Happy Memorial Day!

Hey Everyone, Happy Memorial day! I hope that everyone in the states is enjoying the nice weather while someone down here is very wet all the time. This was a little bit of a warmer week but was very very wet. It has been raining for 2 days straight the whole time. I am getting great use out of my rain boots and rain pants.

On Friday, I recieved my Birthday package from home and have already been making good use of the rain cover for my backpack. My companion likes the swedish fish as he has never had them in his life.

This week we had a really good day where we taught 8 lessons in a day and invited two to be baptized. Both accepted but the hard part is that neither of them is married and that is always the challenge here in Chile. Nobody gets married but there are still a lot of good people.

This week, Papito has been at his home recovering from his accident but he always asks us to go with him to the store because now he is afraid of crossing the street, so we have been helping him with that.

I  can't believe that this next week we have changes again. I think that this was one of the fastest changes that has happened in my mission. Time is going so fast. I am so close to hitting my 1 year in the mission mark, which is crazy! I remember this time a year ago, I was so nervous to start this adventure and now I am already half way done.

Well, sorry that this letter is so short, I don't have much time as we have started a new way of reporting numbers to the president. Take Care All!

Love, Elder Nelson

The Sandwich Challenge

Hello! Family,

What a week!  It has been a crazy last 7 days.

 

On Monday, when we started to work at 6pm there weren't very many clouds so we didn't have a jacket for the rain, only for the cold. But as southern Chile is very rainy, it started to rain so we went back to the house for a rain jacket. As we were leaving, the Mamita yelled at us "Elderes, lo atropellaron a Papito" which means, "Elders, papito was ran over". So we threw our backpacks in the garage and ran about 4-5 blocks to the place where Papito was hit. (Papito is the husband of the mamita and is about 80 years old and a bladder cancer survivor) He was there on the ground with a big crowd. My companion and I made our way through the crowd and saw him. He just had a little blood running out of his nose. He wasn't talking and his eyes were open. We were going to give him a blessing but the ambulance came. Finally the mamita came, she was babysitting a 7-year old girl at the time and left her in the house, so when they were taking papito to the hospital in an ambulance, the mamita asked us to go with him. We were going to ride in ambulance to the hospital but the paramedics said only one of us could go so we went back to the house. When we got back to the house, we gave the mamita a blessing of comfort and we went to go work. I couldn't find my backpack. I knew where I had put it, which was inside the door right next to the backpack of Elder Barriga, but I couldn't see it anywhere. I was thinking that someone moved it to another place and then went to the hospital so we decided to say a prayer and leave to work the rest of the night.  We left and had a family home evening with a family then came back to the house.. I was pretty discouraged because it had my scriptures, camera and videos. The next day, during our studies, I heard the mamita talking with someone and it was a guy from Lipigas (a company that sells propane house to house). It turns out that they were there last night when everyone was gone, and another person who lived there answered the door and said that nobody was there, so they left. Well this guy from Lipigas said that he came with his friend and thinks that his friend might have taken my backpack so he left and came back in about 5 minutes. ( It was obvious that he had alot more to do with my backpack not being there than he wanted us to know). He had my backpack back with all of the stuff in it, which was good. Everything had been in ziploc bags and they took everything out of the bags. The only thing missing was all of my pictures from one of the cards had been deleted. So that was the fun and excitement of this week.

We have found some good people lately.  It has just been hard for them to come to church. This weekend the ward here did a temple trip to Santiago. They returned home on Sunday morning at 8:30am and were all exhausted for church at 9:30. When church started there were about 8 people but soon about 30 arrived. It sure made me miss the temple. What  a blessing to be so close to a temple as  a short car ride. I sure do miss it.

Today as a zone, we decided to eat at a place that had really big sandwiches! There was a challenge of eating the biggest one in under 14 minutes and it was free.  Me and another Elder tried it out and I was doing great until the last minute. I ended up leaving the bread. I felt sick but it was a good effort haha. The sandwhich was a kilo (2.2 lbs) of meat with bacon, lettuce tomato, avacado and mayonaise.

Well, we are finallly getting back into the normal motion of work without any problems or injuries, it feels good but it is always difficult after a little time without working and so now we are trying to make up for it by working twice as hard.

Well I hope that everything is going great with everyone.

Love, Elder Nelson

 The Challenge:  2.2 lb. sandwich - 14 minutes

 The two challengers

the guys in the black shirts made the sandwiches

Ready...set...go! 

  Almost...

Happy Mother's Day 2013

Happy Mother's Day!

This week was a great week, topped off with a great sunday night talking to all of my family.

 

Early in the week we had a zone conference with our mission president, John Rappleye. He is great! He talked alot about obedience and about all the new sister missionaries and the importance of staying away (not flirting) from the "snakes" (women age 16-25 that only want to send missionaries home). It was great, we learned that there are alot of hermanas here now. I just do my own business and stay clear. 

On Friday, I thought I had a little bit of an ingrown townail that was starting, and I called the sister who is in charge of feet here (She is a member) and she looked an I had just a little problem, so she cleaned it out, but I couldn't work on Friday, which was alright because we had an activity it the ward, which was another talent show, this time with a lot more people that came (60! which is about 30 more than come to sacrament meeting). It was good and really fun. The youth prepared a lot of stuff and it was special for the mothers. There was one act a little uncomfortable, it was a guy who sang a song about his mother, it was a little weird but he's a nice guy.  Because I couldn't be working during that time I was able to watch.

Saturday I could work but only if it wasnt raining, because my foot couldn't get wet, that was rough because it rained almost the whole day (I couldn't wear a boot either), but sunday was great. About 8 o'clock, we went downtown to a call center where Elder Barriga called his family. Then we came back and I had some problems with communicating, but in the end we finally got it worked out, it sure was great to talk and I loved seeing my little neice in her leapord pants. I thought that those were pretty cute. I'm excited to see her in a year, and I can't believe how the time has flown.  The next time that we talk for mother's day I will be wrapping up my time.  It was so great and am so grateful for my family and especially my wonderful mother, who I am so glad that she had a great mothers day. She feels very blessed to have three great kids, but we are also very blessed to have a great mother, who is always there.

Mom, I was thinking about the little lessons that you have taught me that I am now putting into practice:

1. Piano

2. Nelsons don't do that

3. Priesthood holders don't do that

4.Respect women

5. Clean my room

6. Cook and clean up while you cook

7. Wake up without someone yelling "Jentry!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT TIME IS IT???

8. When I hear someone banging on the ceiling, that means: "Come here!"

9. Nothing like a good night hug before bed

10. Nothing like hugs from your mom

11. Moms are important!

Thanks so much for all you do,  I am very blessed for everything, and I love you a lot!

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!

LOVE, Jentry

Zone Conference May 2013 - Valdivia

Help from the Rain

1stly IMPORTANTE

I will be calling to mom at the number 208-***-3870 in a little bit to verify the google phone call this sunday for 6 in the afternoon CHILE TIME, which I believe is at 4 time in Idaho, I encourage jeni and cameron to also get google and I can talk with everyone, because with google, more than one can talk, please call and organize it with the other member of the family and I will be calling later today, I forgot the numbers so if this doesn't answer, I will be calling jaren at his number so tell him to be ready with backup. If there are problems, let me know and I will change the time but please verify the time change here. Thanks, can't wait to talk to you guys.

 
Hey all, this week was a very wet week, with rain everyday all day. I made good use of my rain pants, its nice, because when it rains a lot, I just wear my thermals and a pair of gymshorts underneath and its perfect, but it was great also because we can finally use our firewood to keep warm and to dry our clothing, this is very intense rain here in the south, and always raining, but I love it, it sometimes helps us get into houses when people see us very sad and miserable outside, they let us in.

It was a good week, we got a handful of good references, and finally found someone that we had been trying to find, who is so good, she is going to get baptized soon I think, her and her son. Its great to see the level of trust from the members is really growing as they are giving us more referencias of good people. 

Yesterday, I did another special musical in church, this time I played A Poor wayfaring Man of Grief from the Paul Cardall piano book, it was great, my papito told me that it is very precious and everybody said that they liked it alot, it feels so good to be able to bless the people down here with music.

This week, we will be having another zone conference here in Valdivia. We'll see if a general authority comes.

Well, I want you to know how hard I laughed when I saw the picture of milk buddies from Jaren. I showed it to my companion and he thinks that we are a pretty weird family haha.

I was thinking of Cameron yesterday for his birthday and want to wish him a Happy Birthday, a big boy and now a father. 

Well hope that everything is going great for everyone, Love you all and can't wait to talk to everyone on Sunday for Mother's Day.

Love Elder Nelson

 

A giant competo

 

Dry Members and Eternal investigators

Hello!

Sounds great that everyone could attend the baby blessing, that is way cool. Wish I was there but I am where I should be right now.

This was a good week, we had the opportunity to speak in church this week, I think that I gave a good talk. I talked about three things that we as members can do to show the love that we have for our neighbors, seek with diligence, open our mouth and be examples. It's a good ward, they just need a little more motivation to do the work here, but we are getting there. We are getting a lot closer with a couple that we are teaching named Raquel and Jovito, they just have to get married but we found out that Jovito has fear because his first marriage was bad, so we will have to see because right now they are "dry members" which means that they are attending church without ever having been baptized, but Jovito is just a little hard headed with that he doesn't want to get married but we are working with them a lot so that they don't be "eternal investigators" and that they can receive the blessing that they could receive. They are really great people but they just can't take that next step. 

It was also a good experience yesterday because we learned that most of the priesthood in this ward don't really know how to give a blessing, so we taught them how to  give a blessing, it was a little difficult because it took the entire hour but they finally got it down we hope and now we only have to review every week for a little bit until they have it down.

Its great here to see how much the work is progressing, there are a lot more missionaries here in this mission, in our zone, 2 more sectors were opened up for the sister missionaries, its is very true how the work is going forward right now, its a great time to be a member of this church and to have the opportunity to have these blessings. I invite all of us to be missionaries as well in all the places that they may be, in D&C33: 7-10 talks of how we should open our mouth 3 times, may i invite all to do the same in opening their mouth three times, the 1st to declare that Jesus is the Christ, The Savior of the World, that Joseph Smith really saw the Father and the Son and that the priesthood was restored to him, and the third time is that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, I know these things are true. 

I love You all and am very excited and blessed for the opportunity to be able to talk with my family in a couple weeks. Take Care,

CHAOOOOO--Elder Nelson

 

PS.  Hey Grandma and Grandpa (Mom and Dad) haha,

I hope that everything is going great, it is cold here but we can use the firewood on Wednesday. Thanks for everything that you do.  Love Jentry

Our ward party

Grafitti in Valdivia

Eating Flan - YUM!

Fall in Southern Chile

Hey Family,
Firstly, Congratulations! to the new parents (D&C 68:25...don't mess up), I am so excited for the both of you, and the new grandparents and the uncle and aunt once again...I am way excited but a little sad that I cant be there, but by the time that she is actually fun to be around, I will be happy, I'm just a little confused because I thought that we came to the conclusion that she was going to be named Jentrina...

Well, this week, as always was a cold one, a little warmer but it sure is starting to become fall, We can finally start using the fire wood this next week, which I will be using because I am going nowhere for another cambio. Elder Barriga and I will be together for another 6 weeks which is very exciting. We get along really well and are slow in the process but are getting some good people, as long as we work hard and are obedient, the Lord will bless us.

We had ward conference this week, so I was asked to play for the ward choir, we sang two songs, its kind of difficult to play for Chileans because they are so used to singing hymns without music that they don't know how to sing with music, it turned out really well, and this week, I will be speaking in church again.

K, well this was a very slow week, and I don't have much to say about the week, but I am so proud of everything that you are doing for me, and I feel super blessed.

Love, Elder Nelson

Fall in Southern Chile; changing leaves and dark rainy skies.

A pig farm in the country with baby pigs.

A long walk in the country.

Uncle Jentry

You will totally forgive me when you see why I'm so far behind in my posts.  Being a new grandma, I've been helping with a super cute and sweet new addition to our family.  We welcomed Callie Jane Harper into our crazy family on April 19, 2013 at 9:27 pm - 7 lb. 6 oz. 19".  This officially makes Jentry a new uncle. 


Callie Jane
April 19th
jillapontephotography.com