Friday was my official welcome to chile day!!! so first in the morning i was doing my scripture study and i looked up out the window and a house in our ward about 5 blocks away was on fire!!!!!! then all of our plans and lessons fell through one after another so we walked for about 4 hours straight with no lessons. then while we were contacting some houses a guy stopped us and told us to come over to his house so we did and told him who we are and what we are doing and he said come in lets talk about Jesus! Right then my companion and I looked at eachother and smiled! the people of chile never invite you in unless they are ward members. so we went in and it turned into us listening to him. then we asked if we could share a message about our gospel and why we are serving missions and he told us that its more important to listen than to talk so we needed to listen... that made me chuckle a bit! then at the end he told us about his marajuana (sorry don't know how to spell that) and we aren't aloud to be in a house with marajuana and we had been there listening for about 1 hr and 45 minutes so we left him with a few words and a pamphlet and will continue to pray about what we should do with him! then we went to teach an investigator named oscar and when we got there he was fighting with his sister they are like 40 and 45 and he said not tonight and just left... so we knocked on a few more doors and went back to the house. then while we were planning we heard a ton of gun shots about 10 blocks away in our sector and the next day found out there was a gang fight with 42 gun shots fired and they think one man was killed but the police have tried to stay out of it so their is no official report, so we don't know for sure... yeah WOW what a crazy day and mom don't worry im fine and just remember the promise that the lord made to the sons of mosiah!!
Saturday we had two pretty big service projects that took up most of the day and that was really good then we taught oscar and we ran into a lady that we think we can really help that seems to be very receptive of the gospel so we are excited about her!!!
Sunday i gave a 5 minute talk to introduce myself and help get the ward excited about missionary work and it was really awesome even though my spanish wasn't very good i bore my testimony and after a lady in the ward told me that she thinks the world needs more young people like me and it was the sweetest thing ever!! and no i didn't understand that all at first my companion helped translate for me!!! then i attended meetings for a long time then we had lunch at 4 and went and taught 4 lessons that night!!
Monday we had my first zone and district meetings and they were both good but in spanish and hard for me to understand!! then we went and had lunch and taught all that night!!!!
tuesday we taught a teenager in the ward english in the morning and gave his 90 year old grandma a blessing then we went to a zone practice to practice our play for the stake primary and i got assigned the rold of John Taylor which is the only speaking part for an elder and i am the only one who doesn't speak fluent spanish in our zone... but im still way excited for that i think they will laugh at me a lot!!!! then that night we taught francisco and i extended my first baptismal invitation and he said if he recieved an answer he would get baptized!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i know if he does the things we have asked him to do he will recieve an answer because the lord always keeps his commitments!!!!!
Here on the mission i have found a new love for the scriptures every morning i read 5 chapters in the BOM but then i have so much more to study i have to stop... but i have never had a desire like this i absolutely love it!!!!! my spiritual message comes from mosiah 24:15 when the people of alma were righteous but were still overcome by the lamanites and alma promises them that they must remain faithful to the lord and he will deliver them! and it says that they prayed and the lord stregthened their backs that they could cary their burdens and overcome their trials and then it says they waited with patience and cheerfulness.
we have trials and hardships every day and not only is it important to have faith in the lord but it is important to wait with patience and cheerfullness! i am learning how important it is to be postitive always here on my mission. some missionaries seem so bummed and grumpy sometimes and it just makes the work so much harder... the power of a smile is really special!!!
Love Elder Groen because he loves you!!!! that sounds kind of funny!!
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