On Saturday we had a gigantic meeting with Elder Evans of the 70. He is the 70 in charge of missionary work all over the world. 4 hours of sitting in a huge room, filled with missionaries from the 4 missions of Chile. It was an insane amount of missionaries, like a thousand or more. But it was really great, and a little funny. He said everything in english and had a translater translating for him in Spanish. It was a little funny because the translater had a little trouble translating parts. The major theme is assistance and activity in the church. I don´t have the numbers, but there is an insane amount of inactivity in the church in this area. He also had about five microphones going around the room for people to answer his questions and ask questions. One thing he talked about a lot was to focus on young men. He said when he was walking, and there was a couple girls on one side of the street, and a young man on the other, he would always go to the young man to talk about the gospel. He baptized like 21 people in his mission in Japan, and most of them were young men. And almost all of them served missions, and became powerful leaders in the church. They stayed strong in the gospel, and endured to the end. This is what we need in the church, faithful priesthood leaders. He said one of he main reasons for lowering the age of young men to serve a mission was to get them out on missions. I didn´t realize it was so important before to go for young men, but he made it very clear that it is one of the things we need to do more than anything. So I am refocusing my efforts to find more young men in my missionary efforts. And you can do the same, help the young men in your ward attend church, and focus on serving missions. These are not the words of Elder Chandler, but what an Apostle of God said, and this is how the church can be fortified to defend against the fiery darts of the adversary. We also had a meeting of the trunkies, because my companion is going home soon, and the focus there was don´t die, and work even harder than you did before. It was funny too. And there is a new elder to the mission that arrived tuesday that knows way less spanish than me. I was going around with him while my companion was with his companion showing him the ward, and he didn´t say hardly anything in the lessons, and when they asked him a question, he turned to me to ask what they said. But he will learn quickly, there is no other way, and his companion is pretty good. He has a twin too, so there are 4 people in our zone that have twins, wierd. His twin is serving in argentina too. And we ate on sunday with a sister who served in the same mission that Jeremy is serving now. Weird also. But things are good, and slowly the ward is becoming better. With visiting teaching and two of the missionaries working on home teaching which we haven´t had for forever in the ward and two more missionaries and some cool ward activites comming up to strengthen the ward, La Bandera, in the stake La Bandera will be the best ward in Santiago Sur. And I´m one week older and one week smarter, here´s to another great week. Elder Chandler
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