Max

 Hola todos! Feliz Santa Semana (una semana tarde) 

Santa Semana/ Pascua actually doesn't really exist here. It's kind of an after thought, most people we talked to didn't even realize that it was happening haha. It was fun, focusing on Christ more in a week is never a bad deal! We were pretty pumped for Easter Sunday, inviting every living thing we saw throughout the week to "la Reunión Sacramental de Pascua." We even used some Branch funds to create little Easter baskets for all the kids who showed up. The morning came, and... no one showed up. When we started the meeting, there were three of our most active Hermanas, and no one else. I was pretty sad that more hadn't felt the desire to come, and offered up a little prayers asking God to help out those who didn't show up. Hand of the Lord! About 5 minutes into the reunión, people were pouring in! We ended up having 15, pretty decent for this Branch, with 1 amiga for her first time and 1 menos activo we've been working with for a while. That was a cool little tender mercy

We've been teaching Max for a bit now, and he's doing good! It's an ongoing battle between us and his Catholic school... he's at the point where he always starts his prayers with the Lord's prayer, then he'll stop and think about it for a bit, and restart in the way we pray😂 he asked me to be the person to baptize him this week, so that was bacan

Some interesting things that have happened the last two weeks:

- Un Borracho (drunk guy) walked (well, sort of fell,) into our apartment 

- We held baby ducks!! We were asked if we wanted to help kill them next month for food😶

- People keep telling me stuff in Spanish, and then telling me that I don't understand them because I'm a gringo. I do understand, but for some reason they never believe me when I explain that so usually I'll just roll with it 🤷‍♂️

- This man kept telling us that we followed Satan, and then he saw that we had a bible and started calling us angels

- I gave a talk about the priesthood and angels, and this one hermana told me after, "when you arrived your Spanish was awful. I could actually understand your talk today, good job." And then, "but of course you can't understand me haha" Maybe I just constantly have a perplexed look on my face? 

 

Bueno, something that I've been studying this week is 3 Nephi 1- 5. Something that caught my attention was how Satan uses a lot of fear. He likes to make our challenges seem bigger and scarier than they really are, using flattery, threats, and deception. In these chapters he used, and today he uses, thoughts like "It is impossible for you to win. I'm too powerful." Or, "You are trying to do the right thing, but you're wrong" I'll let y'all read these chapters, but I love how firm the response of the Nephites was. As we are built upon Christ, there is nothing that the adversary can do to us. It may seem like it, but he really only has as much power as we give him. He's "all bark, but no bite" so to speak. 

Love y/all! 

Moved apartments but staying in Fresia

 Hola y'all. Lots of cool things this week! This week started out with us getting a new house!! Ciao ciao to the spiders, the cold water, and the holes in the walls!! The new house is a lot smaller but has heating,  warm water, is void of bugs and I love it. 

We've started teaching the grandson of a member this week named Maximo. He's awesome, he just gets us confused with the Catholics sometimes😅 (he, along with the rest of Fresia younger population go to a Catholic school) He's come a long way though!! As of right now, Joseph Smith and Pope Francais are his two favorite people hehe. He's on date to be baptized, prayers for him are very appreciated (:

We got a Papito this week!! The President of our Elders Quorum happens to be a professional chef and has a lot of down time, so he enlisted himself as our Papito. He makes a ton of food, and the best postres I've had in Chile. It's difficult to eat them because they're so beautiful 🥲 I fear my metabolism may have met its match in Brother Sergio.

We got transfer news! I'm staying in Fresia with Elder Quezada, I'm stoked. Literally every other companionship in the Zone, except for the ZL's, got changed so this should be interesting jaja.

Something I've continued to study recently is the story of King David. He's turned out to be my one of my favorite old Testament characters. As many of you know, despite being the king to unite Isreal, the boy who slayed Goliath, and being chosen and loved by Christ, eventually David makes a mistake and loses the promise of Salvation. This mistake was the product of many small decisions, or "switch points" in David's life. We need to be ever vigilant, and set ourselves up for success, not failure. Above all, we need to be humble and repentant when we have made errors so that they don't grow upon one another. 

Love y'all! 

Conference and miracles

 ¡Hola hola! This week has been quite a ride. Last P-day we went to the saltos de petroway y it was so beautiful. One of those moments where I re-realized I wasn't in the States because looking around looked like something out of Jurassic Park. 

       Cool miracle the next day:  we were on our way to an appointment when we saw two ladies carrying some boxes so we went to help them and walked them to their home. Turns out it was a member and her mom, and the member had been praying that we would find her. She is super cool, but has an abusive husband and after the pandemic hit became inactive. We were able to give her a blessing of comfort, and now she's living with another hermana in the ward and to church! She gave us some really good jam in thanks.

        We had an exchange after district council with the Zone Leaders, I went with Elder Miller in Alerce. It was awesome, I love Elder Miller and Alerce.

        The rest of the week was a ton of contacting to invite everyone and their dog to watch the conference. For some reason our tiny church has a massive smart TV so we set that up and watched the conference there. If you haven't yet watched conference, go watch it right now!! It was so powerful, we are seriously so blessed to have a living prophet. I especially loved President Nelson's and Elder Hollands comments. 

         Yesterday we had another cool miracle. We were working on Facebook and I ended up contacting this guy who... let's just say he really needed a message of hope and peace at that exact moment. We were able to stop him from doing something drastic and now we are teaching him! The message of Christ truly has never been more relevant than today. 

Love y'all!