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

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.

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!

Got Talent?

Yeah I heard about Matthews’s big announcement! That’s exciting! Should be interesting! You’ll have to take a bunch of pictures from the wedding so it feels like I’m there! Mi future cunada (sister-in-law) actually wrote me so I’ll respond to her and get to meet her via email. 
Anyways this week was very fun and interesting. We have been super busy with stuff from the branch and when we aren’t doing stuff for the branch we have been busy teaching. We haven’t been able to find very many new people recently due to the lack of people here in Porvenir but we’ve been doing well with the investigators that we do have! 
So now for the interesting stories for the week I’ll just start off with the funny one. So this week we had a branch talent show. I think you can see where this is going...well there are not many people in the branch so there wasn’t much talent. But a lot of people actually ended up coming. So me and my companion had to prepare some talents. We ended up actually doing 3 different acts haha. So the first one was that we sang like a hymn mix up with the Elder Quorum (3 other guys). Then what we ended up doing is that right before hand I was trying to think of what talent I had....then I remembered that I’m pretty decent at catching things in my mouth. Ya I don't know. So we went and bought a bag of Chispop, it’s like a Chilean chip type thing but they’re like little balls. Anyways we ended doing an act with that ha-ha! My companion threw them and I caught them in my mouth ha-ha it actually turned out super awesome! I caught 10 in a row at rapid speed ha-ha looked like I had been practicing for a while;) Then we invited people from the audience and they threw them to me and it was super fun. So that was interesting. But that’s not the best part haha just wait, so before the talent show we realized that we didn’t have enough acts so they asked us to do a 3rd one, but we had to create it in like 10 minutes. So I was like "Hey my companion is Columbian! He can dance salsa or something!!" and everyone was like ya that’d be awesome!!! But he really didn’t want to do it, so I told him that if he does it I would do it with him. So we called our leaders and asked permission and they said sure ha-ha so we ended up dancing salsa in front of everyone. The fun part is that my companion is really good at dancing salsa, but I’m not. I just made a fool of myself but everyone was laughing super hard so I guess it was a success. There’s a ton of videos so I won’t be surprised if it ends up on YouTube ha-ha. Afterwards I was like "Sorry about my lack of rhythm, my excuse is that I’m gringo so..." It was a fun experience, I had no idea what I was doing. At least the Chispop was cool ha-ha. 
Anyways I’ve told you guys about that one investigator that only needs to get married to get baptized, ya well they have a daughter whose 12 and it’s cool because she loves the church. She comes to every activity, literally everything that happens in the church building she’s there, it’s awesome! Actually at an activity we had on Friday she was like "Hey show me the baptismal font! I really want to know like how people are baptized here!" Then after a small lesson on that she was like "Wow me and my mom have to do this! I really want to get baptized!" It’s awesome just to see that type of willingness to follow the Lord in like a 12 year old, its great ha-ha. 
I love this sector a lot, the people here are absolutely awesome, and it makes me sad that one day I will have to leave it. But I also love the mission work, it’s been hard here lately to teach people but this week we’ve prayed hard for teaching opportunities and we have actually seen it a lot more. But it’s interesting because we were praying with like lessons and everything in mind but what we found were a lot of people in the streets and at doorsteps who we were able to teach right then and right there. Like last night we had the feeling to go visit a guy we’ve been teaching named Miguel and actually on the way to his house we found him walking alone in the street and we were like "Hey what’s up?!" He told us that he was not doing well and actually started crying and telling us problems. We actually had the opportunity right there to testify to him and take that teaching opportunity and walked him back to his house and really cheered him up and helped him out a lot last night. God always answers prays in the ways that they need to be answered. 
I hope you all have had and will have a fantastic week! Chao! 
Love-

Zack

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