Chase is moving to a new area with a new companion.

Hello!

This week has been quite a crazy one. We have definitely turned things around from last week. We taught a ton of lessons this week and found a lot of new people to teach. We are still finding some great families that actually want to go to church, which is a miracle! It's crazy how fast your attitude can change on the mission. You can go from being happy to sad, excited to nervous, tired to energetic, in a matter of 2 minutes.

 

Remember Eduardo? We were helping him build a second story of his house? Well over the span of two weeks, he has had some major trials. He was working on somebody's house a couple hours away, and forgot all of his tools at the bus stop. When he returned... they were gone! He lost thousands of dollars of really nice tools. That was pretty much all of his possessions. It was really sad, right when it happened we went over and tried to console him a little bit. After a couple days his family and him were more or less happy. Eduardo found a nice side job selling clothes in San Jose and was renting out an extra room in his house. HOWEVER, after about two days of peace... the person he was renting a room to stole a whole bunch of his things, including the clothes that he sells to make money in San Jose, in the middle of the night and moved. Once again we ran over there to try to help and bring peace to the family... Only this time it was worse. He had no money and couldn't pay the electric bill. They had no money for food, and the family wasn't in very good shape. We shared another lesson with the family by candle light and after about an hour they seemed to be pretty calm.

 

Yesterday when my companion and I were walking past Eduardo's house, he ran outside and stopped us. He said, "Elderes... I just want to thank you. Lately I have been having some real trouble with my life. If I hadn't started talking to you missionaries, I would be a depresssed mess right now. But thanks to you guys and your lessons I have learned the importance of keeping the faith. I know that these are just trials from God and Satan tries to attack us when we are weak. I know that I must stay strong and faithful. Right now I have 4 dollars and no way to feed my family. But I am happy. I am happy because of the faith that you have brought into my life. Thank you for everything you have taught me."

The work that we are doing is the work of God. We are changing lives through Christ. Even if that is the only good influence that I have on somebody for these 2 years... I'm happy. I am so glad that I have been given the opportunity help others and thank God everyday for the experiences that he has given me.

 

Things are going better with Jorge and Roberto too. We are still working with the parents so that they can give permission to their sons to be baptized this weekend. 

We have seen such a big change in them too. When we first taught them, they had never prayed before and didn't know how. Last night in Roberto's prayer he thanked God for the opportunity to be baptized in the true church this weekend. You can always tell how much a person is progressing by listening to their prayers. It makes me so happy when you can see somebody start to develop a relationship with our Heavenly Father and they start to express their feelings in prayers.

 

Also... yesterday was sad day. We received a call from the mission assistants and they told me that I will be changing areas this Wednesday... I really don't want to leave. The people here in this ward are like my family... they have seen me grow from a gringo who didn't know any Spanish to a missionary who kind of speaks Spanish! We received the call when we were teaching at a recent convert/ part family home. I have gotten really close with that family and it was really sad to tell them that I'll be leaving. They wanted pictures, so I'll be sending the pictures to you as well.

 

Today I'm going to play soccer with all of the youth from the ward, as well as with some of our investigators. It will be a lot of fun!

 

Next week I'll be in a new area with a new companion with new stories. While I'm really sad to leave Ipís, I'm really excited to get to serve in a new area! 

Love you all! Remember to write me and send lots of pictures!!