cambios!

Yeah so basically nothing happened with the cambios this time around. Elder Ritchie and I are staying together one more time and at the end of this cambio we are both going to have like 6 months in this sector and we will have to see whats going to happen next time. I'm pretty pleased because it means I don't have to pack a suitcase. Also, Elder Ritchie is super awesome so that will be pretty fun. 

This week was good. We only got evacuated once this week and it was for a lame reason of smoke that really didn't appear to be present. But besides that it was a normal week. There are still quite a few fires yeah but for the most part, with the planes that they have received from other countries, it has been a lot easier for them now. We did do one service this week which was unloading a bunch of supplies from a truck that came from the north of Chile to help people that lost their houses and stuff. It was pretty cool and fun. We were unloading and sorting a bunch of water, clothes, food and just like everyday supplies to help. It was really fun actually. There were a few houses that got burned down in Penco but for the most part all of it was safe and they were able to stop the fires. But we did have other missionaries in our house a few days during the week because they were evacuated. That was fun. Its a lot more fun to have 4 missionaries in a house than just 2.

Marcelo is awesome but its super hard to have lessons with him so we have been struggling to get him to truly progress. We are working with him, a kid named sebastian, and another guy named Cesar, and a lady named Elba. We had Elba at Church yesterday. Shes a super nice old lady and she said she liked it. I'm not sure though if shes gonna keep going though just because she cant really walk super well and I think that the ward would stop going to pick her up in a car as soon as I left. We are gonna have to see though. But that's about it. Have a good week!

This mission is on fire!

This week was actually way different and super fun at the same time. You might already know about it, but here in Chile there are fires going on right now, which put together are the biggest wildfire in World history. It started close to us on Wednesday after we came out of a worldwide training broadcast that was really good. But we came out and there was a huge cloud of smoke pretty close to the stake center but it wasnt too close to our sector so we just went back and started to work but we kind of realized how crazy it was when we saw that there were three fires close by and it was seriously raining ashes. Thursday morning, they called us and said that they were going to evacuate us because the smoke wasnt safe. They told us to go to the office so we packed a few days worth of clothes and left. We were there with our assistants to the president and other missionaries living there for like three whole days almost. We received some statistics Friday night after being there all day. In total, there were 142 wildfires burning, about ten of them were under control. More than half of those fires had been started my humans on purpose as well. They had put parts of the country under marshall law. Our president couldnt come to the office because he was stuck in another city and the freeway was burning and closed. It was a real serious situation. In those three days, I got really good at ping pong again, taught myself a little more of how to play piano, and re learned guitar a little bit. It was fun but kind of boring as well. We had to sleep there both nights and that really sucked. My back hurt so bad each morning. So yeah it was pretty exciting for a while but im glad to be back in my sector working.

Also, on Tuesday, we received and investigator from another sector that is super good. His name is Marcelo and he showed up to church in another sector on his own and has now been going there for like two months without knowing that he lived inside of our ward. We are hoping to be able to put him with a baptismal date this week which would be super awesome. We taught him a super good lesson about a testimony and how can can gain his own. That was a pretty awesome miracle. Hope you all have a good week though!

Elder Parker

Oops...Wrong church

This week was alright. With the summer vacations here it has been super difficult to have constant communication with our investigators and help them to progress. This week we had a lesson with Pedro and he told us that he would only accept a sign from God telling him that he needs to be baptized. He said that he did it for Joseph Smith so why not for him. It was a really frustrating lesson. We also had a lesson with a really strange guy who says he believes in the bible but obviously doesn't understand it because he believes in a whole bunch of weird things that it never mentions in the bible. It was entertaining because we were able to basically prove him wrong with like 5 questions during the entire lesson. He got frustrated and didn't like it. Monday though we found a lady who was super good. She accepted baptism and to go to church super easily and understood everything super well (we thought). We called her Saturday night and her husband answered. He told us that she wasn't there, but she was doing what we told her and she had gone to church. The evangelical church. We reactivated an evangelical lady this week. It was awesome.As far as investigators and stuff go, it was pretty lame actually.

We reached that goal of 20 lessons with member almost every week but its with people who really aren't progressing. And it is a goal that president put. Sebastian couldn't have a lesson either so we haven't been able to really see if he is going to progress though. My comp did call him though and he said that he had read and that he was praying actually every night. So we were pretty pumped to hear that.

We also were showering all week long with cold water because our water heater thing broke and we had no time to get anyone to fix it so we just put up with it for the week. It wasnt very fun but now we got it fixed. hope you have a good week!!

We shaved Pablito's head this week!

Miracles

This week was really good. We were able to see a bunch of small miracles throughout the week and I want to share a few of them. First, on Tuesday, we found a 17 year old kid named Sebastian who is atheist but still let us share with him. We taught him the restoration and he understood everything almost perfectly. It was so cool to see how much his faith grew in the short hour that we were with him. I love being able to see people that don't even believe in God get close to him. Hes pretty cool and we are gonna hope that everything goes well with him.

Second, we had our Zone Conference this week which was super good but its always hard to reach our goals because we practically lose a day of work. And we had a really hard beginning of the week. Basically we needed 14 lessons more in three days. It was awesome to see how we were able to find people to share with all thought that time and we were able to eventually get to our goal of 20 lessons with a member present. 

The last lesson that we had to reach our goal was a miracle as well. We went to a part member family and were going to try and get our last lesson there. We went in and the Dad wasn't there so we were going to walk away one short. But, in walked a cousin of the family that isn't member and we could get our goal. It was something simple and not too big but it really was cool to see how God put everything in place to allow us to have success this week if we just tried our hardest.

Hope you all have a good week!

Moving...

This week was pretty fun. We had a ton of lessons with a bunch of different people but up until now they haven't really shown signs of progress so we are going to see what happens with them. For now our best investigator is Pedro. He didn't go to church though so we are going to see what happened there. I'm gonna be honest it was a great week but I'm not really sure why.  New year's was really fun.  New years is bigger than christmas! It was fun and we shot off confetti canons in our house and that was about the only thing that we did at midnight. Besides that, we ate dinner with a member family and it was super fun. 

Another thing is that we moved houses this week because the landlady asked for our house so we switched with her. Now we are in a house that is actually pretty nice. We still don't have any way to be able to cook our food but those are only details and we only really eat cereal and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches anyways. The life of a missionary is super pathetic but its actually way fun. We did borrow a pan from a member this week though and we made rice crispy treats that were super good actually. But other than that I cant think of too many things that were special. Hope you all had a good new year!

Blanca and Pedro are alright. After that super good lesson that I had with Blanca, we followed it up with a really lame lesson and so she fell back a little bit which was really lame. But Pedro is still good. He just wants to be more sure about his baptism before he actually does it so for now we are helping with that. He didn't go to church though so we aren't super sure whats going on. And yeah elder Ritchie is super awesome and we have lived together for a while but we get along super well and now just live the two of us but still its super fun.  Hope you all had a good New Year!

Happy New Year!

Hey Happy new year a few hours early everyone! We had our P Day changed to Saturday this week because there will basically nothing open on Monday because of the New Year. Here, they take new year very seriously. Like basically the entire country is gonna be shut down for a few days so it should be interesting. We always find plenty of people that are super drunk for the next few days as well so that should be pretty interesting. Its for that, that our mission President has given us permission to watch movies all day tomorrow basically. But these are Disney movies which is going to be super weird, but at the same time is should be a nice break and should be something fun. Haha it surprised me a ton when we found that out but I'm not complaining too much haha.

This week was super good. I am now with my new companion elder Ritchie. He's from Missouri and just finished his training. We get along super well and laugh together a ton. I'm super excited for the cambio. We had a super good week too with the investigators. We were able to have second citas with a few people and those lessons were super good. One was with that Pedro that I mentioned a few weeks back. We had a super spiritual lesson with him yesterday and committed him to baptism if he gets his answer. He also committed himself to church tomorrow which will be super awesome. So now we will just have to pray that he gets that answer. The other lesson that was super good was with a lady named Blanca. We also committed her to baptism if she gets her answer. It was so awesome in the lesson because we were explaining to her how the holy ghost works to be able to get her answer and I asked her, "How have you felt while we have shared today?" and she said that she felt peace and a calmness and a happiness and it was super awesome because we explained to her that is how the spirit testifies to us that these things are true that we have taught her. It was so awesome. So for now they are our best investigators that we have. We finally had to tell Julio that we couldn't pass by him anymore because he just isn't willing to progress. That was kind of sad but I think that it will open up the door so that we can find more people.

Hope that you all have a good New Year and that you can put a whole but of resolutions and reach all of them(: Have a good Year!

Elder Ritchie and I

Our zone at the Christmas conference

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Heyyy merry Christmas everyone! Hope that you all had a good one this year. It was a pretty good one for us at least. Christmas here isnt as big as it is there but its still super fun. We celebrated doing a few things. First, we on Friday went to the local hospital and sang christmas carols and stuff to all of the people there and it was super fun. Everyone was listening to us throughout the hospital and we even got a few "Haleluyah" shouts from the Evangelicals there. It was sick. Uhh we also had a really long conference of the mission in which we learned about how the apostasy went down and it was pretty fun. But the best part of the whole thing was eating on the night of the 24th. We went with the member who lives right next to us and we seriously tried to eat so much food but we couldnt even eat close to half of it. I feel sick for how much food people have given us recently. Its great but awful. 

I will be staying in Penco. They are actually shutting one of the sectors in our sector so there will only be two missionaries instead of four. I am going to be with Elder Ritchie. He was one of the other two missionaries who was already there so It will be good because we both already know the sector and have investigators. I'm pretty excited too because he is super funny and a really good missionary. My comp is going to Linares and I am kind of sad about it because we got along super well together and it was super fun to be with him. I think he was probably my favorite companion. Hes a really good missionary too. 

Hope that you all had a Good Christmas. This year lets try and remember the life of Christ and try to follow that example that he left us. I know that he is our Savior and redeemer and that by following him we find happiness and peace in this life. Have a good Christmas!

 Our Christmas Skype!

 We found out how to be Jedi's with my scripture marking pen

Our Christmas feast for 3 people!

Elder Parker