End of February- 2.28.11

This week went great! The whole week we did splits with some youth of the ward and they helped us a lot. My companion is really laid back and we get work done effectively without stressing over numbers or anything. Hes going to finish up his mission in less than three months so he will probably finish up in Los Volcanes. Its also awesome to be able to speak in English during the day again with my companion too!

We are starting a program with families in the ward. Its a four week program and we took it from the dream of Lehi in the Book of Mormon. The iron rod (word of God) leads through darkness to the tree of life. So, we left scriptures with them to read everyday as a family and pray after. There is a goal every week and the first week is just to complete with the scriptures and prayers everyday. The second week, there are more scriptures and the goal is to do service. The thrid week, more scriptures and the goal is to share with a family for their needs. The fourth week, bring a less active family to church or get a refrence for the missionaries! We started with almost fifteen families this past week and we have a list of 15+ more. So, we are pretty excited about that because every missionary knows that working through the members is soo much more effective than knocking on doors (or yelling, here in Chile)!

I didnt tell anybody pretty much about my birthday! Its honestly not a huge deal to me and its just unneeded attention. But, some people had remembered from when they asked me weeks before so investigators, more than members, all wished me a happy birthday. One of our investigators had a cake for me and bought a tie for me! That was awesome. Its crazy to think that I am 20 but even crazier to think that I am 10 1/2 months through the mission! But thank you for all the birthday wishes! I obviously appreciate it a lot!

Luis got confirmed yesterday and I did the confirmation, which was a first for me! His sister has gone to church 4 times and goes to all the activities but their mom still doesnt want to give her permission to get baptized. Elizabeth and Victor, the couple we have been teaching, went to church again and I was really happy. They arent progressing according to numbers, since they dont have a baptismal date, but are really progressing spiritually. Victor would never pray in his old church but now does it almost every time we share with him! Elizabeth has been getting long visits from her Baptist pastor of how wrong she is by sharing with us and going to church. But, she is staying strong and has felt that the Book of Mormon and the church is true so that is all she has to tell him!

Thats it! Love yall!

Elder Gregory

Pictures this week- 2/21/11

Hey yall! Ill give a quick update but more than anything, Im just going to send some pictures this week.

Luis got baptized yesterday! His mom gave him permission a few days ago. We did the baptism after stake conference. Elder D. Todd Christoferson and President Packer spoke, from the states of course and we watched it through satelite, and it was directed at all of southern Chile. Elder Christoferson spoke in spanish and he speaks really well. They spoke on two things that Chile really needs to hear- the importance of young men serving missions and the law of chastity. I enjoyed it because they didnt beat around the bush and adressed the topics right on. A seventy and the president of the young women spoke also. At one point they said, ¨Is it okay to have sex before marriage.. NO!!¨ I dont think you can get more direct than that!

We have cambios, or transfers, tomorrow and my companion is headed out. An elder named Elder Horton is coming to be my companioin here in Los Volcanes. Ive heard good things about him and I hear he has a laid back personality so we will get along good.

Thats about it! Love yall!

Elder Gregory

February 14, 2011

Weve been feeling a few temblors the past few days! I still havent felt a really strong one but its fun to feel the ground shake every once in awhile. Last Friday we were walking and a man stopped Elder Gil and I to tell us that there was a temblor. We stopped walking, looked up, and a sign with a steel pole was shaking back and froth! Everyone says it was a 7.0 in Concepcion so I guess it was a pretty strong one.

Something really funny and awesome happend last Thursday. I did a mini cambio and stayed in my sector with Elder Hafen, an Elder that works in a branch of 15 +/- assistance named Yungay. We were told to fill up the baptismal font in the church in the afternoon for a baptism for a lady that was coming from another mission to be baptized where her family lives. So, thats what we did because that was our only job! We taught an investigator while it was filling up and everything was going fine. Then, the whole family got there. The started asking me, ¨Where is the white tunic? Who is going to baptize her? Where is the councilor of the bishopric? Who is going to say the prayers and give the messages?¨ I was surprised because I thought that it all had been taken care of! Elder Hafen and I went into problem-solving mode and when it was all said and done, Elder Hafen conducted, we got a councilor of the bishopric to come, we got ahold of a tunic, I baptized Maria Paz, and it all worked out! The few times that I have baptized, its been amazing! I had met her an hour before baptizing her but its so amazing, when I have the opportunity to baptize, to see them come out of the water with a pure look in their eyes!

Something else happend that was really, really special this past week. Its a little more personal that emails in the past but I want to share it with yall. On wednesday (Im going backward in the week with my stories but oh well!) we had a lesson where the Spirit was felt really strong. We have an investigator that lives really close to a member that just left on his mission to Peru last month, so thats how we got things going with her since he was a wonderful example. She loves it when we teach her because she feels something ¨different¨, which is the Holy Ghost! We got the lessong going and we got to a point to where we had to tell her that her baptism wasnt valid from the church she was baptized in because they didnt have the authority to do it. It really hurt her and she started tearing up. She kept saying that she was a bad person and would not go to our church because she wasnt worthy. At one point she said, ¨Im not important¨ and rambled on. That stuck with me. The next time I spoke I declared to her that she IS important because she is a daughter of God. She kept shaking her head no and burst into tears again. My companion did a great job teaching, I tried to do my part, and the Spirit testified very strongly. In the end, we couldnt get a firm commitment out of her to go to chruch, but we did the best we could. The rest of the week we werent able to get ahold of her because of her work schedule. But, yesterday at church Elder Gil and I were greeting everyone at the door like we always do. I see her come up and say to me, ¨You didnt expect to see me here, did you? Here I am!¨ She came with her husband and two children and they were all dressed up nice in church dress and everything! It was their first time and they stayed all 3 hours at church and said they loved it! The Holy Ghost really is the key to everything in the mission work!

Thats it for the week! Love yall!

Elder Gregory

la semana pasada- 2/7/11

This last week was good. Well, its always good! But, we were fortunate to find some new investigators. I kept in the house monday night to keep from the sun but was working for the rest of the week. My face is doing a whole lot better and doesnt hurt at all so everything is good there!

We are still working with Luis a lot so that he can get permission from his mom to be baptized. Now, his twelve year old sister is listening and she even went to church with Luis yesterday. Luis is amazing. He is better than some members with keeping commitments and even knowledge of the gospel sometimes! Speaking of members, the two councilers to the bishop were released yesterday and two more called. I think its a great change because the young men need a solid young men´s president (the one now doesnt even go to church!) and one of the councilers that were released will likely be called to that. The youth really need great leaders and it makes me grateful for the amazing ones that I had growing up. It makes such a huge difference!

I think I wrote something a few weeks back about how hard it is to drop investigators that wont keep their commitments. We had to do it again this week and it really feels like a dagger through the heart. Im glad my companion is brutally honest most of the time because he knows when and when not to drop investigators. He is a lot better than me in that area. If it was just up to me without council from my companion and leaders in the mission, I would keep them around and try to help them over and over. But, we cant do that because there really are other people that the Lord has prepared that are willing to keep their commitments that we have to use our time to find and help.

Something funny that Ill end the email with is something that happend a few days ago. We were walking down a street and to our left, there was a mom with her 2 +/- year old son that came out the front door to be with her. She was cleaning and she looked back at him and started freaking out! She started yelling, ¨NOOOOOOOOOO!! WHAT DID YOU DO?!!!¨ She hit her son and he started to cry too. Elder Gil and I were a few steps away from the house by then but we stopped and looked at each other. We were thinking that he ate something that was poisonous or a cleaning product of something. The lady got up on the fence and started yelling,¨ HELP ME!!!!¨ It really was like the second coming! She was yelling at the top of her lungs and the neigbors started to come out. We sprinted back and asked what was wrong. She told us crying, ¨THE KEYS ARE INSIDE THE HOUSE AND IM LOCKED OUT!!!!¨ The boy had closed the door on the way out to be with his mom. Elder Gil and I looked at each other and laughed. Elder Gil climbed on top of the roof and went around the back to enter the back door and unlock it from inside. She kept crying even after and Elder Gil and I just left after and we started cracking up!

Thats about it for the week. Love yall and chao!

Elder Gregory

Weekly email- 1/31/11

Hey everyone! Things are going good here!

Luis, the amazing investigator, didnt get baptized yesterday. His mom wont let him. We are working real hard to find any way to get her to let him get baptized. We spoke with her for an hour the other day and adressed all of her worries and complaints. At the end, she still didnt let him and didnt give a reason. We are going to work hard and Luis is amazing so he will get baptized, just depends on when!

We have been doing tons of contacts lately. So, as a result, my face got burned really bad. It really looks like someone took a cup of boiling hot water and threw it on my face! We are headed to the doctor a little bit later though. Hopefully I dont have to stay in the house too long to keep away from the sun!

Everyone is headed out on vacations. Its hard to jump around to different investigators and work around their schedules and vacations. We did a Family Home Evening Saturday night with some members at the church and it went well. We spoke about the Book of Mormon and played some games. Our ward mission leader made a crossword puzzle and they did that and then we played a game where we act out stories from the scriptures. It was fun!

Thats it for this week! Love yall!

Elder Gregory

17 Enero, 2011

How are yall doing? Im relieved this week is over. It was a rough one, but we had a baptism!

The weeks before this one we had been finding a lot of investigators using a list of less actives, because there are tons! But, this last week we lost almost all of our investigators! One mom filled an investigator´s head with lies and now he isnt interested. Another family that we found of five doesnt even want to talk to us and avoids us. Another family tried hiding when we yelled (we yell ¨aloo¨ and we dont knock because there are fences) and they yelled ¨nobody´s home!¨ So, its been kind of rough but, atleast we are doing our part! Honestly, there are some people that I have met here on the mission that the Savior himself wouldnt be able to teach. I told my companion that it would be awesome to see the final judgement of some of these people that yell at us and shut their mind off to what we are trying to share because of false traditions and following what their preachers at their churches tell them to do and say. He told me that would be nice, but that is bad to think that on our part. We should desire their salvation, not seeing them before the Lord feeling guilty for their sins. So, I appreciated that a lot. Oh well, our job is to preach the Gospel and whoever wants salvation will listen and act on it!

But like I said, we had a baptism! Elder Gil baptized Monica, an investigator who we had been waiting to baptize until she got married, and I baptized the 8 year old son. He was a baptism for the ward because his Dad is a member. Jose Luis, the boy, is pretty crazy and was scared a little bit before the baptism so I had to guide him into the font for the baptism. Monica had been a member of the ward pretty much, but just needed to get baptized!

So, with the stressful, hard, and tiring week, it atleast ended in a baptism on Sunday! Oh speaking of Sunday, Elder Gil gave a talk and dropped a lot of hammers on the members. (Hes really good about being brutely honest.) He spoke on a commandment that the ward needed to hear- the day of rest. Almost nobody keeps the sabbath day holy here. It was really surprising to me when I got to Chile that we dont only have to worry about finding people to teach, teaching them, and guiding them to baptism... but get the members in line too! The church is a lot newer here than the states so maybe thats a reason. Who knows!

Thats about it for the week. Im really excited to just talk to a bunch of people this next week and find new people to teach. It hurts dropping people and seeing them make the wrong decision but now I can feel a little bit of how Our Heavenly Father feels when his children sin. The mission has taught me so many things! Im so grateful to be here!

Love yall!
Elder Gregory

Hola-po (January 10, 2011)

Hey! Today was cambios but my companion and I are staying where we are. Its good because we have seen a lot of good things happen here these past six weeks and we want to continue with it!

We were talking to a lady on Jonathan´s street that lives across and she was commenting on how much he has changed. It really makes me happy to hear of how the Gospel really does change people for the better. She says he is really pleasent to talk to now and he cut his hair. (All the flites here have a stripe down the center of the back of their head that is longer than the rest.) So, he has really cleaned up and now he is sharing the Gospel with his friends and trying to invite them all to church. He slpet in so he didnt come to church yesterday and was going to recieve the priesthood, but we have to keep him animated because he lives in a rough part so he could fall back easily! We are working with his sister and she is on track to get baptized in a few weeks!

We have been sharing with another teenager too, Luis. He told us that he stays alone in his house a lot and just reads and meditates. So, he doesnt have too many friends but is really nice. We shared about the Book of Mormon and gave him one this past week. We came back to share two or three days later and he had already read up to 1 Nephi 14, including all of the testimonies at the beginning! He was cross referencing it with the Bible and had some questions for us. He asked us the questions, we would answer them, he would cross them off and understand completely fine. We walked with him to church and he said he really enjoyed it. We went with him to second hour and someone was talking about members sharing with friends. Someone said that all members need to share with their friends because, ¨if you dont have friends, your the last of the last!¨ That was a dagger for Luis but everything ended up fine. We smoothed it out and he didnt end up offended.

We have found some other people this past week too including a mom and two sons that moved into our sector recently. The mom and a son were baptized a few years ago but the other son is now old enough to get baptized so they are going to go to church again and he is going to get baptized!

Well, I guess I just talked about the investigators this email but I love them! Ive been working really hard to develop a love for Heavenly Father´s children and show it more. I think it all starts from there and the rest just falls in to place.

Love yall!
Chao!

Jan 3, 2011

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

December 13th

This week was a good week. I feel like I worked my brains out by learning Spanish the last week that Im sort of mentally tired but, thats what P days are for! We dont always rest physically on P days (because we play sports sometimes) but we always rest mentally, and that helps a lot.

Last friday we had mission conference in Concepcion for the inside. The mission is split into two halves, the inside and the outside. The inside is Concepcion and the surrounding cities and the outside ranges from 2 hours to 6 hours aways from Concepcion. Im still on the ¨inside¨ and my whole district from the MTC is on the inside, so I was able to see everyone! I was really excited about that because Im pretty close with a few of them. My first companion in the mission field, Elder Davis, gave his final testimony because he is leaving in February and also Elder Lopez, my zone leader for 18 weeks. They are both awesome so I talked with them for a bit and with other missionaries. Im getting to that point where I know a lot of Elders in the mission because around the year mark, you know almost everyone. After the year mark, people go home that you know and tons of new Elders come in. So, I enjoyed conference a lot. President Humphrey, Sister Humphrey, and the assistants spoke to us on different topics. I really enjoyed what the assistant taught especially. They taught us ¨The Vision¨, which is what we are supossed to teach as we are guided by the Spirit. They basically told us that we are to teach that God is Our Heavenly Father and that Jesus Christ, through the Atonement, is our Savior first and if they dont understand that, then we cant move on because they arent going to know or realize the importance of the Restoration, Plan of Salvation, Doctrine of Christ or anything like that. The assistants that we have now are really good. They arent number pushers like some assistants can be, they just want us to do our best and reach our potential and thats really what its about.

There were two baptisms yesterday. The missionary that I replaced in the sector, Elder Dastrup (who is from my group that came to Chile), came to baptize one of them. When I got to the sector, they were already golden and ready to go for baptism. Baptisms are always really special because you can always see the joy in the convert after they are baptized. Last Tuesday, we attended a setting apart from someone in the ward who is headed to Argentina. It reminded me of mine 8 months ago and how special it is!

I love yall! We are working hard and I love talking to people about the Gospel, that I love!

Chao!

Elder Gregory

First post in Chillan! (12.6.10)

Things are going great! I love the ward, the investigators, and my companion is awesome! Sometimes its easy to get sector trunky (to miss your last sector) the week after changing, but things are amazing here so Im not trunky at all!

Im replacing one of my friends from the MTC and he left a lot of really good investigators. The ward is great and really friendly. Yesterday was fast and testimony meeting and it was a lot of testimonies of people saying bye to a future elder who is leaving tomorrow for his mission! He lives right down the street from us and he is a really good person with a smile always on his face. Its awesome to have a good, LDS family a few houses away from where we live. I introduced myself in sacrament and I could just remember 6 months ago when I arrived in Chile and how petrified I was to do it in my first ward! Its nice to have a fresh start and bring what I learned from my last sector and apply it to my new sector.

My companion is awesome. He doesnt know any English so its spanish all day, everyday. I have probably learned more spanish in this past week than I had learned in the six weeks before. Its all about filling up my agenda each day with words that I hear that I have to look up the meaning to once we get to the house, asking my companion questions, having him correct me, and my grammer book! Im starting to break out of that missionary vocabulary and be able to speak about other topics and it feels great! My companion is really patient with me and he cracks me up. Hes really friendly with everybody and can find something to talk about with everyone and make them laugh. Its hard to explain why, but its different living with a latino but like I said, I enjoy it! For example, Ive been snoring lately a little bit so in the middle of the night I got a few wacks with a pillow! I asked him what was up in the morning and apoligized for snoring and he just laughed about it and wasnt mad at all. It cracks me up how forward he is and how easy going and forgiving he is too.

The sector that I am in is a little ¨flite¨ as they say here. (That is a name for the gangsters here and it comes from the kind of shoe, nike flights!) I really havent seen too much but its known throughout the mission as one of the more dangerous sectors, I guess. We saw a fight outside the church one day with a guy with a 2 by 4, wacking someone who was curled up in a ball against a fence. They got up and the guy getting beat up ran away but its really nothing to be worried about because they dont mess with us at all. The Lord promised us safety as long as we are worthy and follow the guidance of the Spirit so there is nothing to worry about even for a second!

If I havent showed it, I really am enjoying my new sector! Im learning a lot and I feel like we are doing some really good work.

I love yall!

Elder Gregory