this is from a christmas service project at a hospital for children pics with San Bernardo office peeps breadsticks and ice cream are Paleo right? Elder Madsen
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hey all you cool peeps! i dont have that much time to write today because elder hansen and i are cranking away at this whole training thing. but ill talk a little bit about the highlights. so i had the cool opportunity to spend christmas in the office!1!!11 it was actually super fun. on the 24th, hansen went back to one of his old wards to eat, and i was at the office with madsen for the whole day while silvaggio and payne were out with the hermanas singing. it was cool because we got to get some work done and we talked about trunky things for a hot second, counting the days down for when we get to see our families again (you know, as missionaries do.) then we had to go find hansen from doing divisions with his old compy in his old sector and there were a lot of bonfires happening in the streets and a lot of drunk people that were roaming around. it was scary, but it was cool to go and save him from across the mission! when we were all back in the office, we thought that we needed to have a little chill out session somewhere because it was christmas for crying out loud. what is also cool in chile is that when its christmas, everyone illegally buys fireworks and shoots them off the night before. we thought that we would bring a speaker and a blanket to the roof of the church and watch the fireworks! it was soooo fun. we talked about the Christmas traditions that we did back at our homes, and watched the fireworks off in the distance. such a cute little office party. then i had the chance to talk to my family over skype!! that was so much fun! we talked about my time in the office and where im going after this change (i cant say where im going yet because there are people from the mission who read my blog and i cant leak the changes just yet lollll). the worst part about the call when my mom was like "i know you dont want to talk about this right now, but i need to know what classes you want to take when you come home for byu" i almost vomited. i only have like 5 and a half months!!! its going to be a crazy couple of months until i come home! we also talked about the cool spiritual experiences i had while i have been in the office. you would think i would be sad after i said goodbye to them, but to be honest, i felt super recharged, and ready to finish this mission strong! i am SOOOo excited to go to my next sector and preach the gospel to the people in the "____________" sector! i hope all of you got to have an awesome christmas! and i hope that all you missionary parents had a sick time talking to your missionaries wherever they may be in the world! gotta scram..heres some pictures to compensate. love all of you! EKW thank you so much for the package fam! lush.....if you want to sponsor me yet that would be great thanks hermana salas gave me some scratch paper for christmas...so nice! the hermanas in our ward tried coming into the office to prank us, so we got them back with some fake snow in a can..clean up on isle 10 please
you would think a normal week in the life of an office elder would be something like: do visa apps, maybe buy a new house for elders, sometimes go to centro from some random chore that president gives you... mine went like this..... we went to a service for the "todo por una sonrisa" and i got to paint faces and help kids feel better about the holidays this year. we went to the poorest part of our mission and we were able to give them little presents and candy and do games with them. it was such an amazing service to do! i can say that my gingerbread men on kids faces looked like burnt cucumbers, but they were happy none of the less. president gave me a call late at night and told me that i am going to get booted out of the office on the second of january, (yay, transfers!) and that i need to train someone to take my place in the office! my new companion is elder hansen!!! he is actually from my MTC group, so its going to be so fun being able to teach him everything that i know for the job, so that he can run the mission smoothly! this is where things got interesting. i had to pick up luggage for the missionaries that were going home a little early so they could make it to their houses for the holiday season. so, i organized the majority of my sunday to go and pick up bags on sunday night. i start this process at around 5 o'clock. i get to the first house, nothing was overweight, everything was good. take the bags. second house, the elder was a little over weight, but thats just because he wanted to take some chilean wine with him back home (why he did, i dont think ill ever know, but he ended up getting rid of it and giving it to his neighbors). the van was filled up with the bags, so i drop them off at the chapel. i get a call from the matron that we have to take the van to go and pick up some sisters from a near by chapel...it was dark and a little too dangerous to go on the bus. this is at around 7:30 ish. so we grab the sisters from the south part of the mission, then we have to go CLEAR across the mission to drop these sisters off. k, drop them off, and its now about 8:45pm. we continue on with bag pick ups....on to the next missionaries house to grab her bags. we get there, and the majority of the bags that she had were all underweight. her big bag though was about 10 kilos over, which in pounds was about 22 pounds over...so we called her and told her to come back an take out all the useless stuff she isnt going to use when she gets back home. we sat there and watched her take out sheets and rocks and fetching proselyting cards for AN HOUR AND A HALF. its about 11:00pm by this time, mind you i have to start picking up the human missionaries (not just the bags) at about two in the morning if we are going to get them on their flights ok (the earliest flight was at about 5 in the morning and the latest was at about 8 in the morning, but because its easier to just take them all at once, i started at 2am). so we take her bags, go to the third and fourth missionaries houses, and their bags are all good to go. its about 12:15am at this point, and our van is full. we go back to the mission office, drop everything off, go to the last house which is in the most southern part of the mission....we get there and HIS BAGS ARE OVERWEIGHT. ugh. so we wait for him to try and rearrange clothes and all that mess. he took another hour and a half to get his things changed around. when he finished, it was about 1:30 in the morning....total count for being awake: 18 hours. so, we started grabbing people. i grabbed the second missionary from his house, and came back to the office so that a van service could grab all the bags that i picked up and take them to the airport. i sent the two missionaries i picked up with the guy who was taking the bags so they could get to the airport and watch over them while we were coming. i grab the forth and the fifth missionary. its around 3:30am at this point, and we had to be in the airport at around 4:15 to make sure everyone was checked in and everything before their flights left. we grab the fifth and the sixth missionaries. we were already pushing 4am... im not going to say that we sped on the freeway, but ....anyway ..... so we get to the airport, the bags are with the two elders i sent with them, and my companion and i split up so that we could divide and conquer the amount of people we had to check in. i checked in the hermana that had a 5:50am flight, got her all settled and sent her through security. 1/6 done. its about 5 in the morning: 20 hours awake almost. my comp had to wait in a line THE SIZE OF CHINA to get Elder Leles checked in (his name is going to come in later in the story, hold on). i went on and checked in the two people going home to peru. super easy. super fast. i sent them through to the customs line while i helped out the two argentinians going to buenos aires. as i was checking them in, i got a call from president that made my heart fall out of my chest: "elder wattles, the visas of these two elders going to peru have been expired for two days...they arent going to let them through to their flight." side note...if your visa is expired, then you are considered being in chile illegally, and they wont let you leave the country. i cannot tell you how scared i was in the moment. my mind raced so fast on what i should have done. as i was running around the airport with these two elders, trying to beg with the people from the immigration office to extend their visas, president was checking in the two argentinians. i got the whole visa thing squared away with the two peru elders, and they finally made it through and they both made their flight. so in total, 3/6 are through. Elder Leles is still waiting in line to get his bag checked...at this point, he had about 45 minutes to get on his flight and make it to san paulo. he finally made it through the huge line of check in (which took about an hour and a half), and then he went through customs. he made it past customs and had about 10 minutes to get to his flight. we see him running to his gate, and then disappear....ok 4/6 done. sleep count: 23 hours awake. we send the argentinians through, and they get to the customs counter, and they get sent back because their visas had also expired like a day before they were supposed to go home. so, my heart fell out of my chest again and i was running around the airport again...we begged and begged some more, and got them squared away and everything, so they made it to their flights, and made it home....6/6!! right? NOPE. elder Leles missed his flight.....gosh dang it i was speechless. i was literally so scared. his poor family was going to be waiting at the airport for their son to get back to their home, but now we have to send him at another time....president and i had to work together to get him another flight that day! we booked him one for 2 just hours later...we had to stay at the airport with him while we were looking for his bags that got taken onto the flight that he didnt make (fun fact: one got taken to his destination and the other one he was able to carry onto the plane). time awake: 25 hours. BUT HE GOT ON HIS FLIGHT SO HE WAS GOING TO GET HOME SAFE. my companion and i drove back home and we ate a little bit. we got back home at around 11am. total time awake at that point: 28 hours. took a nap for 4 hours, then it was time for second wave of missionaries to get to the airport. apparently, part of the the problem earlier was that i didnt take a special paper that the immigrations offices gave us through an email, so i printed them off this time for all the people, and made sure that everything was going to be ok. so we do the whole bags run, grab elders and what not. there are three more this wave, so we get to the airport FREAKISHLY early, to make sure that nothing bad would happen to them when they went through customs, and i get them all checked in and stuff. i send them through the customs booth, and you can see them when they get to the counter and they are checking all the visa stuff they have. the three elders get to three different counters all at once, and i see two of them start to look confused, and another put his head in his hands.....I WAS LIVID. they all got sent back because even with the paper that i i printed out, their visas werent "extended at the right time". (all of theirs expired about three days before they were supposed to come home). i was freaking out again. i could not begin to tell you the amount of prayers that i was making in order to make sure that everything would be going ok. it was literally in the lords hands at that point. we all went to the extranjeria downstairs in the airport, with about and hour and a half until they were supposed to get home, and the processing man was VERY NICE in extending the visas for these guys. so i sent them all through once again, and they all made it on their flight, and they all made it safe to their houses! time awake in total for getting people to the airport; 36 hours. (with a 4 hour nap) i was completely dead. i crashed that night, and i slept in so hard with permission from pres. you would think that the drama would stop right there. 9/9 people made it through the gate in santiago to go to their houses.... i got a call from president at about 9 in the morning..... "elder leles missed his flight in rio de jenero and we need to get him another flight for him to get to his house. he is on someones phone in the airport using facebook messenger, and you need to get over there fast because the man who is lending him the phone needs to leave in about 45 minutes and leles needs to know the info for the flight." I THOUGHT THE TORTURE WAS GOING TO END. i literally ran to the office, called the travel agency, got him a flight, used a members phone to contact elder leles on facebook messenger......he got on his flight to go back to his house in sao paulo. ok, now 9/9 home to their families! but i feel physically dead still because the amount of sleep and stress i went through was SO MUCH. happy that its all over though. elder payne (who accompanied me through this whole thing and stayed awake with me for that long of time) and i went to a cool spot in santiago for pday while the others did jobs in the office, because we were so dead and deserved a little break. well i have to scram. crazy week down here in santiago LOTS of stress and panic attacks but 9 missionaries are home for the holidays with their families! love you all to the moon and back! merry christmas next week, i cant wait to skype with my fam! ekw happy faces before things went downhill... so this was us when we were running off of like 27 hours of sleep. we got crepes in a near by mall so the place we went to for pday let us take some ski lift cars and let us see all of santiago. it was soooo pretty!!! we also made some fun purchases new companion that is taking over my office job in 2 weeks
hey all you peeps on the other side of the world!! sorry for not being able to email last week! there wasn't a lot of stuff that happened last week, and i had like 0 time to write...but this week some stuff happened! so president, every change, has a little theme or a topic that we are supposed to study for the month. the topic that he assigned to us was joy! so, i dedicated a little study on it and it was so good!! it was really cool to look at what the definition of joy was in the scriptures. basically, i learned that joy can only come from obeying the commandments. but than the question sparked,"wait can we even have eternal happiness in this life? like is that even possible??" so i did a little research and in alma 29:9 talks about how you can get joy by sharing the gospel, and in dc 101:36 talks about how our joy in this life is incomplete without the gospel. so, i was thinking, that we can really only feel a true type of happiness if we live the gospel and if we help other people figure out for themselves what the gospel is about. i mean, whenever i help someone get baptized, or when i help someone finally realize that they can have a repentance of their sins, i get SO GIDDY. also a legit miracle happened this past week. just to give you guys a little bit about the situation that happened. due to the secretaries before me, there were two elders who never got their visas. i was doing extensive research on the two of them and why they never got their id cards, and it said that there weren't some needed papers sent in with their application. they are called judicial antecedents, which basically is a legal document saying that they havent committed crimes. so i called the visa center, and they were like,"so we think that your application period has expired, so these guys are def illegal." i was literally freaking out. basically, the process that would have had to happen was them going to the police station and turn themselves in and getting A FAT ticket. i was like "wait how expensive is it going to be" and she told me "oh around $600,000 pesos each person" (in dollars, thats like $1800). i was literally freaking out. there is no way in heck that the mission has enough to cough up 1.2 million pesos. i got the feeling that they should both go to the visa center in centro and try and resolve it. as they were going up there, there were a lot of prayers said. they went through the lines and stuff, and i got their calls back. "ya so they said that we are legal actually, we just have to send in those papers that werent in our applications is all." I ALMOST STARTED CRYING. i was so grateful that we didnt have to pay that fat fine and screw over the budget for the mission while we are at the end of the year some funny things that happened this week: my comp forgot to fill up the font for a baptism that our ward was having. he was supposed to fill it up at around 12 to get it filled at 4, but people started coming in at 3:30 with 0 water in the font. we grabbed as many pots with water as we could and we straight WENT TO TOWN. i slipped and ate it because there was just so much water all over the place. my pass-a-long cards fell in the font, so we had to use a colander to try and strain baby jesuses out of the water. we grabbed the fire hose that is connected to the wall and started filling the font with a fire hose, some pots of boiling water, and some tea kettles. normally these things take around 5 hours to fill, but we did it in one and a half. *death drop* also there were some members that brought in a snake into the office and i got to hold it and then i tried to take a picture of it and it jumped at me and bit my lens. needless to say, i had to change my pants after that traumatic national geographic episode. gotta scram. love you all!! ekw my christmas package came..thanks mom and dad!
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
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
hey all you guys on the other side of the planet!! i only have a little bit to write this week (again..ugh) so ill give you guys a little update on what i have been doing this whole week! so this last sunday was the dedication of the conception temple! no, i didnt get to fly all the way down to the south of chile and watch the dedication, but we had the blessing to watch the temple dedication in a broadcast in our stake center! they were pretty hard core about it. we had to get recommendation from our bishops to even get into the sessions, and we had to get white handkerchiefs, the whole shpeel. (by the way, trying to find 130 handkerchiefs for your mission in santiago is probably one o the hardest things in the world next to like splitting an atom). we showed up to the session and we were able to listen to the prophet speak to us about the importance of temples and why we need more in chile! at one point, the temple sector that chile was apart of was the Arizona temple....PEOPLE LITERALLY FLEW FROM CHILE TO ARIZONA TO GET SEALED IN THE TEMPLE. now, we have two in chile!! what a blessing! after the dedication, we sang "we thank thee o god for a prophet" and i started crying in the middle of the hymn because the spirit was so strong! just the thought that chile now has a little bit more of a chance to make covenants with God made me feel so happy. last night while we were finishing up some work, there was a huge power outage in san bernardo. our electricity was off for like 4 hours straight and it was the worst thing in the whole world. office elders without internet is like fish without water....#dead. we stayed in the office because our front gates are powered by electricity, and literally anyone can open them. we didnt want anybody getting in and robbing us again. it was a pretty boring period of time, but we got home and slept for a while, so that was good. also one cool random thing. we were going to the temple in santiago because we had a small problem with the cell service that we use for the mission. we were walking from the car to the temple, and this old guy literally COLLAPSES. like straight eats it on the side of the road. my mind went completely to...."brain hemorrhage, heart attack, diabetes, low blood sugar, osteoporosis, maybe its a ruptured patella, or maybe it he literally had a stroke and i need to asses the situation like" and then we went up to him and turns out he was doing an endowment session without his oxygen tank and he got light headed. he also hadnt eaten that day, so he was just super dizzy and stuff. i was kind of sad that i didnt get to do CPR on him or inject him with epi, but none of the less i was happy that this guy was ok, and I could at least pretend like i knew what i was doing. thats it for this week! i love all of you so much! ekw us with a candle and a spoon during a power outage this fried fish looks like the country im serving in and i thought it was cool i made a friend while i was working! he then walked on to my cactus and got impaled (i dont want to put pics animal carnage on my blog because my blog is G rated dang it)
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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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