Independence Day and Investigators

So this week was really interesting. It was Independence Day here in Chile this week, and they party for the whole week.  They had bbq everyday, and they fly kites, and dance and pretty much it was a really sucky week for us to work, but we still did the best we could.

We have two good investigators right now. We have Allison who is going to be baptized this next Sunday. She is 10, and her family we recently reactivated.  The other one is Leonor, she is also 10, and her dad is a member, but he works a lot so he doesn't go to church, but I don't think we will finish teaching her in time to baptize her this Sunday. We are trying to reactivate her dad too.

Sorry this letter was so short.  I lost track of time and forgot to write haha.

But I  love you tons and miss you all!!!

We Painted a House!

Hola!  how is everyone doing this week?   This week was pretty good for me, but it was pretty crazy too haha.

On Monday we got our new companion, we are a trio now, but it's been pretty fun so far.  He has made us a lot of food from Peru, and it tastes so good!  So he is teaching us how to do it.

On Tuesday we had the doctor all day.  First we went to the doctor for me.  It was a check-up, and after our food poisoning he changed the pill I was on to a different one, but it seems to be working because I feel a lot better.  Then after that both of my companions went to the chiropractor, so at the end of the day we got back to our sector to work at 7 PM. So pretty much we did the best we could in a small amount of time.

On Wednesday it was the 11th so it was a dangerous day and we had to be in the house at 7.  So we left to work at nine, and we did service and finished painting a house.  That was really fun.  

 

 

We painted a house!

 

We put our hands and our names on the wall!

 

Nothing exciting happened while we were still outside, but starting at like 8:30 we started to hear gun shots and stuff. A member called us and told us that they had started burning stuff at like 9 and then we heard gun shots most of the night.  In the morning when we went out, we could still feel a little bit of the tear gas in the air that they had used. So it was another day of not being able to work very much.
 

 

Burning Car

[Not far enough away for Mom]

On Thursday it was the first day that we actually kind of worked haha.  We were able to get a lot done, and teach quite a few people.  We found 3 new people to teach and so that was good.

On Friday we had a meeting with President and all of the other Zone leaders, and so again we didn't get back to the house until really late, but I learned a lot of stuff in the meeting and we then had to teach everything we learned later to our zones.

On Saturday we had a ward activity for Independence Day, and it was really fun! They go crazy about their parties so that's pretty fun.  We ate lots of food, there were games, and dancing.  (too bad I couldn't dance...) but it was still fun to watch everyone and see the national dance.

Then on Sunday we had another meeting with the mission president, but this time with the stake president too.  It was fun to see a different side of the mission president, when he isn't just with missionaries.  Then after that we went on divisions with people from the stake presidency so that was really fun. We were able to visit a lot more people that way.

Then yesterday, Monday, we had to teach everything we learned to our zone and so that was pretty fun.  It's been cold recently. It had warmed up a bit and now it's freezing again.  But with the time change the sun is out a lot longer now.  It doesn't get completely dark until like 8 so that's really different.  But today we are going to the zoo again and then we have a stake activity tonight so it is going to be a really fun day!

I love you all and miss you tons!!!

 

 

I'm a wasso!  (Chilean cowboy)

Burning Cars and Gunfire?

¿Hola como están?

 

So this week was pretty interesting.  Pretty much we are now trying to find more new people to teach. So we knocked on a lot of doors this week, and we actually found quite a few people that said we could pass by that Friday and Saturday.  Of course then on Friday there was a soccer game, and so no one was in their house.  But we are going to try and keep passing by.

On Wednesday it was supposed to be a dangerous day here in our sector, but nothing really happened until late at night.  They only stole a car and burned it.  I got a cool photo of the car burning.  Then at 10:30 we heard a whole bunch of gun shots, I guess September 11 is suppossed to be worse, but we will see.

Other than that nothing very exciting happened this week.  Saturday we ate something that made the both of us (Elder Riches and I) extremely sick.  Elder Riches started throwing up at 3:30 in the morning until about 8.  Then at 8 is when I started throwing up.  Needless to say we stayed in bed all day, and it was the first time in my entire mission that I have missed church.  It was pretty interesting. But that's ok.

Today we had changes. and now we are in a trio with Elder Quadros.  He is from Peru, and this is his last change of the mission.  He seems really nice so far so we will see what happens.

But other than that there isn't much new stuff.  Hope next week is more exciting.  But I love you all and miss you tons!

 

 

This picture was posted on Facebook by a ward member.  It was taken on August 19 at a Food Contest.  The missionaries were the judges.

Zone Leader

Hola!  Como estén todos?!  This week has been so crazy for me!  Where do I start?

 

So on Monday we had a family home evening with our ward mission leader and with Fresia to talk a little bit more about her baptism.  It was really good, and we were just starting to do the things we needed to do so everything worked smoothly. 

 

On Tuesday we just worked as normal and were trying hard to find new people to teach.  We were able to find quite a few, and then at like 9:15 we got into a house to teach a lady, and at 9:30 President called me.  I answered it and he told me to call him back later.  Usually when President calls and it's important he just tells you, so when he said that I didn't think it was that important.  So when I called him back that night, he told me that I was getting special changed, and that I would now be in the ward Vespucio and that also I would be a new Zone Leader. (This is one of the most dangerous areas in the mission...  pretty much everyone always talks about this sector.  Haha!)  He told me that I would have to be in the office at 11 in the morning to meet my new companion and go to my new sector.  So all that night I spent packing my things.

 

On Wednesday I got to the office and met up with Elder Riches, my new companion.  He's great.  He is from California and I have never gotten along so well with someone.  It is the least stressed out that I have ever been when it should be the most stressful because I now have a lot more things to do. Our apartment is bigger, and there is an oven to make my brownies, and the shower is like 40 times better haha.  It even has 2 bathrooms so we don't have to wait for each other. My new sector has some great investigators too. We are going to have 2 baptisms this Sunday, with 3 more on the way.  The great thing is that my investigators from the last sector should be getting baptized soon too.

 

We have already had to do house inspections of all of the elders in our zone, so that was pretty fun.  Then we had interviews with President Essig yesterday and we were in charge of his schedule and everything. There are 27 elders, 2 stakes, and 10 wards in our zone. We also have 3 sisters in the zone, but there are sister leaders now that are just in charge of the sisters.

 

 

Elder Riches and Nate

 

(Yes I still got to go back and have my baptisms.  It was great.  Both Fresia and Juaquin were baptized.  I got to baptize Fresia after 7 years of waiting.)

 

 

Elder Stepz, ward member & Juaquin, Fresia & Nate

But I ran out of time.  Today it's our p-day and we are going to go to the zoo!  

I love you and miss you all!!!

Finally the Fruits of our Labors in this Area!

Hola!  We had a pretty interesting week this week.

 

So pretty much Monday night I started to feel kind of strange and it ended up that Tuesday morning I woke up with a fever fairly high.  I had the fever for about 2 days with all of the accompanying symptoms of a cold: runny nose, cough, headache, all that fun stuff.  It's even more fun to be a missionary and to be sick because we still go out to work the best we can everyday!  But it was a good week.

On Tuesday the Hermana Fresia returned to her house!  We are going to have her baptism this up coming Sunday!  Also we have received permission and everything to baptize Joaquin as well, so this up coming Sunday we should have 2 baptisms!  

This week we also had an activity in the church.  It was a night of talents. We brought an investigator with us and he brought his guitar and so he played and sang!  It was pretty cool and it was a good way for the members to get to know him a little more.

We are also looking forward to having 3 other baptisms in the up coming weeks, but we will see what happens!

Other than that things are pretty normal around here.  It's starting to warm up a little bit so that is nice.  We can now use hats, and sweaters in public, that was pretty exciting! And yeah that's pretty much all that happened this week!

Love you guys and miss you tons!!!

Miracles Happen Every Day

Hello everyone! How are you all doing?  So this week was a pretty good week.

On Tuesday we had interchanges with the district leader.  He called me Monday night, and told me that we were going to have them.  But it was good.  During the interchange we ate something that I never thought I would eat, but I just had to try it. It's called sandwich de potito.  The translation of that is pretty much (excuse my language) "Butt sandwich"!  I can't believe that I even tried to eat it. It was horribly gross.  But hey I had to try it.

It rained on Wednesday and on Sunday this past week, it is pretty much horrible to try and work in the rain, especially when we didn't have any appointments those days, and we were mainly trying to find people to teach. But still it was good. On Sunday we were going to go and knock on doors for 1 1/2 hours and right as we started it started to sprinkle, but like a heavy sprinkle.  So I said a prayer and asked that the rain wait until we finish doing our contacts.  The rain stopped we did our contacts and then went to meet up in the church with some members.  As we walked out of the church it was raining hard!  The Lord hears and answers prayers!

This week we also had an investigator that wanted to see pictures of the temples and stuff.  Now she doesn't really know how to use the computer very well, so when she looked it up she ended up going to a website that talked really bad about the church. When we went to visit her we had to answer a lot of questions and show her that what we are saying is true.  (Luckily we are telling the truth, and the scriptures are there to back it up).  

But this week we had 4 investigators in church, and 3 of them have a baptismal date. One of these people was a miracle. We were knocking on doors last week, and we met a young man who said that we could enter and share something short with him. We talked for a little bit and then started to share about the Restoration of the Gospel. He really enjoyed it and told us that we could come back next Saturday.  We ended up getting there late, and he wasn't there.  So after about 20 minutes more we decided to call him and see if he was in his house, and he was. We went and read with him 3 Nephi 11, and we talked about how one of the first things that Christ did when he visited the Americas was give them the authority to baptize. After explaining why, he interrupted us and said, "I need to get baptized! What do I have to do to get baptized?" With the biggest smile on my face, I told him that he needed to keep listening to us, read in the Book of Mormon, and go to church.  He then started asking us about the reunions [meetings?] that we have and said to call him in the morning to see if he could go.  When we called he told us yes he was going to go, but he wanted us to go get him, and to bring him a tie.  When we got to his house he was dressed in a suit and he put on the tie (we never told him the type of clothes that he needed to wear in church) and when we got to the chapel, everyone thought he was a member! We quietly started to explain to people that he was an investigator, and that they need to talk to him!  

The Lord is preparing people to hear the gospel!  The work is moving forward, and in the coming weeks we are expecting a few baptisms!!!!

Thanks for everything, I love you and miss you tons!!!

Don't Tell Your Mom Stories Like That!

¡Hola!  esta semana fue pero super loco.  cualquier cantidad de locura paso jaja!

 

So on Monday we went out to teach at 7 as normal, and we had an appointment at 7. We went and taught it and then we were going to try and visit a person that we had found and taught the last week. When we walked past the first time there were some gangsters, I'm pretty sure they were doing drugs or such and they decided to throw rocks at us.  Well none of them hit us and we just kept walking. The problem was that the investigator wasn't there, so we had to walk past the gangsters again.  This time they decided to follow us and talk to us.  I just kept walking trying to get to the most populated street, but before we got there of course one of them tried to rob the phone from me. We were lucky that they didn't have any weapons or anything like that. But from there we were going to try and find another investigator, and as we were going toward her house and on the street in front of us (not the street we were on) a man drove past in a car and the passenger had his hand out of the car with a pistol in it shooting in the air...  after that we decided to go visit some less actives to get out of the street.

Then the next day we went to visit a woman that is coming to church asking for food and stuff to see if she really is a member, and she told us that she tried to commit suicide in the morning and just wanted to die.  (I'm getting pretty sick of situations like that...)  and so we tried to help her.

On Wednesday our investigator who is going to get baptized, Claudia, broke her elbow along with other family problems.  So she was in the hospital all Wednesday night.

On Thursday I was sick with a horrible stomach flu, but I'm over it now, and this is the day we found out Claudia broke her elbow.  So pretty much we couldn't do much that day.

Friday and Saturday were pretty normal.  Then on Sunday we were blessed to have 4 investigators in church!  Not only that, Claudia went and she got up to share her testimony with the ward, telling them that she is going to be baptized soon!  Then we were also able to go with the Bishop to an investigator's house and talk about the baptism of his son, and how he needs to prepare himself so he can baptize his son! Also we learned that Fresia is going to come back to her house! That means that she can be baptized!!!

The week started out pretty crazy, but in the end we were still able to see the blessings!

But that's pretty much my week!

Love you all tons and miss you a lot!