Sometimes when I get up to the computer to write, I forget what happened in the week. Last monday we had a family home evening with Dayana, an inactive for many years, and her two children Cony and Benjamin who are investigators. Cony has 11 years and Benjamin has 9. Dayana is a single mom, and works at night so she can spend time with her children during the day, which is a little wierd in Chile because everyone in Chile are workaholics and never have a second of spare time. She came to church on sunday, which would be like her 4th time attending. The family home evening went good, despite the technical errors with the DVD player, and that Benjamin was a little sick that day. We finished off the night with sopaipillas. On thursday we had a great zone meeting, which shed some light on the problem of finding new people to teach, and some good new study tips. They also talked about working with the members, and the types of missionaries they remembered when they fed the missionaries hundreds of times before he became a mission president. Think about it, which missionaries did you remember in the ward, and why? Was it for a good reason or a bad reason? What made them memorable? On saturday we had an activity in the stakecenter that we brought Cony and her family to and they showed a video on Christ. Think about this... Jesus Christ, a God who created the earth and many worlds, who worked about great miracles in the old testament, came to the earth in the humblest of circumstances. And not only that, he spent his precious time amoung the sickest and poorest, healing all and casting out devils. Maybe he could have done something more for his own benifit, but no, he went about dedicating His all to others. Then he suffered the pains and afflicions of all in the Garden of Gethsemani, so much that it caused him to blead from every pore. Then he, the perfect Son of God, was betrayed, mocked, spit upon, beaten, and crucified he hung on the cross for all to gawk at. He, the ruler of all, hung up with nails on the cross, like an animal or beast. He truly descended below them all, and overcame the world. And the next time he comes it won´t be in humble circumstances to be mocked and tortured, but he will come in his glory to reap his justice upon the hipocrites, and the unrepentant sinners. He will rein over the whole earth. Oh that we may live worthy of his forgivness, and then bring his message to all four corners of the earth to truly change lives. My life has been changed, and I have seen lives changed, and I have a lot more things to experience. May He bless you all, and please pray for the people here in Chile. I love you all, and I can´t wait to skype on mothers day. We have permission for the 10, 11, or 12 of May. More information in the next week on that. Until next week, Elder Chandler.
This week was a crazy one. Mauricio is one of our investigators we found a while ago as a reference from the other missionaries. He is one of the coolest people. He grew up in New York, and his family from georgia. He is columbian, and has the coolest accent, and it´s great to talk in english a little bit. He is always so excited to hear more about the church, and ready to act, even though we haven´t been able to get him to church yet and it can be difficult to schedule appoints because he works a lot. But unfortunately this will be the last week we will be teaching him. We showed up at his house this week, and he had a cigarrete in his hand and had been drinking. He said he usually doesn´t drink, but he was having a party because he was going back to Columbia the next day. Chile hadn´t been all that he thought it would be with respect to work and he was done. But he told me that he would never forget me and he would find the missionaries there. So that´s the end of one investigator, but I still have hope. I gave a talk on sunday about the atonement of Jesus Christ. The meeting ended up going over because one there were three missionaries speaking and one member of the stake presidency, who talked to long at the end, but it was all good. The rest of the day was missionary work as usual, with a good lesson with a member at the end of the day. Today we have a family home evening with Dayana and her to kids who are working towards baptism. It should be a pretty good week. It´s nice to hear from you all, and how your easter went. Mothers Day is comming, and we will be skyping soon. I can´t wait. Elder Chandler
What a week. This was a week of rededication, to look at all the lessons I had durring my training all the people and youth and to focus more and better myself with my new companion and the great talks from general conference. Many of the people have the same problems, problems with health, they work alot, they go to the street fair on the weekends, they need to spend that time with their family, and so on. It can be hard times when you teach good lessons and leave a strong commitment to go to the church, call them to make sure they can be there, go to pick them up and take them there, and they dont answer the door. That happened this sunday, and has happened many times in the past. Cristopher and his family didnt even go to the church for there baby blessing that was planned, even though we organized it all with the bishop and called them the night before to tell them all the details the bishop said. They said he was sick when we came to our appointment after church. But none of this is going to discourage me, and I will push on even stronger. We are talking about salvation here and I will work with all ive got. I am ready and willing to do what ever it takes. But not all is bad and some of the people were teaching are comming along. There have been a lot of earthquakes lately, one in the north of chile and one just recently in valparaiso, and the mission president is trying to organize the mission to go down there and help them clean up after the destruction. It would be so cool if we got to go down there and help out. It would definately be a highlight of the mission. I am excited for the conference talks to come out in the liahona the next month as well. Little by little we are going to bring back the mountains of inactives and strengthen chile and bringing in more through the waters of baptism. This is a powerful work and we can work miracles. Its good to hear of life at home, and of the fair, and dads 50th birthday. WOW 50 yrs old! I love you all, and its going to be really diferent to see you all in two years. I cant wait to hear more next week, elder chandler.
I thought I might have to watch conference in spanish, but we had all the english missionaries from the stake watching in a seprate room of the stake center. I leave you all the same invitation as President Monson, to review and study the conference when it comes out in the following days and month. There is power behind their words that you just can´t deny, and if you are humble enough to submit yourselves to all the things they said, you will follow in the footsteps of christ as his disciples. Boy time flies fast, today was cambios and there were a lot of changes in the mission and in the zone. For some reason i´m running out of stuff to say, so I think it´s time to wrap it up. Today we got A&W root beer in Jumbo, the only store you can find it. It was a little far away, but worth it. Pizza hut tasted so incredibly good too, I miss american food. Elder Saldaña will be in ecuador tomorrow, and I don´t know what to do with this bolivian Elder Romero, from the mission Venazuela, who doesn´t speak any english. JK. I hope things are going good there. Elder Chandler.
P.S. I am sorry but I busted up in laughter when Marcos A Aidukaitis spoke yesterday. I just couldn´t help it, his accent is so bad. The whole room was laughing. But I love the guy, and his message was a good one. Hear from you next week and see you on mothers day. P.S.S. And it´s starting to get cold enough to need a sweater in the night. I hear this winter is going to be a cold one. Sunday was amazing, It feels so fulfilling to have a baptism (Luis Gutierrez) after all the hard work we´ve done in the ward La Bandera. I love him and his wife, and they will be a huge strength to the ward. It was a miracle to see this man change, gain a strong testimony from the Holy Ghost, and quit smoking. The baptism is a beautiful thing, a change of heart to abandon the things of the world and remain devoted to obey every commandment. My compañion did the dunking, and elder Miller, elder Saldaña`s companion before me, came too. I gave a short talk about baptism, and Elder Saldaña played the guitar and sang I Am a Child of God. My first, and elder Saldañas last. Because of the Dia Del Joven Combatiente, we stayed in all day saturday playing card games, Poker, and having a good time. All three of us, because the new elder, Elder Romero, was in the hospital and Elder Saldaña took him there. He has been complaining various times durring the week, and we had to return to the houses a couple of times, and all day friday, and then saturday morning he left with elder Saldaña. Elder Saldaña returned in the night, but elder Romero will be there until tomorrow. I hope he comes back healthy and ready to go. It can be discouraging sometimes when we do all we can to get people to go to church, and they still don´t show up, but the good moments overshadow all the difficult ones. I LOVE the mission, and am having the time of my life. The mission Santiago Sur is undoubtably the best mission in the world. It never stops to be interesting, wheather it´s the drunks that love to talk to the missionaries, or the hundreds of dogs we see sleeping on the streets everyday. And so many of the faithful members are SO faithful and unwaivering in the gospel, like the family Honores from Peru. Today we went to the center of Santiago, close to the temple, and some old couple missionaries bought our lunch, Burger King. We ran across another member that was in Santiago because her husband teaches at a University, and she should be sending a photo of us today in the mall. Anyway, keep working everyday, and I´ll see you all in about 21 months. I love you all, Elder Chandler.
|