Til We Meet

Dearest friends and family,

Gratitude. This week has been full of gratitude. Events to be thankful for, people to be thankful for, and times to be thankful for. This week was filled to the brim with just small miracles. When I think of miracles and being grateful, we can always remember Jesus Christ and what he did for us. I love the story of the 10 lepers.

In the book of Luke, chapter 17, we read of them:

“And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.

“And as he entered into a certain village, there ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off:

“And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

“And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed.

“And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God,

“And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan.

“And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?

“There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger.

“And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.”

Through divine intervention those who were lepers were spared from a cruel life. The expressed gratitude by one merited the Master’s blessing; the ingratitude shown by the nine, His disappointment. I love what President Gordon B. Hinckley said, “When you walk with gratitude, you do not walk with arrogance and conceit and egotism, you walk with a spirit of thanksgiving that is becoming to you and will bless your lives.” 

In our lives we have so much to be grateful for. We met a family of 6, whom only a few were members, and the family was in a little of a wreck. We met them in the country, taught them of Jesus and how we can be closer to him. All 6 came to church this week, and two of them want to be baptized. They are grateful for our surprising visit and we were grateful for the opportunity.

This week my companion returns home to his family. I am so grateful for the time we had together, and he has taught me so much. I hope he learned at least one thing from me. I am grateful for my family and all of my friends, for the church and the people, my leaders and my companions. I hope the best for all and am grateful for your prayers and love.

Your missionary in Chile,

Elder Jacob Siaosi

 We are still finding ways to have fun on the mission. A picture with Elder Copling from Utah, a picture playing Tennis like the good old days, a picture in the lifeguard tower like good old times, and a picture with the members we like to brin gto lessons with us.

La Humilidad

Hello dear friends and family,

First and for most I would like to thank all of you who are thinking of me and hoping for me. It is amazing how far away I am, but still that I have the ability to feel your love from afar. This has been one of the most diverse weeks of my life. 

One thing I have been trying to work on is one trait that we can find is almost everyone. Ezra Taft Benson speaks of this trait in a talk called Cuidaos de Orgullo.

 "Pride is a sin that can readily be seen in others but is rarely admitted inourselves. Most of us consider pride to be a sin of those on the top, suchas the rich and the learned, looking down at the rest of us. (See 2 Ne.9:42.) There is, however, a far more common ailment among us—and thatis pride from the bottom looking up. It is manifest in so many ways, suchas faultfinding, gossiping, backbiting, murmuring, living beyond ourmeans, envying, coveting, withholding gratitude and praise that might liftanother, and being unforgiving and jealous."

Everyone could use a little more humility in our lives, often times due to a lack of humility we find ourselves searching for the wrong things in this life. We lie, cheat, steal, fight, and overall forget what we have and how we recieved it. This past Sunday I was asked to give a talk on the theme humility, and as I was asked I was given an invitiation to try and live my theme so that I would be able to better speak. 

One scripture that hits to heart, is found in Ether 12:27.

 27 And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.

If we are always remembering our constant need for the Savior and for others around us the World will be a lighter place, we will see more success in our lives, better relationships, we will have much more gratitude in our lives. The scriptures say that pride is the universal sin, and if so, then through humility we have the antidote for all of our problems. I know if we all try to be a little more humble we will see a grnad change in the world and in ourselves!

This week, like I said, was one of the best weeks ever. We had many activies for the branch, great lessons. met gran people, and after much help we were able to get one of the investagators of our Hermanas baptized. Sadly our invest, Jose was not able to be baptized, he was not willing to change his life, and it is his choice, thus we were sad to let him go. But Rodrigo (26 years old) had one of the funnies baptizes I will ever see. First of all the Hermanas did not have pants that fit him well, and he did not know how to tie a tie but tried anyways and he looked like such a champ, after while he was in the water, the water was freezing by the way, we did not have electricity for the heater to work. Then the Hemano who was to baptize Rodrigo could not remember Rodrigos name, he could not get the words right, and finally when we helped him to get it all down, he bent foward instead of going back and after the Brother tried to flip Rodrigo backwards, but Rodrigo fell down and could not get back up, it was like a slow motion fall! And so we rebaptized him, but two more times because he did not go all the was under, it was just the best ever! After the baptize we had a very interesting experience with the brother of Rodrigo and his family!

This Monday we had the opportunity to go to the Nevadas de Chillan, a mountain slope that in meant for skiing when it s primetime winter, for an activity for the zones of Chillan. We, meaning Elder Bertolio and I, hiked up the mountain for about 2 hours alone and had, the time of our lives! I am waiting for sweet fotos to send when I get them from!

Again, thank you for all of your love! Hope all is well with y´all!

Con Amor,

Elder Siaosi

Halfway from being halfway!

Dearest family and friends!

This week flew by as every week. It is hard to say that the time goes by fast when everyday it is filled to the max with work but I guess that what being busy does, never have time to stop and think! It has already been 6 months since I have been out! Whoo!

I do not have anything interesting to write about, thus I shall share what my companion and I have been trying to work on this past week.

We decided that our investigators we met needed to know more about prayer because that is central to gaining a testimony of  the gospel. So we talked in depth about how to pray, who we pray to, and the difference of public and private prayer. One thing that every member of the church needs is their own proper conversion. And we can receive this through prayer.

Also for the members, we have to be weary to not forget the gospel we are living. There is a verse we love in Mosiah chapter 4 and it reads

 30 But this much I can tell you, that if ye do not watch‍ yourselves, and your thoughts, and your words, and your deeds, and observe the commandments of God, and continue‍ in the faith of what ye have heard concerning the coming of our Lord, even unto the end of your lives, ye must perish. And now, O man, remember, and perish not.

Many times we need to remember what it means to be a member of the Church of Christ. We must live the attributes that Christ has. Many of the members find themselves gossiping, judging, and worrying about things, unimportant in this life and usually wastes relations and time. If we always remember what we teach and know we will be representatives of Christ!

I am thankful for everyone, thanks so much Megan Bertha for your letter and love from England! Thank you family for all you do for me! Thanks to everyone in my life, I miss you all! Hope to have something grand in the next email!

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!¨