January 17, 2011

Heyo familyo!

How's that cold treating you up there? It's hot down here today, but all weekend it rained. Saturday night was the worst - it was raining really hard and I woke up at about 2 in the morning because some cats were...making little kittens outside of our window. And if you're not familiar with that sound it sounds like someone is torturing them. So that woke me up and then they just kept at it and at it for what seemed like an eternity and the next thing I knew it was 7 and time to get up. All day yesterday I felt really sick, so we arranged some splits and I stayed at a members house all day and slept while Elder Sanchez went out and worked with a young man from the ward. Stupid cats! This morning was great though - we played a game of soccer against our rival zone - Temuco Ñielol. We lost by one, but only because they brought members who play in soccer clubs and we were only our 85% gringo zone, haha. That's ok though, we had a good time. We even made a flag (pictures to be included)!

Temuco Cautín soccer Flag

The work is moving along amazingly here in Maquehue and our zone. This last weekend a boy named Robinson got baptized, and we finally got his father to come back to church! And on top of that he (the dad) brought his girlfriend to the church and she ended up being really receptive and wants us to come over and teach her more. So we're happy to be seeing fruits of that. Maikel's family also came to church and loved it! His mother, Gladys, and his little brother, Sebastian, have already said that they would like to be baptized by Maikel - he was ordained to the office of a priest yesterday :). It'll be really cool to see a convert baptize his family. I really hope President Swenson keeps me here another cambio so that I can be here to see all of the cool things that will be going down in the next couple of years. We're also reactivating two mothers who want to return to the church and baptize their children from ages 8-14. So we're happy to be helping them with that. Mario and Jimena are getting closer and closer to being able to be getting married and baptized! By the end of this month Jimena should have all the papers necessary to go to the judge and file the divorce - supposing that there are no objections from the ex-husband the divorce should be finalized in about a month. Jimena doesn't think there will be any problems - yes!!!! Oh yeah!!! FREDDY IS GOING TO THE TEMPLE TO BE SEALED TO HIS FAMILY THIS WEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you don't remember he's the man who got baptized at the waterfall. I love him and his family so much - I can't explain how happy it makes me that they're finally going to the temple! He's definitely going to be a stake president someday.

Robinson's baptism

Ok, so I was reading more of the General Conference talks this week and was very impressed by the talk Elder Neil Andersen gave: Never Leave Him. It talks about how we can stay close to our Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ and the danger signs of ''offended'' and ''ashamed''. I encourage you all to read it - I hope it can help you in the way it has helped me. I love the word ''choose''. Our Father in Heaven gave us the ability to make our own decisions in this life. That includes how we react to problems we meet in the course of our lives. This talk is very inspiring and uplifting - read it!

What's this talk about the tabernacle burning? I hadn't heard anything about that. I just checked it out on youtube....wow. That's crazy. Maybe it's the Lord's way of saying His tabernacle needs an elevator *dun dun CHEEE*. No use in crying over spilt milk, right?

This coming week we're going to try to organize a zone trip to the Llaima volcano. It's about an hour away from Cunco, which is about an hour away from Padre las Casas, which is about 15 minutes away from Temuco, which is about 4 hours away from Concepción in bus, which is about an hour and a half away from Santiago in plane, which is about 13 hours away from Salt Lake in plane, which is about 45 minutes away from home in car. So really we're only going to be about 20 hours away from each other! Not so much, huh? Hahaha. If we end up going I'll be sure to take lots of pictures.

Well, I'm just about out of time for this week. Thank you for all the updates! I'm still waiting for letters from the rest of the family, btw! Love and miss you all very much!

18 months

Temuco from Padre las Casas

Love,

Trevor