Elder Davila - Happy 6 months!!!

To celebrate ......Before!

and ....After!

Little Copito our dog friend

all we had to do was count and he would tilt his head-it was hilarious.

copito means little snowflake in spanish para que sepa

hey everyone how are things going? this week was a good one. we had three investigators coming to church yesterday. We have a baptism this weekend for Felipe and Matias Romero. They are brothers in a family menos activa. the family is starting to reactivate themselves now as their kids are getting baptized. their two older siblings are going to seminary now and enjoying that. they are an awesome family. This past week, we had interviews with our new Mission President, Pres. Gillespie. As we were walking down the hall he asked me how i was doing. out of habit i answered in spanish and then he said, " is it alright if we just talk in english?" it kind of caught me off guard but it was fine with me. we did the whole interview in english. it was just getting to know each other a bit more. he shared with me the importance of not measuring our success by the numbers...what we do in our sectors often times will show up in numbers long after we leave but what we do everyday has an impact on the sector and the people. I also had an interview with Hermana Gillespie. She is a really cool lady. She sure does struggle with the spanish though. I had to be a translator for her interview with one of the sister missionaries in my zone who is from Colombia. It was a get to know you, how is your mission going for you type of interview. So the girl that Elder Watkins and I found when we did interchanges a few weeks ago is going to get baptized this weekend. I did the interview for her on Saturday. She is really excited for her baptism. So this week, we were also able to finally find and teach Raul. He has been working a lot and we havent been able to find him for over a month. We talked to him about the power of prayer. He is trying to stop smoking. I told him to give me his box of cigarettes and then i just started eating them. Haha just kidding, i took two out and soaked them in milk. when they dry, he is supposed to put them back in the box all mixed up so he doesnt know which ones are which. we will see how things go the next time we see him.
Well, we are now going into the last week of my 7th change. pretty crazy! take care everyone and talk to you next week. chao elder nelson

One great breakfast!

one great breakfast i made...my first successful fried egg.

i have gotten to be a great cook lately... my fun after playing soccer on wednesday...

Hey so this week was a pretty sweet one. On Sunday night we were a little bummed about the sector not having anything left since we had just baptized Mauro. Monday morning i worked hard to have a good class for the district and it payed off as the assistants showed up to be in our meetings. On Tuesday, i think we had one of the best days of my mission so far. We were able to get 4 lessons with a member. One of these lessons included a family that is kinda new to the area. The kids names are Felipe (12) and Matías (11). We also found a single lady this week who was really interested in what we shared. Her name is Ximena and has a son 5 years old. We taught her on Friday and had an appt. with her on Saturday... We have also started teaching the mother of a kid who was baptized about a year ago. She is on the poorer side of things and is now pregneant with her 7th! She told us that she would come to church on Sunday and she came! She has a baptismal date of 15th of August. So now we have things rolling again. We have been really busy coordinating lessons with these people as we cant enter into houses without a guy there. This will keep us busy for the rest of the change for sure!
It did rain on Saturday and the temperatures have been dropping. We did have really nice sunny weather for about a week and a half but they are calling for a lot of rain this week :(
We are staying busy and workin hard. Take care everyone and HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!!!

Mauro's Baptism

Monserat (5) the Bishop's little girl

Sunset in Chile

Hey!
So this past week was a busy one haha. We had the baptism of Mauro on Saturday afternoon. There was a problem with the baptismal font though…the water heater broke and a lot of dirt rose up from the drain or something and the water was a dark greenish brown. Gross! We were worried that he wouldn’t want to do it but told us that it doesn’t matter what the water is, he just wants to get baptized. So that was pretty cool. When they went down into the water, Mauro started laughing at how cold it was. Everything worked out well and according to plan (except for the font).

The weather has been really nice and warm this past week with the exception of yesterday which was a little on the cold side. We are still teaching Erwin and Joselyn but they weren’t able to go to church yesterday. We watched the Restoration with them. Erwin understands and believes it all but for right now seems more curious than anything. He also has problems with the word of wisdom. He smokes, drinks coffee and tea, and drinks, but only drinks on social occasions.
I forgot to mention that last week during sacrament meeting, a big dog came walking into the chapel just trotting around. I had to do a double take. It was pretty funny.
I was able to do intercambios with Elder Watkins this past week. That was pretty fun and a nice break from the sector. We were doing mainly contacts as they have nobody to teach right now. We were able to get into a house of an older lady. Her daughter is a less active member and lives there as well as her three kids. Well the oldest daughter is 10. We taught her and turns out that she is going to be baptized on august 1st. She went to church yesterday and everything too. How awesome!
We are really busy looking for more people to teach. All of our investigators are hard to find during the week and for a lot of our lessons, we would show up to an empty house. That kind of stinks but its part of the mission I guess. Well thanks to those of you who wrote me. Things are going good down here. Take care and talk to you next week! Chao, Elder nelson

Goodbye Pres. Wilhelm - Hello Pres. Gillespie

Goodbye President & Sister Wilhelm
Presidente, muchas gracias por todo. Palabras no pueden expresar mi gratitud para usted y su esposa y las cosas que han hecho para mí personalmente. Yo nunca los voy a olvidar. Gracias por su consejo y enseñanzas.

We had a mission conference on Friday in Villa Alemana. It was a mission conference for the interior. There, we met our new mission president and his wife. They are from Vancouver, Washington. His profession is a dentist. They are really cool. They are really different than Pres and Sis Wilhelm. First of all, it has been about 40 years since Pres. Gillespie used his spanish and you could tell. He told us that it would take him some time to get used to that. His wife has been learning for about 2 months now and hardly knows anything but she is really nice and is a music freak. so i guess the sunday before leaving for chile, they had a special sacrament meeting in the MTC with the entire first presidency of the church and 11 of the 12 apostles. Crazy! the only one not there was President Packer. How cool would that be! they got to hear each one of their testimonies too...
On saturday night this week we found a really sweet young couple. the husband is evangelical and the wife is catholic but neither are active really...just born into the churches. they have a daughter that is 2. they were both really interested and had a lot of questions. They asked us when we could come back and visit them and answer more of their questions about the Book of Mormon after they were done reading the chapter we left them to read. It was a really sweet lesson. At first we were just going to leave them with the pamphlet and come back another time but they seemed so interested that we just kept teaching. we were really behind in contacts and needed to do more and it was 6:30 at night which was like the best time to do contacts, but this was more important. This weekend we have a baptism for a 9 year old named Mauro. He is a ball of energy. he is cool and really excited for his special day.
oh, hermana cofre says Feliz cumpleaños to dad :)

Chao, Elder Nelson