2/7/2018 0 Comments 12 KilosA lot of people I was totally not expecting to write me wrote me. This p-day has been good. We got together with Elder Neddo, my last companion, and his new companion Elder Concecao from Brazil and with Elder Minor, from Springville Utah, and Ebert and cooked a nice chilean BBQ and talked about the mission and life. It was great to be outside and enjoy some good quality meat with the bros. About 3 or 4 weeks ago, while walking to an appointment in our sector, we found ourselves with a member of the church named Hermano Piña. Hermano Piña had served in the bishopric and in lots of different callings in the La Cisterna ward, but he had gone inactive, or in other words, had stopped coming to the church meetings and nobody knows why. We tried to set an appointment with him, but we couldn´t keep it because an emergency that popped up and we lost contact with him. This past week, we were in the far end of the sector, knocking on doors by his house. I had the impression to call him and ask if we could pass by to visit him. He picked up, and told us to come by his house. We walked over, met him at his door, and he let us into his house. His wife died long ago, so the poor guy lives alone in a decent sized house. He is a painter, so he has all of his wall space COVERED in beautiful works of art of landscapes, portraits, people, some paintings of Jesus, his house is very nice to be in. We sat down and began to know him better, asking him questions about his life and so, and we asked him about his health because we hadn´t seen him at church. He said we was getting weaker as the years went by, and that he couldn´t do a lot of the things he did before, We asked him how we could help, and he asked if we could paint his kitchen. We came over the next Saturday and painted his kitchen for about 2 hours and left it looking really nice. Before we left, we shared a spiritual thought with him. During the spiritual thought, we talked about faith, I asked him to read a verse of scripture. He told us he couldn´t that he was going blind and couldn´t see well enough to read. He also had lost the ability to paint. He began to tell us that he had basically lost the ability to do everything and believed that he was useless. It kinda broke my heart. It also strengthened my testimony a lot. I had been praying to be able to serve someone who really needed it and I knew that God had answered my prayer. It feels good to be able to lift someone up. I love how God uses us, his children, to help his other children on their way. When we serve others, we serve God. God blesses us for blessing other people. I know that we can be a positive influence in other lives. I invite you all to look for chances to serve during this next week. I know God will answer your prayers too. Love you all very very much! Thank you for your support! Elder Scott
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1/31/2018 0 Comments January 31st, 2018One of the ward members owns an ice cream machine and for p-day we decided to rent it. We played games and ate soft serve ice cream and I don`t even want to know how many calories I consumed. I stopped counting around 5 ice cream cones. I didn`t even have breakfast or lunch today. Just straight ice cream. It has been a great day. The p-day was a huge success for our zone. Chair soccer, water balloon capture the flag and ice cream. It always get a bit exasperated managing large groups of people. Sometimes I feel like I`m herding cats…you`ll tell them to do something a million times and they just don`t do it. It is making me a better leader though and also helping me have more patience. Plus, it feels good finishing knowing that the missionaries had a good time. This week, the area president for the countries of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, Presidente Texieda, came to our mission and had a special training meeting with the sister training leaders, assistants and zone leaders. I really loved his remarks. The guy is a convert to the gospel when he was 18ish in Portugal. When he was baptized, the church wasn`t that strong in that part of the world and there weren`t even church buildings. He had to attend the church in the windowless basement of an apartment building. The sacrament room was always dark and super hot during summer. President Texieda said none of that mattered though because he was converted to the gospel, not to the missionaries, not to the church building, not the amount of members. Due to his conversion to the gospel, it didn`t matter to him how many people went, how big the church building was, etc. When he read the Book of Mormon, he knew it was true and couldn`t deny it. That is why he was baptized. He shared those thoughts with us because he said sometimes as missionaries we don`t believe we can be successful because of exterior motives. For example, the church is small. There aren`t that many members. The ward doesn`t do activities. The leaders don`t complete with their callings. Sometimes we put a lot of excuses on achieving success. He also testified of the power of conversion. If the investigator reads the Book of Mormon, prays, finds out it is true, nothing else should matter. I am going to try my best to be less critical this next week. This week, we had some interesting experiences in the sector. We helped an older investigator named Alfonso with a job application for the US Embassy as a driver. The application had to be filled out in English, so we babied him through it, giving him help with the sentences he didn`t understand. I even had to call the US Embassy to find out how we had to send it and that was probably a once in a lifetime thing. After we filled in the application, we started talking about how his life was going and we ending up sharing with him about the nature of God. Alfonso knows God is out there, but he isn`t sure who he is. We shared about how God loves him and has provided a plan so he can be happy and we also watched the Mormon message, Padre Terrenal, Padre Celestial. In the end, he was in tears. I loved helping him out. We set a baptismal date with him for the 25th of February and we are going to do everything in our power to get him there. We were found a Haitian immigrant that is named Marie. She worked in the UN (United Nations) for a long time, and speaks perfect English. We talked about her life for a few minutes, then we shared with her about the restoration of the gospel. It was kinda funny teaching in English. I think it was one of the first times in my mission that I`ve done it. We met her on Friday, and she came to church on Sunday. We gave her a Book of Mormon in French, and she said that she would read it and if it was true, she would be baptized. We are crazy excited for her. We also had the chance to teach Tatiana this week. She is the sister of a member and is from Ecuador. She has an eight year old daughter and is living with her boyfriend with her parents. She wanted to know what happens after this life, so we prepared a really nice lesson with lots of scriptures really well planned out and as we shared it I felt the spirit so much. She was attentive during the lesson and using the Bible and the Book of Mormon, we explained what is going to happened after this life, and where we came from. The Bible and The Book of Mormon work so well together and help explain important doctrines. I`m doing great. The week was amazing. Please shoot me emails! I love seeing pictures! Elder Scott 1/24/2018 0 Comments January 24th, 2018The Christmas package finally got here and I am super happy. Nothing feels better than to wear my Bass Pro hat.
This week we had to go to downtown Santiago because the passport of my companion expired. Mine has been expired for about 2 weeks too, but the office hasn´t said anything. Going to downtown is always super fun because you have to face the subway at rush hour. They shove you into the train along with 50 other people and you ride through the dark tunnels in total silence pretty much on top of each other. Also people give you lots of funny looks for being dressed nicely. When we got there, we ended up waiting in line forever, buying a yogurt from a street vendor and talking to people from Israel, Brasil, even the USA! There were also a ton of Haitians there. Three thousand Haitian immigrants are arriving to Chile every single day. I was also able to do a divisiones with the Elders from our zone. Elder Velez from Equador, a HUGE guy that loves reggae music and drinking mate. He serves as a district leader so it was just a routine div, but we had a great time and talked to a ton of people. I have been trying to look for the postive in everything and make my prayers more sincere and I have been noticing a difference everyday. I feel like when I testify it is more from my heart and it has more power. I also feel like when I share with people, the spirit is more present and I don´t get frustrated as fast. I know that life can get frustrating and sometimes, but I know that there is always something positive out there. God blesses us lots sometimes we are just slow in realizing it. Look for the positive this week! I love you guys all! Take care! Elder Scott 1/24/2018 0 Comments Xmas Arrived!The Christmas package finally got here and I am super happy. Nothing feels better than to wear my
Bass Pro hat. This week we had to go to downtown Santiago because the passport of my companion expired. Mine has been expired for about 2 weeks ago too, but the office hasn´t said anything. Going to downtown is always super fun because you have to face the subway at rush hour. They shove you into the train along with 50 other people and you ride through the dark tunnels in total silence pretty much on top of each other. Also people give you lots of funny looks for being dressed nicely. When we got there, we ended up waiting in line forever, buying a yogurt from a street vendor and talking to people from Israel, Brasil, even the USA! There were also a ton of Haitians there. Three thousand Haitian immigrants are arriving to Chile every single day. I was also able to do a divisiones with the Elders from our zone. Elder Velez from Equador, a HUGE guy that loves reggae music and drinking mate. He serves as a district leader so it was just a routine div, but we had a great time and talked to a ton of people. I have been trying to look for the postive in everything and make my prayers more sincere and I have been noticing a difference everyday. I feel like when I testify it is more from my heart and it has more power. I also feel like when I share with people, the spirit is more present and I don´t get frustrated as fast. I know that life can get frustrating and sometimes we get angry with the world, but I know that there is always something positive out there. God blesses us lots sometimes we are just slow in realizing it. Look for the positive this week! I love you guys all! Take care! Elder Scott 1/17/2018 0 Comments T-20 P-daysIt is -17 degrees in Springfield and it is 88 degrees here in Santiago. People the cold is a blessing don´t complain.
I started my week doing divisiones with an Elder named Elder Covarrubias. I´m pretty sure I´ve talked about him before in my emails. The guy is a role model to me. He is in the second change of his training, so he has around 2 months in the mission, but he is an insane teacher and very, very focused in the missionary purpose of inviting people to come unto Christ. I don´t really have much more to say about him. He is a really great guy. This week we killed a lot of investigators. For those of you that don´t speak mission language, that means we stopped visiting them. I am trying to have more faith when it comes to leaving people. Sometimes it is frustrating because you try different ways to help them with their doubts, or you visit them with members and no matter what you do they don´t keep their commitments. Sometimes I think it is my fault that they aren´t progressing because I don´t speak enough Spanish, or because I didn´t know enough scriptures or because I didn´t teach them a certian doctrine, but sadly, some people just aren´t ready to accept the gospel. The good thing is we have been finding more and more people every single week which keeps my spirits up. We are doing lots of filtering. The members have been giving us references, we have been going through the list of less active members, and we always seem to have an investigator show up at church that we don´t know. God is helping us a lot. I really don´t have much to say. We are just holding in there, looking, doing our studies and trying to be as obedient as possible. Heavenly Father will bless us as we keep going. LES AMO UN MONTON Y NUNCA SE OLVIDE QUE COLO COLO LA LLEVA. CONFIEN EN EL PULENTO Y EL LES BENDECIRÁ Elder Scott 1/11/2018 0 Comments Mayonesa and KetchupI feel like I have been saying the same thing for a year and a half. I talked to people about the restored gospel, I´m doing great. I talked to people about the restored gospel, I´m doing great. I talked to people about the restored gospel, I´m doing great. I´d imagine that it gets kinda boring after a while.
1/3/2018 0 Comments BuenoTwo really neat things happened this week apart from Christmas and New Years. I came back to the same zone where I started my mission, but I am in another ward. My ward is named La Cisterna and has an attendance of about 90 people (one of the stronger ones in the mission). My compañero´s name is Elder Hendrix from Dallas Texas. When I was in this stake at the beginning of my mission, one of the families that we visited was Coralia and Marcela. They had been baptized just before I had arrived and we worked super hard to help the dad to learn the gospel and be baptized. I was in that ward for almost 8 months and in that time, he came to church only one time and we could never get him to stop smoking. Now that I am close again, I talk to the elders there, and they told me that he was going to be baptized!!! At first I could not believe it. I got to go to his baptism last Sunday and it was so so special for me. He was clean, with his hair cut and shaved and looked super good. I am very humbled that I got to be a part of his journey and that I got to see him make a promise with our Heavenly Father in the waters of baptism. I would attach pictures, but I forgot my converter at home. We also have an investigator that we are teaching named Pierre. Pierre is an immigrant from Haiti that has been in Chile for about a year. He lives with his wife and his little son. We have been teaching him and he has progressed really well and is going to be baptized this Sunday. I am crazy happy that I could help him. Herode, another Haitian immigrant that was recently baptized is going to perform the baptism. It feels super good to be an instrument in God´s hands. I am doing great. I feel like I understand how to be a good missionary. I really enjoy the study time we get as missionaries and I love the scriptures with all my heart. I love the Chilean people and I am strengthening my testimony each day. I hate thinking about my mission coming to an end. If I could, I would add more time. It really does feel great to be here. I love you all so very much!!! Elder Scott 12/13/2017 0 Comments Problem solvingThis week’s theme might be “problem solving”. During divisiones we hear about the conflicts that are in the zone from all of the district leaders. As I hear about the issues, my ability to solve problems gets stronger and stronger. It is important to be able to see a problem and start thinking about how to solve it instead of waiting for other people to do it for you.
Other than that, the week was great. I am still trying to find my place here in La Cisterna. It really is a great ward. Lots of ground to work with and tons of people. Our investigators are doing well, but they struggle with keeping the sabbath day holy which keeps them from being baptized. We have been trying our best to contact the people in the street in hopes that one of them will be a prepared person, and I know if I stay at it, eventually we will find one. We had a really neat experience the other day. On the way to future´s house, we got stopped by a man in a car. He asked us if we needed a ride, and we felt like it was fine to get in, so we did. His name is Roberto. We asked him if he had spoken to missionaries before and he said he never had, but that he had seen us before walking in the street. We began to explain to him our purpose, and what we do as we rode on the way to the cita. We asked if we could come by to share more, and he gave us his address and we went last night. The guy is incredible. He is a nurse that lives alone in a department building on the 14th floor. We taught him the restauración and how it could bless his life. I felt the spirit so strong. It is special to me to be able to testify and teach about the truth and feel the spirit working through me. I love knowing that God trusts me and that I am an instrument in his hands. I can´t wait to see more miracles this next week and to help more people. Missionary work is super fufiling. I love you all so very much! Take care of yourselves! Elder Scott 11/29/2017 0 Comments Iluminar el Mundo in full swing!Hey friends and family in America or wherever you are. I hope you are all safe and enjoying the Christmas season.
I’m jealous because in Chile it is summer time and 80 to 90 degrees…there is nothing like a hot Christmas. People don´t really go all out here like they do in the U.S. The majority of the people have a tiny tree in their house and that is about it. My companion and I are in the process of getting a few decorations and we are in the Christmas spirit as much as a person can possibly be. I´m hype for all the things we have planned. This week I had a few neat experiences… In the position I am in right now, we have lots of meetings with the leaders of the stake. We had one yesterday about our zone. It makes me feel weird having the responsibility to think about how I can help other missionaries instead of myself. It is a challenge but I know it is going to make me a better dad in the future. The stake president and the stake mission leader wanted my companion and I to animate the zone. They want us to look for ways to hype the missionaries up and make them feel excited to go out and talk to as many people as possible and teach good lessons. I don´t really know how to put it into words. We are up for the task, but it is going to be hard. We plan to do special divisions and put the more motivated missionaries with the lower energy ones during activities, we want to teach better classes in the zone meetings. I need all of the help I can get. If you guys know any good strategy to motivate groups of people, please shoot me an email. I need advice. I also had the chance to do an interesting baptismal interview yesterday night in another ward. The hermanas were worried about a few things their investigator had said, so they wanted President Gwilliam to conduct the interview. When they called him, he told them that we would do the interview. My companion Elder Neddo and I talked a lot about it, and we decided that I would do it because I had done a few more interviews then he has. I felt super nervous. It is a crazy feeling to be the one that decides if a person is ready to be baptized. I had to rely on the Spirit so much during the whole experience. I said about a million prayers. It was crazy to see how the Lord took me, a 19 year old gringo, and helped me through the spirit to conduct the interview. I shared a ton of scriptures, we talked a lot, and I testified, and after about an hour and thirty minutes with the investigator, we finished. It was for sure one of the most crazy interviews I have ever done, and I am grateful for the opportunity I had to do it. It is good to feel the spirit work through me. I also had divisions with a new elder that is really struggling with self esteem. It was hard for me to help him. I am trying to learn how to correct and to teach more from the heart and with love. I felt like I was helping him because I shared a bunch of personal examples and scriptures and I testified about a million times about his potential but he didn´t really listen to me and he only improved a little. I want to try harder to correct, teach, and love more like Jesus would. It is hard, but I am trying my best to improve. We are putting the petal to the metal with the Iluminar el Mundo and we are trying to invite as many people as possible to go see the video and apply it to their lives. IF YOU HAVEN´T SEEN THE VIDEO, GO SEE IT AND SHARE IT WITH SOMEONE BECAUSE IT WILL HELP THEM. I know so because I have seen it happen about a million times already this week.. I love you all. Take care of yourselves for me! Elder Scott 11/22/2017 0 Comments Chilian ThanksgivingThanksgiving does not exist in Chile so we had to improvise with a huge turkey BBQ that didn´t really turn out to great, but what is not to be thankful for? I can now say I have tried gizzard for the first time in my life ( I ate three of them). I really have a lot of things to be thankful for here in Chile. Obviously it is lame not to spend the holiday season with your family, but I´ve got a second family down here. I am easing into the ward really well. We had a few really special miracles that happened this week. We didn´t get to work as hard as we wanted because we had a lot of meetings. We had to meet with the stake mission leader a few different times, we had to help get ready a seminary graduation. We have been working hard looking for new investigators and we´ve found a few really good ones. We have a reference from Salt Lake City that we received the other day named Javier, a Venezulano, a family of Colombians, a few Haitans, and a man named Luis that lived in Canada for ten years. We really have all the plates covered when it comes to diversity. I´ve been trying to be more sincere with my contacts and all the times I speak to people. I feel like some missionaries have the navy seal tactic. They bust down the door and fly in with tons of noise and action and present a ton of information and are super super happy and smilie. I've noticed that approach never really works. I am trying to slow down and focus on the Spirit and make sure the person really knows that the things I say are important to me. It has been working a whole lot better. When I testify and I feel like the investigators have been able to see the love I have for the gospel. Be strong in the gospel. I met an inactive return missionary that had converted into a Muslim and it was super sad to see. KEEP PRAYING AND READING THE SCRIPTURES EVERY SINGLE DAY. We can´t afford to lose the blessings we can get if we stay loyal to our convenants. I love you all very very much. Stay safe this week. I am thankful for all of you Elder Scott |
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