January 21, 2013
Hey family and friends
and everyone!
We are having a great time here in Talca Centro. I mean, the weather is ridiculously hot, I´ve never sweat so much in my life and gone through white shirts so fast. And we are not really teaching anyone at the moment... We have had a lot of really sad things happen this week with investigators just falling away and people not wanting to talk to us or fleeing from the heat to other parts of Chile. So we are kind of having a pretty hard time.
We had been teaching Patricia and her daughter, Alejandra, and they had two assistances at Church. They were great. Golden. She asked us when she could get baptized. And then, out of nowhere, she didn’t want it anymore. We came one day, when I was on a minicambio with Elder Carter. We walked in and she asked if baptism would make her Mormon. We kind of sat there thinking, “Who is this lady and has she not been listening to us this whole time?” But then we told her that baptism would make her a part of the Lord´s church on the earth, basically. She didn’t even listen. She just told us she was Catholic and that she didn’t want to continue. It is SO frustrating. We will be explaining something very, very clearly, thinking she is really feeling the Spirit, and then she will just start talking about how much faith she has and how she is Catholic and how she feels so good with us but doesn’t want to continue. So we are going to leave her alone. Hopefully she will start to realize how much the Gospel has already helped her and decide she wants to listen to us.
Other than that, we have had a slow week. Not many lessons, not many people to teach, none that are coming to Church or progressing. We are employing every way we can to find-- references, door contacts, talking with everyone, part member families, looking for service opportunities. We found one really good lady that accepted a baptismal date but didn’t come to church this week but we will see. She could prepare for February.
We did some service this week, moving all these tejas, basically big curved roof tiles, for this member. We worked for like three hours, and it was exhausting. It’s been an exhausting week. But there have been some really fun stuff too—that’s the good thing with Elder Ulibarri, even though all this super depressing stuff is happening to us, it doesn’t feel as bad because we know we are doing our best, and we are able to just laugh it off, mostly. But it still hurts. It really makes you think about your purpose as a missionary, how dedicated you really are, and what success in the mission really means. I love that quote from John Hammond—“Any people we convert and help baptize are many more than we ever deserve.”
Saturday was fun, too--our lunch fell through, but she gave us money so we went to Centro. We ate pizza, which wasn’t extremely great. Chileans don’t do great pizza. Basically just bread with tomatoes and cheese and ham. But it was fun, and then we got really good icecream, more like gelato. I got pistachio and nutella. That was great; haven’t tasted anything so good in a long, long time. I think something I have learned in the mission will be to never take for granted any small luxury ever again.
Well, that’s really all that is going on here. I hope Duke is going well for all those that are out there. Elder Ulibarri is a big Flight of the Conchords fan-- our theme song this week has been Brett, You’ve Got It Goin’ On. Takes me back to lots of good times with Carson and Thomas! I was thinking about multivariable calc and o-chem this week—don’t remember anything. Good thing I took notes.
Well, that’s about it. Have a great week and keep praying for us here.
Zach
We are having a great time here in Talca Centro. I mean, the weather is ridiculously hot, I´ve never sweat so much in my life and gone through white shirts so fast. And we are not really teaching anyone at the moment... We have had a lot of really sad things happen this week with investigators just falling away and people not wanting to talk to us or fleeing from the heat to other parts of Chile. So we are kind of having a pretty hard time.
We had been teaching Patricia and her daughter, Alejandra, and they had two assistances at Church. They were great. Golden. She asked us when she could get baptized. And then, out of nowhere, she didn’t want it anymore. We came one day, when I was on a minicambio with Elder Carter. We walked in and she asked if baptism would make her Mormon. We kind of sat there thinking, “Who is this lady and has she not been listening to us this whole time?” But then we told her that baptism would make her a part of the Lord´s church on the earth, basically. She didn’t even listen. She just told us she was Catholic and that she didn’t want to continue. It is SO frustrating. We will be explaining something very, very clearly, thinking she is really feeling the Spirit, and then she will just start talking about how much faith she has and how she is Catholic and how she feels so good with us but doesn’t want to continue. So we are going to leave her alone. Hopefully she will start to realize how much the Gospel has already helped her and decide she wants to listen to us.
Other than that, we have had a slow week. Not many lessons, not many people to teach, none that are coming to Church or progressing. We are employing every way we can to find-- references, door contacts, talking with everyone, part member families, looking for service opportunities. We found one really good lady that accepted a baptismal date but didn’t come to church this week but we will see. She could prepare for February.
We did some service this week, moving all these tejas, basically big curved roof tiles, for this member. We worked for like three hours, and it was exhausting. It’s been an exhausting week. But there have been some really fun stuff too—that’s the good thing with Elder Ulibarri, even though all this super depressing stuff is happening to us, it doesn’t feel as bad because we know we are doing our best, and we are able to just laugh it off, mostly. But it still hurts. It really makes you think about your purpose as a missionary, how dedicated you really are, and what success in the mission really means. I love that quote from John Hammond—“Any people we convert and help baptize are many more than we ever deserve.”
Saturday was fun, too--our lunch fell through, but she gave us money so we went to Centro. We ate pizza, which wasn’t extremely great. Chileans don’t do great pizza. Basically just bread with tomatoes and cheese and ham. But it was fun, and then we got really good icecream, more like gelato. I got pistachio and nutella. That was great; haven’t tasted anything so good in a long, long time. I think something I have learned in the mission will be to never take for granted any small luxury ever again.
Well, that’s really all that is going on here. I hope Duke is going well for all those that are out there. Elder Ulibarri is a big Flight of the Conchords fan-- our theme song this week has been Brett, You’ve Got It Goin’ On. Takes me back to lots of good times with Carson and Thomas! I was thinking about multivariable calc and o-chem this week—don’t remember anything. Good thing I took notes.
Well, that’s about it. Have a great week and keep praying for us here.
Zach
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