Glad Tidings of Great Joy

Happy New Year!! I have been in Chile for a full calendar year now. 2018 was full of fun memories and I hope to make more in 2019! I hope I can make it a year full of personal growth and accomplishments. And a year full of service as was 2018 for me. Speaking of service, we helped a less active sister rake her yard this past week. The grass was all dead because she had sprayed poison so we borrowed a metal rake from someone and just raked it and the roots came up pretty easy. Some good work:) We had another project planned for that day but some torrential rains arrived in the morning out of no where so that got postponed. Scarlett and Oscar came to church yesterday. It was Oscar's first time and he really enjoyed it. Said it was much more tranquilo than what he was used to. He told us he didn't feel the spirit in the church he was at now, and I am pretty sure he felt it yesterday at church with us. Scarlett is continuing to progress very well and we have fun teaching he...

Merry Christmas!! This morning we had a little devotional with our zone in the Mission Home so that was really cool. Blessings of living near the mission base during the time of the Holidays. Had some stories and musical numbers followed by a french toast breakfast. First time I have ever eaten french toast. Verdict: not bad at all.  The city here is pretty busy and bustling with everyone getting ready for the big night tonight. It is a very warm sunny day though! There shall be no white Christmas here this year. We did some service on Saturday for a family that is inactive, but there 9 year old son comes to church every week. His name is Tomás. We helped dig out a ton of grass and wheel barrowed it and a mountain of dirt out front. I had a lot of fun doing that kind of work again! They're a wonderful family and invited us over to cenar with them tonight (eat dinner). That will be really nice and fun. Tomorrow evening Hermana Barbara invited us over to eat an once with her....

Big news of the week: My magnet name tag arrived that I ordered 9 months ago!!! Not that big of a deal, but the anticipation has finally come to an end. Took it out for a spin today and it performed well while we played volleyball with a group of missionaries.  Important things that happened this week: We found and taught 6 new investigators this week. We have been praying for and focusing on that a lot and it has been happening. Our focus now needs to shift a little bit on really helping these people progress and keep commitments while still searching for and finding more people to teach. The key to being a successful missionary (or anything) is being able to focus on more than one thing at a time. That is a teaching from our mission president's wife. We are getting into the Christmas season here and have quite a nice tree set up with lights and decorations donated from a less active family we are working with. Don't forget about the church's LIGHT THE WORLD initia...

This week we had the chance to do service with a man named Oscar. He invited us to come over one morning and help him sand 3 car doors he was preparing to paint to replace on his 1998 Subaru Outback. It was something different and fun. Oscar about one month back decided to quit smoking and left it from one day to the next after smoking for over 40 years. He did the same with alcohol quite a while back too. He and his wife are super friendly. We found them door knocking about 2 weeks ago. Service is great and helps us show the people we truly care about them. We also chopped a metro of leña for a sister in the ward this week. Got nice and sweaty but it is good work.  We found a new investigator named Scarlett this week while doing contacts. Her grandmother let us come and converse with her on her porch and while we were there, she showed up and sat down to listen too. We had a cita with her the next day too and then she came to church on Sunday! She is 16 or 17 years old. S...

We started off our Light the World month on Saturday, December 1 by participating in the global day of service. We traveled to Osorno and helped paint a house and some chairs of a member in a ward there. She is a professional chef and afterwards she cooked us a lunch of chicken, potatoes and a vegetable casserole. It was very tasty and well appreciated by us because we would have had to cook for ourselves after getting a late start so it worked out very well! Being the missionaries that we are however, Saturday was not our only day of service. During the week it was raining and we were out proselyting and came across one of our investigators outside shoveling. They are building an extension on their home so had about 4 yards of dirt brought in to fill the site before pouring more concrete. The truck couldn't get in well enough because of low-hanging power lines so about half of that was dumped in the road. Streets in that part  are pretty narrow so he had to move it to make a p...