Healthy = Happy!
Lunch with the President and his wife...only a few were invited.
My new favorite juice...awesome juice I discovered...mixed with milk =YUM!!!

Hello it's me....Jaren on the web cam at the internet cafe today.

Hello everyone.

My time is a little short today so my letter will be short too. This week we've been making shakes...i am also addicted to these shakes in the morning! so good! fruit, yogurt, milk, yum!!!! i am into bananas and strawberries now. i bought like 4 pounds of strawberries the other day and washed, cut and froze them so i am good to go every morning. makes the shake a lot better when they are cold too.....they went good.. we got invited to go eat with this one guy today. he lived in one of elder tondevolds old sectors but now lives in the zone. he is a chef. woo hoo!

Things this week went alright. we had interviews with the pres and hermana gillespie on friday. me and my comp are getting along a lot better. while in viña this morning this one guy stopped me and was talking in english. he asked me where i was from. i told him idaho and he was all ..OH SH**! haha he said it like 5 times. he had lived in new york. he was all...so you are from the corn state huh? i said no...that would be nebraska haha. it was kinda funny. i laughed whenever he cursed...he said it so funny. crazy dude.

Have a nice week, Love Elder Nelson

Sector Gomez Carreño in the Zone Achupallas

My first Latin companion from Ecuador - Elder Miranda

I get to see the beautiful coastline of Vina del Mar again everydayBut this is as far as we go....what's with the barbed wire fence??

Hey everyone how are things going? Things are going good for me. I am now in a new sector. I got changed to the sector Gomez Carreño in the zone Achupallas. My new companion is Elder Miranda. He is from Ecuador…my first latin companion. The sector is kinda cool. Its big but there are hardly any youth. Its all old people in the ward. I do have some pretty sweet views of the ocean though which is pretty cool.
This past week we had the 18 of September. I was pretty bummed about no being in my last sector as they went to Casablanca (a camp ground)for the whole day. Here we just played soccer in the morning with some of the ward members. That day we just worked as normal which was almost pointless. On the 17th at night, there was a stake activity where they had some festive dances of Chile. It was pretty fun. I guess our ward is going to have a ward party in October.
My new pension is pretty sweet. Its on the 8th floor of an apartment building. I am living with Elder Gulbranson and Elder Tondevold. I was pretty excited to hear the I was going to be living with them. It has been pretty fun this past week in the pension.
On Sunday, we had a fireside with Elder Jorge Zeballos of the 70. He talked to us about the document, “Permaneced.” It was a really good. One thing that stuck out to me was the importance of being an active member in the church and how the Sacrament is like a mirror to see if we are enduring to the end. The whole document focuses on receiving and maintaining the Spirit in our lives and the Sacrament is something necesary to have it.
In the sector, we have an investigator with a baptismal date. She is pretty cool. Her name is Gladys. She is like 50. Her life has really done a 180 degree turn for the better. She really enjoys going to church and is excited for her baptism.
Well that is kind of what is going on right now in the mission. We are just trying to get settled. I am still getting to know the sector so we will see how things go this week.

Take care, chao Elder Nelson

Chilean Independence Day - Sept 18th

Hey everyone how are things going? This past week there were quite a few things that went on. First of all, on Monday evening, we received a new focus for the mission. The goal for contacts was dropped. They will not be counted anymore….well for now anyways. This past Friday, we had a mission conference with Elder Corbridge. We learned about the importance of having the Holy Ghost with us in our lives and how it outweighs any other thing here on earth. It was a really good talk that he gave that really helped us to understand or to learn more how we can increase the unity in the wards that we are serving in. That is our focus. We need to help get the members to do their own missionary work. They need to be trained how to do it and how go about it.
Right after the conference, we went to one of our investigator’s houses and taught him about the importance of the Holy Ghost in our lives and how if we don’t have it, we can’t progress in our lives. It was a pretty strong lesson. All we did was bear our testimonies and shared a couple scriptures but he seemed to really get it as he ended up coming to church yesterday. We showed up to his house on Sunday morning and he was all ready in his suit ready to go. He really liked it and participated in the classes and everything. In Sacrament meeting, our bishop shared about the importance of Unity in the ward and talked about those who choose to be offended. It was the talk that I gave him when we started our big re activation project in the ward. That was pretty much all anyone said when we passed by to visit- that they were offended.
Later on Friday, we had to be inside the pension early because it was September 11. On that day, the military overtook the Chilean Government in like the year 1973 or something and there would be protestors. With that, as well as what happened in our history, we were instructed to be inside at 5:30.
Well that is all that is really going on with us now. We are trying to take care of the investigators that we have and finding more. This change is now over. Training really makes the change go by quick. Elder Tensmeyer has progressed so much these past 6 weeks. It has been a really fun change. We will find out what happens tonight with changes. One thing I do know is that I am headed to the zone called Achupaillas. The mission president called me last night to tell me. Today we are having a BBQ as missionaries to celebrate the 18th of September which is the Chilean Independence Day. This weekend we should be eating pretty good haha. They celebrate it for 4 days! Crazy! Hello empanadas haha!
Okay, take care everyone and i´ll be sure to let you all know how things go this weekend and my first week in a new sector. Chao, Elder Nelson

Caterin Quiroga Baptism

A cookie mix from home...turned out YUMMY!!

Sister Gillespie and "Health Days"

Our church building, soccer/basketball court.

Hey everyone how are things going? So this week we had a lot of things that happened. First of all, we had interviews with President and Sister Gillespie. President Gillespie talked about the importance of having unity in the companionship. What we are doing now will help us later on in our lives too...marraige.
On Saturday, we had the baptism of Caterin Quiroga. She was so excited for her baptism. The water was nice and hot too which felt great. I had the opportunity of baptizing her; she wanted the Bishop to confirm. Both the baptism and the confirmation went really well. We did the confirmation on Sunday right before the Sacrament. On Saturday it was raining in the morning but it had stopped by the time the baptism ended. We ate lunch with the mamita, Hermana Loreto and her two sons, Angelo and Claudio. We had completos. They were so good!
On Sunday, we went to Pablo and Maria´s house and had an activity. We made the chocolate chip cookies that my parents sent. They were so good! Sadly, we didnt have nice cold milk to wash them down with.
Oh, on Tuesday, we played soccer again but we started playing basketball after an hour. It was Elder Tensmeyer and I with a little deacon against 4 big dudes. we clowned them. It was so funny to see how uncomfortable they were in that sport. I guess its kinda how i must look to them playing soccer.
This week with our investigators, we had some success. We finally were able to find and teach Ximena. It had been over a month since the last time we taught her. She is doing well but hasnt gone to church yet. We are going to be working with that. We also had a VERY “frank” discussion with the Morales Family. We passed by them and they said that it wasnt for them,...meaning the gospel. Turns out that they hadnt even read nor prayed to see if it was true. They said that they were Catholic and werent going to change. We explained that that wasnt the purpose of reading and praying. All we wanted them to do was to see if the Book of Mormon was true. If they receive a testimony of that then all other things fall in after. We explained a lot about how important the authority is and that plainly not all paths lead to God. They accepted the commitment to read and pray and we are going by them again tomorrow to see how things went.
Other than that, we are just focusing on finding people to teach. We are focusing a lot on getting the members involved in missionary work so that they can give references. That sure makes the work a lot easier and more enjoyable for us as it fills our days with teaching instead of just contacting.
Take care ya´ll and talk to ya next week. Chao Elder nelson

BAPTIZE ME!

Hey everyone how are things going? This week we had quite a bit going on. The weather really heated up for us this week. We didn’t need to use our coats at all; Just shirts and at night our suit jackets.
On Tuesday night, we had a soccer activity in the church. We had invited many people. We had a group of people who lived near the church that wanted to play so we invited them. They ended up coming and we had enough people to play 5 on 5. They all played together and were good players. My team was our bishop, both us two (the gringos), a guy who was almost a minus for us, and his cousin who was pretty good. Our three other players were all well over 35 years old while all of their team had like 22 years for each player. Well one of the “gangstas” asked me to teach him a bad word in English to say. I told him that there was one but you can only use it when you get frustrated or annoyed…BAPTIZE ME! Haha sure enough, a few minutes later, he missed a shot and shouted BAPTIZE ME! I was laughing pretty hard. He had no idea what he was saying. Well, in the end, we ended up winning. I thought we were going to get blown out of the water.
On Friday night, Caterin passed her baptismal interview! She is going to be getting baptized this Saturday at 11:00 in the morning. I guess Chile is playing Venezuela (in a soccer) later. Everyone was asking us…you know that Chile is playing that day right? I would just ask them…what is more important? Relax…we are doing it in the morning and the game is at night.
So we found a few cool people to teach this week. We got into this one house when we didn’t even say a thing. She just invited us in. Turns out that her husband, (who looks EXACTLY like the guy on Count of Monte Cristo who goes against his friend) is a member of the church but very very inactive. His wife is very very catholic. We taught them the first lesson, The Restoration. We have another appointment with them this weekend. Well that’s what is going on with me this week. We have another soccer activity tomorrow and we have a lot of appointments lined up this week with future investigators. Hopefully things go well with each of them. Well take care everyone and talk to you next week! Chaíto, Elder Nelson