September 16, 2013

Hey everyone, how are things going?

Things are going well back here in Chile.  I can't believe that time has flown by so fast.  I have now officially been on my mission for 22 months now.  Just so that you know, I will be flying out of here on November 18th and arriving home on the 19th in the morning.  But honestly, that doesn't even seem real.  It hasn't hit me that I will have to start worrying about things at home in not all that long.  I really don't know what is going to happen to me before I leave here.  It is possible, although not likely, that I end my mission here in this area.  I would honestly really enjoy having that opportunity to stay here and keep helping the people in this branch.  I have really grown to care very much about each of the members here.

This week has gone well as far as missionary work goes.  We found a new family that seems really good.  Hopefully they will start progressing and learning a lot during these coming weeks, but they honestly seem just golden.

The family that we are working with whose children are not baptized all went to church, including the dad.  Hopefully he will soon be ready to be able to baptize his children and then continue progressing until they can be sealed in the temple.

The other family (the really big family that we starting working with) also is starting to progress.  The mom went to church again (for the third time) with one of her daughters and is very excited to keep coming and keep making the necessary changes in her life that will help her to have the blessings of the gospel more fully personally and in her family.

This week we will have all of the parties here on the 18th and 19th.  I'm not exactly sure what we are going to be doing here for my birthday yet, but it should be fun spending some time with the members.  This time gets really hard for missionary work because everyone leaves or has visits, so it is generally hard to be with a lot of people teaching, but we will have to just see how it all goes.

Well I don't have all that much new for now.  I hope that all is going well with everything back there.  Good luck with everything, and I'll talk to you all soon.

Elder Stollenwerk