This letter is going to have to be a little short, I had a lot of buisness to take care of today, and I am about out of time. I just wanted to tell you all how great it is to hear from you all every week. I read every one even if I don´t respond to everyone. It is unbelievable to me that school is ending over there, oh how the time always flies by. I would like to emphasize some of the words of my brother serving to say just how important the members are in the missionary work. The missionaries will move on, go to a different area and finish the mission, but the members will be there forever. Our ward is really small, and most of them work a lot, but there are some really strong members in our ward that just make all the diference. There are members that have to go to church every sunday to renew their covenants, there is no option for them. There are members that finish a long day of work to dedicate the rest of the time going with the missionaries to lessons. It is so great when the members ask the missionaries when they can go teach with them. It truly is a wonderful feeling. The members can grow bonds with the members that are just not possible with missionaries, and with social network can get a hold of them and strengthen much easier too. We are working closely with the ward leaders to motivate the people we are teaching as well. Keep pushing forward in the missionary work and I know the lord will bless you SO much. It isn´t always easy being a missionary, and there are hard times and let downs, but it is definately worth it. A lot of people that promised they would attend church didn´t, but every week there is an opportunity to push forward and try more than ever before. I love you all and hope the best for you all, Love, Elder Chandler.
We had changes or ¨Cambios¨ today, which means that we lost one elder in our ward and he was relpaced by a missionary from argentina, a few elders were changed in the zone, one siser went home, and some went to the meeting today to find out that they were just changing wards in the zone. Other than changes this week seems really normal, since we are working with generally the same people. We took a step backwards for the baptism of the children of Dayana because they didn´t come to the church sunday. I have another interview with the president this week. And all of that seems to be this last week. Oh, I gave a talk on obedience in church on sunday. I wish I had more to write, but for now that seems to be all I´ve got for the moment, but I promise to write more next week, good luck with everything back home- Elder Chandler
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. It`s getting colder, and we are getting more beautiful snow on the mountaintops. It really is great, I love it. And it rained, which it hasn´t done in forever, months. It rained on Thursday, the day of the worker. Everybody gets off the first of May in South America. I was happy for this holiday to come, because everybody would be in home and we could get a lot of lessons in, but unfortunately everyone was with family or gone. Even for our mutual we only had one youth show up, and then he left because we couldn´t do much with one youth. I guess it was a mix of the rain, cold, and holiday. Oh well, I loved the rain. On friday I signed up for my Carnet, or identification. It was a day with a lot of waiting and walking, because we had to walk to three different buildings. It was a lot like waiting for hours in the DMV waiting for them to call your number. But now I won´t have to do it again for another year. On Sunday I participated in two baby blessings of one of the less active families we are teaching. It was good to see their family at church. On Saturday I bought a cactus in the street fair to remind me of Nevada, it looks pretty sweat. We used it in a family home evening yesterday to show the parable of the sower and the need to leave behind the things of the world and water your faith through the Word of God. It was a fun lesson. Today we played soccer as a zone, and got to relax a bit. I love the mission in Chile, and the challenges of working with a small ward. I love to work, to come back to the apartment completely exhausted. I can´t wait to talk to you all next sunday. I haven´t worked out the hour yet with the family, but how does 4pm your time work. When does church end, is it at 4 or earlier. I will email later this week to tell you all more details. I can´t believe I am almost a quarter done with my mission either. Elder Chandler
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