Missionary Broadcast

Hello everyone!

This was a good week capped off with a great broadcast last night by the Quorum of the Twelve.  I would encourage you to look it up on lds.org, it talked about the missionary work, and how important this work is at this time, the Lord really is hastening his work (D&C 88:73), it is an exctiting time to be a missionary. I am ready to make this last year of the mission truly count. The devotional was great to watch thinking that just a year ago, I was there being one of the young missionaries. Its incredible thinking of how the work has changed in year, and I can't imagine the next year.

This week, I had the opportunity to go to Puerto Montt and work there for a day.  It is weird being in a small city and then going to work in a big city. But I liked it. It is very, very cold here. Not as much rain, only every other day or so for 4 or 5 hours but the cold is hard to deal with.  My feet are always cold right now as its a very wet cold.  In reality it is only about 5 degrees celsius but that is with alot of wind and water and having to be outside all the time. Its still fun though. Puerto Montt is on  a big bay so it is even more cold there. 

We have been working hard and putting in the hours and are starting to see more results.  It's a great time. I am trying to see the real growth that Los Muermos can offer. It just all comes with the work. In the video from last night, the part by President Monson when he talks of St Thomas, really describes Los Muermos and what we want to accomplish. Also, there is a video from this broadcast with the songs:  I hope they call me on a mission and We´ll bring the world his truth; I saw those songs and it brought tears to my eyes thinking about the grand privelage that the Lord has entrusted with me. 

This past Sunday I taught elders quorum on the spot because nobody else had prepared anything, but it went really well. I taught the general conference address from Elder Uchtdorf in the priesthood session of the general conference. He talks about the 4 titles that we have as holders of the holy priesthood. This week we are going to have an activity with the branch.  This branch has a lot of activities which  I like haha.

Well, stay warm everyone,

Love Elder Nelson

Hey Mom, thats great with your new calling and that you are paying the organ a little more too. Without an organist, now you see how all of Chile is...

Well Take care, love you

Jentry

 

Dad,

Hey, I figure you are probably working, but I hope all is going great, and I would love to know who won the nba finals. i heard it was game seven but have no idea, also it would be great to know about the USA soccer and Honduras soccer for my companion, thanks!

Love, Jentry

1/2 Way, Down Hill, Happy HUMP day - Yeah!!!!

 

Today is the "1/2 way mark for our missionary in Chile!

 

It's all "DOWN HILL" till June 20, 2014!

Some call it Happy "HUMP" day!

 Whatever you call it...it's my last year as a missionary Mom! and I am so very proud of both of my missionaries sons! 

First Counselor

Hello All!
This was a great week filled with new experiences, We were able to find some great people this week to teach, including a family that are great and want to follow Christ (not married of course...) but its funny because the guy is super nice but every other word is a swear word. I can finally understand most of the swear words.  Another thing is so uncomfortable here.  I think everyone has had a baby recently or in the past 2 years and is breast feeding in almost every lesson, which is so uncomfortable for us.  It happened 3 times in the 1st year of my mission and 6 times in the past week and nobody covers up down here. We can be in a lesson and a child of 2 years comes running up because he is hungry. Speaking of that, we were with a less active sister in our ward and  I told her about how my Mom taught me the piano, she asked me if i was a "Mamon" and I said a little, and she said "I bet your mother attended you until 5 or 6 years old". I think that that is one of the weirdest things that someone has asked me. 

This week we had an activity in the branch for fathers day which was nice, it was on Friday here but the day they celebrate is Sunday.  There was a little gift for the fathers and a little slideshow and then ping pong, (I dominate haha). 

This Sunday our branch president was out of town which meant that the first counselour was in charge (me) so I presided in all of the classes and the sacrament meeting. I had to take the sacrament first which was interesting. One of the speakers didn't show up so it changed my talk from 10 minutes to about 20ish minutes with playing the keyboard just like in all of the units. It all turned out good though. My talk was about how the ways of the Lord many times aren't our ways but we need to make sacrifices many times. It was nice to have that we had 3 less active members who haven't been at church in a long time there.

Welcome to Winter in Chile! It is starting to get really cold here, it rains and is very cold almost every day. I look forward to enjoying my last winter in Chile. I can't believe that one year has already passed by, it went so fast! I am scared to see how fast this next year will go! I am so grateful for all of the love and support that everybody has shown me, and I am exctied to have this last year serving the Lord and the Chileans. 

Enjoy the heat in the states and I will enjoy the cold.

Que Dios Les Bendiga!

Love,

Elder Nelson

 the ward building in Los Muermos

 Branch party for Father's Day in Los Muermos

Hey Papa!

Felicitaciones para tu nuevo llamamiento, sumo consejo, listo para destruir a todos.

No sé porque no me dijiste, pero está bien.

Hey Dad,  Happy Fathers day! I remember fathers day last year, and I am excited to have the next one with you (almost I think), I am so grateful for you example that you have set for me, especially from having set the comino by serving a mission, so forcing me to fulfill my priesthood responsabilities when I was lazy and didn't want too, I am so grateful for all that you did now and I sure do recognize it now, I wish you the best in this Father's day.

Gracias por todo que hacías y haces ahora para mi, te amo,

Jentry

Birthday on a bus

Hello! what a great week!

I turned 20 this week in the mission field.  (Goodbye teenage years).  I spent my birthday on a bus going from Valdivia, Chile to Los Muermos, which is kind of like the boonies of Chile. The bus ride was 4-5 hours to our sector.  The house where we stay is nice and I will send more pictures next week of the area.  It is a way in the "campo" or far away from the city, about an hour and a half from Puerto Montt. There is just farming lands around.  It's great though and there are so many people that are waiting for the gospel here.  We are already excited to get started and find many.  It was difficult to leave Valdivia but I hope it is going to be a great time here with a lot of success.

 

It is a branch of about 30-40 members.  The fun part is that I am now the 1st counselor of the branch Los Muermos. I do all the things that a first counselor would do like direct the meeting, have meetings with the branch presidency, and assign people to give talks. It is definitely a new and exciting experience. It is also fun because for the 4th cambio (change) in a row, I am with a Latin companion, Elder Vasquez from La Esperanza, Honduras. I think my spanish is starting to get there. It has to or I couldn't communicate with my companion.

Thanks for all of the birthday wishes, it was one of the best birthdays that I have had.

Love,

Elder Nelson 

Hey mom and dad,

Thanks for helping me have a great birthday, it was  a fun experience to be here, I hope that you guys aren't roasting there while I am freezing, at least I am getting good at making a fire for when we go camping.  Love You, Jentry

Elder Vasquez from Honduras

 no candles so I just used a match

Happy Birthday!!

Hello Everyone!

Well, I'm just about to have my first birthday in the mission field, and about to leave behind the teen years. I got another birthday gift, a transfer! It looks like I will be spending this birthday on a bus going to a new sector, the sector is Los Muermos, a small town about an hour and a half from Puerto Montt. I think that I will be in the branch presidency there which is exciting. I will be with another Honduran companion named Elder Vasquez. It will surely be a memorable birthday traveling 6 hours on a bus.  But now starts the goodbyes. Yesterday, I said good bye to a kid (8 yrs old) that we taught and baptized on Saturday. It was so cute, when I was leaving his house, he went into to his room and came back with a stuffed animal, it is his favorite one. It was fun to teach him, we taught the 10 commandments, and talked of thou shalt not kill, and the word of wisdom, and right after, he went and told his grandpa who smokes and drinks. He told me that he wants to serve a mission.

It was another very rainy week. For about 3 days, it rained all day and every day, one day the wind was so bad too that we couldn't use an umbrella.  Monday night at about 4 o'clock (Tuesday morning), we were awakened with a thunder storm and lots of hail for about an hour, and it happened again on Thursday night too. It's funny because I don't think that Chileans know what to do with thunder, because everyone was really scared.

This P-day, we went and played bowling as a district. I did some of the better bowling in my life. I had 151 and the next game 166. There is a bowling alley in Osorno, Puerto Montt and Valdivia.

Well, I'm sure getting ready for a fun and rememorable birthday here in Valdivia that I am never going to forget. Thanks so much for the Happy Birthday wishes from everyone and thanks to my family for the package that they sent me. I love it! And especially thanks to mom for organizing it and helping me have a happy birthday far away.  (She no longer has any teenagers). Thanks to Jaren for the music. I found out how to work the mp3 and have been putting more conference talks on it. I love listening to them when I have 10 minutes.

I hope that everyone is having a great summer there and enjoying the sun while I enjoy the nice cold rain, its great though.

Love, Elder Nelson

 

Dear Mom and Dad,   Thanks so much for everything, I love the pictures, especially of the dogs, my companion still thinks that our weird love for the dogs isn't normal, but I still love it. Thanks so much for everything!  Love, Jentry

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...