Well there goes another week just as fast as the last. The time is really flying down here, I don't know how it is going over there, but I hope the time is going for you guys too!

Anyway, training is going great! It's a little bit harder just because I have to do a little bit more of the work and stuff, but Elder Groen is super good and pulls some weight in everything we do together! His spanish is improving more than mine did when I was in my training, plus he just has a huge desire to talk with the people, so that is what a missionary really needs so he is doing awesome!

So we have had a pretty normal week, there isn't too much to talk about because we have had to walk a lot this week, so I thought I would switch it up and talk a little bit about something that President has really been talking about these past few weeks!

So our statement for this year is that "We are consecrated missionaries whose lives and work are centered on the Doctrine of Christ."  But what he has really been focusing on is the work "Consecrated." The best example of a person who is consecrated is Nefi in the book of Helaman 10 when Nephi was praying and meditating about what had happened previously when God answered him and told him in verse 5 that he will all things will be as Nephi says it. But only because "thou wilt not ask for that which is contrary to my will," or the will of God. So Nephi was trying so hard to live the will of God that everything that Nephi wanted was also what God wanted. That's where we want to be, when he are exactly in line with what God wants. It's definately not easy but it'll be worth it.

Anyway, the pictures I snapped this week were pretty awesome! The first one is pretty sick of a sunset we saw. It was pretty cool!

The second one was is when I made american style pancakes. They were super good! This was attempt number 4 or 5, so they finally turned out!

And the last one is one we found today! I am trying to follow Jesus so hard that I even found the street to take me to him haha.

Well here we are, at the end of week 1 training Elder Groen. It's a lot of hard work training a new guy. He's a really good kid, so that makes it a lot easier! He is a super good missionary already, way better than I was when I entered into the field! His Spanish is improving really fast and he is already to understand a little bit and communicate really well! I think once he finishes his training he will be ready to train on his own! He is a super good kid and I am really lucky to be able to work with him.

So this week we had kind of a crazy week. I think the funniest story we made this week was when we made a super weird contact. We don't even know his name haha. We knock his door and he talks to us a little bit and then lets us in. He talked about all kinds of things that don't have anything to see with us and our message. And then we tried to teach him a little bit but then he just kept talking. So after about a half hour we just told him that we were late for an appointment and we just left. We asked him for his name and he wouldn't tell us. Weird, but oh well haha.

We had a super awesome service project this week and I am kind of mad I didn't get a picture before and after it. A family in our ward had had problems with the roof over their patio and they asked us to help them take it off. So we got up there and looked for the source. Turns out they had pretty bad water damage. So we helped them rip apart the whole roof and took it down. It was pretty fun!

Yeah so I snapped two pretty good pics I think, the first is of the Reese's Pieces that I got in the package! They were really goood!

And the second one is just a sick picture I think. Of a huuuuge completo that we made!

Have a great week!

Well, yesterday started a new change, and this change is going to be a little bit different for me. I was assigned as a trainer and now have my newbie sitting next to me. His name is Elder Groen, (like he is "Growin" up) and he is really excited to be out here and learning! He is fresh out of the CCM, and he is a really good kid. He is 18 and he is from Bountiful Utah. He is really excited with a lot of new energy and ready to go! That's great because we are going to work ourselves into the ground! I still haven't changed wards, so I have 4 changes (which is about 6 months) in this sector. And I won't be leaving for a least 2 more changes, so I will end up with 6 changes in this ward (which in total is about 9 months). So I will know the area pretty well.

I finished up with Elder Zazueta which is kind of a bummer because we got to be really good friends walking in between sectors every day. We only got 3 weeks to work together. He is training too, another guy from the US. In all there are 14 Gringos that came in and 2 guys from Colombia, so the mission is growing pretty fast.

I don't have too much to report because I was only actually in my sector four days in the past week, but we do have an awesome investigator I wanted to tell about! His name is Fransisco. He is 18 years old and he is pretty awesome. His dad is a less active member and his mom is catholic. He didn't have a religious background before we started to teach him, so we had to start from just about the bottom and teach really slowly to make sure he understood. But he is growing a lot! He went to church this past week and really like it. He got along really well with a few of the Young Men in the ward, which was fantastic! He is reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish and in English because he just loves to learn! He is a cool kid!

Well, the first picture was sick! A sister in the other ward I was working in decided to treat us to something special when she gave us lunch! She made us Bacon! Real Bacon! I almost cried when I saw it!

The second picture is me with Elder Groen. I thought you would just like to see him to give a face to the name.

There's another one. Elder Groen is eating his first Chilean Completo. They just grow up so fast!

P-Day change

Well P-Day changed, and that was a huge change for us haha. We all woke up at 7:30 on Monday morning wanting a free day really bad, buuuut we had to wait an extra 3 days. So we are all pretty tired and grateful that we have a P-Day.  The main reasons that P-Day changed was because all of the cultural things about Chile are all closed on Mondays and open all the other days of the week, so we are now able to do more cultural things on our free day which will be pretty cool!

So I am still with Elder Zazueta and we are still working 2 sectors. There is a lot of walking involved and a lot of time taken to go in between sectors and stuff. But it is really fun! I like the other ward where we are working and a few of the people there have grown on me and so I really like it. And one more week and we will be split up in our own sectors. It kind of stinks thinking about it because now Elder Zazueta and I are really good friends and we only get 3 weeks working together.  

This week we had a really cool service project in my comp's zone. We went to destroy a house! The stake president of the stake next to me bought a new piece of land to build a new house. The only thing is that there was an old house and a lot of garbage in the plot of land that he had. So, he asked us if we could help him rip it down and clean all the garbage in his land, so of course we told him yes! It was fun and we had a blast. We got to play around for a few hours and do service at the same time!

The ward I'm working in is starting to progress a lot! We have 4 missionaries right there, but since all the people in the states are going to start leaving for the mission, we are going to start getting a new flood of missionaries, so I think pretty soon we will get up to 6 missionaries in my ward.

We went to the temple today for P-day but we weren't able to do a session, we got there late and the session had already started.  We went to go with a recently baptized member to take out his endowments and since we got there late, so we helped in the baptistry a little bit but I was disappointed that we didn't make the session.

So I'll give you a before and after of the service project we did. Here is the before in the first pic,

and the after in the second pic.

And this one is me with a huge giant Chilean flag over my head.

And then this one because I like it!

Hey....   ...My responsibility here and now is to manage a whole sector by myself and work in another sector too. It is rough. Luckily, the walk isn't too long. Our two sectors border each other and so it isn't too far. But we have to walk about 30 minutes to get between sectors. So it is pretty tiring every day, but it´s a really good experience. I am learning a lot about managing my time and stuff like that. It is good practice. Just a lot of walking haha. My new comp, Elder Zazueta de Mexico is a really good guy! We came in together to the mission, and we get along really well! But that is what is going on here. Just to make it a little bit more clearer.

Other than being tired, I am doing pretty good. We have had a pretty good week. We aren´t able to work normally, but we manage it pretty well. And we only have to do it for about a week more, and then we are done and in our sectors for good, so we have got this.

Anyway, here are the pictures that I owe from last week. The first one is the woman that got baptized. She was really happy because didn´t know that I was coming and when I saw her it made me really excited haha. She was really nice to us.

The second is a picture of me and my first companion with a less active member we worked with before. His name is a Daniel and he is active now.

And the last one is me repping my USA soccer shirt. Today was P Day so of course there had to be soccer involved.

Pretty crazy week this week, I will try to explain it all. We had a pretty normal week up until the weekend, and then it got pretty crazy!

This week was a really hard week. We did not have very much to do this week. It is winter vacation, and so just about everybody left the city or are always somewhere else partying it up or something. Well we still had to work. Oh well, we powered through it. But our number of lessons went down a lot! It dropped pretty drastically. But we are hoping that this week goes back up but we will see.

Well, Saturday I went back to Poeta Neruda, my first ward, and saw a baptism of someone that I used to teach. It has been a long time, but it was nice to go back and see her. Her name is Maritza, and she was a really hard one hahaha. She was Evangelica (a type of religion, I don't know what that is in English) and she was pretty die hard about it. She told us she was never going to change. But then I left the ward and the missionaries kept working and then my trainer left, and they kept working haha. But finally she just showed up to church one day and told everyone she was ready to be baptized! Well that's great haha! We can help you with that! So she prepared really quick and she got baptized! It was really great! I have pictures so I will have to send them

But at the service I saw President. And that's cool that he would come, but I saw him talking to my comp looking pretty serious. And I thought oh shoot that doesn't look good... And then he called me over, oh noo..... But he just told me he needed to talk to me. So I went with him and he told me that Elder Tafur would be moving to the office on Monday (today) and that I would have a special assignment. I will be working with Elder Zazueta for 3 weeks, but there is a catch. We will be working in BOTH sectors and we will be constantly changing sectors and houses and people. So we will be in for a crazy 3 weeks. And when I asked him how we were supposed to do it, he looked at me and said, "Elder Burt, I have never done this before, this is the first time. You guys are just going to have to figure it out." Hmmmmmm... So we will have a pretty interesting 3 weeks.

And there we are, the week in a nutshell. And one problem, I am in a new ciber and it doesn't have a place to put my cable to send pictures, so I will have to send them all next week. Which really stinks, but I tried I promise! I love you all, have a great week!

Alright, well yeah I am writing on Tuesday. We had kind of a crazy day yesterday. We went and played an awesome game of soccer in the morning and got home just in time to do everything that we needed to do, but we got home to find out that we had a visitor fixing our floor in the apartment. So we had to help him out and didn't have enough time to write yesterday. Pretty stinky I know, but oh well.

But other than that we had a great week! We had a really good day tuesday! We went to the church at around 8 and left on divisions with all 3 members of the bishopric! Which was really great for us! We were able to get a lot of work done with the 3 of them and we hope to be able to do it again tonight.

Other than that we kind of had a pretty boring week to tell the truth. Nothing really out of the normal happened. It was just kind of a normal week. Sorry about that. Oh, I did try to make oatmeal cookies, but they didnt turn out that well. Thats about it.

The first picture is me with the cookies I tried to make. They didn't turn out at all to tell the truth.

The second is just to prove that they didn't come out well. I just ended up eating the cookie dough.

And the third is why we didnt get time to write yesterday. That is our new friend Gerard. He is a cool guy and helped us out a lot!