Hello fam,

The weeks keep going by faster and faster. We had a good week though. Christopher was able to get baptized! Thanks for your prayers. He was able to leave drugs, smoking, and drinking within a few months and he has made a complete change. He even gave his testimony after the Baptism and invited his whole family that we had never met before to listen to us and to pray to know these things are true. It was very strong. We also have a great experience with Pamela. We've been taking it slow with her because she doesn't like being pressured and she takes a little longer to understand everything. Usually we don't work with people like that that progress slowly but we felt like we should still visit her and that she would accept soon. Last week she said she didn't want to be baptized and then this Friday after the lesson, out of nowhere she asked us what she needed to do to get baptized in the church. She came to church for the third time and were praying the within a few weeks she will be ready to be baptized. 

I'm jealous of the cruise! Did you learn any Spanish in your time in Mexico? Let me know where Jake and the quads go. I'm excited to hear about it. I'm guessing California Spanish speaking for Jake and Japan for Holli, Peru for Chelsea, and Hawaii for Lindsay.  Love you guys!

We're baking like toasting cheesers!

1/19

Hey family how's it going? Me and Elder Skelton got a lot done this week and we have a great group of investigators that were working with. We are still working with Pamela and she came to church again. She is scared out of her mind to get baptized so I think that might take a little more time but she loves going to church. She has a very sad life and a lot of problems but she understands good and definitely needs some prayers. We've been working with a girl named Eli that is about 25 years old that we found knocking doors. She really cool and super shy and was litery shaking when she went to church. She loved it though and our ward is awesome at being friends with our investigators so she even has some friends. Christopher will be getting baptized this Saturday. He just had his third asistence in church and is ready to go! Also a new person we found named Carolina came to church. We are not sure if she came to church for us or for the church yet because she asks us to be her boyfriend every time we see her. She seriously scares me sometimes so we are going to see her real desires this week.

We had some huge changes in the mission last week. I don't know if you know about all the key indicators that we have like the lessons with members, other lessons, contacts and there was a total of 15. The first presidencia has now told us to take away almost all of the key indicators and to just keep Baptisms, confirmations, asistence in church and contacts. There are basically no numbers now and the way we work has changed a ton. I like it a lot more because were more free to do what we feel the ward needs to grow and not just achieving numbers to get numbers.

Hope your enjoying the slopes. This week was the hottest week ever and we're baking like toasting cheesers. Love you guys!

Luis got Baptized!

We had a good week this week. Luis got baptized! He's a great guy and he's also our neighbor from two houses away. His wife also came to church and loved it so we are going to start working with her. Eveline let us down again and went to the beach or something instead of church, but other than that she is doing really good. She read and prayed and received an answer to her prayers and she loves everything that we teach so were going to give her one more chance this Sunday. We are also working with a kid named Christopher that will be getting baptized in two weeks. He just went from smoking 16 cigarettes a day to 0 in two weeks. We took off  one or two every day until he got to 0 and he's excited to keep going strong. Pray for them they definitely need it!

I'm loving living in Concepcion. There's everything we need here unlike Parral in the middle of nowhere. On Thursday night we ordered a Pizza from our house and it was probably the greatest thing in the world, even though it was super expensive. Well I love you guys and hope you have an awesome week!

Hola mis queridos amigos,

Sorry I didn't get to write you very much last week. I decided to send a few pictures and I ran out of time. I also forgot to tell you that I got transferred from Parral! I am now in the other side of the mission really close to Concepcion in a city call Chiguayante. I love it because I'm now really close to the ocean and the weather is so nice. I feel like I'm in California where it doesn't get too hot or too cold unlike Parral, where we got fried every day. My new companion is ElderSkelton, another gringo from California but he's basically chileno because he speaks perfect Spanish so I learn a lot from him. We have been called to be zone leaders so that has been pretty fun. Its nice to have a change for once. As a zone leader the work is a little different than a district leader. I'm also living in the same house as Elder Tafur again. He's the craziest, most annoying little peruano that I've ever met in my life and I have to live with him again after living with him for 3 months already back in Chillan. I'l definitely be studying patience a lot this week.

We are working with some awesome investigators. We have Luis that is getting baptized this Saturday. A few weeks ago he was addicted to weed but it has been a few weeks since he's smoked and he's excited to be baptized. We also found an awesome investigator named Evelyn. She told us that she has visited almost every church looking for a church and hasn't found one that she likes yet. We found her and she accepted to be baptized right away and even better- she lives litteraly right in front of the church. That would be awesome if you could pray for them! Love you guys!