Happy New Year!

Well hello. Feliz Año Nuevo! That's right, it's time for a new year! 2015 is at the doorstep and it's crazy to think how fast 2014 has passed. It seems just like yesterday that I was with my trainer (who is now home in Brazil) were hanging out alone for the New Years of 2014. CRAZY!

Well Christmas here went really well! It was really awesome! I don't remember how much I told you last week, but we went to an elderly man's house to eat dinner with him and his daughter. It was really fun, because he is the man! His name is Hermano Sepulveda and he is so cool! He has basically read everything there is to know about anything, so it was fun having awesome conversations about just cool stuff about the Gospel. Great guy and we really enjoyed Christmas, especially because we got to Skype home with the Family! That was the greatest, and the hour passed even faster than Mother's Day, so that wasn't good. But it was great being able to see everyone and see that you are all okay!

After Skyping home, we went to an Evangelical church we did service at and attended one of their meetings. It was cool to see how they worshiped and I learned a few things. Overall it was great to meet new people and stuff!

Then on Friday I went on divisions to my first ward, Poeta Neruda, and it was really cool to walk the streets and stuff again. Nobody remembered me because I was only there for 3 months, but they remembered me as the greenie who didn't talk with Elder Bezerra. But I had to tell them first.

Anyway, that was my week. Tonight we have to go into the house at 9, and we can't leave until tomorrow. We actually got our P Day changed to tomorrow, and we only have time to write and buy our food for the week today, and so after this we have to work.

Alright so the first one is our Christmas tree there in the house.

The second one is really funny. We have 3 dogs in our little street that all the neighbors feed and stuff. But they are really friendly and stuff. We left our gate open for 3 minutes and this big guy decided to nap in our front walkway haha.

And the last is the family during Skype! Awwwww, how cute!

Merry Christmas!

Well, here's Christmas. I can't believe that it just snuck right up on us! That came so quick! 

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!!

We are super excited here for Christmas! It has been great because it seems like everyone is more happy, which also means that they are more receptive! So that's great! We have been having a great time this week! We have found a lot of new people and eveyone that we have are progressing really well! 

There's not many stories to tell this week, other thn the fact that we've been tearing it up! We have been doing so well together! I love working with Elder Virga, he's awesome! We work so well together and we are having a blast here in the sector. There is so much work to do!

Anyway, to answer a question I think everyone has, How is Christmas in Chile? Well it's very different than in the states. It isn't as big of a deal, people just usually spend it with their family. But it is different how they do it. They call Santa Claus "El Viajito Pascuero" which basically means "the Old Guy of the Passover." I don't know where they got that from. But here, El Viajito Pascuero comes at midnight Christmas Eve (so today), so all the kids leave the house to watch fireworks at 12 at night and then when they get back in, the Viajito Pascuero had passed, so that's when they open up presents!

(This was a long email so I'll send you another with pictures)

So the first picture is the Meza Family. They were great and I worked with them the whole time I was in Covarrubias. I'll miss them a lot.

The second one is in the Subway this morning. The whole zone went to sing Christmas hymns in the subway this morning. Super fun!

And then the last one is me and Purnell with the Pezoa family. They were great! 

Changes!

Well, I got changed. I finally left my ward. I went back to my first zone, La Bandera, and I am just in a different ward. My new ward is called Pedro Aguirre Cerda! My new comp is Elder Virga from Arizona, and he is a great guy. His trainer was an elder who has my same time, so I'm still senior comp, but I don't know anything about the sector, so this will be fun!

It was sad to leave Covarrubias, I had come to love the members so much. They were all just such great friends of mine. I didn't even get to say all of the goodbyes that I had wanted to. That ward will always hold a special part in my heart, as long as all the individuals who helped me out in my time being there. But, now I'm out.

I don't know too much about my new ward, but I'm really excited to be in a new sector. I hope it doesn't take me too much time to get used to it, even though it will be hard. I don't know much about the ward, so there isn't much to tell about it.

Well that's about it this week. I spent most of the time this week saying goodbye to everyone. It was hard because I had been there for so long.

But anyway, here's the pictures.

The first one is our house "Christmas Celebration" with hot chocolate and sugar cookies.

 The second is a picture of Nicole and her son. She was a less active member but was reactivated. She was a great friend of mine.

The third is a picture of our room while Elder Diaz and I were living in the house of 6.

Have a great week!

Well here we are in the ciber a little bit early this week. This Saturday we have a Mission Christmas party at the Mission office, so today we only have from 10:30 in the morning to 3:00 in the afternoon to have P day, so this morning we baught our food for the day, hung around the house for a bit and now here we are writing. So it's going to be kind of rough getting to Saturday without a full P Day, but it'll be worth it!

We had a good week this past week. Things have been going well in the new house, and the ward has been looking up for the last little bit. One problem is that the Summer Vacations are coming soon, which means that soon everyone will be going out of town, so things will probably start slowing down in a little bit. But this week was pretty successful. We were able to find a few people who seem interested in listening to the Gospel, so that's exciting!

On sunday we were able to watch the First President Christmas Devotional! That was great to see! It was really good this year, and the best thing about it was that we brought a few less active members to see it and they loved it! It brought a great spirit!

This week, I'm on schedule to finishing the Book of Mormon again, so I'm getting really close. I am in Ether right now. The Book of Mormon has become a big part of my life and a bit part of my faith in Christ. I've felt the changes in my life as well as the blessings that come from reading it and living by it's priciples.

Well, this picture that I've got is my favorite part of the house we're at! It has a Massive Manchester City rug!

And, this week I have a surprise, thanks to a guy in our ward. This is a bunch of Christmas pictures that our District took! I hope you enjoy them!

This week was pretty interesting. We had a lot of running around.

This Saturday was really weird because it rained. And we had had weather of about 80ish degrees and then it went straight to 40ish with rain. And when we all thought it would rain again on sunday, it didn't and it was back to 80 degrees. So that was weird, it doesnt usually do that here in Santiago.

We also had an awesome activity in our chapel. The other ward that uses our chapel got to have an "Open House" in the chapel where the mission comes and sets up a lot of stuff and they give a tour of the chapel and what we do there. So our District went there and cleaned the whole chapel and outside of it. So I mopped the Whole chapel. And then it rained and I saw the nice clean floors destroyed. But it was alright because there were a lot of people who were excited about the church and who asked to have the missionaries over to meet with them.

Monday was really cool! We found a new investigator, her name is Maritza. Her dad used to drink a lot, but 2 missionaries helped him quit a long time ago, so she was super open to talking to us. And then after that, we went to help a less active family decorate their Christmas Tree. So that was fun! I didn't get the pictures from that yet, so I'll try to send them next week.

And then yesterday morning we had to go get my comp's Chilean ID, which was my 3rd time going. And it took AAAALLLLLL morning. It was terrible, we were in the center of Santiago from 8 to 3, and he didn't even get it done, which means we had to go back there today, on P Day, which stunk but whatever. Now it's all done. 

Things are going pretty good in the area. The new apartment is great, I live with our district leader, so that's fun! We only taught 14 lessons this week, so we walked around a LOT this week. Sunscreen, I use it when I know I'll be in the sun all day. But the sun doesn't get to me here. 

I hope everyone at home is all good and doing well!

Thanksgiving!

Well this week was better. The work was a little bit better, but me and my comp had a great time together. We started joking around a lot better, and the new companion ice was broken so that was really good.

This week was pretty interesting. Today we move houses temporarily. We are going to go stay in a house of 6 for a few weeks until next change. That's going to be interesting. The house is just outside of the sector, so that'll be fun! Our contract just ended in the house we were living in, and so until next change we'll be staying over there for a little bit.

And then today was probably the most fun P Day I've had. Since they don't celebrate Thanksgiving here (it's really an American and Canadian holiday) we did our own as a district. We got really lucky, because the supermarket just got turkeys here for Christmas, and they got here early, so we had a Thanksgiving Banquet as a district. We cooked a turkey, made stuffing, apple pie, potatoes and gravy. It took us all day, but we finally did it and it was awesome! I'll send a picture.

The first one is a picture of our Thanksgiving Banquet. We ate it all between the 8 of us.

An upclose of our turkey. It's not like mama made it, but it was 

just about there. 

(Here's a joke. 

Q: How many Missionaries does it take to cook a turkey?

A: Only one, but it takes seven others telling him how to do it!)

And then me and Purnell found a reaaaaally old soccer ball in our house, so what were we to do? We destroyed it and then wore it as a hat.

Braden also challenged those of us who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to share the Gospel with someone.  Help the missionaries in finding people to teach.  He says it makes his job so much easier when members are involved!  He especially challenged me(mom) to do it!  Probably knowing that I don't like doing that!!

Well, this might kind of be a little boring of a letter because nothing really exciting happened this week. We just had kind of normal week. We actually walked a lot.

But something that we learned in District meeting this past week was super interesting. Elder Peck, my district leader taught us something that I think applys to everyone. He talked about our purpose as missionaries, and since everyone is a missionary this applies to everyone. Our purpose as a missionary is to "Invite others to come unto Christ." But the word Invite is interesting because it means that we need to be in the act of coming closer to Christ before we invite others. He gave a scripture which is 1 Corinthians 9:14, which is "Even so has the Lord ordained that they who preach the gospel should live the gospel." So that was an interesting thing that I learned.

And then this monday, I went on divisions with my District Leaders companion. His name is Elder Jackson, and he is from Arkansas. He is really cool. He is a convert of one year and he decided to come right on the mission. He was really fun to work with, and I learned a lot from him.

Here he is. We made a Lot of pancakes when he came over.

Birthday Week

I had a pretty good birthday! I mean, it wasn't the same because I wasn't at home, but it was a lot better than last year! I went to church, and almost everyone wished me a happy birthday because they all know me well enough to know my birthday. I did have a birthday cake that someone made me! And it was delicious! But I'll show more about that in a minute!

But anyway we had a good week this week! Last saturday, we went to a conference with the Santiago West Mission, and we got to hear Elder Viñas, Elder Christianson and Elder Russel M. Nelson, and it was so awesome! All three of them spoke and they also had their wives speak to us. It was just a really spiritual experience. It was really awesome to meet them (yes I shook their hands) and listen to them. I learned a lot, and not just about missionary work, but a bunch of just cool stuff. But the very end was the coolest part. Elder Viñas, Elder Christianson and their wives all spoke in spanish, and Elder Nelson and his wife spoke in English with a translator. When Elder Nelson finished his talk he told us all they he wanted to bear his testimony. He paused for a minute and he started to speak in perfect spanish and gave his testimony. It was a crazy experience. The gift of tongues exists.

But other than that, we worked well this week. My new comp is very good at contacts, while that isn't my strong point, so that's good. We compliment each other on that. We are trying to work more with the members to try and get them to help us.

Alright so this first picture is the cake I got on my birthday. The member sitting in the background thought it would be funny to get it all over my face.

The second one. I know that I am super allergic to cats, but these kittens were way to cute to not play with!

And the third was a random lizard I found while doing service and cleaning someone's patio.

Happy Birthday!

First of all, THANKS to everyone who wished me a happy birthday! It made today really special! I don't know if I'll have time to respond to everyone, but thanks! I was astounded when I opened up my email and saw all those emails!

Well, in other news,

I stayed here in my sector. I didn't get changed. Elder Groen left and I stayed with Elder Diaz. So now I'll leave with more that 10 months here in this same sector. Which is A LOT hahaha. I miss Elder Groen a lot, but Elder Diaz is super great! He is from Córdoba Argentina. He is great and I think we will get along really well!

This week went really well! Especially yesterday! We found an incredible new investigator! His name is Oliver, and the missionaries 20ish years ago helped him out a lot personally and taught him a few things! So this week when we went to his house he let us in, sat us down and told us how interested he was in what we had to say! That just goes to show how much of effect we can have on the people we talk to everyday! He remembered that after 20ish years! Every little thing we do counts!

So today, 2 of my really good friends from the MTC hit their one year, and so they made an asado (Chilean BBQ) and invited me too! It's still crazy to me to think that I already have a year on the mission!

So the first picture is me and Elder Diaz.

The second is the amount of meat we made for the 6 of us today! 

It was so great!

Thanks again to everyone who wished me a happy birthday!

 

ONE YEAR!

So I hit one year this past week. I can't believe it's been passing so fast. So I went to a less active member's house and we had a lesson and then I finished we had a fun little tradition. Haha, the tradition, at least in our mission is to go and burn a shirt when you finish your first year in the mission! So that's what I did, I'll send a picture after.

But with that, we had a pretty good week! After being sick the week before, Elder Groen and I were ready to get out and get going! We finished up having a pretty awesome week! It was great! We were able to teach a lot of lessons and it seems like this week will be even better!

At the end of this week we find out changes. And since I've been here about 9 months now, I think i will probably be going. It's kind of a bummer, because I've been here for a long time and now me and all the members are great friends and I'll miss a lot of the people I work with, I think it will be good to go and see a new part, that is IF I leave. Everyone likes to mess with me and tell me that Elder Groen is going and that I'm staying. We'll see.

So these pictures that I got were of my shirt that I burned. I took a video but that's take a little bit more time to upload. But the other is with Elder Mellado, he only has 2 more weeks on the mission than me, so we burned our shirts together!

Well this has been an interesting week. It had a lot of ups and downs, but mostly just one big up and one big down. The big up was that we had a killer week and taught a lot of people and killed it! In that sense it was a great week, one of the best we have had in a long time here in Covarrubias.

The big down was that I got really sick. I got a throat infection sometime in the last little while and didn't notice it. And so Friday afternoon during one of our lessons, I got the chills really bad and just started shaking uncontrollably. So we finished up that lesson and I went home and then I didn't leave for 2 days, and I only left Monday when I could go to get my antibiotics and then just went back in Monday afternoon. Then yesterday I only worked half of the day. But now I'm all good, I feel fine, just a little bit tired. I got cleared to work and everything.

Other than that, it was a good week. We had a Zone Conference this past week with President, and it was super good. He talked a lot about the faith and how to use it in the work and how to use it to help us. I learned a lot!

But really the rest of the time this week I spent in the house. My head hurt too much to be able to read and study the little letters in the books, so I watched a lot of teaching movies that we have there in the house. So I watched the Testaments, which I realized a lot about it when I did. It isn't perfect, it's actually kind of old but the significance is still the same. My favorite part is when Helam is blind right before the end, and Jesus calls to him. The emotion on his face is incredible, and it makes me think of what I will do at the end when it's time to meet Christ and God. So if you haven't seen the movie, watch it!

But since I stayed in the house all week, I don't have any pictures. Nada, nothing. Sorry about that, but it's now reaaaally my fault haha!

Alright well I will answer your questions in the order that corresponds.

1.What is your daily routine like?

 We wake up at 7:30 (well I try to get up at 7 every day) and then we have to be out of the house at 1 since I'm training, usually it's 11:30. And then we eat lunch for an hour and work until 10.

2.  Do you exercise?

We have time for excercises, and I have been doing much better. I usually just do pushups and situps, but since I got sick on friday I haven't done them since then.

3.  Do you walk everywhere?

 We walk everywhere. My shoes are actually wearing down fast, but they still have a lot of time left in them. We walk to the store, in between lessons and everywhere. The only time we take a bus is when we have to go more than a 45 minute's walk, so basically outside of the zone.

4.  Do you feel safe where you live?

 We don't live in thaat ghetto of an area. Everyone knows us and they don't bug us. I feel completely safe.

5.  Do the members feed you well?

 The member's feed us fine. I never go hungry.

6.  How many discussions do you teach in an average week?

 We usually teach about 13 to 15 lessons a week. It is really low, but those have always been the usual numbers in the sector. I'm in a reaaaally hard sector, and I have been for about 9 months haha.

7.  If you aren't teaching a lot, what do you do?

When we aren't teaching, we are usually walking and trying to talk to people or doing contacts. Nothing more really.

*Since he didn't take pictures, I was looking through the computers and found some that I honestly don't know how I got!

I am guessing that I have had these for a while, as most of them are with his first companion Elder Bezzerra!

Well, now we are in the 4th week of the change here, which means I might only have 2 weeks left here. Maybe. Ya never know because this is my 6th change here, which means I've got almost 9 months here, so I've been here for a while. But I'm not too tired of the sector, so Elder Groen and I are still working hard. 

It has been a pretty good week. We had Stake Conference this past Saturday and Sunday, so that took a little bit of time out of our work schedule, plus we had the stake choir practices, which also took some time but it was worth it. The choir was a real success, our director did a good job! It was a really good conference too.  I learned a lot!

Other than that, not a whole lot happened. We had a really good lesson with one of our investigators, Francisco. I'm pretty sure I have written about him before. But just to remind you all, he was the kid that when we first found him, he didn't even know who God nor Christ are, and he didn't know anything about the religion really. Well we had a lesson about finding answers through the Spirit. We asked all these questions about things he had learned and what we had taught him, and he knew just about everything. So we asked him if he believed in what we had taught him, and he said yes! And we told him that was his answer. He was so astonished! It was awesome!

But this first picture we found on the side of the road. It's just this metal statue of a random fisherman. We thought it was pretty hilarious!

And then the second one, we found super cheap jerseys. That's Elder Purnell on the left, and then Groen in the middle, and then me rocking the new Alexis Sanchez jersey!

Conference!

I had a really good week this past week! I really enjoyed conference, but I had to watch it in spanish this time and so I didn't get a lot out of it. The translators talk SOO fast, even faster than the chileans down here so it was super hard for me to understand, especially when their words don't match the movement of the speaker's lips, so it was a little bit difficult for me to understand everything, but I'm going to download the talks in English and listen to them just so I can make sure I understood all of it! But from what I got, my favorite talks were Richard G. Scott's and Uchtdorf's "Is it I, Lord?" Those were incredible!

But because of Conference, we didn't have a whole ton of time Saturday and Sunday to work. Especially because the four of us here in the ward were asked to be in the Stake Choir because our performance in Ward Conference was so good, but we all know they just wanted to get Elder Groen into the Stake Choir because he can actually sing haha. 

But something I did start this week was super awesome! So along with reading the Book of Mormon as a mission, I'm getting up earlier and I started to study the New Testament in the Bible and it is incredible the stuff that you can learn in there. The life of Christ is just incredible. He is such an example to each and every one of us, and by learning of him and trying to align our lives with his will help us SO much! It's really incredible how many blessing we are able to have in our lives through trying to be more like Christ.

Well so the first picture is one of Elder Hoose. We were in the same ward the second change of my training and we got to be super good friends, and now he is here in Gran Avenida as my Zone Leader! I'm super pumped, but we got a nice black and white pic while we were messing around last P Day.

We went bowling today again, and here is the four of us here in the ward. It's me, Elder Mellado from Chile, Elder Groen and then Elder Purnell from Canada.

And then this is one of my best friends. Elder Marshell, he just happened to be there when we went bowling and it was awesome to see him!

Have a great week!

We had a really awesome week! We had a little bit of walking here and there, but all this walking is finally starting to come through and help us out. Well to start we were contacting one day and it has been super hard to find new people interested in hearing the gospel. So that has been our main focus for the last little while.  It has been kind of hard, and really interesting to see is all try to play out. We finally found an elderly couple who is interested in hearing about the gospel! That was an answer to our prayers!

Anyway, we had kind of a special experience. We went to lunch with a newly reactivated member, with one of her friends and we weren't expecting her husband to get home in time so we ate without him. Or we started without him at least. We were there and she made one big dish of lasagna for the 6 of us, and right before we started the prayer, her husband (who's investigating the church right now) walked in, so a lasagna for 7. Anyway we ate without thinking about it, had a bunch of laughs and strengthened our friendship and stuff like that. Well we ate and we were all full and about ready to leave until the hermana started to tell us something. She told us that she felt like the woman in the bible who made bread for the prophet Elias and then was able to make more than enough bread for her and her son. We were confused and she explained that one of those dishes of lasagna hardly fed the 3 in her family, but it had just fed 7. That's one of the most amazing experiences I have experienced. Even her husband was astonished!

Oh yeah, something else. As a mission, we have taken the challenge to read the Book of Mormon in 3 months, we started September 18th and we have to finish the 13 of December. That's 3 chapters of the Book of Mormon every day. I would like to make that challenge to everyone. It only takes about 10 to 15 minutes every day and it will change your lives!

And then this week we also taught an English class. Did you know that the language from China is spelt Chinese? I thought it was spelt Chinease, and I was terribly mistaken. Our student had to go to the internet to find the real answer haha.

No pictures this week as the computer is having trouble!

Changes

Well we just hit a new change cycle, and I am still here in Covarrubias, which means I have 11 months in the mission and I have been here for 7 and a half months. Which is a loooong time. So I'm still here with Elder Groen and we are doing really good!

Elder Torres left the ward and left the house, and we were living together for 5 months, so that's kind of sad, but it's all right. We got to be good friends. But now we have Elder Mallado. He's Chilean, so that will be interesting. He is a cool guy so we'll probably have an interesting change.

Well this week we had a pretty interesting thing happen. This past week, the 18th to the 21st, Chile celebrates it's Independence from Spain. So there is just a lot of fiestas and a lot of fun stuff that they do. To start, they all have barbecues and make a lot of empanadas, so we ate a lot of both! Then the ward had a party the 19th and it was super fun! Pictures will come, but it was a blast! We played traditional Chilean games, some people danced the Cueca (the traditional dance) and we had the typical Chilean drink which is Mote con Guesillo (which I don't actually know what it is but it was good!)

So first of all, this is a picture of us all in the house. This is me, Elder Groen, Elder Purnell and then Elder Torres.

The second picture is the classic Chilean barbecue,

 un asado is what they call it. Super good!

And then I thought I got a picture of the Cueca, but I only got a video and I don't think I can send it, but when they dance it, all the guys dress up like Guassos (a Chilean cowboy) and it is pretty cool.

Too fast!

I really don't like how fast the time is passing. I almost have 11 months now. But I haven't hit it yet, and I still have a month and a half until I hit a year so I am not quite there yet. I'm trying to think that the time will slow down because I don't want it to go faster, just slow down.

Anyway, last week was pretty interesting. The 11 on Thursday we had to stay inside all day. On the 11, if I didn't say last week, all the Chileans observe a really dark time in their history, but now it has turned into a day when all the hooligans just try to cause trouble. So we had to stay in the house all day and cleaned like crazy. So that was pretty good I guess.

Anyway, we are doing pretty good in the sector. One of the hard things we had recently is finding new investigators and less active members to teach, but that is getting better! We have actually been finding a lot of people! 

Elder Groen is doing really well! We just are about to finish half of his training. He is doing really well, but we still have a lot of time to work together, so that's really exciting!

The pictures that I have today are both of me and the zone. These are all the missionaries in my zone!