Final Words

We got to skype with Zack yesterday for the final time and it was WONDERFUL to say we will see you in a few days. He did not write an email yesterday but he did want me to post this scripture. He sounds great and we are sure looking forward to Friday:) Thank you to all for your support!

3 John 1:13-14

13 I had many things to write, but I will not with ink and pen write unto thee:
14 But I trust I shall shortly see thee, and we shall speak face to face. Peace be to thee. Our friends salute thee. Greet the friends by name.

Cool Week!

This week was pretty awesome, we’ve been working hard out of our carpeta de area and we’ve actually found some pretty good people out of it! We found a record from the year 2000...17 years ago...I was 3 when they taught her...and we decided to go by and she still lives there!! And decided to start listening to us again!!! It was awesome!

Cool story this week---so yesterday we had just gotten home from lunch and a member calls us and tells us "Hey we were having a meeting and this guy randomly comes in and asks in front of everyone what he needs to do to be a member of the church...could you guys come and teach him??" We were like uh yeah we will be there in 5 seconds! So we went and talked to him and he said that he just passed by the church and had a strong impression to go in and talk to who was in there. So he did! So we taught him a bit and set 2 lessons with him for this week. He’s super awesome and is willing to do anything in order to "feel the spirit again in his life" which is perfect because whoever goes through with these teachings will be able to have the spirit forever! So we are super excited for him!!
Oh another cool moment this week, was when we literally had knocked doors all day...in the heat...it was miserable...and it was like 95 degrees at night and we decided to start heading back home but I felt like we needed to go up some stairs to an apartment we were by. So me and my companion went up...and we went up to the very top...and we walk over to a door and I was like "yo elder, I have no idea why I felt like we should come up here...but let’s find out." So we knock on the door and this guy came out, looked at us and said "yeah come in" it was so shocking!! Like that never happens! What the heck, you cannot tell me that that wasn’t the spirit!! So we teach him and his sister who are from Venezuela and left because of the dictatorship and everything there. It was a cool, cool experience.

Also, we found a record of this family who had been to church a bunch of times and the last thing on the record said to not pass by...it was weird...so we decided to pass by anyways...and this guy came up and started throwing mad fire on Mormons! Like what the heck!! So we start asking him questions and we started trying to find out what had happened. We could never find out what had happened but we stayed there for like an hour talking to him and talking to him pretty dang directly. When we finally started to bear testimony and he looked at us with something different in his eyes...his voice turned a little different, and he just totally changed after we bore testimony and we invited him to read the Book of Mormon and he said he would do it. I feel like sometimes missionaries are scared to be direct about what we do, express to somebody the real importance of this gospel and then just testify of these things...and sometimes just that will open up someone with such a hardened heart...when they see what we really think about this. So we really had some great experiences this week.
Hope you all have a great week!
Love you all-
Zack

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well I’m going to start out apologizing because I was ready this week to send you a ton of photos because I have like a ton to send...and I brought an adapter and everything today but as we were walking through the city I realized that I didn’t have the most important thing...my camera...so yeah I’m not able to send pictures today. I guess you’ll have to wait a whole another week ha-ha I’m so sorry.
Anyways this week has been a pretty good one. We actually had a thanksgiving feast! We had district meeting that day and I arranged everything with everyone that everyone was going to bring something different for our feast. We ended up having pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, juice, and we bought a turkey and it actually turned out pretty good! It was funny though because we did it at like 11am and we all have to eat lunch at members houses at 1pm so lunch was pretty difficult that day...that same day for lunch we ended up eating meats and potatoes. I was dying, it was hard to eat it all!
 Oh funny story! So this week a member invited us over for dinner at their house at like 8:30 so we went and they served us guatita!! Or in English, sheep stomach! Haha my companion hated it but I actually liked it a lot, I ended up asking for second’s ha-ha. Do they sell that in the states?? There’s so much stuff here that I love that I doubt they sell in the states.
Okay, so the work went pretty well this week. I have many stories but I will be home soon and I can tell you then. Haha  I want to leave you with something I have been thinking a lot about this week. Being Thanksgiving week I have been thinking about gratitude and why we say thanks in our prayers. So what I’ve learned from the scriptures is that we say thanks to acknowledge the blessings we have and give credit to God in a way of humbling ourselves, but the interesting part is that it is more important to show our thanks in the things we do. Almost everyone says in their prayers "we thank thee for this day", yet do we really take full advantage of that day to do Gods will? Alot of times we say it and don’t even think about it afterward and pretend like it’s our day, when really we already acknowledged that it is not. So I’ve been pondering on this a lot this week and I would like to extend the invitation to everyone including myself,  to really think about what you are thankful for in your prayers and then show it in that day and in what you do! I hope everyone has a great week!
Love-
Zack

THANK YOU!

Wow! What a surprise getting all the birthday wishes in my email! You are all so awesome!

THANK YOU!!!!

Alright so I’m leaving Chiloe this week!! I’ve been here for 7 months already ha-ha a long time...but this week I’ll be heading out! I’ll be going to a city called Valdivia...its sick because if you look it up...this was the epicenter to one of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded, fun ha-ha. I’m stoked though! I’m actually going to be with a Brazilian that I already know and he’s a super cool kid! I’m going to try to learn Portuguese with him ha-ha we’ll see how that goes. But yeah I’ll be moving down to be district leader for the last 7 weeks of my mission which will be nice to not be zone leader anymore. I’ll be leaving on Wednesday and my birthday is on Friday so I’ll know like no one ha-ha so I probably won’t be doing anything for my birthday, oh well ha-ha. Not a big deal. Anyways so today we went on a super sick hike; I’ll send you some pictures of it right now! And pics from Halloween and stuff…sorry I do not have a lot of time to write again but I love you all! Thank you so much for the birthday wishes! I feel blessed to have all of you in my life! Have a great week!

Zack

Crazy Week

So we are in Chaiten right now again, we didn’t really get to do much today because everything’s closed for bad weather. It rained all last night super hard, but oh well...Anyways we had some funny experiences this week! Stuff that legit like I tell people here and they just say "That’s definitely an Elder Walden thing...that doesn’t happen to anyone else..." So First thing...getting on the boat to Chaiten, we had to board at 6 and we were supposed to get there at like 10. Well the boat didn’t dock until 8:30...and we ended up getting to Chaiten at 1:00 in the morning. Then we stayed up talking to the other Elders for awhile because they never get to see people. So I am super tired today because we still woke up at 7:00am...wooo haha.

 Okay so this week we had to make an emergency trip to Ancud as well for some stuff that we had to drop off to the Elders...soooo we get there fine and on the way home we buy some bus tickets for a bus that left at 7...and then as we were waiting we were told it would get there at 730...then they told us 8...then they told us 830...finally a bus gets there so we ask the conductor if that was it and he said yes so we get on...and they pull out and they’re on their way and we realize that our seats don’t exist...so someone tells us we should look on the first floor of the bus...so we go...still don’t exist...then we ask someone where the bus was going and they tell us "Santiago..." We had already been on the bus for like 10 minutes so we were like far away from the terminal...so we told the bus driver just to leave us where we were...so we got off...hitch hiked back to the terminal...got there...and the bus we had waited an hour for had just passed by and we missed it!!!! Gosh dang it!!!!! So we ended up explaining the whole thing to the terminal jefe and he hooked us up with some free tickets on a bus because he felt bad for us and thought it was really funny what had happened to us...but hey that picture I have of that sign that says Los Angeles was where that bus dropped us off, so at least I got a cool picture!

Anyways another cool experience was when I went with Elder Clements on an intercambio for a day and we went down to take a taxi up to the sector and we waited there for 15 minutes and I was ticked because that’s a really long time and empty collectivos (taxis) were just passing by without stopping! Well after like 20 minutes an Hermana that I had never met before came out of nowhere and said "Hey elders I’m a member of the church and live right there, and my mom is 95 and is sick and dying, could you come real fast and give her a blessing?" So we went, gave her the blessing, left, and got a collective (taxi) right away...I guess she was praying and looked right outside and we were right there waiting for the taxi, almost magically, I guess God had a different plan for us ha-ha. Now I know why we didn’t get a collectivo right away. Also 2 of our citas fell through that day, which stunk but it ended up being a blessing because we ended up teaching this one investigator we found a few weeks back for like 3 hours...because she wanted to know everything and had so many questions and she wrote down every question she had and the answer and was crying during the lesson and now she wants to get baptized...it was awesome. So definitely a blessing that our other cita fell through and we could be there for more time. Also after that we went and knocked some doors. After because the other cita had also fell. And then we realized we had to do some stuff for the zone in centro...so I said "Ok, we were going to talk to 2 more people in their doors and then we will go do that" Because it was getting late...well we knocked, and knocked, and knocked and NO ONE ANSWERED!!! Literally no one...so we got bothered again and we almost just left...but we decided to not let God down and talk with at least 2 more people...well right after that we knocked a door and a guy came out...named Rodrigo...and it caught me off guard because we had just knocked for like 2 hours without anyone answering...so we talked to him for a bit and he invited us in! And we taught the restoration and he told us that he doesn’t go to any church...but believes in God and he feels like what we teach could definitely be true! It was awesome! He said that whatever we said, made him just feel really good inside...so it was awesome! We also figured out right there why no one was answering their doors...if 2 others answered their doors...we would have left and never would have found him. But God wanted us to find him specifically. It was awesome! I also gave a talk yesterday because everyone think I’m out of here in a week...because I’ve been here for 7 months...but who knows ha-ha, I also gave the class yesterday...woo ha-ha go Chile! Have a great week!!!!

Penguins!

Hey it’s going pretty great this week actually you guys will love it...we went on a paseo and we took a ton of photos! I personally didn’t have my camera because I’m not sure where my charger is (typical Zack) but like everyone was cool and took pictures for me and they’re sending them to me! We went to like this super gorgeous beach and we went and explored these rocks and stuff.  It was really cool... one of the coolest things I’ve seen! And then from that same beach we took a boat out and saw penguins!! Like legit penguins!! It was so sick. So anyways I’ll send of those pictures...Well we've had some cool experiences and what not this week but like I don’t have much time so I’ll tell you guys about them next week when I have more time! Anyways love you all!!
---Zack

Great Week!

Hello Everyone!

This week was a good one! We had an awesome experience yesterday. We were contacting all day because we didn’t have any appointments, which is actually my favorite thing to do, I love going around and knocking on doors. This time though no one was answering us or when they did answer us they would just tell us how much they didn’t like the church and then close the door. Pretty tough day, but we kept at it….trying  creative ways to contact and what not. Then we went to go visit some futures(?)  that we had found in our (?) and we had a prompting to go down a street and then I saw a house that had our same street number so we decided to knock it. We did and we contacted her and she just seemed like a really happy lady and she invited us in! She continued to tell us how the missionaries always used to pass by when she was a child and her parents got baptized but she never did because she didn’t understand why it was important but how she loved going to church and wants to go again and how she even thinks that Joseph Smith is a prophet. It was awesome! We explained why baptism was important and she totally understands now and  wants to get baptized and go to church. She was super prepared! She is also great friends with a ton of people in our branch! It’s so awesome, we’re stoked to start working with her! And she’s got like 3 kids that are interested as well! Such a blessing!

Anyways it was a pretty stellar week, I’m so happy!  A lot of investigators have fallen and it’s taken quite a bit to help them back up but slowly and surely it’s been coming through, and in the process we have found a lot more who are really ready. I might not be here to see all the fruits of the efforts we’re doing, and see all the baptisms but I know that because of the work we are putting in now, these family’s will choose the follow the gospel. And I feel so honored just to be a part of this change they are making in their lives. A successful missionary is not a missionary that gets a ton of baptisms but one that helps others make changes in their lives in order to follow Jesus Christ. So I’m pretty happy right now to see those changes in our investigators. Anyways I hope you all have had a fantastic week!

Love-

Zack