Last Christmas in Chile for Elder Magnusson

it was good to talk to the family yesterday. sorry the internet wasn’t very good but it is what we had to deal with. its weird to think that the next time i hear your voices i’m going to be in the states. crazy stuff.  and it was crazy to hear about mom and dads mission call. after i was thinking about it and i know that it was a call from God.

Elder Magnusson's parents were called to the El Salvador San Salvador West/Belize Mission to begin on July 3rd 2017. 

so this week wasn’t that big. christmas here in chile isn’t really that big. its kinda sad.  i honestly didn’t feel like christmas was on the way until we went caroling as a branch on the 24th.  we went to a bunch of less actives and recent converts. that was pretty special. almost everyone that we went to started crying. it just went to show me that people really do need/want love on christmas.

You can also see the video by clicking here.  

the branch was really good about making us feel good. most of the members gave us small gifts and we had 3 christmas meals. christmas dinner is just a BBQ here. we ate a lot of meat this weekend. all in all it was a good christmas weekend. i cant complain one bit.

we got changes this weekend and i’m going to stay here in centinela with my comp. we are both pretty excited about the change. we work well together and we looking to have a change with a lot of success. one thing that we have to do is help the zone a lot. these last 3 weeks have been really rough for us but we are hoping that the new bunch of missionaries that we are getting this change are really going to help us.

tomorrow everyone moves. it is going to be a long morning for us and i’m not looking forward to it. this morning we were doing all of the travel plans for the people that are leaving the zone and i can already tell it is going to be a crazy day tomorrow. we will see how it goes.

next week ill give you more info on the investigators and stuff. its been a crazy day and time is short.

love you all. thanks for what you are all doing for me. hope you all have a good week.

elder mag

"If you are looking for happiness, real happiness, just talk to the missionaries. They can help you."

it was a pretty solid week and this is why....

so our investigator got baptized on saturday.... it was a pretty stressful baptism and it had to do with the clothes. it always has to do with the clothes...... what happened is he is a small kid and so we couldn’t find pants to fit him so we had an hermana in the branch make the pants. we called her friday night and she told us that the pants would be ready in the morning and she would stop by before the baptism to drop them off. well 20 min before the baptism she called us telling us that the pants weren’t done and that she didn’t have any elastic. she asked us if we could go to the store to buy elastic for her... AHHHHHHHH  WHY??? so we literally ran to a bunch of small mini markets asking if they had elastic and luckily we found one. we ran back to the church sweating our tails off 5 min after the baptism was supposed to start and luckily the hermana finished the pants as she was walking to the church. we put the elastic in and we were good to go. i love baptisms but still everything seems to go wrong the day of a baptism. but the good thing was the dad in the end decided to baptize his kid and it was really cool to see them both standing the the font together. it was a really special moment for both of them and for us.

another cool thing that happened this week was we contacted a man who has had a difficult past. we were doing some street contacts and we started talking to this guy who told us he wants to change his life. we started talking to him about the Atonement. it was a super solid contact. he told us his life story and it was super sad. he then started talking his troubles. i was fascinated in what he was telling us. it is such a crazy world. we ended up talking to him for about an hour and a half. we gave him our number and he said he was going to call us but he never did so we will see what happens this week.

i’m excited to talk to you guys this week. it is going to be pretty sweet. i think this has been the most excited i have been to talk to you guys in the mission. we have a lot to talk about.

love you all.... the gospel is true. if you are looking for happiness, real happiness, just talk to the missionaries. they can help you.

elder mag

A lesson learned about service....

i don’t think i had a normal day in my sector this whole week. We did a lot of traveling, exchanges, trainings etc. but it was a solid week.

one of the coolest thing was we went to rancagua to have the Christmas conference in the mission home. basically what we did was we practiced all morning for a Christmas concert that we were going to sing in the afternoon. we practiced for forever. like 3 hours. i was starving and i don’t really like to sing when i am hungry. but whatever. then we had lunch and a great lesson from pres. harris..... it was way good. he talked about all the things that Jesus Christ did for us in his life. it was some deep doctrine stuff and it was sooo good. pres. harris knows sooooo much doctrine its not even funny. then we all went to the mission office/chapel to perform this christmas concert. we performed in front of 7 women that are in a rehab center. all of them you can tell have had hard lives. when they all walked in i thought to myself that it is kind of sad that we were only going to perform in front of 7 people, but i repented. by the end there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. the spirit was so strong. pres. harris once again gave a sweet testimony about the Atonement and there wasn’t a dry eye. we all felt the spirit so strong. as he was talking i thought Jesus would perform in front of 7 people because he loves them. it doesn’t matter how many people we help. it just matters how we do it. at the end the owner of the rehab center invited the assistants and president to teach everyone in the rehab center. there is about 35 people. i guess they already went and had a lot of success. it was a special moment for all of us.

another cool thing is that our investigator  is going to get baptized this saturday. he is progressing so well and he is super excited for his baptism. he asked me to preform the baptism, but we are trying to get his dad to do it. hopefully things will work out for the dad so it can be a special moment for both of them. anyway we will see what happens with that.

yesterday i had to give a talk about the commandments and about God’s blessings. i feel like it was a solid talk. and it is because i found out about it 3 day before sunday. it is the first talk that i have given where i have had time to prepare. literally every other talk i have given, i found out about it 5 min before sacrament meeting.

today we did a huge bbq for the zone. we bought 70 bucks worth of meat. holy cow it was a mess. the bbq wouldn’t start at it took us 3 hours to get the problem fix. let me tell you it wasn’t fun. but in the end it all worked out.

Things are going well. i’m really enjoying the mission right now. i’m honestly a little sad that things are going to be ending soon. but i just have to take advantage of the time that i have left.

love you all

You can also see the above video by clicking here.  

"Every week in the mission it keeps getting better and better"

Where's Waldo?  I mean, Where's Elder Magnusson?

every week in the mission it keeps getting better and better.

a lot of good things happened this week and we are going to start with some families that we found.

so we were contacting 2 weeks ago and we talked to a really nice mom with 4 little kids. it was just a normal contact and at the end she asked just in passing if we liked to play basketball. she said that she was planning on saving up money to buy a basketball for her kids for christmas. she didn’t really want anything so we ended the contact and as we were walking away we were thinking and we had an old ball in the house that no one was using. we stopped by the next day and gave it to her. she was really grateful for it. she then asked if we wanted to stop by this week. so we stopped by on friday and taught her and her family. they are super good. we had a lesson set up with them yesterday but they weren’t home so we are going to see what happens with them this week.

we found another family as we were contacting some apartment buildings that are super run down. we saw some lady outside of her house. my comp told me that he wanted to talk to her. in my mind i was thinking no way. you could tell that drugs had played a huge part in her life. she had a ton of tattoos all over her body and she just looked different. anyway we started talking to her and she was super good. she let us in and we listened to her life story basically she went off the wall and hit rock bottom. her 4 year old kid has cancer, her boy friend has cancer. her twin 8 month old daughters were born 2.5 months early and almost died. we had a really good lesson with them. we are going to go back soon to see what we can teach them. we  are excited.

yesterday we taught the family from haiti. it was an ok lesson. not everyone spoke spanish and i’m not sure how much they really understand. we will see what happens tomorrow with them.

on thrusday we had to go up to rancagua for a meeting. it is where all of the zone leaders and hermana leaders have the monthly meeting with president. he talked a lot about the good things we are doing but we still lack a lot. and he is concerned because 1/4 of the mission has 4 months or less in the mission. he talked about how he thinks bad rabbits are getting rubbed off them. we have a lot to do.

the funniest story of the trip up to rancagua is on the mission web page it said it was going to be in the mission home so we got there 15 min early and no one was there. we called president and he said it got changed to the mission office. the assistants never called us. so we had to fly over to the mission office which is literally on the other side of rancagua. its a good thing that i was in rancagua for 8 months because i know the public transportation like the back of my hand. we weren’t super late considering the situation.

we have to go to rancagua this week again as a zone cause we have the christmas conference. i’m excited for that.

thanks for your love and support. The Church is true. The Book of Mormon is the word of God. have a good week.

elder mag