Monday, July 25, 2016

Oreos and Milk!


***Zack would love to hear from you:) You can email him at zachary.walden@myldsmail.net******Thanks!

Hey Everyone-
    Hope everyone is doing well. Nothing really THAT interesting has happened this week, been kind of boring. But I still have some cool stories! So we’ve been having some trouble finding people to teach, like I think I’ve said before, but if I haven’t, now you know. So we set the goal this week to find a new investigator every day. We did not meet this goal, but we did find 5 new investigators this week! Which is awesome! That’s like more than we had all last month hahaha. So that was a miracle. With a little more faith, this week we can find 7! SÍ NOS PODEMOS!!!! TENGA FE!!!!
    Oh and remember that area in my sector I was talking about? With all the really rich people?? Well like no missionary has ever entered a house there. It’s super difficult because they’re all really rude and think they’re better than you so they tell you to leave. At the houses you don’t knock on their doors, you ring this buzzer thing and they answer you through that and you talk through a little speaker thing. So it’s really hard to be invited into houses like that. For example, last week we buzzed this one house and this girl answered and said "I have 3 Rottweilers (big dogs) in my yard who will hurt you, so leave." we were like oh okaaayyy??? Hahaha ANYWAYS-- Last night we went up there and we were like dude tonight’s the night!!!! We’re going to enter a house!!! We have faith! It’ll happen!!!! So we knock on this one door, and this girl comes out, and we were like, ”Hey, we have a message to share with you that can change your life.” That’s all we said and she was like, “Hmmmm wait a minute!” So we waited and she came out the door and invited us in. We were like dude, we’re in a cuicos (rich persons) house!! Her mom came out also and they brought us Oreos and milk and sat down with us and listened to our message about the Restoration. And they liked it a lot! So we’re going to go back next week. They even said that they’ll come to church with us! It was awesome. Miracle of the week.
    Tonight we’re going to have a noche de hogar (family home evening) with Pablo and his family at the Mission President’s house with President Obeso. So wish us luck! That will be interesting. I feel like President will darnos cualquier palo (give us a lot of advice) afterwards ha-ha but its fine. We can always improve.But yeah that’s basically it, sorry I’m boring.
     OHHHH also!!! On Sundays we have lunch with the members in the ward and yesterday it was all the way out in the campo (countryside)! So we drove with the AP out there and a GRINGO answers the door!!! We were like “HOLA! WAIT YOU’RE GRINGO! HEY WHATS UP MAN! Ha-ha it turns out he married this daughter of this family in our ward and he’s here visiting her family. He’s from Arkansas and served a mission in Argentina. Actually the Bahia Blanca mission!! Where Taylor is;) But yeah so he met her there in his mission and lived a little bit in Chile after they got married and now they’re both living in Arkansas. And it’s awesome because he has a kid who’s like 4 years old and he understands both languages because they speak both in their house so I can like mix English with Spanish and the kid understands me! It was weird hahaha so random! But yeah that happened--- Fun times! 
Hope you all have a great week!
Elder Zack Walden






Pictures
1-Our old lunch crew and where we eat lunch. Mamitas house is really nice
2-A  pretty picture I took, I'm like an artist.
3- A game type thing that we made for an investigator
4- My last districts last day together

Monday, July 18, 2016

Backpack Full of Coffee

  So this week was an adventure, I feel like a lot happened but at the same I feel like nothing happened, anyways Where am I? Who’s my comp? Where’s Elder Felipe? *bdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbd* (that’s a drum roll) *CRASH* we’re both still here!!! Ha-ha we’re staying together this cambio (exchange)!! Weird, no one expected that but hey I’m excited to be here another cambio with Felipe. We know why we are here. We need to baptize Pablo!! The dad of that family that’s baptized. So we are here together to do that and so far it’s going well. Two weeks ago he said "I’m not getting baptized" a week ago he said "Okay maybe in like 2 years but I need more time" and 2 days ago he said "In August" so I’m hoping the next time we go over he says "Tomorrow" hahaha one can dream! But he’s making a lot of progress. When I showed up he had never been to church but he’s been the last 3 Sundays. It’s so great! I’m excited for the family!! He also gave up coffee. Finally!!! Actually there’s a story with that, so we took his coffee from him, we said we would get rid of it for him so Elder Felipe put it in his backpack. After we left their house we went to do another lesson with another family. And Elder Felipe FORGOT HIS BACKPACK AT THEIR HOUSE! So they called us and were like "Hey I thought Mormons don’t drink coffee??? Are you guys lying?" They were so confused. I was like dude the one time we ever have coffee on us, we forget it at an investigators house!! Ha-ha but yeah it was funny. Also Hermana Bowers is now in my district!!!! She was in my district in the CCM!! So it’s good to see her again. Fun times!
 Oh and guess who showed up to our ward on Sunday?!?! PRESIDENT OBESO! And guess who was teaching the Gospel Principles class that very Sunday, FREAKING ME!!! So I had to teach a class to President Obeso, that was a good time hahaha.. It ended up going really well.
Anyways, I have an interesting story for you guys, really interesting. So Saturday we were at Juan’s again, yes the Juan that sings and stuff for us. So we were having another lesson with him and we asked if we could end with a prayer, and he was like "Oh wait!! I have something for you guys!!" We were like “What is it? He was like "Here move to the sofa. Sit yourselves down." We were like “Um okay?” So we were sitting there and he goes to the kitchen and starts doing stuff and he comes out and points at me and says "Take off your shoes!" I was like huh? So I started taking my shoes off and Elder Felipe was like “Dude don’t take your shoes off man!” I was really confused. And then Juan comes out with a giant tub of water and a towel and we asked “Dude what are you doing Juan??” He answered” I want to wash your feet. Like Jesus and his apostles. Now take off your shoes!” What? I was like okay sweet, but Elder Felipe was like “No man! We can’t do that we’re not like worthy to have that done to us!” He said he would feel weird doing that and feel uncomfortable, and Juan was really sad, he really wanted to wash our feet. But he did come to church the next day so that was good. But yeah it was weird -- only in the mission field. 
I also got bit by my first dog this week! This little dog was protecting this door so I scared it off with a rock, so we talked to the person in the house and when we left the dog was just sitting on the step and we started walking out and it ran up super-fast and bit my leg! The bite was tiny ha-ha it was just like a bruise. I didn’t even tell the doctor about it because I’m fine, but yeah that happened.

Hope everyone is doing great. Have a great week!

Love-

Elder Walden

The group of students we taught English to

 Elder Myuris last day in the mission field-
 We found some mini cows
 Saw this interesting tree so I sat in it


Monday, July 11, 2016

UFO's and Aliens?

Hey guys!! I hope everyone’s week was fantastic!! Not much has really happened with la cobra this week but we had some pretty weird lessons. So first we were having a really good lesson with Maria again and we were talking about the Plan of Salvation. Randomly she asks us what the churches stance was with aliens and with UFOs…… we were like “What?” So we told her that like the church didn’t really have a stance with that. You guys don’t know how hard it was for me to not tell her my opinion and all the scriptures I know about aliens hahaha but we needed to stay with the lesson and I can only preach truths about the gospel and that’s not truths about the gospel...it was so hard for me. If you really know me, you would know the difficulty of that for me. Anyways she continued to tell us her experiences with UFOs and she said with a serious face that she knows aliens and knows without a doubt that they exist.  I was like HOLYYYY FREAKKK....you know how I enjoy the alien stuff….. anyways, Plan of Salvation...ha-ha so yeah.

We also taught our investigator Juan this week and he’s hard to teach because he tries to teach us as we teach him so we will like ask him a question and he will go on for 40 minutes and not even answer the questions. This week he ended a lesson by singing us a song about Christ...again. It’s hard not to laugh because his voice is terrible and he gets like so into the songs. But yeah he also told us that he knew we were going to knock on his door the day before we met him. He told us he had a dream, or a vision you could call it, and he said he was outside watering his garden when he saw an airplane circling his house, and eventually it got really close to his house and he said a holy person was flying the plane and he saw us sitting in the plane. Then he woke up. So he knew the Mormon missionaries were going to knock on his door so when we did he invited us in warmly. This would be a cool story if he actually like listened to us and our message ha-ha but yeah, that was weird this week.

Excitement for the week is that we have transfers happening this week! So we will see if I stay here with Elder Felipe or if I get a new companion. We haven’t been called yet so you guys will have to wait till next week to find out! Sorry!! Hmmmm oh funny story for the week-- So this is probably the worst mistake I have ever made in Spanish thus far.  I was telling someone from the ward that I hung something up yesterday. Which would be the word colgar.  It would be "yo la colgué ayer" but I said "yo la cagué ayer"...with the verb cagar...I’m not going to say what that word means, you guys can look it up on your own. Yeah so I was embarrassed, never going to make that mistake again!! Hey I’m gringo! It’s my second language! Sorry!
So yeah--- Love you all!

Oh BTW, THIS IS MY 6 WEEK MARK IN THE MISSION?!?!? I HAVE 6 MONTHS DONE?! THAT’S CRAZY RIGHT?!? THAT’S A QUARTER OF MY MISSION!!!!! WHAT THE HECK!!!
Hope you all have a great week-
Elder Zack Walden

Monday, July 4, 2016

On Top of the World!

Sorry I don’t have much time to write right now but I have a lot to tell you guys so I will make it fast. So to start it off, we found this one lady named Maria Sanchez who is awesome! She is super receptive and we found her just knocking doors and she invited us in and loves us. She’s catholic right now but she likes what we have to say. We came at the perfect time in her life because her son had tried to commit suicide the day before...and like a month ago her husband died randomly from a heart attack while she was talking to him. Super sad but we are helping her big time and she’s trying to do anything to better her life and come closer to God, so what better ways are there than through the Gospel?! uhm NONE!! So it’s perfect. We’re trying right now to get her son to listen to us as well. But he wants nothing to do with us...it’s sad...but we are working with them.

 Also we are teaching the family still of the girl that just got baptized. Her dad still isn’t baptized but we are working really hard with him and the family is working hard also. He's stubborn, but we found his problem and it’s a difficult problem, because he knows to keep the Sabbath day holy but he can’t because he will lose his job if he doesn’t work on Sundays so he doesn’t want to get baptized because of that. It’s hard but we are helping him out a lot and we had an amazing lesson with them and they were all crying and what not. I love that family! They are so awesome and I always leave their house just smiling. They’re such good people and always just want to serve others and make other smile. It is families like that why I’m out here on the mission.

Also this week me and Elder Petersen (the other gringo in my zone) went and taught English to a class!! One of their investigators is an English professor so we went and helped out a bit. We split up into 2 groups and just talked with the kids in English, asked them questions, they asked us questions and it was so much fun! I kept saying stuff in Spanish on accident though ha-ha not going to lie, it was really difficult to speak English ha-ha like really difficult, and it was weird. But we did mission work too because the kids loved us. They were asking us what neighborhoods we serve in and wanted us to pass by their houses and everything and were asking us after class about the work and stuff. It was awesome ha-ha the kids were amazing! Such a good time!

Today we went to the actual Antillanca (ski resort in Chile)!! Oh my goodness it was the most amazing place I’ve ever seen! I have a ton of photos to attach. It was seriously like out of a movie or something...it was crazy. The view was amazing. And our driver wasn’t a member so we taught him and stuff on the hike up and he loved us! Buena ohnda con la iglesia;) but it was great! You will absolutely love the photos. And by the way they don’t celebrate July 4th here ha-ha their July fourth is in September. And I hear from other missionaries that it is fun but you will explode from how much food people give you that day ha-ha. Oh funny story for the week, when we taught the kids English the teacher told us to talk how we did in our states so I sat down with my group and the first thing I said was "alright what throwing down dudeskis" and I looked at the teacher and she had a look on her face like "oh no, what did I get myself into..." ha-ha but I told her I was just joking. It was hilarious. The first thing everyone asked me was "Do you know anyone famous?!?" and I always answer "Well my brother was in a band" ha-ha "Kings of Narnia!" and they’re all like "Hey I’ll have to look that up!" So KON is making a comeback here in Chile!!! Chao amigos!!

Happy 4th of July!! Have a great week!

Love-

Elder Walden