I'm Getting the Hang of This!

May 30, 2011
"Things are going super well with Elder Nickel! We are two peas in a pod! We have a pretty promising baptism coming up in 3 weeks, so I'll keep you updated on that. Her name is Maria, and is super responsive and wanting to learn more. She doesn't have a very strong religious background, so we are kind of teaching her from the very beginning and having her gain a greater knowledge of Heavenly Father!"

I'm cutting some lena (firewood) for our Mamita

My companion brought me
some firewood, then I stacked
it pretty high!

June 6, 2011

"This was surprisingly one of the better weeks I have had here in Calle-Calle. Elder Nickel is astonished with how this sector, and our zone is. With all the hard work we do...and with the little success. He says that other parts of the mission are much more fruitful. We are trying to turn this sector and zone around, and work harder than ever to help it prosper!

June 13, 2011

"This week was by far the BEST WEEK ever! Me and Elder Nickel are staying busy and starting to teach quite a few lessons now! Its finally picking up, and the time just goes by even faster when we are constantly teaching! We set quite a few people with baptismal dates this week. We have one for the 25th of June and then 4 others planned in July. So I will let you know how those go!"

There were 7 kittens all lines up on the step, but when I came over for a picture, some ran away! They are newborns, and are so cute!

June 27, 2011

"I am super jealous of your weather! I can only imagine being in hot sunny conditions right now. It is pretty cold here, but I'm staying warm with my gear. I thought to myself...why does it seem so cold here? It doesn't snow here, so it has to be warmer than back home during the winter! Then I thought... Well, we are walking outside all day in the cold, windy rain, and the houses here only rely on fire combustion to stay warm, and we have one in our house, but it takes about 30 minutes to 1 hour to heat up our house. So without the normal heated car, or heated house...it seems much colder here than the winters back home."

Here I am with our pizza, celebrating my birthday, my 6 months in my mission, and Elder Nickel's 18 months in his mission.

July 4, 2011

"This week was a very spiritual growing week for me! This Fast Sunday was very powerful with Elder Nickel and I. Many many many of our prayers have already been answered. We have been praying for a family to help us out with the mission work, and yesterday, our Mamita told us she had invited 3 investigators over to her house tonight to have a family home evening with us! WOW! INSTANT answer to our fast! Then... early at church, we were hoping for a few investigators to show up. Only one had come. I was hoping for about 3 others to come. I thought to myself... well here is just another Sunday with very little investigators coming to the most important part of the week...church. But as I was sitting behind the sacrament table to bless the sacrament...THREE investigators walked in just as sacrament was about to start. I had the BIGGEST smile on my face! They were all investigators that had never ever come to church with me here! I was SO humbled in that moment!"

On June 4, 2011, the Puyehue volcano began errupting. It's the first time in about 51 years !That night we had a lightning storm - it was pretty cool, but really strange. I'm about 50 miles from it. Cities nearby the volcano have been evacuated, including about 3500 people. Other areas have an ash covering, but I haven't been affected yet.

Here's a picture of the volcano the next day. The ash went 6 miles into the sky, and spread 3 miles wide. Alot of flights were cancelled in Chile and nearby countries for a while. It also spread to Austrailia and New Zealand.

July 24, 2011

"We had Maria's baptism this last weekend! It was so so special! I'm so happy she was able to take this step in her life, and feel the love and joy that our Father in Heaven has for her! I have come to realize how perfect God's plan of redemption is. Without having the knowledge that I do have, I don't know where I would be in life. I would have no eternal purpose. There would be no progression."

My First 3 Months In Chile!

THE BEGINNING OF MY MISSION IN CHILE
WHAT AN ADVENTURE!

February 25, 2011
Wow! I cannot even begin to tell you how much my life has changed in the last week! I had no idea what to expect arriving here in Chile! It is awesome but so hard too! My companion Elder Paris from Chile. He speaks zero English! Zero! So I'm trying to hang in there and communicate with the Spanish I know! We are in Valdivia, our sector is Calle-Calle, it is in the northern part of the mission. The first day I was out teaching lessons was crazy. I don't speak much at all. I pretty much just bear my testimony and pray! Because THEY DON'T SPEAK SPANISH HERE!!! I don't know WHAT it is!! But it's NOT what I learned in the MTC!! I understand NOTHING what they are saying!! And they don't understand me! So...over time it will get better I'm sure. Right now the members here are less active. We have about 30-40 active members in our ward, and double or triple less active.

This is a family we are currently teaching.

April 11, 2011

We just started new transfers this week, but nothing changed for me or Elder Paris. But I have been feeling so much joy and excitement for this new transfer! My Spanish just keeps getting better and better everyday! My vocabulary is super basic, but I am now talking for quite a few minutes in lessons! So that is really good, and a huge improvement! On Sundays we leave almost an hour early for church and go "wake up" a lot of the people and try and round everyone up to come to church! We are also having the members try and help out in getting them to church. Sometimes they're gone, they have an excuse, or they don't answer!

Help! Elder Paris pushed me off the train! I'm falling! (just kidding)

This is a picture of me by the trees. There is this awesome place with so many trees and then there is this beautiful grove past the trees!

This is my Mamita and me

Some Chilean kids invited me to jump rope with them. Do you think I can remember how?

They didn't talk about Easter much at Church, but the
Primary kids made us these great bunnies filled with candy!

April 25, 2011
This week has been the craziest week of my life! I don't know if you heard about the storm here? But it was huge! We were without power for 4 days. Haha my first worry was our food in the fridge, but our house is pretty much a giant freezer, so everything stayed cold enough. But this storm caused quite the havoc here in Valdivia. There was a count of 150 big trees that were ripped out of the ground and fallen over in our zone. Alot of things got ruined... cars, fences, homes. But everything is coming together again. Our power was out for 4 days, but we got our power back yesterday, so that was good.
Because of the storm and constant constant rain... we didn't have too much luck this week. Things are going well though. We got about 10 less actives to church yesterday! We had a whopping 45 people at church! It was SO wonderful! I think I am going to go into shock when I get home and go to church with so many people!

Since we don't have furnaces, we build fires to heat our apartment. We have to pay for our own firewood, so we figure, "Hey, if there's an extra log lying around, lets bring it home - it's free!" (By they way, it's raining as they do it!)

Here I am by the Rio Calle-Calle

Here's a wider view of the Rio Calle-Calle in Valdivia with neat buildings in the back. This river flows into the Pacific.







May 26, 2011
I am currently with my new companion Elder Nickel, who is from Meridian Idaho! He is awesome! He's been out almost a year and a half. It's definitely a a change having a gringo companion, but we always speak Spanish when we are out teaching. So I'm really happy about that, and know that my Spanish will keep improving as we do so. This week has been pretty good, but pretty hard too. With a bunch of things going on, leading my sector, a new companion... it was all pretty stressful. Its definitely cool to see how there are different ways to approach lessons and teaching. I know that I am going to learn a lot with all of the companions that I have.

Here are the new missionaries in Nate's Zone. Nate is fourth from
the left, and his new companion, Elder Nickel is third from the right.
President and Sister Lovell will be leaving at the beginning of July.