Dear Family,

This last week was a little crazy. Elder Hrabar and I had to do a class in the zone conference on Thursday. The conference was in Melipilla (a zone that is to the northeast of Talagante which is even more campo-ish than Talagante). We had to give a class about the importance about asking questions when we teach. We did an example based on an analogy between opening peoples hearts, an opening up a door. So we had 3 keys that each had a question on them like "What is the purpose of life?" and other questions. Then the missionaries had to ask my companion and I those questions (like in a street contact) to see which one was the right question for us that would call our interest and make us want to listen to the missionaries. The conference was really good. I learned two important things that I had kind of already learned before but had kind of forgotten.1. If we are not happy it is because we are thinking about ourselves, aka we are being selfish. The secret to being happy is actually really simple: we just have to do something to serve others. I tried putting that in practice after the conference, and it worked! 2. Our greatest motivation to do missionary work (or any work at all) should be love. Love towards Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and towards the people we are serving. Elder Hrabar and I have been a little frustrated lately trying to motivate the members in the Talagante Branch to do the work that they need to do, and we think that if we can motivate them to have the pure love of Christ they will start to fulfil their callings like they should. We´ll see what happens with that. In other news,Saturday Daniela was baptized!! The baptism wasn´t very well organized (the only local leader there was President Arancibia, the branch president) but it was very spiritual. Rafael baptized Daniela and they both looked so happy! It was so great to see him baptizing his little sister. Their whole family came to the baptism, too! Daniela and Rafael have 3 other siblings: the oldest is Margarita (a member of the Esmeralda branch), then comes Ariela (she´s not a member and lives in Santiago north mission) then Francisco (he´s not a member either he lives in the Esmeralda branch but we have taught him a few times in Rafa´s house) then comes Rafael and then Daniela. Ariela came with her husband, Raul, and their daughter, Vivian. They said they loved the baptism and they came to church yesterday for the confirmation too. We went to Rafa´s house to teach them the first lesson after church and they seem really interested. They gave us their adress in Santiago and want the missionaries to come teach them there! The Lord is working miracles in that family.here´s some investigator updates:1. Veronica y Nefi (that´s Nephi in spanish): yes, we are teaching a 9 year old boy named Nefi. His dad is a less active member (also named Nefi). Nefi the younger and his mom Veronica and his little sister Brenda (5 years old) came to church yesterday! They have a baptismal date for May 1st so we will keep working with them and preparing them for baptism. 2. Miriam y Benjamin: Miriam was a reference from the Esmeralda Branch, she went to church their with her aunt who´s a member. She is a 20something year old physics teacher and is a single mom. Benjamin, her son, is 9 years old and he is awesome. He knows all the right answers when we teach him. After the first lesson with him, he took out a little notepad and wrote down "me sentí bien cuando estuvieron los carabineros" that is, "I feel good when the cops were at my house" and his mom´s like "no son, they aren´t cops, they´re missionaries" then Elder Hrabar said "That´s okay, we´re kinda like cops. We´re like God´s cops" It was pretty funny.Don´t worry about the package. It doesn´t matter when I get it we´ll still do the egg fights and have great fun with that. I can buy lemons here they are way cheap. Well I love you all very much and hope you enjoy general conference this weekend,

Love,

Elder Cloward