It was a good week, with a great end to it all bieng able to talk with my family. Like I have talked about previously, and talked a little bit about yesterday, this mission is a mission of saving those souls that have been lost, as well and bringing new ones in to His fold. There has been a great falling away of church members and the missionaries are the emergency troops saving these spiritually wounded souls. It is a little more of a burden on the missionaries, but one can not discount it´s large importance. They have entered into covenant with the lord to always obey his commandments until the end, and some have even advanced in the priesthood and gone through the temple and received callings in the church and then fallen away from that truth. Then there are the many that were baptized in the church, not knowing hardly anything about the church nor the covenant or baptism thanks to bad missionaries 20 some odd years ago. But as of last year when the mission was restored after being lost for a time, we are here now with some of the best missionaries to fix all that. Tuesday of this week there was a fight between two drug cartels, and when the police came the two groups turned bullets on the police. Long story short a couple cops were shot and were taken to the hospital in our area. And in the following days there was more cops than I´ve ever seen on the streets of Chile. And there was a helicopter flying around and everything. On Wednesday we had a zone conference talking more about ``el rescate`` the website we are using as missionaries. We also talked about the Pilot program, which is a new thing aproved by the first presidency and quorum of the 12 apostles and they are trying it out on only a few missions. Here is a little information about that.
The purpose of the Pilot Program is to strengthen the Church by baptizing more, retaining more and reactivating more. Under the Pilot we are to focus our reactivation efforts in order of priority as follows: Endowed Melchizedek Priesthood Holders, Endowed Members, Unendowed Melchizedek Priesthood Holders, Other Less Active Members.
On Thursday we did a service project in another ward, cleaning up around a yard and painting a fence. It wen´t pretty good except we started out with only two paint brushes and there were some pretty big spiders under some of the objects. I´ve never seen so many guys be so scared of spiders. I guess it´s because everyone is afraid of the famous rincón spider. But everyone made it out there alive. Because of the shoutout problems previously mentioned our neighboring ward had to go to the church building when it got dark for like 6 days. We cleaned the church and had a pretty good family home evening saturday. Sunday we sang for the women in the ward in honor of mothers day. We sang ``Love at home`` in english as the 5 gringos in the ward and my latino companion sang and played a song afterwards. And then I had the great oportunity to talk to a family that I haven´t seen in forever, but it was a little hard to tell who they were because the video quality was a little bad. JK. It was a good chat, besides the part when Joshua tried to cut it a little short. Maybe if he reads my letter this time and not just skims it he will find out that he´s in it. I love you everyone. I hope all goes good there and I´ll talk again on Christmas. I have yet to resolve the music problem because the files were too big to email, but I still really need some good wholesome spiritual music to listen to in my study time. Today we went to Santa Lucia and took some pics, and then off to the mall to eat Burger King, and buy some candy. And now I am writing probably the longest letter you have ever seen me write. Changes are next week, so I might be leaving this ward. I guess I will find out on friday night. Until next week, Elder Chandler. I love you. Chow.
The purpose of the Pilot Program is to strengthen the Church by baptizing more, retaining more and reactivating more. Under the Pilot we are to focus our reactivation efforts in order of priority as follows: Endowed Melchizedek Priesthood Holders, Endowed Members, Unendowed Melchizedek Priesthood Holders, Other Less Active Members.
On Thursday we did a service project in another ward, cleaning up around a yard and painting a fence. It wen´t pretty good except we started out with only two paint brushes and there were some pretty big spiders under some of the objects. I´ve never seen so many guys be so scared of spiders. I guess it´s because everyone is afraid of the famous rincón spider. But everyone made it out there alive. Because of the shoutout problems previously mentioned our neighboring ward had to go to the church building when it got dark for like 6 days. We cleaned the church and had a pretty good family home evening saturday. Sunday we sang for the women in the ward in honor of mothers day. We sang ``Love at home`` in english as the 5 gringos in the ward and my latino companion sang and played a song afterwards. And then I had the great oportunity to talk to a family that I haven´t seen in forever, but it was a little hard to tell who they were because the video quality was a little bad. JK. It was a good chat, besides the part when Joshua tried to cut it a little short. Maybe if he reads my letter this time and not just skims it he will find out that he´s in it. I love you everyone. I hope all goes good there and I´ll talk again on Christmas. I have yet to resolve the music problem because the files were too big to email, but I still really need some good wholesome spiritual music to listen to in my study time. Today we went to Santa Lucia and took some pics, and then off to the mall to eat Burger King, and buy some candy. And now I am writing probably the longest letter you have ever seen me write. Changes are next week, so I might be leaving this ward. I guess I will find out on friday night. Until next week, Elder Chandler. I love you. Chow.