What really matters on the mission is....

this week flew by...... the mission is really starting to pick up. it is amazing how fast things are going.

we were only able to teach our investigator one time this week and it was a family home evening with someone in the ward. the reason is because he has been really sick. he wasn’t able to go to church yesterday either so we are really going to help him this week to progress. we were able to put another baptismal date this week with him. we have it planned for the 10th  of april. it is so far in advanced because we want to make sure that he really has left tea behind. this date gives him time to get rid of it completely.

we found a new family this week. we weren’t able to teach them but we have a lesson set up with them tonight. from what we were able to hear from the dad at the door is his wife wants nothing to do with us, but him and his 15 year old son want to listen to us. we are pretty exited to teach them. we will see how it goes. we invited the son to play basketball with us and he came. i think he had a good time. ( that is what my comp said cause i wasn’t there.... the zone leaders wanted to do divisions the night that we play basketball.)

speaking of divisions when the zone leader  and i were walking back to the apartment we saw a guy cooking and selling meat sandwiches. so we decided to buy some. but we were idiots and didn’t ask what type of meat it was until after we ate it. turns out we ate pig stomach sandwiches. they were super good but still i don’t know if i would buy it again just cause it is to risky. but i’m not going to lie... i’m going to miss being able to buy really cheap food on street corners when i go back to the states.

Since Elder Magnusson wasn't able to upload his pictures this week, 

I thought I'd add this picture of these pigs.  

You can think of Elder Magnusson eating his pig stomach sandwich

one thing that i’m learning here on the mission is that numbers really don’t mean anything. when i got my mission call to go to south america, i thought i would be baptizing every single week. but that doesn’t happen in this mission. the average number of baptisms that a missionary gets in his mission here is 4.5. what really matters in the 2 years that i am here in the mission is that i work hard, love the Lord, that i am obedient, and that i love the people. i am trying to improve in everyone of these aspects cause i want to have even more respect in the eyes of the Lord.

thanks everyone for your love and for the birthday wishes. my birthday went well. a family had us over for a family night and they bought me a cake. some elders came to my apartment in the night and we had cake and ice cream so everything turned out ok.

i know that this church is true. i love you all

"I wouldn't trade my mission for anything."

this was a pretty normal week. nothing too special.

our investigator isn’t doing super bad but he isn’t too hot either. basically he hasn’t been able to give up tea. when we first taught it to him he told us that he would be able to do it with out any problems but that has turned out to be false. we are going to have to make up a program to get him off of it and move his baptismal date back. we will see what happens. he is golden in every other way so we can’t complain.

we did a special fast as a zone to find more people and to help the people that we do have progress. it payed off cause as we were fasting we found a new family and another guy. with both families we only spent 20 minutes in their house because they were both leaving but we have appointments with them this week. we are pretty excited. i haven’t really found any good families in this sector so i’m pretty excited. we have a lot of potential this week. the power of fasting is real.

speaking of fasting, i remember dad talking about fasting in the mission in the summer and talking about how hard it was. i now truly understand..... nothing more needs to be said.

i haven’t really talked about the less actives that we are working with but we have a few less actives that are progressing soooooo well. when i first came to this sector we found 2 less actives that wanted nothing to do with us. they are friends that live together in the same apartment. but they aren’t dating. its kinda weird but whateves. anyway now they are coming to church and reading and praying. there has been a huge change in them. it has been so cool to watch their change. it has only strengthened my testimony about the blessing that the gospel brings.

my comp is still sweet. i have been with him for a month and we have never fought. now that i think about it, we haven’t even had a disagreement. that is pretty cool. i’m going to miss him when we get separated.

the mission is going good. i’m loving it right now. it is so rewarding. there are hard days but there are days that make it all worth it. i wouldn’t trade it for anything. i love you all and thanks for the birthday wishes. everyone asked me what i was going to do on my birthday and all i know is that we have a video training from Elder Bednar so that is pretty sweet. i don’t know what else we are going to do. (and yes lisa it is normal to crack and egg on someones head on their birthday... i’m going to have to keep my eyes open)

the gospel is true. love you all

elder magnusson

Fastest week of the mission

this had to be the fastest week of the mission. it flew by.

so the biggest news is latest investigator. we were able to teach him 3 times this week. one of those times we taught law of chastity and word of wisdom. it was a really good lesson. out of everything the only thing that is going to be hard for him is tea. but he said that he is willing to do it. so we went to the store and bought him herbal tea and gave it to him. he said that he is going to start the switch over soon. we will see what happens with that. he also came to church this week but only for 2 hours  because he had something to do. we will see what happens with him this week.

my comp and i were called to be counselors in the elders quorum this week. basically we are going to have to work a lot more with less actives. we are pretty excited but there is a lot of work to be done. we have 115 people come to church every week but we only have 5 elders in 3rd hour so we are going to have to work hard to get that number to go up.

this week we also did divisions with the assistants. i went with the assistant that was brand new and had only been in his sector for a week. i felt really bad because we kept getting lost but it was still a really good day. i learned a lot. plus a drunk guy tried to fight us. we exchanged words with him and he tried grabbing the assistant but we were too fast. we took off running. he tried chasing us but ended up running into an electric fence. definitely one of the funniest moment of my mission.

my comp is sweet. he is a guy that is always positive and happy. he loves to laugh and work hard at the same time. i’m going to miss him after this change. i have a feeling that his is going to be made zone leader in 3 weeks. he is a special guy.

today for p-day the sisters were in charge of the activity. we went to some zoo type thing and went in a car ride in a caged truck in a lion field. the tour guides threw meat up on the top of the truck and the lions would climb up on top of truck so the lions were literally 2 inches away from us. we were able to pet it and let it lick us. it was pretty sweet. it was definitely a good activity.

the mission is going really well. i am learning so much and i think i can feel my self changing. i can tell my priorities and the way that i think has definitely changed. i wouldn’t trade anything for the mission. i know this church is true.

elder magnusson

ps everyone asked me if i felt the earthquake..... i didn’t even know that one happened hahaha

More pictures from Elder Magnusson's p-day activity

"Jesus Christ is our Savior and He has so much love for us."

this was a super good week.

ok so remember the story of the guy that stopped to talk us  in front of the JWs? anyway he is doing amazing. we  had 3 lessons with him last week and the first lesson that we had with him was amazing. even before we could ask him if we wanted to get baptized he asked us if he could do it!! we were sooo excited. that has never happened to me in my mission. the other 2 lessons that we had with him went just as well. we told him that we would stop by his house early sunday morning to pick him up for church. he was so excited to go. well what happened was on sunday the sisters had a baptism and they called us in a panic cause they couldn’t get the font to work so we had to save them but because of that we were 15 min late of picking him up. and he wasn’t in his house and he wasn’t picking up his phone either. we were so sad. so we left to go to church and he was sitting there waiting for us. he said that his phone was dead and that when we didn’t show up on time he left on his own. he stayed for all 3 hours and the hour after to watch the baptism to see what his baptism is going to be like. we couldn’t be more happy for him. this week we are going to teach him word of wisdom and law of chastity. he lives alone and we don’t think he smokes so we will see what happens.

also our other investigator and his family (girlfriend and kid) came to church but they only stayed for the first hour. i think that they liked it too. it will be hard to help them progress cause they are living together (out of wedlock) but we are happy that they are coming to church. let me tell you, when you have a lot of investigators in church it is stressful but everything worked out. the members were really nice to them

my comp is sweet. we are getting along really well. we haven’t had any problems and we are working so hard. i have never worked so hard in my mission and i know that the Lord is blessing us especially with our new investigator. i wish we could stay together for longer. i think that we are going to get split apart next change which is sad but its all good.

we had interviews with president this week. i really like our president. he is going home in 5 months and we are all going to miss him. he is such a good leader.

i cant wait for winter time. i’m getting tired of contacting at 3:30 in the afternoon in 90 degree weather.

i know that this church is true. i know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that He has so much love for us. thank you for all of your love and support.

elder magnusson

"The mission is sweet and is changing my life"

happy birthday to my big sister, lisa!!! hope you have a good day today!! i miss you!

so the big news this week is that i got a new comp and he is sweeeeeetttttt! his name is elder conger and he is from colorado. but he is a complete farm boy. his family has a bunch of land and this is the first time in his life that he has ever lived in the city. he has a year in the mission but during that time he has only had sectors in the middle of nowhere. he says that the city is really weird. anyway he is way cool. he loves to work which is nice. he is also a big guy... like 6 foot 4 inches and about 215 lbs. we get a lot of comments from people in the street that we look really big together.  that was really funny. anyway the point is, i’m super excited for this change. we are going to do a lot of good things together. 

we worked hard this week and contacted like crazy. we have a lot of good potential. we are hoping that we can find them again but we were definitely blessed. the sector is doing better than any other time (at least while i have been here) 

the sad thing is we had 5 investigators tell us that they were going to come to church and no one came. that is probably the hardest thing as a missionary. i hate it when people don’t come to church. the people can’t progress if they don’t go to church. we are going to improve this next week. 

so i guess lately i have been talking in my sleep in spanish a lot. elder troncoso would always complain that i woke him up cause i was talking in my sleep. i guess last night i was teaching a lesson about the sabbath day. my comp said that he was listening for about 5 min before he woke me up. but he said that it was a good lesson. apparently i used some scripture references. 

 i don’t know if i have written this but i love the ward that i’m in cause we play basketball every week. now the people that go aren’t as good as people in the states but they can still play. it is so much fun because it is soooooo much better than playing soccer and it is also fun to have elder conger here because he is really good. this past week we had 21 people there to play. we were happy because they are starting to like basketball more and more. it’s the best part of this ward.

I know that this church is true and that the only way to be truly happy is by living its concepts. the mission is sweet and i promise that it will change your life cause it is changing mine. i know that Jesus Christ is my Savior and i love Him so much. i love the mission. i honestly don’t want to come home. i love you guys. thanks for the support.