Music and Lyrics

Hey Yall, This week is all about yesterday. Yep. I´m writing on Tuesday. It´s allowed, don´t worry. Yesterday was the last official day of President Swenson´s service as President, so we had a conference with the whole mission(all 180-something missionaries) and we purposely did it on preparation day so we could use the time to travel and not lose precious days of work in the mission. All of the Elders and Sisters from the South came up and stayed over night Sunday in houses of missionaries in the north of the mission. So, guess who we had in our house on Sunday? My Trainer, Papi and piano extraordinaire: Elder Kamalu! He and his companion stayed the night in our house on Sunday to make the conference the next day. We talked about how the sector was doing(I´m in the sector that he opened a year ago) and how the people of Temuco were doing. It was great time that night. The next morning was the morning of the festivities. I´ve never seen such a sight. We got up real early t...

Hey Yall, This week has been amazing! We had another baptism, a ping pong tournament and I´m playing the piano in sacrament meeting again. We´ll see how that goes for all of us... As for the Baptism, we had a great time with Luis. He´s an eighteen year-old kid who´s dating a member. He was taking the lessons for her I think, but then he finally read the book of Mormon. He read it and now he says it´s like breakfast for him: the day goes horrible without reading. He´s got such a strong knowledge of the truthfulness of the Gospel. It´s amazing how the power of the spirit works. He got Baptized on Saturday! His family and the Branch President came and I had the privilege of entering the water for the first time in my Mission. :) Better news this week! Remember Cecilia and Marcelo from Temuco?! She called me the other day! Apparently Elder Kamalu went to go visit them in his final days before going home(he goes home in July, but Elder Kamalu is always planning ahead) a...

Hey Y'all, Wow, this week went by really fast. I feel like it was yesterday that I wrote from Santa Barbara about going to Camilo. As you may know already, Camilo Olivarria is the name of the Branch here. The whole Missionary zone of Coronel is a district in the Church. It's about the same as a stake, but it's still building as a site for the church, so the mission president is the district president here. The branch president is awesome and speaks really good English, actually. The sector as a missionary is the biggest one I've been in so far and I've yet to figure out how big it really is. Coronel is a city just south of Concepcion here right on the shore line. Actually, the elders went jogging to the beach the other morning. Half of Coronel is another sector and our sector is actually split into two companionships who split the city of Camilo in two. It's not really a different city, just a suburb of Coronel. The best part about this zone ...

Hey Yall, This week has been a big eye-opener. I've realized that the mission is living the Gospel. Just finding out how it works in everyone else's life. But, we've had great experiences this week between a new family in the ward and getting cambios. I'm leaving Santa Barbara! I'm heading off to the Zone of Coronel. The new sector is called Camilo 2, but I don´t know if Camilo is a city or ward or what. I know that it's near the coast and we're going to have a fun cambio with Elder May! From what I've heard, this is his first cambio as a senior companion and that he has just over a year in the mission. We'll see what happens this week when I meet him tomorrow. :) We went to Elder Cottrell's first Interview as a district leader. The district leaders interview the people that are preparing for baptism, so we went to Nacimiento, the town where the Sisters work. We met up with them after 2 hours of travel to get there and went t...

Hey Y'all, This week was a thriller. I don't know why it took me so long to notice, but of the 12 missionaries in our zone, there is only one Latino. His name is Elder Sandoval and he is from Peru. He's learning a lot of english because he's with all of us gringos (Even though we should be speaking spanish whenever possible). We've had a lot of great experiences this week and a couple of bad ones. Let's see what you all think. First off, we found a wonderful inactive member named Soledad. She and her kids live with her parents and she left the church because of a divorce and bad things her ex-husband did. She teaches all the principles to her kids, but she doesn't participate with any church now. We're going to visit her this week again and talk with her kids about Seminary. We're very excited. The best story of the week comes from the Hermanas that work in a little town called Nacimiento. They talked to a homeless guy a few weeks back a...

Hey Yall, This week was a very slow week. However, we did have several people come back to church. Hermana Milka and Hermana Lorena with her kids all came back. We are having lots of fun here, don't worry. (Culture of the mission #5: We enjoy the mission) We had a weird experience on Thursday. That is our planning day, so we usually do practices and things in the morning and don't leave the house until we go to lunch. We got up and did all of that and noticed that it was a little darker than normal. We didn't think much of it and left for lunch at about 12:45 to be there at 1:00. We got to Carlos and his family and they were still preparing food. They asked us, "Elders, what time do you usually eat lunch?" We told them that we always come to their house at one and so we just talked to them while waiting. We then realized that my watch was an hour off. We don't know how, but that made us over an hour early for lunch...oh the joys of the missi...

Hey Yall, This week we finally got Angelica to Church. She was baptized back in April and this week finally was confirmed by yours truly yesterday in church. The Spirit was very strong and I'm sure that all who were there were very excited to have a new member of the church. Her kids both are planning on getting baptized at the end of this month, but we'll see how it goes. Her oldest daughter is very active in an Evangelical church right now... I've had many a dream this past week, most of them having more and more to do with missionary work. I've had dreams with my companions beating me up and all sorts of stuff. Fun dreams, huh? We had another exchange with Zone leaders again this week, this time Elder Smith worked with me in Los Angeles. It's quite exciting, actually. I have seen big changes in the people we've met in Los Angeles. One girl named Ingrid has made all kinds of progress in the past couple of weeks since she got baptized. I almost kno...