Welcome Home Pictures

April 13, 2017 Welcome Home Elder Abel!

Great last week on the mission!

Last email... and no time. please enjoy the pics. I have lot's more but I'll just show them to you in person:)

This week has been great, the members are treating me so nice and I'm eating so much.

Remember J from Perez Zeledon? The one that showed up out of nowhere on a motorcycle and asked us to help him with some problems he was dealing with ? Well I just found out that this weekend he got married and his wife got baptized. He is now a reactivated faithful member of the church. This was such a nice reminder that even when I'm not in the area or in the mission anymore, the work goes on!

Also, remember that picture of the barbeque with the less active family? Well we have been working really hard with them and yesterday (my last day of officially serving in an assigned area) the daughter was baptized and the whole family came to the baptism!

2 baptisms and a very interesting un-birthday for Chase

Hey! well... I don't have lots of time today... it was a really busy day.

This week:

We had two baptisms, one of the which we had to go to a different ward to baptize her because she lives out of the ward boundries. And they both wanted me to baptize them.

Today we went to the temple to prepare for general conference.

I bought a really cool suit.

My companion had to get a wisdom tooth pulled.

and that's pretty much it. Fun week.

Talk to you Monday!

This is Andrea- Chase told me about an interesting(little scary, strange, he thought was cool) story that I thought I would share:

"Funny story... well the church gets food donated once a week and it is usually cakes and premade food so this time when we were on divisions we decided to take a cake to eat at our house before we went out to work. as we were walking to the house we passed this corner that always has a lot of sketchy people around... (drug dealers, prostitutes and all that fun stuff) and when we walked by they said Hey, come here! We are going to rob you! Who's birthday is it? All at once the other missionaries said, Its Elder Abel's birthday! So all of them said, Lets Celebrate!! so then, slightly obligated for fear of getting mugged, we started to share our cake with them. When the other sketchy people saw that we were sharing cake with everybody, they all wanted a piece too! So then all of a sudden this white guy (see picture) comes up and says, hey man, me first I'm starving! then the black guy says heck no this is my piece. Then the guy throws his piece on the floor, rips his shirt off and the two guys start boxing over who gets the cake first in the middle of the street! then even more people came out and started filming the full out brawl that came out of nowhere! When this started we decided to leave with the cake then the fight stopped and they started running after us because they wanted the cake!! We stopped, gave them the cake, the large group of ghetto people started singing happy birthday to me and we got a cool picture with about a quarter of the group. It was the best un-birthday party I've ever had.

Fun story right?"

One of the families in the ward that have been less active decided that they were going to have a really big family home evening with us and they cooked up a lot of meat and gave us their first family home evening lesson in years!  It was great!

Body is sore and tired after two years

Hello!

Well... good news and bad news. Remember those 2 baptisms that I was stoked about for this weekend well... they both are interviewed and ready to go... but there is a small problem with one. Keylin (the 17 year old) doesn't live in our area. I talked to our bishop and he said he had to talk to her bishop to see what to do. Well he talked to the bishop and he says that she has to be baptized in the ward where she lives!! Soo.. we are going to see what happens. hopefully she can still get baptized on Sunday so we can have a baptism on Saturday and Sunday! Francini is still going strong. the family decided that I would baptize her so that I "can take home a nice family memory of them." haha some ticos are just so great.

As far as other updates... I dont think I have any. I am just trying to hang in there till the very end. My body sure is sore and tired and I don't think I own a pair of clothes now that doesn't have a stain or a hole in it, but that's just part of the joy of serving a mission!

Love you all lots and lots!

Had some fun in the mud!

Well hello!

This week has been pretty darn good. In this ward I have learned that it is pretty much impossible to have success knocking doors so I've pretty much just been hanging out with members the whole week and hoping that they give us references, and it has been working out just swimmingly! The family that I told you about last week where the daughter and the dad aren't members... well we had another lesson with them yesterday and we now have permission to baptize the daughter in two weeks and the dad is really excited.  The dad wants to learn more and see the baptism. Who knows if he gets baptized too before I leave? It could happen. 

Also, we have been working with our cooks sons girlfriend quite a bit. It's been tough because she lives out of our area and we can only teach her once a week, but she has been progressing really well! This week was stake conference and she came. During the meeting I thought to myself... well, the district leader is here, and she is here... let's just do the baptismal interview right now and see what happens. So right after the conference we went into a room and asked her how her testimony was. She said, well as a matter of fact I was reading the Book of Mormon last night at one in the morning after praying like you taught me and all of a sudden I felt such a strong feeling. I knew in that instant that the Book of Mormon was true and I needed to be baptized. It was perfect! So right then and there we did the interview and she passed with flying colors! She will be baptized the same day as the other little girl on the 25th.  So that was pretty spiritual... and as a reward for completing last months baptism goal we got to do a zone activity! We went to a place called Fossiland and it was a lot of fun! It was high up in the mountains and we went zip lining, played paintball, went cave exploring, and went down a water bobsled. It was super fun but we got soooo dirty. It was kind of like a trust building activity so there was this crazy guy that was in charge and told dumb jokes and threw a bunch of water at us all the time. We had to do silly little challenges and the losers had to lay down in muddy rivers or smear mud all over themselves. It was honestly the weirdest thing but it was a lot of fun! I'll send some pictures this week and next week I'll hopefully have more of the activity.

Well.. thanks for the emails this week, I got more than usual... but they all had something in common.. "Chase I can't believe that you are almost home!! Sorry for not writing you hardly ever in the mission, but I can't wait to see you!!" I still feel like I have a lot left in the mission and I'm going to work as hard as I can this last month... but thanks for making me think so much about being in the real world again. haha

Love you!

Highlights for Chase last week; a possible baptism and being a DJ

Hmmm... another week has gone by and I can't think of anything to write...... These weeks are just going by way too fast now. 

One cool thing that happened this week is that I helped set up a YSA dance this week and we got to DJ at the beginning... just long enough to get cool pictures. haha

This week we have been seing even more miracles with the members. We are now seeing a constant church attendance of 160+ which is really good for a Costa Rican ward. We are also recieving lots of references that are really prepared.

This week my companion and I were walking down the street looking for something to do because our appointments fell. I thought to visit a less active family and since we were close by we got there quickly and started to teach the family. Then all of a sudden another family that I hadn't ever seen before comes down the stairs. Apparently the family lives there and the wife is a member but the husband and the daughter aren't. We started talking to them and the daughter said that she turns 8 this weekend! I asked if they were setting up for her baptism and the mom said that she has been thinking about that for a while, but she has been inactive for a long time. We said that we would help her out with her daughters baptism and she got really excited and invited us over to have a lesson with her daughter and her husband. Hopefully it turns out well!