Fun Fotos

A girl in Chile who knows Elder Cloward posted some pictures on Facebook! Check them out!













Thanks to Claudia Valentina Montero Marin for the fun fotos!

Baby Gasper

Elder Cloward and Elder Mcbee


This is the baby Elder Cloward and Elder Mcbee blessed, and his dad Rafael

Semana 8 en Rosal II - and very exciting news!!!

"On Thursday we got a call from President Jones, telling us that Elder Mcbee has a herniated disc in his back, so he is getting changed out of here. He will leave tomorrow. President called again last night and told me that Wednesday morning I will go to the temple and then go eat lunch at President Jones` house and meet my greenie! I am going to start training this change. I am pretty sure that I now have the same amount of time that Elder Butterfield did when he started training me. President told me that he considers training to be the most important calling a missionary can have, since how a missionary is trained will determine what kind of missionary he will be, and what kind of missionary he is will determine how the rest of his life will be. That seems like a lot of pressure. I am nervous but I have faith that the Lord will help me in my calling.

"Funny thing that happened though: ever since we got the call from President on Thursday informing us about Elder Mcbee`s back, we haven`t had a single appointment go through correctly. Interesting. Elder McBee sees it as a sign that his work here in this sector is over, and he is convinced that conditions in the sector will improve as soon as he leaves. I think he is right, it doesn`t make any sense for the work to die.

"So here is a little run down of what is happening to our investigators, and why none of them came to church tomorrow.
1. Liliana VIllegas (the hair stylest and our neighbor): got very sick and had a high fever, still recovering today.
2. Rafael (the inactive man whose family we are teaching): his three month old baby Gaspar is sick and can`t leave the house. We visited them this morning and gave Gaspar a blessing and I have faith that he will be better soon. The other son, Emilio, who has a baptismal date, had to go visit his dad in a different part of Santiago.
3. Pamela (Liliana`s friend): has a yoga class Sunday mornings, and hasn`t been able to change her schedule yet.
4. Fan-Fan (the Haitian): continues with his Spanish classes Saturday and Sunday morning until the end of august.
5. Susana Mella and the girls: we haven`t seen them in awhile, seems that Susana has gotten a little cold with us and never has time for us to visit her.
6. Daniel (a reference from the ward mission leader Hermano Costa): has work on Sundays.
8. Diego (some guy that randomly came to church two weeks ago): had to go to another part of Santiago for Father's Day
9. Pedro and Cristina: Pedro`s work schedule continues complicating his church attendance.

"I`m pretty sure that is it. so as you can see, the powers of fate have aligned to fight against the progress of the investigators of El Rosal 2, but through our faith and hard work i am confident that they will continue progressing.

"The weather has been colder, but my missionary mall coat keeps me incredible warm. The rain hasn`t been too strong either. Plus one of the hermanos tells me that it won`t be raining today, since he can feel in his joints when it will rain or not. So that`s good news. Also there sadly was not a baptism on Saturday, since Susana Mella hasn`t come to church in two weeks. We`ll have to work with that. We also visited Felipe, Javier and Cristian, since they moved to the hermana`s sector. They are doing well, and the missionaries are teaching Cristian and he have a baptismal date. So that is good.

"Well that`s about all of the news for this week, I`ll be sure to let you know more about my greenie next week! Love you!"

Semana 7 en Rosal II

(Sorry for the late post, life got the better of me, but now you get two weeks at once! Isn't that fun? -Janessa)

First, a funny tidbit from his email to Janessa:

"It rained. I knew it would have to rain someday, but I still did not want it to. But it did rain.
There is a street in my sector called La Sinfonìa which somehow changed from a normal street into a river of dirty dirty water within hours. I forged the river Sinfonìa in my Ecco shoes by executing an acrobatic series of leaps and bounds and my efforts were aided thanks to the help of wooden planks placed by local negocio owners. It was a terrible experience. The worst part is that someday soon, it will rain again.

"That is what happened on Sunday after stake conference. It was crazy and stuff. Other than that all is well, we found 9 new people to teach last week thanks to the Lord`s guidance. It was good times. I will inform you more in the email to the family, including why I am writing on Wednesday, and not on Monday. It`s a good story."

And here is the email to the family:

"So this week was cool. Sunday Elder Oaks came to our stake conference and yesterday we had a conference with him that included our mission and Chile Rancagua Mission. Elder Mcbee didn`t get to translate because the area presidency provided other translaters and wanted Elder Mcbee to be sitting with the rest of the missionaries taking notes. I have good news from Sunday though. The conference was in Rivas Vicuña (since that is the stake center) and I saw almost everyone from my first sector! I also saw the Correa family (just the kids though) Jocelyn, Michelle, and Eduardo. They are doing well I assume, since they came to stake conference! I was so excited to see them in the church. I thought they were inactive. I also saw Christian’s mom. I don’t know if you remember Javiera and Christian? We were teaching them when I was with Elder Butterfield but they stopped taking the lessons when I left. Christian’s mom explained to me on Sunday that it was very hard for them when I left because we were really close. I am going to write them and try to get them to listen to the missionaries again. I took pictures with Abraham and his family, which they said they would put on facebook so that you could see them. He said that when he leaves on his mission he will have an empty room in his house for me to stay in if I want to someday. They are such a cool family. I was just excited to see that so many people recognized me, since I was there for such a short time and I left in special changes.

"Things are going really well in this sector. I am hoping that neither Elder Mcbee nor I will have changes. We can do a lot of good work here together. Susana Mella is having a hard time progressing though. She is very inconstant and doesn’t show a high level of commitment. Pedro and Cristina are also having some little problems with attending church because of Pedro’s work schedule. But we have started teaching two new families this past week that are really good.

"One is Rafael, who we met by doing something that Elder Mcbee calls the brownie activity. We go to a members house and make brownies with them, then take the brownies with them to go meet their neighbors and talk to them about the church. It works really well. We went to Ivan, a recent convert who gives tons of references to the missionaries (about ten of the recent converts in this ward are his referrals) and we made brownies with him and met his neighbor, Rafael, who just so happened to be an inactive member of the church. We went into his house and met his pareja (neighbor?), Yoala, and his sons Emilio, Cristofer and baby Gaspar. Rafael is now very excited to return to the church and says that his whole family wants to be baptized. We still have to explain to him that he can`t be baptized again... haha.

"The other is Pamela. She is Liliana`s friend (Liliana our hair cutter lady who is also progressing well and came to conference on Sunday) that we met at Liliana`s birthday party. We have a cita (lesson) with Pamela in about 20 minutes so I will have to go soon.

"Also: why I didn`t email on Monday: Elder Mcbee was having problems with his leg and we had to go to the office so that he could have an MRI for his leg. So we went all the way over there and then they told us that we would have to come a different day because they were busy. So we spent our whole pday doing that. Good times. That is why we are emailing today, with Pres. Jone`s permiso of course.”

Semana 6 in Rosal II

"The weather is getting a little colder, but it still hasn´t been as cold as the first night when I got here. Winter is arriving extremely late this year and it seems like it won´t be that cold after all. I am happy. I feel fine too.

"I had my interview with President Jones and he said that Felipe doesn´t need to be baptized again, so he was confirmed yesterday. But this weekend he moved to the sister´s sector. He is still in our ward but not in our sector. Susana and her daughter Fernanda and Pedro and Cristina all came to church yesterday. They are doing well. Pedro and Cristina have a baptismal date June 27th. Liliana is also doing well. She just doesn´t see a problem with drinking a little bit at parties and she wants to be baptized in a river. So paso a paso she is progressing. She found a new job so she no longer works on Sundays and can come to church.

"Today we played soccer and volleyball, but I am kind of mad at our zone because we only played volleyball for about 30 minutes, then they took down the net and started playing soccer again. It is the only thing that they do. Oh well.

"On Saturday we had a practice workshop with the zone. President Jones is really focused on helping the missionaries be better teachers. Anyway members could come to the workshop to learn and to help us out, and the Rossi family came. I don´t know if you remember them, they are a family of members from my first sector. I taught with Abraham Rossi (Janessa should remember him, they are facebook friends) and he said that he sent his mission papers in this past week. He was really excited to see me and I was just surprised that they remembered who I was, since it has been 8 months since I was there.

"Also, some exciting news: Elder Oaks is coming to our stake conference! That is cool. And my companion could possibly be assigned to translate for him, since he is fluent in English and Spanish. I am very excited, since we should be able to meet him. I will be sure to let you all know how that goes."

Semana 5 en Rosal II

"This week has been really good for us. We are still teaching Susana and her
daughters, Fernanda and Catalina, and they have a baptismal date for June 20th.
We did not get to see Liliana´s neighbor, but Liliana is progressing very well.
Yesterday we did divisions, I went with turtle-neck-guy (a new hermano in the
ward, recently married about 27 years old returned missionary, his name is Jaime
Gonzales, but Elder McBee and I call him turtle-neck-guy because when we first
met him he had a turtle neck on) to visit Susana, and Elder McBee went with
Ivan (a 40 year old recent convert) to visit Liliana. We also started to teach a
new family this week, Pedro and Cristina Muñoz. They are friends of Ivan and
they are really cool. They committed to come to church next week. Elder McBee is
convinced that they will be baptized, and I believe they will too. The best
thing about them is that they are humble and teachable, so they are accepting of
the gospel. We also are teaching Bernardita, a 50-something neighbor of a recent
convert. basically everything is going really well. Except...

"Yesterday Felipe was not confirmed because Saturday night he started vomiting
and convulsing so needless to say he did not come to church. Elder McBee says he
will have to be baptized again because too much time has passed between his
baptism and confirmation. Interesting.

"On Saturday we went to the temple and did a tour there with Felipe and Yasna,
his sister in law. It went really well. There were sister missionaries there
from the east mission that are assigned to work in the temple and do tours.
Elder McBee´s uncle lives in one of the wards in our stake, and he is inactive
so president gives Elder McBee permission to see him every once in a while to
try to reactivate him. That is about all for now!" 

Fotos of Felipe's Baptism

Felipe, Yasna, Elder McBee, and Elder Cloward at temple square Saturday May 30th

Felipe, family, and other investigators and members that came to the baptism.

Felipe and family, Elder McBee, and Elder Cloward