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.
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