Short but Sweet

Sounds like a great week for la obra misional!! I'm glad to hear that!! So transfers are happening this week. I am really feeling like I will be moved somewhere else. I will find out Wednesday but I wanted to give you a heads up. We will see what happens..... Anyways some miracles have been happening in the work! Our investigator we have now is such a golden investigator. She's been reading everyday and had a ton of questions for us and stuff, its awesome, so happy about that! And we also tracted into a Less active member and her sons are not baptized but she wants to get back into church and we have an appointment with her tomorrow night. The work is going strong! Sorry I don't have muchtime! les quiero mucho! Thank you to everyone who writes me! Elder Zack Walden

Ice Cream? YES!

Sorry I am writing late and this will be a short letter because I do not have much time. Sorry…..Anyways it’s been tough this week, but I have also seen little blessings from God. We found 4 new investigators this week!! Just out of nowhere!! It was awesome! One of them was super cool-- we had an exchange and I was with Elder Brower, my zone leader, who is like my best friend out here. He is awesome! He goes home in a few weeks though, but we were walking to go to Bosquemar to do some tracting for a bit and we see this young family so we decided to go talk to them and the guy started speaking really bad English and we were like, ‘Hey! You speak English?!” And he was telling us how he wants to work in North America because it’s such a better life. So we were talking to him and stuff and so on and him and his wife were going to Unimarc which was like a 20 minute walk and they said “Hey if you want to come with us to Unimarc we would love to talk and then after you can come to our house and we can all eat ice cream ha-ha so we were like “yeah that sounds great!” So later when we were at their house we were like sharing what our message is and they were super interested. They were asking like so how can my family be together forever because that’s something I really want to do. We didn’t have a lot of time to teach them because we had a family home evening with another family but we have an appointment with them on Saturday and I’m super excited! They seem really cool. Oh it’s super funny too. There’s been a bunch of riots in our city and stuff this last week and the other Elders got caught in a confrontation. They got rocks thrown at them and sprayed with water by the police! They came into the district meeting and were like dude you will never guess what just happened hahaha it was so funny. Well I have got to go! Have a great week---Love you all! Elder Zack Walden

Spider!

So this week really nothing has happened, it has been so slow. The work has been super tough for some reason and I don’t know why! We had an investigator drop us this week and an appointment fell through so that kind of stunk...but I have learned a ton of Spanish this week and I chopped a ton of wood and we walked alot and did alot of contacting. I really have learned a lot. I have grown closer to the members in the ward. My Spanish is finally getting a lot better so I can actually like talk to the members and what not and they can actually get to meet my real personality. So that’s nice! We’ve been going to different members houses every day for the past while and it’s pretty nice because now we know the members better in the ward and it’s made me realize how great our ward is! I really think we have the best ward in the entire mission. They are awesome! So we are teaching this less active right now and she has twins and for some reason they have this giant spider and the one twin put it on me haha so that was weird. I’ll attach a picture. I was terrified! But at least it didn’t bite me. So this week we are going to really buckle down with our investigators and really hit the pavement hard and find some nuevos! This next week should be alot better! I hope! I hope all is well where you guys are!! Have a great week- Elder Walden

May 9, 2016

So I know I just talked to you yesterday and you pretty much know everything already but I have another story for you! And sorry if my typing stinks, I’ve pretty much just been chopping wood all day so my hands are like super shaky ha-ha. Anyways! last night we were doing some tracting, knocking door after door after door, it was tiresome and nothing was working, so I decided “you know what man, let’s do something a little different, right when they answer the door let’s say hola somos misioneros y soy de estados unidos y èl es de Mexico, y estamos aquì de nuestros propios piases para hablar con usted y compartir una mensaje¨ You know so I get them like interested, because usually when people find out we aren’t from Chile they think its super cool ha-ha so we tried this, and it didn’t work. So then I decided, you know what man? Why haven’t we been using the spirit?? Let’s only knock on doors that we feel the Spirit tell us to knock on so we are not wasting our time. So we turn down this one road and I just look at this house and just knew I needed to knock it. So we did and this lady comes out so we say the whole thing about our countries and what not and she walks down and in perfect English says "so you’re from the United States and have a message for me?" I was like uh yeah? And she turned to my companion and said "I want to hear the message from you! But in English...(little did she know he speaks perfect English ha-ha) so he shares why we are here and our proposito and all that in English with her and she is shocked he knew English so well ha-ha. It was hilarious and she started asking how he knew English and stuff and she apparently knows English because she teaches it in school here in Chile. So I told her that if she ever needs help in class and what not we can come help her because we both speak both languages and she loved the idea! Then we started talking about the gospel and she apparently knows the missionaries super well and she’s been to church and everything but was never baptized and she said it’s been forever since we have been over to her house. She was never baptized though because her family wants nothing to do with religion and she said it would hurt the family if she joined a religion but she said she would love for us to come over and teach them sometime. So we exchanged numbers and we are going to go over this week!!!! That’s what happens when you actually listen to the spirit while trying to find people. It really pays off! It was great skyping with you! Love you all! Elder Zack Walden

May 2, 2016

What the heck! Matthews wearing like all my clothes! Don’t wreck them; I’ll want those when I get home! Anyways what’s up guys! How’s the vaca? Oh and the vacation? Little Spanish humor there ha-ha hopefully you get it. Anyways tomorrow is my companions birthday. So far all my companions have turned 20 with me ha-ha weird, but yeah we are throwing a party for him at consejo de lideres so that should be fun. Okay so this week I saw my first baptism in the mission. The zone leaders had a baptism of this one lady that I helped teach like twice. It was cool! Super awesome! And I cancelled my first 3 baptisms ha-ha I was the witness and she had to be baptized like 4 times, I felt bad for her but like it has to be done right. Also this week one of our investigators named Piera legit flat out asked us "so what do I do if I’m like in love with a missionary and want to marry him and God has told me that he is the one?" and then proceeded to ask me "so have you had feelings for anyone in the mission yet?" Sooooo she wants to marry me ha-ha. I answered her really well though just saying like we are in the mission to teach and she should focus on the message and not the missionary. So we have to be careful that she doesn’t get baptized for me and she actually gets baptized for the right reason. Yeah that was interesting this week ha-ha. We had nerf battle today with our zone which was sooo fun. We’re probably going to do it next Monday also. Oh and I tracted into a girl from Philadelphia this week who doesn’t know Spanish either ha-ha it just made me wish I was in an English speaking mission because it would be so much easier. Hope everyone has a great week! Elder Walden