Monday, February 16, 2015

Missionary from 35 years ago, Cleaning and service for others



Family and Friends,

Valentine´s Day was lame, especially as a missionary.  It was just a normal day for us but we seemed to contact a lot more couples who seemed to have something else on their mind besides listening to two gringos talk about God haha.

At the start of this week, we were walking through the main part of town when some guy yelled "Elders" and started walking towards us. Then he started talking to us in English, turns out that he was a missionary here in Cornel in our mission about 35 years ago! It was pretty cool to talk to him and he was with two of his Chilean companions that he had had during his mission. He was a really cool dude and he told us about and showed us pictures of all of Cornel from when he had served here, a lot has changed! He has had 3 kids who have all gone on missions. He also gave us money to go to lunch. It was pretty cool to see that he had come back to his mission and that also he still knows Spanish after all of these years.

Something funny that happened to me, we had to pass by the office and there was a "TRUNKY" letter there with my name on it. A trunky letter is the letter you get when you are completing your mission about your return arrangements and everything. They had accidentally given it to me instead of the other Elder Clay in the mission who is ending. Pretty funny and it was weird to see my name on a trunky letter.

I finally bought a pillow this week after 7 and a half months in the mission haha not as comfy as mine that I had back home but better than nothing!

I went on an exchange with Elder Espitia this week. It went pretty well but a lot of appointments fell through and we pretty much contacted all day. I like having the experience of going on exchanges with other missionaries and see how they work. I take the best thing that I see from each Elder and try to apply it to my work. We passed by an investigator who at the moment needed a little help. She didn’t feel well so we offered to help clean her house because it was a mess. While we doing that she threw away her cigarettes. After all of it she said she felt a lot better. I felt good after doing it and hopefully it helped her. I know that the house looks a lot better now at least haha.

This week we helped a sister in the ward paint her house and some other things around the house that she couldn´t do. She said she was grateful to have two tall gringo boys as her workers haha the sisters in this ward are pretty funny. One of the families in the ward that we are pretty tight with have had cousins at their house for this summer. They aren´t members but we have been spending a lot of time with them and they are going back to Santiago this week. It’s pretty sad to see them go because I’ve made pretty good friends with them but it’s pretty cool because one night I finally got to talk to them about our message and baptism. I gave them all the pamphlets to read and hopefully they can find the missionaries up there.

Something really cool that happened yesterday was that we were contacting and this woman came out to talk to us. She told us that she has been inactive for 30 years and was here just visiting a family member. We talked to her for a long while about how God wants all of his children to return to him, he is just waiting for the call. She told us that she was scared that he wouldn´t want to listen to her because she has neglected him for 30 years, but we told her that he would even be more receiving and wanting her to come back to him because of that. The example of how if we had children and one of them all the sudden decided to move away and cut off connection, how we would want more than anything for them to come back and reestablish connection and we would be just waiting and wishing for it to happen is the exact same thing. We are literally sons and daughters of God and although we get a little lost on the path during times in our life, he will always be there, waiting and wanting for us to return to him. By the end, she was crying thanking us.

Good week here in Coronel. Talk to guys next week. Love you all.

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