February 4, 2013

Hey there everybody!

Another week seemed to pass by so quickly! I´m still here in Los Angeles fighting the deathly heat! Where are the clouds and rain of the Chilean Wintertime?... oh, I suppose I still have to wait for a few months for the rain to come back! Jajajaja,

Well, as you can see from these pictures, we had another baptizm on Saturday! :) His name is Pedro York Estéfano Cheguan Contreras.... a very long name, but he goes by York. We found him looking for an inactive family on the ward directory, and we were able to work with the leaders of the ward to reactivate the parents while we were teaching the gospel to them and thier son. It was amazing to see the change in this family. Originally the idea was that his Dad could baptize him, but due to the chilean laws, the parents have to wait 9 months until they can get married now.... it´s rather strange, so the parents decided that it would be better to baptize their son now instead of waiting 9 more months. The incredible change was that in about 2 weeks the Mom was able to quit smoking entirely and the father stopped drinking. This really is the Lords work, and with the spirit we can accomplish great and marvalous things in our lives! :)

We are still facing a lot of opposition here in the heat of the summer... Everyone seems to be out of town and those who are still here are leaving! When I was with Elder Hinckley, about 80-90 members went to church every week... but yesterday there were only 46 who showed up to church... YIKES!!! The Bishop is a little disappointed with the members who should be showing up but they decide not too... but he is a very wise man and he was able to give a great testimony to the members about the Sabbath-day. This heat is not only affecting the members but a bit of my comp and another missionary in my District... they have been acting kinda a lot lazy lately.... it is a little frusterating when I want to go out and work and have fun working and to be able to teach and share and testify... but my comp doesn´t want to do all of that.... I have to help him out to see the importance of what we do. I love him to death, but he needs to snap out of this lazy stage! But I´m glad that when he does work, he can work with happiness. His excuse is that he is "old" in the mission... but I have less time left than him.... he is rather silly!

I´m just glad that I have a love for this work and that it is one of the funnest and most exciting things that I can be doing with my life in this moment. There is nothing sweeter than to see the gospel change the lives of others! I hope all of you are doing well and that you are having fun in the cold! I love you all so much! Take care!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Garrett

January 28th, 2013

Hey there Everybody!

Wow... another week gone... This past week has gone by so quickly! And we actually had a day with a bit of cloud cover here, so that was really nice! It is so hot.... I´m so ready for Fall time! :)

Anyways, this last week was a little strange. We had a lot of meetings, a lot of intercambios, and a lot of challenges in our sector, but we made it through in the end!

Summertime in Chile makes missionary work a little more difficult in some aspects... for example:

1. Everyone leaves out of town

2. The people that are still in there houses don´t want to leave their houses to answer the door

3. The number of members that go to church diminishes significantly

4. IT IS SO HOT!!!!! :P

Those are a few challenges that we face during the summer here in Chile... for that reason, I´m so ready for Fall time so that everyone can get back into the normal groove here (not that anything really is TOO normal in Chile anyways.... but I love it!). The only thing that I have really thought of to stop people going out of town is that we can go to the farm lands and burn everything... but we probably shouldn´t do that... right? Haha

Well, this past week we were able to make a few big accomplishments, even if we weren´t able to teach a lot of our investigators because almost all of them left out of town. What we were able to do was help the ward were we are at grow a little bit in a few great ways. We went to the bishop to ask him what we could do to help him in the ward, and he gave us a few names of members to go visit. So we dedicated some time to go visit the people he gave us and we tried to see what was going on. So what we were able to accomplish in the end was reactivate (or at least we hope that they are active now) a family of 5 who were baptized last year. We felt the spirit so strongly sharing with them and we were able to help them have a goal as a family to be able to go to the temple soon! Hooray! We were also able to reactivate the Elder´s Quorum President and his family.... they have been inactive for a few months now. It is sad how people go inactive for silly little disagreements in the church. Don´t we go to church because we love our Heavenly Father? Well, he came back to church with his family, so that was fantastic. And the other big thing that we accomplished is that we could help a brother in the ward understand the importance of the Priesthood, and now he is going to go to the bishop to have an interview with him so that he can have the Priesthood and that will be a big step for him and his family to have an eternal family.

I always love the opportunity to testify to the people, member or not, about the gospel and the blessings that we recieve from living the gospel. This really is a great and marvelous work that has come forth among the children of men. And for this reason we need to thrust in our sickles with all of our might to accomplish our Heavenly Fathers desires that everyone can gain the eternal life and live forever with him again.

Well, we have one investigator that we might be baptizing this weekend depending on what our bishop and his parents decide. The idea was that the father could baptize his son, but that won´t be able to happen for another 9 months... due to some laws in Chile over marraige. So depending on what the bishop and the parents say, we might just baptize him now... but if not, they are going to wait 9 months so that the parents can get married and so that the Hermano can be completing with the Law of Chastity to be able to use the priesthood. But we´ll see how that all works out.

So, that´s the update on how things are going here in Los Angeles, Chile. Maybe one day the heat will go away and that I can feel the nice cool air again! But until then, we are here fighting in the heat against the opposition. I love you all so much! I hope that you are all doing well! Today we ate huge completos as a district... 2 of them each one of us! They were so big and I´m still soooooo full.... haha! Until next week!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Garrett

January 21, 2013

 

Hey there everybody!

What a crazy and short week it has been... I don´t think the mission is ever going to slow down.

This last week was filled with craziness and miracles and the spirit. I did two intercambios this last week to get to know the sectors that are in my district and to know their investigators and all of that fun stuff. The really crazy part is that this week I recieved my new comp, Elder Manzanos. He is from Argentina and has one cambio less than I. We are getting along so well! I love the Argentine people, he´s my second comp from there, so no complaints from me! Why were these intercambios crazy? I had to leave our sector in the hands of Elder Manzanos, who doesn´t know much about the sector because he just got here and who doesn´t know any of our investigators or the members. But we have been working so hard and so great together this past week, and we are seeing the fruits of what Elder Hinckley and I were able to do in this sector to get it all nice and functioning.

On Saturday we were able to have a baptizm for our investigator named Sheryl. Sheryl was so excited to be baptized and she really did have a change in her life. It was a miracle to find her after searching for her for a month straight, but in the end, she still wanted to get baptized and the ward is helping us out so much so that she can remain active in the church... that´s the idea, right? The only way to recieve Eternal Life is to follow the Gospel of Jesus Christ and a part of that is Enduring to the End. The water felt so nice and cold... perfect for a hot day. The next day on Sunday I was able to confirm her a member too. She´s really happy and I´m so happy whenever I´m able to participate in an ordinance of the Gospel. Words cannot express the joy I feel when I can baptize someone and when I can confirm someone. It´s amazing, I love it! The best part of all of it is knowing that I´ve been an instrument in the hands of the Lord to help someone be apart of the fold of God.

Right now I´m extremely tired too... As a district we decided to go to a Volcano that is about an hour and a half away by bus, and then from there, we hiked 8 miles up and then 8 miles down to get to the volcano in the heat. It was so much fun! We left really early in the morning, we had to wake up at 5:30 to get to the bus station on time so that it could take us up there. It was quite a fun hike and pretty intense with the heat, the bugs, the adventure. It was a lot better than a normal zone activity of just playing soccer and eating food. We almost didn´t catch the last bus on time to take us back to L.A. from the Volcan Antuco, but by a miracle and with extreme heat and weary legs, we were all able to make it to the bus. Elder Gato enjoyed the hike too.... he hitch-hiked in my backpack like always!

Really a lot has happened this week, I don´t know what more I could share in this moment. I´m quite tired and my mind is all over the place.... I can´t believe that I almost have only 6 months left in the mission... Time is flying by way to fast! So here I am, in the ghetto L.A. of Chile! I love you all so much! Send me some rain or snow or at least some clouds! That would be wonderful! Take Care!

Con mucho amor, Elder Garrett

January 14, 2013

Hey there everyone!

I hope that all of you are enjoying your cold weather... it is just
getting even more hot everyday here! I don´t think I sweat this much
in Southern Utah in the boiling heat... maybe that is because I never
walked around in church clothes all day every day! Haha, hmmm... that
could be it... but who knows!

It´s been a great week to say the least... we´ve seen so many miracles
happening here, all the work that we have been doing since I got here
has been bringing the blessings that we are recieving now in the
sector. It´s been a great spiritual cambio with Elder Hinckley.
Starting from zero has been really fun and a lot of work... I´d rather
not have to do that again though! But we finally have some
investigators to teach and a few of them are progressing to be
baptized now.

We are actually going to have a baptism this Saturday. An investigator
that we have been trying to track down for like a month finally came
back from her vacations and she was passing through a really hard
time. We felt the urge to go visit her one night, even though we have
tried and failed so many times during a month... we could never find
her. But our prayers were answered and we found her basically crying
and even though she didn´t have time in that moment, we could set up a
meeting with her and we went and taught her and she wants to get
baptised to fill the empty space in her soul. Elder Hinckley, my cold
hearted killer of a companion, ended up crying in that lesson with
her... we´ve been praying for her for over a month now... it was a
great experience for him in the missionary work. And as always, an
amazing experience for me! Moments like that when we are really led by
the spirit shows us that this is the Lord´s work and he works in his
own ways. We are just his tools that get to do the work! I love it!
How great is the missionary work!

So she´s going to get baptized on Saturday, her name is Sheryl. She´s
a really nice person. The next Saturday we also have a baptizm planned
for an investigator named York. He is just a little kid, but we found
him through his inactive parents. He is progressing great and we
activated his family! We are also seeing a lot of miracles with other
investigators.... and we are working so well with the church members
in this ward. I love it here regardless of the heat!

Well, this cambio has ended and so has my short time with Elder
Hinckley... it was so much fun being with him, we worked hard to get
this sector prepared for the future. He is leaving the sector... but
I´ll still see him every week, because he is staying in the same zone.
I´m going to be with another Argentine, so I´ll get to work better
with my Argentine accent. haha! His name is Elder Manzanos... but I
don´t know him... so we´ll see what happens. I´m still district leader
and Elder Humpherys is in my district again! How fun!

Well, I hope that you are all doing well! I love you all so much! Send
me some cold please! I would love a bit of snow or at least some
clouds!

Con mucho amor,
Elder Garrett

 

January 7, 2013

Hey there everybody!

Are you all enjoying the snow and cold up in the U.S.? Me? Don´t mind me here in the south end of the planet at the end of the world in the heat! Wow... it is just feeling so hot here... that hole in the Ozone layer isn´t helping out either! I´m glad that I have sunscreen though! Now only if I had clouds in a can or something to block the sun and to get it to cool down... oh well, before I know it the Chilean Fall and Winter will be here and I will have nothing but rain and cold!

December 31, 2012

 

Hey there Everybody! Happy New Years!

This past week seemed to fly by! I can´t believe that last week I was able to talk to my family, it was a lot of fun and really weird too! It feels like time has passed by so quickly, but also as if I´ve always lived in Chile as a missionary and this is my real life. Strange, that thing called time... and it only passes by every second! Haha, and here we are at the end of this year, I feel like I´ve grown so much this year, and I know there is still so much that I can learn and that I need to do while I´m here in Chile... almost 7 months left! Yikes! Time is flying by! I love you my family, and all of my friends and loved ones too!

So, aside from all the holidays and such, it has just been getting hotter and hotter here in Chile... so hot! Well, at least here in Los Angeles. I talked to Elder Hughes the other day and he says that the temperature is really nice by the ocean! Lucky him, he lives in Paradise and I live here in the desert. Elder Hinckley and I are progressing a lot in our sector and we were used by the Lord this week to answer the prayers of a lot of people in the ward. Our new Relief Society President has been praying for this past week for help and guidance, she just got put in like 3 weeks ago and she is really young. So we were planning for our day and what we should do and we decided to go visit her. It turns out we had exactly what she needed... we have a really awesome list and map of the sector and the members that we made and she needed something exactly like that to be able to start working and to know where all of the sisters in the ward live. It was a great experience to see that would could bring relief to a member.

We are also working hard with our investigators, even though none of them want to accept a baptizmal date.... YET! :) We are doing our very best, despite the fact that they are all going from place to place during the holiday season... The summer time here in Chile is the most difficult time to work as a missionary because everyone just leaves! But despite that we are seeing progress here in the sector and we are very happy about that!

This past week all the district leaders had a meeting with the Presidents Assistants about our responsibilities as District Leaders... I´m glad to know that I´ve been doing my responsibility right! I´ve had to travel so much this cambio, and things just seem so hectic and strange lately here!

I hope you are all doing great, I´m doing quite well here. I love you all so much, thanks for all the support this year and I wish and pray for you all to have a great new year! Remember, we don´t have to wait for the end of the year to change things in our lives! That is what repentance is for and we can do it everyday and at any hour! ;) I´m so grateful that Christ lives and that he provides the way for us to become better people! I know this church is true, and I´m so grateful that this new year I still get to preach his gospel to my Chilean brothers and sisters!

¡Feliz año nuevo! 2013!!!!!!

con mucho amor,

Elder Garrett

(do you like our new years decorations?)