Glad Tidings of Great Joy

We met a women named Isis this week. Her 9 year old son, Ariel was baptized a few months back in another ward here in Punta Arenas but they recently moved to our ward! We found them kind of miraculously while contacting and got to talk to them for a little bit. When we went back the second time we met Ariel and he was SOOO excited to see us! That was awesome. And the best part? They came to church on Sunday! The ward received them super well and that was great. We have a cita with the family on Tuesday. I hope it goes well and that we can meet her pareja and teach them both! Ariel is the only member in the family and has a little brother named Daniel, who is 2. We also were handy Elderes a couple of times this week. We fixed the siding on our house and also hooked up two gas stoves in the houses of other missionaries. That was way fun! Soraia is doing really well. We made a Brazilian dessert with her during the week and taught her more about the Restoration. Love you all!

Well, it was a shocker hearing that we can talk to our families by video calling each Monday if we would like! We won't be using our phones to text or call because they definitely do not have that capability, but the video calling we can make happen by using computers! I got to talk to all of my family in one day by that and it was awesome! Knowing that we have that opportunity makes it much less distracting than the calls at Christmas when you spend a month building up to it. It will be cool. Soraia was confirmed yesterday and I did it. It was so great to see how excited she was and happy. We asked her how she felt after and she said "confident" How great is that! The Holy Ghost really can give us confidence in everything we do because we can act knowing that we can be guided by Him. It is a gift from God to help us and guide us and give us more confidence! I love that she felt that way and recognizes that it can help her.  We did intercambios this week and I got

We had a baptism yesterday!! Her name is Soraia and she is originally from Brasil. I think I am learning a lot about Portuguese just from listening to her speak Spanish! She was so excited for her baptism and couldn't wait any longer so we had it on Sunday afternoon after the church block.  We also had a ward activity on Saturday and got to eat some grilled meat and after played a ton of little games with the kids like sharks and minnows, tag, freeze tag, and tug of war. 6 children are my match in tug of war it seems....I need to take my exercises more seriously I guess. I am loving my time here in Punta Arenas and the opportunity to forget myself and focus on other missionaries, members and people we are teaching. The mission is such a fun time of growth and learning!! Elder Brighton

We had a very busy week this week! We traveled to Osorno last Monday and stayed the night with the Assistants to the President and did divisions with them for the evening. I got to teach a few Haitians with him and we had a cool lesson about the importance of a prophet and how he is the one that guides us. Kind of like the person driving a car and steering it. You can take that metaphor pretty far. Tuesday was the leadership conference and it was way cool. I got to learn lots and meet new missionaries in the mission that have more time than me, but we have never crossed paths before. For lunch we had Papa John's and that was incredible. Good American pizza, not much beats that! We returned to Puerto Montt that evening on bus and did a few contacts in their sector before turning in for the night. Also traveled with a watermelon from Osorno to Puerto Montt and ate it that night, super tasty. We got up really early on Wednesday to get to the airport by 6:30 for our 7:25 flight