Monday, February 27, 2017

Windy and Cold!

Hey Everybody, another week has just flown by! Goodness gracious, every Monday just comes so fast...it’s so weird. Anyways this week was a good one. We’re making some great progress here in the Porvenir area, except it’s getting harder and harder to work because of the weather and everything. My companion has been kind of slowing down a bit, so I’m hoping this week he has some more energy! But it has been hard, it’s so windy here ha-ha like unreal. I thought Simi got windy, no I was wrong. Here it is legitimately hard to walk sometimes, you bring your leg up to walk and it gets blown the other way! Ha-ha it’s quite interesting.

Anyways this week felt like we didn’t do much but looking back at it we had a ton of success! Okay so our main investigator is Marisol, she’s the one that wants to get baptized and goes to church and everything but just needs to get married. This week we had such a spiritual lesson with her and the branch president. And we basically gave her 2 options--One was to either get married or  two break up with him.  We gave her those 2 options and we left it up to her and God. So we came back the next day and she said that she’s going to do everything possible to get married, so we’re super excited about that! We’re hoping to go to the municipalidad this week with her to go get a date to do it.

 Also this week it was really funny—we’ve made like good friends with the little kids here. Whenever we see them outside playing we always talk with them and play and stuff. So one day I brought a bunch of quarters with me to give to them as like a gift. So we found them playing in the street and I gave them all a quarter. Then one of their dads came out of the house and they all started running to him. He points at us and was like, "Hey you guys! Come here!" By the way this guy is huge...could break me in half.  He tells the kids, "Hey go play over there! GO! I’m going to talk to your friends..." So we thought he was mad at us because he was huge and seemed mad. So we go over to him and he was wearing a Doors t shirt. So out of fear I was like, "Hey I love the doors! Such a good band!" and he just looked at us. And he said, "Missionaries’ right?" We were like um yes...and he said "I’ve been looking for you guys forever!! I love you guys! I made good friends with some missionaries like 5 years ago and went to church and everything but then I moved and I haven’t been able to find you guys since. I really want to know more about what you guys do!" We were shocked...it was awesome! Now we are teaching him and he’s super receptive.

 ALSO a guy moved here from ChiloĆ© and his wife is a member and he’s been taking missionary lessons for over a year now and wants to get baptized but can’t because he was in prison and still has some legal problems...but we called the President telling him the whole situation and everything and said that if he doesn’t have any sentence he can get baptized. So we had a lesson with him and told him that and he got so excited and the wife was so happy too because she wants to get sealed to him so bad. Yeah it’s awesome!  Just a lot of miracles happening here in Porvenir, literally miracles! Anyways I hope your week was fantastic! Chao!

Elder Zack Walden

Some pictures:
Statue called King Penguin
All the trees look like this because of the crazy wind:)








Monday, February 20, 2017

Punta Arenas!

Well I want to start off my letter this marvelous P-day telling Dad happy birthday! Finally over that hill ha-ha hope the 50’s treat you well! And I’m glad to hear that the party was great! So like this entire week we’ve been in Punta Arenas...we got here on Thursday and we’ve just been staying with random missionaries. It was cool because Rodolfo (the guy that went to Calbuco and worked with us) lives here so yesterday he came to some citas with us which was awesome. It’s weird that I got transferred right near where he is! It was cool, we had a good experience with him.  I was with him and Elder Dickson who is like a newer elder and we didn’t have any plans so we ended up just like knocking doors and no one was answering. Finally after like 100 houses this lady came out and told us "What?! You just woke me up from my nap!!" And the other missionaries were like,” Oh sorry! We’ll come back another time!” But I had the impression just to testify, so I just testified to her that if she would listen to us, she would feel the spirit and she ended up letting us in and it was such a bomb lesson! She really needs the gospel in her life, she already wants to make a covenant with God. She’s awesome! I’m sad it’s not in my sector so I can’t continue to teach her but I’m so glad we found her and just pushed a little with her.
So anyways, this week in Punta Arenas has been sick. I’ll for sure be sending some photos, it’s really pretty here. There’s always a ton of tourists here. It’s super funny because on the boat to Porvenir there’s always a ton of gringos, Germans and French. It’s awesome! They all have one universal language--English. So my companion and I always talk to them. It’s really fun to see where they’re all from and getting to know their stories.  So anyways, I finally bought a sick water proof jacket today; all the ones I was finding that were from a good brand were like 200 or 150 mil peso, way too much. But I found one from like the best Chilean brand here on sale for 50 mil peso! I’m super happy with it. Rodolfo also gave me a really nice backpack because he said there was no way my backpack was going to hold up down here. He is such a cool guy!
Anyways I hope you all had a great week! By the way that storm sounds awesome! Actually the weather is not too bad here yet, only a ton of wind, so when it does rain it stinks. Ha-ha! 
 
Love you all-
 
Zack








Monday, February 13, 2017

Hello from Antarctica!

Hey Greetings from Antarctica! Haha just kidding, we’re still a ways from Antarctica. The flight and everything went good this week. It was weird being on a plane again ha-ha made me kind of sad, because that’s what’s it’s going to be like when I go home.  We flew into Punta Arenas and then that night we stayed at our zone leaders house because boat rides to Porvenir only leave once a day. So the next morning we got on the boat and got to Porvenir. We arrived and this random guy in a large truck asked us, "You guys look lost? Need a ride?" So he took us and all of our stuff to our house which was nice because he saved us like 5 mil peso because the port is like 15 minutes away from the city by car. So we got here and our house is really nice! Best house I’ve lived in so far in the mission! Actually a member here built it just for the missionaries! Its super sick. But it was funny because our cell phone we got is absolutely the crappiest one the mission has, it has no numbers at all!! We went straight to the area book and all the sheets were from 2011 ha-ha, so we were like majorly in the dark the first couple of days.

Funny story--- we found like a piece of paper in the house with a number on it that said President, so we were like calling it and talking to the Branch President here and like setting up citas (appointments) and everything with him. We were asking him who the elders quorum president was and everything and it was super funny because he kept saying "Missionaries you’ve been here for a while! You should already know all this!!" We were so confused. So one day we went to go print stuff out at the church so we called him for the password and everything and he was getting mad at us saying there was no password or anything, We were so confused haha. It turns out that number we found was of a Bishop in Punta Arenas and we had been calling him for like 3 days acting like he was the branch president here on the island, and none of us realized it. It was super funny, we all laughed about it afterwards. Now we have the real president’s number, so we’re good.

 So we thought the sector was going to be really small, that’s what everyone told us but no it’s huge! It is actually like really big, technically our sector is the entire Tierra del fuego, but like we just stay in the city of Porvenir. It is like the only thing our here. So far I love it here though! It’s so windy though and the wind is just pure cold ha-ha, no more just leaving in White shirt. Definitely jacket every day is necessary.

So we’ve already found 3 investigators and they’re super cool. One is Marisol and her daughter, we actually already got them with a baptismal date, she just needs to get married first, which shouldn’t be hard because in this town its actually free. And a girl named Pricilla, she’s super awesome and has been to church before and everything, she’s really awesome. It’s cool because even when there weren’t missionaries here the branch did all the mission work and like taught everyone and everything so they’re all like super down to come to citas (appointments) and stuff with us. It’s awesome! And there’s not too many members here, but the members that are here are super active! There’s around 40 members in Porvenir and usually all of them come to church. I really like this town and there's a lot of work to be done here. My new companion Elder Molina is a great missionary! We both come from little branches in our last sectors and we both had a lot of success in those branches. I think we know why the President sent us here, but we will have to work our butts off here! And I’m excited to do so! It’s not too pretty in this part of the country, it’s all dead because it’s so cold that nothing can grow here ha-ha but like it’s pretty in its own way.

Today for P-day we went to the museum here and we learned that when the Spaniards came in the 1920's, they came here and killed all the native people for sport and used their body parts as money. Like an ear was worth a certain amount and the head was worth the most! Yeah there were some pretty gruesome pictures...anyways have a great week!

Love you All-

Zack Walden








Monday, February 6, 2017

New Area:)


    Well Calbuco is doing great, I’ll tell you more about it in a little bit, I want to start off the letter with some news that I’m super excited about!! So we have cambios (transfers) this week, and I wasn’t looking forward to it because odds were that I was leaving. So we got called yesterday and I was right, I am going to leave the sector. I love Calbuco and the people here so it’s going to be tough, BUT president has a special assignment for me and another kid. We are going to open a sector! AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD! The southernmost city on the continent is called Punta Arenas, and I’m going to an island even below that called Porvenir! It’s in a part of the world called Tierra del Fuego, it’s literally the southernmost tip of the mission. It’ll be really cold ha-ha but I’m stoked! Apparently there are penguins in my sector so I’ll send one home for you guys haha! So I’ll be doing a whitewash down there with a kid from Columbia, I don’t know much about him, so I’ll tell you more about him next week. But yeah that was the news, going from a little branch on an island to another little branch on an island. Ha-ha President seems to like to put me on tiny islands. So I’ll be headed there on Wednesday. Wish me luck!

    Anyways this week was bomb in Calbuco. We see this one guy named Andre all over town and he’s like kind of a weird guy so we always just say hi to him and he’s super nice but like everyone told us to stay away from him so we did. Anyways we ended up knocking on a door and it was his house and he invited us in and actually told us this long story about how he had received missionary lessons before and has been reading the Book of Mormon and like really wants to go to church and wants to get baptized. So that was awesome, I don’t know why we never had talked to him before ha-ha. Also we found this one lady this week named Natalie and she lives in the middle of nowhere. I don’t even know how we contacted her house. So we did and she like told us how she has a bunch of Mormon friends and loves how they are and really wants to know what they believe in to be more like them. Her mom was also there and was baptized Mormon a long time ago and really wants to go to church, she just didn’t know what time it was at. So they’re going to do all that’s possible to come this next week.  We’ve been finding some golden people in this sector. The new missionary who comes here is going to be super happy with all the people we are teaching. OH by the way that drunk guy I talked about last week...so we passed by this week and he just seemed super different. He was super happy and he told us, "Dude I took your advice and I said a prayer every single day this week!! And I just love life now! I feel so much better and look; I have a job interview in Puerto Mont in an hour! I’m going to work and stuff!" He was so excited and like gave all the thanks to God. It was awesome! I think he’s got a solid future ahead of him.
Hope you all have a nice week! Love you guys!

**The pictures are of me burning one of my white shirts on my one year anniversary here in Chile. And then we roasted marshmallows:)