you can chastise me if you want. i am going to use the "see you next year" joke until the day i die. i am going to put it on my gravestone too, but instead its going to say,"see you in the resurrection!" anyway. i hope all of you had an awesome christmas and are gearing up for the new year!! this entire week was absolutely amazing. let me explain. the first full week that i have been here in los castaños has been pretty good. we saw a lot of people do some weed and we saw one guy shoot up some heroine. it has been a little bit of a jump going form los raulies to here. its still awesome though! i got the chance to contact this lady and her daughter who were wearing some sick disney gear. you know me and how i literally love disney to death. she was really awesome and we are going to pass by her house in a couple hours! one of the tender mercies that i had this week was when rigby and i went to go and visit an "antiguo" (someone that the missionaries had passed by for in the past, but then stopped for whatever reason). we went to their house and found out that the missionaries stopped visiting them because they didnt want to get married (and when you arent married and living together, you cant get baptized). they sat with us and started crying and telling us that they had felt the difference from when the missionaries where their teaching and when they werent. they told us that they are going to get married in march, and that they want us to come back and teach the lessons again! i am literally so excited to see them again! we will have to see what happens with them in the near future. christmas eve was a blast too because i had the chance to go and visit pato and fernanda for christmas dinner! it was so nice to be able to go back and see them again and talk to them about what their plans are for their baptism! they gave me a little eagle necklace and i havent stopped wearing it since!! we then got driven home in a mustang that one of the neighbors had, and he went really fast down the roads. it felt like i was in my dads twin turbo g37 hahahah. christmas day was super tranquilo too! rigby and i did some chores around the house, i made some aji de gallina (literally the best peruvian food in the whole world), and we went to go and visit some members for a little. then i got to skype my fam and it was so awesome!! it made me feel so good to know that they are all doing good on the other side of the world, and taking a little break from the heat thats up there in california! after the call, we went back home and slept until the next day. the whole day was super chill! then i went on divisions with my district leader the next day and we had 4 lessons that day (which down here, is HUGE cause the max you get each day is like 2 or 3). he said that my spanish is the best he has ever seen with the time i have. ugh. this whole week in general has been awesome! i hope all of you have a safe and happy new years and that you guys come up with some awesome goals for the upcoming year!! love you all to the moon and back! EKW my group and i hit six months, so we burned ties to celebrate! the tie carnage the outside of my house!! we live in one of the extra houses to the side of this lady that lives in front! my camera had a spasm and i took a cool picture of the incense and the jelly bellies that my mum sent me skyping with the fam on christmas day...literally the best! Elder Wattles testimony in spanish (sorry it's in 3 parts!)
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hey you beautiful people on the other side of the world! this entire week was just a rollercoaster of emotions for me. let me explain. in los raulies, we just committed this couple that we have been teaching to get married and i literally almost cried! the thing down here in chile is that when you date, you dont ever get married. you kind of just stay dating for like 19 years, but have kids and a house and all that jazz. #comitmentproblems. but pato and fernanda are going to get married, and i am literally so excited!! they are going to get married at the end of january so they can prepare and all that stuff. the sad thing is, is that i cant teach them anymore because... I GOT CHANGED. whitaker and i had trucked in los raulies for about a month and half. i have been there for almost 5 months (ish) and he was there for about 8. initially, we got a call from our zone leaders saying that we weren't going to get changed, and that we would be staying in los raulies. we were gearing up for another 6 weeks together in our sector, planning out all our contacts and what we were going to teach on saturday. well....sunday morning, we got a call from the president saying that he made a mistake and that he was going to take all of us out of raulies and do this thing called a whitewash (where they stick in two elders, who dont know anything about the sector, and take the previous elders out.) so out i went! my new area is called las arucarius (that translates to...the walnut trees; by the way, there are no walnut trees in my area) with elder rigby!! the cool thing about elder rigby is that he was in my district in the ccm! so, two american peeps who dont know THAT much spanish in a huge area in the lords vineyard (well ummm.... walnut farm?) its going to be a fun ride my dudes. as i have been going around this new sector, i have come to realize that this is one of the most "flaite" parts of the whole mission. a flaite down here means gangster. word around the mission is that its the roughest part of my mission. there are a lot of sketchy looking people down here, but its pretty aight. i got the lord on my side, so its ok mom..try not to worry! i gotta scram, but i hope all of you have a good christmas! i get to skype the family this week, and i am literally so excited i can't stand it! love all of you to the moon and back! FELIZ NAVIDAD! EKW me and whitaker with ayline, one of our investigators that came to church with us just before we left! me and elder riby getting ready to killllll it....worst picture of us ever, but had to send it to document our first pic together....neither of us are mad...promise lol me and whitaker saying good-bye to one of my favorite kids form our ward #literallylovehim he's getting ready to go out and serve a mission himself. my new hood (this is actually the street i live on...my casa is down at the end on the right (you can't see it in the pic...i'll send better pics next week)
hey you lovely people in the world!! how are all yall doing? this week was a little bit of a challenge, but it was definitely a learning experience for me. let me explain. we continued with iluminar el mundo this week! my district and i went to a nearby hospital where we sang to the people in the ICU. it was such a tender experience to see all the people in the wing have a little bit of a smile while we sang christmas songs to them. we got to pass out a whole bunch of iluminar elmundo cards to the patients, and we even got to participate in a bendicion de salud for a member who was staying there. the christmas season is so awesome!! we also went to this thing called a persa. a persa is like a street mall that only comes up on saturdays and sundays. there are literally thousands of people that pass by this thing, and so we planted another white board for people to write who they loved on it, and we got to talk to people about the pass along cards and a little bit about the gospel. it was such a fun way to contact! i had the opportunity to give a sacrament talk in church this past sunday, and i talked about the significance of the navidad, as well as talk about how the navidad is an awesome time for us to serve. if we are going to celebrate the birth of our savior, we have to show our love for him in someway. we cant give jesus a shirt for chirstmas, but we can serve to show our love for him. we can show that we can serve our neighbors and show that we want to follow him. it was really awesome. i cant write much else becuase i only have three seconds, but i love all of you to the moon and back!! chaoa for now! EKW light the world at the hospital! koodos to hermana andrus, my sick seminary teacher, for giving me this flag to take sick pics with. me and my mate hiking with the crew today
hey you beautiful people on the other side of the planet! i hope your week this week was awesome! we just got into the month of christmas, so you all know what that means! ILUMINAR EL MUNDO!! now, i know i know, you all have prolly gotten 50,000 emails from your other missionary peeps about how you guys should do the challenges and what not. i would like to invite all of you to do that too! now to show a little bit of what elder whitaker and i have been doing to try and make the world a little bit more lit...... on the first day, elder whitaker and i went out to a street corner with a whiteboard that we took from our chapel. we wrote the question "por que está agradecido" which means "why ar you thankful". it was a pretty awesome success! we got to do a whole bunch of contacts to try and get people to write on our board. plus, we even got to teach a couple small lessons of the restoration of the gospel! it was pretty fun! the second day had to do with giving drink to someone that was thirsty. we teamed up with elder larson and doxey to go to a nearby park near our sectors, and we gave juice out to the kids that were playing on the playground! the little kids LOVED it, and it warmed my heart so much to be able to see them enjoy a cold drink when it was so flipping hot out. im forgetting what the other scriptures were, plus in what order we did the rest of the things, but the last couple days, we wrote letters to our investigators on how much we loved them, we called our mission president to tell him thank you for being our mission parent, and we kind of counted my companions baptism in his other sector as a small act of service. i mean, its not that small of a service, but i mean hey we invited someone to come unto christ, so *mouth click* there was a miracle this week!!! we were trying to get into our investigators house, but he said that we couldn't come in because he was washing clothes (people; the chileans come up with the worst excuses in the whole world. ill write more as my time here goes on). he shut the door, and that was that. as we turned to start walking, this 15 year old kid comes up to us. he had a whole bunch of piercings in his face, and he was listening to death metal in his headphones. he told us that he has been a member of the church for like 5 years, and that his older sister wants to hear more about our message. we went along with it, and went to visit his sister who lives down the road. we knocked on her door, and she let us into her house, where we taught her about eternal families and how families can be together forever through the restoration of the gospel! it was such a tender moment for us. as missionaries, we get rejected by people EVERY DAY. no joke! so it was nice to have someone who was ASKING for us to be there! the lord has definitely prepared people for us to teach. he knows that we have a huge work, and he wants his children to come back to him! i have a testimony of this gospel. i know for a fact that the things that god has revealed to us through joseph smith are true. i know that all of you can find out for yourself if these things are true if you ask your heavenly father. dear reader, i do not want you to be convinced by my emails, nor by the people you may be around. the only way for you to find out if the gospel is true, is if you ask your heavenly father YOURSELF in prayer with real intent and having faith in christ. the holy ghost will manifest it to you in your mind and in your heart, I PROMISE!!! i love all of you to the moon and back. hope all of you have a great week! chao for now! EKW ps...to all those in my home MV stake...GOOOOOO to the mini mtc coming up in january!! i promise you will see surprisas from yours truly! me in a cookie monster onsie cause elder scott left it behind for me, and i thought i looked dope (even though i about died from heat stroke after about 2 1/2 minutes of having it on) our iluminar el mundo board! LIGHT THE WORLD peeps!!
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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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