Jack - July 30

I am definitely SICK of being sick.

Yeah somebody fed me some fish this week and I´ve had some pretty bad stomachaches all week. Oh well, it was nice to be well for a couple days this transfer.

Other than that the District meeting went pretty well this week, I did a fun class with a bunch of funny drawings and stuff like that. And everyone liked it, so I was pretty satisfied.

We´re still working hard with the people we´re teaching, but not much has changed. The cool news though is that the district is doing really well. As a district last week we had about 10-12 people with baptismal dates, so that´s really cool. It is a huge district, but still, that´s more than I´ve ever seen. I´m also excited because it means I get to do a bunch of baptismal interviews, which are some of the best experiences ever. So that´ll be fun. 

Transfers are coming up, which is pretty exciting. Honestly, I don´t know if I want to stay or if I want to leave. I think this last transfer has kinda brought down my perspective of this sector. But it´s ok, trials are the building blocks of miracles.

I hope you all have a great week!

Parker - July 30

Hey everyone!

Yeah, it's true, we are entering into my last week in the mission. 

It's pretty....exciting. 

The mission has been a really wild roller coaster ride. There have been ups and downs, but really, I can honestly say that I have come out of it a better man than I was before. I've had to pass through the refiner's fire, but now I can look to the future with hope and faith. 

I'm gonna keep working hard, in this last week, but I know that I have done what our Father in Heaven has sent me here to do. I have carried HIs will and His word to many. I have opened eyes and helped others move forward in a Christ-centered life. I had to work hard to do it, but with the Lord's help, I managed to make it through. 

Truly the mission is something really special. I don't know if I'd go on another one any time soon, it's been really hard, but what I can say is that I will never regret the decision I made to serve. 

Love you all! 

Elder Blaylock

Jack - July 23

Hola Familia ¿como estan?

This week was pretty, normal for me. I wish I had more time like I used to, to be able to write in my journal or just have time to study or think. It´s a lot to have a district so big. But everything is going well. I´ve been pretty stressed about the work and all that this week, but it´s ok. 

The bummer about having so much going on and not having time to stop and process it is that I don´t remember very well all of the things that happened in the week. So I figure I´ll just apologize for my boring emails, I´ll try to find some time this week to better record what happens. It´s just been a long transfer for me, tons of things have been happening. Today I had to go and do a bunch of paperwork again because I was robbed a couple weeks ago and lost my Chilean ID, so today`s been pretty boring. 

But I hope everyone is having a great time back home, and is enjoying their summer (because it is freezing down here haha). I´ll write you all more next week.

-Elder Blaylock

Parker - July 23

Hey everyone!

Yup! We made it! Week 100! And I have exactly two weeks left in the mission. And this will possibly be my penultimate email. I'm gonna be in Salta my last Monday and I don't know what the Agenda is, so I may not be able to get a letter off that day. 

But anyway, this week has been a little rough in terms of work, cuz we've got a lot of Pending New investigators. What that means is that they receive us at the door and tell us that they'd love to have us teach them, but they set an appointment for another day, we go by, and they don't have time, or are about to leave, and yadda yadda yadda. 

But we did have two activities this week. The first one was a primary activity where the Primary president had made paper mache globes to represent the different steps of the Plan of Salvation. It was nice. The other activity was yesterday, in charge of us, La Obra Misional. And I almost died, cuz the oven's fire shut off unexpectedly and when I went to turn it on again, a ball of fire erupted from the open oven. It wasn't too bad, I didn't even get burned, but it was pretty wild. 

And for pday today, I ran into my hijo in the mission (the missionary I trained). He's in one of my former areas, so that was pretty fun. 

Other than that, I'm just prepping myself mentally for the return home, I can still hardly belive it. 

Love you all!

Elder Blaylock

Jack - July 16

Hola Familia ¿cómo están?

This week I don´t have a ton to write about unfortunately. We did get to meet the new mission president and his wife though, which was pretty cool. They seem really nice, and I really like the trainings they gave in the zone conference we had. 

What was kind of a bummer is that I got pretty sick this week. Bueno, actually I´ve been sick basically all of this transfer, so for like 2 or 3 weeks now, like how I had a fever, lost my voice for a while, and started getting migranes. So this week it basically all just got worse, I had to go to the doctor actually and he told me I have a bacterial infection in my throat or something, and he prescribed some antibiotics for it. But still, we had to stay in the pension for a while because it´s pretty humid and that would just make it worse. So it was kind of a boring week, and it went by kind of slowly, but we made food and played uno to pass the time.

Other than that, I hope everyone has a great week!

Parker - July 16

Hey Everyone!

About the pics this week, those are avocados, really weird, even the people who live here were like "estas paltas son raras." We were making tacos, we have three mexicans in the district. 

And the other pics are from Zone Conference and a Barbecue we had.

Let's start this week with the Zone Conference! It was my last one!!!!

Seriously, it felt really weird, being in my last Zone Conference. I don't know what it's like in other missions, but in this mission, when you're in your last Zone Conference, they ask you to go up front to give your "Testimonio de los Fieles." I had seen a bunch in my time, but I never thought that I'd actually give mine. It felt weird but good. I basically just testified about Trusting God, and how Trusting in Him is always going to go better than if we Trust ourselves. 

Also, this week, we've had more members come along with us to visit people. It's been great, there are a lot of members here who like to help. With regards to missionary work, we might have one or two more baptisms here before I clock out, but we'll see. 

I'm running out of things to write. Not much is going on, we're just trying to work hard. I don't have a whole lot to say this week. 

It's also still super surreal for me to be ending the mission. 

Anyway, I love you all!

Elder Blaylock

PS 24 days left

Jack - July 9

Hola mi familia! ¿Como Estan?

Hey guys, this week went by pretty quickly for me. Well actually it wasnt that quick, but I havent had any extra time to write stuff down so I don´t remember very well what happened. We basically just worked pretty hard all week.

As a district leader, now I have to do the interviews of the people who want to be baptized that the people in my district have taught, so this past week I did my first one and it was super weird, super cool obviously but also a little weird. My first interview was with one of the people the assistants to the Mission President had taught, but he´s in a wheel chair, so we got permission to do it in his house instead of the church like they´re normally done. Overall it was basically just a unique first experience, it was really cool to be able to participate in it though.

As some of you already know, last week someone stole my wallet, which I normally don´t carry around, it was just the first pday of the month so I had brought it to take out cash. Anyways, somebody stole it, and it had basically everything in it, which stinks. But luckily I had just been pondering a lot on the scripture in the Book of Mormon- Helaman 5:12- because even though I felt a ton of stress and dread for a couple seconds, this scripture came to my mind and I decided I wasn´t going to worry about it and just trust in God. It was really cool to see the truthfulness of the scripture because I really found the security and peacefulness that we can have in times of trial thanks to a testimony in Jesus Christ.

I hope everyone had a great week this week, I´ll be talking to you next week!

pancakes and leche con platano

Parker - July 9

Hey everyone, it's been an interesting week. 

First of all, Happy Fourth of July! (late)

Wednesday, our lunch cancelled on us, and we had to eat in a food shop down the street, it wasn't too bad though. Thursday we ate Tacos with the Bishop. My comp finally got his Tortilla dough down, so we had some pretty good tacos. Friday and Saturday were pretty normal, teaching, finding new people, etc. It's just funny though, cuz basically this whole week we've been teaching some new people and trying to convince them that our Church is different, that it truly is Christ's church. 

In happy news, I've got one month left until I go home. 

Elder Blaylock

Jack - July 2

¿A dónde se fue el tiempo? ¿y mi voz?

Alright. This week has been crazy, just crazy. Let´s be honest, I was super super excited to be district leader this next transfer, but then tuesday in the middle of the night (the night before transfers) I woke up with a horrible fever. Darn it.

It hasn´t been too bad though, it just kind of kills a lot of excitement, and I want my district to be super excited for this transfer. Though I think that was my downfall. For those of you who don´t know, the district leaders in the mission have to call each companionship in the nighttime and find out how they´re doing and how their day was and all that jazz, but it´s every night.

Oh! Also, I already knew I had an unnaturally large district, but then the first day of the transfer the zone leaders called me and told me that I had 2 more sister missionaries in my district. That leaves me with a district of 12 people. Which if you didn´t know, is enough people to make a zone, so I´ve decided I shall now be known as the zone leader of the zone of Quintero. Hahaha, honestly it´s really weird, what makes it weirder is that I have to call the Assistants and some of the Office missionaries every night too. It´s been crazy.

But, as most of you know, I don´t normally talk very much. So what happened? I lost my voice.

It´s still just barely coming back, but its ok because it´s been a great week, though I do wish I wasn´t sick anymore, and that I had a voice.

Yesterday was really interesting for us. In the morning we went to look for the A family to help them get to church, but the day before one of the kids got super sick with a really high fever, so they couldn´t go. This family is so great, they´ve progressed the most out of anyone I´ve seen in my mission. But it´s been tough, the opposition really is strong against them. Something has happened basically every week to stop them from attending church as a family. Some weeks some family member arrives in Santiago and they go to visit them, other weeks they stay the night in Viña, last week everyone came except the mom who had a lot of pain in her bones out of nowhere, and then this week with the high fever. So basically yesterday we had a pretty frank talk with them, we explained to them and pointed out everything that´s happened, and then we shared Helaman 5:12, to explain how to overcome it, really I know it´s possible, and even though it´s been difficult I´m glad these things have happened so that we could all learn this lesson and so that they can really start to exercise faith in Jesus Christ to overcome it. I know that God has a plan for each and every one of us, and that every single one of the experiences that we have in our lives leads us closer to Him, it´s just a matter a patience and meekness, being ready to accept His will, and learn what He would have us learn from every moment.

I hope everyone has a great week.

(Pictures of Elder Robinson´s last day with the family)

Parker - July 2

Hey everyone!

This week's been good. We're just tryin to work hard. Finish strong. 

I don't know how much you guys know about it, but the Soccer World Cup is going on right now, and this saturday, they just eliminated Argentina. They played against France, 4-3. It's been pretty funny, cuz everybody goes crazy for soccer. Me and my comp were laughing cuz so many members came to church sunday cuz they were depressed. 

But anyway, This past Saturday our bishop called in the morning and asked us to go give a health blessing to a member. So we went to the hospital where he was staying and we gave him a blessing. It was really nice cuz he's less active, but he really apreciated our visit. We also had an activity Saturday afternoon, where we played games and drank mate (we didn't but everyone else did). We played Do you love your neighbor, and even though it had a slow start, everybody was having fun and laughing by the end, even the old ladies who couldn't run. 

Wednesday we had a funny experience. We discovered a new neighborhood in our area and some inactive members that were really receptive. So we're gonna start working in that area. But Wednesday night, we had the 12 step recovery program, so we asked if there was a bus we could take to make things go faster, but we take the wrong bus and end up an hour away from where we needed to go. So we just waited for another bus and came back to the apartment. 

Friday was funny too. Our Ward Mission Leader is taking English classes, and asked if I could participate in a class. So I think "ok, they want me to talk english to practice, or ask questions, I don't know," turns out they wanted to know about if I felt like Argentina was racist against english-speakers......Which, in and of itself could be construed as racist, but I shrugged it off and just answered their questions good-naturedly.

And yeah, about my spiritual experiences and stuff this week, I've come to realize more about what Love is, and how we can use it to overcome our problems. 

Basically, Love is placing the needs of others above our own. If we truly love God and others, then in every situation, we will be able to overcome temptation and choose the right. We won't be perfect, but that's because we need to truly repent. Mistakes happen when our minds fail us. Sin happens when our hearts fail us. How then, do we avoid making mistakes? Repentance. Repentance is adopting a new attitude about oneself, God, or life in general, its learning. So when we make a mistake, it's cuz we don't see the whole picture, we don't know all things. This allows us to exercise repentance and have more of the picture shown to us. We must receive "grace for grace". 

To get a different perspective on this, go look up in youtube Discovering Truth under Mormon Messages. Uchtdorf is talking in the video. 

I love you all, and can't wait to see you all again!

Elder Blaylock

PS 37 days left

Jack - June 25

¿Hola como estan? This week was... weird. Oh and we got transfer news. I´m staying in Quintero.

Oh, also I´m the new district leader of the Assistants to the President.

And it´s a district of 10 people. And so, there goes my free time in the night! Hahaha, now I´ll have to call everyone and see how their days went. The district is almost big enough to be it´s own zone, so that´s neat. 

In other news, Elder Robinson is going to La Serena, waaaaaaayyyyyy up North.

Also. Elder Bahr is coming to Viña!!!! He´ll be the district leader of the other district in the zone. This is going to be awesome.

My new companion is Elder Graves, I don´t know anything about him other than the fact that he´s a gringo (3 companions in a row), he might be from colorado (I´m not sure), and he has more time than me in the mission (he arrived with Elder Robinson).

Anyways, this week was really crazy. On wednesday we went to explore the edge of our area in a pueblito that´s called Maitencillo, but well, I´ll let you watch the videos.

Random people just kept showing up all week, like members moving into the ward, or investigators that show up out of nowhere, so I´m pretty excited for this next transfer.

We had a ward activity on Friday to talk about Family History and Temple work and to watch the movie Coco, it was really fun, not many members showed up but the ones who did brought friends, so it went well. Everyone arrives late in Chile though, so we started late and my companion and I couldn´t finish the movie because we had to go. It went well though.

Then on saturday we wake up to a text from the Bishop telling us he needed help cleaning the chapel for a wedding, so we helped with that, then ate lunch, and then went to the wedding. It was interesting, The dude who got married has been an investigator for about 20 years, so now that he´s married he can be baptized, we just have to teach him. 

On sunday we wake up to another text from the Bishop telling us to prepare talks for sacrament meeting. So we both talked about the importance of missionary work and how the members can participate and receive a ton of blessings. It went really well, now the ward is a lot more excited to work with us.

We also received the transfer news on sunday, so that was fun. 

Parker - June 25

TRANSFERS

Nah, nothing happened. I'm staying with Elder Hernandez. The only noteworthy thing about these transfers is that IT'S MY LAST ONE.

Yeah, it's really, incredibly crazy. I can hardly believe that it's finally coming. I'm just excited to keep working hard till the end. Earlier in my mission, I'd see many missionaries end, and I was afraid that when I got to my last transfer, I'd be totally burnt out, and wouldn't want to work. Yet, to my surprise, I find myself even more dedicated and wanting to work. Really I want to shine in this last transfer and present a good offering to God. 

But yeah, this week has been fun. Tuesday, we had District meeting, a Baptism in the District, and Interviews with President. We were in the Stake Center for most of the day. We ordered sandwiches and had lunch. 

I've also been studying general conference talks lately. And I found my favorite picture in the whole Liahona. It's the one with the little girl. 

And yeah, we've been working pretty hard. We're trying to focus on improving our teaching methods, cuz sadly in this mission, with all of the focus on having a bunch of numbers (from the zone leaders more than anything, President's awesome), actually teaching properly is kinda thrown by the wayside. 

But yeah, then Sunday was my comp's birthday, so this family made us a Barbecue. It was fun. Then our landlord wanted to do a deep clean of the apartment. So we spent the afternoon doing that. (didn't do much though, after the floor dried, it looked the same as before.) 

And, well, since yesterday was supposedly transfers, but there was this strike by all the bus drivers in Argentina or something like that, they told us to move Pday to Tuesday. (Basically this means they took away our Pday, cuz we had to go out and work normal Monday, but we already had set up appointments for today, but at least we still get to write home:)

And yeah, that's basically my week. Now for a spiritual thought. 

Something that's helped me stay obedient and endure to the end let's say in the mission has been the phrase "remember who you are." And well, I am a missionary. But, as I am rapidly drawing closer to the point where I will no longer be a missionary, I've been thinking about how I can still use this phrase to find strength. I've come up with Four responses that you guys can adapt if you want to do something similar:

The First is I AM A CHILD OF GOD. This is to help remind me of my relationship with God and all His children on the earth. 

The Second is I AM A DISCIPLE OF CHRIST. This is to help me to be a faithful member of the church, read the scriptures, pray, go to church, and always seek to develop Christ-like attributes. 

The Third is I AM A PRIESTHOOD HOLDER. This is to help me resist temptation, remain righteous, and remind me to serve and bless those for whom I am responsible. 

The Fourth is I AM CALLED OF GOD. This kind of replaces I am a missionary, and adapts it for whatever calling I could have in the church. To remind me to magnify my calling and be diligent. 

I love you all, and invite you to remember who you are, learn of your identity and let it be a source of strength when you face trials. 

Elder Blaylock.

PS 44 more days until I get to see you!