5.9.11

Jared with his MTC companion in Concepcion

Stuff i forgot to tell you in the call last night... well things are still good as always. we´re teaching tons of people right now, but that doesnt mean much, cuz its only like a 1 out of 5 baptism rate here :P but all of our investigators are really solid. the only thing is that didnt come to church yesterday! :P so that was a bummer, and now we have to set their baptismal dates back cuz you have to attend church 3 time before you can get baptised. But they´re all great people. And they have so much faith. Its the most beautiful thing ever hearing the prayer of a brand new investigator. at the end of every first lesson we always invite them to say a prayer at the end. they´re
always nervous and dont want to, but we just bow our heads and wait haha and when they start to pray its so cool. They´re just like "Heavenly father..... ummmmm thank you.. for my family and for these missionarys... please bless us with health and please bless my grandma that is sick, cuz she´s a good person, and i like to go over to her house and have lunch." and then they just start really having conversations, its so  so so cool. and i think my favorite thing to see is poeple changing their lives. Actually it was kinda funny, this week, we were talking with this street vendor that i bought a little hand made, bone, pocket knife from, and he was smoking a siggarett, and we were like "ya know you shouldnt do that, its just wasting money and not good for you" and he´s like "huh. yeah ur right" then we left and didnt think anything of it. and then saw him on the street again a few days later, and he came up to us and was like "hey! I took your guy´s advice and i stopped smoking! look, i just use mints whenever i want a ciggarett!" i just thought wow. what the heck, we try and try to get some people to stop smoking so they can be baptised, but they never really do, and this guy we talked to ONCE stopped smoking completely. it was funny. but i think going to go visit him sometime this week and try to set a baptismal date with him. so we´ll see how that goes. but yeah things are still good here. i can understand almost everything everyone says now, and take directions and everything. and its really funny when chilleans want to point somewhere, they use their lips and not their fingers haha so that was interesting to learn. Until next week......
Love, Elder Philpott