Happy Birthday Mom!

Hello All!

What a great week and super short! We had a party in the ward to say good bye to Elder Vasquez and then on Tuesday we went to Puerto Montt to stay the night because as we had to be in the air terminal at 6:30am on Wednesday morning. I woke up at 5:00am to be in Osorno to obtain Elder Mcdonald and to have a short traning meeting for the trainers. It went well and we got back to Los Muermos  around 5:30 pm to start his day. We taught a little but he was a little lost with the language. He has been improving a lot! Every day he understands a little bit more and with no time he will be speaking great.  It's nice. He has a lot of entheusiasm, and I even had him give a talk in church on Sunday which he did great.  How well I remember that new feeling!

Speaking of church, the Branch President wasn't there this week so I was presiding, directing and teaching sunday school.  I got a phone call that one of the persons assigned to speak wasn't going to give their talk because they didn't prepare, which i was pretty annoyed with that. I thought about what mom would say, "lack of preperation on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine".  Oh well, I ended up giving a talk of 30 minutes because the other talks were short, so with 5 minutes of preparation, I talked about obedience, then I taught sunday school afterward on the priesthood. Now I am hoping that somenone stands up and claps to make everything interesting in our branch because to get them to sing a semi-familiar song they don't even try.  We did have good attendence even without 2 active families who were vacationing.

This week we found alot more people which is great, I'm excited, we are working hard and are seeing the blessing,  It will be a fun and challenging 12 weeks here but it will be great and I will grow alot as will Elder McDonald.

 

Mom 

I hope that you had a happy birthday. I thought about you all day yesterday and hope that you had a great day.

I love you all! Take care,

Love, Elder Nelson

 Picking up Elder McDonald in Osorno

 Where in the world are we?

 My new trainee - Elder McDonald, West Valley, UT - USA

 Our little branch in Los Muermos, party for Elder Vazquez as he goes home

 Beautiful winter sunsets in Los Muermos

Trainer, 1st Counselor & District Leader!

Good Day All,
We are currently sitting on an 8 day streak of rain, so I hope that everyone is enjoying the warmth and we only  have 2 more months of winter here. Also, I think its funny that dad and I now have the same calling - 1st counselor. We´ll be able to give each other pointers on how to do our job, the only thing is you have organizations and other stuff.  Los muermos would die without the missionaries, and to top it all off this week, the branch president will be in Santiago so that puts me in charge again. 

We have the cambios this week, it looks like Elder Vasquez is finishing his mission so it would be impossible to be together another change. On Saturday, I got a phone call from President Rappleye to tell me of the next cambio. I will be training an elder from West Valley, UT, named Elder McDonald. He then informed that I will be made the district leader as well.  It will be alot of responsibilities as counselor, trainer and district leader but I am excited to have this oppurtunity to work. I will be needing all the prayers that I can get! So it looks like I will be in Los Muermos for the next 3 months as the training program is 12 weeks.

Mom, I like the story of the homeless guy, now you know a little how I feel with all of the drunks who want to talk to us all the time, they are the only ones who want to talk to us sometimes.

It sounds like everyone had a fun week. That's fun that Jeni and Callie were able to go see grandma and grandpa.

At church yesterday there was some visitors in church (we had 38 in church yesterday, almost full), and they had a little girl that was about 4 months old. I thought about Callie. Also speaking of my photo book of my family that I have, people always say that some of the pictures look like they came from a magazine! The one of Jeni and Cam when they got hitched, and the ones of Kassie and Jaren when they got hitched haha, and people asked me if mom was my sister haha. I love showing the pictures, chileans dont really have family pictures, nor do they smile when someone takes pictures haha.

Well I will send pictures next week, sorry I don't have any this week, but i will have some of my new companion etc.

Love You All

Elder Nelson

Winter in Chile

Hola Todos,

Wow! the winter time has come, and it has come hard! It is very cold here, with a lot of rain and cold. I am so thankful for my winter clothes: rain boots, pants, scarf, gloves and jazz stocking hat. I use all of it all the time to try to stay warm.  It is also nice with a good fire that we have to get dry. This week was also a fun one on Wednesday night we had a power outage at about 9 o´clock in the night, while we were teaching a lesson. That was fun. So we finished with a prayer and walked to our house in the dark, and had to do everything that night with candle light, it was an interesting time, it made me think of all of the power outages that we have had in our houses haha, the lights ended up coming back on in the middle of the night. We were able to have a nice little fire going as well. 

This week in church we hit a high of 35 people that attended, with 8 of them being inactive. A family of 4 came back after years. We have been working with them a lot. This branch is an intersting challenge for me because I feel that I am having to divide my time between the branch and the investigators. I help with tithing, presidency meeting, and ward council and  whatever else needs to be done. I realize that we are helping to build this unit up. This week in church, i had the opportunity to conduct sacrament meeting. I have never done that before. I think that I will be giving a couple talks this next month as well.

Happy July 4th to everyone, especially my parents who are both celebrating their birthdays, and to the birthday of America. I hope everyone has a great 4th and enjoys the fireworks. I look forward to celebrating it with you the next year.

FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS PAPA!!!!!!!!

Espero que disfrutes patinando por tu cumpleaños y que lo cumplas feliz, 

Well, good luck with the heat, enjoy it, becuase i would love to have it right now.

Love,

Elder Nelson

PS, there is a sister here, who we have been helping to reactivate, she is so sweet, she lives alone, she called us this morning to tell us gracias (Thank-you) for all that we have done, and then said something like May God Bless you. I thought, in a year, it was the first time that someone has called us just to say thank-you, who doesn't need something. I hope that we can do things like that to people. It sure made our day, and it can make the days of everyone else, the missionaries, the people who we home teach, or anybody that we serve, lets have a grateful attitude to everyone who helps us.