¡Hola mi familia y mis amigos!
On a scale of 1-10, I'm about a 22 for how excited I am to let you in on the goings-about in my world right now!!
Last week, we had transfers in the mission, and I got moved over to GÓMEZ CARREÑO, let me repeat, GÓMEZ CARREÑO!! For the uniformed, it is the first ward where Dad served while on his mission 30 years ago!! Can it get cooler than that?? We'll see.
My new companion is Elder Judd from Mesa, Arizona. He's still in his first ward, and he's incredible. We're so so so good for each other, and seriously like everything we had been praying for has been coming true in each other, and we have been realizing it more and more as we go. Cool fact: Elder Judd is also celiac. We are the 2 celiac missionaries in Viña del Mar, and we're together. Believe me, we're stoked, and we've already made all sorts of plans for the gluten-free menu this transfer. It's going down.
Ok, I walk into the church building on Thursday night, and the relief society president is there. She sees my name tag and asks if I by chance have a family member "Elder Kimball" who served in Viña del Mar. I say "you mean like, 30 years ago?" I show her the picture, and she freaks and says, "you're Mark Kimball's son!!" Dad, I know you remember the Vargas family, because I remember the story you told me about your "palta con ojos" companion and you baptizing the mother of a really really good member lady who always shared the gospel with everyone. Well, the daughter, Lorena Vargas, got married to another convert of yours, Jaime Arancibia, and they remember you VERY well. The mother of Sister Vargas that you baptized kept a picture of you and your companion to her grave, along with one of the scarves that she knit for you. The Vargas family still has your newly-engaged photo that you sent them of mom and you! They've told me some stories about a couple of your converts that they know about and where they are now, so I'm going to see if I can't get permission to search them out in Valparaíso and other places where they are said to be living currently. They also said Eduardo Nieto and his family, the bishop of Miraflores in your time, have really fond memories of you and miss you.
What's more? On your birthday, I ate lunch with Lorena Vargas and Jaime Arancibia, and Jaime told me he had been praying for a long time to find you or find some way to get in contact with you, and I told him you don't have facebook, and that's why, but I gave them your email and your skype. Then, on Sunday, Jaime gave a talk in sacrament meeting, and my mind was exploding because I could just feel the Spirit so strongly for listening to my dad's convert give a talk 30 years later. Then, that night we had a family home evening with them in their home and took a couple of investigators with us, and he shared his conversion experience and spoke so sincerely and personably with the investigators, I thought I was dreaming. It all just seems like I'm stuck in an Ensign story or something.
Funny story: we played a game in the family night where we tied a handkerchief to our forehead and put a pice of paper on the forehead with a word on it so that everyone but you could see what it said. Then, you could ask every person one question, trying to figure out what thing or animal or person or whatever it was that was on your paper. So one girl, one of our ward missionaries who is really energetic, had "Koala" written on it, but did a pretty bad job of asking good questions, and had already asked all the questions and barely narrowed it down to her word being a small animal. So out of mercy, my companion decided to give her a hint, and said "It's an animal from Africa." We were all about to correct him, when almost immediately the girl said "Koala?" We laughed SO HARD!! It was the most illogical thing we'd ever seen, and we're still laughing about it. Life is so so good. I love you all so much!!
Love, Elder Kimball
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