Frisco meets Santiago

Ok. So this has been a very interesting week!!! So I had a special visit and got to spend a few hours with Brother Halverson!! haha It was a bit of a culture shock seeing someone from my ward, but it was really cool!! We went out for empanandas which is a chilean food, and it was really fun catching up with Brother Halverson and his brother Pete!

Afterwards, Pete wanted to buy a SIM card so we went to a store to help him translate. Before we walked up to the counter, he told us that he wanted to talk. (beforehand he told us that he studied for three hours on the plane). Pete talked fearlously and was doing everything he could to communicate with the Chileans!! It was awesome!! For only three hours of studying on the plane, I got to give it to him, he communicated really well!! 

This past Sunday, we had a sister missionary leave for her mission to Guatemala. The ward had a celebration for her after the sacrament meeting, and it was great seeing the ward come together to send her off!! It was really cool! 

                                                   

Thinking back and pondering on the lessons we had with the people we taught, I am again and again reminded of the truthfulness in what we share. After repeatedly sharing the messages we share as missionaries, I find myself knowing the universal and really simple truths in what we share. We taught a family about the plan of Salvation and it was really spiritual. This family is Catholic and have some different viewpoints on religion, but as we shared the message, to them, it made complete sense and they believed in every word that we were able to share with them! It was really spiritual and I left really happy afterwards. 

One of the things we teach in our first few lessons with people is about our Heavenly Father. In our missionary study book, it talks about how when we make good decisions, God is happy, However, when we make bad decisions and seperate ourselves from God, he cries... I read that this week, and maybe I have been skimming over that, but that phrase really got me thinking. I think that our  first initial thought on when we disobey is that God is angry and will judge us. When we sin, Heavenly Father gets frustrated because of our disobedience to his laws, but I have never thought about him crying.. As I thought on that, it really got me thinking about how more intimate and loving that makes our Heavenly Fathers relationship with us as his children. 

Its like a mother and her child. If the child rebels and disobeys his mother. If the mother yells at the kid and punishes him out of anger that would be one thing. However, If I disobeyed my mother and if she cried, I would instantly feel bad.

I Believe that if we thought of our Heavenly Father crying when we sin or choose wrong choices, I believe that we would 1. sin less and 2. feel remorse and strive to be better and honor him. 

An All Gringo House

Wow!! What a week here in Santiago!! After now passing the year mark, I marvel at how fast the time has been passing. I really cant believe it!

Well , to get to details from this week, We had a really good one! We are in an ALL GRINGO HOUSE!!!! haha Elder Brown is training Elder Patterson and Elder McKane and I are still together. We are having such a blast all together! 

 Yes, those are jorts! Great to see Elder Murphy again.

 Southern BBQ at President and Sister Gwilliam's for the one year mark.

 So, some highlights from my week, On Monday, we had a zone meeting and talked about missionary work and being able to meet the goals that we have as missionaries (standards of excellence) It was a really good meeting and we learned a lot. We talked about scriptural prophets that conquered what seemed like difficult tasks to do what god wanted them to do! Really good conference!!! 

I went on a division with another Elder from our district named Elder Gowers! We had a really good day in his sector and taught some good lessons to people! That was a great day!

On Saturday, Elder Mckane and I were working with a list that we have of all the members in our ward. we were actualizing the list and we came across a guy by the name of Victor! We had a really good 30 minute conversation with him outside and taught him lesson 1. He understood it and was really receptive!

We did lots of finding through working with our list and with talking to people in the street!!! 

On Monday, we taught a really good lesson to a old investigator. We talked about what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is. What Jesus taught us during his time on earth! Really good lesson. And very spiritual! We talked about faith, repentence, baptism, the holy ghost, and enduring to the end. Christ has taught us all of those things! 

 Soccer on P-day with Elder McKane

Cereal that my mom sent me!

Elder McKane.....He's crazy!

Until next time!

Mutual, Elder McKane Dancing and Consistency

It has been a good week yet again in the Santiago Urban Jungle!! I kind of forgot but I complete a year in the mission today interestingly enough...that year went by pretty fast for me..haha. Its crazy how fast time flies on the mission. 

As for my week, it was really good. We had a lot of administrative things to do which made the dynamics of the week a little different. We had a leadership conference in San Bernardo, and we were able to learn a lot during it. We had a lot of talk on the fundamentals and the importance of them in our work as missionaries. We also talked about the doctrine of Christ, and looking for other sources of scriptures outside of the normal missionary prototype scriptures that we normally use. Hermana Gwilliam talked about love and how we need to show it to ourselves and for the people we serve. We learned a lot during the conference and will be bringing it back to our Districts!

As a ward, we haven't really had mutual, but right before I got here, we started picking it up and helping it. We now have lots of kids attending and bringing lots of there friends that are nonmembers. It is great! We had almost 20 kids here for Mutual this past Friday which is our record so far!

On Saturday, we had our ward talent show! We had such a blast! Lots of people performed their talents. One of our investigators who is 9 played the piano really well!! His name is Benjamin!

Elder McKane is a really good dancer and danced to a funk song! Everyone was amazed and going crazy when he danced! hahaha. He got the whole crowd going. At the end, we saw a Cueca dance which is a traditional Chilean dance that they do here in Chile! This group is from a different ward in our stake. They did a really good job and put on a great show! We had 80 people show up to the show and about 12 were investigators between us and the other elders. considering that our ward has 40 people coming each week, we were stoked and so happy!

Our Investigator named Victor is progressing lots too!! He is doing really well and progressing towards baptism! We had a lesson about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he loved it! He expressed his testimony and love for this gospel and how much he has loved the church since coming to know it in such a short span of time! He already has a testimony and is growing it each week!

 As I was cleaning this week, I came across one of my old letters from my mom while I was in the MTC or training center back in Mexico. It was a good letter. My mom talked about her time in Brazil learning Portuguese and the challenges that came with that. Also, she referenced a talk that talked about Consistency in all that we do. It made me go back to the good old days in the MTC where there was a desperation that I felt to be consistent to be able  to learn everything! Looking back now, and not to bag on myself persay, but I dont think I have that same tenacious desire and desperation to learn everything as much as the day I started. Thats not to say that I am lazy or layed back, and maybe that's something about the new freshness of the missionary, but God expects us to be consistent in what we do! Consistent in our love for him, our obedience to his commandments, and consistent in other aspects of our lives. As we try to maintain ourselves at that consistent level (knowing that it is hard and that we will dip) we really come to know Christ who is the most consistent above all other men!

A quote I love from John Wooden is ¨All of life is peaks and valleys. dont let the peaks get to high and the valleys too low¨

Or that as we maintain ourselves  disciplined where we know that God wants us to be, we will see results. 

Have a great week.