hey guys! so here in the office, we got a new Elder! he is going to take over atkinsons job from here on out. his name is elder madsen and he is from Pleasent Grove Utah. getting a new elder in the office is like getting an new companion, because we basically all are companions. when he came into the office, president said that we should go and take him out while we were running around in centro doing errands. we looked on our little gps and we found PF CHANGS IN SANTIAGO. you do not understand how fast we drove there. being able to eat orange chicken and some brown rice oh my gosh. TENDER MERCIES. it was a good little welcome to the office dinner. the next day, pres was so impressed on how well we did with these past changes that he took us out to one of his favorite peruvian restaurants. i got some meat that was served on a hot rock with some awesome sauces and we drank inca cola and rocotto sauce. so good to get away from the chilean food once and a while! last year when thanksgiving time came around, i ate turkey neck with my greenie. (this is what the butcher gave us when we asked him for turkey). this year, the senior married couple that works in the office offered us to eat with them for thanksgiving dinner!! it was so sweet of them. they made us turkey and salad and sweet roles and PUMPKIN PIE. oh my gosh it was the biggest blessing. this week was probably one of my more harder weeks emotionally (its not all peaches and roses out here on the mish...stress gets to you in the worst of times), and i was trying to figure out what is something that i can do to try and boost my spirits. i had the thought come into my head to try and ask for a priesthood blessing from the office guys. i asked elder madsen to give me the blessing and it helped me literally SO much. the blessing he gave me was so intricate and very tender! after he gave me the blessing, my day got progressively better, and i was able to feel the spirit more, and back to my old self! the power of the priesthood is true people! in this coming week, i think things are going to chill out a lot more, so i think we are going to have more time to go out and teach people! so so so excited!!! i have to scram though...love all of you so much! ekw p-day art...this art is literally all over the side of the buildings here mashed quinoa and some sea food santiago sur art oh yes, some good ol american fast food the office crew...santiago south cheesin cause we got some calabaza (pumpkin) pie
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WE FINALLY MADE IT THROUGH CHANGES (transfers) PEOPLE AND OH MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS. im literally so thankful that we made it through that because it was a L O N G change week. just to give you guys a glimpse as to what we had to go through (in no particular order) we realized that we had a huge shortage of beds and bed frames, so we had to call all the zone leaders and ask them if they could figure out how may beds were in there zones. we got all the numbers, and we had to sit down and devise a plan to get all the houses where they didnt have beds from the houses that HAD beds, and in reality it was just a huge headache, because we were driving around for like 3 hours, taking beds and placing beds. we also had to move 2 sets of missionaries into 2 sets of houses in the middle of all the bed swapping, and it was just lllloooonnnnggg. it ended up taking like 2 straight days to do the whole mission. but everyone has a bed now, and things have calmed down. we also had to go to centro again and run around to look for shoulder bags to give the new incoming missionaries, as well as getting all the finishing signatures at the notary for the new houses that we got for the missionaries. that took up one day too. then we also put together a lunch for a conference that president wanted to have for the new leaders, as well as do ANOTHER move to a house. then the no sleep part came in right here. i woke up at 4 in the morning to go and drop off an hermana at the airport because she finished her mission, go back to the office and take a nap, then go all the way back to the airport to grab a missionaries parents that were coming to pick her up, do all my little jobs before changes, wake up again at 4 in the morning to go back to the airport to get an elder that was coming to our mission, and then come back to the office, to do orientation and changes, and then staying up late trying to finish all the post changes mess. :)) im just thankful that we are finally done until next change, and that everyone is setteled in and happy....for now. being in the office keeps us busy, and service for us is everywhere. word on the street is this will be my last change here in the office, and then it's back out on the streets to look for more souls to save :) can't believe im almost to having just 6 months left!! i have to scram though..this week is going to be so much better!! love all of you! ekw us getting acai bowls in the mall ive literally done go karting like 2 times in my life, and these kooks made fun of me for getting 5th place for like 4 hours LOL!
hey you cool cats!! i have to bounce here in a sec, but ill give you a little update as to what is going to go down this week in the office, and what has happened. so there was an elder that has been waiting for his visa to go to mexico. he has been serving in our mission for about a change now (6 weeks). we finally got his visa, i ordered the next flight out of santiago to go to mexico city, and we took him to the airport. when we got there, there was a huge line to get his bags in and do checking. we sit in line for like 45 minutes, and we get to the counter and we give the woman this elders passport. she looks at his name in the system and nonchalantly says,"ah ya so your flight got changed so you'll leave at the same time, but you will have a two day lay over in mexico when you get there." .........my wig was found on the surface of the surface of neptune. i about had a meltdown. lady, you MUST be joking right? i had to talk to her and tell her that there should be no way in heck that he could have a two day layover in mexico, because there would be no way for him to get a hotel, nor have the mission come and grab him at another time (cause there mission is like 2 hours in the other direction.) it was a long and fretful battle against the receptionist desk lady and me, but we got his flight plans all figured out and he got to mexico safe! we got to see a lot of santiago this week, because we were running all around to different notaries that we thought had our presidents signature registered. it was cool to go to las condes and la reina, to go to providencia, and to macul. i took some cool pictures of stuff like a building with foliage and stuff on the side, and some mountains that ive never seen. on the way home from the airport drama, i went to neptune to grab my wig back.....but, it got snatched again because a few days later when i ordered lunch for a conference that we were having as a mission. the people that were making the food mixed up the amount of plates that i asked for two days prior. i ordered 71 plates for the day one zone conference and 64 for the second day, but they switched the numbers and I SWEAR WE WERENT GOING TO HAVE ENOUGH FOOD FOR THE TWO CONFERENCES. but tender mercy, they ended up having enough by cutting portion sizes from all the plates, and then the whole conference was saved from hunger!! also i was able to make a baptism video with all our recent baptisms in the the mission and it was actually super fun! we showed it at the conferences, and i got so many positive responses. but what we have to do this week is we have to go to centro to get some passports from the people that are going to be coming to our mission! we also have to plan for changes, (transfers) and move 5 whole houses out and do a huge switch that president wants for this change :,)). you guys, thats like moving 5 houses full of stuff out AND in to 5 new houses...im dead just thinking about it. we also have to do the changes meeting, and i have to go to the airport about 5 times in two days, with like 3 hours of sleep in between its going to be a wild ride. pray for me, im going to need it!! love all of you! we are going to get through this week! ekw buildings and buildings... from notary to notary it rained a little yesterday and we got a super cool sky after flower tower we found some streets with states on them. i couldnt find california :,( i made some lemonade by hand and i can safely say that my forearms were HUGE afterwards
im telling you right now that this week was literally psycho!!! what ended up happening here in the office is, we were having a little lunch with some of the zone leaders when our mission president got a phone call from salt lake. he took the call, left the room, and looked at us with some worrisome eyes. after the lunch with the zone leaders, he pulled the office peeps aside and was like.... "hey so um that was salt lake that called, and they told me that there is a lot of tension happening in mexico and they are worried about the hermanas that are serving over there. they decided to pull some out, and now three of them are coming to our mission in two days. you guys need to go find a house to buy and have all their furniture and things ready for when they get their new companions. good luck!" oh i was so shook. SALT LAKE JUST WANTED TO HUCK THREE HERMANAS FROM GUADALAJARA TO OUR MISSION...in 48 HOURS?! literally, we had a planning meeting and we hardly slept for the next like 2 days. we found a house to rent out, we cleaned it, we lifted like stoves and a fridge up like 5 flights of stairs, closets and all that stuff. then the next day we were running from home depot to the mall buying stuff like beds and kitchen stuff, i was doing applications for these hermanas visas and organizing interviews for them. it was literally THE MOST STRESSFUL thing. i love serving in this position, dont get me wrong. the i have to remind myself, that i work with THE WORLD, and the world is literally so unpredictable. they got here safe though! and they are working happily in san beranrdo and in san miguel districs! when we finally had a second, i had the opportunity to teach in a family home evening with alejandra and her husband! i wanted to touch on a little bit about challenges and how god uses them to our favor, and i didnt want to be boring, so i went to dc 122 and used verses 5-9. basically whats happening in these verses, is Joseph Smith is in jail and he is like "god why the heck are you putting me through this difficult time? i should be restoring the gospel and you put me in jail for what??????????" verses 5-9 explains what god said to him in a revelation, and it was amazing! the one that makes me tear up a little bit is the part where he mentions that "Thy days are known, and thy years shall not be numbered less; therefore, fear not what man can do, for God shall be with you forever and ever." seriously, i thought it was so awesome! so what i did, is i made the example of an artist and god. i told them that god is the most perfect artist in the history of man kind, and we are his unmade creations. when we are born, we are like blobs of clay. we dont have experiences under our belt, we dont really know a lot about what it means to be happy and sad, so we need help trying to figure out those crucial differences. what god does, being an artist, is he takes us and puts us in his hands and molds us. he rolls us out, flattens us, rolls us up into balls, he puts you in coils, and sometimes he takes parts of clay off because he has a bigger picture in mind for you. it may hurt a little but, but at the end, you have a sort of form. you are still malleable. what an artist has to do is he has to put his piece in the kiln for the first firing, (which basically means the piece has to go through intense amounts of heats and get all the water taken out of it the process is very very very hot, and it normally takes about two days of straight heat in order to get rid of all the water.) now if this were us, its like trials. sometimes they are super long, sometimes they are going to hurt a whole bunch, and sometimes you are going to wonder when the heck you are going to get out of that stinkin furnace! but, like trials, the firing has to come to an end at some point, and you get to leave that furnace stronger. what happens is the piece comes out completely dry, and is able to take impacts way better. if it falls, it may get chipped a little bit, but not a lot of damage will be done. the only thing is, is that its just a one color piece, and who the heck wants a tea pot thats like a gross shade of beige. now the artist has to cover his piece in liquid glass and decorate it to make it unique and different from all the other pieces. god gives us so many spiritual experiences in this life that let our testimonies grow so much stronger, and lets us know the amount of time and love he is putting into us. we need those spiritual experiences because in the long run, they make us stronger for when we have to go through the second firing process. to get that liquid glass to solidify and show its true color, the piece now has to go in the kiln for even hotter temperatures and even longer periods of time. sometimes if you have a specific glaze, you get thrown into a flippin bonfire and are cooking for like a week straight. it takes forever! yes, sometimes the trials can get SUPER painful, the fire will come eventually. you are going to wonder how the heck you are going to be able to get through that second kiln stage. you are going to think to yourself,"if god has blessed em with all these great things, why the heck must i go through (insert trial here)". i want to tell you that in reality, once you leave that last kiln stage, you are going to be a piece more beautiful than you can ever imagine. once your glass has hardened, once you have cooled off and caught your balance again, you are going to be worth millions, even stronger than you can ever think of. trials, yes they suck....A LOT. but they are for a purpose, they are for your benefit for when there is an art gallery, people can see the things you had to go through in order to become that beautiful." i dont know. i really liked talking about this with alejandra! the spirit was super strong and we all left that noche de hogar spiritually uplifted! i hope you guy can look at trials in a little better way through this example i gave! i gotta scram though....love all of you guys so much! ekw we went go karting for pday..in a parking garage, with regular parked cars! beautiful chile my lunch right before the salt lake city call tryin' to take edgy pics thanks for the pumpkin spice cookie mix mom
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Elder Karson Wattles
Chile Santiago South Mission apartado postal No. 544 San Bernardo, Chile Archives
May 2019
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