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