Hey everyone! Everything is fine here as far as the earthquake. It really wasnt too stong where I am since we are so far away but it still shook us around a little bit. We were doing contacts and I had to grab a limb from a tree to keep balance but it really wasnt too bad. Its worse in a house when you can see tons of stuff moving around! But everything is fine and its was pretty fun!
These past few weeks were the ¨trunky¨ days of the year for a missionary. (Trunky means you think about home a lot!) But, it wasnt bad at all. We took it easy Christmas morning, talked to the family and I loved it! For new years we had a family home evening with the elders qourum president and his wife and went to a few other members homes. We had our P-days on the Saturdays these past two weeks and Mondays we worked regularly.
Yesterday another Elder from the ward left. Hes headed to Peru! (Chile and Peru dont like each other too much.) His mom washes our clothes and she is extremely nice and is always worried if we have eaten enough and are doing ok with everything. Shes been doing it for more than 20 years! So, Javier, the son, has been raised with the mindset for a mission and he is really prepared. Its tough for us that all the willing young men are leaving on missions from the ward because we wont have them here to help us, but they are going to do great and going on their own mission is more important! There are 3 more leaving in the next 4 months!
We are working a lot with less actives here. There were tons of people that got baptized when the church was new here in Chile to where the missionaries would have an average of 40 baptisms a month! Sometimes people would just get baptized because everyone else was doing it. They would walk up to the missionaries and ask what they had to do to get baptized! So, the retention rate isnt too good and we are going through the ward list and trying to contact everybody. We havent seen results yet but we have a few return appointments with incomplete families for this week, so we will see what happens!
I attached a bunch of pictures because I havent sent any for awhile. A few are from when I said my goodbyes in Chiguayante with the ward mission leader, elders qourum president and his family, and a convert and her mom that will get baptized once she gets married. A few others are from Jonathans baptism and others are with Javier and his nephews.
Love yall! Chao!
Elder Gregory
