Week 84 (May 4, 2015)

Wow... I’m going to be completely honest. This week was insane!!!

We didn’t have a very eventful first part of the week, but it all turned around when we had something called the mini mission.

So on Thursday we had our half p-day arrangement and went to the Huascar in the morning. It was a really cool zone activity and it was fun being on a boat and everything.

Thursday afternoon we started to stress because we had a lot of appointments and the members we were going to take with us bailed. So we had to replace them. Elder Hepworth went mad and started calling EVERYONE. He called 21 people before he found someone who could help us out. It turned out to work nicely. We got the vision at the end and we felt really content.

That same afternoon we went and looked for our new little mini missionary. The youth here have an annual activity called the mini mission where they go out and do splits with us for a weekend. They come to live with us in our sectors. Since there wasn’t quite enough to have one for each of us we just made a trio. We picked up our joven, and his name is Hermano Bravo. (Hermano in the place of elder). We had a great weekend together. We worked our guts out and got a lot of work done. We passed all expectations and got the vision 4 times in a row. Neither I nor Elder Heppy had ever done that before and we felt so awesome after getting something so huge for the sector.

It rained like crazy all day on Saturday. We walked all over the place and we got soaked. Hermano Bravo didn’t bring any rain stuff and we could only find a waterproof jacket in the house. He went without rain pants. HE GOT SOAKED. It was only slightly uncomfortable.

We are making some good progress with our focus group but they just lack baptismal dates. Everyone is being really lazy. We are pushing as hard as we can, they just don’t want to commit.

We are working on finding more people who can really progress. We are tired of finding people who aren’t married because they never want to do anything about it. It’s just insanely complicated.  We have contacted a lot of good people and I feel optimistic about it all.

So the biggest news of all is probably that of cambios.

Elder Hepworth is leaving and I am staying. It’s a shame because Elder Hepworth and I got along really well and he already has become one of my best friends. We had many great times and conversations in these last few weeks.

And that is not all

I have been assigned to be a trainer! I will be looking for my hijo tomorrow! I am so nervous but excited for this opportunity! It just reminds me of when I got in the mission.

Thank you so much everyone for all that you do. I love you and I feel your prayers. May all of you have a great week!

Elder Ethan Haws

Week 83

 Elder Haws playing "Come Thou Fount" in a guitar shop

April 27, 2015

This week was good. It was jam packed with the regular stuff.  Monday we had Physical therapy which means we just got contacts done and I updated my journal.  P-day was on Tuesday and our activity failed so we had a quite regular day.  Wednesday we had Physical therapy which means we just got contacts done and I wrote even more in my journal.  The rest of the week was good.

Thursday I had a nice mini cambio with Elder Withers from Idaho. He is my zone leader and he came up to my sector to help me out a bit and we worked hard. Out of a miracle we got the vision and we were able to find a new family that I believe that will progress. They are actually our next door neighbors! We were just wandering desperately around in the night just trying to kill the last 15 minutes of the day on finding and I just felt like knocking on the neighbor’s door. And then all of a sudden a lady comes up from behind with keys in her hand and greets us. She was just getting back home from work as a dental assistant. We told her we were sharing the ‘because he lives’ video and she hesitantly let us in. We had a great short lesson and they accepted to be baptized. They didn’t want to put a date yet but we went back later in the week and talked to them about lots of doubts and questions they had. They have very good and healthy doubts that will actually help us teach them better. I think if we can continue teaching them regularly, they will progress really nicely. The family name is Barrientos Chamorro.

I’m teaching plenty of lessons and classes. I’ve never been so overwhelmed with so much to teach. I find that it is helping me a ton with expressing things and its teaching me how to teach.

On Saturday we had our cleaning day and stake conference. That means we had ABSOLUTLEY 0 time to work on Saturday we had to get out of stake conference early just to get contacts done. Also on Saturday I got sick with all the other missionaries in Centinela. Just a nasty common cold.

Sunday we had a good conference. The building was full. There were great messages and my district brought a lot of people to church. We are progressing very very well here. I am content with all that we are accomplishing. We are seeing good things. We almost got another point but we lost our member to go with us… So close……

I am learning tons about the gospel lately. Elder Hepworth and I are learning mutually from each other. It is a great companionship. He is really helping me out with family history. I am now addicted to family history…. Watch out family when I get home I’m going to be getting all of you hooked!

Thank you for all that you guys do! I love you all so much! I hope you guys have a great week!! I miss you and love you tons!! Until the next week!

Elder Ethan Haws

Week 82

April 20, 2015

Wow we are getting really far into my time in the mission! Every week is just soaring by now.

So this week we had a lot of extra stuff to do. We lost lots of precious time to work because we had to deal with mini cambios, physical therapy, special conferences, and investigator interviews…. We were running all over the place this week!

So Elder Hepworth is doing well with his physical therapy. His leg is just getting slightly better, not completely, but yes he is making progress. The traveling we have to do to get to Concepcion takes a ton of time. It’s an hour there and an hour back. So on Physical therapy days we don’t have much time to be working and visiting which kind of stinks.

On Saturday we had an awesome special conference where Dallin H. Oaks came and talked to all the missions here in Chile through a conference. His talk was amazing. He taught us many incredible things. It was awesome having a somewhat personal talk from an apostle. He talked about being FULL time missionaries, the spirit, prayer, commitments, and opened our eyes on the atonement talking about Alma 7:11-12. I was so inspired. I received the answers that I needed. We also had a very inspiring zone conference this week and it was very spiritual. It was also very direct.

Right after the conference we travelled back from Chillán and went back to our sector to have lunch and work. Right before we were about to leave, it started to rain. It was the first rainstorm of the season. And it didn’t let up one bit. It poured for the rest of the night. Let’s just say that by the end both my companion and I were drenched. It was a fun but a bit uncomfortable day! Hooray for the winter season!!

Our week was good work wise. We are moving slowly with the same investigators as always and nothing too interesting happened with any of them.  But we did contact a new family and we will be visiting them this week. We are excited to invite them to baptism.

So not to much happened in the week besides extra events. We are having a great time and our companionship is doing great. I am having a blast with tons of things to do. I am truly content!

Thank your for all your support and love! I love all of you so much! You are the greatest! Until next week!

Elder Ethan Haws

Week 81

This week was a pedal to the metal kind of week. We didn’t have a ton of cool stuff happen, just had a lot of hard work to do.

Famous…. among children:

So Elder ‘’Heppy on the beats’’ as people call my companion here has made himself quite the star among the flaite kids here. Even though they sometime harass us and treat us terribly, those things are changing now due to my companions rapping skills. There are literally times where we will walk down a street and then out of no-where a herd of kids comes running up to us and starts shouting ‘’HEY MAN, RAP!!! COME ON JUST RAP!’’ I chuckle a bit and I start the whole beatbox thing and then he just whips out a Mormon rap. I’m talking about classics like ‘’Teach Me How to Jimmer’’, some songs from Sons of Provo, and some missionary rap songs that are pretty classic. The kids just laugh and think we’re awesome!

Elder Hepworth is a magician as well. I mean, he knows a ton of magic tricks and we get people and those kids pretty good sometimes. It’s pretty entertaining.

The District:

The district is doing well. Our main challenge is finding people to teach. We have been talking about it a lot as a district. For my Tuesday class I talked a lot about it and talked about what Mosiah 28: 3-4 means to us.

 3 Now they were desirous that salvation should be declared to every creature, for they could not bear that any human soul should perish; yea, even the very thoughts that any soul should endure endless torment did cause them to quake and tremble.

 4 And thus did the Spirit of the Lord work upon them, for they were the very vilest of sinners. And the Lord saw fit in his infinite mercy to spare them; nevertheless they suffered much anguish of soul because of their iniquities, suffering much and fearing that they should be cast off forever.

Basically I talked about getting that desire at all times. It’s really important having that testimony going strong at all times. We talked about a lot of other things, and I felt like I gave a good class. I am feeling much more confident and comfortable in the classes I give. It’s a good feeling trying to serve and inspire not only missionaries but members and other people.

Our work week.

So we tried passing by Alexis multiple times and every time we had a fixed appointment he had an excuse as to why he couldn’t visit. We passed by his house on Sunday on our way to church and he said he would go and he didn’t show up. So we are moving on…

We are making slow but steady progress with the Parra Lopez family. They haven’t decided on a marriage date but I feel like they are getting close. The dad, Mario, has something buried deep because he still won’t go to church no matter what we do to commit him. We are going to have to pull him aside and really find out what is going on.

We had a great time teaching our investigators Yoanna and Griselda. They are liking the gospel. Especially about temples. We just explained all that to them and they loved it. Griselda has to get married and Yoanna has to drop smoking.

That’s where we stand with our investigators. We have some pretty good futures to visit in the week, so we hope we will find someone pretty cool.

That is about it for this week. I felt the spirit a lot and I know that I was strengthened spiritually! I love being in the Lords service. There is no other calling I would ever want over this one.

I love you guys so much! Thank you for all that you do! I hope you have an incredible week! Until the next one!

Elder Ethan Haws

Week 80

Week 80

Wow, what a week. We had an incredible work filled week.

Here are some highlights.

Wait, where are you from?

Perhaps the thing that I’m enjoying most now is walking down the street and talking with everyone. Why? Well, when I start to talk to them they just look at me weird for a second and then ask… ‘’wait, where are you from?’’ They then go on to say that they are surprised because I can speak Spanish clearly, and better than most of the gringos they had ever seen. I feel pretty awesome about that after all the hard times I went through to get to this point. Most actually think I’m Chilean sometimes and that is awesome to me.

Lightning, tremors, fog and predictions:

We’ve seen some interesting natural events and weather here lately. Up north in Copiapo, they were affected with those huge landslides and rain because it hasn’t rained in 20 years up there. Down here we are unnaturally dry. It’s supposed to be rainy and basically winter weather but we are just seeing sunshine most of the time. Yeah, it’s getting colder but it is really different than what it should be. We have also had some serious fog on the hill for the last few days… Its super thick fog, sometimes it’s almost as thick as I’ve ever seen fog get….

We are seeing a lot of tremors lately. I personally haven’t felt a single one because we are walking around all day but there is one nearly every other day now. Scientists are coming out with reports that the continental plates are following the same exact pattern that it did in 2010 when Concé got rocked with that huge earthquake. Most people are antsy now because it was exactly how it happened 5 years ago…. So we’ll have to see if an earthquake rolls by sometime.

Also, I forgot to mention this but on my first day in the sector we had a lightning storm come over the sector all day. It was SO awesome hearing the boom of thunder again. Oh man it made me pretty trunky for Utah weather, I’m not gonna lie.

Alexis:

So we got an awesome reference from some hermanas from another sector. They said that this was the brother of an awesome member in their ward. They said he was golden, so this week we immediately passed by. We got into his house and then started to talk. He’s this really chill 23 year old guy who was really friendly. In our lesson we found that he has been meeting with missionaries for years now and has read the book of Mormon all the way through, and has been waiting to get baptized. Our jaws dropped right open…. We were shocked.  We put him with a baptismal date and then committed him to church (or general conference and he said he had time for any session). We walked out of that lesson so grateful for that blessing and we were just on top of the world.

Turns out he had stuff come up in the weekend and procrastinated getting to the chapel so he didn’t make it. Also we found out he has a complicated work schedule so we are just going to see how this whole thing works out. I hope we can coordinate so that we can have a good baptism soon.

Parra Lopez:

This is an incredible family that we have been working with. They are making good progress. The parents are Margarita, and Mario. Their daughters are Noemi, Laura, and Escarlet. Margarita and Mario aren’t married and Laura is 13 and hasn’t been baptized. Margarita isn’t a member either. So we are working with them so that they can get married, get baptized and get sealed together. We had one of the best lessons ever this week and invited them all to conference. They even accepted to start to prep for marriage and eventually get sealed. Elder Hepworth made up a really cool card magic trick that taught that lesson well. It was great.

Turns out that Mario, even after being strongly committed to go to church, hasn’t gone to church once during the time Elder Hepworth has taught him. There is definitely something deeper. We will have to see what we can do to get the whole family going. Margarita and the daughters are eating the gospel up. They love it.

General conference:

I loved conference and definitely learned a lot.  I think that my 3 favorite talks were from Wilford W. Anderson, Elder Eyring in the priesthood session, and Elder Hollands (that’s always a classic). I loved the spirit that came with those talks. It was a powerful 5 sessions. I love general conference. It was a good time to rest a bit, but still mentally exhausting from all the doctrine I learned. It was just what I needed and answered all of my personal questions at the moment. I am looking forward to studying the talks.

Elder Hepworth and I are doing good work. We are having lots and lots of success. I’ve never been so blessed in my mission. We are having a blast out here. I am definitely more content than ever. Sure, I am exhausted from all these new responsibilities but I feel God’s hand more than I ever have in my life guiding me on and helping me up. I love the lord’s work. And I love being in his service.

Thanks for everything guys. I love you so much, and I am so grateful for your messages and inspiration. Thank you for all that you do for me. I love you all and I miss you.

Until next week.

Elder Ethan Haws

Week 79

Phew, that was possibly the longest week of my life!

District leader!  The stresses and the blessings:

What can I say; being district leader has been, I believe, the craziest thing that has happened to me in my mission to this point. I never believed I would be this busy with responsibilities and be so blessed with the energy to continue onward in the mission. It is the most amazing time of my mission!

My district is awesome. It’s me, Elder Hepworth, Elder Watts and Bennion (the two biggest missionaries in the mission, having played football and all) and two Hermanas: Johnson and Fernandez.

I had a good district class on Wednesday. I prepared a ton being stressed and all and ended up using like 10 minutes of it all for the entire hour and a half……  The responsibilities are many, but after doing so many things I don’t know what happens but I still feel like going out and giving all I can to the work.

I feel like my mission has been like this….  I got to the mission and metaphorically it was like showing up at a huge long road for driving the best cars in the world. All of a sudden someone pulled up and gave me the opportunity to ride in a Lamborghini to advance down this road. Others also had the same opportunity. I got in and started off well, and as I went down I had technical issues and the car didn’t seem to be shifting right. Others sped past me and I struggled to get really going; not really knowing how to drive the thing. But as time went I got control, I launched the thing down the road racing down as far as I can to make up for the lost time.

I feel like I am finally making some really good progress here in the mission. I think things are starting to all make sense and become more than natural. I feel a power with giving my all to the savior. I no longer have anytime to do anything for myself. It is ALL to him. There is a power that I have felt from that this week. I feel incredibly happy, and incredibly satisfied.

 The sector!

First off the scenery in the sector is fantastic. I felt so good from going to just seeing run down and ugly buildings and apartments to being on massive hills, next to forests and getting raw views of the sea. I'll be taking lots of pictures. It is a BEAUTIFUL place.

Despite the beauty, it is a bit dangerous. Not nearly what I thought it was going to be but still we have had scary looking guys come up to us at night and you just feel like they are going to rob you. But we just talk them out of it by contacting them and the spirit helps them away. I’m not even joking, it’s awesome seeing Gods protection!

So Centinela was once two wards and a branch, and now it’s just a branch. It reminds me of the feelings that were in Retiro. It’s just like going back there and dealing with the same dramatic things, so just look forward to hearing about that stuff again.

I’m so happy to be in Centinela we have many possible baptisms coming up and the sector had really been doing well for some time now.

 My companion!

My companion Elder Hepworth is awesome. I don’t think I’ve gotten along with a companion so quickly and so well than anyone else. We are already great friends. We are working hard and I think that is the best part of it all: we do good work. We had a great work week and we saw great things happen. I’m just content with it all. He is a professional at Family History work as you can see here…

 https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2015-01-04-sam-hepworth-mission-prep-video?lang=eng

He has already taught me a bunch of things. It’s going to be a great transfer with this guy. I am so blessed with what I have at the moment.

Also in our little house we are 4 elders that live together. There’s me and my companion, and Elder Copling from Herriman and Elder Smoot from Pleasant grove. We’re all from Utah and live really close!! It’s a pretty hilarious group we have here.

The initiative:

So the best highlight of it all is possibly the whole initiative that we have going on… I’m sure you guys have heard and seen the ‘’Because He Lives’’ video, and if you haven’t…

http://www.mormon.org/easter?cid=HP_FR_3-27-2015_dMIS_fMRMN_xLIDyL1-A_

We are going ham with this whole thing and sharing it with everyone. So I invite all of you to do the same whether it is on social media or in person, you need to share this. It is incredible to know that our savior lives and guides his church. It is so comforting to know that we are a part of his church and he cares for every one of us. He suffered more than we can comprehend and invites us to come unto him and accept his help. We need to share the good news as much as possible.

The week was very long but very rewarding. I am looking forward to the week especially general conference where we will get to hear from our prophet. It’s like Christmas to me I swear. I love it so much.

I love all you guys! Thank you so much for your support. Until next week! Have a great week!

Elder Ethan Haws!

Week 78

Saying goodbye 

Elder Haws with the Castillo Family

 Cleaning day

Week 78!

Wow! It was a good closer for the transfer and good end to my time here in Concé. Yep, today there were big changes and the future is looking bright.

This week was challenging and somewhat uneventful because our sector is going through a refining process right now. It’s like the ground is covered in mounds of dead leaves that aren’t doing anything good and we are just raking out the all the debris and waste. Its time for a cleaning of the sector. So this week the sector will be focused on finding!

We passed by many people and nearly all were gone. It seemed like we couldn’t progress with anyone. We tried to coordinate but things fell through, so hence we had a week of cleaning out people from our focus group and we are starting over again.

We had funny experiences though. On Thursday, I believe, we were walking down the street and we get to a certain negotio and a drunk man came out loudly and abruptly to greet us. I decided that I would have a little fun. He first asked me nearly shouting, ‘’Hey! Are you a gringo?!’’ I said, ‘’Yeah obviously....’’ and then he went on to telling me every single false detail about World War 2 and about Germany. It was the weirdest thing watching him scream ‘’AND THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS DIED.’’ So in the midst of this serious little conversation, I decided to ask him a serous question. I interrupted in mid sentence and asked with the best poker face I could muster, ‘’hey! Do you like elephants?’’ He paused and said calmly, ‘’Yes, yes I do... Yeah they are beautiful creatures…’’ And then he went on to babbling about the war and Germany and stuff. Not 10 seconds later I interrupt, ‘’Hey! Do you like giraffes?!’’ He paused and thought for a bit and looking confused he said, ‘’ No, no giraffes are weird…… I don’t like 'em’’ He then looked at me and then declared ‘’Well, all this happened but the thing I like the most is the Pacific!’’ and I said ‘’Oh yeah! There are penguins there too, right?!’’ He looked at me for a second and then went on. I gave up and we just thanked him and said ‘’we’ll see you later.’’ We couldn’t stop laughing. In such a weird moment trying to be serious we had the strangest conversation ever.

This week we had another cleaning day and we got the house super clean. We even spent time finishing up the painting of the house. It looks really nice now. I’m sad I’m going to have to leave the place.

So yeah Cambios….

I am going to Talcahuano Norte.....

Centinela!

The most flaite - ghetto sector in the mission.  (So I’ve heard)

I am now District Leader

It is the same sector Elder Froerer went to right after I was with him. He rescued that branch.

I will be with elder Hepworth; He is a really cool guy, one of the coolest missionaries in the mission. He is sick. He is young with only 4 cambios in the mission and is fearless. He is the son of an assistant. Its real close to conce! I am going there with missionaries that I have known for a long time. We will see how this all goes! Ive never set foot in Talcahuano and I'm clueless to what its like, but Centinela is a sector

that is one GIANT hill. So looks like every day is going to be a leg work out. its right out on  the sea, like a peninsula. Its going to be an interesting sector for sure.

I am stoked for the new opportunities that are up ahead. I am going to work my guts out like never before. It will be a good time!

Thank you all so much for all your love and for your support. I love you all and miss you all. I love you guys! I hope your week is awesome. I’m sure mine will be loaded with experiences.

Elder Ethan Haws