Head CT scan

 Monday: Cumpleaños de Elder Pereira 🥳🥳 we ate some cake and had a fun Noche de Hogar with the Aguilar family

So I've had this pressure in the back of my head that gets bad when I do push-ups, so I went to the doctor and he told me I need to get a Cat Scan for $550, I think I'm going to go to a Nuerologist this week to confirm what the doctor said so that's exciting!!

The weekend was absolutely full of the hand of the Lord, it has got to be one of the funnest weekends of my mission. On Saturday, we met Elizabeth. Elizabeth is the sister of our friend that we are teaching, Marcela. The whole family is progressing very rapidly, there are some situations with the family and its been cool seeing just how much the Atonement can work with people so quickly! After our lesson with Elizabeth, the family came with us to the ward Watermelon festival

Watermelon festival: it was awesome! The members all brought Watermelon, and they were all enormous because it was a competition. Cristina and Cristofer finally came back from Santiago and they went! After some dancing, chicken, and Watermelon we went as a ward to an indoor fútbol court and balled out for a bit.

On Sunday, marcela and Elizabeth and the whole fam came to church, and they stayed afterwards for a ward baptism! That night we had a lesson with Marcela's side of the fam, and now they're gonna get baptized the 18th🥳

Also, Adam from Osorno got baptized! Milagros!

Ethan's update

 This week was awesome! It was one of those weeks where the hand of the Lord was just so present, and we were able to break all of the goals we had. One miracle was that we had 9 people go to church, and it was one of the most powerful Sacrament meeting I've been in for a while. A good part of the congregation, including Elizabeth and Neida, some of our friends who hadn't been to church before.

Some random events:

- My wrist got a catscan. (Cat-scan? Katscan?)

- Some recent converts are currently giving us a ride in their baby semi truck

- had intercambios with Elder Player, the asistant.  He's cool.

- went to Puerto Varas and Elder Ball gave us some of his home-made Mate con huesillo. Man's more chileno than porotos.

Love y'all!

Our dirty water

 This week I studied John 2 a lot. I love the story of Christ turning water into wine! There is so much to be found in those 10 verses. 

I'd like to share one insight that I hadn't seen before this week! I was trying to imagine how it would be being the servant, expected to bring forth wine when he could only bring forth water. Desperate, he acted in faith to follow Mary's council to do whatever Christ asked him to do. I like to think that as he received instruction to fill up the pots, he was saying, "I know that we need to fill up the pots, sir. That is the issue! No matter how clean or pure the water I can provide will be, it will never be as qualitative as the wine that is required." I then like to imagine Jesus smiling patiently and saying something along the lines of, "I didn't ask you to provide wine. I only asked you to fill the pots up. :)" 

Of course, after the servant filled the pots, he brought them to the chief of the feast. Surely conscious of just how imperfect the water he had used was, he must have been among the most affected after seeing just how perfect the wine was.

When we are working in harmony with the Lords will, it doesn't really matter in the end just how many mistakes we end up making. Obviously, we should learn from our past, but we should have confidence that Christ's grace is sufficient!

Anyways, it was a great week! love y'all!

lots o' conferences

 It's been a good couple of weeks! Lots of meetings, miracles and icecream. We started the week off with some Basketball. For those who know me, you can probably guess just about how that went😅 We ended our pday with a lessons with Guenso, a Haitian who speaks incredible, Spanish, makes incredible food, and has a very impressive knowledge of the Bible. He's a member of the 7th day adventist church, but is super humble and dope. 

On Tuesday We had our leadership conference. It was phenomenal! I got to see and hug Hermana Jeppson again, highlight of the week (: 

On Wednesday we had Zone Conference, where we talked a lot about having the faith to Baptize. It was powerful, left ready to take on Alerce. We ended that day with one of the funniest lessons ever with a less active member named Namuri, it was literally a fever dream. It was a tin house with intense burning and a Budhist mantra going in the background. She was heating up water in the sun to "fill it with vitamin D," and to top it off she had a gas stove blazing on an already hot day.

On Thursday my companion learned that a certain action done to be committed to the Abrahamic covenant before Christ's apostles declaring it unnecessary is still practiced today for medical reasons... (circumcism)

Friday we had Interviews, so we had the day in Puerto Varas. We had amazing sandwiches for lunch.

Marcela: so we received this interview last week of Marcela on Saturday, she came to church last Sunday, and we've been meeting with her and her daughters, Barbara and Paz, since. They're golden, having been looking for joy and they came to church this week😊

Spiritual thought: this week I felt a bit like Christ's disciples as he descended from the mount of Transfiguration, who had tried and failed to cast out a demon, much to the Pharisees and Saduccees prideful joy. The Apostles had done such simple tasks before, they knew they acted with Christ's power, and yet Christ still informed them that the reason why they couldn't do it was a lack of Faith. 

At times in life, we've got problems that we try and fail to defeat, even when we act in Faith. I believe Christ's response to us is the same as his council to his disciples: "howbeit this kind cometh about only by fasting and prayer." In other words, the apostles had yet a ways to go, lessons to learned, and they needed patience. 

Love y'all!