Music and Lyrics

Hey Y'all, Kind of Slow week in the Missionary work this week. As Elder May and I have talked about, we thought this week was going to be awesome when it started out. As is customary here in our mission, every week at the start of a cambio (This week) we do a "week of sanctification", meaning we do something extreme to give a boost to the missionary work. This week we had the challenge to enter the homes of 25 people and to start teaching 5 families of 3 people or more. We thought we did pretty well here when every day we found 2 or 3 people that seemed interested in the gospel and we committed them to coming to church. We even found 2 or 3 families, one of which was awesome! It was the family of an inactive member who stopped going to church just because of work. We taught his wife and kids and they seemed really excited to attend church. The week went like that until yesterday when we arrived at church and not one of the people we had talked to came to c...

Hey Yall, Well, it´s the week of Cambios in here in our little mission down in Chile. Don´t worry, Elder May and I are staying together here in Camilo. We´re getting another Latino in the house to replace Elder Swenson, because he´s headed back to the US! Yay for ending missions! Elder Kamalu, my Trainer, is also going home. We´ll see what the both of them do once they´re back on American Soil. :) The fun story for the week is about a referral we received. I should start off by saying that our area does not have a very set line for the edge. We are right in between two other sectors and the one just south of us is incredibly vague concerning where it ends. Anyway, we received a referral to a street about where the line is, so we decided to go exploring to find him. We walked all the way out to the hill, went up the hill and to the other side. It started pouring rain while we were walking, so we got thoroughly soaked. We found the street easily enough, but the number...

Hey Y'all, No, it didn't snow. That title refers to when we made snowflakes last night with the Family Quiero. This week has been really stressful but really worth the pain. We found out that there's an Hermana in our branch whose husband is not a member. So we are working with him and we can already see a difference in his attitude and his countenance. :) The most stressful part of the week was getting a baptism put together for Floriza. We've been putting it together for about a month, just because she always says we should talk to her daughter that lives in Lota, about a 30 min drive. Anyway, long story short we got it all set up, including an interview with the New Mission President on Friday night. :) She was baptized by her Son in Law and it was an amazing experience. We also met our new Mission president this week. His name is President Martinez and it's a little interesting because he has three little kids. President Swenson's kid...

Hey Yall! Happy 4th of July! It has certainly been an experience today with a BBQ we had. We got together as 3 zones of missionaries to celebrate, as most of us are from the US anyway. We started out the day by cleaning up the beach and then playing ultimate Frisbee. Afterward we ate churipanes and hamburgers, great American food. As we were eating, we randomly burst into a chorus of the star spangles banner. :) Even better, there was a guy who lives on the beach who started playing the Star spangled banner out of his window at us. His name was Manuel. Oh, and guess which instrument he was playing? Yeah, that´s right. The Trumpet. Even better, he came out to play with us as we sang. I talked with him and told him I am a trumpet player. What did he do? He went back in his house and brought another trumpet! We played a duet while all of the gringos sang! I´ll do my best to get a copy of the video of about 25 Americans singing the Star spangled banner on a beach in Chile. ...

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 ...