Circunvalacion 1-Week #8

Howdy Texas!!!

First off I wanted to start with a shout out to the birthday girl... RYAH!!! BIG 18!!! I'm feeling a little old now, my baby sister is all grown up... maybe...

This last week has been excellent. I was able to get a lot of my work caught up, and we were able to have quite a bit of time in the sector as well. The highlight of the week, hands down, was Wednesday night... but I'll start the story from the beginning.

Sunday at church there was a new young woman, 19 years-old, who came in and sat down at the back of the chapel. None of the three of us really payed a whole lot of attention, as there are a ton of unknown members here in Chile, said hello and kept on about our business. At the end of Sacrament Meeting, however, Genesis (the girl) came up to us and introduced herself as a member who had recently moved to the ward. Being missionaries we instantly asked when we could pass by and set an appointment for Wednesday evening at 7:00 pm.

Wednesday came around and we were super busy with work here in the office, but we decided that we would leave to go to the appointment that we had set. We are very glad we did! Upon arriving at the appointment we went in and started "trying" to share with Genesis. The conversation was one of those awkward ones that you ask a question and the person responds with a one word response and chao! AWKWARD! Luckily as we were about to sing, share a message, and leave (all 3 very quickly) one of her friends, Abraham, who also lives there, walked in and broke the ice. We taught him to sing and shared a quick scripture when 2 more friends showed up. Shortly thereafter Genesis' mom showed up and every was all ears to the message. So to make a long story short, Wednesday resulted in 4 new investigators, with lots of potential, a real desire to share, and a return visit yesterday.

We passed by last night again and shared with Jennifer & Mario, 2 of the friends, and with Genesis' drunk dad. The lesson was pretty comical, after all we did have your typical Chilean drunk, but we did make a lot of headway. Jennifer & Mario are planning on attending church on Sunday and are super excited about the gospel!

Missionary work just feels so freakin' good!!! I'm super excited to hear that Ryan is out in the field and starting to tear up the work in Missouri. Have we heard whereabouts he is serving yet?

Bummer to hear the opposite of all the good news. Lots of times one person's bad decisions can effect the lives of lots of people. Jake's life is going to be changed for a very, very long time!

Work sounds like it was pretty fun this week. Dad, I kinda wish I had been there on Wednesday... sounds fun but super crazy at the same time (at the moment I'm sure it was not at all enjoyable). The house sounds like it is taking a new shape, hopefully all of the damage due to "normal" East Texas weather has been fully repaired and the work can keep progressing. I still want to see more pictures! So when is the projected move in date? Is it close or will you be waiting for me on that one?

Hope everything went well with Ryah's birthday. I can't believe she's already 18 and getting ready to graduate pretty soon. She told me that she is still the top of her class! I don't want to miss her valedictorian speech so somebody better record it for me!!! And possibly heading off to BYU pretty soon...

Work here in the office is still going. According to our plan we are a couple of days behind, and President keeps throwing us curve balls that aren't letting us get caught up. As part of the office change we are writing instruction manuals for our jobs, to avoid what happened with Elder Smith. I've gotten one of about 30 processes written and I'm not progressing at all!!! I've been working for that past week or two helping out Elder Taylor with the secretary work, but now that we are getting that lined out I'm able to start working on my stuff. Good thing we've got 3 more weeks before changes and all of this jazz has to be finished... jajaja!

On Wednesday we also got to tour the new office building. It is fairly decent size, but the whole move process ought to be a blast... not! The set-up is definitely going to cause a couple of problems with the furniture that we have now, but we've been to handle it school!

Well, that's about all of the news I've got for now! I love ya'll and miss ya'll bunches! Wish I could have been home for Ryah b-day!

¡Todo mi amor!

-- Élder Todd