Fall in Chile

My new glasses....ya right!

Hey! How are things going? Things have been going good for me. This week really flew by for me. I have been really busy here in Viña it seems. This past week Leo came to church. The normal 5 minute walk for us to the church took about 35 minutes with him. He walks really slow and i think he was trying to keep his pants from falling the whole trip. This next week i think we are going to try and find someone that can come and pick him up. He has no problems with walking but we can tell that it is a little hard on him. We have had a great support from some of the members in our ward that come with us to our appointments that we have with him. We were able to get 11 lessons with a member this week which is the highest in this sector for over a year now. There is still work to do though. SO kind of the highlight of the week was that we had interviews with the President on Tuesday morning. I was really nervous for it since he has a longer interview with me to go over the district and stuff too. it was a really good interview. We talked about the difficulties of contacting a rich sector like Recreo with all of their intercoms and nannies and stuff. He gave us some really good ideas.
This week has had some really nice weather surprisingly. The sun came out and we were rockin short sleeve shirts for the week. Saturday night though we all just about froze. Sunday was really cold. Today it is overcast and chilly. I sure do miss the nice hot summers. I would take that over the cold anyday.
Thanks for writing me this week and letting me how things are going there! Love you all lots! Take care con amor, elder nelson

Sweet things in Viña.

Sweet sunset ocean views
Clay courts...sweet!

Hello everyone. Things are going good for me here in Viña. I am in a really rich part of town and most of the contacts we do during the day are with the nannies that work in the houses. that's not too good especially since our sector is so small and even smaller with all the big houses here. in church i havent had to teach anything yet but being district leader, i have to teach a class every monday night....i dont enjoy that muchl...i am liking Viña though. i am a bit dissappointed that i am here for all the rain though that is going to come. in Ovalle it rains 3 times a year... later on today we are going to go to the flower clock to take some pictures. this past saturday i was hardly in my sector. we had to go down to Viña Centro to do a baptismal interview for the zone leaders and then out to Quintero with one of the zone leaders to fix some problems that are going on out there. there are sister missionaries out there. my comp went with elder schneider to the other sister missionary sector in Con Con. apparentely they had only done 12 contacts as of friday night...normally we have to do 150 each week...160 for district leaders and zone leaders. then we got back from those around 6pm and worked in our sector for 2 hours and had to go up to another sector, Nueva Aurora to do another baptismal interview so i have done 5 now.
well other than that we are just workin hard. we have someone that we are teaching right now. he is 72 years old. his name is Leo. he couldnt come to church yesterday for some reason so we had to change his baptismal date but he really enjoys when we come over to teach him and loved going to church last week.
well that is about it. thanks for the letter and dad go play a round of golf for me. i think there is a course in La Serena but no idea if there is one down here. as far as i know we can go there on pday...that would be an experience...well take care! love you lots! chaíto!

More Pictures of beautiful Viña.

Jaren sent a lot of really beautiful pictures this week of Viña and I wanted to share more of them with you. Viña del Mar is the vacation spot of the Chilean Riviera. He's in such a beautiful place and very happy to be in the city named for his mission. Enjoy!

Lovin' it in Viña del Mar

A sunny day in Viña del Mar
Another beautiful coastal view of Viña.
Elder Palmer and the dirty dog encounter
My new companion Elder Watkins.

Me in Viña. It's turning fall now and cooling off so we're wearing long sleeves now.

Another view of the hills we climb everyday in Viña.

hey everyone.
things are going good for me here in Viña. the weather for sure is changing. there has been some light rain this week but will for sure only get worse. we have been wearing long sleeves during the day and our suit jackets at night. this week we were able to get into 13 houses. that is quite a bit. one of the houses we got into was pretty funny. the guy was old and couldnt really hear so we had to like shout everything. the prayer was kinda funny as I was not used to shouting one. turns out this guy was like a bigwig factory owner back in his day and made bank. he had his slacks and sweater on to just chill in his house and had this funny fur hat thing on. he was pretty cool and invited us back for tomorrow. my easter was like another day in the mission. i will say something though....i absolutely hate holy week in the catholic religion. we got that like all week as an excuse for everything...it is good that it is all over with now though...we can get back to working without the excuses from everyone. yesterday, the family we were going to eat with had company with them so gave us lunch to take to our pension to eat...so that was our easter.
things with the new comp are going good. we work good together. with the whole district leader stuff, i went and did interchanges with elder palmer in the sector of chorillos. you met his parents at the rest stop going home from the mtc. it was a fun day although he got mud splatted on him by a dog too...i have a pic i´ll send. i did get my package this past week and must say i love it! thank you so much for it and everything!

it is really getting cold here at night. even with socks and three blankets, my feet freeze.
well thats about all thats been going on with me...just hangin in there and working hard, getting used to all the new stuff to do...well thanks for everything and tell everyone hi for me. take care. love you lots!
chao, elder nelson

My First Transfer....Viña del Mar

A gorgeous view of the city and ocean in Viña del Mar. A Sunset view of the ocean in Viña del Mar

Hey Everyone!
How are things going? Things are going good for me here! Well we had changes in the Mission this past week. I finally left Ovalle. That night I had to be in the Zone Leader´s pension at 10:00pm and then at the bus terminal at 1:00 in the morning to VIÑA!!! I am now in Viña del Mar. My new sector is called Recreo Alto. My new companion´s name is Elder Watkins. He is from Vegas area, Nevada. He has one change less than me. I am now senior companion which is a little overwhelming…especially going to a new sector. It felt weird being toted around the sector this week but I am getting the hang of the sector. There are tons of hills and stairs. I am not really a fan of these haha…I miss the flats of Ovalle. I was so tired when I got to Viña! We got there at 6 in the morning. It only got worse as the day went on. I was replacing an elder who had been in the sector for 7 months and the people were sad to see him go. I am finally in a ward again but from what I hear, there are only like 50 people that go every Sunday which is about half of what came to the branch in ovalle. My trainer is a Zone Leader here in Viña right now too which is cool. He is in his last change. When he was with me he still had six months to go… This weekend we had the opportunity to listen to general conference. We had to listen to it in Spanish which took away from it a little. Some of the speakers had recorded their talks in Spanish too so we got to hear them speak. Elders christofferson and scott are crazy good in Spanish haha… So to welcome me into the sector, my first day we were doing contacts and we went down this little path. At the end there was this old tiny house. We yelled and out comes this little 10 year old kid that is just mad and tells us to leave and starts pushing me. I told him that all I need to do is talk to his mom. He told me that mormons weren’t welcome here. He started pushing me again and I told him to stop. He asked me if I would like him to punch me in the stomach…I was like fine we will go. As we turned around he went to kick me. I grabbed his foot and tossed it to the side. As we started leaving he and his friend and little sister started throwing rocks at us. Good thing they are bad shots. Well they followed us the whole path throwing rocks at us. When we got to the end of the path, I turned around and pretended to pick up a rock and throw it at him. He curled over and hid but when he saw that I didn’t throw anything or didn’t even have a rock, he got mad that I had embarrassed him so he threw his rock hard right at me. Well I caught it and got right into the motion of throwing it back and he ran away…stupid little kid… Well that is what is basically going on for me right now. I am getting used to my new sector and all the stuff to do now as companion mayor. The ocean looks awesome! Our sector boarders the ocean and is right inbetween Viña and Valpaíriso. It is so pretty. Alright, well that’s all for this week. Love you all lots! Take care! Elder Nelson

Last week in Ovalle

Me & Elder Gulbranson

The Pieto Family and their son Santiago

So this week has been a busy one. After a not so great week last week, my comp and i decided to see how we could improve and in what areas needed fixing. We set goals and decided how we were going to achieve them. On Tuesday, our day was awesome. We were able to get into 2 houses and get 4 new investigators.We now have 3 people with a baptismal date. On Wednesday, we had a mission conference up in La Serena. We had to be at the bus terminal at 6 in the morning. There were a lot of new things established…for one, now we arent allowed to go eat in restaurants on pdays… that is kind of a bummer. The other was that we cant communicate with people within our mission. That was kind of already established but he went over it again. On Thursday, we had our interviews with the President. He shared with me a really awesome scripture ( Mormon 9: 19-20). It talks about how we need to have trust in the Lord. Of course, this is His work. This was exactly what i needed at this point. I was really discouraged from our last week and this interview really helped me. He also gave me good insight on the importance of planning and writing down everything. He shared the scripture of the brother of jared and how they needed light for the barges….he had to have faith and ask the Lord specifically what he wanted Him to do. Pres. said the exact same thing to me. On Saturday, the elders that we live with had a baptism. We went to support them for a little bit. When we got there, their ward mission leader pulled me aside and asked if i could give a talk on baptism and confirmation. It went pretty well for not having any prep time. I shared Mosiah 18: 8-10. Yesterday in church we got a new branch president. It is the old Elders Quorum Pres, Hermano Honores. His wife is our mamita. He will be good.

Last night, chile beat peru 3-1 in soccer. The game was in Peru. There are a lot of problems between the two countries right now as they are having border issues with the sea. Things could get worse pretty quick up there… Well tonight we have changes so we will see if i am once again going to be in Ovalle for another 6 weeks. I am now two weeks short of ½ a year here in Chile. It sure doesnt seem that long though… Alright, talk to you next week. Thanks for writing me. Take care and know i love you! Chao Elder nelson