Glad Tidings of Great Joy

My first cambio in the mission field left me with a new trainer, Elder Price! He has about 7 months in the mission and comes from California. He is 18, and the 2 of 7 children. I'm super excited for the time we have together here to work with the ward. His Spanish is great and he can communicate with anyone. I'm almost to that level, but at times have trouble understanding the Chilean language, which they claim as the Castillano language, or something like that. Just one of the branches of Spanish. He is a great example for me and gives me something to shoot for in his language skills and confidence as a missionary. Our new mission plan for the ward got approved by the bishop yesterday and includes 4 points that we're putting into practice to start out: 1. Every 3rd  Sunday  of the month will be missionary themed and will include a song sung by the missionaries and talks by people associated with the mission work. 2. Visiting a member family for 15 minutes each ...

The evening of the last Pday we were walking along and found a lady taking in firewood by herself. We walked down the street and started to help her. After 45 minutes or so of working hard we had gotten it all in. It is hard to imagine her doing all of it by herself! But she is a strong woman and would have done it. her name is Patricia and she is about 65 years old. She lives in that house alone with one of her sons who is 20 and has downs syndrome. He is relatively high functioning. I really enjoyed doing that service and it was great to see a job done from start to finish.  We had a lesson with her  that went well and we taught the restoration. We'll visit her again ! Just writing about the experience makes me excited to be a missionary! Service is the best way to show people we really care, and we always offer it and do what we can. I invite you guys to do the same and look for service around you in the house or with your friends, and of course always invite your friends t...

Sorry for the delay in posting... I had a cool experience with prayer this week. We had planned a visit to the chapel with an investigator and went to search for him. On the way I said a short, simple prayer in my head asking that we could actually find him and show him the chapel. We got to his house and saw his mom in the window, but nobody answered the door. We continued walking, and ran into him on the sidewalk! He had been in a store about 100 meters from his house, so the timing was just perfect. He went from there to the chapel with us and we were able to show him around and have a nice conversation. Another day we were stopped by a car and a guy asked where we were from. I told him, and he started talking in English. He had been an exchange student in Georgia. Based on his line of work, what he offered us, and language, I didn't feel he was exactly ready to accept the Gospel, but I gave him a pass along card with our number and told him to give us a call when he was r...

We had my first intercambios, exchanges, this week. I was pretty nervous to be in charge of leading our sector and having to find all of the houses, get around, and teach without getting lost. But with the help of the map we have, there were no major problems. We did spend a little extra time on our journeys to and from the site of exchanges but that wasn't too terrible....All ended well. I was with Elder Stirling, who is actually the cousin of the violinist Lindsey Sterling. He has about 5 months in the mission and is from St. George, Utah. It was such a great learning experience and really a confidence booster. I could see that he was able to understand and communicate without an issue and I know I can too with more time. My biggest challenge is understanding people when they talk. Anyway, we were doing some contacting as always, and a woman opened the door. I introduced us and after a bit of chatting she invited us in to share a lesson with her and her teenage son. They ...