Time Changes, and times change.

Nuevas de Chile

This week was a hard one, not that it was not good, but it had it´s difficulties. You can expect opposition in all things, especially the Lord´s work.  For the past few weeks, we have had our days filled to the brim with work, lessons, and contacts, but we have unfortunately unable to get people commited to follow the commitments, and promises from the Lord. Though I feel like we are doing our best, sometimes we do not receive the blessings we hope for, or expect, but those things that we needed. One thing that straight hard work achieves, is you can see who people really are, and you can see who you really are. In the story of Job we know he had many things in his life he worked for, and thus was obedient to those things of the Lord. Later he was tested and stood strong to his heart keeping the things of the Lord close. After he had lost everything he began to see that material things, numbers, or wealth do not keep us strong, but our will, and our mind. The spirit is strong. The relationship between my companion and I is starting to open up, and if I ever learn one thing from our time together, and it can be summarized in a Quote from Jeffery R. Holland.                                                                                                                                                                 “Some blessings come soon, some come late,  and some don't come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come.”

All we can do is keep on keeping on. We are getting a set of people ready for baptism this coming month, hope all goes as planned! Other than work, it is starting to get really cold down here, and I am not even in Osorno. So very grateful for all the sweet gear I have, special thanks to Brother Bertha! I always imagined it to be fairly sweet in Concepcion, but I hear it rains there everyday so I am alright in good ol Quillon! Overall, enjoying the work, working on getting letters to people, I never imagined the days to be so filled. Till next week, Chao Chao!

Elder Siaosi

The pictures before the cambio. And the good Jesus paintings that are all over the town!

Semana Santa

As of today I have been out in the mission for 4 of my 16 cambios, and though it seems like I still have a long time to go, I have hardly been out in Chile. As we hit the 21 of Abril we hit another 6 weeks and that means cambios, lucky for me I am still in good ol´Quillon with my companion Elder Bueno! This cambio is his last so I will be killing him as he prepares to return home just in time for the Mundial. He actually wants to extend his mission but the president says that he can not since he will not be able to get a return flight home due to the huge attraction to the east due to the Mundial! This week has been one of stress, but also of great joy!

As for many of your questions, all is well in my area of Chile, though for others not so well, there are many fires, earthquakes, and even tsunamis that are devastating towns, so many of the prayers are being sent to them.

Starting off this week we have been finding people to teach like crazy, we actually have 3 new invests se llaman Jose, and two Luis(es), along with many more Maria(s)! This week had so much fun and success in this manner that it reminded me the joys of doing the Lord´s work, there are so many people waiting for us!

This week we also had the opportunity to have many Noches de Hogar and really help people remember why we celebrate Easter, and for whom we ought to remember. Down here they do not make easter eggs, or such, so we were able to share a very strange custom from ¨gringo land¨ and also thanks to a sweet package from my Family, I was able to give this little girl, one of our new investigators, birthday presents from the Elderes.

Speaking of packages, this week I recieved 4 packages, I was in a state of shock and stoked! Thanks so much to my Aunt Jane, Aunt Jen, my mother, and my dad, who sent me a Nike band because he wants to see if I am actually working. It is funny what things get sent in packages, all of which are good, especially the peanut butter, thank you so much! You would be surprised how grateful people are too to receive something from the United States, one of our investigators was eternally grateful I gifted him a pen from the states. HA! But again thank you so much family!!

This past Saturday was a little jam packed, I was asked to give a talk, our Hermanas in our district asked us to come to where they lived because there was someone ¨creepy¨ outside their house at night, it was their neighbor. And! we were without light in our house so I had to write my talk with a headlight, thanks Dad, and after the night, in the morning at church the whole stake leadership was there and so the missionaries didn´t talk!!

However, yup all is well with me! It is getting cold, but I would rather be cold than hot! Thank you for all of your support! Otta head out!

Elder Siaosi

Pictures of the Season

The girl is so happy in this photo because I gave her some of the toys you send to me in a package a little while back!

High on a Mountain Top

Dearest Family,

First of all, sorry I was not able to finish my letter last week, the whole area of Quillon lost internet access for the day so we all had to just send our letters real quick!

But hopefully, this letter will be better!

Starting off, the week was not too exciting, just a lot of hard work and hastening the work! This whole week we have been working in the more country part of my sector, trying to meet new people that have never talked to the missionaries, which is hard because almost everyone is less active or has a less active family member! One crazy experience of trying to find new people, we came to a house where all off the family were being taught by the missionaries but never got baptized because after the great earthquake here in 2010, they were forced to move and build a new house and lost contact with the missionaries! Well now we are teaching them and they are absolutely amazing!!

Another sweet experience I had this week was with a boy named Bastian, who happens to have the same birthday as me, January 10th! Well this boy, the son of a less active, does not have a father, only his mom is in his life, though he is a normal boy he definately lacks the fatherly parent in his life. Well one day we were teaching his mother, Alejandra, and while we were waiting for her to cook something delicious, I do not know why some people always think they have to feed us when we visit, but I am not complaining. Anyways, while we were waiting, he starting playing with this toy light I have, in the shape of a shark,  and he brought out these coins of 10 pesos, begging me to sell him the shark. Well after some hard bargaining, I accepted four 10 peso coins for the shark and told him that it would protect him in the dark from monsters. The next week, Alejandra called us and asked to visit. We came and she starting giving us so much thanks for all we have done, her son uses the shark and is never afraid, how silly, but I never realized how great small things can be.

Two minutes left!

We went to the mountain this Monday and it was the longest hike I have ever done in the dark!  

E Siaosi

Season of the Conference

WHAT A GREAT WEEK!

I am so excited to write home but I don´t know what to write because there is so much that I want to say, and I only have 15 minutes to type it all out. First of all, I have been trying to work on my attitude in the mission to better apply myself to my work ethics, but I have been having a hard time trying to be that sort of missionary. This past week had been filled with miracles, but they were not mine, we were the miracle to someone else. The work is great, and the fruits are beautiful. I am not sure if I said this before, but nothing is better than being the answer to someone else´s prayers. One day in the morning we were just contacting houses to meet new people and one lady answered us after many unopened houses. She opened the door and started crying, not sure why she told us to come in, and then she expressed to us how she was praying for help, she could not walk well and thus could not leave the house, she felt lonely, none of her family lives near and she just wanted to die from depression. She had knelt down on her knees and prayed for someone to come to her house and make her lose these feelings. In the same instant she stopper praying we called ALO at her door. We taught her, gave her a blessing, prayed for her, and then left to return in another day. This is just one of the many great miracles that happened this week. Conference was amazing too!

I have to go now, the internet is lagging hard!!!!!!!!!!!

During the middle of Conference we thought that we would take time to take a few pictures for the families.

Some pictures of the average days work, we try to find the best enjoyable parts of the day to make the hard parts easy. And the last picture with the matching shoes...¨but it was 99 cents!¨