Fotos

Elder Carpenter & Elder Cloward
Part of our district/zone in our district activity today (eating pizza at Telepizza, the local pizza place) hurray for Chileanized Americanized Italian food!

A giant abandoned hospital in the sector next to ours. Apparently they built the whole thing, then a few years later realized that the ground they built it on was unlevel. Way to go structural engineers of Chile.
(he would notice that haha)

Semanas 7 y 8 en Parque Subercaseaux

"After changes this last week, Elder Butterfield is now my zone leader, which is great. He finally left Rivas Vicuña after being there for 5 changes. And Elder Mawhinney is in my district now and it is great to see him every Wednesday for district meetings.

"This week was good. On Monday I left Elder Noguera with the assistants and came back to my new sector with Elder Carpenter. He is from Mesa Arizona (no, he doesn´t know the Giles or anyone else we know from Mesa). He has one little brother that is thirteen, and everyone in his family is a member of the church. He likes photography. He has been in the mission a year and a month and has stayed in the city the whole time. He is shorter and a slight bit stockier than me. I will send a pic. So as far as companions go Elder Carpenter is the complete opposite of Elder Noguera. The polar opposite. I talked to president about that in my interview. He said that is true, there are probably not any two elders in this mission who are more different than they are. So I told president I figure that if I can get along well with the both of them then I can get along with anyone in the mission. He agreed.

(background-Janessa sent Michael a BYU Men's Volleyball magnet with the game schedule on it...) "One of the elders that lives with Elder Carpenter and me is a Ute... ughhh.... so he didn´t really like the magnet we put on the fridge. He accepted it with the condition that he could put sticky note dialogues on the magnet, which consist of the BYU volleyball players saying girly things to each other, such as 'let´s go paint our nails together after the volleyball match,' etc. I will take a pic and send it next week. I thought it was actually pretty funny. We get along really well despite our blood-color differences. (mine is blue)

"The discussions are going well with Maria Eugenia and Sebastian. We went there on Wednesday and told her that we have already set tons of dates with her for her baptism and it never works, so we want her to pick a date. She said she wants to do it March 28th. So we are hoping and praying that this time it will go through. Also, Sebastian put his earring back in, and now the hole in his ear is growing, but we are working with him on that. I don´t think he will get the priesthood in time to baptize his mom, but she is willing to do it without him. The important thing is just that he does it.

"I just hope that Maria Eugenia gets baptized this time but I know that Lord´s will be done in all things. Maria´s mom has been really sick apparently and she lives in another part of our zone, and the missionaries gave her mom a blessing of health and apparently she wants to get baptized now too, which is great, but she is still really sick, and Maria needs to take care of her, which made it impossible for her to come church yesterday, but she still has her date for the 28th of March. Maria is very worried about her mom´s health, so we did a lesson of "comfort scriptures" that we shared with her, such as: 1 nephi 11:17, 2 nephi 2 :24, mosiah 4:9, which are pretty good to remember in the times when we don´t really understand why things go the way the do. Just something to have saved up for a rainy day :)

"There is also another investigator, Pabla, that wants to get baptized. Her cousin and two aunts are recent converts, and she always comes to visit them on the weekends, but during the week she lives and works in the east mission (funny story she is actually one of the p.e. teachers at the school where President Jones´ kids attend) but of course wants to get baptized here. So we are not exactly sure what we are going to do about that. I will keep everyone updated of course.

"Elder Krainik is no longer in this zone, he is in Maipú (pronounced my poo hahaha) it is still in the city but on the outskirts, almost the countryside.

"Alright maybe a little something for the bishop to read:
Dear La Mirada ward,
Hola ¿como han estado? Things are going great down here in Chile. I am now with my fourth companion in Chile, another gringo, which has been really strange after 18 weeks of being with companions from South America. I am forgetting English little by little... the members in our ward are doing well (all fifty of them). We started a new program called "the tie of responsibility" to get the members excited about missionary work (I actually stole the idea from the elder´s quorum in Mar Vista). So we bought a really ugle tie from the street flee market (the feria) for a dollar and then gave it to one of the brothers, and he has to wear it every week until he has a missionary experience, then he can share his experience with the other elders and pass the tie to someone else. We are doing the same thing in relief society but with bright red ugly sunglasses. The ward here is small but they are very excited and help us a lot with the work. Thank you for all of the letters of support I truly appreciate it, especially the poems from Brother Bodell. I am praying for you always!
Love, Elder Cloward

500 days!

According to this fancy little counter thing, Elder C gets home in 500 days. (not that we're keeping track or anything)

Volleyball, Christmas and a crowd surfing Mission President

The Zone
Teaching Gaby how to play volleyball

President Jones is crowd surfing whether he likes it or not!

The Chile Santiago West Mission Christmas Party

Semana 6 en Parque Subercaseaux

"So this week was long and tiring but hey that is life. On Monday we went to talk to Maria and Sebastian again about her baptism and basically told her that she knows enough to be baptized and she is prepared, now she just needs to take the step and do it. She is trying hard to stop drinking tea but still seems to have a lot of doubts. She didn`t come to church yesterday so now she can`t be baptized the 21st and will have to wait almost a month more to be baptized. There really isn`t anything else we can do for her we just have to let her make the decision that she knows is right.

"We are teaching a few other people, and all of them are relatives of recent converts to the church. The niece of Maria (the other Maria, the one that was baptized the week after I got here) is listening to us now and has a baptismal date for the 7 of March and we are also teaching the mom, aunt, and grandma of Felipe, another recent convert. I will keep you updated on what goes down with them.

"In other news, this Friday Elder Noguera and all of the other elders that are going home this transfer went to temple to do an endownment session with President and Sister Jones, then take some time in the celestial room to meditate about their mission and ask if the Lord accepts their service and pray about their plans for when they get home. There were five of us who came who are the companions of the ones going home. We usually just sit in the office and study while the others do the session, but they let us go in the temple and do initiatories, which was really cool. President Jones` parents came to the temple too because they are visiting the family in Chile for about a month. His dad impressed me very much he seems like a very humble man and I could tell that he really loves the missionaries and his son.

"Let`s see...what else...I have a ton of pictures from this week I will try to send as many as i can. sometimes there are weeks with nothing to take a picture of and other times there are a lot of pictures. asì es la vida.so we have a couple of initiatives we are working on with the ward. I stole the idea from the Mar Vista singles ward. In the elders quorum we had an ugly tie that we passed form person to person, and he had to wear it until he had a missionary experience, then the next Sunday he shared the experience he had and passed the tie to the next person of hischoice. We are doing the same thing in this ward, but instead of calling it the "ugly tie" we call it the "tie of responsibility" haha so the second counselor in the ward is wearing it now. We are doing the same thing in the relief society, except we are using the "sunglasses of responsibility" that is the great thing about Chilean ferias, we bought some bright red sunglasses and an ugly tie on the street for $2 USD. Good times.

"And this is to give you an idea of how the church works here down south: yesterday morning we had the executive commitee at 8:30 in the morning. At quarter to ten (the sacrament meeting starts at ten) one of the speakers still hadn`t shown up to give their talk, so the bishop kindly asked if Elder Cloward could prepare a little talk (10 minutes) about responsibility, since we are starting the new program with the tie and the sunglasses of responsability. So at quarter to ten they told me, then Elder Noguera and I prepared the sacrament, since there are no active priests in the ward, and at 5 to 10 I had a little time to pick 3 or 4 scriptures for my talk. Then, after passing the sacrament, (there were no deacons either) I went and gave my talk. I was really nervous since it is the first time that I have ever given a talk like that with so little preparation. It went pretty well though it was a good experience, I could really feel the spirit guiding my words since at times I honestly had no idea what to say. I think He understood that I had prepared as best as I could so He made up for the rest."

Scripture Study

Semana 5 en Parque Subercaseaux

"I have given two talks since I have been in Chile, one in Los Arcos and the other my first Sunday here in Parque Subercaseaux. Maria Eugenia will not be getting baptized this week, since she has still not stopped drinking tea. We are praying for her and working as hard as we can to help her. Her new baptismal date is the twenty first. Sebastian still doesn`t have the priesthood, but we are working with him to get ready. I talked with Elder Becerra today in our zone activity and he said that Katy couldn`t get baptized yesterday because one of her relatives passed away. She will get baptized this Saturday, and another investigator, Camilo, from Lo Ovalle will get baptized on Sunday. I am not sure if I told you about him, he is nine and his mom is a returned missionary that recently reactivated in the church. Elder Becerra and I started teaching him a couple of months ago and it looks like now he is ready to be baptized, I am very excited for him.

"Our ward has about 65 active members and our chapel is super old and tiny. The sacrament room is the cultural hall, we don`t have pews, just chairs that get stacked up.

"So Elder Noguera will be finishing the mission two weeks from today. His story is fairly complicated, but I will do my best to explain it. To finish the full two years of his mission, he would have to finish this change (which ends next Monday) and stay for another change, six more weeks. However, President Jones talked with him and told him that he doesn`t feel that it is the right thing for him to do the full two years, because Elder Noguera has a scholarship in a flight school in Argentina, and if he isn`t home by March 9th to take some test he will lose his scholarship. Elder Noguera was pretty bummed to hear that he had to go home 6 weeks early, it doesn`t really matter to him if he loses his scholarship. Anyway, a few days after that President Jones called again and said that after talking to an apostle (he didn`t tell us which one) he decided to let Elder Noguera finish this change and have an extra week. So, Elder Noguera goes home two weeks from today, one week into the next change, and someone will have special changes to come to this sector and take his place. I am not exactly sure about how that will all work out, but we`ll see."