November 19, 2012

Hey there everybody! ^_^

This past week passed by really quickly. We are adjusting quite well to the whole no knocking doors things. We have been trying so hard to strengthen this ward to help it to continue to grow. We are working and working without stopping, especially since we heard from the stake president that this ward might be closed off and put together with a ward that hasn´t had a bishop for like 2 years here.... The ward has grown a lot since I´ve been here, and it would be so sad to see all this work get destroyed!

So to help our plan to help the ward out, we decided that we needed to advance our relationship with the bishop. We had the chance to work with him an entire day visiting sick and less active members in the ward. It was great to be able to leave with him and to help him out and to be able to plan with him a few things that we would like to see in the ward and we most definitely asked him what we could do to help him out with his calling and with the things in the ward. Results of meeting with the Bishop and improving our relationship with him? I gave a talk in church with 2 minutes of preparation.... good thing I don´t mind one bit and that I love giving talks in church! (Haha... weird how I like that now!... not sure how well I´d be able to do that in English though ;P) and he is actually starting to care about all of the converts that we have and some amazing things happened with that. He sent out care packages with lots of food and supplies for our converts that are going through some tough times, and he is extending callings to them! ^_^ Hooray! Progress! So hopefully this ward won´t get closed off and put together with the other ward without a bishop... that would be terrible!

This past week we also were able to help two of God´s children enter the waters of baptizm. We were able to baptize Scarleth (pronounced Escarlet) and Brayan. Brayan is 12 years old and is another grandson of María that was baptized last month with two grandchildren.... so we are just continuing to baptize everyone in that family! ^_^ Scarleth is a daughter of an inactive family that we found through our convert Angelica, and we were able to reactivate the family and teach Scarleth all of the lessons and she was really excited to be baptized. Baptizms are so spiritual and amazing... but so stressfull too! This baptizm was really pulling some funny (not funny at all) jokes on us at the last second. A youth in our ward, also named Brayan, baptized Brayan, but the baptizm pants didn´t fit too well at all! :P So we were able to find a solution for that luckily... untucked shirts! Woot! Not to mention that the water was scalding hot! OUCH!!! I toughed it through to go into the water... but poor Scarleth of 8 years didn´t want to enter.... but after convincing her that it would be A-okay, she got in and we were able to do the baptizm! She was really happy afterward! My legs were all red from how hot the water was! Elder Hughes was laughing. Brayan and Brayan didn´t want to go into the water either... but after convincing them too, they went in! Woot! Elder Hughes and I confirmed them in church the next day... we thought we wouldn´t have any investigators in church because we are baptizing everyone... but somehow 7 investigators showed up! So the work of the Lord moves on!

Saturday, the day of the baptizm, was also my comps birthday! In the morning we weren´t able to celebrate it too much, I woke him up at midnight to wish him a happy birthday, and then in the morning I made him some breakfast. He turned 20 years old. He´s still a youngin! But at the end of the day, a couple families in the ward got together and invited us over and they had cake and balloons and lots of food. We were able to celebrate his birthday and he even got his face smashed into the cake! Yum! He couldn´t breath very well with frosting up his nose! :P It was a great close to a very spiritual day.

Well, I hope all of you at home are doing well. Things are flying by so quickly here! I love you all so much and I wish you all well! Happy Thanksgiving this week! ^_^

Con mucho amor,

Elder Garrett

 

 

November 12, 2012

Hey there everybody!

This past week we had a wicked rainstorm for 2 days! We got soaked to the bone!!! But now it is super hot again and not the funnest to walk up the gigantic hills in a suit, but that´s just life! You just have to walk up some big hills and stairs in a suit every now and then, right?

A lot of the things in the mission have been changing, and Presidente Martinez has challenged us in our zone to not proselyte knocking doors at all this month! The focus in the mission is that we can find a way to work more effectively with the members so that the members can have the spirit of missionary work, so that we can find ways to baptize more people and to help the converts stay active until the end!  We are also trying to work more with less active members to help the return to the church. It is going to work out really well if it works as well as it sounds!  But the past week turned out to be quite difficult for Elder Hughes and I. The members are great here, but only a few are really excited to do missionary work or at least invite friends to hear the message that we have. So we have a lot to face, but we will find a way to spark the interest of all the members. By small and simple things, great things come to past.

We have been gaining a lot of confidence with the Bishop these days, and he is starting to take more of his responsibilty as a bishop, which is fantastic! He even wants to spend an entire day with us in a portion of our sector called tumbes, which is like a40 min bus ride from the city to a small fishing town. So we´ll see how that goes for us! It´s awesome that he wants to leave with us to go visit people. 

Aside from that, most of our appointments that we had with people this week have just decided to not happen. Almost every person we had planned to visit for the entire week wasn´t home or they couldn´t recieve us in that moment. And usually when the people aren´t home, we go to our back up plan and this week they decided not to be home either. :P  It was an exciting week, especially since our last resort is usually knocking doors to find people, but we can´t do that this month. So we tried talking with as many people as we could in the street, but the streets in chile die when it rains.... Haha... so it was a rough week. We are waiting on a list of all the members for a better back up plan so that we can be able to strengthen the ward and such. 

Although we have faced a lot of hardships this week, I was studying the war chapters in Alma, and I found a scripture that really motivated me regardless of the circumstances. Alma 58:37  It seemed like the perfect scripture for this difficult week, and I was able to remember to have a good attitude, a big smile and to trust in God that he will always help us! Even though some people don´t like a lot of the Book of Mormón because there are a lot of war chapters, there are still lots of principles to learn and apply in our lives! I love the Book of Mormón! Anyways, the good news is is that this next weekend (the 17th) it is Elder Hughes´s birthday and we are going to have 2 baptizms! Woot! He turns 20 years old and we are going to celebrate it with some baptizms!

I love you all so much and I hope you are all doing well! Take care! Until next week!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Garrett

(Elder Hughes got caught in a huge crowd of Evangelicos..... so I snapped a picture! It´s like "Where´s Waldo... but Where´s the Gringo!)

November 5, 2012

Hey there everybody!

I don´t have any new fotos from the past week... it´s been kinda a strange week and after being in the same sector for a long time you kinda run out of things to take pictures of! Hopefully something out of the ordinary in the hills of Talcahuano Centro will happen this next week so that I can take some pictures!

This week Elder Hughes and I didn´t have too much time to work as we would have liked... it made completing with the norms of the mission a little more difficult, but not impossible! We spent a lot of time trying to find a few of our investigators, but we are starting to think that they fell off of the face of the earth. No, it was just a strange week for a few reasons:

1. Our zone leaders took up the entire morning of one day for a "short zone meeting" that turned out to be a very long almost 2 hour meeting of rants. :P

2. On Halloween we had a big mission conference with a Seventy/Area president of South America, Elder Arnold. We were at the church building from 7:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. and then later in the day we had a devotional at 8 until 10! So working was really fun that day! (not including travel time... :P)

3. Friday we had an activity in the church, a Karaoke night! I was only able to sing for a little bit because we had to go visit a convert with the bishop because... well, I´m not sure why... but oh well! :P

4. Yesterday I woke up not feeling well. I spent at least 2 hours of the day in the bathroom... yucky! But I feel just fine today! :P

5. We had stake conference yesterday too! It was great but none of our investigators showed up... stake conferences are always quite interesting as missionaries! We aren´t 100% sure if some showed up because there were a lot of people who showed up! :P

Anyways, Halloween was a weird day... it didn´t feel like halloween at all for me and we were in a bit meeting for the entire day. It was a great mission conference and I was able to learn a lot from Elder Arnold and from Presidente Martinez. He talked a lot about our futures and the temples and how we can help our investigators understand the importance of going to church and making covenants with our heavenly father. I think on Halloween I only saw about 6 people dressed up in costumes, but some kids gave us candy when we were walking home! So that was a nice treat!

When we were returning back to the activity that we had of Karaoke from our converts house, we ran across one of the strangest people I have ever met in my mission. He told us that he is a profet, that he has healed a couple people from cancer, he has raised the dead, he has healed the sick, blind, deaf, etc. He could talk in at least 4 different languages very clearly, and he made some really weird guesses about our lives. I´m pretty sure that he had a demon or something bad inside of him... it was a really weird experience and I felt weird talking with him.... I´m just glad that I have the true priesthood and the spirit and lots of love from my Heavenly Father! I´m so grateful that we have real living day profets too that have been chosen by God! So, we get to meet a lot of fun people as missionaries!

This past week Elder Hughes and I found a really amazing family that is super interested in the gospel. There are four people in the family and they want so much to learn about the gospel, and we are going to start teaching the kids English too. So we will see what happens with them, but we are going to try to help them progress to baptizm! We have been seeing a lot of opposition these days with a few of our investigators, but we are doing everything possible so that they can continue progressing and so that they can resolve the doubts that they have. So we are working hard to help everyone possible out with what is going on with thier lives and in the gospel.

I love you all so much, I hope you are all well! Take care and until next week!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Garrett

October 29, 2012

Hey there everybody!

I can´t believe that it is almost Halloween... It doesn´t feel like Halloween at all here in Chile. There are a few little celebrations and some kids go trick or treating on Halloween night, but I miss the real Halloween fun! ^_^ Next year for sure I´ll be going all out and carve pumpkins and such! This year for Halloween we get to go to a mission conference with Elder Arnold, the Area President, so that will be fun! Apparently he is going to interview a couple random missionaries and also leave with a companionship to go proselyting in the end for a few house! That would be crazy to work with a general authority! I´m not too worried though. Elder Hughes is getting a little freaked out because he thinks that his spanish is not as good as it could be. He has improved a lot!

This last week was very interesting. We usually average around 150-160ish contacts every week (we are supposed to be able to at least contact 140 people, which is easy cakes!) But this past week we contacted 200+ people! That´s a new milestone for me in the mission! We have been working hard to help all of our investigators progress to be baptized and we have seen a lot of miracles this past week. We lost a little bit of contact with one of our investigators named Jocelyn because one of her kids are really sick and she was at the hospital every day and her husband had her cell phone and he wouldn´t answer it, so we decided to go try to find her. When we got to the hospital, the people wouldn´t let us in to go visit her because we didn´t have her full name (Chileans have 4 names....) so we couldn´t enter the hospital. So after doing all that we could (walking for an hour, trying to call someone to go find out her last name, etc... lots of fun random plans!), we said a prayer for help that we could find her and a little bit afterwards she came out of the hospital and was on her way to buy something to eat. It was so great to see that miracle that after we did all that we could, the Lord stepped in to bless us with the things that we couldn´t do. Even though she doesn´t have a baptizmal date now because she couldn´t go to church because she is spending all her time in the hospital with her kid, it was a miracle to be able to find her outside of the hospital and to be able to talk to her.

This past week I was also able to do some baptizmal interviews for 2 different people. One kid was named Diego who was baptized on Saturday. He has known the missionaries for like a month and has a really strong testimony. He shared his testimony of the spirit and the power of prayer and that he has recieved answers to all of his doubts that he has had through prayer. He also shared with me that before the missionaries came to his house and started teaching him, he would swear and such, but since then he has changed his group of friends to avoid bad influences in his life. Even though he is 13 years old and the only member in his family now, he wants to be a missionary and is forever grateful that he could learn about the gospel in his life. The other person is named David. He is going to get baptized this saturday. He is an eternal investigator and he didn´t have a baptizmal date until I interviewed him. He is an investigator of the sister missionaries in my district, so we went over to thier sector and I was able to interview David to see how he is going in his life and what I could do to help him to be baptized. It was a really spiritual uplifting experience and even though I have only ever met him once before, I was able to get to know him really well and to understand his doubts and concerns. I felt the spirit guide me during the whole interview and I could understand really what he was thinking. In the end he agreed to pray about baptizm for this next week and then a little later in the day he called the sister missionaries to let them know that he wants to be baptized this next saturday instead of waiting for another year or two. The sister missionaries are grateful that I could interview him... and they thanked me a ton and are so happy and excited, but I really didn´t do anything. I´m just glad that I can have the spirit to help me magnify my assignment as District Leader and that David could feel the spirit and recieve his own answer about baptizm!

So, the work just continues on with a smile and working hard! I miss you all and I hope you all have a happy Halloween! I love you all so much! Take care! Until next time!

Con amor,

Elder Garrett

A happy bean,

A funny picture that a little kid drew of Jesus,

and Elder Hughes saying a prayer with a Chilean

 

October 22, 2012

Hey there everybody!

So Cambios have come in, and where in the world am I? Take a guess, quick!!!

Well, I´m in the same sector, and I´m with the same companion! Woot! I´m super excited that Elder Hughes and I can stay as companions for one more cambio. We are bother really excited, and we are working as hard as ever to make sure the 6 investigators that we have that have baptizmal dates that they are going to get baptized and have tons and tons of blessing from the Lord! The weather once again has been acting up... just when I thought that the rain would stop... nope! RAIN ATTACK!!! Haha, I do love the rain, but this mother nature lady is getting quite ridiculous!

So, as for interesting things that happened this past week? Well, Elder Hughes and I are still leading the zone with all the work that we are doing. Our zone has 3 baptizms this month... and they were from our sector. Our zone leaders called us to thank us for all the work that we have been doing and for being examples to the zone for all the work that we have been doing. We were the only companionship that completed with the norms of presidente with all of the goals for the week and such. I wish that the other missionaries would stop congradulating us and just go to work! Haha. This is the eternal salvation of the people here in Chile, so we should do our part to make sure they can recieve the blessings that we have! All I know is that Elder Hughes and I have found a great groove to work with, the groove of the spirit, and we aren´t going to slow down. This work is amazing and so important. I love being a missionary to help other out. The light in the eyes of the people and the change that I can see when they start feeling the influence of the spirit in thier lives and when they start to change is amazing.

Yesterday we were in our Ward Council meeting and Elder Hughes and I had to stop the meeting from ending just to help the leaders in the ward understand that the new converts are precious and they need to be taken care of. Just like President Hinckley said, All new converts need to have a calling, a friend, and to be nurished by the good word. Almost none of our converts have friends or at least members visiting them, we are the only ones nurishing them, and they don´t have callings. It was really sad that none of the leaders of the ward know that our converts are going through some really tough times. Camila has a kidney disease and her mom Andrea doesn´t have enough income to barely pay for food and she can´t really afford to buy all the medicine that Camila needs. That is just one of the things that are passing in the lives of our converts. So they all committed to help us out in the missionary work and to complete with thier duties that they have in thier callings. It was a sad, but happy meeting. But I hope things will be getting better now. I´m glad that the ward loves me more than enough to accept the suggestions that we have as missionaries that we found in the words of the profets... So hopefully they didn´t take it too hard! We shared our thoughts with love.

I´m glad that I can be in this sector still, all the members are really happy that Elder Hughes and I get to stay together for 6 more weeks. It´s going to go by so fast, so we are going to keep working hard to help as many people as we can! It´s going to be fun to work with all of the investigators that we have. There are a lot that we have to do, but when we are doing all that we possibly can, I know that the Lord will bless us with the spirit and that he will help us out with the things that we can´t do. I have a lot of fun teaching little kids with a small whiteboard that I have and that I´m able to draw pictures of what we are teaching to help them understand. Elder Hughes likes it when I draw, but he refuses the whiteboard when I hand it to him when it is his turn to teach, he doesn´t draw :P Haha. Oh well! I´m glad that we teach really well together, he has learned so much! I hope that means that I´ve been a good trainer!

Well, I love you all so much! I hope that you are all well and that all will be well! Take care always! Ciaó!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Garrétt

Check out my fancy first 2 pairs of shoes! fun stuff! ouchy!

--

 

October 16. 2012

 

Hey there everybody!

This past week seemed to fly by so quickly! (Seems like I always say that now :P) Wow, time is just flying by. This is the last week I might be with Elder Hughes... we are going to recieve cambios tomorrow and we are going to have to do our cambios on Friday... so this time cambios are coming a little sooner than usual! Elder Hughes and I have been asking Presidente Martinez every week in our emails to him if we can stay together another cambio... but whatever happens happens I suppose! We´ll keep working hard no matter what though!

We ended this past week with 5 baptizmal dates set up for November! So already we have a few people that are getting excited to get baptized here in our sector! ^_^ It is so much fun teaching the gospel! It was actually pretty cold this last week, but luckily we haven´t had to deal with a lot of rain. The rain should just end! My goodness, it just doesn´t want to stop! :P

This past week I had a lot of great spiritual experiences. We have an investigator named Monica that has had a really really hard life, and we had the impression to go visit her. When we got there she was just about to leave, but was having a lot of problems with depression and such and she expressed to us that she was thinking about killing herself... who knows if she was leaving to take her final walk of her life?! But we showed up and we were able to listen to her and talk to her and she had a change in her heart and she wanted a blessing from me. That blessing was super powerful, and I know that I said the words that our Heavenly Father had for her. She felt a lot better after that and was smiling and laughing. It was a really unexpected experience and I´m glad that we were able to pay attention to the spirit and that we found her at the right time.

Another spiritual experience that we had is that all of our plans fell through and we had no idea what to do for the last hour of our day. So after thinking of something random that we could do, we decided to go visit a recent convert that was baptized earlier this year. While we were walking up a road, I had an impression to stop walking and to go contact a door that we had already contacted before... and I remember that we got rejected there. Well, we went and knocked on the door and we found an 18 year old named Brayan. Brayan is an Athiest that has a lot of questions about if God really exists or not. He wants to know that if he exists because he said if God does exist, it would mean that he needs to change his life. He understands that God is someone important, so he wants to find out if he exists. I was so happy to know that he was willing to accept us and to listen to our message. We taught about God and read with him the experience of King Lamoni´s Dad in the Book of Mormon and the power of prayer. He committed to pray to know if God lives, so I am sure he will get an answer! We are going to stop by his house later this week to meet up with him again.

So, for all of you who read this letter, please, magnify your callings, or at least do the little bit that we are asked to do as members with our callings! It would make missionary work here a lot smoother if the members would help out and do what they should! It is frusterating sometimes when our converts and the less active members feel like we, the missionaries, are the only ones trying to help and support them... and really we are practically the only ones that are trying to do that. It is sad to see that a lot of the people here are lazy sometimes, but I love them so much and they are at least helping out a little. Just do your part! ^_^

Earlier today, we also went to a small zoo that they have here in Concepcion, that was fun! But I love you all so much! I hope you are all well and that you know that I love you! Make sure that you are always reading in the scriptures and all that fun stuff! Take care! Until next week!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Garrett