Hello all!
First off I want to apologize that there are not more photos this week. The computer is being a snob and says it cant read the format. I will try again next week though so stay tuned.
Also I completed 5 months in the mission today! Woohoo! The time has gone by way fast. It is almost a quarter of the mission complete. I have changed a whole lot I feel and learned what my strengths and weaknesses are. I have also learned, poco por poco, how to overcome them and be better.
We had Christmas Conference this week which was way awesome and included a 6 hour bus ride to Iquique for the day. That is a very nice city - has a different vibe than Arica. But to sum up the conference= Awesome. We reviewed the numbers for the year and as of last Thursday we had 1461 baptisms in the mission this year! We also watched the mission video which was hilarious. We also had a few talks given on the reason for the season which I know to be is Jesus Christ. This time that I have in the mission is my offering to Him. He did so much for us, gave us a purpose for this life. Without Him, we would just be living life to live life, but the message is that we have the chance to continue to progress, be with our families forever, and seguir mejorando. (becoming better) It is a great time of year and #Lighttheworld will make it a little bit better. (had to stick that in there. But really it is super awesome so check it out).
We also watched a movie and I was able to catch up with some of the people that I was with in the Mexico MTC. It was good to see everyone.
Not much more to talk about so my apologies but Merry Christmas everyone! For those taking Finals, Good luck. And to those of you not experiencing summer in December like me, please enjoy the cool weather.
That is all for now!
Photo: We can't baptize on the moon, but its a great view.
Excerpt from family letter:
This week has been a really good one. We had a pretty easy week as far as all things go in the mission . We are trying to find more and more people so that we can continue baptizing next week. We have a baptism fijo for this week con Hmna J. She is the mother of one of the active members and basically was an eternal investigator . She doesn't know how to read but we have been able to teach things simply enough with the church videos and pictures. We were able to gain her trust (really her need) and now she will be baptized this week. That seems to be one of the key parts of the work is to gain people´s trust. I have a little difficulty with that because often the topic of discussion is about something that has its own vocab and so I am trying out how to best overcome that and be able to contribute something that has something to relate with it. My comp really likes to talk about food, but all these types of food don't exist in the states, so I am like what??? Anyway she is really cool and always offers us something to eat which is always good for a missionary because we are always hungry.
Right now we are searching for people that we can baptize next week. That requires obedience and diligent work. I am trying to improve in both with my comp. The baptism services are getting better and better. We are having more and more members show up and now finally people are also bringing food. I hope the trend continues. The barrio really needs the animo! (energy, excitement)
So one of the awesome things we were able to do this week was have our Christmas Conference!!! I only received the journals(editor's note--I sent these in August as first class mail) and not the Christmas package so I guess I will have a new years present instead 
. We left at like midnight for Iquique which is a really awesome city. It is more urban and has more character than Arica. But yeah. I got some sleep on the bus and we arrived at the chapel to finish off our sleep at 5 in the morning. ]Get this, the President had the Hmnas sleep in the chapel too so that was a bit unorthodox but everyone fell asleep right away because we were so tired. Then we woke up and ate some breakfast (sandwich and apple and peanuts for me) and got ready. Basically we spent the morning trying to look a little bit more put together and setting up the chapel for the conference. Then everyone came from Iquique and Alto Hospicio. There are like 5 Elders and Hmna Torgerson in those zones from my group at the MTC so we were all able to catch up and it was really cool. I have photos of that as well. We had a little review of the year as far as numbers go and we watched some of the new mission videos that we made for this year. Then we had the training and lesson from Hmna Ferreira. She really talked about how this time is the time to remember our Savior. This time of year especially but also the mission is our offering to the Lord. With that perspective it really made me think about the things I do as a missionary and how I can do better because I really am here to serve Him. I love the Lord and I want my efforts to reflect that. Then we had some lunch and a gift swap. Basically every missionary bought something to the conference and placed in under a chair. The chairs were arranged in a giant circle and each person was assigned a fruit name. If the the person in the middle said your fruit you had to swap chairs and the person left out had to share a funny mission experience.. After 20 minutes of that, the gift under our chair is the one we get. Elder Lindsey (comp from MTC) got his own gift and I got a box of some really nice chocolates. We then got a box of chocolates from President and Ice cream. We also had a chocolate fountain for strawberries and bananas. 
We also watched the new approved movie for the mission. KUNG FU PANDA. It was pretty darn hilarious. Afterwards, we cleaned up and took the bus home. We got home at about 1 in the morning. So it was a pretty sweet conference. Almost like a second PDAY.
My confidence in doing the work has really improved. I feel good at just about everything that I am doing. I am still working on being able to converse with people but that will come with time and experiences to share.
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| Putting roof on house last week |
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| Lunch as a thank you :) |
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