Barbara's Baptism

Part of our zone after a service project in El Monte. this hermano´s house was made of adobe, and it was not safe to live their anymore. We took it apart and threw all the adobe bricks outside.

This is a "Chile helps Chile" poster that I´m saving. Apparently this guy wasn´t in his house in Concepcion when the earthquake hit. The next day he went to see how his house was and found it... on the ground. He was looking through his stuff and found his Chilean flag and was shaking it off, and a photographer that was close by told him to hold the flag out and took this picture. This picture is all over Chile.

Barbara's Baptism

So here I go again-I'm late posting Elder Cloward's email from March 15, 2010. Hopefully I will be able to keep up for the next 3 weeks.

Dear family,

This week was crazy busy but it was also way cool at the same time. So Elder Marín left last Monday around 6:00 p.m., and they didn´t give me a replacement companion. I just walked around in a trio with the other elders in the zone for the day. We visited with all of our investigators. Tuesday we went to changes and I met my new companion, Elder Hrabar. He has about a year and a half in the mission and he´s a great Elder. He´s from South Dakota, and he loves ska music just like me.

We had our concilio meeting with the zone leaders and the assistants (aka my two former companions, Elder Marin and Elder Butron) in the mission home. It was a really inspiring meeting. Elder Marin and Elder Butron are gonna be great together, this is the first time in my mission when we have two latin assistants. The only problem is that Elder Butron just got his drivers license like 3 weeks ago, and Elder Marin doesn´t have his license. So they are having a good time with that.

Barbara´s baptism on Friday!!!! She was a little nervous when we got there, but the baptism turned out really well, and she was so happy after! President Arancibia (the branch president) did the baptism. It was great and the spirit was so strong and it was wonderful to see her enter the waters of baptism. Her whole family came (including grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins) and they enjoyed seeing Barbara get baptized. They really felt the Spirit and are asking a lot of questions.

She was confirmed yesterday in Sacrament meeting and now we are going to start teaching her aunt, uncle, and cousins that live on the same property as Barbara´s family. (Here in Chile it´s common for one lot of land to have two or three houses on it).

So an Elder who finished his mission here 6 months ago came back to Chile with his parents and they visited Talagante yesterday. It was really cool because Elder Reese had started teaching Barbara 10 months ago and he saw her get confirmed yesterday!

On Saturday we had the zone meeting and talked to the missionaries in Talagante about what we learned in concilio on Wednesday.

Franco had his interview on Saturday, and Daniela had hers on Sunday, and they both passed and are preparing for their baptisms this Saturday. The missionaries in the MTC in Santiago are coming here on Saturday to work in Talagante. We have to prepare for that and pair them with our exsisting companionships!

Also, yesterday Máximo was ordained an Elder! He has come so far and is doing great in the Gospel. His testimony is so strong. We haven´t seen Fernando this week, but I have faith that we will talk to him soon. He will have to have a different date for his baptism.

Cris is doing well, I talked to him on the phone Saturday night, but he didn´t come to church yesterday and we don´t know why. I´m sure everything´s fine though.

Well, fam I gotta go do some missionary work! I know the church is true and I am so thankful that I have this opportunity to serve my Heavenly Father, Savior and the people of Chile. I am so thankful for everyone of you and all you have done for me!!!

Have a great week!!

Love,

Elder Cloward