Hello dearest everyone, 

Due to the fact that this internet is very slow and that I spent almost all my P-day deep cleaning our house, my p-day is about to end and I (again) don`t have much time.  our house had (clearly) not received a good deep-cleaning for quite awhile, so my poor companion had to wait for me as i scrubbed the floors, the cielings (they had mold), and various other surfaces as well as throw out about threee huge sacks of trash of all the unecessary and gross things in the house.  i promised her that I was only going to do this once, and that all the rest of our P-days would be much more fun. 

This week, we found a less-active who hasn`t been to church in QUITE a few years (she`s 76 or something like that) but she invited us in and we had the privilege to listen to her life story.  It was asombrosa.  She had no fornal education, but got married very early in life and had children soon after.  her husband turned out to be a horrible person who beat her everyday and did not help her with anything.  To provide for her children, she started a small store out of her house (that`s very common around here), and would stay up until the wee hours of the morning making sweets and cookies and knitting and crochetting hats and socks and other things.  Well her little store started to grow and grow and she was able to expand until she, at one point, owned three houses and two cars and her "little store" was a huge business where everyone stopped by.  let me just tell you, you have to have a LOT of money here in chile to have three houses and two cars.  Well she just kept working and working, and one day decided that she wanted to live in a house a bit smaller, so she sold her three houses, two cars and her business and came to live in a quiet little house in our sector.  a few months later, she suffered some sort of attack that left the muscles in her face grotesquely mishapen and her arm and leg paralyzed.  For some strange reason that i didn`t really understand, her insurance didn`t cover it, so she used her entire fortune that she had gained to pay for the medical treatments, which saved her life and her face.  Now she lives in a rather barren little house and sells kindling which she chops herself, but she says she is so grateful to God for saving her and giving her the life and the will to keep on working.  It was an incredible testimony to me of hard work and i resolved then and there to enjoy the work that we are given and to ALWAYS find the way to be self sufficient.  Anyway, i don`t have more time, but I love you all!!!

Pictures to follow next week!

Hello dearest everyone, 

Well I am officially out of Punta Arenas (6 months later), and in my new sector Alerce III in Puerto Montt.  Puerto Montt is huge (twice as big as Punta Arenas) and there are three companionships of missionaries in our Alerce branch.  It´s a branch, but there are 90-100 people attending, so we´ve heard that it´s going to be a ward soon.  I really quite love the branch already because I´ve noticed that everyone there works incredibly hard in their callings, and you can tell the difference.  My new companion is from El Salvador and her name is Hermana Estrada.  She´s very low-key and down-to-earth.  My new sector is gigantic (We have to take a bus for about 15 minutes to get to one part of the sector) and very green and beautiful.  We can see two volcanoes from our sector, Volcano Osorno and another volcano who´s name I have not yet learned.  

A very happy mother´s day to all the mothers, and especially mine, whom I love very much.  As a public statement, I would like to say thank you to my mother for making me practice piano, even though I said for about 15ish years that I would NEVER say that.  Thanks for making me practice the piano.  There, now all the mothers who might be fighting with their children about practicing the piano can print that out and use it as factual evidence.  

Anyway, I don´t have much time left, so I promise to have lots of good stories the next week, but I want to share my testimony with all who might read this.  I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the most important thing we have in this life and that the most wonderful feeling in the world is the Spirit.  I know this is the Church of Jesus Christ, and I have no doubt about that.

I love you all, and murch more next week!! Sorry it´s so short!!

¡Chao mi amada Punta Arenas!

Well well well hello dearest everyone, 

As they have a way of doing, cambios have come again, and I will officially be leaving my lovely Punta Arenas.  When I turned in my mission papers, I NEVER thought I would be preaching the gospel at the end and tip of the world, but I will never forget how I´ve changed and what I´ve learned here.  I suppose I had to come to the end of the world to become the kind of person I wanted to be.  How expensive.  But completely worth it.  As a going-away gift, it snowed (but REALLY snowed) for the first time today, and as I stood in the plaza watching the snow fall around the statue of Magellan discovering the Magellan Straight, I teared up a bit.  But I´m pretty sure it was just because I had forgotten my gloves and it was ABSOLUTELY FREEZING.  Apparently I will be leaving as winter starts.  I´m not INCREDIBLY heartbroken about that.  

HOWEVER, I will be going a little bit more north (obviously) to the sector Alerce III, and I´ve heard that it rains A LOT.  Apparently there are THREE companionships of missionaries in the branch.  OUTrageous.  Alerce is right in between Puerto Montt and Puerto Varas.  I don´t know if that means anything to you guys, but I´ve heard that Puerto Varas is VERY beautiful.  yay!!! 

ANYWAY!! In other news, this week we had 44 people at church!!!! At the beginning of the cambio we had only 26, it was SO wonderful to see the progress.  And TWO inactive families showed up for the first time in quite awhile!!

My companion and I also started teaching a little boy named Leo this week.  His mom isn´t a member, but his great grandpa is an active member of the ward and his great grandma is our mamita.  He started going to church with his great grandpa about 4 months ago and now he goes EVERY week without fail, all by himself.  He´s 8 years old.  His mother doesn´t pay much attention to him so he wanders the streets by himself after school and he doesn´t really talk much to people.  But the first Sunday in the ward we met him and he came to watch me play the piano.  A couple weeks ago, he started coming to his grandma´s house when we came to eat lunch, and little by little we gained his confidence and now he eats lunch with us and little by little we´ve got him to talk to us!!! The last several weeks in church, he has followed me everywhere.  He comes and helps me play the piano during sacrament meeting and one week when I gave a talk, he came up to the stand with me.  He always sits with us during sacrament meeting and draws pictures in my agenda book.  I think he loves church because everyone there is so loving to him.  It´s his favorite place to be.  Well my companion and I decided that we had to help him, so we went to his house and asked his mom if we could start teaching him.  She didn´t want to listen to us but she said that we could teach him.  She went into the other room and carried the little telivision into the room to watch TV, but she never turned it on, and was completely silent the entire time we taught the lesson about nuestro Padre Celestial y Jesucristo.  When we finished, she came out and started asking us a lot of questions.  And she asked us if Leo got baptized, if he could also be a missionary.  We told her, of course.  She thought about that for a minute and then told us that she might be able to come to church with him one week.  Then she gave him a hug and a kiss.  Which I had never seen her do before.  

In other news, I got bit by a dog for the first time in my mission!!! Luckily it just attacked my foot and my boots are pretty thick.  The only damage was a sore and bruised foot and lovely teeth marks in my boot.  It was rather quite funny after.  If I had more time I would the tell the story really dramatically and with much more detail.  But it sufficeth me to say, I got bit by a dog.

I love you all!!!

i don´t know if you can tell, but it´s snowing in the pictures.