Crazy Storm!

Hey what’s up guys! I’m writing you this week from Puerto Mont because we have the conference with Elder Braggs tomorrow .Looking forward to it, it should be great!

 

So this week has been awesome. The storm was pretty awesome, we just put ourselves in our rain pants and rain jacket and just went to work. We got worked on pretty hard. One part of the island got so wrecked that it got cut off from Chiloe and made its own island! It was cool. They called it a catastrophe, but we were fine just a little wet. The whole time walking in the streets that day, getting pelted by rain coming in at rapid pace we just always looked at each other and said, “Only in the south of Chile”. Ha-ha it’s a good time!

So anyway this week we learned from an investigator how to make Milcao, it’s like a southern Chile thing. They’re super good. It’s a lot of work to make but hey at some point I’ll teach you guys. We ended up making like 70 so afterwards we went and gifted them to a bunch of people. So anyways also the girl from my story last week, our investigator, is going to be baptized this week because her parents couldn’t go last week so we ended up moving it to this week. We’re still super excited! Yesterday we had to go to get the signature from her parents, it was awkward but we ended up talking a lot with them about the church. It was chill, now we get along super well with them. I was sick all week which stunk, I didn’t sleep for 3 days because I had major sinusitis and couldn’t breathe at all. It was terrible, but now I’m a lot better, just a little cough, but it was tough with the weather and everything this week, but its chill.

We’ve had some good lessons this week! We’ve been teaching that family of 7 and man it’s crazy. We’ve decided that we can’t teach them like regular lessons, with video and scriptures and folletos and what not, but we have to teach them like a primary class. So this week we started to print out little games and stuff and then relate them to the gospel and it’s been a lot more effective, and now they love when we come over and they’re all super excited to get baptized! So yeah it’s been a pretty good week, nothing to complain about. Baptisms this week and many more to come, I’m dreading the cambios though because I might be out of here and I don’t want to go, I want to be here for the baptisms of my investigators! But we will see, I hope I stay though. Anyways have a great week!!

Love-

Zack 

 

Photos from this week:

1. Elder Amaya’s birthday at the mamitas

2,3,4. Baptism this week but the font drained itself right before...so we had to fill it up in like 10 minutes, so as they started, we went and had the great idea to use the fire hose ha-ha and we were throwing buckets and everything...then we had it all good and then it started automatically draining itself so we had to do their baptism like super-fast, it was funny ha-ha

5. We had McDonalds today with the gringos from the zone!!!!

Amazing Week!

Aug 21, 2017

Haha so weird that Matts married now! I told like everyone this week that he was getting married and everyone was like super happy and excited for him! I’m glad people liked my toast, I want to apologize because I had no idea what to say. I totally winged it and that was my first try and it was super hard to speak English! I am so sorry if I sounded like a retard.

 Hey it’s awesome because I’ve seen some miracles here this week also, woo it was SUCH an amazing week. Anyways I’ll save the biggest miracle for last. So first of all its been raining literally all week and tomorrow there’s going to be one of the biggest storms in the history of Chiloé. They’re expecting winds up to 160kmph! It will be crazy! We will have to be in touch with the President because if it is actually that fast we won’t be able to work because every house is made out of tin here so like roofs tend to fly off and kill people, it’s happened before. So that’ll be interesting. Also we taught some pretty powerful lessons this week about temple work and what not...we made a powerpoint for it and everything and literally the 2 investigators we showed it to cried about what we were telling them. It was awesome….. but they still didn’t go to church on Sunday. So we gotta keep trying!! But we still had 8 investigators in church so we were pretty happy about that! The Lord is blessing our efforts!

Anyways BIG Miracle we saw this week...first of all we have an investigator named Antonia and she’s 14 and has been going to church for like 8 months and she’s shared her testimony in sacrament meeting and everything but she’s been weird about the whole baptism thing. So last week we got real serious and asked her what it was that she needed in order to take that step and we found out that it was her parents that didn’t like the church and told her she couldn’t be baptized. We had never really talked to them before, met them a couple times, but never really talked to them because they like avoided us. Well we had one of those "capilla abierta" this week, it’s like an open house but with the church building and the whole branch is there and what not and we do tours. So anyways we were there and this was the first one we had ever done in Chiloé...and we were like in charge of everything...it was a lot of work. At one point this couple walked in, so before the tour starts I started talking to them and they were super cool. We made like pretty good friends and then the tour started so I left to go help in other parts and then Antonia found me and told me that I had been talking to her parents. I didn’t even realize it was them! So I was like frick! Let’s go! We’re going to do the tour with them!! So we went and joined them in the tour. Well during the tour we got to the young women’s room...and in that room randomly all the young women just started bearing their testimony about Antonia and how much she has progressed and how big of a testimony that she had, and Antonia went and hugged her dad crying and told them "I just want to be baptized so bad! I know this is true and all I want to do is get baptized!!" The spirit was so strong, I was legit crying, and I never do that! And her parents just said "We will talk about that at home!" Well after the tour I went and was talking to the dad and I got to explain to him what we’ve been teaching and a little bit about what exactly we do as missionaries, then they left. Antonia stayed to help clean up and everything and she told me that she was super scared because she had never like born testimony to her parents and had never begged them like that and she was scared what their reaction would be. Well the next day in church...after Sunday School she asks us "Hey could we do a baptismal interview?" We were like wo wo wo hey what did your parents say?!?! They GAVE HER PERMISSION TO BE BAPTIZED!!!! Wooooo!!!! And she wants to do it as soon as possible!!!!!!! We have the interview today and she gets baptized this week!!!! Literally the capilla abierta opened her parent’s heart up to the gospel and gave them the chance to know a little more and feel what she had been feeling for 8 months!!! She so stoked, we’re so stoked, and it’s awesome...it was a major miracle. You don’t understand how happy we are that she’s going to get baptized this week!!! So yeah that was a major miracle we saw, thanks to the spirit and the young women in our ward. I know it was an awesome experience for them too because they got to bear such testimony to non- members and experience the mission work. It was awesome, and without their help, she might not be getting baptized. The power of a testimony is real, and can change people’s hearts. Thanks for all your love! Hope everyone has a fantastic week!

We're Killing it!

August 14, 2017

Oh my goodness it’s so nice having a heater and warm showers and what not again...you don’t know how much pasta and stuff we’ve made this week hahaha. We’ve missed being able to cook. So this week was a super good one, we’ve had some major spiritual lessons this week. Elder Amaya and I teach really well together, we're killing it too, we’ve got a lot of people that we’re teaching and almost all of them want to be baptized, so we are super excited, just working towards achieving that. Yesterday was kind of sad because we had the time change, like day light savings and we had to wake up an hour earlier because of it and it was pouring rain. Our church starts like way early and all of our members flaked that were going to pick up all of our investigators. So yesterday we ended up waking up super early, to be able to leave early and we walked all the way to the investigators houses to wake them up and take them to church and it turns out that out of the 5 houses that we committed to go to church only 1 of the families was awake and went with us...and it was only because she had gotten drunk the night before and never went to sleep. But she came to church anyways at least with her kid and husband...but she was drunk so it was weird haha. I am hoping next Sunday goes a lot better. We did our weekly planning and made some killer plans though to get them to understand the importance of church and everything. We’re working on a powerpoint right now for 1 investigator that loves her kids and actually lost one a few days after having it and her only desire is to be with ALL of her kids forever and a lot of other churches tell her that the kid is gone and what not. But as we know, she can be sealed to him and be with him forever, and she is still his mom. She’s awesome, she loves us and the church, but she hasn’t gone yet because she always sleeps in and can’t beat "sabanas" (sounds like satanas in spanish) but yeah so were making a power point of family history and temple work, because that’s how she can achieve being with her family forever and be sure that she will be with her child after this life. We made a pyramid of the things she needs to do in order to receive those types of blessings. And the last thing on the pyramid is wake up early and go to church, then we have that scripture in Alma 37:6 that says that from small things come great works, and we’re super excited to teach it. It’ll be such a good lesson. So we’re trying new things! We can’t let people let go of such big blessings just because they’re tired in the morning!!! That’s just silly! Anyways, it’s rained a ton this week. Like a ton! And I still haven’t bought an umbrella so it’s been interesting, and I don’t want to buy one either because it’s super windy so it’ll break in like a couple minutes haha. Anyways that’s been my week in a nutshell, still finding, still teaching a ton, and just working on that whole baptism part. The people are here! We just need to help them understand the doctrine a little better;) Anyways have a great week everyone! Love you all!

We have HEAT!

Well this week was GREAT! A lot of administrative stuff, which kind of stunk but we still did a lot with the little time that we had. So first of all, we finally moved yesterday!!! Woo!!! We were living in a house of 4 for like over a month...too much time, like it was fun and all but we didn’t have any space at all, nothing stayed clean, and we lived without fire, or any form of heat, or a stove to cook on for like 2 and a half months. So we were more than happy to move ha-ha. We had two houses to choose between and we finally prayed and made the decision yesterday and chose one from the same owner as the other house. But it’s got a fireplace, a stove, and a gas heater, and its super nice. So almost all day yesterday we were packing up and moving everything to the other house, a lot of work but hey we’re finally all settled in and it feels so good!! I’m so happy! I can finally make food!!!! I’ve been living off Top Ramen and bread with peanut butter for a while now haha. So yeah we’re pretty happy about that.

 

Anyways we also had the leader’s conference this week, which was good. President changed up how we did it so it was pretty good. We stayed with the APs the night before and it was super fun. Hmm what else happened this week...Oh! This week I had to travel all the way to Quemchi...it’s like a little place on the side of the island, because someone was getting baptized there so I did his interview. And I totally left my umbrella there which stinks. But it was a cool little city! Super pretty and super small. Oh also!! Paula didn’t go to church but 3 of her kids did!! We got a member to go pick them up in the morning and 3 of her kids were all ready to go so they went and it was awesome!! They all loved it!!! Had a super good time and got along with everyone there!! So we’re excited about that, we’re hoping that they all come next Sunday.

 

 Good news! So Pamela was acting weird for a while and like didn’t want anything to do with the church so we kind of left her alone for a little bit because she was just resisting...but her son is baptized so we passed by on Sunday and took him to church and everything, but it was cool because yesterday she called us saying she had things to talk about. We were afraid she was mad at us because we hadn’t been passing by as often...but she actually like apologized to us and told us that Oscar just seemed so happy when he got home from church and she wants to start over again and go to church and everything and work towards baptism again. So that was a major surprise and a repented heart! We were super happy and thankful that she has softened her heart again! Anyways, hope everyone has a great week! Chao Chao!

 

Love-

Elder Walden