December 29, 2014

Funny, LaRee mentioned that they´re calling missionaries closer to their homes today. Here it´s the opposite. Before, Chileans were almost always called to serve in Chile, although some made it to Argentina or Peru. Now, they get called all over the place. In our stake, there´s a returned missionary from England, another with a calling to go to England, one with a calling to the United States, and I hear about missionaries who have been sent to pretty much every Spanish speaking country there is. There are also many Chileans who are sent to Brazil and some Brazilians who are called to Chile, which almost never happened just a few years ago, but now is a lot more common. There´s a companionship of Brazilian sisters in Osorno right now. They’re a lot taller than people from other South American countries. The newer one slips Portuguese in her sentences without meaning to.

Dad, how long did it take you to ride LotoJa? Elder Vega got sobrecambioed (emergency transferred) and the elder who replaced him, Elder Alder, said he rode the LotoJa in 12 hours and wanted to know how fast you did it. (Note: Connor’s dad’s time was 10 hours 20 minutes.)

Hey, this has nothing to do with the mission, but I was showing where we lived on Google maps to Sebastian and I was so amazed that our house is in 3D!!! Actually, Google´s gotten so impressive! I was nerding out! Before I left on the mission, I saw they were prototyping something to make Google maps in 3D, but it looked really blobby and ugly, but it´s a lot cleaner looking now! Look it up.

Oops... my hours up and I didn´t get anything spiritual here. I´ll just share about a contact we had. We told him how he could know, not just believe, but KNOW that the church was true. It caught his interest. We gave him a pamphlet and a copy of the Book of Mormon. We came back yesterday and he found lots of stuff on the internet. I was amazed that I could answer every one of his questions. He asked about garments, Martin Harris, the Urim and Thummim, the Word of Wisdom, ancient middle-eastern people migrating to the American continent, how missionary work is funded, and why we dress like businessmen. I answered each of his questions, but I also focused on how all those questions were only appendages to the big questions. Was Joseph Smith really a prophet of God? Is the Book of Mormon true? These things you can know through searching, pondering, praying, and acting on the answers you receive. Do it, it´s awesome :D

Love y´all

-Elder Connor Christopherson

PS: We´ve got 3 people with a baptismal date :D :D :D :D :D :D