Hello everyone, it´s been a great week! Quite rainy and all, with lots of mud, but it´s all very exciting.  I really love the rain, it makes everything more exciting.  Gathering firewood in a downpour at 7 in the morning or 9:30 at night is not my favorite though.  Especially because then the fire won´t light because the wood is extremely wet, but really it´s fine. I think I´m going to try and invest in some slippers today because my socks get RATHER dirty because our floor is rather dirty, what with the mud, ash and kindling that seem to be everywhere despite our best efforts to sweep regularly. The people of Chile are as warm and friendly as ever, and I can usually collect my dinner by the time I get home (an orange at one house, a slice of bread at another).  

This week my companion and I had a GREAT experience with a less active family in our sector.  There are about fifty people who attend the branch regularly and then about ten or twenty (on a good day) who come every month or so.  We share our branch with a companionship of elders, and they have most of the active members in their sector (we have about four) I cannot begin to tell you how many less active members there are, but they are still coming out the wazoo.  Our whole mission is like this, and our mission president has started a new program where we assign these less active members different things to do in church each week to encourage them to attend.  Many of them have strong testimonies of the gospel, but have even more excuses as to why they can´t go.  Being lazy is an acceptable excuse around these parts and I´ve heard it rather too many times.  It is always really fun to teach them though because they agree with everything we say, it´s just the doing it that´s tough.  It´s a good lesson for me to learn.  It is NEVER enough simply to know something, you have to APPLY what you know.

Anyway, we had taught this family a couple times before, but only the mother and her two teenage sons because the father always works late.  But this week we were able to catch both him and his brother (who lives close by) along with his entire family, and it was one of the best lessons we have ever had.  We talked about the Restoration of the priesthood and the power of the authority of God, and both him and his brother said that they´ve been thinking about preparing to receive the priesthood.  This family hasn´t been to church in three years, but the Spirit was incredibly strong in the lesson, and I think we finally found a family that understands the importance of the knowldge that they have through the gospel.  And this week, they attended church! It was great! Anyway, our goal for them is to have them sealed in the temple.  

Dessert of the week: Leche Asada - I don´t know if there are different kinds, but the one I ate was caramely 

I have to go I love you all!!!