New Watch Battery leads to New Contact

Mom wanted me to take a picture of this little girl.  Chilean children are adorable

 There was a flood in Tocapilla because of the rain.  We drove the mission truck to Tocapilla to help members of the church who lost a lot and some most everything as a result of the flood.

 This is the city of Tocapilla.  The canyon in the center of the picture is very steep with only rocks and no green.  As a result, when it rains it floods.  Water came down this canyon and id a lot of damage.  The road south was washed out in several places and people had to be removed by Helicopter.  The Branch President appreciated our delivery.  It took us all day.

 This is the church in Tocapilla where we delivered the supplies.

 I thought you would like to see some of the beautiful scenery we passed on the way to Tocailla.  This is the Atacama Desert.  The driest desert in the world.

 Last week let Elder Erickson look at my camera and he took a picture of me with it, which i included last week.  He did not know that I took this picture of him taking a picture of his name tag in the desert.

 Dinner at the home of a member family.  The girl standing  by mom is Purimisa.  She is engaged to a non-member.  She is a returned missionary but is 28.  The boy she wants to marry is not a member of the church and doesn't seem to be too interested.  This is a big problem for her.  Her boyfriend was supposed to come tonight, but did not come.

 Jamie, Purimisa (mother) Estela, Drew, and Purimisa.  It was a lovely dinner

 Our new watch repair contacts.  Mom, Martha, Rodolfo, and Gustavo.  We go to their home for dinner on Sunday.

August 14, 2015

Dear family,

We have an appointment in a few minutes, so I will likely have to finish this e-mail a little later, and it may be tomorrow.

We worked on normal things in the office, but continued to work with investigators in the evenings and on Saturday and Sunday.  We have turned a number of investigators that we have found over to the missionaries.  We have still tried to keep in touch with them and fellowship them.  We had the missionaries come over and to teach Blanca and Christian on Wednesday.  Blanca was not able to come because her little boy was ill, but her son Christian came.  He was very interested in the church and is a student at a university in Calli, Columbia.  He will be going home on Wednesday, but is going to go to Church with the missionaries this next Sunday.  We got his new address in Columbia and will try to have the missionaries pick up with him there.  He is really a fine young man.  Hopefully his mother will be able to go to church with him this Sunday.

We picked up another contact we will call the watch battery contact.  The battery in my watch died, and so I had to go to a store and get a new battery so I would know what time it was.  The lady owner of the store was very nice, and while we were there, her husband came in and he was equally nice.  We left the store and did some other errands, and then Margaret and I talked about how nice they were and we should go back and talk to them more.  They were quite busy in the store while we were there, so it was not convenient the first time we were there.  When we went back, they were just leaving so we talked some more and invited them over for dinner that evening.  They willing agreed even though they could see our missionary tags, so  we had them over to our apartment that evening.  She was from Brazil and he is from Chile.  As you could guess, we eventually started talking about the Book of Mormon.  Margaret reached over and picked up some two copies of the Book of Mormon that she had brought back from the office to give away as we had people in to our home.  She thought they were all Spanish Book of Mormons.  Fortunately, she gave one to Martha, the wife, and she said, "Oh, you have the Book of Mormon in Portuguese."  We were shocked, as we thought they were copies of the Book of Mormon in Spanish.  They each took one home, one in Spanish and the other in Portuguese.  As we explained about the Book of Mormon, he commented, "I have never heard anything like this before."  We invited them to read some in the Book of Mormon and they invited us to their home for dinner on Sunday.  They want to invite a brother to their home as well to meet us.  We had a fun evening and will look forward to  being with them again before we turn them over to the missionaries.  Rodolfo and Martha Gabrielovich happen to live in the sector of the the office missionaries, so they are very excited to get an opportunity to teach them.

We had another interesting experience this week.  An Elder Preston was to go home, but they had not been able to get his visa processed to allow him to go home as scheduled.  The missionaries in Iquique went to help with the situation and were told it would be ready on Thursday, but when they arrived, they had not processed it and it would not be available until the next Tuesday which made it almost impossible for them to get the Visa processed so that he could go home.  I told the elders of the experience II had in Mexico, which seemed like an impossible situation to solve, as the border agents would not let Elder Senkans and his wife Velga cross the border.  The agent through his hands in the air and left saying he could not allow them to go into Mexico and left.  I was left with the problem of going back to Belize City with them, or leaving them on their own and going with the group.  If I went back with them I would leave the tour group without a director.  I stood there with a terrible choice.  While I was standing there pondering what to do, the man came back out and said OK, I will let them go.  I discovered the women on the bus had been praying that the man's heart would be softened and that the Senkans would be allowed to go with us.  The prayer was answered.  I told the Elders this story and said let us go and say a prayer and asked thee Lord to soften the men's heart in Iquique.  A while later, Elder Hortua came to me and said "you won't believe what happened.  They approved the Visa in Iquique, and now the problem is solved.  That shows the power of prayer."  We were all relieved.

I have written more than I expected.  Hope everyone is well at home.  We miss you all and appreciate the pictures on everyone's blogs, facebook, and those that have been sent to us.  I will have to admit, to see pictures of everyone does make us a little homesick.

Love,

Mom and Dad