March 31, 2014 (day 118)

Hey there!!! This week flew by! I feel like it was just barely Monday. Anyway, I needed a day of rest because I am exhausted. This is what I did this week:

Monday after emailing we went and made some pancakes in the apartment. We`re getting some good use out of our new oven. We visited a few people, or tried to. Nobody ever follows through with the appointments we have with them. When we got back in the night I cut Elder Brown´s hair. Haha it was really long. I hope his new haircut looks ok. 

Tuesday: We did some service in the morning. We tried to seal a lady´s roof with tar. That was fun. We spent a really long time trying to wash the tar off our hands haha. I then went on an interchange with our district leader. We walked a ton and knocked a lot of doors. We gave it a really good effort, but didn´t see much success.

Wednesday: We had a bunch of appointments that all fell through, so we visited tons of less active members which was really good. Then we had English class which was pretty fun. I`m not sure I´m a very good teacher but it was exciting. We have one guy that comes and he loves english so much its kinda ridiculous haha. But he is going to bring 5 of his friends next time, so we are going to have a pretty good size class.

Thursday: We worked like crazy. We knocked a bunch of doors and made tons of visits. We met a lady named Laticia who we talked to for a little and gave her a Book of Mormon. It was really cool to talk to her. She said that she was going through some really hard times in her life a few years back and she was in the street one day frantically running because she was so upset and she was thinking about taking her life. She ran by an LDS church and somebody stopped her and took her in the church to talk to her and calm her down. She said that that person literally saved her life. I know that God places his children in the right places at right times to help other people. I also know it wasn´t a coincidence that we knocked on this lady´s door. I love seeing the Lord work through his children! So that was a really cool experience. We didn´t have much more success that day, but we ended the day nicely by throwing some brownies in the oven. We make lots of brownies. We are starting to become famous for them in the ward.

Friday and Saturday we just worked really hard and walked tons and tons and tons. And I loved it :) But still we did not really get into any houses which was a little disappointing. We tried to invite lots of people to church on Sunday. And lots of people said they would come!

Sunday: Nobody came to church. Haha surprise! It is a little frustrating when people say they will come but they don´t. We are pretty used to it though. People don´t know what they are missing!

We walked tons and tons and tons after church. Like maybe even more than usual. We ended the day completely exhausted. It was crazy that the week was already over. 

This morning we made more german pancakes for breakfast. This time with new eggs. So far our tummies are still holding up just great! We went to Walmart and walked around down town a little bit. So far a really good day! I also finished the Libro de Mormón today!! That was great!! I found a scripture that I really liked in the end. Moroni 8:3 ( I am mindful of you always in my prayers, continually praying unto God the Father in the name of his Holy Child, Jesus, that he, through his infinite goodness and grace, will keep you through the endurance of faith on his name to the end.)  It reminded me of everyone at home :) I invite you all to read it!!

Anyway, thats basically how my week went!! I love you all tons!!! Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Marchant

p.s. Oh and maybe if you want to race me with reading the Book of Mormon, I will be starting over tomorrow and reading it in 3 months! Good luck if you are up for the challenge!!

March 24, 2014 (day 111)

Hola Hola!!!

I hope everybody had a great week!! My week was pretty good! I love every moment of the mission! Right now we are not having too much success, but I am still excited to be here and ready to go once we find some people to teach! This is what I did this week:

On Tuesday we woke up and made some german pancakes for breakfast. We just got a new oven and bought some cooking supplies last Monday. We made tons of german pancakes. They were wonderful, but it turned out that some of the eggs we use might have been a little old and we spent the day running back and forth between our apartment and the church to use the bathroom haha. Oh well. Unfortunately we did not get much done that day. Just knocked a bunch of doors with little success. 

Wednesday: We left the apartment and our zone leaders called and asked us if we could bring them the copies of the keys we were supposed to make for our apartment. Turns out we forgot to make the keys and we left the only key that exists in the apartment with the door locked behind it. We didn´t have time to go try and break in at the time so we went to our district meeting and then to lunch and made a few visits before returning home and trying to enter in a window. I think it was actually a blessing that we locked the keys inside because we found out how incredibly easy it is to break into our apartment through the window. We are now trying to figure out a way to secure that haha. Something cool that happened that day was that we were just walking and Elder Brown thought we should go contact this little street and so we decided to do it. The first house we knocked on, a lady came out and once we said that we were representatives of Jesus Christ, she let us in. It looks like there is a big family that hopefully we will be teaching this week. I´m really glad Elder Brown listened to that prompting he got to go contact that street.

Thursday:  We knocked tons of doors and didn´t seem to have much success at all. We still were happy and working hard, but we just didn´t get into any houses all day.

Friday: We received a reference from our zone leaders and this guy lived a little ways away, so we decided to call him and see if we could visit him in the morning. We knew the house was a little ways away, so we started walking. Turns out it was about an hour walk to his house. Luckily we got in and had a lesson. His name is Germán. He is very open to what we have to say. We had a great lesson, and then we got to walk home haha. We got to our lunch appointment an hour late, but it was ok because we called them. We spent the rest of the day knocking doors.

Saturday: We knocked doors. This was the most tired I have been in the whole mission. That was the first day I just wanted to go home and sleep haha. Luckily we made it through the day.

Sunday: I got to speak in church :) how fun is that? I gave a 15 minute talk about the Holy Ghost. I was really nervous because it was my first full length talk in Spanish, but I prayed that I would be calm and I got up there and was just fine! We went and visited some people after church and then guess what we did! We went and knocked more doors! We are trying to knock every door in our sector. I think it will take about 3 months to do it haha, but we are making some good progress. 

Even though this week we really didn´t see much success, I still am always excited to go work. I really love working. There were days in my last sector when we would have tons of stuff to do and just wouldn´t have that much time to go teach and knock on doors and stuff. But I love working! I am happier than ever when I am working! I love being a missionary :) 

Anyway, that was about what happened in my week! I love you tons! Have an amazing week!!! Oh ya I just remembered that we are going to start teaching piano lessons haha. The bishop wants us to teach lessons so that they can have people who will play the piano in church. That should be fun!!!

Elder Brown and Erik

March 17, 2014 (day 104)

Hola hola familia!!!!! This week there was a lot of change. I`ll get to that in a minute though. 

This is how my week went: 

 Lunes: I don`t remember if I mentioned this last week, but we went to get some stuff from the zone leaders and so we went to the church in their area. My companion, Elder Cropper, and one of the zone leaders, Elder Newbold were playing soccer in the church and broke a window. That was real exciting. I don`t know if they ended up getting into trouble or not. 

But then we went to the zone leaders apartment where Elder Hormaechea cut my hair, and then we hurried home to get to a family home evening with our ward mission leader and his family. The Hermanas also came and we had a little farewell party for whoever out of the four of us was going to go. It was really fun. I really love that family. 

 Martes: We went and made some visits and spent a lot of our day out in a little town and then ended with another family home evening with a family and some friends of theirs. It was really good and the spirit was strong. There was a less active member family there and they seemed to be making progress towards getting back to church, but I don`t know if they went yesterday or not. 

 Mièrcoles: We woke up in the morning, and while we were doing our daily exercises, the zone leaders called us. Change time! They told me that I would be leaving and Elder Cropper would be staying. I pretty much wanted to cry haha. But also in some ways, I really needed to get a new companion. It was a little bit of a struggle sometimes. So anyway, I had like 5 hours to pack up and then go say some last goodbyes. I got packed and showered and then was ready to go, and Elder Cropper was taking tons of time. I wanted to go visit Pedro and Lorena and we were going to have to take a bus to go see them. I was ready to go and then some things happened that made us lose tons of time and I didn´t end up getting to see them :( I actually didn`t really get to say goodbye to anybody. Maybe that made it a little easier, but I was pretty sad. I really love those people, and I am sad to be gone, but that happens in the mission. Haha I left my pink tie for Pedro and he just emailed me, so it sounds like he liked it hahaha. 

But anyway, we headed off to Viña for our big change meeting and Hermana Frandsen bore her testimony which was really cool. I didn`t get to talk to her before or after though. She actually went to my old zone. She is in Limache. I got called to the north. I am now in La Serena. My ward is La Serena 4 and I am in a place called La Florida. Its a huge city here. I am out of the central part and more in an urban area, but it is huge. 

My companions name is Elder Brown and he has been in the mission for 6 more weeks than me, so we are both young in the mission. He just got out of high school too and he way cool. We have a good time together. We had some really busy days the next few days and I didn`t get tons of time to write, but I went on an interchange with the zone leaders to the central part of the city and I learned a ton. I was with Elder Cannell who is from Logan and he is almost done with his 2 years. We went out in the street and literally just contacted every person we could. He taught me a ton. I really had a good time with him. 

He taught me that as missionaries, we really can receive revelation. I have received revelation in the mission, but not quite in the way he showed me. He told me to look at the area book, that just has tons of papers and people and stuff, and he told me to look in the old investigators section and pick by revelation which one of them we should visit. I learned a lesson that really if we trust in the Lord and pray he will give us what we need. I really was directed to page in that book and found the person we needed to visit. I am amazed that our Heavenly Father without fail will give us what we need when we need it if we just ask. I know that revelation exists and that we can all receive personal revelation for ourselves.

On Sunday I got to speak for like 5 minutes in church which was fun. Thats normal for missionaries when they go to a new area. There are 4 Elders in our ward. Elder Valencia and Elder Pederson and then us. The ward is really big and our chapel is really cool looking. I need to take a picture of it. There is a recently returned sister missionary in the ward that served in Arequipa! I asked her about it and she knows Erin!! How cool is that? That got me pretty excited. 

I really like my knew area, but it is a ton different than Olmuè. Olmuè is like my second home, but I think I will really come to love this place too. Today for our preparation day we went to the center of the city to Lider. Lider is just Walmart in South America. Or at least Chile. It was huge! Definitely the biggest store I have been in here and I think about the same size as Walmart at home, so I was really excited about that. 

I also went to Mcdonalds haha. That is the first time I have seen a fast food restaurant here. Wait, actually I just remembered that there is a Dominos too. I haven`t been there though haha. 

So anyway, la Serena is waaaayy different than Olmuè, but it is great! I am really excited to get to work here. I am really happy to be with my new companion too. In the last few days we have already had a ton of fun together and learned a bunch. 

 I love you! Talk to you next week!! 

Chau! 

Love Elder Marchant

Erik and Elder Otterson (pix from the mission blog)

Hermana Frandsen just came from the Chile CCM to the Viña del Mar mission.
She is a friend from Jordan High.

March 10, 2014 (day 97)

Hola hola!!

I have learned a lot this week! It was a little bit of a tough week, but I am doing wonderfully!!

This week we worked really hard. We contacted and searched for people to teach and visited tons and tons of people, but we taught 4 lessons the whole week which is really bad. We can't figure out why we don't see much success. We have some good investigators, but nobody is progressing towards baptism which is frustrating.

We had a family home evening last night where we invited like half the ward haha, but guess how many people showed up! Like 2 haha. We had a very spiritual meeting though and we talked about how much the gospel means to us in our lives. We talked about our own personal conversion to the gospel and how important it is that we share what we know with other people. 

Not everyone will listen or accept. In fact, most people will not. There is a statistic in our mission that out of every 20 investigators that we have, which means that we have taught them at least once and have a return appointment, only 1 of those will progress towards baptism. Many people even will know that what we are teaching is true, and have very spiritual experiences and receive answers to their prayers, and yet will not want to get baptized or progress. 

I have seen that a ton in the people here. In order to get baptized a lot of people have to get married. Everybody here lives with their boyfriend or girlfriend and doesn't want to get married. We see so many people that just don't understand how important this gospel is. A lot of people see our church as something ''muy lindo'' which is very beautiful, but that is all they see in it. Even when they realize they need the gospel in their lives, many times they don't accept! Its frustrating! But I know how important it is so I am going to keep on sharing!

I love being a missionary! I have never felt more joy and happiness in my life than I have out here. Its crazy how we can spend a hot day out in the dusty streets and come back dead tired, but yet be really happy. It happens every day actually. I have never been more tired in my life. Unfortunately I have fallen asleep in the middle of lessons sometimes haha. I am exhausted. But it is worth it! 

This week we have transfers and I just hope that I stay. I really love Olmué and the people here. We will see what happens on Wednesday, but I think I will be going.

Anyway, I don´t have any crazy stories for the week I don´t think. Nothing that I remember at least. I am doing real good though :) I hope everything is going wonderfully back home! I love you tons! Chauito!!!!!

Love Elder Marchant

March 3, 2014 (day 90)

Hola everybody!

This was a pretty uneventful week. We worked hard all week but really didn´t see any fruits from our labor. I am really happy though!! I don´t really know why I am so happy because really not much good happened this week. We didn´t have many lessons at all and nobody showed up to church yesterday. I don´t know. It's hard to not have anybody to really teach that is progressing, but we still have a ton of work to do so that is good.

The first few days in the week we basically just knocked on doors and visited less active members and tried without success to find people to teach. Thursday we went to have lunch with a member family that lives out in the middle of nowhere and we started working with them to re-activate members and find new people that live out by them. It was really fun to see this family get so excited to help with the missionary effort. They got really excited and we have a family home evening with them tonight because they really want to help us out to teach people. We also went to a little corner store while we were out there and this lady had a really nice ice cream machine!! We got really excited so we got some. That isn´t something you normally see out here. Ice Cream is different here, not as good really. But anyway, that was something kinda fun that happened. Then the lady started taking pictures of us which was weird. Haha I guess we stand out a little bit. 

Friday we got to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and I went to a city called Villa Alemana to work with a couple other missionaries while all of our companions went to a meeting in Viña because they are district leaders. It was fun to work with a couple of elders that I didn´t know before. I got mail that day which was fun! I got a few cards and stuff, so I was happy! 

Saturday our recent convert Carlos and his wife Evelyn and their kids moved to the southern part of Chile and it was kinda sad to see them go. He is a marine and is going to go to Haiti to help with the relief effort there. I got to give him and his son Diego a blessing which was a really special experience. I have really grown close to these people and it is hard to see them go. 

Sunday was a tough day too. We didn´t have anybody show up to church and we just feel like we aren´t having any success. I am hoping for a better week this week. This is the last week of this change. So crazy how fast it goes by. I´m pretty sure I will be getting a new companion next week. I just hope that I will stay here in Olmué for the next change. 

But like I said, I am really really happy! I really can´t explain it, because we have had a disappointing week, but I just feel good. I am happy to be here and I am having the time of my life! This church is true! I guess thats why I´m happy! Thank you for everything! I love you tons!!!!!!! Until next week! Chau!!

Love Elder Marchant

 Carlos and his family

Huasos are just cowboys here.