Staying in Porvenir:)

We got cambios this week!!!! Cambios (exchanges) are always so exciting in this mission because it’s so huge! Anyways, we are actually going to stay here another cambio together! And I’m super stoked about that! We knew it was going to happen because we've got a lot of work to do here together. We’re looking at having some pretty solid baptisms this next cambio which I’m excited about! Porvenir hasn't baptized for a really long time, like since 2013, so it'll be good.. Anyways, interesting stories this week, so one of them, we were at an investigators house and her husband is a member but her and her kid aren't, so we were teaching about the gospel of Jesus Christ  and what benefits it has and what the purpose of life is and it was awesome! She was amazed by the celestial kingdom and she told us "Wow I just want to get married to my husband and then be baptized, I want that!" So I think they're going to get married this week or next week and after that she can make that covenant with God. So I’m super stoked about that! She’s such an awesome person!Sometimes it gets difficult during the lesson though because her husband has been a member for like ever and only ever wants to talk about deep doctrine and it confuses her. But she’s awesome because she always says, "I just want to know what will get us saved and make us happy, that's it!" Haha she’s cool.
    Also last week we found an older guy named Saul, he fishes for octupus...and we went in and he didn't seem that interested in what we had to say. But we gave him a Book of Mormon  and taught him about it and stuff and left. Well this week we went by and he accepted us in again and told us that he's been reading a little bit every night, just a couple scriptures, and continues to tell us he's already in like 1 Nephi Chapter 17,  after a few days! He had a ton of questions for us!! Like he actually read! It was so weird because he didn't really even seem that interested but he really is, and is really reading to see if it's true! It’s awesome! Usually it’s super difficult to get someone to read but hey I’m not complaining haha. Also Elder Felipe passed by Porvenir this week, he was my old companion from Osorno. He ends the mission on Wednesday so we did splits together and it was great to see him for a few days. Super fun! I love seeing other missionaries! Especially because we are stranded here in Porvenir and never see anyone hahaha.  At least I’ve got Elder Molina and he's a super fun kid. Anyways I’m excited to be here another 6 weeks, we should see some real progress in this sector within the next couple of weeks and I’m excited to be a part of it. Have a great week everyone!
Love you all-
Zack

Cold Wind and Rain from Antartica!

What's up? So I will start by answering the questions because if I don’t do that I will completely forget to answer them! So the branch is good, and I lied; only like 25 go to church, there might be 40 members but I have not met all of them! But it’s still a small branch and yesterday was the first Sunday since being here that I have not had to give a talk. Cool story, so I had to give an improvised talk like 2 weeks ago and on accident talked for like 20 minutes ha-ha my bad...felt like 5, but it was 20. Anyways it was a good talk! I liked it ha-ha. And yeah we have a Mamita here! Her and her husband are getting divorced though so he hasn’t been home a lot so we usually just go and pick up lunch and eat it in our house. We’re helping them a lot right now. We always go by and have lessons and stuff because they’re less active. Cool story, the Papito is Hermana Silvia (the Hermana from Calbuco that always sent you photos) cousin! And he grew up in Calbuco with her. So he’s been going there a lot to live with them so I’ve been able to send them notes and what not! And yeah my companion is Elder Molina! He’s got like 6 months in the mission, we get along super well. Actually, he’s one of the funniest companions I’ve had ha-ha! We’re always laughing at something, seriously this kid is addicted to laughing. We will literally be doing a contact and he’ll just start laughing out of nowhere ha-ha we’ve got a ton of inside jokes. We’re really good together, people don’t believe us when we say that we’ve only been companions for 5 weeks! So I’m happy, I’m hoping this next cambio we stay together here in Porvenir!

Anyways the wind has been CRAZY here,like 100kmph...it’s insane! And it rains a lot too here so that plus rain...woo. And it’s insane because you can feel the difference when the rain comes from the north and when it comes from the south...you know what’s south? Antarctica...so the winds that come from the south are unreal, so cold.

 Any ways I’ll get on with the week, it’s been a pretty good week; we’ve had some good lessons and everything. Oh remember that guy that randomly came to church last week? So we went and passed by his house this week and we actually realized that it was a guy we had contact our first day here in Porvenir and that we had invited him to come to church and he came that next Sunday but we were in Punta Arenas so we couldn’t make it that Sunday. So like he legit just took our invitation and went! Now he’s been 3 times and has loved it! And we haven’t been able to teach him yet because he’s like never home. It’s so weird, he’s like the opposite of any investigator I’ve ever had! Can’t have us over but he goes to church every Sunday haha but hey I’ll take it! We’ll just need to get in soon and teach him! Also this week I made no bake cookies again, I made about 110 and we brought them around to all the investigators and then to a conference thing we had in the church to all the members. They really liked them! Now all of them have Mom’s recipe ha-ha. Also this week Pricilla invited us over to meet her husband, she’s been taking lessons from us but her husband is always working. She was scared for us to meet him because he usually doesn’t like missionaries. She said that he hated the other missionaries and would never listen to them or anything. So yesterday we went and met him for the first time. And he said that he really likes us and that he wants us to come by more and stuff. We actually made him laugh really hard at one point, it was awesome. And then he started asking about the church and everything and we actually got to teach like the entire first lesson and he really liked what we had to say! We’re going by later today to teach him a little more, I’m excited!

 Also yesterday we went to Marisol’s to go and invite her to church and her mom was there and randomly told us "Hey I’ve been to your church before! I went like 3 weeks ago in Punta arenas!" We were like “Oh that’s awesome! Did you like it?” She said "I actually loved it, I would love to go again!" So Marisol said she would take her!. I don't know how we get so lucky sometimes, like God does major miracles with his missionaries! Sometimes I feel like we don’t need to do anything, we just need to be outside and God will just give us people. I know it doesn’t work like that but sometimes it happens like that ha-ha I love it! Cool thing that happened, we went and visited a less active and his nonmember wife and he was showing us his collection of foreign money. He had a ton of foreign bills, a whole book of them, so I asked him "Hey do you have a Mexican bill??" and he told me that he had not been able to find one but he really wanted one. I had 2 in my wallet at that time. So I offered him one, and he decided to trade me for it, but I wanted to give him it for free but he insisted in giving me some extras he had. So he gave me a bill from China and an Egyptian bill! So now I’ve got those 2 bills sitting in my wallet ha-ha so I thought that was pretty cool! But yeah, I can’t really think of anything else to say, pretty successful week!

By the way my Christmas package got here ha-ha finally! But it’s in Puerto Mont...Like 500 miles away! So I’ve got to wait another month for it to get here...just my luck right?? Hey cool stuff, so I got word that a girl that I and Elder Shumway were teaching has a baptismal date now and is going to church every Sunday! AND the little old lady I baptized in Antillanca is apparently the Relief Society teacher! So I was super happy to hear that she has a calling and is still faithful in the church! Good news for the week that made me happy ha-ha. Love you all!

 

No Coincidences

Yeah March is here! This means even colder weather! Woo hoo! Ha-ha:) Right now we are in Punta Arenas again, just for like 2 days to buy some groceries because they have like nothing in Porvenir. But it’s been fun being with the missionaries here! We don’t get to see many people in Porvenir ha-ha.

 Anyways this week was interesting. I don’t have a ton of time so I am just going to sum it up fast and send some photos. We are still working with the guy that came from Chiloe. We have had to put his baptism on hold for now but we are still meeting with him. BUT we found this family this week, la familia Paz and goodness they are awesome! We actually found them through the daughter. Like I said we’ve made good friends with all the kids here in Porvenir, and one of the kids told us that her Dad was Mormon but her mom’s not and she isn’t, so of course we got her address and went and talked to her parents. They are golden! He is great he just hasn’t been attending church for a while. Because of some laws and stuff here in Chile the couple is not married yet. But they are planning on getting married soon so then they can get baptized and be together forever!! IT’S AWESOME!!! It’s weird how we found them and at this time in their life? It’s like God planned it or something? ;) I’m so convinced that there is no such thing as coincidence in the mission work ha-ha. They are a great family! I look forward to teaching them.

Anyways we also started doing English classes here in Porvenir, and an investigator and his daughter showed up! It was great! We actually had a pretty big turn out! I’m excited to see how many come next week. OH also! In church yesterday we were sitting in sacrament and this random guy walks in and sits down. So of course after the meeting we went and talked to him and he was like, "Oh I used to live here a while ago, and I was taking lessons from the missionaries. Then I moved to Argentina, and lost contact with them, but I lost my job there so now I’m back here in Porvenir so I just decided to come...Could you pass by my house sometime this week? I’d love to get to know you guys!" Like THAT DOESN'T HAPPEN. EVER!! It was an investigator miracle! Ha-ha I love stuff like that! Anyways I hope you all had and have a great week!

Love you All-

Zack

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 Chiloé 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:)

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

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

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:)