October 5, 2009

Hey everybody! This is doctor Nick!

WOW!!! General conference is the BEST!!! I love it when the prophet gets up and just lays the smack down on all these Chileans, JUST LOVE PEOPLE!!! Haha no i´m sure it isn´t just Chileans that can increase their ability to love, it applies to all of us but i´m just a little biased right now being in chile and all, seeing how little the people reach out and converse one with another, its kinda sad but that’s what we´re here to change!!! I had a really sweet experience actually that I wrote to my president about and i´ll attach it, here it is:

This last week I had a really powerful spiritual experience. One of my converts, Eduardo La Torre has been a really strong convert until this last week when he saw an anti-mormon video about the Book of Mormon. He lost practically all of his faith and was left with only a shell of what his testimony once was. As we talked with him I remembered that General Conference was coming up. I had always heard of missionaries and other members testify of how when we go to General Conference with a question and a prayer that we can answer that question the Lord provides the response that we need to strengthen our testimonies. Having remembered that I was prompted by the spirit to make the same promise to Eduardo, I told him that if he was to go to all the sessions of General Conference, praying that he could regain his testimony of the Book of Mormon that he would hear something that would astound him. The answer to my prayers ( I was also praying that he would receive an answer) came on Sunday afternoon when Elder Jeffrey R. Holland dropped a bombshell on all those with doubts about the Book of Mormon! President, my testimony was also strengthened as I listened to this Apostle of God testify of the truth of the Book of Mormon and I could not help tear up, knowing that the answer I received also will help another to stay firm in the church and be a believer of the Word of God. I love this church, I love my older brother Jesus Christ and I know that miracles exist. I know that God loves each and every one of us and listens to our prayers!

Yeah that was a really sweet experience, unfortunately I won´t be seeing Eduardo or anyone else for that matter from the Vicuña Mackenna anytime soon. Seeing as how i´ve been moved out. I´ve been sent to one of the most ghetto sectors in all of this mission. Its called El Molino. Don´t think the fun stops there though, i´m white washing the area, and also training, and also a Zone leader. HOLY COW!!! As the two latin elders that I just left living with would say, “Oh my gosh!” (turns out I say that a lot and they caught on to saying it) so yeah, this change is going to be a blast, I really am not prepared for any of the 3 new challenges that are coming my way this change but I know one thing and that is that I NEED YOUR HELP AND PRAYERS!!! I will continue to pray like crazy but please feel free to help me out in this cause for Justice and righteousness ;)

Alright I love you all, i´ve gotta run but remember that I love you all and are praying for all of you!

With love and care,

Drewby

September 28, 2009

Hello all,

How are things going? Life is really really good here in the Vicuña Mackenna, unfortunately i feel like it is coming to an end this week. Its a little sad, especially because i don´t want to part with the people here nor elder hualca but i feel a change a coming so here we go!

Is everybody super super excited for conference this week? I am SO EXCITED!!! I love general conference! Its such an awesome weekend, all we do is just get spiritually nourished. Even though they always say things instantly kill me because i´m a dirty sinner i love it! Its a ¨dang i´ve gotta do better¨ lashing that i recieve! Hope that everybody can recieve an answer to a prayer or a question this week! I know that i will and i don´t even have a question yet, i just know thats how intune the apostles are with what i need, i don´t even know it, but they do!

Yesterday capped an extraordinary weekend, well, to be honest the week was just like any other, but Sunday was something else! We had the baptism of Sebastian Munizaga which was really cool but the baptism that was really special, one i´ll never forget was that of Jillian Jara. She is a girl who since the age of three has been battling a tumor in her nervous system. For that she has had a problem with the development of her entire body, she has had to undergo 16 surgeries and still has many to go in her life. She can completely recover from it but the surgeries have really taken a toll on her growth. This last week she asked if the missionaries would baptize her. Of course we were more than happy to perform the saving ordinace for her but we didn´t know how much of a challenge it would be. It was a bit of a challenge but 100 percent worth it after all was said and done. She is still in the recuperating process from her last surgery and so she is without the use of her legs so we lowered her down into the baptismal font in a chair. The water was unbelieveably cold and she started to whimper as we lowerd her into the water so we didn´t know if we were going to be able to do it, every time we tried to put her a little further in the water she started to cry a little bit. It was heart breaking to see. The mother eventually told us to just do it, just dunk her and so elder hualca said the prayer and we tried to inmerse her in the water but her whole body couldn´t be inmersed due to the fact that she was in the chair. Failed attempt one... they told me that one of us needed to be knelt on the side of her, in the freezing cold water so i knelt down and we tried to do it again holding her legs down and she was still crying a bit, failed attempt two. At this point elder hualca told me it wasn´t possible but i wasn´t going to have any of that. I pulled her out of the chair, held her in my arms  as i knelt in the water and  had to brush her cheek to get her to stop crying and then i told her that we had to go under the water one last time because it was what Jesus wanted us to do. So elder hualca said the prayer holding her hand, i had her in my arms, plugged her nose with my free hand and she was immersed completely! It was a touching experience and just writing it down makes me tear up. I love children! After we completed it i carried her out in my arms and slipped going up the stairs but i was able to catch my balance, it was an experience to remember!!!

That caps the week, this morning i was reading in this september´s liahona (ensign for those outside of the promised land) and i read in this talk from elder Oaks, what a KILLER!!! Its about the purpose of a missionary and it killed me! I don´t need to help the ward´s where i´m at! Forget that, i just need to baptize! Thats all i need to do! So wish me luck, pray for me that i can get this purpose etched into my daily life, because i´ve been praying for it as of late but i could use all of your help! Pray that i´ll have the vision to baptize! Alright i love you all, keep in touch and keep on smiling!

Love elder livingstone

August 24, 2009

Family!

Whats up? How are we all doing? Things here in Vicuña Mackenna are moving along just great and it looks as if i´m going to be here another six weeks with Elder Hualca as my companion again! Good news first right?! We had changes today and nothing changed accept for Elder Hutchins leaving, which was a huge bummer because we were really starting to become good friends and whats more we were making some cool plans for ¨cousins before girls¨ times when we both get back to the old stomping grounds of BYU but all those plans will have to wait in pause for a couple of year/months... So that was a big bummer to loose the hutch dog but the other Elder that just moved into our house is way awesome too. His name is Elder Wyatt and he is from North Carolina! His parents live in Utah now but he claims Nor Carolina as his home, turns out that he is a health FREAK! So we´ll be going running almost every morning which will be a really good thing to continue doing. Oh another bit of bad news, apparantly President hasn´t realized how crappy i am of a missionary yet because he called me last night to tell me that this change i will be a district leader. Not something i am looking forward to. Fortunately enough my district is LEGIT with the Zone Leaders and another companionship of quality missionaries so i´m not stressin it too much. I´m actually looking forward to being taught by all of these great missionaries over the next six weeks. Hopefully by then President will have realized the mistake he made in making me a district leader and i will go back to being junior comp or something! Haha that´d be awesome!

This last week has been another really good one, we´ve really tried to put a focus on inviting people to church this past week. Not that we weren´t before but now we are just inviting EVERYONE to church, in lessons, in contacts, random people in the street right before church starts, at all times, we have got to get the people in the church because they can´t be baptized if they are not in church so thats one HUGE hurdle that if we can overcome will help us complete with the promise that Elder Oaks made us, ¨baptisms weekly¨. So this past week we did a really good job of inviting everyone to church and even had someone who we´ve never taught in church too, it was really cool actually. We´ve known this guy for a while now, he runs the internet café where we do all of our emailing, so he´s here right now actually. His name is Johan and he´s a stud, he´s 20 years old, from Peru and had only been to a church once before in his life but he said he loved it and wants to come back next week! ANOTHER GOAL FROM GRIFFINDOR!!! The next step is to obviously teach him which we´ll see if we can set up a time right here in a second but if you kept him in your prayers it would be MUCH appreciated. We also had a couple of eternal investigators in church, Jose, who is found in the picture attatched, the 40 year old lookin guy. He´s an awesome man, he considers Elder Hualca and I children of his and wants to be baptized really badly but currently cannot because his ¨girlfriend¨ (marcela, also pictured) is already married and not divorced, I can´t remember if i´ve ever mentioned this but that is a huge problem here in Chile and it kills me! Before it was completely impossible to get divorced, thankfully in the past 5 or 6 years they´ve changed that but it still has a very negative connotation and many of the people think that its still impossible so it is really hard to help people to do it! UGH!! Anyways, he will get baptized if it´s the last thing i do! I love that guy! Hmm... Bastian and Sandra also made it to church for the first time this week, bastian is a crazy little kid that is our neighbor, he lives across the street from us and he is just a character, he is really funny, 11 years old and was buddies with some of the missionaries that were here before but they never taught him the lessons. He wants to be baptized but doesn´t really understand what it entails... in sacrament meeting he was kinda goofing around and didn´t really take it all that seriously, again he is 11, i was a huge dork at that age too and i turned out alright ;) anyways, i think they liked it, they had to leave right after sacrament meeting and i didn´t really get the feeling that they were too hot on it but we´ll just have to wait and see, we will be passing by their house sometime this week so we´ll talk to them, see how they felt, resolve some doubts, you know do missionary work in general!

I´ve got a question for all my wonderful sisters and mother, how in the heck do you deal with your kids in church? There are some children here that are TERRORS, i think that it has something to deal with the chilean mothering techniques but i´m not sure.. anyways i´m just wondering if anyone and or everyone could tell me their techniques in helping their kids stay calm and quiet in church. There is one little guy in particular who is a BEAST that he just screams and screams and screams and runs around with his naked barbie named Britney Spears. Its quite commical at times but at other times i just want to drop kick him becuase everyone is turning around and scouling at this mother, whom happens to be a less active that we are trying to reactivate so its just really an inconvenient sitation that i´d like to help her out. So any suggestions would be gladly accepted at this point.

Hm.. running out of things to tell ya´ll. I love reading all of your letters! They are awesome! Keep them coming and if you haven´t written in a while there is still time to repent! Alright gotta run take care, i love you all very much!

August 17, 2009

Whats up family?

This week was a pretty darn good one, really the days are like minutes now, the time is FLYING!! I can´t believe how fast the first 1/3 of my mission has gone by, I don´t want it to end, that’s for sure but one day it´ll have to, and that´ll be a sad day, in the very very far future!

This last week was a good one because we were able to do some good work and find some new people to add to our near empty teaching pool. Unfortunately none of them went to church due to the huge rain storm we had this past weekend! It was awesome! Here it rains like cats and dogs! Honestly it started raining on Friday at about 6 and then didn´t stop raining until Sunday at about 2 or 3 in the morning! I loved it! Going out to work in a good pair of boots a rain jacket and a good umbrella is awesome! I was wading through puddles/rivers that were a good foot and half deep! What a blast!!! Like I said before though, it pretty much killed our attendance on Sunday we had about 80 people in church, 2 investigators, andrea munizaga (eternal investigator because she wants her boyfriend to baptize her and will not accept our baptismal invitations) and jose- the father of jean(whom was baptized yesterday with his sister). So they were in church which was good, the baptism was also really good. I love to help complete families, I can´t stress that enough! I love it! Helping families take one more step to becoming eternal is amazing! Their story is something extraordinary for me, I think I told the story earlier of when elder inzunza and I were walking down the street and we had the impression to pull out or map and double check where we were going even though we felt like we knew the way, and then we met the inactive lady who had been searching for the missionaries for months because her daughter wanted to be baptized. Yeah, that is this family, the duagher danyella is the reason for which we had this baptism yesterday of Jean and the reason why the entire family is being reactivated. So yesterday was her 8^th birthday, and she asked me to be the one to baptize her, it was an amazing experience! She is just this pure little amazing girl, who wants to follow Christ and for her desires, her entire family is becoming active again, I have no doubt in my mind that children are WAY closer to God and the spirit than we are!

I´m really grateful for the opportunity that I have to be here in themission field, I know that it is a blessing to be here, i´m very blessed to even be on a mission and I know that it is thanks to a lot of prayers and fasting on the part of all of you, thank you so much for your humble pleading to our Heavenly Father in my behalf, I will never be able to thank all of you enough for helping me to prepare and correct my life so that I could be here! You all are amazing, the best brothers and sisters and mom and dad and grandmother on the planet! I love you! Please continue on in the faith! God loves us so he sent his son!

Elder Livingstone

August 10, 2009

You´ve got mail…

And it´s from me...

This week went by way too fast, I feel like I was sitting here two minutes ago, and I have about two minutes worth of work to show for it too.. shoot.. SIKE! I really do feel like I was just here but that´s just how out of whack my perception of time has become... Benny C, big number 54, once told me that the mission can be summed up in the following three numbers, 2, 40 and 10. 2 because its two years, OBVIOUSLY.. 40 being that if an elder works hard and does the work right, he should mature 40 years in church service, and the 10 is that we grow, or digress, however you want to look at it, in innocence.. haha i don´t know if all of those numbers are right, to be honest i live with a couple of goofs and feel like i haven´t matured all that much or gotten any more innocence but i still have a LONG time to serve, so there is still hope ;) Another thing that Benny C told me was that in the mision there are 3 types of days, p-day, other day, and Sunday.. hahahahaha its so lame but so true, all of the other days in the week have begun to mesh for me and i can never tell what day it is.. BLAHH....

The cool experience for the week happened when i was studying the scriptures, in Alma 48 verse 7: ¨ Now it came to pass that while Amalickiah had thus been obtaining power by fraud and deceit, Moroni, on the other hand, had been ^apreparing the minds of the people to be faithful unto the Lord their God.¨ obviously he was also preparing the people to war with Amalickiah as well but the scriptures make a special point to mention this first, that our minds need to be spiritually prepared, BEFORE afflictions. That part stuck out a lot to me because it helped me to understand the principle of ¨choose now¨ choose now whom you will serve, choose now that you wont smoke, choose now that you won´t ever, EVER miss a sacrament meeting which happens to be the only opportunity to clean yourself spiritually offered here on the earth. The decisions are easy once we really think about it. God only wants us to keep a couple of commandments and if we do that we guarantee ourselves eternities of happiness. BOOYA!! Life is so dang simple!!! Haha i´m probably the only one who can say that right now because i don´t have much choice in my life, my tie and suit, thats about the only choice i have right now but i love it! I LOVE LIFE!!! So, that being said, the importance of our decisions not only has effect here but echoes throughout the eternities, so do the decisions of your children, thats why YOU need to help them make the decisions right now, RIGHT THIS INSTANT to always obey God and ¨to be faithful¨ in every circumstance. Soapbox, dismounted.

This week was really good, we had a couple of really good lessons, a good find, his name is Julio and he really understood the principles we explained. He is a huge boost and blessing, I love finding news and its even better when they are like him, he asked us to call him to set up another appointment and he said he was going to invite his family to invite the next time we pass because if its all true, he wants his family to have the happiness too!!!! WOOT WOOT!!! We also found a couple of other people thanks to member references, THESE ARE THE BEST!!! Note to family, talk to your friends about God and ask them what they believe and then tell them the importance to you of being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ, i.e. ¨thanks to the church i know where i came from, why i´m here in this earth, where i´m going after this life and i know WHO I Am, i know that i have a divine heritage from my Father, who is God. I know all of this thanks to the grace of God that he has restored his Church, with his power again on the face of the earth.¨ that is what being a member of the church means to me and that is what a bunch of people could benefit from hearing because a lot of people don´t know what it means to be a memeber of their church and your testimony of these things will knock them off their feet! And after all that is said and done you can say, look, i have these two friends who are representatives from my church and they would love to come by and share a message with you that WILL help your family to have more peace and joy in this life, when will you come over to my house to meet my friends? Or better yet, just tell them, ¨hey come over to my house this Monday night, my friends will be over then and we can talk.¨ DONE DEAL!!! Alright that is my missionary tip for the week. I love you all like crazy, i hope that everybody is doing well, tito thanks for the insight on Nefi, you are completely right, the Lord has the plans laid, we can´t see the future but he can, for that we just need to play every situation with the spirit and trust that God will provide for us what we need to do... alright love you all like Peter Parker loves Mary Jane.. he he.. that came out funny..

Alright i gotta go, give the missionaries and keep on keeping on, i love YOU!!!!

August 3, 2009

What it does?

How are we doing family? I´m doing quite well thank you very much! Things are a great here in the mission, this past week we had a conference and President granted us a lot of freedoms that we previously didn´t have. For instance on our day of preparation we now study in the morning but don´t have to go to a zone class type thing. We clean in the morning, and he lengthened the day by an hour seeing as how our time schedule is different than most of the other missions. So it is nice now to have the same amount of time as every other mission in the world. We also can eat fast food, or eat out in general and another great thing is that we can visit musuems, zoos and other cultural sites which is AWESOME because we couldn´t do any of that before. It is really good, i feel like a free man now! WOOHOO!!!

Highlight of the week... BAPTISM!!! We were blessed again this week to have another baptism, this is a habit that i could really get used to, unfortunately we don´t have anyone lined up for this week so it looks like we wont be continuing the trend but we´ll try our darndest to find someone that we can baptize! Anyways back to the point, this week was the baptism of Javiera, she is this little 9 year old fireball who is the daughter of a less active who has just reactivated herself, meaning she is no longer less active, anyhow, back to Javiera. She is nine years old and hilarious, i am so greatful that she was able to be baptized this week, every time that we pass by to teach her or visit with her she has the sweetest spirit and teaching her i really do know that the Kingdom of God is made up of little children because they are pure in spirit and heart. She is always so happy to talk about God and how she wants to obey him because she knows that it makes Him sad when she disobeys, etc.. after the baptismal interview (conducted by Elder Steven Hutchins, side note, turns out that his grandfather is first cousins with Grandma Livingstone, grandma, did you know that?) anyways after conducting the interview we had a little scripture and sung(sang?) a hymn and the mom was just bawling the whole time and Javiera was sitting there just beaming, IT WAS AWESOME!!!! Elder Hutchins and i left the house with the sweetest spirit and the both of us had the same question in our minds, WHY DON¨T MORE PEOPLE WANT TO OBEY GOD??? We both saw the blessings invoked by living a life worthy of the spirit of Christ and it was awesome, we wondered, why is that people don´t want that happiness? The jury is still out on that subject but it was a very special experience that charged my spiritual batteries. The baptism was a really good spiritual experience as well, when isn´t a baptism a good experience but that one experience is what has really touched my mind and i´m going to use that as motivation for this week to invite others to come unto Christ.

Thanks Tyler for encouraging the family to pray for me, i appreciate every prayer that is offered in my behalf, i really am honored and touched deeply and want you all to know that i continue to pray for all of you. Alright i gotta run but i love you like crazy, i hope that all are doing well and remember that this life is short but the eternities aren´t, they last forever so do what it takes to make the good, little decisions here so you can have the eternal happiness in the life to come. I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!

Drewby

July 20, 2009

Fam Damily,

Now that the reunion is over you can all go back to living life like normal, accept the fact that mom and dad are HOME!!! Ah that’s still got me trippin a little bit. Oh well they are gonna keep on keeping on.

This last week has got to have been one of the most stressful weeks of my entire life. I´m fairly concerned that God is trying to test my patience and devotion to him due to the fact that last change I was with a fairly noobie and this change i´m with a real freshy. One thing is for certain, I DON´T KNOW WHAT I´M DOING! Well that’s a lie, I do know what i´m doing i´m just finding it really stressful trying to lead on the battle against satan being the actual leader against the war here in the ward of Vicuña Mackenna. I´m definitely trying to do my best, I think I might be stressing way too much over little details but I just want to show my kid how live the mission, to really live it, have it be your life, and to follow every rule with exactness. He actually hasn´t even unpacked his bag yet because there hasn´t been ¨free-time¨ yet.. HAHAHA no that’s how it was with me when I got here but it might be taken a little far to the extreme. I was given council by a couple of return missionaries in our ward and also by the assistants that I just need to turn him loose and realize that the first couple of lessons are just going to Suck, period. So I think I will take those councils, also any that you have given me, or would like to give and apply them this upcoming week and we´ll see how it turns out down the road right?

To give you a little background on him, he is a stud, his name is Elder Hualca, yes, his first name actually is elder, that’s how hardcore his parents are! No just kidding, i´m just bluffing for the fact that I haven´t asked yet what his first name is… wow i´m a piece… haha so yeah, he´s from Guayaquil, 22 years old, has a girlfriend, a really good guy, he likes to say ¨ok¨ a lot and is general a really, really good guy. I like him a lot. He is really enthusiastic and likes to talk to people a lot about the weather here, his house, and food. He´s a bit bigger than me, in girth, but I still have him beat in height!

Lets see… we got clearance this past week to baptize our buddy Eduardo in this ward, he just has to get confirmed in his ward, I know pretty apostate right? I don´t know how it all shook out but they said we could do it, I think its cuz his parents are really anti having any reps from the church in their house so he´s gotta do all the lessons and stuff with us and likes to go to church here with his girlfriend so we´re stoked! The plan is to baptize him this week but that might change as his girlfriend´s little sister wants to be baptized as well but theres a situation involved there that might delay it.. shoot. Other investigators, Oscar. He has almost fallen completely off the face of the planet. That’s really bummin me out but we´ll be passing by his house this Tuesday so if you could have a little prayer in your heart this Tuesday that he´ll accept i´d really appreciate it! Jenny just had surgery, shes out for a couple of weeks, javiera gets back from her ¨vacay¨ this week so we will be teaching her a couple of times in between now and the next time and the plan for her is the 2^nd of august! Woot woot! We also just started with this family of less actives that invited us over to teach their daughter the lessons because she wants to be baptized. The family thought that we were coming over to teach her but we sneak attacked them and have been teaching the dad and the older brother to get them baptized as well and its working! The brother asked us to be baptized yesterday and the whole family was in church yesterday so surely but slowly we´re working toward the goal of baptisms weekly!!!

Spiritual moment of the week goes to teaching Eduardo and Stefani the law of chastity! Powerful stuff! The tears were ready to bust out of my eyelids when I bore to them the testimony I have in me of this eternal law. It was amazing! I was testifying of how i´ve seen the difference of joy in my group of friends of those who have lived the law and those who haven´t, the difference of eternal happiness is black and white. I love the gospel and the ability that everybody has here in the earth to live it. There is no one, no where that is not worthy of repentance!!!

Alright kiddies i´ve gotta get outta here to show my compy the way to live righteously! I love you all like crazy and hope that the you have all the blessings that God has provided for you. Live in a manner that God can´t not bless you!

LOVES AND HUGS TO ALL!!!

drewby doo

July 13, 2009

What it is what it is?

How is the most amazing family on the planet doing? i know that part of that family(me) is down here enjoying life, very very much. but i´m about to get a nice shock here soon, as in tomorrow. today we had changes and i kissed my first kid away(Elder Inzunza) only to find that i will have another. this time though its a real, real kid. as in i´m getting a freshy tomorrow. his name is Elder Hualca and i´ve heard that he is from Peru... so thats the story of my life right now. i´m really freaked out to say the least. i´m not prepared for this at all. i know that much. i know that its going to be a uphill battle the whole change that i´m never going to feel like i´ve won but i´ll work my tail off until the end. I honestly feel really really unprepared right now, like i did six weeks ago when i found out that my comp only had one change. yeah that fear times by about 1000000000000000000000000... the one thing that i´m not worried about is that he will be able to speak spanish. that will be a really good thing, actually that will take about 20 percent of the pressure off of my hands but still, i´m not ready to have someone look and see everything that i do and learn from me. i´m still learning for heavens sakes.. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

ok, well hopefully i can take my mind off of that for a bit and explain how the past week went, it was really good actually we had some quality lessons with members, we didn´t find anyone really new to work with but we were able to continue teaching all of our previous investigators which was a blessing. Oscar again was not able to make it to church and we found out his difficulty, he is a former professional soccer player for a team here in chile and plays soccer every sunday morning!!! dang soccer!! it always takes the best investigators! so were gonna really work with him this week and teach him the importance of the sabbath day and how he needs to observe it.. Jenny an investigator that we found when elder Inzunza and i had to get haircuts a couple of weeks ago, came to church and really liked it, unfortunately she will be undergoing surgery this wednesday so her coming to church anytime in the near future is kinda out of the question. and our other really strong investigator, actually the best investigator i´ve ever had is named Eduardo and he is the boyfriend of a less active member in the ward. unfortunately for us he is going to have to be handed over to a different set of missionaries because he doesn´t even live in our stake!! SHOOT!! but what can ya do? the important thing is that he is baptized right? i´m a little worried that if he is baptized there he is still going to come to our ward but we´ll just have to see, and teach him right and then leave it up to him to make the decision.

we had a few experiences this week that really helped me to see that this work is God´s and all that i am is just a puppet to do the work... elder Inzunza and i were making our way to a lesson when we found that we didn´t know the exact way to get to the lesson. we thought for a second about turning down this road named libertad but then changed our mind and decided to consult our map that we had. when consulting we came to the conclusion that we needed to continue down the main road that we were on and turn later. continuing down the road that we wouldn´t have taken origionally all of the sudden we heard the yells of a woman yelling ¨elderes!¨ it was a less active member that we had no idea she even existed and she asked us to come over to her house and teach her and her daughter and all of her family becuase they were unactive and she wanted to be reactivated and she wanted her daughter to be baptized as well. it was an amazing experience, she told us that she had been looking for the missionaries for the past couple of months but could never find them.. it was an experience where after i just thought ¨what if we had continued down the path and not listened to the spirit that told us to stop and look at the map, how long would she have continued looking for the missionaries?¨ its small little means like that that show me that God is doing this work, He can/will not be frustrated, His ways are perfect and he will have his will done whether we like it or not, its really only our decision to decide if we are going to be the functional tools in His hands or not. what is the purpose of a pen? to write, what if the pen is not writing/not completing its purpose? you throw it away right? WRITE!!! do all you can to be a functioning instrument in the hands of the Lord and i know that if you do it, He will bless you! more than you can imagine. I love Mosiah 2, i think its 17-25 or something like that. it lays the law down! if we complete with the commandments we are immediately blessed, and therefore in debt again, so what do we have to boast? nothing! alright, now that i´m done ranting and raving, i just want you all to know that i love you. i really do, you are all amazing examples to me that i can never forget, keep on keeping on and have a smile on your face, your all together for heavens sakes!!!

Loves and hugs and kisses,

Elder LIVINGSTONE

July 6, 2009

hey family how is life?

Things are good down here in the skinny. There has been a lot changed with new president already, some things for the better, somethings i´m not so sure about but thats not really for me to decide. Its presidents job to recieve revelation for this mission, not me! All i gotta do is get behind him and say YES SIR! and if i do that i´m sure that everything will turn out the way it is supposed to!

We had a a baptism this last week! WOOHOO it was so awesome! Elder Inzunza baptized them both and we (when i say we i mean God) completed a family! It was really something else to be able to see a family be able to see a family embrace after their baptism! I loved it and want to do it more! For that we´re gonna start working A TON with part member families! Hello! Why didn´t i think of that earlier! Oh well, anyhow she gave a killer testimony after her baptism and she has an awesome testimony of the power of prayer and repentance which is way good! It was such an amazing experience to see them so happy! I loved it! We also have some other pics of the whole family before the baptism but i don´t have them and will have to send them next week but honestly, the gospel is here to bless families! I know that! Its something i testify of everyday, i say something like this ¨in my family we are a family of 10, 8 kids and its not easy to be tranquilo with that many kids but with the gospel, everything is possible.¨ you guys are in my testimony every day! Eat it up!

Well i´ve been just a little trunky this week thinkin about everyone being together, iknow that isn´t until this week but i guess i was preparing myself for the trunkiness or something ;) no i know you all are gonna take some killer pics and send them my way so i can feel like i´m there too. No worries!
Elder Inzunza and i are starting to try out a couple of programs to help this ward because it has a little unity problem, that being said does anyone have any good ideas of programs and or activities that their ward has done, or they tried in their mission that helped their wards to unify themselves? I will take any suggestions right about now! ¨shiny happy people holding hands!¨ what an appropriate song to be playing in the internet café right now, thats what i want for this ward and i´m pretty sure this is God sending me a message that one of you has an answer to my problem!

Oh we met our new president this week, that was awesome! He told me that Grandma had talked to him and that his parents were working with Grandma to find the connection between us. How is that going grandma? That was pretty cool to have an instant connection with him. Also heidi and jay he is a former lawer, big time, maybe he knows judge griffiths and can hook me up? Hahahahahahahaha just kidding. Anyhow he is a really good man, i really respect him a lot, he seems like he has had a ton of success in his life and is prepared to take us to the next level. Infact he said that on several occasions. So i´m pretty excited to see what he has in store for us. Another thing that he told us is that he was set apart by Elder Scott(sound familiar) anyhow he said that when Elder Scott set him apart that he(Elder Scott) told him (pres Laycock) that he was inheriting the most obedient mission in the whole world.. that was a compliment that i don´t know if he says that to all the mission presidents, if he does oh well, but really it cool to hear from president because this mission is really really good. I love this mission. Sometimes its kinda lame because i feel like there are a bunch of pharases(is that how you spell those crazy ruly jews back in Jesus´ time?) anyway i feel like there a bunch of scribes and the type in this mission but really its all out of love. We know that when we keep the commandments of God we are blessed and so its good to have a little reminder every here and there. I thought it was neat to recieve a compliment like that from an Apostle. Anyways, not to get proud or anything, it just was cool…

Investigators… we have a couple who are really good, prepared people that we feel extremely blessed to be working with. First of all there is Javiera, a 9 year old daughter of a less active who is currently reactivating herself. Unfortunately she is leaving on vacation this Thursday until the 24 of july but she has a baptismal date for the 26th so we´re all set there. She wanted to do it Thursday morning but we don´t have time to teach her all the stuff before then and have the interview so we gotta wait! Thats how much she wants to get baptized! She´s awesome!

Also there is oscar, jenny, fransisco, jessica, eduardo, the other francisco and his daughter francisca and a couple others that we are teaching but i don´t have time to get into details with them and some of them aren´t really progressing much so i won´t talk about them right now but next week if they are getting ready for baptism i´ll let you know, but if you could pray for them that would be awesome!

Alright i gotta bounce, just so everyone knows we repeated the pledge of alegiance, the star spangled banner, america the beautiful and my country ´tis of thee on the fourth and i thought about all of you at the smoots cookin some dawgs, running, watching fireworks, the parade and i got a little trunky but not for too long because i know i´ll get to enjoy them again with ya´ll! alright i gotta bounce, love you all bunches and bunches and bunches, keep up the good work, keep a smile on and share the gospel with someone. Joseph Smith said that¨there are many who don´t find the truth only because they don´t know where to find it..¨ its our duty to help them find it! When i say we i mean you too!

Love you bunches,

Elder Livingstone

June 29, 2009

Familia!

Como estáis? Sois mis hermanos queridos y os amo! Nice, this week was a really good one, we worked a ton with the members and had a mess of lessons with members which is always a good thing. Unfortunately our ¨sure baptism¨ fell through but we´ve got a date set with them and the water this week so they´ll be saved enough, their names are Gabriela and Francisco Periera. The really good thing that we did with them this week is that we made the mother promise that she would teach her son every night a little bit of doctrine, he has a learning disabilities so it was becoming a little difficult teaching him because we didn´t understand how he learned best and all that yada yada so we are now having her teach the doctrine to him. GOAL!! Two birds with one stone, now she´s going to have a stronger testimony of the things because she is teaching them and he will learn them better because he has someone who knows him teaching him in a way that he can understand! We were super jazzed when we went by one day and he understood the word of wisdom and the law of chastity, yeah I really didn´t feel like explaining that to an 11 year old… haha its all good! One thing that this has really impressed upon me though is the importance of parenting. Really no one knows your children like you, that being said that means teaching your children the doctrine is of the utmost importance right? I´m really grateful now more than ever for the way mom and dad taught all of us, I wasn´t before but that’s because I didn´t ever really realize… the best way to do it, or the best place to do it is in the family night! That’s something that really lacks down here too, its too bad but hardly anyone has family nights, for that elder INZUNZA and I have decided that were making a program to fix that. What we´re going to do is make groups of families that live near each other, about 5 families to every group and one of them will be less active that the other 4 active families have to support and fellowship. The idea is that every week in these groups they have a family night, a big one as a group that is, and that the place in which they have it, who teaches the family night, who brings the game and snack, all of that changes every week. So what will happen is that these 5 families will get to enjoy the benefits of having a family night every week but only having to prepare it once a month! Legit right? I´m super excited for it for a bunch of reasons, 1 hardly anyone has their family nights here, 2 the fellowship between the members SUCKS and is even worse with recent converts and less actives so when we bring investigators to church and baptize them they don´t stay because the fellowshipping lacks here. So with this program we´re going to get some sweet fellowshipping going on!

This week we saw a bunch of blessings, firstly an investigator who has not wanted to get baptized for a couple months because she wants her boyfriend to confirm her decided that she can´t wait anymore (we left mosiah 3 with her, that chapter is a killer). We have a killer investigator named Oscar that is progressing a ton(except he didn´t go to church L ). We´re going to have these baptisms this week (the 4^th of July), there are a few other blessings that I can think of, we got to go to the temple this week, I don´t have swine flu, I haven´t been super trunky even though everyone is going to be getting together soon, I am starting to really understand Spanish… yeah the blessings are far too many to count but i just want to thank all of you for praying for me. I can feel the blessings, i´m not lying I really can.

There is not a whole lot to report on this week to all ya´lls. I love you like crazy that’s for sure, if anyone wanted to take a ton of pictures this upcoming week and then print them and send them to me along with some reeses and a sweet tie that would be cool… haha I love you all like crazy! I´m a little bummed that President Moran is leaving but every good thing has got to come to an end, I mean MICHAEL DIED this week, what?!?! Haha its all good, he now can be baptized without prejudice of his fans. I got a question though, what will he look like in his perfected form? Michael from the thriller movie? I just hope he has his jerry curls and is black again… alright, i´m just rambling now, everybody enjoy these next couple weeks, go see transformers without me but don´t tell me ANYTHING!! Alright I gotta head, love you all, take care and have your family nights!!!

attatched are some pics of berlins( a delish donut like treat)

my face after eating said berlin

and a shot from our house in the morning, i really do like this city, its got some really gorgeous parts to it.

alright love youall, take care

elder livingstone

June 22, 2009

Hello my loved ones,

SWINE FLU!!! Pysch! Got you all worried didn´t I? Sorry, I just had to get that out of my system because down here it is very taboo to talk about ¨the disease that will take over the world¨ or so the chileans think.. To explain myself let it be known that 3-4 chileans have died because of the swine flu and for that almost every chilean has this undescribable fear of the illness. Its quite silly actually, I don´t know why everyone is so concerned about it. Less people have died from this than the amount of people who die from drunk driving in 10 minutes or so. Whats the hang up people? Oh well, you all already know that and know that it´s silly, or do you?

This week has been pretty good, well not really, it was pretty bad from the works stand point. Tuesday we had our devotional with Elder Dickson, newsflash, the man has one arm! Regardless he gave us a very deep devotional about how the roots need to grow faster than the branches, something i´ve heard before from Dad but it´s always good to hear quality doctrine again. The part that really was good during the devotional was delivered by Lawrence Corbridge, that man is a spiritual GIANT!!! He is one of the 70´s that lives in my previous sector and he gave us a quality rundown of a discourse(is that what a paper is called?) that we now are going to use as a lesson with the less active members of our wards. It´s a really huge problem down here in Chile. To the point that yesterday we had 6 elders in elders quorum 2 whom have the ¨name badge¨(AKA me and elder Inzunza) and when they passed around the list to mark off if you are ¨present¨ in elders quorum it was 4 stinking pages long... OH MY GOODNESS!!! Yeah so that kinda got me really down about the whole activity rate here in Chile, returning to where i got off on this crazy tangent, we now have a document called ¨perseverad¨ or persevere the which we will be using to drive the point home to the less actives that we all have hope and it comes through the atonement of Jesus Christ and there is no other way. ¨Any other way is foolish¨ as E. Corbridge put it (see his talk in the November 2008 edition of the Ensign) so that was a good charge on the spiritual battery. The next thing of importance that happened this week is that on Thursday I woke up sick, which was no fun but we worked anyhow, Friday we had our last zone conference with Pres which was even less fun because he´s the man. The part that I really took away from his words was how we know if we truly love someone. It was really powerful because he explained to us that love is wanting to be together with someone for the eternities. Obvious that part is my young ones, but the other part was what made me think, If we want to be together with them for the eternities how do we accomplish that? Taking the sacrament weekly, going to the temple, etc... what does all that mean? KEEPING THE COMMANDMENTS.. every single one of them. It was a huge lightbulb moment because I remembered all the times when mom and dad had nagged me to do this or to do that or had made me promise to stop dating someone who shall go un-named and I remembered that in those moments i didn´t feel like they were trying to help me. I felt like they were just nagging me to nag me or what not but I came to the realization that they really were exhorting me to keep the commandments out of Love, pure, pure love and nothing else. This lead me to think that really if I love someone, my comp, my buddies, my family of course, anyone who I think I love I need to help them to keep the commandments so that I can be with them forever. This is ¨family business¨ as Señor West put it. This is forever and not just a game, I need to take it more seriously, that being said i want to extend the invitation (haha i´m a good missionary and not gonna let you off the hook without a commitment) to really love your loved ones and help them in anyway you can to keep the commandments, start out small, not killing for instance. Should be easy for the rest of you, me however... PSYCH again! But seriously, every moment we have here in this earth is to do the Father´s will, do what Christ would do if He was in our shoes. In that we will find the happiness that lasts. The happiness that has no end. This past week i can´t tell you how excited i was when i opened a letter from Jayson and see Kobe with the trophy, i was stoked! But ask me how long it lasted... a day? Maybe two? Lies.. it lasted longer than that, in fact i´m still happy about it but i know that someday, in a couple of years, maybe 80 í´ll forget that they won the championship. But i can tell you that the atonement has no end, there is no end to Celestial Glory.

Alrighty i´m outta time i´ve seen many blessings this week, for instance i was way sick the whole week and Saturday night i even hit a fever of 101.2 at which time i almost thought i had that swine flu but with blessings, prayers on your part and mine and a little bit of faith i´ve been able to see miracles. I love the mission, i´m bummed i haven´t baptized in a while, this next week promises to have some for the which i´m happy but i´m even more happy that the family is doing good, that everyone is going to have a ball of a time these upcoming weeks together. I expect some killer pics, maybe some sent through the mail too? That would be cool, also if anyone feels the need to send me some reeses i wouldnt complain about that either. Recipes i´m hungry for some homeade food but i gotta cook it so send some easy recipes my way cuz i´m a little bit on the lamer side of the cooking business, meaning i can´t do much, ask Jayson, he remembers ¨what drew can cook¨... alright gotta run, i love you all. Keep in touch and STAY CELESTIAL!!!

Elder Livingstone

p.s. kirk or ty or kev or amy do you understand what that sign said in the pictures that i sent last week? i thought not, thats cuz chilean spanish is RIDICULOUS!!! it says -- drunk, you don´t save anyone!

June 15, 2009

My dearest family!

How are the things going for all of the Livingstone clan and the amazing brothers and sisters in law that I have? I hope that all is well with everyone and that every brother and brother-in-law that I have has a very very special fathers day this upcoming week! you all are amazing! Especially i hope that dad has a very special fathers day, i know he´ll be working hard so he probably won´t even get to enjoy it that much but i have no doubt that he will be well taken care of in just a few weeks here...

Primarily i want to thank all of you for all of your emails and support. Í´m so excited every week to go to the internet and read about all of your lives. You might think that they are boring and not worth writing down but i promise you your stories are great, they are quality, funny, heart warming things to read, so keep ´em comin´!

This week was a pretty good one for the work here in ¨Vic Mac¨. My area is boomin with lessons, i love having lessons to go to all day. Sometimes we get a little down because there is not a lot of time to knock but i can´t complain about having tons of lessons to teach! It´s what this work is all about! So i guess i should tell ya a little bit about who i´m teaching then... The best family that we have right now is the Pereira family, he is a member, their oldest daughter too but the wife and the two youngest children are not. Gabriela is the name of the mother and Francisco is the name of the son who is an age of eligability to be baptized. They were going to be baptized this week, unfortunately he got chicken pox this week and was therefore not able to get into the water and the mom wanted to wait and do it together with him. So unfortunately their baptizm will have to wait until next Sunday (2 weeks from now) because their father is going out of town this week meaning he won´t be there to baptize them... One problem we´ve experienced with them is that he is iliterate and it is really hard for him to understand. It has forced us to really liquify our teachings and make them really simple which is way good for us but at the same time, really hard. I never thought i would say that it is hard to simplify spanish, me being a spanish wiz ya know, anyways its really helped me a lot because simple powerful teaching is the best, teach simple and powerfully with the spirit so they can´t deny it is my new motto!

We also have some other investigators, one named Andrea who is a difficult situation because she has a boyfriend who she wants to baptize her but he doesn´t have the melquisedek (spell check anyone?) priesthood and he doesn´t like the missionaries either. I guess he talks behind all the missionaries backs (us and the missionaries in his own ward too) that we don´t teach with the spirit and that we are bad people, i think we´ve come to the conclusion that he is the one who doesn´t have the spirit as he doesn´t attend church regulary and there is a long list of other things that aren´t exactly lining up.. this is not to say he can´t repent, lets remember who is talking here, but it just stinks being on the other side of the fence, knowing what is going through their heads and i know that they think they´re right, i was there for heaven´s sakes! Regardless that is something we are trying to overcome, unfortunately we haven´t come up with any ways other than to just tell her straight to her face that her boyfriend is wrong and she is waiting in vain...

We have other investigators but mainly we are working alot with less actives right now, its so hard to see people like this, former bishops, former elders quorum presidents that want almost nothing to do with the church. In one case their is a former bishop who is mad at the church and/or God because his mother died.. it is such a bummer to see priesthood holders who have gotten mad at the world over something that at one point they probably gave counsel to someone about. I´ve heard of some elders who tracted a former mission president who is now inactive. I don´t think thats possible but i can promise you if i were to ever find someone like that i would smack them. Why is it that we are so blinded by our own personal pursuits at times in our lives? why is it that we do foolish things like that sometimes. Agh... stepping off the soapbox...

Other than lazy less actives things are really good here. It rained pretty hard yesterday which was good, it has started to get a little cold lately which is no fun. Its a humid cold here which is the worst! I´ll wear a couple of layers of coats etc.. and its still cold! Bah humbug! Haha beyond that life is great, elder Inzunza is the man, unfortunately he gets a little trunky sometimes, most days i mean, but other than that were doin really good, its always in the morning when were studying that he/I get trunky which puts a damper on the day but fortunately 1130 rolls around and we go out to work and i forget all about you suckers at home! Haha just kidding, i don´t forget about you all but i do love to get out and do the work! There is nothing like some good old missionary work to fill the hearts holes!

Well i was really excited because Elder Oaks is in town and word on the street was that he was going to talk to us. We were going to hear from him tomorrow morning but turns out he´s gonna be busy ¨laying down the law¨ elsewhere so instead we´ll hear from a 70 Elder Dickson, i believe is his name so im lookin forward to that! I´ll take copious notes and send them next week! alright, runnin out a time, love you all, take care and keep the faith!

Love elder Livingstone

June 8, 2009

FAMILY!!!

Hello, how goes life? Things are just splendid here in Chile. Turns out being senior comp is not all that fun because its a ton of responsibility but what can ya do? It´s the calling that I have for this change so i´ll just do the best I can and move along next change.

The really awesome part is that my companion is amazing. Elder Inzunza is a great great great missionary. I really respect him a lot for a whole gaggle of reasons. First of all he is the first member of his family, and the only current member. Reason number two being he has a girlfriend of 6 years that he left to come and serve and she has a child that is 8 years old, the both he has converted... Reason number three is that he is 25 years old. This guy is amazing! he´s got such a strong testimony and really is here for the right reason. Oh and I almost forgot, he is a cancer survivor... ha, oops almost forgot that small little detail, really i´m just floored with how amazing of a missionary he is, he is kickin my lazy butt around and we´re doing some great work here, I love him, I can already tell that he´s gonna be a life long friend, it just stinks that he is from here and will never live up in the States so i can see him that often... thats a good little summary of my comp, I believe i sent a pic of me and him last week so that´ll have to do for now.

This last week was a great week, we have lessons coming out of our ears, which i love. because it really helps me to learn spanish and i´m finding that having a latin comp also helps that but the teaching lessons part i really love. unfortunately we didn´t have anyone ready to be baptized this week but we´re gonna work dang hard this week for the investigators that we have to help them prepare. two of them are from a part member family, the mother and the son, the father recently has been reactivating himself due to his own ¨come to Jesus moment¨ as Jay likes to call it, regardless we have a baptizmal date set for them for this sunday but we´re still waiting to see if the father will be ready to do the baptizm. we suggested it to him last week and he is talking with the bishop tomorrow to propose the idea so please if you can, offer a special prayer for Hermano Pereira and his family. They are great people, he is a painter, he has some beautfil paintings but its more of a hobby for him than professional business so he doesn´t take it too serisously but they still come out beautiful!

The experience of the week this week has to be what happened on saturday. alright to give you a little background I have to let you know that i have dejavu every once in a while, like every 2 months or so. what it comes from is my dreams, what happens is every once in a while i´ll have a dream during the night and it will be very very real, it will be so real that i´ll feel like i´ve already lived that moment in my life and it is just a memory, then i´ll wake up and realize that hasn´t ever happened in my life. the cool part is that i´m just foolin myself because that thing will come to pass sometime in the next couple months. alright, now that the table is set and you understand a little more, last month i had one of these dreams where i saw this wierd looking white guy that was speaking spanish to me and we were sitting down on a couch and he was showing me some colorful map that i didn´t understand. THE EXACT SAME THING HAPPENED ON SATURDAY!! turns out this wierd looking guy is our ward mission leader and that he was showing me some outdated map of the stakes here in santiago. It was cool though because i remember seeing all sorts of stuff in the foreground during my dream like these stuffed animals and a BUNCH of illegally obtained movies.. anyhow i´ve come to the conclusion that dejavu is to warn me of something that is coming in the future because later that day, after we had spent some time at his house we left and went to another sector in the mission for a planned zone activity, and the time worked out exactly perfectly that when we were in the other sector we experienced one of the coolest/scary things i´ve seen in my life. my comp and i were walking down the street in the broad daylight when a man passed us on his motorcycle, he was going pretty fast but all of the sudden we heard the screech of his tires and looked ahead not 20 feet to see two men in the middle of the road with a 9mm pointed at the man on the motorcycle! it was pretty dang crazy. what happened was they yelled at him and told him to get off his bike which he didn´t like. in response to his displeasure in giving up his bike the man with the 9mm decided to pistol whip him in the forhead (pistol whip meaning he held the pistol in his hand and then hit him in the head with the butt of the pistol) which caused the man to start bleeding and comply with what the asailants wanted. the unarmed man took the bike and the one with the pistol started waving it around telling all of us that we didn´t see anything. elder Inzunza and i had already taken the next street and were on our way to the other side of the sector. it was a pretty crazy experience that i won´t be forgetting anytime soon. a lot of prayers of thanks have been offered since then! the crazy part is that within 10 minutes we were back knocking doors again, which lead me to think the following, ¨you know you are a missionary when you´re life is threatened and within 10 minutes life is back to normal.¨

haha well i gotta get outta here before i am struck down for going over my time limit, i love you all like crazy and hope that life is treating you well. enjoy the summer because it is starting to get pretty darn cold here!

LOVEYS!!

Elder Livingstone

June 1, 2009

Hello loveys,

It would appear as if yours truly is now located in a new location with a new companion. The awesome part is that I now find myself with a latin companion. Elder Inzunza is from Concepcion Chile. That is just down the road from here about 3 hours or so by airplane. I´m really excited to work with him because he is going to really teach me to speak spanish! woot woot! the hard part is that i´m in a new sector (thankfully its a little bit smaller) but also the hard part is i´m going to have to shoulder a lot of the responsibility now. Partly because i´m now the senor comp and partly because he has only a small amount of time in the mission. meaning this is his second change. i´m not ready for this at all. i´m actually really overwhelmed right now becuase this is the first time that i´m really going to have to be on the ball, always and lead the lessons. PLEASE PRAY FOR ME. I don´t know why i´ve been placed with this responsibility because i´m not ready for it but I will do what i´ve been called to do to the best of my ability. excuse me if this email seems a little scatter brained, its because i´m feelin a little stressed right now but i´ll do my best to explain some of the past week so you know what has gone on in my life.

This last week was pretty good, we had a number of lessons with members and we actually found a couple new investigators through members. I can´t stress enough the importance of the members in the work(thats you guys!) It is imperative! without the members we have nothing because they help us in every facet of the work, especially finding investigators! one thing that i hope each of you tries to do this week is talk to a friend about one principle of the gospel, it seems difficult but honestly when you think about how happy we are because we have this gospel, it is natural to want to share it with a friend so they can have that joy too. anyways long story short we found some awesome brazilian investigators due to one of the members in our ward and i´m pretty sure that elder Jennings and his new comp are going to teach them this week, tonight even! well it might be hard for him seeing as how they are the new AP´s but i´m sure they´ll get over there sometime soon.

it was a tough last week with elder Jennings because he´s such a good elder and i knew that since we got along so well we weren´t going to be together again, i don´t know why that is the way that it is, i´ve just heard that from various different sources.anyhow we tried to make the best of our time and teach our investigators, tried to keep working hard because we know that is where true happiness lies, helping the others to come unto Christ.

shoot, i haven´t written anything but my time is already up and i gotta get to work. i love you all and pray for you like crazy. keep smiles on your faces, mom and dad will be home soon enough ;)

love loves
elder livingstone

May 25, 2009

Greetings loved ones!

How is life in the good ole United States of FREEDOM!! Life down here in Chile is really good, I could not even dream of complaining!

This last week we had an awesome experience, stake conference. It was really amazing because we had presiding at the conference Elder Carlos Amado of the Seventy (nothing new, he presides at sacrament meeting every week, we also have Elder Lawrence Corbridge of the Seventy in our ward too, look up his talk from two or three conferences ago, its killer.) Anyways the treat was that President Morán asked us to be at every meeting of the conference to help our ward leaders out and we also were there to help present a ¨ward council¨ according to a talk that Elder Tom Perry wrote to all the mission presidents a while back. It outlines an efective ward council meeting and how the missionaries can help every auxilary retain its members and help strengthen its quorom members, its a killer plan, i suggest that all read it, unfortunately i only have it in spanish but i can still send it out if some of the spanish readers would like to take a look at it, just give me a hollar. Anyhow Elder Amado made a couple of things crystal clear to us all in the Priesthood session, primarily he asked us all what was more important, our families or the church. A few answered in the affirmative for the families before he threw the hammer down on them and asked them what ordinances their families have done to bring them salvation. The obvious answer is that the family can´t help us to complete any saving ordinances but he went on the explain how they are both equally important, the family can not exist forever without the saving ordinances the church provides and without the family the church wouldn´t serve a purpose. It was interesting. The theme of stake conference was that and also that we need to find and help the lost sheep, he said that the single mothers that are praying for their loved ones to see the light have no answer to their prayers without us, the faithful members of the church. It was super powerful, especially for me because he asked me to read the quote that President Monson told him that he needed to share with the stake which goes as follows:

If you don´t intend to do it,

You wont do it.

If you don´t do it,

Why are you here?

We also had a sweet conference earlier this week with the missionary who baptized our President of the mission when he was a young kid. it was cool but it made me realice how precious and short life can be. I think he is 55ish and he already has cancer and doesn´t have a long time to live. Its scary that honestly their are things like that in the world that can just creep up on us and take our loved ones away in the blink of an eye. Don´t let it happen to any of you, i love you far too much!!!

Alrighty i´m runnin out of time but i love you all like crazy and miss you too! Put a smile on and invite someone to listen to the missionaries!

May 18, 2009

Hello!

Hey how is everybody doing in the greatest family in the world? I read all of the emails and am very greatful to have recieved all of them! Its so great to see the progress of our family, even though I only am aloud to see it in weekly increments it is super exciting to look every week and hear that a baby is walking, sleeping through the night, talking through skype and all that good stuff! Keep the awesome emails coming, I LOVE TO READ THEM!!!

Life, missionary life rather, down here in the southern hemisphere is going really well.. The work moves forward every week and ever week we have a new experience to look back on and reflect on how the church is growing down here. One thing that was kinda scary for me, but i guess its not all that new here in Chile was that our chapel was broken into sometime between Thursday night and Saturday morning. The way the church is set up is on one side of the building there are two bishops offices and a ¨bodega¨ in between the two. I think a bodega means a store room, or i´m not sure, it has the computers and its where they do all the tithing counting on Sunday, which i guess means that it is the ward clerks office? I´m not sure, anyhow what happened was that someone broke into the church, how they did it, i don´t know because all the windows and doors have huge metal fencing on the outside that is welded on there pretty well. Anyhow someone was able to break in and then they must have thought that the office would still have some money in it because they broke the windows out of one of the bishops office doors and then realized they couldn´t unlock the door from the inside so they proceeded to rip off the door handle and eventually axed out the entire door handle mechanism to get into the bishops office. That was what they did on the other bishops office. What they did on our bishops side was open the door (our bishop knows the future so he knew the robbers would come, therefore he didn´t lock his door ;) ) but then they tried to get into the bodega by beating through the reinforced wall of his office, that didn´t work so they tried to break through the roof of the office and drop down into the bodega, again they came to a sore realization when they found that the entire office is surrounded by reinforced concrete. So they gave up and ran away, not being able to steal any computers or money but leaving the church completely trashed! It was really sad actually, i thought about it after and really, who is desperate enough to rob a church? That is like asking to be struck down with lightning on the spot, any church, not just specifically ours (even though ours is the only true one, therefore it is the worst to rob us) but honestly, who tries to rob a church? But i guess this isn´t the worst that has happened, in the super ghetto ward of our mission, ¨chiloe¨ they built a new chapel and people robbed everything from it. They literally took everything, they completely dismantled the chapel, all the roof, the dry wall on the walls, all that is left of that church is the frame of it, they even stole the fence, my comp said that he was walking through the feria one day ( the feria is like the huge garage sale that goes on in the poorer part sectors of santiago) and he even saw the huge rock plaque that said ¨la iglesia de Jesucristo de los santos de los ultimos dias¨. That is called robery!!! By the way does robery have one b or two? Anyways so that was the scary story of the week.

The cool story of the week is that we had a killer lesson with Milena this week and she came to church! She loved it and is going to be baptized! The only thing is that she has to wait for a while to get hired at the military school before she changes her religion. The thing is that she isn´t even done with school and wont be for a while so she could be waiting a really long time. We are pretty sure however though that she is going to change her mind becuase she has told us a couple of times that that might be the case so we will have to continue to pray that she can do something to make that happen. She has told us quite a few times now that she knows the church is true. She asked us at the end of our last lesson if we could give her a booklet or something that had the rules of the church in it so she could start to live them... does such a book exist? haha the best thing we could think of was giving her a for strenghth of the youth pamphlet which is what we will be doing tonight so keep us in your prayers!

We have a couple of other investigators that we are working on and we hope for success in getting together with them this upcoming week because our appointments with them fell through this week but we have reset them for this week so we should be able to teach them and help them progress this week! Keep us and them in your prayers!

Well i´m about out of time, i just got a call from two crazy people in africa wanting to talk to me so i gotta end the email here but i love you and hope that everything is going well! Have a good week and next week i´ll write a little bit about a family BEEH which is our thing that we are trying to implement here in this mission so the familys can get involved in the work as well! Alright i love you all! Keep a smile on!

Elder livingstone

May 4, 2009

Hola Familia,

First and foremost, yes, we are going to the cabin. I know right? I´m so STOKED too! I´ll see all of you up there, will someone please remember to bring syrup because i am going to make the best popover that any of you have EVER TASTED!!! Haha just kidding, i´ll be here down in Chile when everyone is there having fun. Shoot, that makes me a little bit trunky but it´s alright, i love opening 15 emails all entitled ¨are we going to drew´s favorite place on earth¨ haha suckers, having to live the real hard life, riding four wheelers, waking up at 10 o´clock, dang that sounds pretty tough.. haha just kidding again, i wouldn´t trade anything in the world to leave where i´m at right now, i can´t lie, i have the best life out of EVERYONE right now so go ahead, enjoy the cabin, it´s got nothing on the mission!!!

I just want to share an experience that I had this last week, its about goal setting and the importance thereof. Earlier in the mission I had the outlook that, it didn´t really matter what goals I set, I was going to go out and work hard whether we had reached our goal or not. Therefore i never really took the whole goal setting time of our planning all that seriously, for me it was kind of just like going through the motions. It didn´t help that we had set mission goals to find 20 new investigators to teach every week, 15 lessons with members every week and 15 other lessons every week. Just to give you some background on those goals they have been set by an apostle, i think it was Elder Holland, not quite sure, regardless the goals are quite lofty, just so you have an idea, the most lessons i´ve ever taught with a member in a week was 7, and the most new investigators i´ve found in a week was 8. those two respective weeks were the BEST OF MY LIFE! Seriously though, the goals are really up there. So Elder Jennings and i were talking about how i wanted to actually accomplish the goals that we set so we shouldn´t put the mission goals ( behind this there is a whole different story, its not apostate, i promise) anyways i wanted to set lower goals so we could accomplish them and not feel like i was just going through the process of putting numbers down and Elder Jennings, being the wise sage that he is, helped me to understand why the mission goals are there. What happened is that he asked me how many people I wanted to find this week, not how many i thought we would find, or how many was logical, but how many i wanted to find. I took out my agenda and began to flip through the pages of the next week, i began to look at each day and determine, based on what we have planned, how many New investigators i thought we could find each day. I wrote down how many i thought we could find today, 1, and then continued on to Tuesday, 3, and i preceded to think for each day, putting the number of new investigators in my agenda on the corresponding day. When i went through and counted how many i had put for the week to my astonishment i had counted 20 new investigators. After i realized this i realized that if we found 20 new investigators in a week that meant that we had to have taught 20 new investigators, meaning 20 lessons, we had planned for around 10 lessons with members so we literally with faith and breaking down each day into an individual day found that the goals are possible. In retrospect this story isn´t all that amazing but when i step back and look at it i learned a really big lesson. That when i actually listen to the council of my leaders, and apply what they have taught me with faith that they know exactly what they´re talking about. Also i found that by taking every day, one at a time we really can accomplish big things. By small and simple means the Lord brings about his great works and i just hope that i can continue to be an instrument in his hands and doing that which needed of me.

So the cool story of the week that i have to share with everyone happened Friday night when we were headed down to an appointment in the south end of our sector on the micro. It was super full which wasn´t all that fun but thats just how it is sometimes. Anyways, we were going along stopping here and there to pick up passangers and let others off just like normal but at one stop there was a man who tried to get on for free(the rule of ¨permiso¨ as it is called here in Chile, basically means that if you say permiso you can do whatever you want, ride the bus for free, use your companions shampoo, milk, whatever you want, its just a word that the lazy, not self relient people have invented to steal from us self sufficient people. In a sentance, I HATE THIS RULE, probably becuase i´m too embarrased to use it because i hate using that which isn´t mine, regardless, i don´t like) anyhow so this gentlemen tries to use the permiso rule on the bus and the bus driver wasn´t going to have any of that, he told him ¨no¨ and the guy was a little shocked but got off the bus anyways. Little did the bus driver know that he had ¨amigos¨ already on the bus who had his back covered, they shouted out that someone wanted to get off the bus still so that the bus driver would open up the back door so the one man could get on the bus for free in the back. The bus driver noticed, stopped the bus and yelled at him for doing it saying ¨you just make the public transportation system look stupid and you are not respecting any of these people who actually paid to ride, etc¨it was a good little speach, secretly in my mind i was like ¨yeah, take that dude.¨ anyways he let him ride for the time that he needed because the bus driver had to get goin´. Here´s where the story gets awesome, when the dirty freeloader got off the bus, like a true knucklehead he came up to the front of the bus to taunt the driver, knocked on the windows and was yelling at him calling him all sorts of obscene things and then started to walk off. The bus driver however was not done yet, he returned to favor telling him a thing or two about his mother and some other stuff that i didn´t understand nor need to understand... this made the freeloader pretty ticked so he came to confront the driver of the bus, he yelled some more through the window of the bus, he jumped up in the window and started to hit the bus driver and he even hawked(can i get a spell check on that word?) a loogey on the bus driver, i can´t imagine what was going through his head. Anyways after all this he started to bang on the front window of the bus again with his fists, NOT SMART! The bus driver hit the gas to scare him off but he didn´t take the hint, so he started hitting the window again, gas again, hitting the window again, and this time the bus driver really hit the gas and the guy realized the bus was moving a lot more than the previous times so he tried to run to the side of the bus but he didn´t make it!!! Hahaha fortunately the bus driver had hit the brakes so he didn´t run him over but seeing the look on that guys face as he went underneath the bus was priceless! Really scary too, my heart stopped because i thought for sure he was getting run over but thankfully he didn´t! He popped right up and started at it again, tryin to get in the window of the bus but the driver really hit the gas and he jumped off because he didn´t want to hang on the outside of a bus going 40 miles an hour but what i learned from this experience is that i need to always be SUPER nice to the bus drivers here in Santiago because they are crazy! Before i thought they just drived crazy but i was dead wrong, they are truely CRAZY!!!

Hey i just thought about this, it might be cool if everyone had my address so they can look up where i´m living and what my sector is like, my address is 5600 los militares (something like that, they are green appt buildings next to this huge grocery story called ¨santa isabel¨) anyhow our sector goes from the street Fransico Bilboa at the south end up the hill in the north and the western end of our sector is a street called ¨avenue hollanda¨ to the eastern part, a road called ¨manquehue¨ there are some other parts of it but it is HUGE!!! Anyways i just thought that maybe someone might like to look at where i´m living, but were planning on moving this week so that will change. We´re moving to an apartment in the street ¨felix de amesti¨. Cool stuff, have fun looking it up!

Well i´m outta time, i spent all the time writting this letter so hopefully it is a little bit more interesting and helpful for everyone to get a picture of what its like down here! We had some great appointments with investigators this week, one girl who is really developing a strong testimony is named Melina Jaksic, please pray for her that her dad will let her get baptized and also her job, she is studying to be a profesor at the Escuela Militar which is a catholic school so she doesn´t know if she will be aloud to do it but we are praying like crazy that she can! She is already converted, she is setting time aside in her school schedule next semester so that she can go to church and all the activities so she is set but yeah, pray for her please. Thank you all so much for the support, letters, prayers and pictures. I love you all and unfortunately i only get to talk with mom and dad this upcoming week but I know they´ll be back soon and can relay some stuff to all ya´ll. I love you like crazy and pray for each of you! Remember it!

Love

Elder Livingstone