Week 47 Antofagasta

Jan 30, 2016

Alright, so this week was pretty awesome. I may have turned 20 years old and I`m still not sure how....? I am old! To be honest, it did not feel like my birthday at all.... It felt like just another day in the mission. The Assistants bought a cake for me and Chileans have a tradition where you have to take a giant bite out of the cake but while the person is doing it, someone smashes their entire face into it. I unfortunately didn't see it coming.

We taught a few people on my birthday so that was fun and we had another awesome lesson. This time it was a very short 10 min. lesson we had with a member family before leaving their house. We taught them about repentance and our purpose here on earth and how the two relate. It was a very short but powerful lesson. After the lesson the mom told us it was exactly what she needed to hear in that moment and the father, which has been inactive for months because of his work said he was going to try and make it to church this Sunday. Its little moments like this that I love about the mission. To simply have some sort of impact in the lives of others. I love seeing the joy that comes through the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

Also, we received the transfers this week to start working on and I have been extremely busy with that. There is soooo much planning that goes into bus schedules and everything. I`m am still really enjoying the office. My companion, Elder Morales is awesome and we have been having a ton of success in finding new people to teach. We just need to start inviting them all to baptism. Alsides is doing good but we have had to change his baptismal date several times because it is so hard to find him and finish teaching him all of the lessons. We think we are going to change the date to the 13th of Feb. so that we have time to teach everything and have his interview. We have become more involved with our ward and we have been leaving with several members to visit people. We also have several young men preparing to serve missions, which is super cool! Today we didn't do much because Elder Walker and Elder Gonzalez went to do audits in other cities of the mission so it’s just me and my companion in the office right now. That`s pretty much the update for this week. I will be sending photos next week. Love you all and until next week!

Elder Spanbauer