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!