July 2010

July 26, 2010
This week went really well. Today we had changes, so Elder Montecinos and I were a little worried about what was going to happen to us. But we got the call last night and we are going to stay together for another transfer. That´s a good thing, especially since this week we found a golden investigator that has a baptismal date for the 8th of August. I guess I should say, that she found us. For the last couple of months we have been teaching a couple who is completely ready to get baptized, but they aren´t married, so they´re just waiting on that. So we went over to their house to visit them this week. When we got there their granddaughter came up to us and told us that she wants to get baptized. Apparently, this family has been doing Family Home Evenings every week for the last month or two, and the one that they did last week was really special. The Spirit was felt strongly in their home during the Family Home Evening and the granddaughter decided right then and there that she wants to be baptized. So we´ve been teaching her this week and she is preparing herself to get baptized on the 8th. We´re really excited about that.

This week it snowed here in San José de Maipo. It is freezing cold, but winter is always better with snow. The first morning it snowed my companion and I immediately ran outside and started playing in the snow. What can you expect from a couple of missionaries. Also, this week was the first branch conference ever here in San José. It went really well and quite a few people came to church.

Since last week was the last week of the transfer and my companion´s birthday was on Monday, the members have been treating us pretty well. And my companion has been saying goodbye to a lot of the members. He even got a couple of presents. It´s funny because both of us are still here. It´s weird to say goodbye when you´re not sure if you´re leaving. But this week was a really good week.

Thanks for everything. I love you and miss you. This week I´m starting my second to last transfer. Can you believe that? Only two more transfers.

July 19, 2010
This week went really well. Three mornings this week we have woken up and found that our water pipes have been frozen. So that means no hot showers in the morning to warm us up. The water comes back at about noon. The first morning wasn´t fun because we didn´t have any water at all. After that we started filling up bottles of water in the nighttime to use the next morning. This morning I heated some water on the stove and combed my hair and washed my face with that.

As far as investigators go, we´re not having too much luck lately. The other day we stopped by a store where one of the members of the branch works, and we were talking to the member and one of her co-workers. We found out that the member gave a book of mormon to her co-worker a while ago, and so we started talking about it, and the lady said that she was reading it and was liking it. My companion and I were really excited. We thought that we had struck gold, but when we offered to visit the co-worker in her house and teach her a little bit more about the book of mormon, she gave us a fake excuse and left. So that was a bummer.

Then on Sunday we went to church and a family of four people came to church out of nowhere. We started talking to the family, and it turns out that the guy has always been interested in religion and has always wanted to be a member of a church, but hasn´t been able to find the true church. He has looked into a lot of different churches in his life, and he´s actually listened to the missionaries before. He told us that they came to church thinking that we were Jehovah´s witnesses. But he said that it wasn´t coincidence that they got to our church. After talking with him a little bit, we tried to get an appointment with his family to start teaching him, and he told us that he doesn´t want to listen to us yet. He said that he´s going to keep coming to church, and that he´ll let us know when he´s ready to listen. Yet again, my companion and I were really excited, and we thought that we were the luckiest missionaries in the whole world, and they didn´t want to listen to us. I don´t know what´s going on. I just hope that they come back to church next week.

Last Friday we organized a Family Home Evening for the whole branch in the church. It was fun, for the spiritual part we divided everybody up into groups and had each group draw something on a poster board to represent a principle of the gospel. Then we played Pictionary for the game, and it was a lot of fun. It´s pretty easy to organize little activities like that in a small branch, so I think we´re going to be doing that more often.

Today is my companion´s birthday, so when we get back from internet I´m going to bake one of those cakes that you sent. The money was in the birthday card. I´m pretty sure that eveything made it here just fine. Thanks so much for everything. I miss you, tell Garry and Jenny that I say hi.


July 12 2010
I hope all goes well with the unpacking. It sounds like you really won´t have much time at all this week, but that´s alright. It´s more fun to be with family than to unpack. This week both of the packages that you sent made it. Thank you so much for everything. It was a lot of fun to see all of the pictures of you guys. Everything was perfect, exactly what I needed. Thank you again.

Well, this week went well. On Wednesday we had our zone conference. It was held in a church about two and a half hours away from our area, so we had to wake up really early and travel a lot Wednesday morning. But when we woke up Wednesday morning, it was about an hour before the conference started. I swear that the alarm clock didn´t go off that morning. My theory is that it was so cold Tuesday night, that the alarm didn´t go off. So we got ready as fast as we could and went to the conference, and ended up getting there almost two hours late. My companion and I were so embarrased. But we got there and slipped in the back, and nobody really said anything. And if anybody did say anything, they said that they understood because we are so far away from rest of the mission. We lucked out. Then the next morning we had to wake up early and go to the temple. Since the temple is in our mission, we get to go to the temple every change, which is every six weeks. So on Thursday we got to go to the temple, and that´s when we swung by the office and picked up the packages. On Sunday, we went to church and the daughter of one of the recent converts, who isn´t a member, came to church with her mom. We were talking to her and she told us that last year she was listening to the discussions and almost got baptized, but stopped because the missionaries that were teaching her left, but she told us that she wants to get baptized now. So we are pretty excited about that. We didn´t really have to do anything, she just showed up and asked us how she can be baptized. She´s one of the golden investigators. Things are going really good. We have transfers in two weeks and my companion and I are hoping that President doesn´t change either of us.

Thanks for everything Mom. Tell everyone I say hi. Have a great week.


July 5, 2010
I´m so sorry to hear about the car and all that you guys had to go through last night. Cars are the biggest convenience and inconvenience at the same time. But you´re right, that´s life. Things like that are bound to happen from time to time. Still nothing on the birthday packages, but we have zone conference this week, so I might get them when we go to zone conference.

This last week we had interviews with President Laycock. They went really well. President told me that I am the expert of the mission in branches, because I have been in a branch for about half of my mission. My companion and I were pretty excited going into the interviews because for the last two transfers President has told my companion what the changes were going to be. So we thought that we might get a heads up on the next transfer, but we didn´t get anything. But it was still a good experience. This last week went well. We´re having trouble finding new investigators. We decided to work hard at asking for referrals from the members, and the majority of the members just told us about someone that used to be investigating with the missionaries like a year ago. So that kind of didn´t turn out as well as we wanted it to. Because on one hand they gave us a referral, but on the other it was just some old investigator that the missionaries dropped for some reason or other. But we´re working at it. We´ve been starting a fire in the fireplace just about every night lately, I´m getting pretty good at it. Even though I´m an eagle scout I don´t think I was very good at starting fires until I got to this area and had to start fires to survive. Things are going good and I´m getting along really well with my companion. He´s my first Chilean companion. He´s a really good guy.

Well, unfortunately, there isn´t too much to report on this week. Thanks for everything. Hey, were you about to ask Timpview High School to send my transcript and ACT scores to the University of Utah? Can you let me know when you do that just so that I can know? Thanks a bunch. I love you and miss you.