Hey everyone!

First off, we had some baptisms this week!! Elder F. and I had two in our area - Pablo and Euclides. Pablo is the 20 year old son of 2 members and Euclides is the guy I found when I went to the centro in the beginning of last transfer with the big sign shouting "clase de inglés clase de inglés gratis gratis" and he actually went and now he's baptized! Just shows you how there really aren't any coincidences and the Lord will put people in your path.

So, almost all of the members here in this city are new to the church and sometimes some pretty funny stuff happens. We have some unique lingo and sayings we use often at church. Sometimes people just being introduced to the culture of the church will repeat things they hear and mix them up or just say or do things not in the "normal" way we're used to hearing them. There's this one guy, Mario, whenever he blesses the bread he takes his whole arm and like sticks it out in front of him in some weird curve and puffs out his chest and says the prayer in a super deep robotic voice"OhGodtheeternalfatherweaskthe..." like way fast. My favorite up to this point is the same guy gave the lesson in Elders Quorum and he'd just have us read some random verses and then without explaining anything be like, "well, I think that's pretty clear" and move on. And then at the very end he gives his testimony and he says "I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, amen (it's a practice to close a prayer or testimony in the name of Jesus Christ...not the "Latter-Day Saints.") It's probably the same way for them when they hear us gringos speaking Spanish, ha! They are trying, but it still makes me laugh.

Other than that, things are going well. We have 8 baptismal dates set for the 16th of Febrero and plan on having a lot more. We just need a lot of people to go to church. Our area only had five investigators at church yesterday, but as a district in the ward we had over 20. They couldn't fit everyone in the casa capilla. Plans are already being started to build a real chapel here. I doubt I will be here when it's done, but maybe when they start it.

La semana pasada fue chévere y sé que recibimos mucha ayuda de arriba jaja. Trato de aplicar lo poquito que sé para que la obra aquí crezca. No podemos hacer nada a menos que el Espíritu esté con nosotros. Que estén muy bien. Chao.

Hey,

Things are going well. This week was super stressful all the way through Saturday. Last week was the week of "si o siembra" where basically we had to find as many new investigators as possible. The mission goal was 15 for each companionship for the week. Elder F. and I put 40 as our goal. The whole mission is having the regular interviews with President Prince and he said he is really impressed with our goal and he is assuming that we, of course, we’re gonna achieve it. This was on Tuesday, so I was really stressed Saturday night when we only had 20 out of 40. We had one day left and still needed half to get to the goal we set. So Sunday, after church, we just went out and decided to go find the investigators we needed. The Lord really helped us and we worked hard and ended up finding 33 that day for a total of 53 in the week. It really was a blessing. I was feeling really down, especially Sunday morning, but my companion and I just did our best and the Lord helped us.

If things go well we should have 4 or 5 baptisms this Saturday. It’s been tough because I've been moving around so much that I haven't had the chance to see the results of my work. I haven't seen a baptism since September, so this Saturday will be pretty cool.

Also the family of Magnolia in my old area, the 3 daughters are getting baptized this Saturday. It is so cool to see what has happened with them from the very first day when Elder A. and I contacted them outside their house. Now they all have super powerful testimonies of the Book of Mormon. Oh yeah, two of them, in the 6 or 7 weeks that it has been since we gave them The Book of Mormon, have read the entire thing. It is way cool to see how they have gained such powerful testimonies. Y., one of them, isn't even baptized yet and the branch president put her in the class where they teach people how to become teachers so that she can teach already!

Sé que El Señor en verdad nos bendice cuando hacemos su voluntad. Fue difícil la semana pasada pero ya hemos visto los frutos. Vamos bien y nos vemos en dos.

Élder Chase

Hey everyone

Okay, so good news and bad news with the transfers. The good news is that I´m still in Buenaventura. The bad news is I got changed from La Isla to another area called La Marina. So that officially makes it 4 different areas in four transfers. Oh yeah, and four different companions. Elder A stayed in the Isla and I am in the Marina with Elder F from Santiago, Chile. It's been really stressful this week. What happened is that they changed out 3 of the 6 missionaries here and 2 of them were both in the same area, La marina. So what happens is president moves me to their area with a new comp. It has been super stressful trying to find where all the investigators live and get to know the investigators and all that. Elder F is good though. 

So, one cool thing though is, remember when I did the whole shouting out in the street "clase de ingles" thing? Well, it turned out that out of all the people we met doing that, only one actually ended up coming and kept coming consistently and lived in Elder B and W area. They gave him a baptismal date and now he is my investigator. His name is Euclides R. He's like 35 and single. I think he's like quiet out in public but loves to go on and on in the lessons. 

Oh yeah, Saturday we did service and helped a member clear out his land. We all rode a jeep down there. Basically what happened is they handed us machetes and said go at it. It was so sick! I just got to hack at whatever and chop it down! We were basically in the jungle with machetes with permission to destroy everything. It was so cool!

Entonces ésta parte de mi misión ha sido tal vez la más dura hasta éste punto. Pero está bien porque El Señor nos ayudará según nuestros esfuerzos. Grácias a todos ustedes por todo lo quehan hecho para apoyarme y la obra del señor.

Elder Chase

Hey everyone!

Another week of sweating here in Buenaventura. Things are going well. We have transfers tonight but I doubt I'm going anywhere. I'm basically positive Elders H., A. and I will stay and the other three will go and we’ll get 3 new guys. The first time I stay in an area more than a month and a half hopefully, ha.

We’re working hard with this one family we contacted that we call the familia de Magnolia. They're really great, especially for being just a family that we talked to on the street. We definitely got some help from above with that one.

We went to some river place with some of the members for pday today. The best part was getting there. In order to get there we had to go on this thing that basically was a piece of wood with wheels attached. You put it on railroad tracks then attach a motorcycle and you just go. The back wheel of the motorcycle pushes it. We went way fast... it was sick. Really dangerous, but sick.

One thing I've really been learning lately is that it's super important to teach PEOPLE, not just LESSONS. We've been working with this one girl, Maricela, and we could never figure out why she wouldn't read the Book of Mormon. I had a feeling that there was something wrong and those feelings were confirmed when we found out she actually doesn't know how to read.  If we had just pounded along with the usual routine and treated her like every other investigator, we may have thought that she was just lazy and didn't want to read. We may have interpreted it as disinterest and stopped visiting her. But instead, we tried to reach out to her specifically and we found the problem . It was really cool.

En èste momento todo està muy bien. No sè si me voy a ir con los cambios mañana pero lo dudo. Tampoco sè porquè los tildes estàn al revès. De todas maneras, vamos bien aquì. ya sè que cuando vuelva a casa, serè una persona diferente. Solo quiero ayudar las personas aquì a cambiar sus vidas y lo voy a hacer lo mejor que puedo. Nos vemos.

Elder Chase