Hello familia! Sounds like you guys have had a great football season and I love hearing about it! Sorry about the cold weather that is coming your way and for the hot weather that is coming very quickly to Chile. It gets warmer every day and I'm loving it. I received some good news from Elder Stallings in Chillan that Tina got baptized! She actually got baptized the week I left and she's doing great and going to church every week so that was awesome to hear. Some bad news, our investigator Moises said he doesn't want to be baptized and we had to leave him. It was a bummer but we worked hard this week and found a ton of new investigators. 

I bought a basketball this week. I got really bored of the push ups and sit ups in the morning so I decided to go play basketball in the mornings at a court that's really close to our house. Me and Elder Mitton challenged a few Chilenos to a game the other day. I don't know if you remember Elder mitton, we came on the mission together and he also lives really close to our house in Pine View. Anyways we played some Chilenos and after a year without playing we were pretty rusty but we still kicked some butt. I also played a kid in one on one and committed him to church if I won and I won but sadly he didn't end up coming to church. It didn't work that time but I think we are going to keep using  that for a finding activity. 

Max and Ryan HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I remember your birthday last year like it was yesterday that went by way to fast. Love you guys!

Hola Familia, Another good week here in Parral. This week was a little tough because it was the biggest holiday in Chile 18 de Septiembre. Everybody was out of town or they just had all of their family over and we didn't get into very many houses this week. We had a big branch activity on Thursday and had another big barbecue again. It was actually really good and I didn't eat too much and get sick this time. 

We are still working with our investigator Moises but its been really hard to get ahold of him because his mom is sick and in the Hospital and he has to be there for hours every day. They same thing happened with Philipe and Barbara in Chillan. Right when we found them, their mom got sick and then they were so hard to find. Moises did go to church though and were hoping he can get baptized on the 4th of October.

The weather is getting really nice here and we are starting to pull out the short sleeve shirts. I'm loving it and I wont be seeing the winter for a whole year from now! Sorry I'm out of time. Love you all!

Hello family and friends,

We had a good and interesting week this week. We have some great investigators that were working with right now. Were still working with Angel the nine year old and he's doing great and excited to be baptized. We still need to do a little more work on reactivating his parents but other than that I don't see any problems with him. We also found a guy this week named Moises who is passing through a rough time right now. After being with his wife for 25 years he just got separated and lives alone. We got there a few days after and he just needed a friend and someone to talk to and he is ready for the gospel. They both went to church and had a great experience. I love the branch here, I have a lot of confidence that they are going to have a good experience at church and the members are going to do their job and be friends with them.

We saw a cool experience with some Recent Converts this week about the law of tithing that I wanted to share with you guys. A family of four got baptized the week before I got here. They have almost nothing and both of the parents are without work. They have a lot of faith and paid tithing for the fist time after putting it off the first couple weeks because they didn't feel like they could do it. The week after they paid tithing, one night they didn't have food for their kids and it was because of tithing. The husband got mad and they even got in a fight but Joseline said she never doubted. A few hours later a man came to their house and asked to keep a tractor in their yard and payed them on the spot for the month. He also noticed that they were without work and he offered the husband work for 3 months. It was a great testimony builder of tithing especially seeing this family that litterly has nothing.

Last Monday we had an activity as a zone. We had a huge barbecue with more meat than I've ever seen in my life. A few hours later I did not feel good at all but we decided to go work anyways. About ten minutes later I puked my guts out in the street. Also two nights ago our bed broke and Elder Mitton fell right on top of me just like in the movie RM. Sorry I don't have much time but I'll send more details later. Love you guys!

We had a descent week this week. We ended up leaving all of our investigators from last week and we just started over. They weren't progressing and we wanted to find all new people this week and we were able to find ten new investigators. We are really trying to focus on less actives and incomplete families and we were able to find a nine year old kid named Angel who is a son of a less active. He really wants to be baptized but first were working on reactivating the dad. He does have grandparents and uncles that are really active so he has a lot of support.

The sisters in my district had a baptism this week. I did her interview on Tuesday and it went really good and she has a really sad story. Her son was perfectly healthy until he was 2 and then his mom gave him a shot to prevent a sickness but he ended up being allergic and was left without hearing and talking. Its been really hard on her but the gospel  has changed her life and she is happier than ever. She chose me to baptize her and it was a really cool experience.

There was a really funny thing that happened with a family in our branch. It is a family of 5 or 6 and they have a daughter that is 17 years old. The other day out of nowhere the daughter Connie had a baby and not one person knew about it. After 8 months she hadn't gained enough weight- that not one person in her family noticed and it was a complete surprise. I thought that was crazy because I didn't think that was possible. Mom, I also wanted to let you know that there is a new blog for our mission. http://chileconcepcionmission.blogspot.com/ so if you want to look at that. I bought a new bike this week for about 30 dollars. It is not very nice but it gets me around pretty good. That's about all this week.

Love you all!

Yummy!

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.