"Thanks for your letters and love."

my new comp

all of the trainers

thank you everyone for your letters and love. i'm loving it.

so the big news this week is my new comp. his name is elder silva and he is from brazil. he is a good kid but he is just super shy and quite. but at least he is humble. i was praying for a humble comp because a lot of the new missionaries aren't too humble but he is excellent. his spanish is pretty good too. it is probably equivalent to a north american at 6 months and even in one week it has grown a lot. the only problem is that he cant really understand too much because the accent here is super strong. but we can still teach together pretty well. plus he is dying of the cold. it rained a lot this week and where he is from it is always hot so he is just trying to survive the weather.

so because of what happened last change with my comp, we didn't really work too hard in it for the last 3 or 4 week and we are paying the price for it right now. we spent most of the week contacting and i think that was a huge shock for my comp because he comes from one of the highest baptizing missions in the world and we are in one of the lowest here in south america. i think that has been pretty hard  for him because he didn't see that coming at all. i'm just trying to keep him motivated and he is doing a lot better.

i remember reading in dad's mission journal about a year before i left on the mission about the first time that he had to train or be with a younger comp (i can't remember). but anyway what he said was that in their sector they didn't have anyone to teach either and right before he left that day he got on his knees and poured out his heart asking for blessing that day. and that day they were filled with success.  well this week i have to say that was probably one of the hardest weeks i have had in this sector. literally we had 7 lesson with investigators fall though, members wouldn't let us in, people weren't home etc. by friday i had enough of that. i remembered dads journal and did the same thing and that day we were able to find a 15 year old kid and teach him about the plan of salvation and we put a date to get baptized as well. i know that it was a huge blessing from the Lord.

Our long time investigator is starting to die off. we had 3 lessons with him fall through and i am suuuuuper sad. it all started when we taught him about tithing.  i came to love that man and i hope that we can find and teach him this week. i just want to see him get baptized this week.

i still cant believe that i am still in this sector. i have been here for more than 6 months and there are moments when we are walking and i think holy cow i remember walking down this street my first day or i remember contacting that house 6 months ago etc it is a weird feeling.

i'm learning so much right now as a missionary. things are going pretty good and i can feel my self growing. i know that the church is true. i love you all.

elder mag

"I haven't seen so much rain in my life."

It looks like Elder Magnusson made it to McDonalds last week.  

this was probably the most random week that i have had in the mission.

so i have been chilling out with the zone leaders this week. they are super cool. one is from chile and the other is from arizona. we worked in their area pretty much the whole week except a day and a half we were able to swing by my area and make some visits. their area is the 2nd most dangerous area in the mission. the whole time i thought someone was going to come up and rob us. especially at night but, we were protected. it was good to get away from my area for a week and be with cool comps. it was also good to be with them because they are both really good teachers and i was able to learn a lot from them.

we were able to meet with my investigator 2 times this week because he was going to get baptized yesterday but we did the pre baptismal interview and he is having some doubts. i’m kind of frustrated because in the past he told us that he knows that Joseph Smith was a prophet and everything but now he isn’t sure. we just have to work harder with him. he is basically the only person that we have so i hope that we can help him.

You can also view the video by clicking here

this week we got dumped with rain. like literally, i haven’t seen so much rain in my life. luckily in san javier i found some rubber boots that go up to my knee.  i have been using them all week. and because the drainage system doesn’t work here they have saved my life. when we walk in the streets the water is half way to my shin. missionary work is always harder in the rain because no one is in the street and no one wants to talk to you as you contact. a common contact in the rain is: hey, we are missionaries and we want to come in and the people always say yeah but it is raining. i want to say yeah i know we have been in it for 3 hours and for that reason we want to come INSIDE. but what ever we have had a lot of opportunities to serve. yesterday we spent the day pushing cars out of rain and giving people piggy back rides across the street so they didn’t get their shoes wet.

so we got changes yesterday and IM GOING TO BE A TRAINER. so i’m going to be training here in recreo. i couldn’t be more excited.  i’m going to pick him up from the mission home tomorrow at 10 o’clock. we will see how it goes. i’m pretty nervous but i feel like i can do it with the Lord’s help.

the mission is amazing. it is completely different than what i thought it was going to be but, i wouldn’t trade it for anything. chile is an amazing country and i honestly love the people here. i love what i am doing and i know that this church is true.

elder mag

"I've never been so excited for......"

my comp is the short one with glasses. he went home on saturday. 

the other 2 are the zone leaders. im going to be with them this week

this week was one of the craziest that i have had in the mission..

so first things first.... my companion went home yesterday cause of some problems that he was having with his family. we kinda saw it coming about a week and a half ago but this week it happened. the whole week we were in and out of the mission home trying to figure out all of the plans. so because of this we weren’t able to teach very much. we only had 3 lessons this week which i think might be my all time mission low but at least we had a reason.

the mission president didn’t have any spare missionaries that i could go with so he said that i could pick any companionship in the zone and go with them. i decided to go with the zone leaders because they are super chill. we live in the same complex so we took all of my stuff to their house easily. the only bad thing is there wasn’t room for my bed so we took my pad and i’m sleeping on the floor for a week.  we aren’t really going to work in my sector this week unless we have a lesson set up. all in all it has been pretty fun with them. i’m going to have a blast this week.

so it looks like i’m going to stay in Recreo one more change. when all is said and done i’m going to have 7.5 months here.  we find out the changes this week.

i can really feel myself changing. i’m not the same person that left california 11 months ago. i think that this is the most i have grown in one year. it’s crazy to think that the Lord trusts young men like me to do such a great work. it is just now hitting me how important my job really is. i love what i am doing.

sorry this is kinda short but i gotta go because we are going to take a bus to eat at McDonalds. 

i have never been so excited for McDonalds in my life.

love you all! thanks for your prayers.

elder mag

Elder Magnusson Sighting

I was searching the internet for pictures of Elder Magnusson and I found these two pictures of him on his Mission President's blog.  Hi Elder Magnusson.  It's good to see you!

Exciting news from home

first of i’m sorry to hear the news of grandma harris' passing. i know that it was her time but it is still sad to hear.  i know that she is in a better place now.

Grandma Harris is surrounded by some of her family Thanksgiving 2013

on a happy note, i’m happy to hear about renee and dave. i was praying that it would happen soon and i’m glad that it did happen. i’m sad that i wont be there to see the wedding, but its all good. i’m sure that you guys can survive without me there. 

Renee and Dave got engaged on the first of April! And that is no April Fool's joke. 

They will get married sometime this summer.

this week was pretty slow. not a whole lot happened. conference was the biggest deal so i guess i’ll talk about that. 

so normally in south america all of the stakes provide a room for all of the north american missionaries so that they can listen to conference in english. well, our stake presidency decided that they weren’t going to provide that room. there are 2 zone of missionaries and all of the english speakers were going nuts. we had to watch the first session in spanish and even though i could understand it all it just wasn’t the same. the zone leaders called our mission president and explained the situation. he gave us permission to go to the other stake center in rancagua to watch it in english. so all the english speaking missionaries walked out 15 min before the 2nd session and we all hopped in busses and taxis to get to the other stake center. when we got there we ended up cramming into a small room to watch it. i don’t know how we did it cause we were about 40 missionaries. i wish i got a pic, but i forgot my camera. 

the engish room was crazzzzzyyyyy.  just imagine 40 missionaries together watching conference. it was sooo funny to watch everyone interact with each other. the funniest thing was one of the sisters yelling at all the elders cause she said that none of us put on deodorant that day cause the room smelled nasty. she was being serious too. so that night we bought spray that you use in the bathroom and gave it to her the next day so that she could use it at her pleasure.

several of our investigators  came to listen to general conference. they all really liked it and  our long time investigators says that he now knows that pres monson is a prophet of God so that’s good. they  only came to one session each, but i’ m glad that at least all of them heard something. and with our one investigator we are going to have to push his date back to the 17th because we weren’t able to teach him as many times as we needed to this week. his health is kind of bad so it is hard to find him sometimes. we were able to give him a good blessing to help with his health and i think that really helped him. 

other than that, nothing too big happened this week. we are still working trying to find new people. the whole mission is having trouble finding people and the zone leaders said that it is something that president is really worried about. we are going to have to work extra hard this week. 

i love you all and the church is true.