10/19/09 through 11/16/09

11/16/09 New calling: Zone Leader
I had a pretty busy week too. Yesterday we had a baptism that was incredible. We were teaching this lady named Carolina for the last couple of weeks. She works from Monday to Friday as a nanny, she takes care of the kids of a really rich family. But she doesn´t work the weekends so she has been to church with us the last couple of weeks. But on Saturday when we went to her house to do the baptismal interview, she told us that the nanny that works on the weekends for this family was in a car accident, and broke a couple of ribs and was in the hospital, so the family wanted her to work this Sunday. When she told us that, my heart seriously fell to the bottom of my stomach. And after a couple minutes of talking about what we could do to fix the problem, she said ¨I don´t care, I´m going to go to work in the morning early, and I´m going to sneak out to go to church and be baptized.¨ And that´s exactly what she did. It was awesome, she ran away from her work to get baptized. So she was baptized, and everything is all good now. Our mission president told us that we need to fight for our baptisms, and it was funny, because although we never gave up fighting, Carolina was the one that made things happen.

Also, we had changes today. What they always do for changes is Sunday night they call to tell us if we are leaving or staying. But last night there was a problem with our cell phone, I don´t actually know what was wrong, but we couldn´t receive or make calls. And in the morning, when the cell phone started working again, we saw that we had missed calls from the zone leaders, the assistants, and the mission presidents too. So we called our zone leaders and explained what happened they told us that I was leaving the area. So I packed my bags and we went to the meeting for changes. And I talked with the mission president for a minute, he was trying to call me last night because he called me to be Zone Leader, and be the companion of a missionary in his second change. So now I´m in a new sector, with a companion that has six weeks in Chile, and I´m a zone leader. My new sector is one of the richest sectors in the whole mission, so it´s going to be quite a bit different from what I´m used to right now. My new companion is Elder Page, from the United States. He doesn´t really speak very much spanish but he is a really cool guy, this change is going to be a lot of fun. I have a lot of new responsability now, but I´m excited.

That´s good to hear that Grandma is getting better. What´s going to happen to Grandma and Grandpa´s house? It also sounds like this Thanksgiving is going to be fun. But this is the last one for me in the mission, I´ll be back for the next year. Sorry, I haven´t really put too much thought into Christmas with how busy this week has been. But I´ll start thinking and let you know next week. Thanks for everything.

Love,
Matt

11/02/09
Sounds like you guys had fun on Halloween. Jenni sent me pictures of the snow in Colorado. That is definately one thing I miss about the States, the snow. It didn´t snow all winter here. And now summer has started and it´s getting hotter and hotter every day. Here in Chile, Halloween isn´t really a big deal. About half of Chile dresses up and the other half thinks it´s dumb. In fact, we didn´t even see anybody trick or treating that night.

The other day my companion and I were knocking doors and we taught a family of twelve people. It was pretty cool. It really wasn´t like teaching a lesson, more of a class. But it was fun, because everyone paid attention and everything went just fine. Also, about five months ago one of my first companions in this sector and I were knocking in a neighborhood, and we didn´t have any success at all. But my companion that I have right now and I went to try again this past week. I didn´t expect that much would happen. But we taught a lady that remembered me from when I knocked doors there five months ago and let us in. Then she told us that she has been praying and asking God to help her family, and we showed up, so that was a pretty good experience.

I actually am good for garments for right now, and I can´t think of anything that I need, so I´ll be thinking about it this week and next Monday I´ll tell you what I need. And I´m feeling a lot better now, I´m pretty sure that I don´t have bronchitis anymore.

I got Dad´s letter and the package. Thank you so much for everything. It was perfect and it helped me a lot. Thanks for everything.

Love,
Matt

10/26/09

This week went pretty well. Yesterday at church the Primary did a program for sacrament meeting. It was really good, and funny. Little kids always do something funny. One of the recent converts that is in the Primary gave the opening prayer for the sacrament meeting so that was pretty cool. But everything has been good. I went to the doctor last week and he gave me some pills to take and I´m feeling a little better but I´m still coughing quite a bit. But it´s getting a lot better. The swine flu got to Chile a while ago, and a couple of missionaries got it. It´s pretty strong but it´s not life threatening. I got the package. Thank you so much for everything, it was really nice to read your letters and see the pictures, thank you so much. The speakers and charger are perfect, thank you. I´m looking at the USB right now and I think you might have sent the wrong one or something, because it doesn´t have any music on it. I think it has some of Brian´s stuff from the Playstation 3. Well that´s about everything new for this week. Thanks for everything.
Love,
Matt

10/19/19
Sounds like the cruise went well. That´s good that you guys got out of Utah for a little bit. I honestly don´t remember much about a lot of the people you mentioned in your letter. Of course I remember Kurt and Laurel, and the Burnett´s, and the Crawford´s. But I don´t remember much about the others. Your cruise reminds me a little bit of when I went to Hawaii with the football team. That´s cool about Vanessa Burnett. I have two friends from the Timpview football team that are in Mendoza right now. They left a couple of weeks after me because I saw them in the MTC. The Mendoza mission and Santiago East are neighbors. The only thing that separates us are the giant Andes mountains. Tell Dad to try and not be so lazy about writing next week. He doesn´t have any excuses because you guy´s only have one son on a mission, imagine what it´s like for the Bird family.
My week went pretty well. We had two baptisms planned for this sunday. We were going to baptize a mom and her son. But in the week the mom told us that her husband won´t let them get baptized. She actually had to lie to be able to go to church. She told him that they were going to the grocery store every Sunday morning. But then he found out, and now won´t let us baptize them. So that was bad news for this week. But everything else is going well. We had interviews with the President this week, I told me that I´ve been in Pirque for a long time, and I´ve done a lot of good things here, but I should be ready for a change the next time we have changes. So it looks like I´ll be leaving to another sector in four weeks. Just so you know, for the last month or so I´ve been writing in my journal every day. President Laycock is emphasizing that a lot. I wrote in my journal every day in the MTC, and when I first got to Chile, then I got lazy for about five or six months where I was writing every once in a while, and now I´m picking it up again. It´s kind of cool, now that I´ve got a year I can look in my journal and see what I was doing one year ago. That´s about it for this week. Thanks for everything.
Love,
Matt