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

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

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

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

Singing Solo

     Not much happened this week...its been really slow with the soccer final and everything. You dont know how many times I have heard CHI CHI CHI LE LE LE VIVA CHILE!!!!!!!!! This week was insane with that we have talked to an insane amount of barachos (drunkards). Haha So that was fun but like freaking no one answered their doors to us or wanted to talk to us or anything!!! It's been soooooooo slow! Even our investigators were all super busy this week so we didnt really teach that many lessons either.
    The good news is that we had a baptism on Friday!! So that was good. And then we confirmed her on Sunday. It was awesome and we had 2 investigators at the baptism. It was great! I was incharge of conducting the music and here in Chile theres not any pianists so to start the song the conductor goes up and sings the first couple of notes and then starts to lead the congregation. So at the end of the baptism the Bishop was talking at the microphone and went to go sit down so I was like oh okay its my turn to go up and conduct the song so I went up on the stage and started to sing the first couple of notes and everyone was just looking at me I was like uhm que pasó? and I look over and the Bishop was at the stand with his scriptures and everything. I forgot that he had a talk at the end and theeeennnnn we sing.......so every one laughed and I sat down and then he finished his talk and at the end he was like and noooooowwwww we're going to sing Elder Walden hahaha, I have too many embarrasing moments with these Chileans, gosh dang haha. But our investigator Juan showed up.  He's awesome, he came out of no where!! The first lesson with him he like sang us a song he wrote about Jesus and preached to us the whole time so we thought we would like never go back to him again. But then he came to church randomly and the baptism and he loved them both. He loves the members and his neighbor is our Mamita and they're super good friends. We're going to have a lesson with him at her house this week. It's awesome!

       I've learned alot this week about teaching with the spirit. I have realized that in lessons I have trouble speaking and talking the language when I don't feel the spirit and when I don't know much about what we are talking about. So I've been studying alot and during lessons I realize that when I feel the spirit I always say what I need to say and feel good about the lessons and what we taught about. I've been having a problem lately because my companion really likes to teach by the book and by the points and everything which is good but it wasn't working for us because our investigators would have questions and concerns about the doctrine and he would try to morph the lesson into what he wanted to talk about without answering their questions and it just felt weird. So we had a long talk this week about how to feel the spirit during lessons and how to discern the needs of the investigators by the spirit and direct the lessons by the spirit and not by our own thought. This was a big learning week and this next week will be applying what I learned I hope!

Sorry no pictures....my camera broke. Have a great week!

Love

Elder Walden
 

Chicken! Yuck!

Sorry if the writing is weird today, this computer for some reason autocorrects to Spanish so some English words might become Spanish, not my fault! But this week was crazy. SOOO about the baptism-- the bishop won’t let us do it today because we can’t have activities in the church Monday night because it’s a night for the family. So we went to Andrea and asked what other day works so we moved it to Friday. So we went and told the bishop and he said we have an activity in the church already Friday so yeah it’s frustrating but she passed her baptismal interview which is really awesome!! But we still don’t know when we are going to have it... So yeah there's that. We had 2 exchanges this week, one with other Elders and the other one with the zone leaders. So Tuesday I was with Elder Gonzalez, he’s from Chile. So I learned all the slang phrases from him ha-ha. He has less time in the mission than me though so I was senior companion for a day which was fun. We taught some lessons and what not, but I had to run the sector which was tough because I’ve been here for like 2 and a half weeks so I don’t know the sector like at all so we got lost a lot. I have a video that I’ll attach of him speaking, it will show you how fast the people talk here. Chileans talk really fast!. Then we had an intercambio (exchange) with the zone leaders on Friday. I was in central Osorno with Elder Ordoñez, he’s a Peruvian. Peruvians are super cool! But the intercambio was miserable. I’ve been sick all week and it has gotten worse and worse every day. Thursday my stomach was super bad. I didn’t eat like anything on Wednesday and Thursday but like every 10 minutes I had to go to the bathroom. So all Thursday I had like no energy from the lack of food but we still walked all day and taught lessons and what not...ah I was miserable. Then that night I spent all night in the bathroom so I didn’t sleep at all so I finally called the nurse the next day and have been taking medicine so I'm better now. But for 3 days I was like dying ha-ha I think I lost like 15lbs pounds. So all that weight I gained in Puerto Mont I lost again. I'm skinny again! So that’s a plus! Anyways...I'm almost positive it was from eating bad chicken, which is the second time in Chile. We had gone to lunch out in El Campo, which is like straight up red necks of Chile who own big barns and animals and talk terrible Spanish. It was funny. Next time I’m out there I will have to take pictures for you guys. It’s literally the Alabama of Chile Anyways we went there for lunch, and these people put a giant plate of solid chicken in front of me! I was like oh no...And I couldn’t like ask for less or say no or anything because these people are like pretty poor. They didn’t even have running water in their house. So I ate it...and was so ill afterwards. Chicken just isn’t the same anymore...so yeah. That happened. But it was also funny because those days I didn’t eat because I was sick I had to tell the mamitas (ours and the one in centro) that my stomach didn’t feel good so I wanted to not eat and the mamitas like freaked out and gave me like every single remedy they knew. They gave me like all these random herbs and like teas and these weird pill type things ha-ha it was hilarious. Every Chilean mom has their own like remedies. It was funny because when I went back to our mamita she was like "What did the other mamita tell you?!?! No that’s all wrong! You need to do this and this and this!!” ha-ha I love the Chileans here...they’re honestly such caring people. I got smothered this week with remedies. So what else happened...sorry this email is super-duper long...oh Spanish clicked this week! I don’t know what happened but I can speak Spanish. So weird! We were in a lesson and I just like started speaking and I remember thinking in my head wow how am I doing this? It was like a second language! Weird...so yeah that happened so I can randomly speak fluent Spanish now! Cool stuff! I taught the gospel principles class in church on Sunday that went well. Oh also!!!! I have another story!!! Sorry it’s so long!! So we contacted into this guy named Juan Carlos, and he’s this older guy and thinks he’s like an apostle or something because we went into his house and tried to teach him but the whole time he like preached to us about random stuff. We would ask him like "so do you know what happened after Christ died?" and he'd be like "Well John said this, and in Psalms it says this and in my heart I feel like and my grandson did this when he was younger and that’s why my hair is how it is now." He was so random hahaha. So we ended up just like extending a weak invitation to the church and got out of there. Well HE SHOWED UP to church. It was so random. We invite like 100 people a week to church and no one like ever shows up and he out of everyone did show up and he stayed all 3 hours and participated in the lessons and actually brought up like super good points in the lessons that actually were in line with the gospel! He loved church and says he’s going to come next week as well. So that just goes to show that don’t be afraid to talk to anyone and invite them to church because you never know who will actually show up. Anyways yeah I think that’s it ha-ha so bye! Hope everyone has a great week! And be careful eating chicken— Love- Elder Zack Walden

Looking Peruvian

Hello Everyone- So this week was an adventure! For some reason it felt super long. Like I feel like I’ve done a lot but also like not that much ha-ha it’s weird. So we’ve been teaching this girl who’s about 20 years old and her family was just baptized a couple weeks ago but her and her dad weren’t because she didn’t feel it was right for her. But we have been teaching her a lot and she’s super cool with the missionaries. She loves us. We went over to their house on Friday and we sat down to have a lesson with her and she was like "Hey guys, so I’ve been thinking a lot lately and I think I’m ready to be baptized now.” That is awesome!!!! She’s been like reading every day and studying the scriptures hard core and finally realized like "Why am I not baptized? I need to be!" So that’s some awesome news! She’s going to be baptized next Monday, a week from today. So that’s super exciting news! Also this week we taught Maria Paz more. We went over with a member who was awesome. He has like a cool conversion story so he shared that with her and it was great. Her friend was there too and listened to the whole lesson and said she wants to know more so whenever we meet with Maria her friend is going to be there too. The lesson went super well but she had a lot of questions on like women’s role in the church and why they can’t have the priesthood and all that which was difficult to explain and I don’t think she really gets it yet but we have a lesson with her tomorrow so I hope she has been reading and studying. We had zone conference this week with President Obeso and it was super awesome! I got a lot of spiritual insight from it. The whole time I felt like he was speaking to me. It was really focused on like what we talk about in the streets while tracting and all that, which I need to work on a lot. It was awesome!! We also had intercambios (exchanges) this week with the Aps (Assistant to the President) so I was AP for the day---just kidding. But it felt like it. I lived in their apartment (which is way nicer than ours, wayyyyyy nicer) and I got to drive around in the mission car for a day. It was great! And I got to teach 3 lessons with Elder Sanabria which was super fun, I learned a lot from him. Hmmm let’s see, funny story---this week we were knocking doors and this guy asked Elder Felipe where he was from and he said Mexico and then the guy turned to me and said "Hmmmm Peru???" I was like yeah! Peru! De Lima! Hahaha and the guy like believed me. It’s weird because my skin is super white right now and my accent is totally gringo ha-ha but hey that’s the first time I’ve gotten something other than gringo. It was super weird! Here are some pictures of me and my companion, food that people gave us and me at the mission home. Keep writing—I love getting emails! Hope everyone has a great week! Love- Elder Zack Walden