Week 17

This Saturday will mark 4 months in the mission for me. I cannot believe it.  I am so happy to hear from all of you every week. It lifts me up and I am so grateful for all your support and all your love. I cannot thank you enough.

This week has been very interesting. We worked a lot. We tried everything we could to find new people. We tried, experimented, and analyzed every little thing about our work. We've created plans and specific ways for our schedule to work so that we can find the people that are prepared to receive the gospel.

Monday.

A really average P day. We had a nice relaxing day getting ready for the week. Elder Layton went on a cleaning spree once again. Our house is looking nice! We left to work that afternoon and left with the grandfather of the Ferreira family. He showed us where an inactive and part member family lives. We set up a visit for the next Tuesday. We contacted, and worked really hard to find people the rest of the day.

Tuesday.

We had a special district class because Elder Layton and I were the only ones who were able to bring someone to church with a baptismal date. It was an intense set of workshop oriented classes. We were all fired up as a zone. After that, Elder Ramirez and I had a mini cambio. It was a long day. It was the hottest day so far in Nonguen. I think it peaked at 30 degrees celcius with 100% humidity. We were dying. Nevertheless, we went at it and worked. I scrambled around with my plans, and it felt like Elder Ramirez was just kind of observing me the whole day. At moments it was frustrating because things just fell through and I didn’t know what I really could do. We had a so so lesson with Armando and Rosa and nothing really got accomplished other than giving them a strong commitment to pray for an answer about the Book of Mormon and the church. We returned after a long day in the heat and we talked about the day. Elder Ramirez told me that my Spanish sucked and I have hardly made any improvements. It destroyed me. I just quietly finished planning and went to bed.

Wednesday.

We changed back into companionships and got back to work as usual. With a humbled heart, I pushed as hard as I could to find people. We went up this huge hillside in sector D. We found a few decent future investigators and had some good visits with some members. It was a really foggy and eerie looking kind of day. Elder Layton wasn’t feeling his best either.

Thursday.

We had a really usual day to start. In the morning we had a meeting with our newly moved in and newly called Elders quorum president. He is completely new here and is really fired up to get to know Nonguen, the ward, and fire up missionary work here. We discussed how we can get the members involved and how they can help us find more people. We also discussed how we can get the ward to be more self- sufficient. It was great and us three are really excited to get things rolling. The afternoon was good. We were knocking doors in Independencia and we found a less active family. The 18 year old girl has recently felt the need to go back to church but she didn’t want to go alone. We found them in a time of need and had a great lesson. It was a cool experience. We left with the relief society president and tried to go visit some people she knew. None of them really panned out. We then visited a few members and finished the night up.

Friday.

I had my first interview with President Arrington that morning. It was amazing. We talked about a bunch of stuff and about how I’m doing. He gave me some great pointers and I left there feeling lifted up and ready to work. It’s been a bit hard to work as hard as we could because Elder Layton has been going through some health issues and never really feels stable or good. He is always deathly tired and we are going to be doing some medical tests this week to find out what’s really wrong with him.

With renewed confidence we left to work. We visited a few members and got a few references. We also had a great lesson with an old investigator and his girlfriend, Felipe and Vivana. We taught about the plan of salvation and they were really receptive. The spirit was powerful and it went over well.

We looked for people to teach the rest of the day. We realized towards the end that contacting was just not leading us to find anyone. We were just losing time. We returned to our house and made some adjustments and worked out a plan to better find people to teach.

Saturday.

We did a bit of service in the morning cutting some grass and throwing some rocks. That did Elder Layton in. His body didn’t take it well. And he had to take it easy for half the day. We left for the latter part, and visited Miriam, Armando and Rosa, and one of our new investigators Lisseth. It turned out to be a better day. We didn’t get Lisseth to accept a baptismal date, but she accepted to go to church.

Sunday.

Good day. We had a good church meeting. The only investigator who could come turned out to be Andrea. We haven’t been able to visit them in 2 weeks so it was amazing to still see her committed to go to church. They are a very committed family. We had good meetings and we had an opportunity to invite people to work with us this week. We got a lot of people to accept. We were really excited. We had a great lunch with the Ojeda family and had a great weekly planning session. After that we had a great lesson with Andrea and Marcelo. They aren’t really familiar with any kind of religion so we broke things down to the basics and we talked about Jesus Christ and his gospel. The spirit was strong. We also discussed about their situation about not being married. Turns out that the only reason that they aren’t is because they just never got around to it and Andrea wanted to be married in a church. We talked about eternal families and the blessings of that. They now want to get married. It was great. We visited the Chaves family and the Ruminot family. It was a great night.

Monday.

We haven’t done much today. I got a haircut and we cleaned up and got here in the centro. That’s about it.

This week was kind of lack luster to be honest. Like I said, we’re finally going to see what’s wrong with Elder Layton and get things rolling in Nonguen. This is the last week of the cambio so I’m going to give it all I have.

I know this letter is kind of short but there really isn’t much to talk about this week. I still want you all to know how much I love you and appreciate you. You are everything to me. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to be in Chile. It is a blessing to be with these people. I love them. I love the gospel and the happiness it brings. I love my Heavenly Father. I love my Savior. He is my friend. I am so grateful for his atonement.

Until next week! I love you all! Have a great week.

Elder Ethan Haws