Hasta Vernos con el rey

 Hola todos! ... This is my last email as a missionary. Writing that out bring me an incredible amount of emotions. I am sad, yes, but mostly enthusiastic for the future! I know more than ever that "God's thoughts are not our thoughts, his ways are not our ways," And so he has a beautiful, perfect plan for each of us. I am excited to progress as his child, and know that the required progression will come from experiences that the mission will not give me. The mission gave (and us giving me still, for 6 more days!) Me priceless experiences and circumstances, and has allowed me to grow and apply the Atonement in my life. I am truly a new creature in Christ, and hope to keep changing. 

It was a great week, filled with miracles. We started the week off with my last normal interview with President, it was phenomenal.

Great lesson with Carmen and Camila. They are to be baptized the 22 of July, and are very excited.

Emma and Rene are probably the highlight of the week, Rene has serious physical and mental illnesses as lasting effects of past and current addictions, and Emma is his sweet old lady sister, who cares for him even though he hates her and tries to run away. The spirit testified very strongly as we read about Christ lifting us up and helping us with our burdens.

On Sunday we saw a few miracles. It started raining hard in the morning, but stopped after we prayed and asked God to stop it, so that people could go to church (we are teaching a few people with weak health that are very effected by the weather, I have no idea why they chose to live here hahaha), and soon after the rain stopped! 

Another miracle was that Sherly came to church on her own, and showed up even though she was a little late.

I love Chile with all my heart. The weather, geography, culture, food, hot drinks, rain, bandurrías (a crane-like yellow bird, they are literally everywhere), la casuela, y etc., and most of all, the people! Son todos muy "de piel." (Of skin, it means loving, loves hugs) I realized a few weeks ago that I feel homesick, not for Utah, but for my mission. Past areas, people that have grown to be my family. That being said, I am beyond excited to see yall in a few days.

I will be home on Saturday, my homecoming will be on the 16th. All are invited, message me for details!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos, espero siempre recordar de Chile y mi familia acá. Hasta vernos con el rey 🇨🇱

Last call with the Hermana Leaders

Last Goodbye with Alberto

After 1.5 years, finally learning to make bread

Hermano Silva

Valdivia Stake President Godoy and his family

The rain of miracles flooded our church

 I figured it's about time that I sit down and write out a decent email 😅 it feels like each day from this past week included enough events to fill a week, it was like a week of weeks! Let's get into it:

Monday: the aforementioned Curiñanco visit!

Tuesday: Hermana Jeppson's B-day. You already know that we gotta go all out, so we bought an Oreo cake and a big ol T-Rex candle to celebrate during District counsel. We went to the Doctor, and then had a great lesson with Alberto, in the which we changed his baptismal date to this week 

Wednesday: Great family home evening with the Solis family, they're this sweet family of the recently baptized Agustín. We made cookies and studied the Book Of Mormon. We visited so many members that day, including Monica, who gleefully accepted our cookies and presented two lil hand nit scarves to us 🥹 pics below

Thursday: Lots of finding, we found Lyda and Esteban knocking doors. They are so awesome! She is a single mom, and he is 20 and hilarious. They live right in front of the church, and came to some activities without hesitation! We also had our fathers day 11 (like chilean dinner) as a ward.

Friday: Cool lesson with the Rio Cruces Elderes, Alberto date changed again, this time from Saturday to Sunday. We had ward Family home Evening, 8 friends showed up! It was sweet. 

Saturday: cool call with a reference, Carla, in the morning. Carla really needed to pray with someone, and now she's interested in learning more! 

Cool miracle: We started our weekly planning, when I felt like we had to visit a friend, at that very moment. We drop everything and start heading towards her house, and we caught her as she was leaving her house with her daughters and her member friend, who was randomly visiring from Niebla. We ended up accompanying them, and had a fantastic conversation about how to recognize the spirit. She said that us coming by at that moment was an answer from God to her prayers. We gave her a blessing of health, and went on our way.

That day, we had many very amazing lessons and saw many tender mercies from the Lord. Which was good, because things quickly got pretty crazy...

Sunday: ok, backstory: amidst the craziness of our lessons the day before, we were filling up and draining our baptismal font, trying to clean kht the dirty pipes. Well, the last time we did it, we had planned on meeting with the bishop at the church to look at it together. Our lessons ran a little late, and we asked our bishop of he could go look at the font without us, so that we weren't disobedient to the curfew. Well, he got there a little bit later than planned, and we had the water up a little higher than intended... and so we woke up to a video from him of the church filled with about a centimeter of water, from the sacrament room to the kitchen.

Meetings were canceled for the day, the sacrament and the baptism, and so we scrambled to find a different building to do the baptism at. By some miracle, the baptism did in fact happen, in the Estanque building! It involved a lot of quick cleaning and coordinating, but Alberto got dunked. He's had a long path to prepare himself, so it was special to have been here for the experience.

This is my penultimate email! Love y'all!

President Vergara had the honor of baptizing Alberto

This water was green no matter what we tried... leading to the draining attempt that led to the church flooding 

Us giving a thought at the ward activity

Curinanco

 Esta semana fue muy buena

We had intercambios with the Angachilla Elderes, I went with Elder Adams. 

We went to Curiñanco again! It was a blast.

Member house at Curiñanco

Last transfer...

 Alright I don't have a lot of time tonight but it's been a few weeks. I present, my weekly!!🥳🥳 (mega-short version of the last 3 weeks)

My last zone conference:

 Thus was one to remember haha. We left early in the morning to get to Osorno for our conference, and some of the missionaries missed the bus, and were going to be 1.5 hours late. BUT our mission presidents car broke down, and so he was 2 hours late! He didn't want us to start before him, and so we had not a ton of time to cover everything, and so, President Gervic directed us to get later bus tickets. We told the executive, and everyone was chillin 

However, the executive then get back to us and let us know that there were no later buses. By that time the bus was already leaving the station, so we sent 2 elders to run to the terminal and ask the bus driver to stay a bit longer while president finished up so that we could catch it. We ended up having to pay the bus driver a bit, but everyone made the bus!  We had the rest of Zone conference, the part with the practices, a few days later in Valdivia with a pancake breakfast. I made coconut buttermilk syrup

Idarmis: 

 A few months ago, we served this lady who lives in the middle of nowhere by helping her dig a big hole. Well, on Sunday, she came to Valdivia just to help her Evangelical friend, Idarmis, and her daughters, come to the church! They're awesome, looking for something that was missing, and we will begin teaching them shortly. #miraclesfromservice

I also had my last leadership counsel! Hence all of the fotos😅

Love y'all!

Elder Reeves

Elder Farmer

Elder Bateman and Elder Winward

Bus to last Zone Conference

Elder Rolfson

Hermana Rodriguez and Hermana White

Hermanas White, Decker, Dixon, Rodriguez

Jose Miguel and the infinity box we made him

Submarine

No bake cookies, our "American" dessert to share with everyone

Elder Gana

Flowers are underrated

 Howdy! It's been a great couple of weeks. I'm realizing as I go through these photos that I have more Maté photos than people photos, I promise that I love the people and Valdivia more than Maté 😅

Anyways, some great weeks! Here's some highlights: 

- Interviews with President. Love President Gervic.

- Exchanges with Elder Pereira, Elder Reeves, and Elder Johnson. 

- last p-day, everyone in the Zone brought a dessert. We did a bomb oreo rice crispy

- And, by far the biggest highlight, we have seen the Lord's hand guide us as we have worked (:

1 Nephi 17:13 has become a sort of anthem for me these days, I've come to realize that this verse outlines the wag that Christ's grace usually becomes manifest in our lives. As I've shifted my prayers from "Please bless others through my efforts," to "Father, which is the path, what are the ways, that I should seek to work?" I've seen lots of blessings. 

Love y'all!

Exchange with Elder Reeves

The Imperfect Harvest

Great week! Full of lots of tender mercies, and lots of Satans little jabs. We found lots of hostility, but also were able to see the hand of the Lord! I'll just get into it 

I think I mentioned this last week, but started off the week at Curiñanco, this little Beach with a little hill you can climb, lowkey climbing that was one of the sketchier things I've done as a missionary haha. The foto doesn't really do it justice, that thing was like 60 feet tall, and it was made of mud, rocks, and roots. 

After the beach we had a grill with a member. Had a coconut flavored Maté, and a great beach side gospel conversation, hypest moment of the week😎🥥 shoutout to Hermana Jeppson for organizing the District activity!!

Constanza:

OK so one day we were visiting member points on our map and we were receiving Nashville-level hostility. I found out what Gnostisism is! Anyways, we felt that Satan was just trying to block the path to someone that God had prepared, and a few hours later, we met Constanza! She was just in the street, moving stuff in her house, and we started talking to her, and it turns out she's a less- active member who has been on the edge of coming back, but needing a little push.

Carlos:

We met Carlos! Another less active member, who lives in a little nook in a side alleyway, he can't read but as we showed him the fotos in the Book Of Mormon, his face lit up, and he's coming back to church! 

We also had a fun service project in Punucapa, a little mountain country road. We had to dig like a 10 by 5 by 5 foot hole to put a large septic tank in the ground. 

We also had a Multi Zone conference in Osorno! It was awesome being back in that church, I saw Hermana Alicia again and it was an awesome Conference, focused on goals and plans.

Joseph: 

We met Joseph in the street, he's from Haiti and came to church with us. That was rad. 

Anyways, this week, I've grown to appreciate God's organization a lot more. We had lots of goals that we did not reach this week, and while I know that they were within God's will and very possible, I also know that he consecrates our efforts, and uses our imperfect actions and faults as part of this "perfect harvest." I highly recommend reading "The Imperfect Harvest" by Elder Stanfill. Love y'all!

Elders Bezerra and Garlick on our way to dig

Hermanas Rowley and Zolman

Elder Heywood

Mi prima

Sceptic tank dig

Our whole zone went to Curiñanco on accident for P-day... here's us waiting for the bus

May 1st Farewell Alerce

 Hello World! My time in Alerce has come to an end. With many tears shed from my Alerce Family, I left to Valdivia! Valdivia, (or Valdi-lluvia, (valdi- rain in English,) as the locals call it,) is a beautiful City built around a huge river. It also happens to be the rainiest city in Chile 🫠🥳☔️ so far, it's only rained like every other day, but we are about to enter rainy season.

My companion is Elder Winward. He's from Shelly, Idaho, and is absolutely awesome. As per traditional stereotype, we have already eaten lots of Potatoes.

Anyways, another thing that is absolutely rad is that I AM IN MY COUSINS DISTRICT. #repthejeppsonname

Valdivia has been rad! My companion arrived a few days after the transfer, because he was in the office and had to train the next financier, so I was just kinda boolin around for the first week with Elder Fritz and Elder Bazerra. Lots of miracles those days,  son unas máquinas.

In the week that I have had in my área with my companion has been awesome. We've been visiting tons of members and past friends, because we are also white washing and have no idea what's going on here. It's a small ward with lots of Grandparents, kind of a different vibe than I've had before.

One miracle we saw was the Barrera family. We had this guy in our record, Rodolfo Barrera, who is the urbanized 17 year old kid of a member, but the number was bad and the direction as well. Well, after tinkering with the phone number for a little bit, I found out that I just had to delete a certain section of the number and then it worked! And we called Luisa, the mom of this Rodolfo, and she was down to meet with us, and she was actually our neighbor haha. We go over, and she's actually got TWO 17 year-old, unbaptized kids. They came to church with us, please pray for Rodolfo and Juaquin🙏

Other things of the week: 

- Leadership council in Puerto Montt. After the recent conferences with Shane Littlefield and Elder Godoy, the mission had so much momentum and its awesome. Also, 2 of my previous companions, Elder Sanchez and Elder Rolfson, are together in Alerce, my old sector, and its awesome. 

- This guy was playing "one love" by Bob Marley in the park, and after initiating conversation and telling him that he should stop drinking, he let me know that he was Iluminati and so he assassinated perverts, and that he would not, in fact, stop drinking. He then got up, set his guitar down, and just walked away.

- Helping a member with her English for her job interview with CranChile

Also shoutout to Eloy Nelson, legend in Alerce, who got baptized this last Saturday

Spiritual thought: Going above and beyond, magnifying our office, is how Christ's grace can mold us.

Love y'all!