It's pretty amazing to a mother that her two boys who are both called to serve missions in Chile should rub shoulders with this very wonderful man. Jaren first had President Wilhelm for his mission president for the first half of his mission. He was able to meet up with President Wilhelm at his mission reunion last April and told him of his brother who was going to the Osorno mission. Now Elder Wilhelm presides over the Osorno Region as an Area Authority. Jentry had the privledge to have him at a meeting and he so graciously posed for a picture for his brother. How cool is that!
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| Jentry with Elder Wilhelm as his Area Authority, Osorno, Chile - September 2012 |
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| Jaren shortly after arriving in Vina del Mar, Chile with his Mission President & Sister Wilhelm - October 2008 |
How is everything going for everyone? I have to write on Saturday this week becasue just about everything is going to be closed on Monday to Wednesday so tha'ts the reason that the letter is today and not Monday.
This week has been a busy one, we hada a zone conference in Puerto Montt which is a huge city with a mcdonalds and pizza hut about an hour away from Fruttillar, and we had some great stuff from President Rappleye and his wife. President Rappleye was talking about a meeting that he had attended with president wilhelm, and quoted him a few times, and then after lunch he finished his presentation and then turned the time over to Elder Wilhelm who had been sitting on the front row. He is the Area Authority and lives in Puerto Varas which is about 30 minutes away and is actually our zone. He talked about his conversion, which I didn't know that he is a member of only 26 years, and he was Stake president of Osorno after being a member for 3 years. He talked for a while and then opened everything up to questions, he talked for a while which was awesome. Aferwards, the APs had an activity, but I went over and talked to him in spanish and told him that my brother was a missionary for him, and asked if I could have a picture with him to send home to Jaren and he was more than happy to do that. He is a great guy and I might have the oppurtunity to work a little more with him in the future.
After that, it has been rainy. Thursday was probably the nicest day so far of the mission and yesterday was my inaugral use of my rain boots. I went out with my rain pants, boots, jacket, umbrella and I stayed pretty dry, but it was cold. It sure does rain hard here. This week is going to be hard, we cannot work except for fixed appointments from monday to wednesday because of all of the drunk people in the street. That will be difficult to be cooped up for that long, but it will be nice becasue the branch is having a party today (Saturday) where I will be able to have my first chilean empenada! I have been looking forward to that since Jaren talked of them.
It should be fun to see how everybody celebrates down here, and with hard work, I will be able to understand everything for the next 18th of Septiembre.
Well we had a rough thing happen last night, we were teaching Monica who had a date for baptism, only needs to get married, but we found out that there is legal problems, because chilean law is weird, and if they get marroed, they are going to lose a house so they have to do some stuff, so they told us that we had to wait until december for a baptism. I hope I am still here for that to happen. It was kind of interesting becasue I was trying to explain the gospel of Jesus Christ talking of 2 Nephi 31 which was her reading (And she read 4 times which was awesome). We talked about faith and asked what is faith and she gave us an answer almost exactly from alma 32, same with repentence. Then we were talking about baptism and Elder Rupp explained some stuff and then it was my turn to go into talking about the baptismal questions and I was thinking of how to go into them, and I kind of repeated myself saying how we need to follow the example of our Savior and she stopped me and told me something interesting, that when I am talking, she can see my face light up when I talk about these kind of things and how she can her the words of God when I am talking, just because she sees how much I am enjoying the work and trying so hard to be able to understand them, and I am almost there. I think it is amazing the progress after 3 weeks, I can't even begin to imagine after 2 years. I am just excited to get there.
Well, I hope everything continues to go well for the family, I love you all and miss you. During the rough times, which are plenty, I just think about you guys and how much I truly love my family and how thankful I was for the last time we all had together, which helped our family unity so much. The other thing, is when we teach the first lesson, the first topic is that we have a loving Heavenly Father, the second is that the gospel blesses families. I am grateful that I can truly testify to every person that I talk to that that principle is true. I have seen it in our lives.
I love all of you,
Love Elder Nelson
