Hello Everyone,

Another amazing week here in Parral full of blessings! We are seriously having the best time here and I found out today that I will be staying here with Elder Alder another 6 weeks so I'm pretty happy about that. This week there is some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that Mauricio and Blanca and their family didn't make it to church. They had a baby shower the night before and Mauricio started drinking again. This family needs a lot of Prayers! They are such great and normal people but Mauricio just can't stop drinking. They were separated for about 6 months and just got back together because Blanca is having a baby and all they want is unity in the family and for Mauricio to stop drinking or they're probably going to get separated again. We visited them last night and we had an amazing lesson and they have so much desire to follow the gospel and get baptized. We gave him a blessing and I have a lot of faith that they will be baptized this month.

Me and my companion saw a miracle this week. We did a tour of the church and a member brought two of his friends. We invited them to be baptized and they accepted right away and also invited us to teach the rest of their family. We went and taught the family and the kids are all really cool and want to be baptized so bad. The kids names are Carlos, Matias, Maxamiliano, the mom Joseline and the grandma Estrella. Everyone went to church except for the mom but she cant get baptized yet anyways because she's living with her boyfriend. The four are planning on being baptized on the 6th of December. It was really cool to find them because we've been praying to find a family of 7 for the last few weeks. We found them and counted 6 but then the second visit we realized the mom was pregnant and it will be a family of 7 in a few weeks! I'm really exited to work with them and if you can please keep them in your prayers. 

This week they cut the Internet time for us to an hour instead of and hour and a half so I'm sorry if my letters get even shorter.

Les queiro!!!

11/3

Hello family!

We're still having a great time here in Parral! This week got really cold, you never know how the weather is going to be here. I realized I was a getting a little lazy in the mornings so I've started doing track stretches again every morning and I feel amazing. I'm definitely out of shape and not flexible at all so I'm going to try and keep that going. We do get a lot of exercise on our bikes though so that's been good. My bike is getting really beat up. The other day I was on a little dirt trail and I saw a little jump and I just got so excited to hit it as fast as I could. I got some pretty good air but landed on a very flat landing and completely bent the bike. I don't think it will last very much longer. Halloween this week was a little disappointing. I thought I would get more candy but we ended up being in houses all day and I forgot it was even Halloween.

We are still struggling to find investigators. We are really trying to work through the members to get references and with some patience were starting to get some references. We are working a lot with a recent convert named Gabriel, who is like a machine of references. Every time we go to his house he has a different friend that he's hanging out with and he immediately invites us in and starts sharing the gospel with them. If every member was like that, the church would grow ten times faster! I hope you guys are doing your best to share the gospel with you non member friends! Love you guys!

11/10

Hello family and friends,

First off I want to give a happy birthday to the greatest Mom in the world!!! I love you mom and I hope you have an awesome day and that they treat you well! Also Happy birthday to my Broski Dillon!! That blows my mind how big the kid is!

We had an amazing week this week here in Parral! This whole week was seriously full of blessings. First off like I told you last week were working with a recent convert named Gabriel that is like a machine of references and we are now working with 4 of his friends that are really interested.  We are working with a guy named Christian that we just started talking to one day in Gabriel's house and he was not doing good at all. He said he wanted to change his life, so we shared a little bit about baptism and gave him a Book of Mormon and set up an appointment for another day. The next visit we had he looked like a completely different person with a hair cut, shaved, and with his Book of Mormon open on the table. He said he had received and answer and he wants to get baptized. It was amazing to see how he changed so fast. But the only problem is that he lives with his girlfriend and he's not married so we'll have to see how that goes this week.

We received an awesome reference from a less active that we are working with. She invited a family of 4 to church this Sunday and they all came except for the husband. They loved church and we went and visited them that afternoon and they all accepted to be baptized within five minutes. They are definitely the most chosen investigators that I have found in my mission and I'm super exited to work with them. It would be great if you could pray for them. Their names are Blanca (the mom), Sebastian that's about 12 years old, and I forgot the name of the dad and the daughter but I'll get that to you next week. Les amo y que tengan una buena semana!

We worked hard this week in the baking hot sun. The temperature changed from cold and wearing jackets to a thousand degrees in about one day and this week was so hot. We've been hearing that this summer is going to be one of the hottest in the history so I'm not too excited about that. 

Its been tough lately to find new investigators but this week we found a guy named Carlos that just got out of jail about a month ago. He actually found us on the street and brought us to his house and told us he wanted to get baptized. He's really funny because he can't read and doesn't understand very much but when we ask him questions he just says baptism is a cool thing to do. He doesn't have a job and lives in a house barely big enough to fit one person and basically has nothing. I'm excited to see how he progresses this week.

We had our mission conference this week. They talked a lot about fasting and praying. They talked about the importance of fasting and how some of us are capable of fasting more than once a month and even once a week. That really made me think of the importance of the fast and its something I want to do more often even though I'm still the skinniest man alive and I feel like I get even skinnier every time. That's about it this week. Keep choosing the right!

Feliz Cumpleanos Tyler

First off I want to give Tyler a Feliz cumpleaños! That's crazy he's 23 - that is pretty dang old.

This week went by really fast but we are having good time. Elder Alder is speaking a lot better and he's improving everyday. He's a really nice and quiet kid and we get along really good. This week was really hard to find new investigators. We dropped a lot last week that weren't progressing so some prayers to help us find new people would be great. The mission is putting a really big focus on the less actives and recent converts so we worked a ton with them and we had a lot of people in church this week.

I finally found out what was wrong with my mouth. I have had this sore for about two months that has just killed me to death. The first time I went to the dentist he said he couldn't see anything and that it was my tooth brush rubbing on my mouth. I knew it wasn't that and then I woke up on Wednesday morning and the sore had broken out and was completely visible on the top of my mouth. I went again to the dentist and he found out what it was. I have no idea what its called but he gave me some medicine and its finally starting to get a lot better.

My package got here! Thanks for everything and I can finally send pictures because I now have a camera. Love you guys!

Hello family,

This week was very busy and I got very little sleep. On Tuesday I went down to pick up my new companion! His name is Elder Alder and he is from Salt lake City. He speaks almost no Spanish but he is learning really fast and he's a really nice kid. He's a little bit shy especially because I decided that I'm not going to speak any English to him but he's talking more and more every day and I think he's learning really fast. On Thursday, we had a leader conference in Concepcion so we had to take the 3 hour bus trip again and stayed the night in the assistants' house. The conference was really good and there is going to be some changes in the mission. We are changing a lot of key indicators to work with the recent converts and less actives more. I also saw a ton of my buddies from the mission there and I found out that Filipe and Barbara, our investigators from Chillan should be getting baptized on the 25th so I was really excited to hear that. 

After Conce we went straight to a little town called Retiro to do a baptism interview for some missionaries in my district. We went to do it that night because they were getting baptized the next day, but when we got there they told us they weren't going to make it home in time from work and that we would have to do it in the morning. We ended up doing the interview at 7 30 in the morning and then we took a 15 passenger van and drove about 30 minutes to a river in the middle of nowhere and they got baptized. It was really funny because it was freezing cold and there was also a group of fisherman fishing right next to the baptism. That's about it this week! Love you guys,

I have a lot of pictures to send when I get my new camera battery

Hello everyone! We had some changes again. Every six weeks seriously flies by like nothing. Elder Kemner will be leaving and I will be getting a new companion. This morning I learned that God really wants me to learn the principle of patience when I found out I will be training another gringito! To be honest, I wasn't too excited at first because it really does take a lot of patience and you are on your own for the first few weeks but I do love training and the new kids always have so much animo to work so I'm pretty excited. I will be traveling to Concepcion tomorrow to pick him up and I'll let you know next week who it is.

We don't have very many investigators right now but we are working with a man named Fernando. He's the father of a less active and has cancer. They sent him home from the hospital telling him he had a few months to live and now it has been almost a year and he said the only thing that will stop him from getting baptized is if he dies. He says he's not feeling too good right now so were praying for him that he can live to be baptized. We are also hoping that he really has the desire to go to church because he wasn't able to go this week.

Conference was amazing! I felt like this year they were just so powerful especially President Monson and you could really tell that they are Prophets and Apostles of God. I really liked the talk by Richard G. Scott and the four things that we need to be doing. Prayer, scripture study, Family home evening, and going to the temple. I really liked what he said about family home evening and how nothing is more important on Monday night. Its not just something short but the whole evening and not even school work is more important.

That killed me to hear about the end of the explorer. I felt a special bond with that car -almost like it was my brother. Hopefully I can see him again. Love everyone!

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!