August 23, 2010

*Note from mom: He made me laugh with the pouty "his flag is bigger" pic! The story is that he asked me to send him a small American flag for his wall. I sent exactly what he asked for, but this guy's is way bigger.

Dear Mommy,

Getting back into school already? Wow, I feel like just yesterday you were telling me how happy you all were to be leaving school and getting into vacations. I guess time passes by faster when you're not actually around to see everything happen, right? Glad to hear you all enjoyed the summer, though. It's actually been really warm here for the past 2 weeks. Yesterday it rained a bit, but nothing to complain about. When it rains here, though, it RAINS. Curanilahue turns into a giant puddle when it rains...or really all of Chile does. Los Angeles isn't quite as close to the coast, though, so it doesn't reain as much here. It's basically the same as Cabrero (climate-wise) so I won't have to adjust too much.

Well my first week as a zone leader was great. My companion Elder Hall was pretty trunky when I got there, so I took him out to work, resurrected him, and squeezed every last bit of juice out of him that I could, haha. He's really happy to have finished his mission strong - we had people with us in church and 3 baptismal dates. This sector hasn't had baptismal dates for about 6 weeks, so that was pretty cool. The members here are awesome! They pretty much just throw references at us, haha. This last week they gave us 14 references! That has never happened in any of my sectors before! Elder Hall said that they had never done that until I got here, so maybe they just like me, haha. But references are so much better to work with because they already have friends inside of the church. Elder Hall will be leaving for Concepción with another elder that's going home tomorrow, so I'll be with my new companion Elder Heiser, who is from Colorado. We've got some great ideas for the zone and will be working really hard to help everyone have success this cambio. This last weekend the zone had 3 baptisms and we've got 2 more for this week, looks like about 4 or 5 for the next week, and more coming. Just trying to do what President Swenson told me to do - ''Have the zone put goals, and hold them to those goals. Light it up.'' It's been a great experience so far and I have a little over 10 months left to get better at being a zone leader so I'm really excited to continue learning and participating in the Lord's work.

Heading Home

Saying goodbye to Fabiola and family

Saying goodbye to the Chamblás family

Here's a fun story for the week:

So there was this lady hanging around the bus terminal in Los Angeles the day of transfers (the zone leaders have to stay and wait until everyone has their companions and then we can go back to our sectors) that was just bugging the missionaries to death. She gave elders the finger as they were heading off on buses, tried to rob the monopoly cards we had, and even tried to grab a few suitcases hahaha. She was there from about 9 in the morning and was still there with a suitcase at about 3 in the afternoon, ticket in-hand. I don't think she ended up going anywhere, she just wanted to bug all the missionaries. People are fun, right?

Let's see...anything else for this week...Elder Kamalu is a district leader in my zone, and we're living in the same house, so that's actually pretty fun. It's kind of like the MTC over again, haha. He was my district leader and I was his zone leader and we were roommates. Deajavouuu....or however those crazy french spell their words.

Well, I believe that'll be it for this week. Nothing else really comes to mind. I'll go get some of those pictures attached now. I love and miss you very much!

Burning the 1st-year shirt

Love,
Trevor