Hey friends-
Oh boy I have some good stories this week.
Investigators and a Miracle
We only have one progressing investigator, but lots of new possibilities. Basically Isabel and Ignacio rock. They have stopped smoking and Isabel has a baptismal date for the 26th of March. Ignacio will be ordained soon to a priest and will baptize her. It was pretty much a miracle. I passed by to visit them with Elder Opazo in divisiones and we were leaving their house (because they were not there). We ran in to them really late and had about 20 minutes for a lesson. We started to talk about the BOM and how they had been reading and how their lives had changed for the better. The spirit was really strong and Elder Opazo asked how she felt in her heart about everything she had read. She took a second to organize what she was saying and then said, "I have felt more and more like this is the path that I should follow. I am going to get baptized." I was floored with her response and the spirit that entered the lesson. She said that the 26th would be a good date and the both of them stopped smoking by the end of the week. The moral of the story is that the missionaries don´t teach, the spirit does. I feel like I had almost nothing to do with her change of heart, it all started with her reading the Book of Mormon. That is why we must always read the Book of Mormon because we can´t fall if we are reading it regularly and following all of the commandments.
Changes :S
So with the good, comes the changes. I found out that I, yes I, have changes. Both Elder Perrusquía and I were not expecting that, but it is ok. I am sad that I will miss the baptism of Isabel, but hopefully I will get to see them sealed for all of time and eternity before the end of my mission--which is really the goal, that they can have eternal blessings. However, I will go to Santiago tomorrow to find out where I am going and I know that it will be where the Lord wants me to be and with who he wants me to be.
Earthquakes, Tsunami, Evacuations, oh my!
Oh boy, I have been so excited to share my story about this one. We found out in Friday that there was a possible large Tsunami headed our way; however, the Chilean coast was only in alert. I was really excited to find out what would happen, because our pensión (apartment) is the lowest in the coast of all of the missionaries. Later on in the day we were heading down to the area of our sector which is a red zone (highest danger of Tsunami damage) where Carolina lives. It turned out that President King tried to call us directly himself around this time, but for some reason it went straight to voicemail. However, as we were going down we got a call from the assistants and they said that we needed to stay the night in the Zone Leaders´ pension. We stopped by Carolina and her parents and joked around with them about the Tsunami. They weren´t even afraid of the Tsunami. But after we finished talking with them we notices that a lot of people were leaving the area with backpacks and other items. We called one of the members because we knew that he would be worried about us and he said that the status had been changed from Alert to Alarm for the majority of the Chilean coast. This meant that they would be evacuating all of the low-lying areas. So we tried passing by all of the houses down where we were to see if they needed help, but no one took our offer. It was really cool at this point. My comp and I weren´t worried at all and it was really cool to see a real evacuation. We went back to our pension to get a few things for the night and saw everybody leaving. We also saw the bomberos (firefighters) getting ready to sound the alarm. We took taxi to the Zone Leaders pension along a very deserted main avenue in San Antonio. We also got to see the entire division of Caribineros (the thing most similar to police) move out with huge buses and other equipment. Basically, the whole experience was freaking awesome. But in the end, there never was even a tiny wave in the San Antonio area. But yeah, along with a few other cool temblores (small earthquakes), that was about all.
Well that is all for this week. Hope everyone is doing well.
Love-
Elder Taylor Thomas
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