Another week! Ahhh my first change back in Los Olmos is going by just as fast as my first change...well, my first change ever. I watched Joseph Smith the prophet today, ahhhh he is such a hero of mine, but Emma is also a hero of mine as well. As for many other people, too. It´s interesting the two parts of the battle that were fought, on Joseph´s end being constantly persecuted and unjustly attacked, enlightened and brilliantly illuminated, and Emma´s end of being in charge of bearing everything patiently, faithfully, perfectly. Interesting, no? The woman not only bears her children for her whole existence, but her husband also. I admire Emma Smith a lot. I admire my mom a lot too. I will find a wife like the 2 of them!
Well, this week has been pretty busy. It´s pretty wild how different things are here, my first 6 months were a heck of a lot of contacts, fewer people to teach. Now, in the weeks I have been back here, I have done a total of about 2 hours of contacts, and the rest of the time we have been teaching. Lots of teaching here. We had a pretty awesome experience in a lesson last night, where we were able to place 3 baptismal dates! Wild. In these moment, we have 4 people set to get baptized on the 9th of October!
I want you guys to meet Jorge.
Jorge got here just before I did, he is from Venezuela. Things in Venezuela are pretty messed up right now, it was pretty sad as he was telling me about the situation his family is in. That place is a mess. Anyway, he came here to Chile with 11 friends, to find a better living situation and find better everything, and on his way here, he got seperated from the group at the border of Bolivia, got robbed of everything he had minus his clothes and his phone, and THAT is how is life in Chile started. Pretty bright eh?
Anyway, long story short, he lives behind us now. In February remember how the dueña of our house died? He lives where she was living, right behind us. It´s pretty fun having him back there, living with 2 returned missionaried behind you is pretty ideal for divisions! (juanito is another guy who lives back there, chileno, haha he´s pretty good at Pokemon Go if ya catch my drift). Nah Juanito is also awesome, really, we are pretty blsesed to have them back there.
Last night, we were with La Familia Reyes. That house is pretty messed up, used to be a drug house, the daughters of 17 and 13 years lived with their boyfriends, but one of them got kicked out for smoking the mom´s marijuana and the other broke up with the daughter, and add that to a thousand more times apostasy and a pregnant 18 year old Katiuska and that´s the family we are teaching!
We´ve been teaching the now 14 year old Scarlett, who is really receptive. All the ahrd things that this family has gone through (to some level at their own fault) has made them really realize how bad things get when we forget The Savior. How true is that. Elder Albarracín (remember him?) and Elder Harrison found them a long time ago, and then they kind of disappeared, but we are now teaching them again. We are finding the Scarlett is the most receptive of the family and so we are focusing our teaching a little bit more towards her, and last night we went over to teach The Plan of Salvation. We had plans of inviting her to be baptized. When we got to the house, she was outside with a friend taking selfies (Chile really isn´t that different than the States) and we went over and hopped in a few. Then we invited the friend to come listen to us as we taught Scarlett. We had a good lesson with the family, and at the end we felt like we needed to include this friend (named Carla) to be baptized along with the invitation to Scarlett, and she said yes!! So they both are on date for the 9th of October, along with Scarlett´s brother named Lorenzo. We are going to Carlá house later this week to meet and start teaching her family, excited to see where things go. Earlier in the week we were also able to put the same date for baptism with another investigator named Jorge.
All in all, things are going well in Los Olmos. My good friend Amaro has been coming to church every week, like a good, faithful 8 year old kid. We gave him an alarm clock to help him wake up by himself so that he isn´t dependent on anybody else waking him up, and he did a good job this week. Nobody else in the family came to church, but Amaro got himself ready and called to have us pick him up. I look up to Amaro, I hope I can be as diligent as he always is, even when he´s alone. One of my heroes for sure! Another hero I have is Obispo Moroni. He is one of my greatest heroes here in Los Olmos. He makes a list every week of the people who didn´t come to church. Last week from the pulpit he called for a spontaneous activity in which all of us would return to the chapel and 5 o clock that same evening and he sent us in groups, with people to visit who didn´t go to church that Sunday. He also was out visiting. Pretty darn awesome guy. Wears his name well. I hope to be like he and Amaro one day.
Love you! Another week in Paradise!
Elder Hixon
