¡Hola mi familia y mis amigos!
Last week was a blast!! It was so fun and productive, where to start...
In response to Elder Chris Bowler, I don´t know all the number statistics of how many contacts or news turn into baptisms, but it´s about the same when we show up for a first visit with a future investigator. About 70 percent of the time they´re not even there or "they´re busy." It´s ok, we always take that as a sign that we were brought to that part of our area for a reason, and we like to try to find out why!
So last last Saturday, the 8th, was the 50 year anniversary of the LDS mission in Chile. 50 years since missionaries have been in the country. There was a fireside given by the area presidency that night which we watched by broadcast, but the real celebration was saved for this last Saturday, the 15th. The 20 missionaries that finished the 2 years of their missions last week were given the option to go home or stay for one more week to go to the celebration on Saturday in Santiago. Of course, you would be just silly to say no, so we had about 14 or 16 extra missionaries for an extra week. 2 of them, Elders Mace and Negri, were assigned to spend the week with Elder Pilcher and me in Nueva Aurora!! In other words, we got to do double the work in the same week in our area with 2 missionaries who had 2 years of experience and who were at the top of their game. We split our area in half and I spent the week in one half while Elder Pilcher took care of the other. We were able to visit all of our investigators, weak or strong, and talk with everyone in the streets and find new investigators and just cover everything, it was so productive! It was fun to spend a week with a couple of missionaries on the verge of dying who could just dish out advice and thoughts that they´ve developed over 2 years, and I learned a lot from them.
Elder Mace and I talked to a lady on the street and she said if she had any question to ask God, it would be how to raise her family better. It was so great to be able to bear testimony of how the gospel of Christ helps families specifically, and then see it touch her heart. She asked us to come by, and we set up a time to come by and gave her a Book of Mormon with Mosiah 4 marked. We then went to her house the next day and the husband let us in and the family sat down at the table and we taught them! I wish I could paint this picture better in your minds, but it was so powerful to be there and share the message of the restoration with a family of 4 that were all so attentive and receptive. The mom had read the chapter we left with her and they all committed to reading and praying together as a family, and they did! We taught them twice last week and we will see them again tonight! It´s really kind of a miracle, because it is incredibly hard to find a family to teach, it just doesn´t happen often. The fact that they are all available to be taught, receptive, and united as a family is incredible. They have 3 daughters, but I´ve only seen 2, and that´s where the need is for them. The 11 and 14 year old girls are the ones we´ve taught with the parents, but the oldest daugter is having some sort of crisis and doesn´t live at home and is making bad decisions in her life and they don´t know what to do. I´ll keep you updated, they´re kind of our main focus right now.
The celebration of 50 years was incredible! We were allowed to go to Santiago on Saturday with some members and be a part of it! It was held in a soccer stadium and started at 7 at night with a devotional by the area presidency of Chile again. I love hearing them, and there was so much that we got out of their talks that have to do with how we esteem Christ by the simple things we do, simple acts of faith. The theme of the celebration was "Creemos" (We believe.) After the devotional, the celebration began. It was a pageant of the LDS youth from all over Chile. The story was of a grandmother recounting to her family her conversion story of the missionaries and the Book of Mormon when she was a girl. They told the story of the 2000 stripling warriors and had 2000 youth on the soccer field dancing as stripling warriors. They also showed Christ coming to the Americas after his resurrection as told in the Book of Mormon, and went through history to the present day by depicting the Aztecs and Columbus coming and the First Vision of Joseph Smith and the pioneers crossing the plains in handcarts (as they pulled handcarts across the soccer field) and Parley P Pratt coming to Valparaìso, Chile in 1851 and then the first missionaries coming in 1961. Before the First Vision, they had the youth from stakes from around Chile dance traditional dances of the countries out on the field. Some of the countries the did were Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Argentina, and of course, Chile! They had such cool dresses and costumes, it was really cool! They then had the missionaries of today, me and about 1000 other missionaries from the missions around Santiago, sing "a donde me mandes irè" (I´ll go where you want me to go) which we memorized last week. We were all sitting together in a section of the bleachers, and we sang perfectly together and with all of the testimony we could muster. It was so powerful to be a part of that!! We didn´t get home to Viña until about 2 AM, but it was such a blast. I also got to see all 5 elders from my MTC district that went to the Santiago Oeste mission, which was super exciting. It felt like it had been 6 weeks (forever) since I had seen them!
The best part of the celebration was to see the fruits of 50 years of missionary work in Chile. The greatest blessing of having the restored gospel in the country is that of the rising generations, to see all those youth performing and showing that they know who they are and where happiness really comes from. It certainly makes everything worth it and inspires me to go out and do all I can to bring that joy to more youth, more families, more of God´s children every day. These youth knew that every pain and challenge and decision in life can all be healed and swallowed up in the joy of the Savior of mankind and His glorious Atonement for each of us individually. I love you all so much!
Love,
Elder Kimball
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