March 18, 2013

Hey Folks, 

We have been having a great week here. Well, honestly, pretty mediocre, but the greatness of the last couple weeks are keeping us through. We are working hard teaching Julian and his great family. They have three daughters, two who are 14 and 15 and are actually willing to listen and go to church (which is rare in Chile), and Fernandita who is 2 and just the greatest. Ever. I’ll snag a picture this week with them. We are also teaching the mother of Fabian and Mitzi, the young couple in our ward whose baby recently died. She doesn’t understand a ton but we are trying to teach her really clearly so that she will be ready for her baptism Saturday and be able to really progress in the gospel! We have also been really focusing on Nora. More about her later. This week we also found Cyntia, who is 14 and a friend of a family in the ward. We weren’t sure if she was really that interested or just felt obligated by this family but then we went and taught her in her own house with her mom and they could quite possibly be golden. We will just have to see.

We had interviews with President this week--President just basically told me we are doing great, try to fix your shower that is terrible, and then we talked about Duke and basketball for pretty much the rest of the time. Not sure if that meant that he has given up on me or if he was just tired or if he just wanted to talk basketball--probably a mix of all three. Also, on Wednesday, I am going on a minicambio with one of the assistants, kind of nervous about that. He is a Chilean and no one is really sure if he is actually human. But I´ll just do what I do best, which is basically just talk to lots of Chileans and try to act interested in their earthquake stories and then try to share the gospel with them, and then, sometimes after that, they and the Spirit change their lives. That would be ideal.

Now about Nora and Pablo. Pablo is a convert of about 1 year and is super funny, but a crazy, little, old guy. Reminds me of one of the vultures from Jungle book. He makes us yummy food, though, and is a fun little friend. But his neighbor, Nora, he asked us to go visit. He really insisted with her, even though he never comes to church either and has Word of Wisdom problems, and so we started sharing with her. The first time we went, she was SUPER depressed and closed with us, but with the Spirit and some inspired teachings she started opening up; now she is getting ready for baptism. She is a little manic depressive, a little suicidal. Kind of scary. We have been leaving her with church videos to watch--she is watching the Doctrine and Covenants seminary videos this week. So she is going to learn a lot of random stuff, I guess. Pablo is spending lots of time with her, and we pass by daily, and she was a lot better after coming to church yesterday!  But she has been smoking about 40 cigarettes every day for the past ten years. And yesterday she only smoked five. She is super happy and is just completely changing her life. She loves church, loves reading, loves praying. Actually, the hardest part is the guy that’s already a member, Pablo, because he offers her his cigarettes and booze. Crazy goon. Gonna go talk to him about it tonight with Nestor.

So that’s about it for this week. Tell the Glaziers their cousin is doing great--apparently her second day here or something in four contacts they taught four lessons--apparently she is doing something right. Have a great week! Say hi to Allie for me, and my boys Thomas "the tinker" Fitzpatrick and Carsen "hairy man" Barnes.

Love yáll
Elder "now you see him, now you don’t" Brown