Leaving Chillan

After a long and awesome 6 months in Chillan I have been changed. I was a little sad to be leaving because Tina was supposed to get baptized yesterday and we had some other awesome investigators progressing but the missionaries there are going to let me know.  I am now in a little city called Parral that is a little bit smaller than Chillan. My companion is Elder Kemner from Blanding Utah and  he has 5 months in the mission. He's a great missionary and we are getting a lot of work done especially because we have bikes! We can get so much more done on a bike and I'm loving it, except that my bike is the most beat up bike I've ever seen. I'm the newest one here so I got the shaft on the bikes and now I'm doubting if its even worth it. My legs just get destroyed every time I ride that thing so I'm thinking about chucking it and buying a new one if I can get a good deal. 

Here in Parral its just a branch but its bigger and way stronger than my old ward. We have about 120 people in church every week and its probably one of the stronger branches in the mission. On Sunday we had one investigator in church named Estenban. He's 12 years old and he loves coming to church with his uncle that is recent convert. His parents aren't members so we still have to ask President to see if he can get baptized with just his uncle being a strong member of the church. That would be great if you could pray for him and also for us to find more investigators because we don't have very many right now.

Thanks for the football videos. I love seeing how they are going so let me know all about it!

Elder Roberts

We had a good and also very disappointing week this week. We're really focusing on taking care of the investigators that we have right now especially Tina who had  a baptism date for last Saturday. We worked with her everyday to get her ready and to finish all the teachings she passed the interview on Friday and was so excited to get baptized. We had everything all ready to go and as we were on our way to walking to the church Tina called me and said she wasn't going to be baptized. My heart dropped and it just about killed me. We still don't really know what happened but she still wants to go to church and keep preparing so were hoping we can do it this week or the next. It was a tough day but we kept working hard and it actually ended up being really good. We were at a members house trying to get them excited to share the gospel and we gave them a pamphlet to give to a friend. We gave them one week to do it but 20 minutes later we got a call from the hermano saying that they had already given the pamphlet to someone and she was waiting at there house to be taught. We went right away and had an awesome lesson and she accepted to be baptized right away. Her name is Scarlet so that would be great if you could pray for her.

We are still working with Filipe and Barbara. Its been really hard to teach them because of his mom with cancer but they really do want to be baptized. He said his mom is getting a lot better and might be in the house this week so they will have a lot more time and were hoping they can be baptized within a few weeks. 

I really want to send a lot of pictures but my camera battery is dead and i cannot find a place with camera batteries here so i don't really know what to do.

That's about it this week. Keep sharing the gospel and have fun in school!

8-11 This week I have some great news and some not so great news. The good news is that our investigator Tina is doing amazing and is all ready to be baptized this Saturday! The bad news is we haven't been able to see our other investigators and they weren't able to go to church. Carla had some complications with her surgery and will be in the hospital for probably another week. We were able to teach her son Benjamin that is 14 years old and he is now planning on being baptized with his mom in a few weeks so were hoping this week that we can get ahold of Carla again to figure out when they can be baptized.

Barbara and Felipe are just the greatest investigators but this whole week they were in the hospital with Felipe's mom who is really really sick and we couldn't teach them. I called him Sunday morning to see if he could go to church and he told me he had just found out a few hours before that him mom has cancer. Its been really hard for them and its definitely the perfect time to here the gospel. I think his mom entered the hospital the very day we found them so we were definitely led there by the spirit.

We had the greatest zone activity today. We went on a long drive this morning into the middle of nowhere to one of the biggest waterfalls I've ever seen. It was seriously incredible, and Dad you would have loved it. We walked down and under it and got completely soaked and then froze like ice sickles on the 3 hour ride home but it was all worth it. I'll send you some pictures next week because I don't have time right now even though I wasn't able to take very many because my camera battery is a goner. Last week it just died and it doesn't work at all and its always been a bad battery and died really fast so i don't know if you have some kind of warranty or something on that?

Love you guys and have a great last week of summer!

8-4 The last couple days we have gotten destroyed by rain. My water suit isn't holding up very good and I've bought three umbrellas and they all break within a few days. Were getting pretty wet but other than that this week went really good. We've been seeing a lot of blessings and we have found great new investigators. We're still working with Hugo and he has a baptismal date for the 16th of august. He's still not really sure about it but he's progressing really good and had a great experience in church. He's really hard to teach because he talks like crazy and never stops until you cut him off in mid sentence. Its been a little difficult trying to help him fully understand everything so i think that's why he's progressing a little bit slower. Carla is doing awesome and can be baptized whenever she wants. The only thing that is stopping her is her family is very catholic and they are not going to be happy if she gets baptized but she knows the church is true and said she's already made the decision. She's going into surgery this week so her baptism will have to be in a couple weeks. 

We had a new investigator come to church. Its a family of three that we found knocking doors. We don't know doors very much but i really felt the impression to knock in this door. Barbara the mom was able to come this week and Philippe the husband was really sick and couldn't come. They are doing awesome and i really feel like they are a chosen family that would be amazing members of the church. They're very interested but we'll see how it goes this week with them.

Hope everything is going good down there. Have an awesome trip in California! Wish I could go but I'll be there for sure next year.

Dad, Happy Birthday! I can't believe your so old, your pushing the big 50. Hope you had an awesome day. This was a great week and we are seeing so many blessings. Church on Sunday we were expecting three investigators. They were all able to make it and two more investigators that we invited on the street showed up! We had five investigators and three with a baptismal date. One of them is Carla that now has three asistences in church and can be baptized any time. She said she doesn't feel ready for this saturday so probably the next week. When we visited her Saturday night before church, she had already bought some Ecco and said she's going to stop drinking coffee before we even taught the Word of Wisdom. We also have  Maria Luisa who is doing  really good also. We found her doing contacts and she accepted Baptism the first visit. Her life is really hard right now. She lives alone with three kids and one is special needs so if you could pray for her that would be great. It was her first time at church and she loved it. She also went to our ward activity and is already making friends in the ward. Our investigator Hugo absolutely loves going to church. His only problem is he doesn't feel ready for baptism yet and I think his wife is holding him back a little bit also.

 That's about it for our investigators this week. Thanks for all your prayers. Hope you guys are having an awesome summer and are enjoying hanging out on the lake all day in the hot sun. Love you guys!

We had cambios today and our whole house will be staying as it is.
That means I will be leaving in 6 weeks almost for sure but I feel
like these six weeks are going to be amazing. My new district leader
is Danny Ainge's son and our zone is definitely the funnest zone I've
been in by far. We had a great week this week. We are really starting to
find and we finally have some great progressing investigators. I told
you guys about Hugo last week who couldn't make it to church. We've
been working with him and he was able to make it to the last hour of
church. We also found out that he has family members in our ward! This
is going to help us so much and the only thing that stops him is time.
He works a lot but he does own his store so I think we can work with
that. I think I also told you about Carla that got sick last week and
couldn't go to church. We finally found her again on Saturday night
and committed her to church and she went for all three hours. We made a
deal on Saturday that if she goes to our church we have to go to the
Catholic church this week. I think we're allowed to do that but I'll
have to make sure. She had a great experience at church and she really
wants to be baptized. That would be great if you could all pray for
both of them.
Sounds like you guys had an awesome time at tennis camp. I'm so jealous
of the docked boat. It kills me watching those videos but I love them.
Make sure to send me Taylor's email so I can tell him about the MTC in
Mexico! Les amo muchisimo!!!

I'm sorry my letter was so short last week, I'll try to give you a few more details. This week I passed my year mark in the mission. That went by way to fast and I'm officially an old guy in the mission. We didn't do much to celebrate. I forgot about it most of the day and then we made some brownies. For 4th of July we didn't do much either, we just talked and sang songs in English about America to make Elder Tafur from Paru angry.
We had a great week this week and found some really good investigators. We have an investigator named Ugo that was a reference. One day for some reason he wanted to give money to our church but the Bishop wouldn't let him. That really surprised him that we don't just take money like that so he wanted to know more. We taught him twice last week and he just loves everything and how organized the church is. He's really hard to teach though because he just talks like crazy and will not stop until you cut him off in mid sentence. Its really weird how Chileans talk like that but they have no problem when you cut them off. He wasn't able to come to church this week but he came right when it ended so we got to give him a tour of the church. He really has potential and we also found another really great investigator Carla and also her son Benjamin. They have been taught before and have been to church and I honestly don't know why they didn't get baptized. I guess we'll see this week when we invite them so that would be great if you could keep them in your prayers.

We decided to go fishing again today. We went to a new river that we were told actually had fish so we were determined to catch one but sadly again we didn't see a living thing the whole time. It was really fun though and I have some awesome pictures but I wasn't able to send them on this computer so you'll have to wait till next week.

That's so awesome Grandma and Grandpa are going to Peru! I really thought they were going to come join me here in Chile but Peru is close enough. Tell Taylor good luck! That would be awesome if you could send me his email so I can send him a letter. Happy fourth of July! Love you!

Today, June 16, & June 9

June 23

This week went by really slow and I feel like we got a lot of work done. We've been working really hard to work with the members and we were able to find ten new investigators. We found a family of three that is really interested. There names are   Adolfo, Carolina, and Rodrigo. The first time we talked to the Adolfo (the dad) was in the street and he told us that nothing in the entire world can change him of his beliefs in the Catholic church. Surprisingly he let us into his house but thinking that it would go nowhere. We started teaching him and he was a little closed but within ten minutes he opened up and really listened to our message. The spirit was definitely there and the family is committed to church next week. 

This week we'll be starting up English class again. We stopped for a while because nobody came but we found some investigators that have to learn English for work. They said they have a lot of Friends to invite so I think we are going to have a big class this Friday. I realized that English class is a lot harder than I thought. Last night I was teaching English and I felt so dumb because I couldn't answer half of the questions but eventually I figured it out and I'm learning a lot about English grammar.

Sounds like you guys are having a great time at the lake and enjoying the nice weather. Winter just started yesterday and it gets colder every day but I'm enjoying every second of it. Love everyone!

Elder Roberts

June 16

Hola! This week went really good. My companion is improving a lot and he is starting to talk a little more in the lessons. He's a little shy and still getting used to the missionary life but he's picking up on things really good.

We had a really cool experience with an investigator this week. Her name is Elizabeth and she was a reference from a member in our ward. We invited her to pray to see if she needs to be baptized. We found her in the street a few days later and she told us she had had a dream and received an answer! In her dream there was a lady that invited her to come to a church. She went and entered and it was our church and she new she had received an answer. It was awesome to hear that but sadly she wasn't able to come to church this week. We'll be working with her this week and we also have a few more referrals from the same member to work with.

The big Chile soccer game was last Thursday. Its huge and that's all they talk about here. We had to be in the house from 6 till the rest of the night and were going to have to do that every time they play. I don't think its that dangerous here but I guess we need to be extra safe.

Happy fathers day Dad!!! I liked that fishing poll case you got from Tyler. Hope you had an awesome day! Love you!

Elder Roberts

June 9

Tuesday morning I went to Concepcion to pick up my new companion. I was hoping to get a Latino to keep speaking Spanish 24/7 but turns out I will be training another Gringo! I'm actually really excited. The first few weeks are just hilarious because they look ridiculous trying to speak Spanish and they just make no sense. It is funny because that was me not that long ago but we are having an awesome time together. His name is Elder Stallings and he's from Idaho.

We found some awesome new investigators this week. We have a sister in our ward Hermana Carolina that really has the vision for missionary work. She sells bread to everyone in her neighborhood so she basically knows everybody and the other day she took us around door to door visiting her friends. We found two new families to work with one of them named Elizabeth accepted a Baptismal date. Her date fell through when there was a huge rain storm and she couldn't come to church but we are going to keep working with her and get her to church this coming week. 

It is absolutely freezing here. We got dumped on by rain this whole week and it is ice cold. If it wasn't for my water suit it would be impossible to work. If you haven't sent my package yet some rubber shoe covers would be awesome. I hear they're really cheap. 

Dad I love that picture that's hilarious! Tell them i say hi! have fun taking out the boat. be sure to send me some pictures. Love you guys!  

Sam