Experiences with my Investigators...it's awesome!

Keeping Warm and being funny!

well hello! things are going really good for me right now. i love the mission here . it is so good. but it is getting pretty cold. the houses here are seriously a joke. you know the houses that actually have insulation the insulation is freakin stire foam. ya. its pretty ridiculous and our house is freezing!  i had a really great week so that is always good. we had 7 in church again as well, we made a list of almost 20 really good people who "said" they would go to church with us but when sunday morning came around and you were litterally shivering in you bed with two blankets and a very nice sleeping bag it becomes a little more difficult to go to church. it is so freakin cold i just like it a lot. i am lying it sucks.  Me and my comp put our sleeping bags under our coat to be warm...see the picture?  Sorry Tracy...wasn't trying to be like you!! :)

So! short story, saturday night we made some greasy french fries with Romina a girl we are teaching and my 2 convert who are cousins. well actually there whole family was there but anyway when we left things were all good and sunday morning came around and we did the sunday morning wake up call and they didnt answer. turns out my 2 convert took Romina to a party and they got drunk and got home at 7:30 in the morning. we were quite pissed with them you could say. we went there to their house after lunch and chewed them out and screamed and yelled and punched them no im just kidding. but we did give them a really good talk and now they really understand good bye keeping this commandment will actually help them. oh ya and Romina is getting baptised now. May 15. she never would accept a baptismal date before but now yes!

we also are teaching a lady in a wheel chair who wants to get baptised. so that will be very interesting dunking her! we also found out that there is a cousin of a member family that wants to get baptised so..........................its pretty sweet! we didn´t have to do anything with her!

me and my comp are doing great together we have a lot of good times. i also did a little switcharew for a day and worked in los angeles with a elder from argentina. the kid is way cool and i learned a ton from him. and i was very nice talking all day in spanish.....me and elder glover need to work on that. my spanish is getting lots better but we need to talk to eachother in spanish as well.

well i hope that all is well. sounds like kevin is the next Lionel Messi. dad says Kev's getting pretty good at soccer. i can't wait to see you play Kev!  oh ya and aparently tracy is about ready to pop! awesome i wanna see number.............shoot i dont know how many nieces and nephews i have. ill count when i get back home. my comp has 34. they are 10 kids from the same parents. thats a little.

i love you all just a whole lot. enjoy the warmth. ill keep freezing my buns off and baptising. well! see ya later!

Elder Elder

Little slow this week...but next week will rock!

whats up!! this week has been a little poopier than my liking but next week will freakin rock! im getting really close with the people i am working with, we´re having a lot of good lessons with them. sunday morning we went to the our peoples house to walk to the church with them and everyone bailed except one. we were hoping for 10. but we ended up having 3 people with us in the church and we had a great time. me and my comp teach the class after sacrament meeting and we have so much fun i love it. of course its spiritual too duh who do you think i am? but...........our branch has this weird disease where there the people are boring at times so we do our best to fix that. i enjoy.


man i reallly enjoyed all of your letters thank you so much. i got a ton of letters which took a long time to read but i really liked it. i will do my best to reply but just know i like you all a lot!!! ok i love you all.

the work is going great here and we will have some baptisms happening in a week or two so i am very excited! we found this girl the other day who is actually pretty catholic and we are talking to her and she is very interested so we shall see with this one. our other investigator is doing great with not drinking and smoking and doin that stuff but lives in concepcion through the week now with kinda sucks but im gonna dunk her.

thank you all very much for you support and love and i hope you all have a great week. keep it real.

elder elder

Guess what???!!! I am not getting transferred!!! Also, see my pictures below!

Hi family and friends!  i am so excited to tell you that me and my companion are not getting transferred and we get to stay together for awhile!!!  so this week has been great for me! i baptized a really old lady!! she is awesome her name is mirta. she is really one of my favorite people here. she reminds me so much of grandma goodman so that is kinda special for me. well she doesn´t remind of her becuase she is with more age but because she is way funny and acts like her. (sorry grandma) ill put some pictures up of a lot of stuff.


i want everyone to know that you can email me! my address is austin.elder@myldsmail.net. i love getting emails every monday.  but i dont hear from some of you that i know will write me if you knew i can receive emails.  i respond to dad and then forwards them on to you. if you snail mail your letter it can take 4 or 5 weeks.  but every monday, i get to go to the internet cafe and sit in this nice confortable chair and write emails and respond to those who wrote.  so, send me an update from for your family!
im not going to lie i love the videos dad sends me. they are so cool. RJ where the heck did your teeth go? oh ya and Kevin, you are a freakin liar. i totally believed you when you told me you broke your arm hahaha so you got me. i loved seein all you in the video but i think the part i liked most was seeing my little nieces and nephews. man i miss the poo out of you little guys! you all draw so good!! emily, i like your lighter colors too. it makes the picture look so much better i agree. all of you little kids are so awesome i cant wait to see you again!

me and my companion are doing great together. we have a lot of really great investigators. we are killing the cigarett companies here one by one. we are workin with this girl that is 23 named Romina who smokes like three a day but hasn´t smoked for 6 days! and has gone to church with us 3 times. one of the requirements for baptism in my mission is a minimum of 3 times going to church. to show they are serious about getting baptised and will stay active. so we´re still working with her and she will be baptised really soon!

Also we are working with a inactive lady who is way cool and has two daughters who have never been baptised. BANK!!! this lady loves us so much i like it quite much i must say. i really can say we are helping saving her life. she smokes 80 cigaretts. not for the month. but the freakin week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! we did the math, if she sleeps 8 hours she is smoking a cig every 12 minutes. i was talking to her a ton the other night, i told her look im going to say this not only as a missionary but as a friend who cares very much about you. you are going to die if you keep this up, and soon. she just put her head down and said she knows it but she feels so trapped. i gave her a bunch of really good scriptures about hope, faith and encouragement to kinda get her stoked i guess you could say and then we made a big old paper with a weekly smoking allowing chart. hahaha it was pretty cool. her goal is to be smoke free by may 8. so we´re gonna work our buns off with her. to start this week she decided to drop from 80 to only 20 a day this week. and next week is 10, then 5, then 1, and then none!!!!!!!!! so keep that in your prayers if you can. her name is Judit Lara. OH YA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and somethings way way awesome is that her brother is a pilot for the chilean airlines and she told me that she can hook me up anytime i want as many times as i want with tickets! anywhere in the world too!!!!!!!!!! a round trip to chile is about 1000 bucks for one person and she can get me tickets for only 200!!!!!!!!!!! so there you go dad. she said she can get tickets for you as welll!!!! isn´t that freakin cool?  now you and joan can for sure come and pick me up after my mission!!!  wink wink!!! :)

thank you all so much for your prayers and support it helps a lot knowing that i have a fam and friends that care about me!!!!! have a great week and good luck with your talks Chris and Dasha!! take care everyone.

Enjoy my pictures!!!  Here they are!
Elder Elder

My mission car! Only cost me five bucks!

Mirta and i after her baptism

our investigator Romina who is mirta´s niece and us

and that cement that shot up is from the earthquake. the earth moved so much it shoved it straight up like that.

me drinking chilian water! :)

lots of people in white!

General Conference was awesome!

Well there goes another week, time is going by so fast for me i cant believe it. ive almost been gone 5 months. its going too fast. but its been going great we are baptizing the mom of the lady i baptized a few weeks ago. we are baptizing her this weekend! she is way old and kinda crazy but seriously one of my favorite people in Cabrero. i always call her sobrina and do the high five and pound it hand shake with her and she just laughs at it. Sobrina means niece and its what the people say to younger people anyway................

so holy crap conference was awesome! i took more notes this time than i ever have in my life! i never was a note taker but this time yes. they really hit the family really hard so listen to the talks and remember them and dont be surprised if hard times come up. i dont think they would have spent so much time talking about it if something wouldnt happen. i really liked how direct all of them were and just said it how is is. "if you in a place you shouldn´t be in.....GET OUT!!" -president monson. haha his face was pretty funny when he said it. we had a lot of investigators go to the conference and it was really great for they liked it a lot. haha actually when i asked them what they liked or noticed about it almost all of them commented on the prayers how they were almost like talks as well and super long. i could only just laugh and i told them i noticed that as well. did you all notice that to? i mean there great prayers but man they are so long!

we have transfers already coming up which sucks becuase me and my companion are working way good together and we´re way good friends. hopefully we´ll stay together but i dont know. there is 44 new missionaries that are coming. that is a humungous group. normally its like 15 or so but they are two huge groups and the first was supposed to come 5 weeks ago but we had that freakin earthquake....so they are all coming this week and need tons of missionaries to train them.

things are going great with me. i understand spanish and i speak it! almost every day i get compliments on it which is nice. oh ya, so i get to call you all in a month! i will tell you when i know i will call but i dont know exactly what day is mothers day..................................................................................sorry.................................................................. i am horribe with dates. but i know its in the begining of may! so i will be able to talk to you again.

oh ya happy birthday katie! i remembered the day before.......then i forgot. i bet it was good and i hope you enjoy my phone, car and subwoofer. i hear shaniah twain and spice girls have tons of base in the songs. i hope you like.

well i gotta go we have to travel back to Cabrero. i am in Talkahuano right now. here the earthquake was so freakin bad. afterwords there was a tsunami and it still smells so bad like fish and poo. litterally im not lying. its nice. i hope your all great and take care!

Elder Elder

Service with a Smile!! :)

well whats up!

man this transfer is going way good. me and my comp elder glover are doing way good together. yesterday we had 7 investigators in church so that was really good for us. the people we are working with are great and are really seeing the difference in the things we teach and share with them. i am getting very close to the people here i love it. one night we were visiting a less active family to try to get them to come back to church and we were just talking to the mom and daughter and then the dad walked in. you could tell that he had been drinking so i thought that something bad might happen or something but when he saw us he started crying and said that we were a answer to his prayers. he told us that he had been praying for help to stop smoking and drinking but just felt like he just could not do it. and then he said that he walked in his house and saw two angels. it really was one of the best parts of my mission so far. he is a great guy and we talked to them for an hour or so and they made us eat dinner with them haha then at the end we told him that he had been praying praying for help and we had come to his house but he still needed to do more. we told him to give us his cigarrets and that we weregoing to help him stop. for like twenty min he kept resisting and resisting us and would say i will start tomorrow and stuff like that but we kept persisting and he gave us the cigarrets and we ripped them up with him. it was really nice to see how much the people that are open to us as missionaries appreciate what we do and that we can help. they came to church yesterday too for the first time in years!

i almost got my head bit off yesterday by a dog. freakin mutt.

i am so excited for general conference this weekend! seriously i am, my converts and investigators are realy excited too because they can see the prophet of God. i was thinking about it yesterday about how we just take it for granted i think sometimes, we are just so used to seeing him and it is just something totally normal. but in reality it is huge! he really is the prophet of God who is here on the earth for us to guide us and help us return to live with God. that was my thought. In my head.
ok so on saturday i think it was we were just walking to someones house when we got a call from one of the ladies in the ward and she sounded really panicky and asked us if we could do something for her and so i said ya for sure and then they asked me if we could go meet her at the church and get chairs for her and bring them to her house (and these chairs dont fold) so i thought in my head, crap. because i had already said yes so we went to the church which was like 15 min away and waited for her and she didn´t show so we called her and she said she was waiting for us at her house. any way long story short i understood bad and she wanted us to bring the chairs from her house to the church. ( i even double checked with her before with what she wanted so it wasnt my spanish´s fault) so we finally got to her house and she had a wheel barrel and the chairs waiting for us. and her freakin kid with inside playing. he is 16. i was a little mad but didn´t say anything. so we wheel barreled the chairs for about 20 to the church through the middle of town and everyone was laughing at the 2 gringo mormons. it actually was pretty funny to us at the end so it turned out fine. the chilean people seriously love taking advantage of people when they can. but i love them.

Kevin broke his freakin arm!! holy crap dude that sucks. i bet it freakin hurt. i remember when chris always had a cast on his arm in the logan house because he was so accident prone he would always hit me on the head with the stupid cast. get him back for me please. thanks. that is so cool to here that you are to the best on the team. i want to see some pictures of you playing and doing your thing. i played soccer with a bunch on the youth here on friday and i actually scored. it was my first goal in my life im pretty sure.

thats sad to hear that Dasha´s mom went home. she looks like a very nice lady i hope i get to meet her. im glad to hear that everyone is doing good though for sure. Joan, it sounds like you are keeping really busy and entertained with the geneaoligy of how ever you spell it! i really enjoyed your letter thank you. and to answer your question yes it should be fine to send the package now.

thank you all for your letters and encouragement. i hope you all have a great week!

elder elder

This is me and my companion, Elder Glover
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  















Awesome Waterfalls We did some site seeing on our P day.  Elder Glover and I had a great time.  

 

  

 

Kicking back!

well whats up family!!!

well whats up family!!!

this week has been was awesome. im so stoked for this transfer! im with an elder from south jordan, Mark Glover. he is way chill and we are get along super good. its cool cuz we both teach the same way, we´re excited and have fun with my brown people, and love the board sports! so its rad.

i loved that video you all look so good! seriously i loved it so much thank you dad you are so freakin awesome. the baptism of dasha part that was definetly my favorite! oh man i am so still way stoked about that and now that i got to see the actual day that is so cool! you all look so good (chris and dasha family)!!

alright so with this transfer so far its been really good. we had a conference with our president so we got all excited and pumped up so that was good. also we were teaching one of our really good investigators (or however you spell it in english) and they told us about their experience with knowing that this is true and good and gaining a testimony. Judit who is like 30ish got her answer during the closing prayer of the previous visit. she said it hit her really really hard. during the prayer she said she was like surrounded by this amazing feeling and just knew it was true. it was so freakin cool. she explained it a little bit better but i kinda forgot all the main exact details (crap) and im still learning the more descriptive words. but it was good!! and her husband Nelson had a dream the night later and in it he had someone come up to him and just hug him and told him that is was true. I´ve only heard about experiences like that but now i´ve helped someone get it!! im so excited for them to get baptised. Their getting baptised in three weeks. Also the mom of the lady we baptised last week she is getting bapised in few weeks too! we have to wait till after conference because our branch president said that....so ya but its all good.

i am really really happy with this transfer. things are looking super super good. thank you again for the video it was really funny when dad told grandpa elder to say hi to me and he looked around to say hi them remembered im here. your funny grandpa. aaron and laura you two are freakin awesome how is jack? that fetcher was sleeping! grandpa/ma, aunts, uncles russ, michelle, chris, rainy, ashlee, katie, kevin, chris, dasha, daniel, krystal, matt, melinda, mom, dad, emily and all the nieces and nephews you all look so happy so that makes me happy. oh ya and maggie. man what a list. i love you all and hope things are going great.

love elder elder

Dasha! I am so happy for you!!!

A member with his awesome cowboy hat!

wow what a week for me! i am sending you pictures of water in a bucket that i used to wash some of my clothes. hopefully you all appreciate that.

DASHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! holy crap that is seriously so awesome. i was so excited when i read that! i am so happy for you Dasha. and you as well Chris you are the man bro. thats so cool you baptised your woman and bebe! i mean blessed your bebe. its also even more cool for me because saturday aout 1;30 your time we baptised one of our investigators as well!! that would be crazy if they were at the same time.
it sounds like you are all doing way good that makes me way happy. this week has been so busy for me. unfortunately we haven´t been able to teach hardly any lessons because we have been helping people tear down there houses so that they can rebuild them and not have to sleep in tents. its really really sad to see what has happened here. and the crazy part is that where i live there isn´t hardly any damage in comparison to concepcion area. im about anhour away from there. but there is still a lot of damage here. just the freakin crappy houses. so......................not gonna have a freakin crappy house when i grow up! im sending pictures of what i have been doing. but it is really awesome because even though we haven´t been able to teach alot we were still blessed with our baptism and a lot of really good discussions with the people about the gospel that we are helping. starting this week i think we can get back into our normal schedule as proseliting missionaries. im really excited for that to tell you the truth. when we taught our first lesson earlier this week it felf soooooooo good after ward. you have no idea hahahahah it was cool.
well we finally have tranfers tomorrow. they were supposed to be two weeks ago but with the earthquake everything was screwed up. i told you i was going to have elder heiser come but now it is elder glover. i met him the day i arrived here. two months ago!!!!!! holy crap, but he seems super chill. it will be good times with him. me and elder rodriguez have had a lot of fun and success these past 8 weeks.
so saturday we had a baptism session for 3 sectors who each had 1 baptism so we had 3.......obviously. but anyway one of them was this super old man who is about to fall apart. i feel bad for the guy but he is super funny. i think at least. i cant really understand what he says but after he says something to me he laughs and i laugh along with him and he hugs me. how precious right? but during his baptism he didnt know what to do to go under the water so he pretty much just squatted and was shaking on the way down. man it was pretty funny he is a stud! i gave the holy ghost for the first time yesterday as well! it was kinda shaky but i did it! in spanish too fyi.

well i am doing quite superb out here thanks to the lord. we are making really good relations with the people and doing what we think is best. its really really awesome spending your whole day doing stuff that isn´t even for you. i like it alot. the work of the lord is something so amazing. i love being here in chile doing this. thank you all so much for your support. i love you all.

welp see ya later
 
Love Elder Elder

March 13th baptism~All those who were baptized and those who were the baptisers!

Very happy!

I am super buff now!

No one messes with Elder Elder!!!

All that work tearing up our kitchen in Nibley paid off here...but this is a lot more work!!!

elder rodriques, cecilia, me