Week 28

Wow, the week flew by this time. Week by week, we grow here in Retiro. We had a really polar opposite week. It went by really slow and rough the first few days and suddenly changed to great days after Friday. 

We have been adjusting to the fall weather here.  All the leaves are falling and the skies are getting cloudier. It sure is getting colder. The humid cold is something interesting too. No matter what you do, at times you just have to deal with being cold. 

The week was very interesting. 

Monday. 

It was a hard day. Our citas fell and we were forced to stay out contacting to get our goals for a long time. It was really cold so a lot of people weren't out and about. I tried real hard to spark us into working with serious excitement. We contacted late into the cold Chilean night. 

Tuesday. 

We had a good District class to open the week and had a really cool experience practicing with Elder Rhodes one of the Zone Leaders. We practiced contacting in the street, and I shared a small message about the restoration and applied it to his needs. By the end we were in tears by the spirit. It was really cool. 

We had an ok day of work. Again, lot of our appointments fell and we were left to contact a lot. We found a lot of new's, but were unfortunate to not be able to visit with Pilar, Carmen and Carina, or any other investigators we had. 

Wednesday.

We had an interesting day we got sucked into helping a former investigator named Guillermo by helping him send in some work applications that were in English. After that we had a meeting with our ward mission leader, Luis Ivan. We made plans for future activities here in Retiro in the coming weeks. For the rest of the day we went around trying to get our appointments to work, but most people had left. So we contacted and found some really cool futures. 

Thursday. 

We witnessed a miracle as we found a woman who has had her oldest daughter, spouse, and good neighbor friend die in the last couple years. In fact her neighbor died this week. She is stricken with the tragedy of death. She is really prepared to hear the gospel. We were able to have a brief visit and we shared a overview of the Restoration. We will be coming back to visit her the next week. We went around trying to visit our other investigators but most were busy. We were getting really frustrated. No one is remembering our appointments even when we verify the night before. It was just getting us really down. We mostly did contacts as well. We also were able to visit the recent convert, Eliana, for the first time in a while. We had a really good visit. We were able to hit it off good, and talk openly. It was cool.

Friday.

Friday scared us. We got the news on Tuesday that we were going to have a mini cambio with THE ASSISTANTS on Friday. We were stressed the whole week, and wondering, why us? We prepared all week to have a good day Friday. In the morning we went to Parral, and had a training on the new rules of contacts and planning for successful days. We ended and we headed back to Retiro with Elder Evans. He is now a traveling assistant and is going around visiting the mission with my old zone leader Elder Ramirez. I’ve gotten to know Elder Evans pretty well because Elder Layton is good friends with him and when we stopped by the office I always talked with Elder Evans. He is one cool guy. We headed back and had a really good lunch with the Uribe's. Ran out to work a while after and we worked our guts out. We learned a great way to have very direct contacts and to work more efficiently. We had two major things happen. 

1. We found a guy named Eugenio. Hes 70 years old and lives alone. He’s like an old Chilean cowboy and he was really slow to understand us. We taught the restoration in the simplest manner possible, and we committed him to baptism and conference. He accepted. 

2. We had a great visit with Carmen and Carina. They let us in and we were able to explain the restoration very clearly. We committed them to baptism and they accepted. The spirit was strong. 

We ended the night by cooking up a few burgers and planning for the next day. It was a ton of fun.

Saturday.

We mostly just spent the day in Parral watching the satellite broadcast in English. They don’t broadcast to Retiro so we would have to rely on slow internet there to watch it. We chose to just spend the day here and sleep over. We set up a tv in the high council room on the second floor and had a great time just E Froerer, Rhodes, Price, and I. 

Sunday. 

We had our ward members get mad at us and drama was going on so we had to come back to Retiro and set up conference there. After some tweaking we got the conference to work for the Sunday afternoon session. We missed most of Sunday morning. We cooked lunch in our own house and planned for the week. We also helped a recent convert named David with his English homework. 

I loved hearing the messages from conference. It was a truly amazing conference. I thought it was very interesting how the prophet and apostles frequently warned of and spoke of:

-hard times and challenges

-kindness

-the restoration

-and the importance of keeping and defending the faith no matter what

In these crazy times of the world, we will surely have our testimonies tried. The prophets have directly said that every single one of us will have to stand up for our testimonies and our faith. The times will come. I hope and pray that we may be able to stand strong enough to beat the bullies, outlast the persecutions, and defend the faith at all times. We must have courage to do so. We have to be doing the little things like scripture study, prayer, and attending church every day/week. I know that if we do so we will have our foundation structured on Christ and we will never fall. We may be buffeted, but we can always get back up through the atonement. I love the gospel so much. - 'It isn’t weight, Its wings' - I am so grateful for the opportunity to serve the Lord with my whole heart. I love every one of you so much. I hope your week goes fantastic. I pray for you all and miss you all so much. I love you. Until next week

Elder Ethan Haws