Monday, April 24, 2017

Baptisms:)


Well I got some good news for the week! Martina and Heriberto were baptized and confirmed! Woo! It was awesome! I got to baptize and confirm Heriberto and my companion baptized and confirmed Martina. It was awesome because there hasn’t been a baptism here for like 4 years so like the whole town came. We had like 40 people there, which is more people than come to church.  All the less actives came too because it’s a rare sight to see 2 baptisms here. I will attach pictures. By the way, funny story--the font here in Porvenir is tiny, so I totally bonked Heriberto’s head on the font but I knew he wasn’t under all the way when he did so I just forced him under a little more ha-ha! Everyone made fun of me for it afterwards-- everyone always makes fun of me here for everything ha-ha! Anyways, it was an awesome baptism, Heriberto was super nervous but afterwards he was all good. But we should also be baptizing again on the 6th. We put one of our investigators with a date this week, and he’s awesome, his name is Gino. He was actually a reference from one of the members and he’s so stoked! We have such powerful lessons with him and he actually asked us, "Is that the only date you have? Or can I get baptized sooner if I want?" ha-ha he’s so great! So we will be looking forward to that, I hope I don’t get transferred before that.

 So anyways, Elder Shumway called me yesterday with some good news; they baptized a family that we found together! The mother and the son! So we’re stoked about that. We seriously found them so randomly, it was so guided by the spirit! We went into the area and we were walking just to like explore to see where this road led to and I had the prompting to knock a house, and they came out and now they’re baptized! So I’m stoked about that! Elder Shumway also had some bad news for me too...Well do you remember our investigator named José and Juana from Calbuco? We always went over to their house and we always ate there and they were super awesome, I always sent photos home with them, so I know you know who they are. Anyways, they had a daughter that had a really strange sickness but had lived with it for 24 years, well Saturday morning she passed away in the hospital; he was telling me that they’re pretty distraught about it. But I actually got it where the missionaries live behind their house now so it’s good because the missionaries have been a major support for them. I really think we showed up at the perfect time in their life. Jose has been saying that God gave her to him for 24 years, what else could he ask for? So he’s dealing with it really well. I wanted to update all of you on that so that you can keep them in your prayers.

Anyways I hope all of you had a good week!

Love you All!

Zack







Monday, April 17, 2017

Happy Easter!

This week has gone by super-fast and I really don’t even remember much of what happened. Ha-ha! But hey we’re going to be baptizing 2 people this Saturday so we are stoked! Ediberto and a 10 year old girl named Martina. I will be baptizing Ediberto and my companion will be baptizing Martina! We’re super stoked!! Porvenir hasn’t had a baptism for like 3 or 4 years, so the President put missionaries here at literally the perfect time, it’s like he’s inspired or something? Weird. (I know he is inspiredJ) Anways, this week was good, we’ve come up with some new ways how to contact people because in Porvenir it is super hard to find people to teach, it’s such a change from Calbuco! So what we’ve been doing is we set up the TV in the church building and we open it up and we literally just stand outside and invite everyone we see to come watch a video and talk about Christ for like 5 minutes. And you know what, it’s been working out a lot, and if it works in Porvenir it should work in other areas too! But it’s cool because we’re not awkwardly asking to enter somebodies house on there time, no we are inviting people to enter the church building! So I thought it was a good idea, and it’s been working great. So if you know any other missionaries who are having trouble finding people, there’s a suggestion ;)

Anyways Easter was great! We actually did not get too much chocolate, ha-ha Our branch didn’t do a big celebration or anything...but we did have 40 people in church on Sunday which was awesome! Usually we have around 17 to 20 people, so we like doubled it which was awesome! Oh  and I have a funny awkward story that would only happen to me...so the branch President asked us beforehand if we could stand by the doors during the sacrament so no one came in or out. So right before the sacrament my companion walked out, so I went to go out too to go ask him which door he would stand at, so I was going out the door, and it like hit my foot while I was opening it and it bounced off my foot and totally nailed me in the face! I looked back and literally everyone was watching...it actually hurt too!  I have a bruise on the side of my face from it! So after sacrament everyone was coming up to me laughing and asking me how I was ha-ha. At least I could make them laughJ

There were quite a bit of foreign people on our island this week because there were some road rallies, and people from all over the world come to this rally car racing event. It’s like a world famous one that happens all over the Tierra del fuego, and it starts in Porvenir. It was cool, all week we were seeing weird rally car things everywhere, doing like street races ha-ha it was awesome. Everyone would freak out when they heard I was from California because it’s like home of Nascar racing, so they would all get super excited and start talking to me about Nascar, and they would realize pretty fast that I knew nothing about Nascar ha-ha. Anyways, pretty chill week, hope you’re all good where you’re at!\

Love-


Zack






Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Lessons Learned

       This week was amazing and full of miracles! This last week our Mission President called basically every single companionship to tell them that he had felt strongly that he had to make the promise to every sector that with faith they could see a baptism before the 15th of May and another one before June. Super random but he was listening to Elder Rasbands talk about going with the first impressions from the spirit and felt super strongly that he needed to call everyone telling them that. So of course Elder Molina and I were thinking a lot about that all week. We only had one guy with a baptismal date and he has some major problems to work out before that date...so we’re really trying to think who we could focus on to be those baptisms. So Friday I decided that my fast on Sunday would be for that, so we could be capable of fulfilling the promise that the President made us. My Friday studies were all about following the spirits first impressions, and I got a strong prompting from the spirit telling me, "Call Rosa and Heriberto right now.” They are a couple that have been struggling and he never shows up to our appointments but I followed the prompting and called them. She answered and was actually crying and telling me how she was just done and she really was going to divorce and move back to Chiloe and leave him here.  I calmed her down and told her that it’ll be alright and that we would talk at church on Sunday. Then I went and I called Heriberto and he answered (already a miracle) and we actually set a cita for that night in the church building (which we have done 4 times before and didn’t show up) but that night he showed up! And we had a great lesson with him and he actually told us how he hasn’t been drinking lately and he really wants to change how he is. So we got a big impression to invite him to baptism, so he accepted and called his wife and she was so happy and super proud of him. On Sunday they came to church! And he was super happy to be there and said that he will go from now on every Sunday. He will be getting baptized on the 22nd of this month.
       Saturday night during the fast, we had the impression to go to a less actives house that has a daughter that’s 11 who’s not baptized. We went and invited them to church, but she couldn’t go because she’s always working. But the daughter for some reason really wanted to go so the mom agreed to bring her to church and then go to work afterwards. Well, we never can go visit them because she’s single, so we can’t enter and she’s also never home because she’s always working. Well Sunday after church we just had another impression to call her at night to see if we can go over with a sister, and she actually said sure! For the first time in 10 weeks ha-ha. So we got a sister super-fast and went and talked about baptism and she remembered her baptism and everything. It made her super happy, and we had the impression again to invite the daughter to baptism, and the daughter was so happy and the mom was too and we actually put her with the date of April 22 also. She said she would do everything possible to help her daughter get prepared to get baptized that day. Literally God answered our prayers and the promise from the President super-fast, now we have 2 with a baptismal date, that are solid, for the 22nd, and I’m stoked! I love covenants, because God always comes through. 
      That’s actually not all the miracles we saw, just wait. So Elder Molina told me that he was fasting to find a family, that are ready that will be baptized. So there’s this family who have listened to the missionaries before that live right in front of our house and we have never been able to find them or anything. Well Saturday after 10 weeks we finally found them. And they were cool, super nice and have heard the lessons like a thousand times. So we talked with them and that night at our house Elder Molina tells me that that’s the family, he just knew it was them. Well this morning, he tells me "Hey dude I had a weird experience last night." he continued to tell me that he dreamt about that family, and in the middle of the dream he woke up and Heard a voice clear as day tell him "Their daughter will get sick, the missionaries will give her a blessing, she will be healed, and they will believe" so he got up and wrote it all down immediately. We have an appointment with them tonight, so we will see what happens. It is interesting because literally yesterday in the Gordon B Hinckley manual it said that revelation comes at night a lot of the time. So that was interesting, I will keep you all posted on what happens! Also we’ve been giving a lot of blessings lately. The papitos daughter got sick, and was super sick the other day and we went over to give her a blessing and literally like 3 hours later she was all better, up and walking around and totally fine! Blessings work, Priesthood power is real, and God always answers our prayers and fasting. Lessons learned this week. 
Hope everyone has a great week! Look for those miracles that happen every day! Love you all-

Zack











P.S.- The pictures are from us in Porvenir. That’s actually the back yard to our Little house. We live on the property of the elders quorum president so we were doing some service for him and Elder Felipe and Oliver came from Punta Arenas to do some divisions and did it with us, fun times ha-ha. Elder Oliver is super cool, we’re actually really good friends.

Monday, April 3, 2017

Handstand Champ!

Ay what’s up guys! Sorry I don’t have a lot of time today so I’ll make it fast. We have actually been in Punta Arenas all week, since last Wednesday...and I only brought clothes for 2 days because I thought we would be here for just 2 days. But there were some complications with my companion and money and the law (nothing bad) and what not so we had to stay a few extra days ha-ha so we are still here and we should be leaving tomorrow. But this week was awesome! I absolutely LOVED conference so much! So awesome!  I took a bunch of notes and it’s definitely going to help out a lot of our investigators. The talks are just so inspired! I’m not sure what my favorite talk was because I left my journal at home so I don’t really remember but I remember I really liked the Ulisses Soares guy from the first session, I remember that I really thoroughly enjoyed his talk a lot.

Anyways not much has happened this week because we’ve been kicking it here in Punta Arenas and helping out the sectors here. By the way the climate is super ugly right now...like its super cold and raining which is weird because it like never rains here. One of the taxistas was telling us that it might snow at the end of this month which’ll be interesting ha-ha. Anyways Dad would be proud, today we went and played sports with the whole zone and we all had a hand stand competition and I won! I totally thought I wouldn’t be able to do one still but I actually can hold it pretty long still. We went to an investigators house for lunch today, he was the investigator that went to Porvenir for a day and we hit it off and taught them and stuff and then went back to Punta Arenas. He Invited us and 2 other missionaries here for lunch so we went and ate some salmon and then we made cookies and it was actually super fun! They’re actually the people that I sent a picture of last week! We spent a while there, that’s why I don’t have much time ha-ha. Anyways that’s all I can really remember that was all too interesting, sorry for the worst letter I’ve sent yet haha. Chao! 

Love-
Zack
By the way people here always guess when gringos are gringos from their accent but people always guess I’m from Spain or something. They tell me I speak with like a perfect Spanish Spain accent, so I guess it’s  kind of a compliment! At least I don’t sound gringo haha!