Noticias

Date: May 28, 2012
Area: Santiago, Chile
Companion: Elder Salz & Elder Chung

Hola familia!

This week was a good one. Some fun and crazy things happened so it made it a great week. I guess
the week kind of started with my birthday on Tuesday. We had a zone conference this Tuesday with President Essig and it was great. He is really changing the mission alot. He was making the changes on his own since a couple months ago and then the area presidency told him that all the missions were going to have to start making the same changes that President Essig was already making which was pretty cool because it means that Pres Essig was really inspired by the spirit to make the changes that hes making. But he capacitated us on working alot more with the members. That if we work with them we are going to see a whole lot more success. It is really true though. Working with the members is so much better than having to do everything alone because if we work with them then the investigators already have a friend in the church, someone that they can confide in and ask questions and everything. It just makes everything better. I think slowly, the missions in South America are going to change bit by bit to be more like the missions in the states where the members do most of the work. Thats how it should be. So help the missionaries out! But that was what the conference was on and after the conference all the missionaries in the zone sang me happy birthday.

But the rest of the day Tuesday I was working with Elder Salzl alone and it was a really fun day. Nothing too exciting really happened but we just enjoyed ourselves so it was fun. But we were teaching Tuesday in the night and we got out of the house late and so we got home late that day and when we got in the door Elder Chung, Christensen and Jones jumped out of nowhere with birthday hats and noise makers and they had a cake with candles there so it was awesome! They completely surprised me and we had a mini fiesta that night which was really cool.

But later on in the week we had a couple of ward activities because this week we had a ward conference so one night there was a movie night and then the next there was a karaoke night too. We brought a couple investigators there and they had a great time. We couldn't stay for the whole time but we stayed for a little bit and it was great. The ward here in Renca is a really good ward. One of the investigators that came is named Nelson. He is 11 and should be baptized on the 10th of June. He is doing really well. His mom is a less active but they stopped us in the street the other day and told us that they wanted us to come by and see them so since then we have been going by and Nelson is progressing really well towards his baptism.

The weather here really changed this week. It was raining for like 2 and a half days straight and here in Chile they haven't discovered drainage systems and so the streets just fill up with water and its like a huge lake. But Elders Chung, Salzl and I were walking in the road on Saturday and we were already kind of wet but Elder Salzl and I just started kind of splashing one another a little bit and the next thing you know we basically had a full on war between the 3 of us and we were all completely soaked from the waist down (everywhere our rain coats didn´t cover). That was a lot of fun. Its good to have fun like that every once in a while. The only thing bad was that we were out working since that happened at like 4 or 5 in the afternoon until like 830 when we met up with the other elders in our ward at the house for exchanges (Elder Salzl and Jones had to go do a baptismal interview). So we were finally able to get changed. Saturday was also my companion, Elder Chung´s birthday and so we celebrated with a member with a cake and we made some amazing tacos!! SO GOOD!

Sunday was good too. We had ward conference and so the Stake President came and spoke to everyone which was great. He talked about not criticizing the leaders in the church for the things that they do and to try to support them. So he kind of bashed on the people and then he also kind of bashed on the leaders and told them that they needed to work better than they are, to pick it up a bit. Soo it was pretty good in all. It was well needed haha. But it was raining again so not as many people as we were expecting to come came, but there were still more than average there. (about 110).

So now for the crazy story. Today we had our zone activity. We can only have one zone activity every change (every 6 weeks) and we decided to make it today. We were originally planning on playing soccer in a church and having a BBQ or something like that but then some of the elders in the zone started complaining and didn´t want to do that so we were like,ok lets do something else then. So in the end we decided to go to the Cerro San Cristobal which is a big hill/mountain sort of in the middle of the valley in the middle of Santiago. It rained over the weekend so there wasn´t so much smog in the air as there normally is (there was still a ton though) but it was cool to be able to get out of the sector and to to something different. The view is really pretty cool from up there and Santiago is a massive city! Its huge. But as we were coming down (we took a taxi up and decided to hike down) we were getting onto this dirt (well more mud than dirt right now) trial that took us down the side of the mountain. I was the first one and I entered the trial and was headed down but like 10 yards in I hear someone yell, ¨JAROMY!!!!¨ I was kind of startled like, ¨what??¨ and I look up and standing right above me was CHI!!! It was crazy! Chi was there! She got here to Santiago like 2 weeks ago and will be here for 2 months and I was bummed because I was sure that I wasn´t going to be able to see her while she was here because of the rules but she just happened to be there when I was there. It was absolutely crazy! I couldn´t believe it! So that was definitely a blessing from the Lord. I mean, what are the chances that I would see her there, that we would both be there at the exact same time on the same day? It was crazy! But we had like 10 or 15 minutes to talk was all because we were leaving and the group of missionaries was waiting for me but it was so good to see her. It really made me trunky though, to actually see a friend from home. It was so unexpected but it was really great to see her there. Just kind of strange haha.

But Lindy and Spencer should be gearing up for the trip to Zambia! That is going to be great! I´m exited for you two, its going to be quite the experience and I want to hear all about it when you get back. Cutlers probably crying every night because school is about to end and he is going to have to enter into summer vacations. I know he is super bummed about that, but don´t worry bud, you´ll be back into school soon after so don´t worry! Mom, thanks for the letters and the voice recordings and thanks again for all the birthday wishes. Your the best! Dad, keep up the hard work with work, youre doing great. And Lindy, I like the idea of visiting Prague. When you said we should visit some places that we have never visited before, that was the first place that popped into my head. Like ¨we should go to Prague!!!¨ so I´m down. I´ll send you a voice recording next week with my thoughts on everything =) Thank you all for everything! I love ya!

con amor,

Elder Jaromy Holland