March 3, 2014

Hi everyone!

Thanks to the Jensens for the Christmas card :D Yes, I have gotten to play piano... but just once because the big ward had a pianist and the rama doesn´t have a piano. The time I played was in Puerto Montt in a funeral.

Maia, Elder Holt says David Archuleta lived on the opposite side of Murray.

So many of you have been telling me about roadshow. I´m proud that Maia stuck through it even though she didn´t like it and I´m glad Max was so good with his lines :D

Mom mentioned that I´m probably sick of rain right now. I should probably say that it´s been really hot since the middle of January. For the most part, lots of heat and lots of sunscreen. Today was the first day of school for the year after summer vacation and we saw lots of youth in uniforms in centro today. (Every school has uniforms here.) I´ve been told that the winter will be especially cold because there have been lots of little earwig pincher bugs coming out (especially in our kitchen sink).

We had a zone conference. I liked it much more than the zone conferences in Puerto Montt. There we had 4 zones combined and we filled the chapel. In Coyhaique, we were in a classroom sitting in a circle. Much more personal that way with fewer people. Easier to converse. There was a senior couple of missionary doctors who spoke about preventing back, foot, and knee problems. President Rappleye was translating them the whole time.

Did I mention how that works? When there´s someone who needs to speak who doesn´t speak Spanish, like Elder Ballard, they say only a phrase at a time before the translator speaks, so the speaker has to pause after each phrase. I liked it this way because it gave more time for everything to sink in and you could think about each phrase and it´s weight.

The other day we gave a copy of the Book of Mormon to the sister of an investigator. We´re usually a bit conservative about giving copies of the Book of Mormon because we´re always short of those in Coyhaique, so maybe it was a surprise that we gave it to her, considering that the sister wasn't even an investigator yet. However, she was there with our next appointment. We were on splits and Elder Holt was with another Hermano and I was with José (a 16 year old recent convert who is awesome, went to EFY -- which they do have here -- and now he wants to be a missionary.). The sister of José, Maria, was already spending the day there after church so she was there when we arrived.

Long story short, there were a lot of people at the house and every single one of them has a very distinct background of the church. I was really planning on teaching one woman, our investigator, but as I was teaching the plan of Salvation, Patricia, the woman to whom we gave a Book of Mormon, asked a question. She asked why Maria and Jose are members of the church. The testimony Jose bore was particularly great.

Later, Patricia asked about what she'd read in the Book of Mormon. I was surprised to find that she'd read Jacob 5, the Allegory of the Olive Tree. I have always found Jacob 5 to be very difficult to understand (I get frustrated by the symbolism), but she already understood the original tree to be the Jews! Wow! She asked some very deep questions about the allegory.

Now, I know this was a really long complicated set up, but this is the part where you need to pay attention. I´ll be honest, I´ve understood about nothing about Jacob 5 up until a week ago, when I arrived there in my chapter to chapter Book of Mormon studies. Elder Holt had a guide to Jacob 5 that helped me understand it, and I´ve gotten to really appreciate it. I never could have known that just a week later I´d be confronted with an investigator who had read it and had a very good question. I know that God prepared me. I had to use all my knowledge of the first 3 lessons to have a satisfactory answer. I know that wasn´t just me. The spirit helped me. Even though the 9 people in this room all had very different backgrounds, I think every one of them felt it.

 

I know that Christ is our Savior in a perfect plan of God which allows every one of us to learn and grow and choose personally if we want to follow Christ or not. It is a perfect plan and it is a loving plan. I testify that this is true. This is the Church of Jesus Christ. I know it and God knows it and I cannot deny it.

Love you all.

-Elder Connor Christopherson