"This church is true and I know that God loves us."

so this week was a big change. i’m not in centinela anymore. i’m in paine.

paine is a pretty good sector. its  out in the middle of nowhere but it is kinda a big town. our sector is really small because there are 6 missionaries in paine and each sector is tiny but its all good cause it will be big enough for 6 weeks.

my comp is pretty cool. his name is elder newell from Nampa idaho. he has 6 weeks in the mission. he is a really humble guy who really wants to learn so i got pretty lucky with a  good comp. it should be a good change.

and i’m also district leader. i have 4 hermanas latinas in my district plus a senior couple. all 4 of the hermanas have sooooo much energy. it was good to teach with them this week because they are so energetic.  it is going to be a good change with them.

so when i got here we were struggling with people to teach. we only had one investigator. so we spent basically everyday contacting. i have honestly never contacted so much in my mission in one week. but it was good. we found 3 new people and the coolest thing is we contacted someone from haiti. he doesn’t know any spanish, but he speaks perfect english. he said that when he was in haiti he was a tour guide to north americans and there he learned english. anyway he said that his brother got baptized 2 years ago in haiti and just got his mission call to serve in the dominican republic. he said that he didn’t know anything about the church and that he wanted to learn more. we taught him lesson one in english and ended up putting a baptismal date with him. and yesterday he went to church!!!! we are pretty excited. he is progressing well.

this week is general conference and i’m so excited. conference weekend is the best!!

hey, this church is true and i know that God loves us. Thanks for your love and support. talk to you soon.

elder mag

You can also see the video by clicking here

The Church is True

first and foremost happy birthday to janelle and kristine. hope you guys have a good b-day and i love and miss you.

Elder Magnusson's sisters were born on the same day, 3 years apart.  

On their birthday this week they will 27 and 30 years old.  

hey so this week was a slower one but we were able to get a lot of good things done.

so our 9 yr. old investigator was baptized and it was soo good to see. i was able to do the baptism and it was really special cause i was able to see the whole progress of the family and i was there to complete it as well. the testimony of the mom was so good.i wish i could have recorded it because she talked a lot about the blessings that the gospel has brought  into their lives in the past 4 months. the only bad part was the water wasn’t super warm. so when she got into the water her face went from calm to fear so i had to talk her into doing it. for a second i thought she wasn’t  going to do it but it was a special moment when she came out of the water.

so we got changes and i’m going to a sector called Paine and it is in the northern most zone called Buin. i’m going to be district leader and i’m going to be finishing a missionaries training. i’m pretty excited. my comp is named elder newell and he is from idaho. i talked to him on the phone for about 5 min yesterday and he seems like a pretty cool kid. so my district is kinda different that usual because there are only hermanas in it. because there are only sisters that means i cant do interchanges with them and that is the best part about being district leader. but its all good. i’m still going to enjoy it. plus in my zone i have a ton of friends so it should be a good last change.

so i started saying goodbye to a bunch of people yesterday. it was sooooo hard. i have been working with them for 6 months and then just like that i had to say goodbye. it is honestly the worst part of the mission. there are days that are hard because  all of the lessons fall through and no one wants to talk to us but you don’t remember those days. but the days that you have to say goodbye are hard and you remember them. i’m going to finish the goodbyes today and then tomorrow i head up north early in the morning...

hey thanks for all of the love and ill see you guys in 6 short weeks. the church is true.

elder mag

Baptism!

so this week was a pretty good one. it was stressful but good.

so the biggest news this is that our investigator got baptized. it was such a good baptismal service. two other people got baptized and because of that there were a ton of people there. we had been teaching him for about 2 months and i saw a huge change in him... he has came a long way. To confirm to me that he was really ready was when he came out of the water he looked at me and with a big smile on his face he asked me "am i really clean?” when i told him yes he said, "oh good cause i feel clean". it was a real honor to baptize him. then on sunday he received the holy ghost by my my comp. it was a really nice blessing.

So our other investigator is going to get baptized this week. she is a 9 year old girl and the daughter of a family from the ward that we have been working with. the family had an interview with the branch president and put goals to go to the temple. we are super excited. anyway she already had her interview and passed so now we just have to finish one more lesson and we are good. one crazy thing about her is that she is super smart. she is the number one student in her school and it is a huge and good school. sometimes i feel like that she knows more about the doctrine of the church than us and that isn’t a joke. she knows so much. i just hope all goes well this week.

So yesterday i realized that it was more than likely my last sunday in centinela because next week we have district conference and then changes on tuesday. as i looked around the chapel i realized how much i have come to love the members. they are so good and they do so much to help us. when i have to say goodbye to them when i go there are going to be some hard goodbyes. when i got set apart to be a missionary and as i bore my testimony i said it was going to be hard to love the people here because i didn’t know them. i realize that was a pretty dumb comment. i have come to truly love the people here.

so next week ill write with the news about changes .  i’m pretty sure that i’m going. i have no idea where but we will see what happens.

i love you all and i will see you all soon.

elder mag

ps i have a ton of pics but i don’t want to send them because the computer place is pretty sketch and i don’t want to get a virus. i’m going to try to back them up on a pin drive and send them next week but no promises.

Baptism this Saturday

so this week flew by.... i cant even remember what really happened.

so the good news is that our investigator is going to get baptized this saturday!!!!  the bad thing is that he is going to be in santiago the whole week and he comes home saturday in the morning so we are going to have to have constant contact with him the whole week so that he is ok. statan likes to work on people the week before their baptism. we are way excited for him and we know that the Lord has really blessed him.

also we have been working a lot with a family in the ward and it has been paying off. they have been to church several times and they have a 9 year old girl and she wants to get baptized. they had an interview with the branch pres. and both he and we think that we need to baptize the girl. we have taught her everything except for tithing so we are doing pretty good. we have a date planned for the 17th. it should be good. they just have to come to church this sunday and we are good. the family loves me for my b-day they gave me a beautiful gift. i couldn’t believe it. especially because they aren’t the richest family on the planet. i felt super bad taking it but they said that they had it custom made and it was already too late. it made my day.

so this week was a really good week with my new comp. i really like him. he is a humble guy that has a lot of patience. he is going to be a great zone leader when he figures out what he is doing. i feel like we are teaching more with the spirit and we work pretty well together. I just feel bad because i feel like i’m not going to have enough time to teach him everything because we still have to do a bunch of interchanges with the zone.

this week we have a 4 hour training with president harris planned. the whole conference is going to be about how we can repent on the mission and how we can teach repentance better. i talk to other people that already had the training and they said that president was amazing. i’m pretty excited to hear what he has to say. one thing about pres. harris is that he knows soooooo much doctrine.

i love you guys and i cant wait to see you soon. it is going to be a glorious day. the church is true and God loves you.

elder mag

"I love and miss you all"

wow so this week was not what i thought it was going to be like..... it was different that any i've experienced on the mission.

on thursday we got the call from president that we were going to have special changes. and that my comp was going to go. and that i was going to stay in my sector to train my new comp to be a new ZL. there were some things that were going on in the mission that we had to change and its just kinda what happened. so my new comp is named elder monja and he is also from peru. he has a year in the mission and he is a very good elder. so after all of the changes i had an interview with pres and he told me that i have 3 weeks to teach my comp the sector, the zone and how to be a zone leader. I asked him if there was another way to do it with more time and he told me no because he wants to send me  to another place before i go home so we will see what happens. so it looks like we are just going to have to “get her done”.

we have been seeing big blessings in the sector. Our investigator is progressing so well. he is basically ready for his baptism. we just have to wait so that he has one more week to go to church. i have seen a huge change in him and he is a big example to me. also a member brought a friend to church yesterday and the person stayed for all the meetings. after church we got her information and went by her house and ended up setting a baptism date with her. the Lord has been good to us. when i leave centinela i’m really going to miss it. i have learned a lot here and its going to be sad to say good bye to everyone.

so my b-day was kinda boring but its all good. because of the special changes the APs called us thursday night to tell us that we weren’t going to do interchanges. so we didn’t have much to do friday cause i canceled it all but it all worked out. we were able to get some solid contacts in and that made me happy. in the house we did a bbq and that was pretty fun.

thanks for everything. i love you all and miss you all. take care and just remember that the church is true.

elder mag

"Thanks for all the love"

So this week came and went and it was a harder one. i just kinda felt off my game but the last part was better than the first.

So the big news is about our two investigators. The first was doing great until he didn't show up to church....AHAHAHAH - i don't get why it is so hard for people to come to church. he is doing everything and he comes to church for one of two weeks and then he doesn't go for a week. if he went yesterday we would have baptized him this saturday or the next but he didn't go so now we have to wait. we just have to work with him a little bit more.

On the other hand our other investigator is progressing so well. He didn't go to church but we knew that he wasn't going to to go because he had to work but he doesn't have to work this next week so he should be going. we taught him the word of wisdom and law of chastity and he is totally willing to live them both. We should be seeing his baptism the 11th of march. we are pretty excited for him.

so this is my 4th change in the sector and i remember that when i was in Recreo for 5 changes the 4th was the hardest. i'm kinda having the same feelings. i love the branch but it is getting hard to push though the sector cause i feel like i have already contacted everywhere. we just kinda have to do it.

so this week its my B-day on friday and i was all excited because 3 different families invited me over to celebrate during the day. but that’s not going to be happening because i got a call from the APs on saturday. they told me that they they wanted both me and my comp to go up to rancagua on friday to do interchanges with them in their sector. i explained that it was my birthday and asked if we could do it another day... but i got shot down. the good thing that the families told me that we could do it all a different day so i'm still excited.

thanks for all the love. i cant wait to see you all soon. like honestly you all have no idea how excited i am to see you. but  we have to finish strong so, “no mas". take care and have a good week.

elder mag

"This week flew..."

so this week flew.... and i think its because we had something different almost each day.

On tuesday we had changes.... i have said it once and ill say it again. i hate dealing with changes. but this time it wasn’t too stressful. the only problem that we had was the zone leaders down south didn’t plan their changes too well and some elder got stuck alone down south. he was traveling to our zone so some how it became our problem and we had to figure out how to go get him. so we ended up sending and older couple to go get him. it wasn’t too bad and we finished way early which was nice.

on wednesday we did interchanges with a sector that just got whitewashed. my comp just came from the sector and so he was able to go and help them figure things out.

on thursday we had consejo. that is when all of the zone leaders and hermana leaders have a training with president Harris in rancagua. this time it was sooooooooo long. from 10:30 until 6 with 45 min for lunch. but it was good. we formed new goals and plans for the mission and talked about a lot of doctrine stuff. the president is happy with the improvements that we are making but he wants us to do it faster. we just have to do the small stuff. it ate up our whole day because then after we had to travel back to the house and stuff.

friday and saturday were pretty normal but on sunday we had to travel to chimbarongo to train the members on a open house that we are going to do in the chapel there. luckily it only ate up the morning but it was sad cause we weren’t able to go to all of our church. and we had a lot of investigators in church so we don’t know how it went with them 2nd and 3rd hour. we are going to check in with them this week.

so we have 2 people that are more than likely going to get baptized this change. Both are really progressing and the only big challenge that we see with them is them making time to listen to us. we are pretty excited for them and we just have to push forward to help them. ill give you more details about them later when i have more time.

so my new comp is pretty cool. he is from lima peru and he goes home the same day as me. we often wonder why president put 2 "dead" missionaries togethers and every time we joke about it we have to get refocused and back to work. we just got our flight plans so we have to stay extra focused this week. but he is a good guy and i’m really going to enjoy my change with him.

So I have never gotten sick in my whole mission. i have been super blessed when it has come to my health. but last night some elders in the house brought home a cake. well i think it was bad because the 3 of us that ate the cake spent the whole morning in the bathroom. it was a killer. i forgot how bad it is to get sick. but i feel a lot better now so we should be good to work tonight.

thanks for the love and support. i cant wait to see you guys in 11 short weeks.

elder mag