¡Hola mi familia y mis amigos!
I don't know if I mentioned before, but there are a handful of missionaries in Viña del Mar that are from the Colorado Springs North Stake. It's been kind of an exciting thing to run into them around the mission, even though I didn't know any of them before the mission. Elder Kirkpatrick came with me from the MTC to Chile, but he was in a different district, and I've met Elder Whittle a couple of times in the hospital when we've both been there for our companions. Sister Ellsworth was in the Viña del Mar Oeste zone with me for 4 months, and Sister Jessica Hart is in my zone right now in Villa Alemana. Every time I see the sister missionaries I think of how proud I am to be the brother of the best future sister missionary in the world! Go Tiffy!
The therapy sessions are $80 total, but the real reason we can't keep doing them is that it takes too much time to go and do it, I guess. Elder Rojas isn't really quite dying, we think, and that's all we really know. It's a confusing situation, but I guess he's not quite bad off that he needs operation yet, and he just wants to stay in the mission.
I don't really have enough time to go check the blogs of all the J Hall district, but I do read the monthly updates that Sister Richards compiles that Dad forwards to me through email. Jeff Marlor's getting married?? What a stud.
I just received a package from Marta last week, which is so wonderful because I was in need of more art from my nephews to hang on the wall over my desk! Thanks so much, Andy!!
Last week, we started to read the Book of Mormon from the beginning again together as a mission. We're going to read it in the same amount of time that it took Joseph Smith to translate it, which was a space of 2 months, 8 pages a day! I spend 15 to 20 minutes in the morning to read 8 pages, and it really goes to show that there's no way Joseph could have written the Book in such a short space of time without the direction of God. This activity has already helped in our teaching. One investigator told us he simply didn't have time to read the 3 pages we had left with him to read, and we were able to say that we were reading 8 pages a day in the mornings, and then he realized that he could take 5 minutes before breakfast to read the chapter we left him, and now he's reading for 5 minutes every day! His name is Marcelo and he's progressing well, he just had to overcome a little bit of laziness is all. He didn't used to believe in God until a couple of months ago when his house burnt down in the middle of the night and he was awoken right before that happened and got out of the house just before it collapsed, where it would have killed him.
I'm also marking every single question in the Book of Mormon as I read it. The goal is to help me improve my ability to ask questions, and reading the questions that are found in the Book of Mormon really gets you thinking hard. The very first question found in the Book of Mormon is the best! I invite all to find it and ponder it deeply.
Cecilia is still in Viña del Mar with her husband who is in a coma, but we contacted her by telephone and she is doing well and has been reading a lot from the scriptures and says she has been strengthened by God a lot in the last weeks. As we were walking down a road last week, we saw a house that had hedge bushes in the front yard that were cut into shapes, and really well done, actually. There were bushes shaped like horses, reindeer, and there was one of an armchair. So we decided to tell them that we liked their bushes, and the man invited us inside. We soon found out that he had just woken up from a coma that he had been in for 6 months, and was sure that God had a specific plan for him. He already had a Book of Mormon, and pulled it down off his bookshelf where he had read until Alma, but that was years in the past. He had a pamphlet of the plan of salvation from the 90's when he had last talked to missionaries, and is really excited to have us come back to continue sharing with him the message that God has in store for him. Anyways, comas seem to be more common than I thought around here. I love you all!
Love, Elder Kimball
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