"I know that this Church is true."

this week was really hard but we are pushing through.

basically we have a half investigator that is progressing. i say half cause he came to church the 2 sundays before this one but missed yesterday. we have an appointment with him tonight and we are going to try to put a baptismal date with him to try to encourage him. other than him we don’t have much. we are seeing some special things with some less actives. for example we met a less active by total "luck" on the bus and invited him to church. and he came!! this never happens. normally you have to visit someone at least 4 times before they come to church. we talked to this guy for maybe 3 minutes. he has been out of the church for 10 years and he said he misses what he had. plus he said that his mom is really interested in the church so we need to stop by this week. the problem is he lives 30 min away on bus so it is hard to plan for.

speaking of buses you don’t know what crazy is until you have been on a south american bus!! we have to take the bus at least twice a week to Talca which is 40 min away for our district meetings and p-days. i’m telling you it is nuts. there  is never sitting room (standing room only and you are packed in there).  that is one thing that i miss of the states, the liberty of sitting comfortably in a car.  you gatta love south america.

funny story of this week.... we went to a baptism of a pair of missionaries in the zone. they planned the program 15 mins before it started cause that is just what missionaries do. they didn’t have any one to lead the music so they asked me to do it. thanks to mom and her teaching me, i know how, so i said yes. well in this building there wasn’t any music books. the only people that had them were the elders. so no one knew the words. what ended up happening was out of the 40 people that were there, there were 2 people that were singing. a sister missionary and me. it was terrible. it was like i did a solo. allllllll of the elders were making fun of me. i’m not going to lie, it was pretty funny.

this week is transfers. i find out what happens to me on saturday. part of me wants to stay in san javier but another part of me thinks its time to go. i say that because i feel like you learn more when you are out of your comfort zone. i have gotten pretty comfortable in san javier. we will see. if i do go, i am really going to miss the sister that was baptized. she is doing so well and there is a special place in my heart for her. she is such an amazing women and to have seen her make this change in her life to become happy again. it will be sad to leave her when i do have to leave.

i know that this church is true. thank you for all of your prayers. i really can feel them.

elder mag

Hola, Elder Magnusson

Elder Magnusson assures me that his is taking plenty of pictures.  He hasn't figured out how to download them onto a computer.  In the mean  time, I decided to  scour the Internet for any picture sighting of Elder Magnusson.  I found these pictures on chilerancaguamission.org

"Everyone in this world just wants to feel loved."

hey ya’ll! today has been crazy!!! we got our writing time cut cause we did a lot today so if i don’t write you a personal letter and i normally do i’m sorry!

well, this week has been pretty slow, but there were still some highlights.

First, our convert received The Holy Ghost yesterday!! it was so sweet. the branch president gave it to her and he gave her an awesome blessing. it was perfect for what she needed and wanted. she said that she hasn’t felt this happy before in her life. it is so worth all of the hard times to watch her change her life.

another highlight of the week was the weather. it was either 95 degrees or above or rainning. im not even joking there was no in between. let me tell you, the heat is hard but it is a thousand times better than the rain. no one wants to talk to you in the rain and no one is in the streets so raining days = hard days. the heat is hard cause pants and a buttoned up shirt with a tie is killer. i have been wearing short sleeve shirts for about 3 weeks now and i already have a killer farmers tan. i cant even imagine what it is going to turn into. its bad!!

so i have figured out a good way to tell how much i am going to understand someone before they start talking to me. all i have to do is check to see how many teeth they have. if they have them all, i can get about 90% of what they say which is pretty good. if they have half their teeth, we are looking at 45-60% and if they have no teeth... game’s over. i might as well not even try. lisa, do you understand what i’m trying to say?

two things that i am figuring out that i miss a lot is carpet and grass. you have no idea how good these two things are. i miss soft warm carpet that you can walk around bare foot in and i miss freshly cut grass. these two things seem really dumb but when i get back to the states i’m never going to take them for granted. everyone here either has tile, dirt, or concrete instead of carpet and rocks and dirt for grass. the only place that has these two things is the church which has a 20 by 30 foot space of both. this is why i love our church so much.

one thing that i figured out this week is everyone in this world just wants to feel loved. it is a basic thing that all humans want and need to feel even the most crazy people in this world.  love is the reason why some people do dumb things- they are looking for love in the wrong way. it just hit me as we were talking to some crazy dude in the street. we need to follow the Savior’s example and love everyone, even when it is hard. i don’t know why i just realized this but it is so important. love everyone. there is a reason why they do certain things.

You can also hear this video by clicking here

there isn’t much info in this letter but things were pretty slow this week. there isn’t much to report when we spent most of the week contacting. hopefully we have more success next week. i love you all. the church is true.

"One can't describe the life of a missionary."

first things first.... right when i signed off last week i forgot to give a shout out to my big sis rachel so happy late birthday. i honestly remembered but things happen.

and happy birthday to mom on the 15th. hope it is a good day. remember the birthday present i gave you a year ago? i broke my finger on that day. i cant believe it was a year ago.

next thing.  the baptism this sunday was super good. Our investigator was baptized by her friend that introduced her to the church. it was a really good meeting and all went really smooth except for he was 15 min late but it’s all good. every thing in chile is late so we just kept the tradition going. i must say though i don’t like not starting on time. but ah well. i don’t know what else to tell you about it. it was just a solid service. the best part was seeing the smile on her face the whole night. i know she is happy right now.

we found a new guy to teach. we have taught him twice this week and he is really interested. we gave him a baptismal date for the 7th of nov so hopefully things work out. he didn’t come to church yesterday which isn’t good. we have a lesson with him today so we will see what happened. BUT our other investigators came to church today which is sweeeeeet. it was testimony meeting.  i think that they really liked it.

this week i gave a blessing to a guy who has eye cancer and other health problems. (See James 5:14-15) i have known him for the whole time that i have been in the mission field so i am pretty close to him. he asked me to give the blessing. it was one of the most spiritual experiences of my life. it was 100% guided by the Spirit cause i am not even joking-my spanish was perfect during the blessing. after it was all over we were both crying. it is an experience that i will never forget. the Spirit is real.

this was a pretty good week. i am happy for the experiences that i am having here. i know that they are changing my life. that being said, transfers are coming on the 31st and i kind of want to leave just so i can progress more. i feel like i have stopped progressing here in san javier and i would learn more in another sector. but i happy to be serving the Lord and building His kingdom. one can’t describe the life of a missionary but it is a good life. things are going good down south.

"I have a great love for the humble people of Chile and the Gospel"

this week was pretty crazy.  I’m not going to lie, but i like crazy rather than slow so that is good.

our sector is pretty big so we spend so much time traveling and we even have bikes. if we just had cars we could get soooo much more done. but its all good. i would rather have bikes than walk. walking is nasty.

we are having a hard time finding new people. i don’t know if it is just our attitude or what but after our investigator gets baptized this week we aren’t going have much. i think we just need to spend more time contacting. we are going have a heart to heart with our other investigators tomorrow so we will see how that goes. i hope they want to continue to hear us. they are such a good family. we weren’t able to teach them this past week cause they were out of town. i hope they didn’t loose all interest.

Our investigator who is getting baptized on the 11th is doing great. we finished all of the commandments this week and all went well. she said out of everything like tithing, word of wisdom, and law of chastity she is going to have the hardest time with fasting. that was a shock to us but she wants to do it. she went to conference and loved it. the one thing that she said she was lacking was a testimony of Pres. Monson. but she said that when she was watching him speak she felt the spirit sooooo strong. she is ready to get baptized. the service is this sunday so we are pretty happy.

conference was pretty sweet. in our stake there are 2 zones of missionaries. the stake has a room for just the north americans of conference in english. it is sweet. there are about 20 or 25 missionaries that speak english and it was seriously a party in there. we have some of the funniest missionaries in the mission here and i haven’t laughed soooo hard in my life. every one was high on sugar cause we all went out and bought candy for the weekend. i’m not going to lie. it was really hard to focus on the last session cause i bought a big bag of peach rings and ate the whole bag in less than 30 min. i honestly thought i was going to throw up. it was totally worth it. And the only mcDonalds  in the mission is 5 min from the stake center so in between all the sessions on saturday all of us went there. the people thought we must have been idiots cause we are a bunch of gringos speaking english dressed up in suits but it was so much fun. i never thought i would appreciate mcDonolds. but american food is so good.

this week were were riding around the most poor part of the city on our bikes and it just hit me that i am in chile, a 3rd world country trying to teach these people how much God can help their lives. i have been living here for over 3 months but it just hit me. i love what i’m doing and i am learning so much from these people they are sooo humble. i have a great love for them and the gospel. thank you for your prayers.