their couch through their window. But we kept going. And going and going until it seemed ridiculous to keep doing what we were doing but we knew we had to keep going and every once in a while there would be a small deciding moment. Something that would have been very easy to miss. Something that wouldn't have happened if we didn't keep going. But because we tried our best we were able to find people exactly at the moment necessary to help them.

And even though my entire body hurt at the end of the week, for some reason it was worth those small 20 minute deciding moments.

Long story short, we have two people who told us that they want to get baptized in a couple weeks. And they are both awesome people and very fun to work with.

Thanks for all your support and letters!

It's still hot out

This week was another week.

It started out pretty good. Actually it started out really good. We found some people that we had lost contact with because of vacations, work, etc. and had some cool experiences with them. Actually, to be more specific, we were teaching María José who was pretty cool but she wasn´t really into it. So we left her the challenge to read the book of mormon from the beginning and we left her the promise that she WILL start growing a testimony if she does it right. So she did it, and after two weeks without talking to her we found her in her house and she told us she wants to get baptized. The Book of Mormon does it again. But seriously, it is one powerful book.

A similar situation happened the next day, he had lost his book of mormon but even though his family was on vacations up north, he went alone to church for the first time. He also wants to get baptized.

Long story short, the church is true.

Unfortunately, on friday in the morning I came down with a fever and the weirdest bowl behavior and was bed stricken for till sunday morning. I'm fine now but it was a weird weekend.

Thanks for all your support and emails. Have a good week!

It's still hot

This week was another week.

It started out pretty good. Actually it started out really good. We found some people that we had lost contact with because of vacations, work, etc. and had some cool experiences with them. Actually, to be more specific, we were teaching María José who was pretty cool but she wasn´t really into it. So we left her the challenge to read the book of mormon from the beginning and we left her the promise that she WILL start growing a testimony if she does it right. So she did it, and after two weeks without talking to her we found her in her house and she told us she wants to get baptized. The Book of Mormon does it again. But seriously, it is one powerful book.

A similar situation happened the next day, he had lost his book of mormon but even though his family was on vacations up north, he went alone to church for the first time. He also wants to get baptized.

Long story short, the church is true.

Unfortunately, on friday in the morning I came down with a fever and the weirdest bowl behavior and was bed stricken for till sunday morning. I'm fine now but it was a weird weekend.

Thanks for all your support and emails. Have a good week!

Hawaii

Good news: I got accepted to BYU Hawaii. I haven't decided yet but if I don't get into Provo, I am probably going to Hawaii.

Anyways, this week was hard. It was probably the hardest I have ever worked at something in my life. We did all that we can but nothing was turning out. We were talking with everyone, planning better than ever but NO ONE was in there house. This week we got the address and phone number of more than 70 people and when we planned an appointment no one showed up. Our days were full of at least like 10 appointments and they all fell. I think I might still be getting used to being out here again.

On saturday we started a fast to be able to have someone progress and all of a sudden, almost half of the appointments were there! Baby steps!

For pday we are just getting things clean and organized. President will be visiting all of the houses next month so we are going to get everything organized. That's about everything for the week.

Love you all! 

Cyber cafe

Once again I have the curse of using a Cyber cafe computer which are slower than ever. Long story short I have very little time to write.

Los Angeles is awesome. It is so hot. Like over 100 degrees sometimes. My new companion is Elder Galbreath from Moses lake, Washington. He likes farming, soil testing, tractors, and working hard. And that is exactly what we have been doing. This week we were able to set up baptismal dates with 6 people and we are not stopping there. 

I want to emphasize how hot it is here.

Our ward is giant and very helpful. There are plenty of members willing to just walk around with us as we find and teach new people. It helps a ton.

I have never been as exhausted as I have been every night this week. The only thing that saves me are frozen grapes and the book "Jesus the Christ." I suggest reading and eating those things.

Ok times up, Love you all. And good luck packing up the house!

More conferences

This week we had the rest of the multi zone conferences. They were awesome but we kind of did them by muscle memory because we were all focused on the big activity on Monday. 

On wednesday we got together with Carla to go over the last couple of things before her baptism and she couldn't help but to break down. There are a lot of things that are happening with her, most of which would be inappropriate to say but she was just about to give up. Actually, she had a terrible long night because of how stressed she was then in the morning she was laying in bed and told herself that she was going to stop visiting with us. She said she was just about to decided to do it when I called her and convinced her to get together with us. She came and we had an awesome lesson. Now she says that she's positive that she is getting baptized next saturday. It's crazy how everything works out. I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing but almost as if it were magic, everything comes together. That's just the mission

Everything else this week has just been preparations for the activity. We got all the buses contracted, the shirts made and paid for, the food bought, the DVDs made, we built signs out of wood (that was actually pretty fun) and got everyone organized into teams. The rest of today will be spent getting all the last little things done.

Plot Twist

To be able to make this big mission activity happen we had to drive down to the site and plan out the things we can do with the resources we have, we had to contract 8 buses coming from 4 different cities so that 250 people can get to the middle of nowhere, and do endless nit picky planning but in the end, it turns out that we probably can't do the activity where we wanted to do it. So this week we are going to start over.

Besides that, we have been pretty focused on helping Carla get baptized. She is to the point that she says "I already know I am going to do it on the 24th, I´m just terrified what my parents are going to do to me when it happens." Unfortunately, it´s most likely that she is kicked out of her house and cut off, at least from her parents. She is hoping that they don't find out until after she moves to Louisiana but we all know that the adversary doesn't work like that. 

I think that is all that happened this week, Lets see.. I haggled a Colombian into making a bunch of DVDs for 200 dollars instead of the 400 he wanted. we had an old woman cuss us out in english and the moral of her rampage was that "ice cream cones are a gay food"(that isn´t exaggerated). I have a sinus infection. 

Alright, now that's everything

My Mission Year

Well, there it was, my only full year in the mission. This is how it ended:

2014

On monday we went out to look for people to teach with the little time we had left in the day. We went to work in the rich part of town again, mostly because the houses are so giant that, it makes it interesting. But with just 2 hours we found 5 families. That's not exaggerating. We got into the houses of 5 different families. I have no idea how it happened. But I can't complain.

I can't remember what happened on tuesday, just getting work done then teaching some people.

On wednesday we had a ton to do in the office but at exactly 8:30, when we were allowed time to celebrate, we turned off our computers, took off our shoes and played soccer in the mini cultural hall thing we have in the office. After a half an hour, we were all exuasted and I had ripped my pants so we stopped and made classic chilean "choripanes" which are like mini hotdogs.

After finishing everything at the office we went home and waited till midnight to try to see the firework show in Concepción. Last time I looked at my watch, we had five minutes till twelve but all of a sudden

2015

we heard the boom of the fireworks. We quickly ran up to the top floor of the apartment building and watched them go off as we reminisced on 2014 and made the classic goals for 2015. Then some of us went to sleep and some stayed up telling stories.

The next day we had a zone activity. We all got together in San Pedro and had a classic summer day. Tacos and orchata made by the mexican sisters in the zone complete with soccer, volleyball, frisby, ping pong and blazing sun. By 3 we were all exhausted and way too sunburned so we just layed in the shade and talked instead. At 5 everyone went back to there houses and suffered the consequences of not using sunscreen. My arms are litteraly tuning blue from the burn. I kind of have to accept that I will get cancer now.

On friday we didn't have much time to work in the office but we had some awesome lessons in San Pedro. The girl that talked to us last week in the rich part of town, Carla, is now committed to be baptized on the 24th of January. She said that she is commited to do it but she is afraid that her parents will cut her off as their child if she gets baptized. When they found her book of mormon, they cut her off economically so it wouldn't surprise her if they would do something even more irrational if she joined the church. Today we are all fasting, Carla included, that when it comes time to tell them, her parents will soften their hearts. If you could, it would be a big help if you all could give a little time in your prayers so help her out. 

Today we traveled down to Traiguén to check out the site for the big mission activity. It was just as hot as usual. At one moment, we were driving though the country and there were endless wheat fields so we stopped and ran through them and took pictures. I will be sending those today. On the way home we had a free style contest to EFY music and we finally got Elder Medina, the Ecuadorian to do it in spanish. It was a good time.

Christmas #2 of 2

Well, that was my last christmas in the mission. For those who weren't present for the skype call, this is what we did;

The day before Christmas Eve, Hermana Bluth, President's wife, gave us the job to go to all the mission delivering the missionaries' Christmas packages. Considering that it takes us 6 hours to get from north to south and 4 to get east to west, we had a lot of work to do. So we left early in the morning on christmas eve and delivered packages everywhere. Through the course of the day we had many "christmas miracles" that saved us time. Somehow we got back to concepción at 9:00pm just in time for our little Christmas party with President. When we got there they had some Delicious mexican food ready which was followed by Santa Bingo (with prizes). After playing games we ate root beer floats and watched "it's a wonderful life." We finally got home at 1:30am. It was probably the best Christmas Eve ever. in the mission at least.

On Christmas morning we got up, listened to some Christmas music, drank some homemade egg nog, and did some studies. We went to the office and ate way too much candy and stuff then each took turns skyping with the family. This year we only had 40 minutes to skype which was kind of lame but still a good experience. After everyone finished skyping we went home with the plan to build a blanket fort and watch a movie but everyone wanted to go to bed early so I stayed up and made sushi and it turned out really well. I ended up eating most of it that night.

On friday we went out to work in Andalué, the really rich part of town again. As usual, people were really mean but after walking away from a house that rejected us hard, someone who was hiding behind the fence called to us, so we came to her and she told us not to let the people in the house see us. we walked to the side a little bit and she told us her story. Her family is all baptists. However, her boyfriend is a return missionary and has told her all about the "mormons." She went to church by herself just to see how it is and she loved it. They even gave her a book of mormon which she then studied frequently. When her parents found out about all this, they threw away her book of mormon and didn't allow her to go to church. She has been secretly learning stuff on her own and hoping she could find missionaries and sure enough, on the way home from work, she saw us knocking her parents door.

Yet another Christmas miracle. 

This week we have a half pday becasue of Christmas so I won't be able to respond later today. Talk to you next week!

The stress of a Christmas Miracle

This week we had transfers. So it was the usual crazy schedule, getting up too early, going to bed too late. Loading and unloading suitcases a hundred times. During transfers there is a million things that go wrong and most of the time it seems that there isn't any solution. But in the end everything works out. Elder París left the office so now i´m the only one left from the original group. I'm staying one more transfer but after that I am going back as a normal missionary! As much as i´ve loved being in the office, I'm pretty excited to go back.

Wednesday was a day of life changes. In the morning we got up early to pick up the new missionaries from the hotel on the way there, the motorcyler in front of us was T boned by a small car running a red light. His body was thrown up in the air and my brain couldn´t process what I had just seen until it came crashing back down. We quickly stopped the car and ran to the man now laying still. Assessment: his arm was now a spagetti noodle, his face was severely cut from the glass, blood was coming out of his ears, and when asked what his name was, he could only groan loudly. I have always wanted to own a motorcycle but now i've decided against it. It's weird to think how this persons's plans and probably a large part of his life where changed in the matter of a few seconds.

To explain how the next life change happened I have to give a little back story. One day Elder Herron and I made some plans and found a little time to go to San Pedro to work. While I was turning lights off and getting my backpack I noticed a small paper on my desk with a name and an address so I stuffed it into my pocket. Later that day I remember I had the paper so I took it out and we realized we were on that same street. We looked for the address and when we gave up, we felt we needed to ask someone where it is. So we asked and a grumpy middle aged women directed us to some run down apartments. Run down is an understatement, I would also add "unsafe" and "sketchy." The door to get in the complex was locked so we went around the other side and the back door was open. After running into many spiderwebs we found the person, Vanessa. We taught her and she loved the message. Over time we taught her every once in a while and she was very smart but her family is all catholic and hated the mormons. When she told her parents that she was listening to us, they threatened to cut her off as their child. 

With time she became too busy to meet with us but every once in a while could go to church. She said that she would like to get baptised but if she did it, it would be in a long while and we coudln´t convince her otherwise. Well, that same wednesday of the accident we felt like we needed to call her so we did and she told us that she was going south for christmas on friday for a couple weeks but unwantingly allowed us to teach her later that day. We taught her something, I don´t remember what it was, the spirit was really strong and we challenged her to be baptised before she goes, in two days. She burst into tears and said yes. Later she told us that if she didn't do it now she wouldv'e just given up and followed what her family said, and not what God impressed her to do. On thursday she had her interview and on friday she got baptized. 

There was a ton of problems as usual, the font wasn't working and wouldn't fill up or drain, the person playing the piano couldn´t go, and we had to find buses for missionaries who just finished a conference. In the end, like usual, we got everything done. The opening song was "secreta oración" and the spirit was so strong. I couldn't help but think about how everything went perfectly, but how little we actually did. I look over at her and she was tearing up already. 

The best part about the baptismal service came afterwards when her cousin, who had been unsuccessfully trying to share the gospel with Vanessa for years, came up to us and told us about how hard she has worked to try help her cousin, how thankful she was for our help, and how happy she was to see Vanessa finally decide to do it.

It was a hard, exhausting week but watching Vanessa take this step was worth every second. 

On an interesting note, The two people that have been baptised in my time here are both named Vanessa and the people that baptised them are both named Daniel.

President has given us 45 minutes to do skype on Christmas so it will be a little complicated. 

Also, I got my package! It was awesome. Seriously, it had everything I wanted. Thanks to all those who chipped in.

I´ll see you all in a couple days!