Week 26 Vallenar

Sept 7, 2015

Hello friends and family. Another awesome week in Vallenar. So first off, we have been finding a bunch of new people to teach which is awesome but we still haven’t committed any of them to baptism. Victor still hasn’t gone to church but his wife did go with us again. The daughter just got mauled by a baby goat recently and it almost broke her jaw.... so the daughter didn’t go to church with us. Honestly, we could baptize the mom and the daughter but the parents need to be married and also investigators have to attend church 3 times before getting baptized. We have to work really hard the week to get all of our investigators to church so they can be baptized before I leave but what’s really important is that they just get to that point whether I am here or not. We will see if I can get a miracle and pull it off. The chances are super high that I will be transferred so we are going to be working super hard this week. This past Saturday we had Zone Conference with President Dalton and his wife Hermana Dalton. This was a special conference for me because I learned a lot. The topic was how to find new investigators and how to be baptizing constantly. That was basically what I wanted to here and learn. We also did practices where we had to teach the restoration but like a 5-minute version. It was awesome and one of the elders that we did it with is from my group. He is from Brazil and told me after that my Spanish was sooo good. This made me feel super good because I was always comparing my Spanish to everyone else and it basically destroyed my confidence. The practices went really good and I was able to express myself really well. One thing that touched me was president Dalton shared his testimony and he said that he wants every missionary to know that their mission president knows without a doubt that the church is true. This touched me a lot because it was a very simple and powerful testimony. It helped me realize that we don’t have to know everything to teach someone and touch their heart. Simply saying that I know this church is true is a very powerful statement. President Dalton is a very big influence to me. He has taught me so much and he is an amazing mission president. We had a couple of lessons with new investigators and one of them the lady told us that we aren’t allowed to invite her to our church. We then taught her the restoration and invited her to pray and read. She told us that the book of Mormon scared her and that she didn’t think it was right to have another book of Holy Scripture. She then opened it and started reading random parts and she loved it! Its like her heart was changed immediately haha. She was like "this is just like the bible" and she said she was going to pray. She can definitely be baptized and I know her prayer will be answered. We will probably meet with her today. Wish us luck! There really isn’t much more to say about this week. Except for... HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!! I hope you had a good birthday and I’m sorry I wasn’t there to say it in person. I love you so much and the rest of you as well! You guys are always in my prayers. Until next week! Chao!

Re-Post of Elder Tanner Mangum in the Chile Antofagasta Mission. Great week for BYU fans and great TD pass from Tanner to beat Nebraska with a Hail Mary pass in the last second of the game!

Elder Spanbauer

BYU QB Tanner Mangum with Elder Leon & Elder Spanbauer