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!

We had a pretty tough week this week. We walked around a lot, a lot, and a lot. We had a lot of investigators that weren't progressing and we just had to move on. So we have been contacting a lot, and a lot haha. So we are pretty tired, but we have tomorrow to completely recover. We can't leave the house all day tomorrow because Chile, on the 11 of September, has a bunch of riots and public showings and stuff like that. So we have to stay in because it's dangerous. Especially for us. So we will be able to have a nice little rest and recuperation. 

Anyway we had a really good week this week. We recently had a reactivation. Her name is Nicole and she is super awesome! Her assignment is to be the ward Zumba instructor, so she is super pumped about that! And so are we! Especially because now her husband is getting more and more interested in the church. His name (or nickname rather because that's what everyone calls him) is Pato. So we are excited about that!

We also got a pretty funny noticia this past week. We sang in the ward choir this last week during our ward conference. And I guess us 4 missionaries are just so good at singing that they asked us to sing for stake conference! That'll be interesting!

Well, there we are. Hope everything is good over there! Oh! And one more thing, I took one picture this week! We went on divisions with the Zone Leaders and that's the picture I took of the two of us!

We had a super good week this week, although it wasn't too easy. We didn't have too much time to work but it turned out pretty well! We had ward conference this past week so it was pretty nice because we got a lot of ward involvement in the last little while. 

All Wednesday after P Day we went to practice for the ward choir. It was super good, the only problem was it took all day so were weren't able to work that whole day, but it was all right because we were able to help out the ward in some way which was super good!

Then on Friday there was a Ward Night in the chapel that we were in charge of. So we chose to talk about Unity within the ward. It turned out super good and so it was pretty awesome! We used a lot of examples and just tried to make everyone realize that without unity in the ward, nothing will go right. Which is really the same in everything we do with everyone we do it with. If we aren't united, nothing's going to work out.  And then on Saturday the young men and women put on a show as part of a stake activity which was super good and we were asked to be there, but it was super good, and it helped out the ward a lot.

Then today we had a super fun P Day! We bought what's called a Fardo de Corbatas. A Tie fardo, although I don't know what fardo means. But it is just a huge bag of ties (I'll send a picture to show what it is.) It is basically a bag that weighs 40 Kilograms of just straight ties. The first pic I sent is just a pic of the bag!

The Second one I'll send it me laying in a pile of only the bad ties that nobody wanted. There were a lot!

And the the third is a picture of my clean study desk. I had kind of an OCD panic attack and cleaned everything. So that was the result! But now it's clean!