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

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!!