August 2010

8/30/10
That´s really funny about Grandpa´s haircut. What happened to him was pretty much what happened to me the first few times I cut my hair in Chile, although I have the excuse that I really couldn´t understand what they were saying to me in Spanish. As far as missionary stuff goes, I liked the fitted white shirts that you got, and I liked Rockport shoes because they were comfortable and not crazy expensive. Ecco is the best brand for shoes, but they are really expensive. And tell Briggs not to let the salesman at Missionary Mall and Mr. Mac try to trick him into buying suits a couple sizes big unless he thinks he really could get fat, because my suits have been a little baggy for the whole mission.

Well, this week went well. Last week we we had training meetings with the mission president every morning from Tuesday to Friday. It´s a new thing that they are doing where they teach us something that has to with missionary work, then we practice it. It´s a pretty good way of teaching some basic things so that all of the missionaries know how to do them. The bad thing is, being in a branch in the mountains, we have to travel anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours every morning just to get to them. And we´ve got these training meetings all this week too.

Yesterday we had Stake Conference, even though branches normally pertain to the mission, the branches in this mission pertain to stakes, because there are only two branches. So we went to Stake Conference yesterday, and the Stake Presidency got changed up, and our Branch President was called to be second counselor in the stake presidency. So that changes things completely for the branch. The Branch President and his family are the only ones in the branch that have been members for a long time. Everyone else in the branch have been baptized in the last four years, so we don´t know exactly what´s going to go on with the branch, but the one family that was holding it all together is probably not going to be able to help as much now. Right now, there isn´t anybody in the branch that meets the requirements to be branch president, so it looks like the stake is going to have to assign one of the guys from the high council over to be the temporary branch president. It´s going to be interesting to see what happens.

Things are going good here, thanks for everything. I love you.

8/23/10
That´s so crazy that Courtney is going to start college this week. For me it still feels like she´s in high school. Some things have changed quite a bit since I left, I guess that´s what happens. I´m glad to hear that Jake will be around when I get back, although I don´t think too much has changed for him, his favorite thing has always been eating treats.

This week went pretty well. Elder Richard G. Scott and Elder Costa from the presidency of the Seventy are in Chile, so there was a special devotional last Saturday morning for the missionaries in Santiago. Although Elder Scott wasn´t there, just Elder Costa talked to us. I think that´s what they always do when the Apostles come to Chile because last year Elder Oaks came with Elder Dickson, and we had a conference with Elder Dickson. It was a really good devotional.

Today we had a big zone activity in our sector, we played soccer and had a barbeque. It was fun, we brought all of the missionaries from our zone up to a camping ground in our area. It was fun because we hardly ever see the other missionaries. Usually, there is a zone class every week, but we don´t go because our area is kind of far away from the city. It was funny, one of the missionaries that ends the mission with me was at the activity and he kept talking to me about how we have eight weeks left. Everybody made fun of him for being trunky.

This week we had a good turnout of investigators at church. This one sister in the branch brought a friend to church for the first time yesterday. It was cool, because hardly anyone even invites their friends to church, so we´re pretty excited to start teaching the friend. It´s funny, the sister is 40-something years old and separated, and her friend was a guy with pretty much the same situation, so my companion and I are thinking that maybe they are dating, but the sister wants the guy to be a member of the church.

Things are going good here in Chile, thanks for everything.

8/16/10
Well, this week was a lot better. Although the investigator that was going to get baptized isn´t going to get baptized now. Her parents said that she is too young to make a decision like that. But my companion and I suspected that this was going to happen because the week that she told us that she got sick, she didn´t really look very sick. And her mom was the one telling us that she couldn´t be baptized. Tonight we have an appointment with the whole family and we´re hoping that we can work it all out tonight. We´re going to talk about how to recognize the spirit and receive an answer from God because our investigator has a testimony, and she received an answer, we´re hoping that this will give her the chance to share her testimony with her parents, and maybe that´ll soften their hearts. This Sunday was a lot better than last Sunday, although we still had to teach Sunday School class, and the Primary class third hour. But, considering all that happened last week, this week was much better.


Well, sorry for such a short e-mail this week. There isn´t too much to tell. We´re kind of worried about tonight, but whatever happens, happens. Thanks for everything. I love you.

8/09/10
I´ve got some bad news, the girl that we´ve been teaching didn´t get baptized yesterday. She got sick with bronchitis last week and we had to postpone the baptism. So that is kind of a bummer, but we just have to wait until she gets better because she is ready for her baptism. This week we did the Movie Night that got postponed from last week, but it didn´t go very well. We scheduled the activity at 7:00pm, so that everybody would show up at about 7:30, but people were rolling in after 8:00 and close to 8:30. So we couldn´t even start the activity on time. And we were supposed to watch the movie on a projector that the Branch President said he would bring, but didn´t. So we ended up watching the movie on the little tv from the library. It didn´t really turn out anything like we wanted it to Then on Sunday, we started walking to church and the Branch President called us and asked us if we were ready. We told him that we didn´t know what he was talking about and he told us that every 2nd Sunday of the month is Missionary Work Sunday, the the Elders have to give talks. Of course we said that was fine and that we would give talks, but before this month, the 4th Sunday of every month was when we gave talks. My companion and I were talking about why he would change it all of a sudden without telling us, then we remembered that one of the guys from the High Council of the stake was at church yesterday, and we think that the Branch President didn´t have anyone to give talks, and didn´t want to look unorganized for the guy from the stake. It sucks, the Branch President has been screwing us over lately so that he doesn´t look bad. Then, after Sacrament Meeting, it was my turn to give the Sunday School class for the young men and women. Then, in the third hour, the Primary President asked us if we could play games and sing with the primary kids for the last hour. But I don´t really blame her because her counselors never come to church to help her out. But anyway, this week was kind of crazy, and really busy. We had a lot to do, but I think that's always better than having nothing to do. Thanks for everything.
Love,
Matt
PS I don´t want to sound trunky or anything, but I´ve only got 10 weeks left.


8/02/10
This week went well for us. Although we had a Movie Night branch activity planned for last Friday, and it got postponed until this Friday because the Young Women had an activity the same night, and the Young Womens President is the Branch President´s wife, so she won. It was funny because he announced the Movie Night last Sacrament Meeting and everything, so we had to run around letting everybody know that the activity was postponed. But it´s all good because this week we´re going to do. So this week should be a really good week because we´re going to have the Movie Night on Friday, then the baptism on Sunday. Everything is good to go for the baptism for the 8th.

This week we had a good turn out of investigators at church. One of them was the friend of one of the members and said that she wants to learn more about the church. The only bad thing is that her friend that´s a member, only comes every once in a while and has a reputation for asking for stuff from the Bishop´s Storehouse a lot. So we´re going to have to take it slow and see if she is in it for the right reasons.

Thanks for getting me a new debit card, and thanks for sending me the flight plans. Thanks for everything.