Back to Ovalle and a family challenge!

A cool roadsign for Dad.
the best chilean dish...CHORRILLANA
The Bishop's wife and his daughter

Hey everyone how are things going? Things are going great down here. Well I have now finished my 9th change in the mission. This week we put three baptismal dates down in our ward. (they are no longer called sectors in the mission. They are wards or branches.) Last night I found out that I am going back up to Ovalle! I will now be in Ovalle Sur. I am soooo excited! I will be with Elder Allen. He is from Oregon and has one change more than me. He was the other district leader when i was in Belloto. He is a cool kid. He actually played on the same basketball team as Kevin Love in high school. He went to Lake Oswego High.

Well family, I would like to extend a challenge, that you read the Book of Mormon either individually or as a family (or both) before me getting home in 9 ½ months. I know that through daily reading and studing the Book of Mormon we will be able to strenghten our testimonies of the Gospel. I really hope that you can accept this challange to strengthen your testimonies of the Book of Mormon. Know that I will be completing with another goal to be reading it multiple times before I go home. I hope you all have great experiences in reading. Let me know how things go. :) Take care everyone and talk to you next week.

Goodbye! Elder Tondevold

Goodbye and Good Luck to an awesome companion! elder tondevold and me sportin' our Everton soccer jersies.
Ordering TELEPIZZA in elder tondevolds last week in the mission

Elder T and me at the internet cafe....

Dennis the Menace meets Mr. Wilson in Chile

When I was little, my parents always called me

Dennis the Menace.

A "Mr. Wilson look alike" came to church on Sunday....

I couldn't resist taking this picture. Sail boats out on the ocean in Vina
I teach the Ficher family how to make
American french toast... and they love it too!
Who's cookin' now?
The cutest baby ever....

baby Michael and his dad a new convert Daniel (far right)

The chilean national team

The Chilean national team beat Ecuador on wed. my comp is from Ecuador. he gets a lot of crap from ward members. viña also has a professional soccer team called everton. this is their 100 year mark. its the mission soccer team....sweet!

Good afternoon everyone!

so things down here in Chile are starting to really warm up. actually last week it was overcast and even cold at points but today its nice and hot. This week we had really good success in finding new investigators which in the past has been really difficult. We found a couple families. One is an older couple that are friends with our bishop and his wife. We went with the wife and visited with them and taught them about the importance of the gospel for the family. The older lady was crying. They were really grateful for the visit. They were going to come to church but had family come from the south. We are still busy in the finding process.
It is crazy to think that this is the last week of this change. It sure has flown by. Things are going great, i am loving my time down here. Hope all is going well back home. Take care Con amor, Elder Nelson

My Testimony

Well while thinking about the General Conference this past week and how the themes were how we should be as well as love for others, i came across 2 Nephi 2 which is an account of what Lehi says to his son Jacob. He talks about how there is opposition in all things. We need to experience the bad to be able to realize the good. I started thinking about how that has been applied in my life and what the mission does for me to help me grow. One of the things that I realized that the opposition and pain of being away from my family has really helped me realize the importance of the family and the joy that comes from being near to the ones that are important. Dont think that i am getting “trunky” or am sad....on the contrary i absolutly love being in the mission. It has really helped me get a view on what is important in life. Through this opposition though that i am experiencing though I hope that all of you take advantage of the blessing of having family nearby.
To my family, I want to say that I love you; each one of you. I am so grateful for the support that you are to me everyday of my mission. I know that there are prayers being asked to help me in my mission, but know that there are prayers for all of you everyday as well. I dont think I would be here without the constant guidance of my parents and immediate family. I am eternally grateful for their example and the love that they have showed to me in the past in their prescence and also including the love I feel so far away. I just wanted to say thank you for all you have done for me during this past year that i have spent here in Chile as well as for my entire mission. Thank you for your love, letters, prayers, and of course the pictures.
I know that The Church of Jesus Chirst of Latter-Day Saints is true and that we have a prophet of God here on the earth today, whose name is Thomas S. Monson; what a blessing it is for us. I know that he is called and chosen to help us in our lives. He as well as his counselors and the twelve apostles receive the revelation to help us be successful in our lives in both spiritual and temporal matters. All we need to do is listen and obey and we will be blessed. I have seen the truthfulness of that in my life and even more here serving among the Chilean people. I love this work and love seeing the changes the gospel makes in peoples’ lives. I know the Book of Mormon is true and that it was translated by the prophet Joseph Smith, who saw God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. We will all be better off in live by abiding by its precepts.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Reading the Book of Mormon in 6 weeks!!

Elder Miranda and our matching ties...I love the sunsets here!

Hey family how are things going? Well this week has been a better week for me. I am enjoying the nice warm weather that is now arriving. This past week we found a couple of new people to teach. One is named Silvia. She is around 60 years old and is really cool. She really enjoys us coming over and teaching her. We also were doing contacts one day, Thursday, and knocked this one house at the very end of our sector. This guy came out and we started talking. His name is Luis. He told us that he had read the Book of Mormon and that he still thinks about the words in his head but is now Evangelical. We started talking about the promise in the Book of Mormon about reading, pondering, and praying. I asked if we could come in and share a little more about it. He said yeah. We taught him the Restoration. It was a really good lesson. He went to the United States for a few days for business but will be back later this week.

On Friday we had a mission conference in Viña. We are really focusing on the importance of the Book of Mormon as the companion of the Holy Ghost in the conversion process. We were all given a special task to complete in the next 6 weeks. We need to read the Book of Mormon in our native language and mark every name or reference to Jesus Christ as well as marking all of his words that he says or that his prophets say quoting him. It is a really neat way of reading the Book of Mormon.

hey well i gotta get going. love you tons and talk to you next week :) take care and say hi to everyone for me. thanks for the great chat.

Ups and Downs

Viña at night

me & Jose

My ties....all packed and ready to go from the last transfer

Hey everyone.
SO this week was full of ups and downs. Especially with our main investigator, Gladys. We had a lesson on Wednesday, while i was on interchanges with Elder Tondevold. She flat out has a lot of doubts and is nervous about what her family thinks. She was pretty embarassed talking about things with us because she said we were the same age as her kids. she feels like she needs some time to think about everything. Gladys told us to pass by in a month.....how depressing. The only thing that helped me get over it was the great general conference that we had. How AWESOME!!!! I loved every talk especially the talks on Saturday. I was able to get some really good notes but just cant wait for the ensign to come out to be able to study them again. I have never really felt that way about a general conference but just about every talk was a powerhouse talk that really left an impression. It was also pretty sweet to hear that Concepcion, Chile is getting another temple. That will really help the people in the south be able to get to the temple easier.
Things are going good down here as well as the weather. Its getting nice and warm now during the day. Last night however, was pretty cold in the evening when the sun went down. The change is now half over. Things are really starting to fly by. Time being the first. This friday, we have a mission conference in Viña. I am looking forward to that. Should be a good one.
Well hope all is going well at home. Take care and love you all tons! Chao, Elder Nelson