April 27, 2009

throw your hands in the ayyyer and wave them like you just dont cayyyer!

hey family!!!

things are lookin really good here from el golf these days. my new comp, elder Jennings, is a stud and he knows EVERYTHING! i am going to learn so much from his small little buddah like figure this change that i am just super super content right now! he´s already helping me to really teach more effectively and i´m way happy about that. just a quick review of the week i guess..

monday we got here to el golf with all his stuff. bought our groceries and stuff, went to a FHE with a bunch of recent converts which was quite amazing because they brought a friend so we ended up having a lesson with members which is KEY!! unfortunately we´ve been super busy the rest of the week so we haven´t gotten into contact with her again yet but were calling her tomorrow so that will be really good.

tuesday we had lunch with a member and she brought a friend to eat with her so again we had a killer lesson with a member! mom and dad know how important that is because it is one of the ¨key indicators¨ of what we report every night but yeah, it was way awesome, we´ve got a return appointment to teach her again this upcoming thursday and so were quite pleased with that as well, we then went to another lesson with a less active member and her non member husband, can you say ¨lesson with member¨ again! woot woot! that is music to a missionaries ears. anyways after that we went to this guy who weve taught a few times before but we were unsure if we were going to continue teaching him anymore. this is only because he is a little bit crazy. what it is is that he has just had A LOT of experience with other religions, hinduism, budhism, catholisism and the whole lot, he normally wears a white comodo when we teach him and he´s just really different is what i´m trying to get at. every time we go we don´t know what to expect, anyways this last time we were talking about forgiveness and how everyone needs it and he understood the concept of asking forgiveness really well. gosh i don´t know how to explain this without it being really weird so i´m just gonna throw it out there cuz it happened. he had been preparing for like 2 weeks to serve us in a way that he thought was the most appropriate... what ended up happening was that he washed our feet with his own bare hands and was praying to God for forgiveness during the whole thing. i can´t explain the feelings that i had through an email. on the one hand i thought, what the heck is going on here, lets bounce.. and on the other hand the way he was asking God to be forgiven of his sins through service to the Lord´s servants touched me to the core of my being. i realized how humble this man really was, and at the same time how unhumble i am and how much more i need to be willing to serve others. this guy took things a little too literally in my opinion, but in the same sentance i have to say how humbling and eye opening it was to me. it was a really wierd experience and i can promise that it will never happen again because its got to be against some mission rule or something but it was a really heart wrenching experience. the cool part of the story is that we´re going back tomorrow to teach that only through CHRIST can we be truly forgiven but yeah, i dunno, take the story for what you will but it was pretty amazing from my point of view.

well yeah, wednesday through sunday were really good too. we had some investigators at church so that is always nice and actually a real sign of progress but unfortunately i do not have the time to go through all those days right now...

um... yeah, i feel like i haven´t really said anything that will help you guys or any cool spiritual insights cuz this week was really busy and we only studied like 2 times cuz we had a lot of stuff to do but i hope that this little partof my week can help someone gain a bigger perspective on life, somehow. i dunno, i´m really sorry to everyone who reads these emails, i suck at writting general emails to a group of people, hence, my letters are always super boring but yeah, i hope taht everyone is doing really good, i´m lookin forward to talkin to peoples this next sunday, i don´t know who i´m aloud to call yet but hopefully all of you cuz i feel like i could actually explain some of the mission a little better that way over the phone. hey, heres an idea. how about everyone emails me one question of what they´d like to hear about on a daily basis and then i can write emails that are interesting to everyone! then i´m not just writing to write! i think thats a grand idea. also i´m gonna start to look for cool spiritual insights to share every week ok? alrighty, sorry for the weak sauce letter and i promise that with our new format next week we will be able to take over the world (insert evil cackle here) hahahahahahahahaha! alright take care, i love you all!

elder livingstone

April 20, 2009

Fam Damily!

Whats new in the hood? Things are looking pretty good here in El Golf. Turns our i will be livin here another change but on the brightside i´ve got a new comp! An ex zoneleader at that! Woohoo! Were gonna turn this place inside out! No but the hope is that were gonna be able to work a lot harder than we had last change becuase we had a lot of sad weeks with really horrible numbers. Not that numbers are everything, they´re not, but there is something to be said about 10-15 lessions a week versus 6... i dunno. From what i hear my last area is suffering pretty bad too though so i´ve come to the conclusion that while i wish i could blame it on this sector, i can´t. I need to step up the line with all the charismo and smile that i have and just work and hope for the best. All i can do is offer what i have and let the Lord do the rest.

President shared with us today in our changes conference a cool way to look at the miracle of the fishes and the loaves of bread. Maybe this is how everybody looks at it and i´m just slow to catch the train but he had us look from the perspective of the boy who brought the bread and fish to the Savior. There was 5000 people there when the small boy broughta small meager amount of fish and bread, he brought all that he had which obviously wasn´t enough to even feed the Savior and his disciples but he offered it anyways to Him and we all know what happened. The Saviour took the meager offer that he made and gave him back baskets full of bread and fish on top of the 5000 whom he fed. It gives me a lot of hope to be able to look at this story and realize that i can´t give a lot. There is not a lot that i can actually give, really the only thing that we have in this life that we can give is our will, and even that isn´t really ours but it is the only true thing that the Lord can never take away from us. And for that it is the only thing that we can truly give him. But i´ve made the decision that i don´t want to live ¨my life¨ i want to go where he wants me to go and do what he wants me to do so that is my goal for this change. To honestly forget my will and be enveloped in the work.

Well i suppose i could tell you all a little bit about my new comp, i just got him, his name is elder Jennings, he´s from utah, he´s short and he´s funny. Thats all i realy know right now! I just met him recently, meaning 2 hours ago. So yeah other than that life is good. I´m really looking forward to being able to talk to some of ya hopefully. I don´t know how that is all going to shake down, i´ll have to talk to my comp about that and let ya´ll know next week k? Cool beans.

A little about the work this past week. We found 2 new investigators! Woohoo! They are both females, one is around 20 and the other is around 40 and she has 3 kids! I´m super excited about her cuz she has a cousin that she hasn´t talked to in a while but is a member so were gonna help her get in contact with him, his son just got back from a mission so that is way aweseom! The only problem is that they live in florida so i don´t think that is gonna help much but she is just super ready to accept the Gospel so im excited for her! Melina, the girl who is about 20, contacted us, she´s pretty cool too the only prob is that she wants us to come teach her with her dad who is an ex professor at notre dame so that could be a bit of a problem.. not too much for the Spirit to handle though so i am not worried! That wraps up the work for the past week. We did a bunch of service and singing and stuff so that was cool but those are the only two people we found melina and loreta.

Not much else is goin down here. I do pray for each of you individually to have missionary experiences and i hope you´re having them! its super easy! Just bear your testimony of Jesus Christ and tell them they can have a better relationship with God through sincere prayer. They can also come to know that God loves them and has shown his love by calling a prophet in OUR times to guide us and help us in this difficult world. They can know all of this through prayer and tell them to do it!

Well i´m about outta time but i jsut wanted to say i love you all and hope that you are doing well! Your names are on the prayerlist of the temple here in Santiago!!!

Love

Elder Livingstone

and sorry if its hard to understand my emails. i don´t really think clearly so when i sit down and just typing out what happened this past week and some ideas that randomly pop into my head it can´t be really understandable either! sorry!!!!

a few pictures

(this is Elder Ben Christensen, Drew's quasi-brother who was serving in the North mission)

April 13, 2009

i don´t have a bunch of time this week like normal. heres what i sent to mom and dad! THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR YOUR LETTERS!!! i printed off 13 pages of reading matterial. let me tell you that was the best bathroom reading matterial ever. WAY better than any coldwater creek/ readers digest that this world has ever seen! please, please i beg you with all my heart to keep up that good work! i loved to hear all the missionary experiences that everybody had this week, kirk way to talk about the meaning of life with that guy, that is one of our things that we try to do in the mission, is ask people the questions of the soul and then testify testify testify like you said. that is all we can do, get people thinking and then testify with the spirit and then its up to them to deny the spirit or not. i wrote a short story below about that very thing, kinda sad, come to think about it i dón´t think i wrote anything really exciting from this week. it really was a good week! just a bummer letter i guess... sorry for that. something i´m super excited about is that we´re going to the temple this week!!! WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO i´ve been praying for that for the past couple of weeks cuz i miss it a ton and lo and behold! an answer to my prayers! Prayer is the key!!! alright gotta jet, love you all!

elder little brother livingstone

I really have begun to love the mission, not that i didn´t before but i am going to miss this place a lot when i have to leave. I´m sure that i won´t leave without a fight!!! This week has been another tough one. We really struggle to find people to teach in this sector. Part of the problem is that the people don´t really care to listen to us, the other part is that we aren´t doing enough to help them reckognize that they need this message in their life. I´ve written this phrase on the front of my planner so that i always see it ¨Love each and every one of them (chileans). Don´t let anyone walk away without feeling the love of Christ because that is the true power of conversion¨. Its a good goal for me to have but sometimes i get a little down on myself. Its tough to be Christ like when people laugh at your spanish or just sit there and yell obsenities at you for no good reason. This past week we were flipped off and i remember the talk that elder holland gave to the mission presidents( we got a copy from pres. Moran) he said ¨remember when you are rejeceted cast out, spit upon, made a hiss and a by word that you are standing shoulder to shoulder with the greatest life this earth has ever seen.¨ that quote cuts to my core every single time i read it. Wow. I loved his talk in conference, he´s such a smart man. So i felt a little bit of what he was talking about when those events happened this week. For one of the first times i really felt hated when these teenagers were throwing rocks at us. It wasn´t scary at all, i just realized how ignorant that Satan has made the world.

Last night we had another one of those moments where you realize how numb satan makes people. We were knocking and I made the question of the soul ¨have you ever wondered what Christ expects of you in this life?¨the guy came out and was really cool, we were talking about his time of easter and how we need to focus on Christ more and then his mom came out and was super lame. She was just shaking her finger saying were´roman catholics and not going to change a thing. It was really unfortunate to be driven off by an old lady who didn´t even listen to a word we have to say. WE PREACH OF CHRIST LADY!!! Do you read the bible!!! ¨By their fruits you shall know them¨ i´m not gonna say we did it perfectly but i know if that lady lived by what the bible teaches, love and charity and not turning away a single soul she would have realized and for that matter the whole world would realize that our message is true and that God has so much more for them than what they can provide for themselves in this world. Wow that was a weird tangent we just went on...

Cool story, its a little belated cuz it happened two weeks ago but two weeks ago i was eating these cookies that i had kept in my bag for a while. I bought the cookies like a month ago but didn´t open them until 3 weeks ago so i thought for sure they were gonna be good still. I ate one of the cookies without even looking at it and then as i was pulling the second one out of the bag guess what i saw!!! If you guessed worms you´re RIGHT!!! Hahaha yeah so i´m pretty sure i´m feeding a family of worms in my stomach right now and i´m almost positive that that is the case seeing as how my trips to the restroom have become more frequent with less time inbetween each one! So yeah, i don´t know what i´m gonna do. The doc has been outta town for a while but he got back this past weekend cuz he was having surgery himself. He´s a funny guy, there are tons of stories that go throughout the mission of his infamously dirty mouth, my comp claims to have heard him drop the S word but i don´t know if i believe it. Anyhow i´m prob gonna go see him sometime this week to get ¨bombed¨ as other missionaries have called the series of pills that kill off worms in your stomach... thats my fun story for this week!

Well time is running short, i´d better get outta here so that i can keep in line with the rules! I love you bunches and remember that always!!

Elder livingstone

March 30, 2008

HOLY COW!!!

Has it really been another week? This is crazy how fast the time flies. On one hand its awesome, on the other hand I realize I only have 19+ months left… yowsers! Sounds like a lot of time but when I started out with 24(that’s how long 2 years is right? Just kidding I know!!) anyways I see that I don´t have a whole lifetime to spend here and that makes me sad. Its crazy how the mission is, my emotions are through the roof awesome on top of the world one minute and then within like 5 minutes I experience the lowest of lows. Its like alma the younger felt when he was in his comma.. I love it cuz then I go right back up on the high end within minutes or hours but its just weird how it happens… like the story last week of how the baptism wasn’t going to happen but then it did. We had the same circus this week. Alejandra told us that she wasn´t going to be able to come to her confirmation this week in sacrament meeting. Yeah, that was the low part, she wasn´t going to be able to make it cuz her and her husband are on the outs at this moment. Meaning that he is living with his parents.. kinda sad but she knows that the church can help her find a better person that isn´t such a slob. Anyhow he wanted her to come to the park on Sunday so he could see their child and she had told him yes but luckily we were able to go over on Saturday to convince her not to do it but she had already made the decision to not do it. She told us that she wanted to have the Holy Ghost with her so she didn´t want to go to the park on Sunday! That was the high part!! I love it when people make good decisions on their own, obviously it is influenced by the spirit but I love it when they start to WANT to make the right decisions on their own. Not because we tell them that’s what God wants but when they can feel, in their own lives that that is what God wants. That’s when you know that they are really making the changes necessary in their lives! WOOOHOOO!!!

Things are going well here outside of that. It was a really slow week. We had the weekend/day of the day of Joven Combatiante. I think that means the day of youth combat or something.. anyways it was kinda lame because we had to go in early the whole week cuz there was riots and stuff!! EXCITING!! We heard people screaming in the streets and everything! Unfortunately we were not able to see any real violence or anything but I guess i´ll just have to wait until next year to see that stuff if i´m back in the ghetto at that time!!! Here´s to hoping! Haha yeah I don´t know why they have that day. Its kinda stupid, it’s a national holiday were they police don´t really stop any violence and they just let young people riot.. i´m still really confused, if anyone could Wikipedia it and get back to me i´d appreciate it cuz they tried to explain it to me many times this week(members) but I never really understood.. it could’ve been that I don´t understand Spanish still or it cuold´ve been… hm… yep i´m pretty sure its cuz I still don´t understand spansih!!haha just kidding, but seriously, everybody that’s not from chile say that the Chileans speak like garbage so thats why i´m still struggling, I guess the problem is that they speak really fast and they drop a lot of S´s at the end of words and some N´s so all the words just kinda mix together. Its hard to explain and even harder to understand so basically please just pray for me! Haha! Well I gotta jet but I hope that everyone is doing fine, I love to get letters from everyone! This week I got letters from Tito&gang, K+S+S, Mom and dad, Shan and Grandma.. if your name isn’t on that list feel bad. But don’t worry, there is hope, its called repentance and you can feel better by writing me!!!! Haha just kidding hugs kisses and everybody stop saying how excited they are for July!! Making me stinkin TRUNKY!!!

LOVES LOVES!!!

elder livingstone

March 23, 2009

Hola hola buenes dias!

Hey ya´ll how is life treatin ya? Life is good down here in the south of America. I´ve got a question for tyler, Heidi, jayson, brent, Kevin, nancy and all others who served at some point of there mission in a metropolitan part of their mission.. HOW DID YOU DO IT? Haha no i´m just playin, I really love it here in el golf. Its still a little tough cuz the people are kinda hard hearted and we can´t really make an effect contact through a speaker phone but were workin hard and doin all that we can to keep up the good work so that’s all that matters right? Lift where you stand is the saying.. so yeah, we´re lifting where we stand and we´re also super excited for the next time that we get to hear from that amazing German. Can you believe that conference is already here again! YES!!!! I´m kinda bummed I wont get to listen to it from the leather couches and comfort of the cabin but I guess all good things are worth waiting for right? Onto the real business.

It was really good to hear from everyone who wrote this past week. Mom and dad, Kevin amy, Heidi jayson, tyler nancy, and the rest thank you for your letters of support and update. Seriously I love to hear about the family and their ongoings, I wish I could be there to share the good times but I can´t at this moment so reading about them is the best that I can do.. in other words thank you for the letters and the rest of you, your slackers. But I still love you… hahaha I love the missionary mantle!

A little bit about my week. We had a pretty good week. Elder evans and I are really starting to get along. It took some days of just getting to work which was kinda tough. Especially since his girl friend dear johned him this week. What a jerk!! Haha and the worst part is that its to one of his good friends! But we both knew that the best way to get over a sick heart was some hard work so that is what we did! The sad part is that there is not a lot of new investigators to show for our hard work but on the plus side we did have a baptism! The great part is that it almost fell through. K that’s not the great part. The great part is that we can see that the hard work and prayer paid off this week. Alejandra was having some struggles with her husband, but we were there to comfort her and try to help her to overcome these things through the power of the spirit. We gave her a proclamation on the family which really helped and I think the fact that we sincerely were praying for her every minute of every day made the difference too. We truly saw the Lords hand in this work when we got a call Sunday morning that she wasn´t going to come to church or to her baptism. We prayed prayed prayed our hearts out that the conflicts with her husband would resolve themselves and lo and behold. We got a call an hour later (in Sunday school) that she was going to be able to make it! Hooray for the SPIRIT!!! So yeah, alls well that ends well. Unfortunately she thinks that she is going to be divorcing her husband in the next five months but on the plus side its because he is a really bad example for their child and so its in their best interest. .. and so that’s my super sweet story of the week. I´ve come the realization that I am horrible at telling stories and even worse at describing them through emails so yeah.. i´m sorry to all who read this and think that i´m just a big idiot who has no English skills but newsflash, you´re right!!

March 16, 2009

Hola amigos y amigas y familia!

Como estamos? I´m doing really well here after an initial week of tough work. It turned out to be a pretty good week after all but i´m not gonna lie. i was hating life after the first 12 hours in this sector. I have come to realize that the Lord is testing me in this sector. I´ve never been so homesick in my life.i´m not sure what the whole cause of it has been. Elder Evans and I had a rough couple of days where it seemed like we couldn´t agree on anything but in the end I just decided that I was going to follow his direction and do what it was that he wanted me to do. I gotta admit I don´t feel like i´ve learned a lot of Spanish or anything in this week but at least we are in unity right!?! Haha no its not really all that bad. To be honest its just this sector. Its freaken HUGE!! And I dunno, just might be huge for this mission but the second day I was here we decided we were gonna knock this street in the south end of our sector (we live in the middle) and it took us a freaken hour to walk there! It took us 20 minutes to walk from one end to the other in Sotero so that was a huge shock but I have gotten over it and have come to the realization that the work is going to be a lot slower in this area for a number of reasons.. 1 the people are hard hearted. 2 it’s a huge sector. When we set up an appt and it falls through the next day it’s a waste of the whole day cuz it takes us an hour to walk there and find out that it was a false address or something. 3 we freaken stop at every crosswalk and wait for the green walking man. Yeah, its just funny now but it was way annoying the first like 10 times when he told me he was uncomfortable crossing the crosswalk. Now I just laugh! Haha so yeah, on the plus side of life! We do have an investigator with a bap date for this week! Her name is Alejandra and she is super rad! She goes to church faithfully and yesterday she brought a friend with her too which was super cool! Anyways her struggles are the word of wisdom so please, PRAY! Yeah we´ve got faitht hat she can overcome these problems so hopefully our faith will be manifest next Sunday! Anyways i´m outta time I gotta bounce but I love you all and thank you for your support in everything! Elder evans and I are fine now so don’t stress that! We just couldn´t find out anything in common until like 2 days ago so now were cool and can PREACH TO THE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!

Love ya alls,

Elder livingstone

March 9, 2009

Whats up my family?

Things are good here in Chile Santiago este! I just got changed which is kinda lame cuz Elder Renshaw and I had just set out this killer plan to get the ward back on its feet but I guess he will just have to carry it out without me. I know he can do it and I also know that this is the Lords will that I am here right now. My new area is called las Condis. Yeah, I went from the southern end of the mission all the way up north. It took all of 45 minutes on a subway, which I think i´ve failed to mention up to this point, their metro system. Yeah it kills everything we have back in the USA. That thing is super clean, in more ways than one. It’s a super smooth ride, like butter, also its actually really clean. Like seriously where the heck am I right now? I thought I was going to south America? This place is stinkin baller. For reals I went from the ¨poor¨ part of Chile (not poor at all) just a little gangster, and now i´m in the flippin rich part of the country. My new comp, Elder Evans from Sac-town(sacramento, yeah, i´ve had two nor-cal comps now, kinda weird… or is it???) yeah so my new comp told me that this place was really quico. Meaning rich. Meaning the Hollywood of Chile. Yeah I didn´t believe him but he wasn´t lying. Its kinda a bummer because I was really looking forward to the baptisms and stuff that we had lined up(ana, because she fell through this past week) but now I get to deal with stinking filthy rich people. Can´t lie i´m kinda in a funk when I found out this information. But on the plus side, they have people who actually attend in their ward. Which means they have on average 100 peeps there. Not much compared to the strong wards back in the states but it kills Sotero Del Río. We had 40 people at church yesterday.. regardless i´m rattling on right now just saying worthless information.. lets start a new paragraph, shall we?

Ana- we worked our tails off and threw down a fecha(baptism date) on her this last Sunday, she accepted, told us she had some problems like tea and stuff, nothing too serious but the point is we got her to commit. Little did we know that Satan works really hard against us. K we knew that but we just were hoping he was takin a nap or something. He wasn´t. later on Sunday night she met with all her neighbors and family and they proceeded to shoot down the faith that we had built in her to the point that she is thinking that she is not ready again. What a joke. She´s been taking lessons since June. She always says that she ¨falts¨something. Yeah they only thing she falts is a tunica and a pila baptismal!!!! Bah.. anyways we set up a bunch of stuff for her this past week cuz she had a bunch more time cuz her kids started school etc. . but she bailed on going to the temple twice.. dutch! Anyways we got her to the FHE with the family in our ward that is super rad and we had a good spiritual lesson on faith, including cups, dirt, beans and water. Does anyone know what chapter we read? Bet you can guess!! It was really good and we invited her to attend church (for the 5^th time mind you) but she had to support her husband who ran a race or something lame like that yesterday. So end of story, she didn´t go, but that’s not the end of the story I guess cuz she´s gonna get baptized next week or the week after but that’s my experience with her. She´s cool and i´m glad to say that I was able to play a part in her being taught and stuff, 2 points God´s team, 0 for satan!

Yeah, so that’s that, we taught Felipe again on Thursday, we also had lunch with his whole family and taught them on Saturday which was really cool too but unfortunately the whole family was not able to attend this Sunday when he was confirmed a member of the church. Which was awesome by the way! I love it when people get converted, baptized and confirmed! Another point for our team!!! So yeah, his dad who has always been apposed to missionaries and churchs and such went to church on Sunday to see him get confirmed which was a big step. He even told us it was, he said i´m catholic and I´ve never let my wife´s JW´s(Jehovahs witness) friends even in the house to talk with her. Let alone let them teach him, which is exactly what we did! Quality! I love this work! I´m so glad i´m in it. Yeah, so anyways he´s a ¨devout catholic¨ in other words, he likes to claim the religion but never go. I love the catholics! Their base of members are great… seriously, if you want to be a lazy religious person in life, just claim to be catholic! They require nothing!!! And on the plus side you get to worship Cathorine or wherever their name comes from. All I knows is that they´re good people in general but their church is wrong. Wow, weird tangent I just got on.. I don´t know where i´m going with that..

Melanie, she finally got a job which means she had to make her first difficult choice in a long time and she chose… poorly.. she didn´t go to church this last week but she still was pretty dang spiritual when we met with her this week. So i´m not too worried about it. She told us she is going to make a compromise with her work so she can go to church at least 2 a month or something.. i´m just hoping she keeps her promise.

Yeah, I don´t really know what else to say so I will describe how it is here in my new area, called ¨le Golf¨ which translates to ¨the Golf¨ in English… turns out that in this sector we have chile´s largest golf course!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BLAH!!!!!!!! I CAN¨T PLAY AND AM THEREFORE GRIEVED MUCHISMO!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah, so basically when I found this out from my comp I was really ticked. On the plus side we can play tennis… I don´t know if that’s good or not. I know i´m no good at tennis so yeah, I got that workin for me. Anyways i´m gonna find a way to play, it will probably be when all ya´ll come to pick me up in 21 months but hey, I have to wait so you do too! Haha so basically what this all means is that its really rich here and that’s gonna be tough but my comp did tell me that they do have an investigator who is progressing very well so that’s tight, i´m stoked on that. Woot woot! Possums… yeah, a little more about the area, its got a ton of freaken sky-scrapers and stuff! BUENO! My comp says that most of the contacts that we make here don´t live in our area. Crap. And that most of the time we get invited into houses by the nannys, whom we cannot teach. Crap. So yeah, he says its really tough but that’s what people said about Sotero as well so i´m just not gonna pay any attention to that and work hard!

My comp. elder evans from sactown, he´s seems like a baller. Legit. He played basketball all in high school and so that is quality. Thankfully he doesn´t like the Kings. That could´ve been bad but yeah, he´s a tall white American(united statsian) like myself so we´ll do work here in Hollywood! Haha yeah, so he´s nineteen, has 8 months in the mission so were gonna ball like that! Two greenys speakin some excellent broken Spanish! PARTY ON WAYNE, PARTY ON GARTH! I don´t know much about him. I just met him and I get the feeling that he doesn´t speak much, like in general. He´s kinda reserved I mean so we´ll see how this goes cuz i´m not exactly the reserved type.. regardless this is gonna be good cuz I know that it is where the Lord wants both he and I so i´m excited! San Demos High School Football Rocks!

i´m outta time, i love you all and hope that life is treating you well!

love your little brother in chile,

elder livingstone

March 2, 2009

Family!

Hola how are we all doing? Things are great here in the South end of the world. Still hot, still dirty, and where i want to be and wouldn´t rather be anywhere else! Haha life is good, i´m really beginning to love life down here. There honestly is no where on the face of the earth i´d rather be right now than right here, right now, doing this work! I´m so glad to hear that life is good for everyone else back in the good ole united states and i´m glad that mom and dad are doing well in the craziest of continents, africa!

Kirk and family, i´m not gonna lie i cried when i heard about max. That definitly put a huge damper on the beginning of my week but i´m pretty sure that if the celestial kingdom is what we think it will be then our best buddies will be there too. And by the way felicitaciones on the baptism that you had this week! Way to go Josh buddy! Your on your way to eternal life! CONGRATTTTTS!

Yeah, heid´s thanks for sharing that story with everyone else. GROSS yet very entertaining... haha so i guess i won´t know til next week but did anyone in the family get an email from a ¨nelda aravena`? yeah, she is the bomb hma that is in our ward and if we want to baptize someone we just set up a family home evening with her and the investigator and it´s pretty much guaranteed! Ha no, its not that easy but yeah, her family is ballin and i´m glad that we´ve got good members like her.

Well things have been kinda crazy the past week. We´ve been workin real hard all week to get our investigators to progress.

Felipe – SE BAUTIZÒ AYER!!! Yes, this guy is amazing, he´s only 17 but he already wants to be a misionary! We´ve been working with him for less than 20 days now but he´s already stoked on the church. He loves the ward, the people, the feeling that he feels when he´s there, the only problem we´ve got is that he needs to have a deeper testimony of Christ i think. I dunno. He´s pretty solid but when he bore his testimony after his baptizm thats all he really talked about was the ward and stuff. On the plus side his whole famly showed up to the baptizm. We´ve been teaching his sister for a week now, her name is fernanda and before we even started teaching her she asked if she could get married in the temple with her boyfriend! Can you say elect! Yeah it was a pretty cool experience. Anyways his whole family came to the baptizm which is awesome cuz they are pretty catholic but we were able to talk to them at the baptizm and followed up with teaching them yesterday afternoon a killer first lesson! Yeah i´m super stoked right now which means i´m probably in for a humbling experience real soon but i´m just gonna keep a smile on and keep workin hard!

Ana- We were still hitting a brick wall with ana, the lady who has all the doubts but i think we finally overcame them last night! Booya! I invited her to get baptized and she said yes! Little did we know that she drinks tea like every day. Yeah that kinda sucks but we commited her to not drink it at all today until we can get back to her tonight and lay the smack down, aka word of wisdom.. yeah, so lifes good, her and her 3 kids should be gettin baptized this week. PLEASE PRAY! Yeah, so we bought her some stuff that she can drink to try and overcome her addiction to tea. So that was a huge highlight of yesterday, missionaries have been teaching her since june of last year so this is a HUGE thing! We are seriously way stoked on this!

Well family i really want to share more but i´m straight up outta time, this kinda stinks that i never have any time to write ya´ll. They give us an hour to write, one letter to the presidente every week which takes a bit of time, then i print out all the letters from ya´ll and read them and then i have just a bit of time left to send an email out so yeah, here it is! I love you all. Thank you all for your support and love, i hope that life is treating all of you well and that things are going well.

Much love, well wishes and prayers sent in your direction,

Elder livingstone