Guatita picante (spicy cow stomach)

 This week I have eaten, breathed, and slept miracles. The Lord has been very good to his children here in Alerce! Fired up from the conference with Elder Godoy, Elder Rolfson and I have had so. much. faith. That sounds prideful haha, don't worry, we've got a long way to go😅

I'm just gonna do a quick recap of every day because there's a lot:

Monday: lots of Gatorball, found a new Maté brand. Drank an incredible amount of said Maté. Coni committed to be baptized! (story in last email)

Tuesday: incredibly sick. Literally like fainting on my feet, I think I had too much Maté. Anyways, phenomenal day. Paz Cardenas committed to following her Mom's and sister's examples and be baptized on April 8th! Also, Coni called us and confirmed the date of her baptism, may 13th!

Wednesday: Lunch with the Godoy family, with the aforementioned (title,) spicy cow stomach! Keep in mind that I was sick, with nausea😅 it was honestly not bad, just weird. It was shredded in little squares, in squash soup, with a bunch of French fries placed over said soup. After lunch, could not physically be on my feet for a bit, and in the afternoon we had another lesson with the Gaete family. 

This lesson is best described as spiritual warfare. The Spirit was not there, and we tried without success to bring it in. After a bit, we started talking about baptism. A little bit of backstory: parents and older siblings are members, really inactive. The mom is trying desperately to keep her family out of poverty, and is trying to come back to gospel habits. It's a tough battle, do to the fact that there are 8 other people in the house, who have various addictions and don't contribute to the family in any way, shape, or form, including financially. The dad, though once a member, is almost anti, but the four little girls of the house are so innocent and full of light and good, that we keep coming back.

Anyways, one of the Girls, Martina, is of baptism age, and wants desperately to be baptized, but her dad said no when we asked him in this lesson. Long story short, my companion then gets on his feet and says, "do you want to know Alejandro what I see in you and in your family? I see four little angels, full of goodness and light, that can bring your family once again to its feet. I see your wife, an example of Christlike diligence, who puts up with you because of Christ like love. And I see you, someone who lost the path a while back, but who could be a great priesthood leader, and a tool through which God could bless hundreds, but you need to let him prevail." Alejandro then got quiet for a moment, and agreed that his daughter could then be baptized. And so Martina, April 15th!

Thursday: Went to Osorno to see a Neurologist for this weird headache that I've had for a few weeks. It was a perfect day. It was hot, reminded me of the summer I had spent there. We ate at Come y Calla, had ice cream at Luigi's, and we're able to visit the Saez family, a family I had the privilege of baptizing when I served in Osorno. That night, we visited Namuri, a less active member who is coming back. She had watched every single one of the Book of Mormon videos, and we got to know Nelson, her son.

Friday: Final preparations for the Baptisms this Saturday. Went to Yonathan Gonzales' house, and his son, Christofer committed to being baptized. It was actually quite funny, at first he said no, but then his less-active father said something along the lines of, "Alright, son, well then at judgement day, me and you mom will go to heaven and you will be separated from us and burn eternally. Do you not love us?" Cristofer, April 29th!

Saturday: Marcela and Bárbara Cardenas were baptized! I had the opportunity of baptizing Marcela. It went super well, they had a ton of family travel from the Isle of Chiloe for 4 hours to see the baptisms, and they aren't members! Like, 50 members showed up, although they did so 45 minutes late (as per usual for the church here in Chile 🤣,) the young women prepared a secret musical number, and at the end, Marcela bore powerful testimony which had her family in tears. 

Nelson, aforementioned 2 days prior, assisted the baptism and asked us to help him be baptized. Nelson will get baptized April 22nd!

We had a bomb lunch with the Gorostiaga Family, and played baseball with an axe and tennis ball in their jurassic park-looking field. 

We watched the Restoration movie with the Gaete family that night.

Sunday: Confirmations of Marcela and Bárbara. On our way home from church, Nelson was just bumping his electric music😅 he is the quirkiest guy. Man's 14 and loves the Hannah Montana movie 😎 that afternoon, we gave hermano poblete a blessing of health. He had a bone sticking out of his toe.

Love y'all!

March 14-21 the return of Elder Carlos Godoy

 Alrighty the highlight of this week was definitely our mission conference with Elder Godoy and Elder Walker. It was supposed to be a mission conference with Elder Stevensen of the quorum of the 12, but he had an emergency reassignment and so the aforementioned two members of the 70 came. It was a spiritual feast to say the least! 

Elder Godoy was so incredibly powerful as he spoke. He was very interactive, asking us lots of questions and adapting to our answers. He actually gave our mission a palo (chastisement,) when he asked us to describe our mission with one word, one hermana said that we are a mission that baptizes, to which he responded, "Oh no, no you are not. This is a great mission, and I can see that it is a converted mission. Y'all are very much like Christ, but 40-50 baptisms a month is very little. This is the land of the Nephites! The land of the Lamanites! You can and need to do better."

It sounds tuff on paper, but at that moment the Spirit descended over us, and the room filled with energy. He was right! I wanted to shout amen, hallelujah as he said it 🤣

Anyways, it was also cool to see the whole mission again. I hugged my cousin again 😎 always a highlight.

My Stake had a Stake conference with Elder Godoy the next day, and we had to meet in a gymnasium. There were so many people! It felt like I was in Utah, there were hundreds. The most beautiful Spanish choir was singing, and we had Ana, Coni, and the Cardenas family come with us on the ward bus. He spoke of not living on the borrowed light of other's testimonies, as the moon does from the sun (and, coincidently, as terestial souls do from celestial souls.) We absolutely loved it, our friends were astonished at how much love they felt from Elder Godoy.

Alright, thats enough about Elder Godoy😅 other highlights of the week:

- my hand got kissed by a prostitute

- House blessings🥰 I love feeling light enter a place like a home.

- I had the best casuala of my mission with the Zamudio family

- The local Venezuelan restaurant gave us missionaries a free 5- person chorrillana #handofthelord

- first family home evening of the Gaete family, where we watched Lehi's vision (we had to tell the little girls it was like Stranger things,) and a knelt down family prayer

- We went to Frutillar

- Coni is going to get baptized: so Coni we have taught for a few weeks now, she's awesome. She got to know the church through her college friend, who was a return missionary. She went to the conference with Elder Godoy, where he talked about the restauración of the church and not doubting our faith, and was set up so perfectly by the Lord. Anyways, we had a powerful lesson with her, where we invited her to be baptized. She started crying and said, "I think the Spirit is talking to me right now. I feel good, I want to do it." And then, her mom started YELLING, "No, don't force her to be baptized! Let her choose!" To which we were pretty confused, but long story short, Coni denied her mom, prayed about a date, and will get baptized in May.       Jesus: 1      Ana: 0

Lenadores profesionales

3/6/23

 This is the entry from 4 weeks ago that I did not send🤦‍♂️

What up! This week was a Rollercoaster.

 On Monday we went to this museum that was absolutely wild- so basically there's this guy named Pablo Fierro who's a history nut, and he's crazy about preserving/ recycling history. Basically, when an old house is being demolished, he goes and collects stuff. Typewriters, windows, whatever- and then he adds that stuff to his museum. Well, Puerto Varas has a very colorful German history, and there's plenty to be recycled! His museum looks like a house that has slowly mutated and grown over time- its construction includes the hull of a boat, a giant clock, a few cars, metal steamship plating, etc.

This week we went to chop wood for our friend Marcela. There was a ton of wood, and we hadn't chopped wood for a while so we were excited. She made us crepes in thanks. Marcela and her family are excited for their baptisms, there's a few members of her family who are not quite ready yet, but they're all coming to church and they all did a fast, we're excited for them.

On the other hand, Cristina and Cristofer let us know that they want to distance themselves for a bit so that was a rip.

We did intercambios this week as an entire zone 😳 it was a little complicated to prepare, but it ended up working super well and was pretty fun.

Oh! I've got a cyst in my wrist! Remember when I sprained my wrist like 4 months ago? Well, it still hurt, and they sent me to get a Cat Scan, and it turns out that I've got a cyst in my wrist. I'm not quite sure what that is or what it means, I think I'll have more to say on the subject next week (: 

Update: I've since learned that it was not only a cyst, but a bone split IN HALF and there's also a bone splinter. However, miraculously, the two halves did not drift apart, and so it just kind of... healed. Just like that, I'm good, dont need a brace or anything, and even though it will hurt a little for 2 years, I'll make a full recovery! Miracles.

Puerto Varas Pinball

3/13/23

 On Tuesday morning our zone met up in Puerto Varas to watch transfer news and eat breakfast together. I'm staying in Puerto Varas! I'm super stoked, I have grown to love a lot of the families here. My companion got sent to Punta Arenas (the very south of the world,) and I'm a little worried for him because he was dying of the cold here, up North where it's "warmer", during the summer, and now he's going to be the on the closest land mass to Antarctica during the winter. Prayers for Elder Viloria!!

On Thursday, the transfers happened. Over half of our zone got transferred, so there were a lot of missionaries to send out, and a lot of missionaries to receive. We arrived at 9 In the morning, and from then until 7 we were scrambling around. The office must have felt a little funny organizing everything, because they sent the missionaries coming into the zona to three different bus terminals, or in normal city buses that could arrive at any point in the city🤦‍♂️ missionaries leaving the zone were also leaving from a few different points, and so we spent the day running from terminal to terminal or in the streets looking for missionaries that may have gotten off the bus. The fact the everyone arrived and got home is a huge miracle, this is the Lord's work😂

My new companion is Elder Rolfson from Castlerock, Colorado, and he's a beast. We've hit the ground running and have have some very powerful lessons, it's been fun. Thiare and Paz committed to baptism, and there were 12 people at church😳 Huge miracles. 

Highlights:

- Lunch with Hermana Claudia Jara. She was talking about Zodiac signs the whole time, and trying to convince us that the 12 Zodiac are connected with the 12 tribes of Israel. ♒️🕉♋️ she was flaming me, because I'm Leo, and so obviously I want to be the center of attention because my element is fire. (Or something like that)

- followed very distinct prompting and found the old, inactive young men's leader, Ricardo!

- Some powerful lessons with the Gaete family. Super inactive family that came to church for the first time in years

-Noche de Hogar with the Gorostiaga and Cardenas family. We had amazing Cujen and an amazing conversation about the commandments.

- We asked Barbara Cardenas when she knew she wanted to be baptized, and she told us that she followed the invitation to ask God, and she felt a burning feeling of pure joy in her chest. 

Love y'all! A cool study I had was comparing the story of the brother of Jared and his family preparing to cross the sea to our own life. He was promised that it would be a hard journey, but necessary, and that the challenges could all be overcome if he would act with Faith. In a similar way, when we were in the premortal world, we knew this life would be hard, but that the challenges were necessary for our growth, and we knew that we could have joy and direction if we followed Christ. Mormón 5: 18 compares the fallen nephites to a ship without Sail, anchor, or something to direct them, and so they were tossed to and fro. We are currently in this life, with challenges, and if we do not have a sail, anchor, or compass to guide us, we will be lost. 

I thought about it a while, and realized what the sail, anchor, and compass are for me, and I invite all y'all to do the same🚣‍♂️

Love y'all!