First successful contact was Baptized!!

April 12, 2016

Dear family,

You can always tell when we have a hectic week, as we do not get a letter written home until later.  Usually we try to write on Saturday or Sunday, but this past weekend was very busy and we did not get it done.

We did not get very many pictures taken either, as we were not out as much taking pictures. We did take some at Edward's grandparents Sunday dinner.  They are really a fun family and very United.  I talked to Edward's grandfather for a few minutes and he said as a family, they are very United.  He says if any of the family has a problem, they are all there to help them.  I see a lot of similarities between them and the Talbots.  They love being together and really enjoy each other.  Unfortunately, they have no religion.  Edwards promised us he would go to church with us this next Sunday and bring his girlfriend.  Hopefully he will come, and they he will enjoy it.  He has been pretty good at keeping commitments, but most Chileans are not.

We have had this young man (Jose, who  is 26) come over and help us with our computer when we have problems and he has also helped us with Spanish.  We always feed him dinner on Monday night.  He is Catholic and has not shown any interest in the church.  We invited him to dinner on Friday night this past week, and called a Catholic girl we met in Tal Tal to come and join us.  We called several times on Thursday and Friday, but she would not talk to us after we said Hola.  We could tell she was going to cancel.  I told Margaret we better put a sign on Jose's door and tell him we would have to arrange dinner another night.  She had a strong impression that we should still have him come but try and find someone else.  I did not think that was a good idea, but finally tried to find someone else.  There was a young lady in our ward that was contacted through another person, and she said she would come and bring a friend.  That sounded like a great idea.  They were supposed to come at 6:30, but we finally decided to have dinner without them at 7:30 p.m.  We finished our dinner with Jose and he went back to his apartment.  Before he left, the elders came to our apartment to pick up a prescription that I had picked up for him.  When they went downstairs, the to girls were there and did not know how to find us.  They had been given the wrong room number.  When they saw the elders, they were then told how to get to our apartment.  Margaret fed them dinner and went down and got Jose and brought him back to meet them.  They were really fun girls and he enjoyed them and they him.  We now have another evening scheduled with them this Friday, but they said they wanted to surprise us with the food.  Jose was more than anxious to come again.  We will see what happens.

Sunday we were busy all day visiting investigators.  We have access to a car on weekends so,try to visit as many people as we can on that day.  As soon as church is over, we begin our stops.  We find if we keep making visits with the people, they are more likely to also stay interested in the church.  We are always received well and we manage to share a message with those who are home.  Religion does not seem to be a main concern of people.  They look for entertainment when free, go to the beach, but are not very interested in religion.  Even those who have expressed some interest are not very good at keeping commitments.  We always try to call and confirm appointments, otherwise there is a 95% chance they will not be there.  When we call to confirm,, there is a better than 50% chance that they will not keep their commitment.  Usually they will tell you they are busy and will call us.  Seldom do they ever call us.  Usually saying they will call us is their polite way of getting rid of us.  It is quite a task trying to be a missionary.  We are determined to keep trying to find those who will accept the Gospel. 

We love you all, we pray for you and asked the Lord to bless you in our absence.

Love,

Mom and  Dad

April 17, 2016

Dear Family,

Another week has slipped by and it is time to give a report on our missionary efforts in Antofagasta, Chile.  It seems time passes so quickly each week.

I remember a comment by Maria Lopez about our having the only true church on the earth.  She said, "You mean that everyone in Antofagasta is going to have to find your church and join it?"  That was a question to be pondered.  Obviously, the answer is yes, but there are a lot of people in Antofagasta.  When I go downtown to run errands for the mission, I look at all the people on the streets busy doing their daily tasks, and our responsibility is ominous. Most are not looking for the church.  Many found the church at one time and are now inactive.  Trying to find people who will even listen is a rather difficult assignment.  Of those who say they will, many do not keep their commitments.  Serving as a missionary here, or I suppose most places, comes with it a heavy burden to try and find people who will listen.

I sent pictures of our dinner with Elder Ricardo Jimenez and his wife Catherine.  They are wonderful people, and will be moving to Ely, Nevada next week where he will be employed for three years.  He was released as area authority seventy in April conference.  His wife Catherine has been so good to help us with our missionary efforts.  We wanted to have them over to dinner to tell them goodbye.  We also took the opportunity to teach them how to play Rook.  They liked the game and want to return again before they leave to play again.  He was released at April conference, but continues to serve until May 1, 2016.  He had not shaved for a few days, so I had to tease him a little about getting released and then immediately relaxing into not shaving.

I also sent some pictures of Ideide, Wilson and their children.  We had them to our home for dinner.  Their boy wanted to play Clue, so he brought that and we played that game until late at night.  Because there was so many playing, each person only had three cards.  As a result, it was taking a long time to sort out "how did it, with what, and where."  It was getting so late, we finally had to make some educated guesses and close the game.  Nevertheless, we had fun with their family and they have become good friends.  We are hoping to continue to have the progress towards learning more about the church.

We are overjoyed today, as Ideide's sister Cleyde is getting baptized in Ovalle, Chile.  Her baptism was at 1:30 p.m. Today.  The missionaries said they would send us some pictures of her baptism.   We are excited to receive those and realize that finally one person that we initially contacted has joined the church.  We have worked so hard, and there so many who do not follow through with their commitments, that it is nice to finally have someone take the final step.  We wish that we could have attended her baptism, but Ovalle is in the Vina Del Mar Mission.  It was interesting to learn that David served in Ovalle for five months, as he was called to the Vina Del Mar Mission.

We appreciate all of your support.  We have had an extremely busy time trying to keep up with everything here. We miss all of you, but are so appreciative that you are all serving in the church and keeping your covenants.  That means a lot to us.  I take great pride in showing the people here our family that Laura included on the calendar she gave us.  You are all very special to us.

Love,

Mom and Dad

Two other uncles of Edwards through marriage.  The one in the red they call Chabacca.  The are really a very fun family, but no religion.  

 Edwards mother and father.  It is Edward's mother, but not his biological father.  They always treat us very nice.  We had the sister missionaries stop in to see them.  They have no religion, and do not seem to be too interested.

 Elder Ricardo Jimenez and his wife Catherine.  He was released as an Area Authority Seventy during April conference.  They are good friends.  They are moving to Reno, Nevada to work in the mines there for three years.  He is an accountant.  She helped us with missionary work.  I teased him about growing a beard so soon after he was released.

 Wilson and Daniel along with Pascal and Ideide.  We had them over for dinner.  Ideide's sister(Clyede) is the one we helped teach and is getting baptized at the moment I am writing this e-mail.  We are hoping to also get this family as well.

 We taught Wilson and Ideide how to play rook, but Daniel want to play Clue, so played that game until 11:00 p.m. Saturday night.  Rook will have to be another night.

This was our first successful contact that was baptized.  She will be a good member

General Conference in Chile

April 5, 2016


Dear Family,

       We hope all is well with all of you.  We are so grateful that we are able to visit with you periodically on the telephone and occasionally skype and get to see you.  It seems we are so far away that is nice to forget the distance and see you and talk to you.  It was fun to watch the egg fight on Easter Sunday.  That certainly brought back a lot of memories.
       We had a very busy week with eight missionaries going home and ten missionaries coming into the mission.  This is called Cambios in Spanish, but Transfers in English.  That usually involves us with meals, transportation, and shopping for three days.  This time, because of conference they had Leadership Council on Thursday for all of the Zone leaders.  That is also a very busy day for us, as 34 missionaries converge upon the office for the day and we have to prepare food for them.
       Friday would have normally been a rest day from the four days previous, but with General conference coming up, we were trying to get quite a few investigators to watch conference.  We had invited ten, and had five come.  They seemed to enjoy it.  We hope we can more forward in their teaching and get them baptized into the church.  Our investigators are very special people, and it would make our mission worth it they would become members of this wonderful church.
     I had to go downtown today (they call it Centro here) and I always try to find someone to talk to along the way that might be interested in the church.  I have usually been successful.  We made three contacts today that gave us their name and addresses and wanted to have the elders come and teach them.  It was interesting that in the one case, the two elders were walking a head of me and I noticed a woman on a bench with another lady watch the elders pass by and look at me like she wanted to say something.  I stopped and walked over to her and introduced myself.  The elders then came over to help me with my Spanish.  The lady (Vitoria Tablete) indicated that she had had the missionary lessons 15 years ago and was about to be baptized, but was not.  She indicated that she has attended many churches since then, but had not found one that compared to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and wanted to have the missionaries come by and teach her again.  That sounds like a pretty good contact and will be turned over to the sister missionaries to the missionaries in that sector tomorrow.
       It is always a struggle here trying to make contact with people here.  For some reason they do not want to tell you they are not interested in your message after you have met with them, so they just quit answering their phone when you call.  We do not know that they are no longer interested, so keep trying to contact them thinking they are gone, or there phone is off or something.  In some cases I find they block your number so that it will never ring through from your phone.  You finally concluded that they may not be interested.  We never like to give up on people, so you keep trying until you are forced to give up.  I wish they were more open and honest that her than letting you continue to try to contact them.  We have one or two like that right now who we thought were very interesting in learning about the church and then one day they do not keep their appointment, but you can't reach them any more.
     We noticed that it is getting cooler today.  Normally we have our doors open to cool the apartment down, but today, we have the doors closed because it is getting colder outside.  In Utah it is Spring right now, but here it is fall.  We will never have snow, and I doubt I will every wear more than a suit coat during the winter, but we have noticed the change in the temperature.  I was thinking today that when we arrived in chile it was winter.  We then had summer here and now we are going into winter again.  When winter is over here, we will be leaving for Utah (November or December) and be going into winter in Utah.  There will be thee winters and one summer.
      We really enjoyed the talks at General Conference.  Some of them were very outstanding.  Some buoyed us up in our missionary efforts.  We have to keep trying and doing our best, and that is what matters.  Success is not measured by by the number of baptisms but by how much effort we put forth.  We have set a goal to try and have 6 baptisms before we leave.  This mission has about 400 baptisms per year. Since there are 200 missionaries, each missionary averages two baptisms per year.  Since we will only be her 18 months we felt we should have 5 baptisms to be equal to the other full time missionaries.  They do have an advantage in that the are working full time, and we only have evenings after office hours and weekends to find our people. It is a lofty goal, but we are hoping to reach it.

We love and miss yo all.

With much Love,

Mom and Dad

 This is where we watched Conference sito the misionaries.

 You will have to look Hard, but you will be Able to see a host of turkey vultures circling over our apartment.  They aré waiting for me.

 Noticie the empata chair.  We invites the elders over to mee an investigador, bus Marucio did not show up.  Se just has breakfast sito elders Walker (center) anda elder Huffstutler

 Elder Morales and (left) and elder Spanbaur relaxing in the office form a feo minutes.

 After Saturday Afternoon General Conference sesion, we celebrated  María Antoinetta´s birthday.  She turnes 51.  Marta is our friend and sister in law of Maria.  They aré both investigators of the church and good friend.

María opening her birthday present.

Easter and Eating Octopus

Dear Family,

It has been a very busy week for us, and this coming week will keep us equally busy.  Of course we have our office work each day, try to do some studying on Spanish, but in all of our free time we are trying to interest people in the church.  That is not an easy task.

We did have one success story in that Cleyde Colome left to go back to Ovalle wanting to be baptized.  We would have loved to see her baptized, but felt it better to send her back to where she lived so that she could meet the missionaries and members there and get baptized there.  That way she would be anchored in the church where she lives.  I called her today and she indicated that the missionaries were coming over tonight to teach her.  We are so happy that she is choosing this course.  We met her at her sister Ideide's home.  We are hoping we can now work on Ideide to see if we can get her more interested in the church.  She is a lovely person, and in many of the pictures that we are sending this time.  Wilson will be a harder sell, but I am hoping we can go that direction.  We have an appointment with them to play Rook on Friday night.  They have never played it, but we have found if we can get into the home and meet with them doing fun things we always are able to share the Gospel and gain their trust. With Ideide's sister accepting the Gospel, we feel we have a better chance of having Ideide join the church.

While meeting with Cleyde, we met Raul out in front of his home, and began talking to him.  He invited us to his home on Saturday, where we were excited to go.  While we were sitting there getting acquainted, he said, "Tell me about your Church."  Naturally we really had to struggle about telling him about the church, but we did.  We then drove to his home on Sunday morning and he went to church with us.  He really seemed to enjoy that.  We have an appointment with him again on Thursday evening.  His wife is in the hospital in Santiago with Pancreatic cancer.  She was supposed to come home on Wednesday, but they said she will be in the hospital 10 more days as she now has other problems.  We are hoping we can get him to come to conference and bless his life with the Gospel.

For Easter, Margaret made some brownies and we put them in sacks and took them to a number of investigators.  Some were not home, so we attached them to the fence.  Those who were, appreciated our thoughtfulness.  Margaret is always good at doing things like that.  We make a good companionship on the mission, because she is so good at caring about people and doing nice things for them and I try to talk to everyone about church and get new contacts.

It was fun to Skype with Laura, Mike and Amy and their families.  It seems the grandchildren are all growing up.  It was fun to talk to Michaela and Hannah about their plans.  We really enjoyed the egg fight, as that brought back a lot of memories.

We hope all of you have a great week.

Love,

Mom and Dad

It was a fun week, but a very busy one. Margaret Wanted me to take this picture of our dinner.  Most every thing is pretty normal, the drink is pineapple and then there is the rice.  The meat in the white dish was a little different, as it was Octopus.  I had eaten it once before on a Cruze ship, but it was cut up and did not look like that.  In this case, the tentacles were still lengthy with the suction cups in place.  I will have to admit it tasted good, but I wanted to close my eyes to eat it.

 Elder Hart and Elder Talbot.  Elder Hart was an AP and is now being transferred to Vallenar.

 Elder Hart, Elder Talbot, Elder Erickson, Elder Vasquez and Elder Rodriguez leaving the office for the day after the Antofagasta Zone conference.

 One of our many beautiful sunsets over the Pacific Ocean

 Pascal had an 8th birthday party,  It was quite the event.   She is the daughter of Wilson and Ideide.

 Pascal and her mother Ideide posing for the picture.

 Mom visiting with the he guests at the party and helping them learn English

 Some of the classmates of Pascal who were invited to the party.  Pascal and Ideide are in the back.

 The hired a magician to come to the party and he was entertaining the children.

 Wilson, the husband of Ideide serving in the kitchen.  His sister is seated.  He was caught off. Guard, as you can see

 Margaret teaching English.  Not appropriate to try and share the Gospel at a birthday party, but we did pick up some referral names.

 Even Hermana Lorenzo and Hermana Gemin was invited to the party.

Margaret posing with a new friend she made at the party who speaks some English.

 Pascal's birthday cake.

 Lighting the candles.

 Pascal's brother Daniel at the party.

 Hermana Lorenzo and Hermana Gemin getting ready to leave the party.

 Margaret posing with a new friend and her son.

 One more foto of Pascal as we are doing the final clean up after the birthday party.

Ideide,  Daniel, Pascal and Wilson.  This is family we would really like to get into the church.They are wonderful people and friends..   She is religious and Catholic.  He does. Not believe in any religion.  It is going to be quite a challenge.

 Huge cargo ships sail in and out of the Antofagasta Harbor.  This one is just leaving.  Note the tomatoes to the left of the picture.

 This was our Easter Dinner that Margaret prepared.  We invited Mauricio Rivera to come to the dinner.  Margaret met him at LIders.  His family is Catholic, but does not go to any church.  We have invited him to breakfast again on Tuesday and we have invited him to General Conference with us.