¡Hola mi familia y mis amigos!
Happy Happy Birthday Birthday to the rest of the men in the family! Dad, you inspire me so much, and I am so amazed by the courage you have to be the incredible father you are to us. Brandon and I have learned so much from you. Brandon, with every year as you get older, it just means I'm getting that much closer to beating you in a wrestling match, old man.
Tiffanie's district is full! In my entire zone in the MTC, one district had 3 sisters, and another had 2, out of about 9 districts. It must be really neat to have 6 sister missionaries in one district together!
Today is another Chilean holiday, so it should be another interesting opportunity to find people. Right now, outside in the plaza of Olmue, it looks like there's some sort of motorcycle parade, because there's a bunch of people crowded around watching about 50 motorcycles drive around in a circle. It looks pretty fun to me. It got me thinking about how cool it would be to teach a motorcycle gang. We might see if we can start a conversation with them before heading over to do groceries and finish our preparation day.
This morning we woke up an hour early to go meet up with the ward council for a leadership activity that we called "amanecer" (wake up). It was fun, and the bishopric had hot chocolate waiting for all of us as we arrived, and then they capacitated all of the ward leaders about how we can go and search out the less active members more effectively and create an environment of love, hope and faith that will invite the influence of the Spirit in their decision to come back to the church. In my experience with less active members, (I run into a LOT, considering that about 19 in 20 members do not come to church here in Chile) that environment is so important. No one wants to hear, "So why haven't you gone to church lately?" or "what has been stopping you?" but if they can remember WHY they chose to enter into a covenant with our loving Heavenly Father in the first place, they are much more likely to want to come to church on their own accord. President Uchtdorf, one of my favorite apostles, talks so well about the what, how and WHY of the gospel.
Anyways, it was a fun adventure this morning because when we woke up an hour early, Chile was in a blackout, and we didn't have electricity. I was excited that I was prepared for such an emergency occasion with my flashlight handy, but a little unexcited when I found that the batteries had died. I then found in the dark my emergency go kit that I prepared a while back, opened it up and found my backup flashlight, and then became a little more less excited upon finding its batteries dead as well. I then found within my go kit my backup batteries...which were also dead. I then tried about 10 different combinations of 9 batteries between 2 flashlights before miraculously finding one combination that worked! I then saw that one of the flashlights had corroded on the inside and is therefore useless, and I'm pretty sure 5 of my 9 batteries are dead. Hmmm. So that's kind of crummy because if you thought batteries were expensive in the States, you ought not to see their price in Chile. Oh well. Even funnier, last week my batteries for my camera died, hahaha! The good news is that my internal batteries are still very much alive and cooking! I love being a missionary and throwing a smile in every direction to brighten this little town up a bit. The electricity came back about 4 hours later.
Kenzie, I finished the Book of Mormon last Tuesday morning, 8 pages a day for only 2 months! It only took 15 minutes a day and it makes all the difference! The stories in the Book of Mormon amaze me every time I read them!
Sounds like a fun set of plans you got fixed up for the summer! I'm especially interested in the family history indexing projects, because as a missionary, I have really striven to use family history as a good finding tool, something to talk about in contacts and a way for people to approach the church in a friendly, nonthreatening manner. All this talking about family history has really made me want to have done more with indexing before the mission, which means I will certainly do a lot of it afterwards. The strongest power on earth is found in the homes within the families. I love you all!
Love, Elder Kimball
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