View from our fronot door. Our house looks like the one on the far right with a car in front.

Note from Mom: I thought this photo was out of focus until I realized it was heavy rain--which is a daily occurrence for Connor.

 

Dinner in Melefquen (the town 15 minutes from Panguipulli).

 

Sept 22, 2014

 

Lots to say. Oh... oops. I left my notes in the house. What was I going to say?

This week we travelled to Osorno to have a special capacitation with Elder Viñas of the Quorum of the Seventy. We had a good 9 hours in a van or in a bus, but it was worth it :D

 

Elder Viñas is from Uruguay (I think), so it was cool that he spoke in Spanish. First time I´ve heard a general authority speak Spanish. Normally, in General Conference, when some of the non-native English speakers speak, you can tell that it´s hard for them, and I sometimes feel that they can´t say it quite as well as they might have in their native tongue. Makes me glad that they´re letting people speak in their native tongues this next General Conference. If someone gets up and speaks Spanish, I´m definitely going to the other room to hear it, rather than translated into English.

Elder Viñas was fantastic :D He gave lots of time for the missionaries to express their thoughts and feelings on the Atonement. Something that hit me is that Christ loves his role as Savior of the World. He loves helping us and he lives for making things work out in the end. It´s His work and His glory (along with his Father). We need not feel ashamed as we lay our challenges and our guilt before Him because He LOVES helping and he LOVES showing us the right way to go, even when we are sometimes slow to repent, change, and obey.

Elder Viñas also showed us the importance of having Priesthood holders who are active in the church. The new convert retention structure of the church doesn´t work too well in branches because there aren´t enough priesthood holders. As missionaries, we need to be more accountable for that, and we should always be aware of the new converts. Elder Viñas pulled out a list of all the elders who were ordained in the last 12 months and asked about every one of them. It was really embarrassing for the missionaries who didn´t know who these people were. Thankfully, we knew what´s going on with our branch´s recently ordained elder. He just left for a mission in Peru today.

 

I also loved how Elder Viñas didn´t stay in the pulpit, but walked around the aisles with a mic to talk with us.

Oh! time just went by really fast... um still lots to say.

We had a TON of nonmembers attend sacrament meeting today because 2 members of the branch were ordained as missionaries and the parents of one of them invited all their friends from Melefquen (a town about 15 minutes from Panguipulli). We had a great gospel principles class and President Obeso came to set them apart. The setting apart was a big reunion in the chapel (almost as many people attended as in sacrament meeting). There were some testimonies and President Obeso explained how missions work in a way that was so clear and understandable. The two missionaries left in a plane to Peru today (two different missions in Peru).

Hey! Great news! Elder Viñas will return to our mission in November, but this time he´s going to bring a friend. Elder Russel M. Nelson is coming to our mission at the end of November. :D That´s 3 general authorities in just one year. It appears our mission needs help :D

Maia! YOU CAN DO IT :D

Max. The ward corn roast was in the other direction. Enjoy silly mistakes like that. Sorry that band has frustrations. That´s how I felt about winter drumline my Junior year.

And... I lost $40 bucks today. I hate losing things.

But, the church is true. The book is blue. And God´s a Mormon. (That´s something Elder Strate says sometimes).

Love you all :D

-Elder Connor Christopherson

PS: Mom, thanks so much for the testimony. :D

Pshh. I always end up with a computer with a hole right where the USB drive should be. I guess no photos today :/

Maia, yup. surprise! BYU is basically extended EFY with homework. 

I´ve had a lot happen this week.

We had two new elders move in with us. Elder Maldonado from Bolivia (he´s served in Bolivia, Venezuela, and now he´s ending his mission here in Chile), and Elder Lawton from Provo (turns out, his family´s been reading my blog since he got his call. Hola, Brother and Sister Lawton! Makes me wonder how many other people read my blog. I guess I´ll never know. (He said I topped the Google search for "Chile Osorno Mission blog.")) They´re both excellent elders. They´ve been here for just a few days, and they´ve been machines for finding new people to teach. They´ve had more lessons with member this week than we´ve had in any week this whole month. It´s great living with these humble, spiritual, cheerful people.

President Obeso called me an hour ago (that´s a big deal here. I think in other missions they contact their mission president pretty frequently, but here it happens a few times a year). He said he was calling all the trainers to remind them of the trust that the Lord has in them. That call came exactly when I needed it. It helped a lot and I know it was inspired.

This week we have the Chilean holiday,18 de Septiembre :D As it turns out, they made a law that everyone must have a Chilean flag in front of their house or they receive a $300 ticket, so we need to find a flag pole today.

A seventy is coming to speak to the  mission this week on Wednesday, and we´re all going to travel to Osorno. It´s gonna cost a good $200 to get the zone there (I´m not sure if that´s a two way or a one way price, but the zone leaders have it all figured out), it´s amazing how much the Lord provides through well managed tithing.

This last week we had branch conference, and the branch planned for an activity every day. That meant a lot more time in the chapel. It´s amazing how much time these branch members work for the church. The attendance just keeps dropping and the members are working harder and harder. We feel like Abinadi, who preached and was killed and never saw the fruits of his labors. It´s the Lord´s work, not ours.

One of the activities involved going to Hno. B´s house at 7:00am to give a prayer for Panguipulli. This member lives very far from us and collectivos don´t run that early, so we had to get up at 5:00am to make it on time. We got there and all the lights were out, so that worried us a bit. We thought we might have been the only people to show up. It started to rain in the dark morning as we sat outside the Hno. B´s unlit house. Thankfully, a car pulled up with the Relief Society president asking where a different member lived. As it turns out, the activity wasn´t in Hno. B´s house, but in another one nearby. Good thing the Relief Society president got lost. The meeting was spiritual and we all got to bear our testimonies, but goodness it was early. I guess when the Lord wants you to do something, you do it whether you think it´s worth it or not. That´s what Abraham had to do when he sacrificed his son. The Lord makes stuff turn out in the end.

I may not have time to fully describe the last experience of the week. We ran into a gringo named Steve who was really friendly and who invited us to visit. They have a lovely family here in Panguipulli. It´s actually a really long story, so I´ll sum it up and I might get to elaborate more next week. We were in that house for WAY too long. They gave us pumpkin pie and were really nice. He said he had a list of questions for us (which we had asked him to make so we could focus our teachings in his needs). I´m pretty sure the list of questions came from an anti-Mormon site. As it turns out, Steve is a pastor who knows the Bible REALLY well. He also knows a lot about all the big churches, including Christ´s restored church. He had a lot of really hard questions that have been nagging at me all week. Several of them I could answer right away, some of them took lots of study during the week to be able to answer for myself, and other questions I may not be able to answer for a while. It´s really deceptive how the truths and falsehoods were entwined. I guess that´s what happened to Saul. He sincerely believed the teachings of the Pharisees, but the Lord knew Saul´s heart. He knew that Saul was sincerely trying to do what was right, so he could appear to Saul and help point him in the right direction. I have faith if we do our best, the Lord points us in the right direction with the condition that we depend in His wisdom more that our own wisdom. Ask and ye shall receive.

Love you all!

-Elder Connor Christopherson

Hola, todos :D

The second package arrived. :D a camera, garments, Reese´s, and a debit card with MONEY :D :D :D Is that bad, that that´s the thing I was most happy about?

The package also had some photos from our fridge. Grad photos always look a little ridiculous :P Everyone looks so much older . . . like they´re graduating high school or something. I loved the magnet about God´s voice being encouraging rather than pushing.

Congrats, Hayden, for the mission call. :D

Maia, I love the extended analogy. Sorry about the dead possum. LaRee actually guessed what you were talking about and told me she loved the last book. You´ve got to talk about it with her. :P Hmm. Starting next week, the emails from my parents and from Maia are going to be different because they´ll actually be in different parts of the country. Don´t freeze in Idaho. (tip about college: Get to bed on time. I had some good laughs with friends, but I think my grades would have been better if I had gotten to bed earlier. It´s also important to look for fun service opportunities to do with friends. I don´t know if Idaho will have the same, but BYU had a place to go where you could find out about all the service opportunities. I ended up cleaning horse poop with a bunch of strangers in my first week. FUN :D Oh! 3rd tip... and what might actually be the most important of the 3. Meet everyone and enjoy talking with and doing stuff with strangers, ESPECIALLY THE FIRST TWO WEEKS! What happens is, the first few weeks, nobody knows anyone else, so everyone´s floatin´around finding where they fit in. After a few weeks, everyone´s found the people they´re comfortable with, and then it´s a lot more difficult to join in with a group (all the inside jokes ´n stuff have already been set). If you get to know a ton of people right from the get go, you´ll get to choose which type of friends you want to be with. If you just kinda wait around, you won’t get to pick and you´ll be stuck with whatever life gives you, but they´ll always want to do stuff you don´t really want to do and you´ll stay in your housing all day. Not a good way to spend your first year. Make lots of friends :D. I loved my first year of college and consider it the best year of my life up to that point. Make it awesome :D

Ok... I don´t have much time left. You all probably want to know what´s going on in Chile. We´re kinda dry on investigators at this point except for Natali and Dagni. They´re awesome :D They´re way into nature. They don´t eat meat or egg, and they try to get all their food the most organic possible. It´s delicious :D Very fresh. They´re very healthy, athletic people. We´ve been teaching them with the Biggs (the senior couple). Dagni (the mom) is very intelligent and has already read lots from the Book of Mormon. She really liked the story of the Brother of Jared and was telling us all about it. Natali (the daughter) is always cooking in the other room, but she listens to every word. The food she makes is spectacular. The Biggs asked if they could be the missionaries responsible for Natali and Dagni, so we won´t get to visit them quite as much now, but I´m really excited to see when they get baptized.

Cambios are this week and 2 more elders are coming to Panguipulli, but I don´t know either one of them . It´ll be weird sharing the house between 4 elders now. It´ll feel a lot more cramped. We´ve done a ton of cleaning and organizing this week to prepare. There are so many new missionaries that have been coming. More than half of the mission is in training schedule now (training or being trained).

Elder Strate continues being a wonderful, supportive companion. He did particularly well in a practice we did with the zone leaders last week.

I love you ALL :D :D : D :D :D :D Even you. Yes, you.

-Elder Connor Christopherson

Hola!

So. Where to begin.

We took an interesting survey this week about our understandings of Preach my Gospel and our ability to apply it. It made me realize how important every chapter of PMG is so important. We can´t slack on a single one (unless you´re a native English speaker in an English speaking mission... then Chapter 7 doesn´t really apply). I was reminded that I need to work harder to do Chapter 8 well (how to use time wisely). Chapter 8 has been the most difficult for me the whole mission. It´s the one that teaches how to plan and use the area book and the planner correctly and goal setting. I think it´s the hardest for me because it´s rather rigid; you´ve got to draw the yellow flower with a green leaf and that´s the way it´s done (if anyone´s familiar with that story).*

 

My goal for September is to internalize and master Chapter 8. (Chapters 2 and 13 are a little tougher for me as well, in case anyone wanted to know. I basically struggle with anything that´s based in paperwork).

Have I mentioned the birds here? There´s some species of bird that is EVERYWHERE. They hang out in the trees, so you don´t see them a ton, but they are very obnoxious. They make a loud, repetitive CAW sound that is heard 24-7.

Maia, sorry about the muffin**. I only read up to the book where they went to Greece and had to go in the big tower full of witches, so I don´t know who the Slither guy is. 

Max, that synth stuff sounds a little rough. The good thing is that you can practice piano type stuff in the house. Well.... I played a frustrating instrument my first year too: a vibraphone that was broken and made an ugly DONK. Do what edifies and not what tears down when making decisions in marching band. Have a good attitude and make it work.

What the heck... it just got center justified. Okay.

Oh! I lost my wallet again. We spent a whole morning searching for it. The caribineros told us to go to the colectivo station, which led us to a 2nd colectivo station on the other side of Pangi, which led us to an obscure address of a person who called the collectivo driver and said he didn´t find anything). Thankfully, later on in the day a young girl came to our house with the wallet. Her school teacher found it on the ground and knew that she was a member of the church, even though her family is less active and I´d never met her before. I was surprised that she knew where we lived (considering that she lives on the other side of Pangi). Yup. That´s my story. The Lord provides a way so that we have the things we need. :D

Love you all :D

-Elder Connor Christopherson

* Connor’s talking about a story I used to tell him about creativity, how it shouldn’t be stifled. Creative people don’t like being told exactly how to do something, they’re rather . . . well, be creative.

** Maia read a book that she was expecting to be really good, like a cupcake, but it was only a muffin. The muffin is still good, but it’s not a cupcake.

Note: There haven't been any photos in a long time because Connor lost his camera, and the new camera we sent him hasn't arrived, perhaps stolen?

Hola, todos.

Another great week :D Our numbers are still quite dreadful, but we´re finding people that look like they can be solid investigators :D One was an old investigator from the other part of Panguipulli named Pablo. He´s really receptive :D He said that two missionaries came and helped him once after a bike crash when he was 12 (10 years ago) and since them he´s never rejected letting the missionaries in his house. I´m surprised he hasn´t been baptized yet. We invited him to be baptized and he accepted the date. I think his biggest trials will be getting to church and quitting smoking.

You know you have a great companion when he helps us get out of lessons on time. A bad habit in the mission is to stay in and converse about lots of stuff (because Chileans are rather talkative). We need to focus on the things that are most important as we visit so the spirit is not diluted.

Elder Strate is great. He's very talkative. He loves to tell stories about before the mission and he loves talking about guns and hunting (he´s considering joining the military and tells me lots about it). It´s really nice for my stress just listening.

As y´all know, the last transfer was pretty tough, and a lot of the stress from that has carried over. I´m learning how it really helps to simplify the situation. Just focus on the next thing that needs to be done and love doing that thing. Tommy´s always been a really great example to me of that. He loves serving the Lord and as a result is very happy. There´s no internal fight because he´s already given up :D He´s striving to be consecrated (sorry to put you on a pedestal, pal. Psshh. I just called you "pal." I´m pretty sure I´ve never called you "pal" in my life. It´s a silly word. "PAL!")

The branch is struggling right now. Attendance has been dropping every week and it´s less than half of what it was when I got here. Pray for Panguipulli :D They´re branch conference comes up in a few weeks and that should help a lot (here, branch conference is like a weeklong thing where they have an activity every day).

Thanks for all the wonderful emails :D Keep reading the scriptures every day. I started reading the Book of Mormon every day as part of a district goal and it sure does point man to God better than any other book. Nephi was so solid in the face of doubt. It really does work out when we just give up our own desires and serve the Lord. As we do, our desires become more in sync with those of the Lord and we end up enjoying what we do instead of looking to do what we enjoy (if that makes sense).

Love you all :D

Oh! and Happy birthday, Max :D

Oh! and one of the packages arrived. It had Reeses, socks, jeans, and hot chocolate. Thanks :D Elder Strate´s package was robbed, so we´ll see if the second package arrives.

-Elder Connor Christopherson

¡Halo! (That´s what you shout at people´s houses when you want them to come out)

 Beloved family, friends, and people who read my blog without having met me before -- to you I say, "Hola."

So, this week had its ups and downs, like every week. The two other missionaries who were living with us just had a sobrecambio (a tansfer that doesn´t happen during the normal time for transfers). I´ll miss them both, especially Elder Gomez, who´s from El Salvador and who listened to Zelda music like I do (it made my day when I left the shower one morning and recognized "Hidden Village" from Twilight Princess playing on Elder Gomez´s speakers).

We only found out about the sobrecambio on Monday, and they had to leave on Tuesday, so they only had a few hours to walk with us and show us the new part of our sector. Now, all of Panguipulli is ours, which means there are a lot more people to teach. You´d think that would mean we´d teach more, but our numbers have been dreadful this week (except for number of street contacts, in which we got 107, a personal high :D ) We´ve had way more appointments than usual, but most of them fall. We´re planning stuff we´ll do so the appointments don´t fall through.

Someone asked why I´ve been traveling so much. Our mission has a few small cities and several towns and a whole bunch of rural countryside in between. Each town only has about 2-4 missionaries, so most missionaries have to travel to get to their zone meetings or even district meetings. We also have to go to the cities (like Valdivia) to do legal stuff so we don´t get kicked out of Chile. I´m in the process of getting my 2nd visa and my second carnett.

Dad, I noticed that you always include stuff about your bike races in your emails, but I have yet to comment. Sorry! I want you to know I´m proud of you for your diligence, and I´m grateful that my dad has such a healthy hobby. It´s impressive how far you go on bike every week. I´m also grateful that you love to garden, and I apologize that we´re often less than eager to help. I think you´ve had this ideal in your mind of kids who love being athletic like you and who are really eager to help in the garden. It hasn´t been quite that way. I´ll definitely be different when I get back. Most importantly, I´m grateful for all you do in your callings and home teaching assignments.

Mom, thanks for your supportive emails every week. Thanks for working so hard in the ward and for being so diligent in your calling. Thanks for being so observant and for always looking for ways to edify. You always had a lot of trust in me and I´m grateful for that.

Maia, YOU´RE GOING TO COLLEGE AND YOU HAVN´T WRITTEN ANYTHING ABOUT THAT. Well... you´ve written about selecting classes and everything, but now you´re almost there. I don´t know. If it were me, I´d be kinda freaking out. I didn´t seep at all the night before going to BYU. Oh, and you´re a legal adult, so you can´t hit people without going to jail (or something like that). Bwahahahaha! Oh! And you have your patriarchal blessing. Congrats :D Are you from Ephraim (no idea how that´s spelled)? Miss you lots.

Max, when your shadow starts getting bigger and rounder, RUN!!!!! When you hear moaning, you should play the sun song. You also must construct additional pylons. But you already knew that. Don´t do anything you wouldn´t want your parents to know about.

Kelsi, you can´t read or understand, but hey, thanks for being a great sister. Because of you, we have a one-story house with a big family room, so we spent more time together as a family instead of cooped up in our individual rooms upstairs. I´m excited to really get to know you in the next life.

I was going to write about Tommy, too, but I´m all out of time.

Love you all :D

-Elder Connor Christopherson

“They’re taking the Hobbits to Isengard – guard, guard, guard guard.” Ha ha! You know you have a great companion when he knows that and several other silly Youtube videos.

Oh, I said that my new companion, Elder Strate, is from Pleasant Valley in my last email. It´s actually called Mt. Pleasant. He loves hunting and fishing. He´s a little quieter, and he speaks a little too much English (he answers in English sometimes to people who speak zero English.) He´s got a really good heart. He looks out for others and is not argumentative.

 

We had a companionship inventory and he said the same thing my mom´s been telling me the last several weeks... I beat myself up over everything. It´s true. Well, I make a LOT of mistakes and it´s kinda a lot of responsibility we have—finding the people the Lord´s prepared, being examples, not being late to appointments, or forgetting things we need to do (which happens about every day).

We had a zone conference in Villarric. President Obeso so faithful. The spirit just emanates from him. We´re basically doing everything wrong, so there´s a lot to improve :D

Sister Obeso talked a lot about our health. We´re lot living the spirit of the Word of Wisdom if we don´t exercise every morning and eat unhealthily. She does not want to see tired, sick missionaries, but happy, energized ones.

President Obeso tells us, with calm, bold faith, that we can have 100 baptisms a month as a mission right now. When Elder Ballard came in February, he said that we needed to open our mouths and talk with everyone so we could teach more people. I definitely contacted more after the conference than before (before we contacted like 15 with lots of knocked doors a week), but I never reached the prescribed 70 street contacts in a week. Well, not being obedient by not having contacted 70 a week is having it´s to-be-expected lack of results, and I´m understanding more how faith and obedience work (more on that in a moment). President Obeso told us that that it´s not 70 contacts per companionship, it´s 70 per companion, so 140 a week for companionship. If we do that, we´ll teach more. 

Later in the week, I had a meeting with the zone leaders that taught me something interesting about the Lords´ work. The standard of the mission is about 10 lessons with a member present a week, but the usual is much less than that. President Obeso surprised us by changing the standard to 40 lessons with a member present a week (about 5 or 6 lessons a day, which is unheard of).

 

When the zone leaders told us this I was really doubtful. The zone leaders asked us one by one if we´d do this, and everyone said yes, but I didn´t respond. I said I could not say I could accomplish 40 lessons a week right now because I´ve been stressing out just to have a few lessons with a member present. I didn´t have the faith, and I couldn´t just say I´d do it just for the sake of saying I´d do it. I wanted to know that I would actually do it.

I thought about what I´d need to do. When people become converted to the gospel, they do it as a response to knowing and feeling that the church is true. They do it because they have read and prayed about the Book of Mormon to receive an answer from the Holy Ghost. I can look at the evidence that the church is true and know that it´s true intellectually, but it will NEVER change me unless I FEEL it. I know that it´s possible to contact that many people in a week, but I may not feel that it will be effective, I may feel that I will cause more damage than good, and I may feel that I waste my time that I could use for other, better things. I can know that I can do it without believing that I will.

Conversion takes more than knowing. That´s why Laman and Lemnuel were not converted even after having seen angels and miracles.

What makes the difference? One must study it out in their mind and ask God, our Heavenly Father. It´s the fundamental promise of the Message of the Restoration. It´s the great plead of the prophet Moroni.

I see the goal... well, not really a goal but a standard . . . that we should speak with everyone and we should invite 140 people through contacting every week. I sincerely know that I can, but I felt like it wouldn´t result. I realized that not one person in my district will achieve this unless they are converted to it through study and prayer.

 

That´s what we´ve been working on this week. We have talked with so many more people that the Lord has trusted us with, I have been praying to God to ask if this is what the Lord wants, and I have been feeling the Spirit testify to me that we really can, should, and will. My faith has grown, and as we contact more, we will find more. If we find more, we will teach more. If we teach more, we will baptize more people who are truly converted.

This is the only true and living church of Jesus Christ on the face of the Earth. It is led by Him through inspired prophets and apostles. Nothing in this church works without seeking, receiving, and heeding revelation. The Spirit will testify of the truth and you will see the hand of the Lord in your own life.

I love you all! I actually had a bunch more to say, but I wrote it down so I´ll tell yáll next week :D

-Elder Connor Christopherson