Chase got transfered! Lot's of pictures this week.

Had changes!! But... I got sent to the city! I'm practically next door to where I was in the office, but it's all good. At least I'm already accostomed to how it is here and what the weather is like. My new companion is Elder Martìnez and is from Mexico. He just finished his training and has 3 months in the mission.

It was actually pretty hard to say goodbye to the members in Perez. It is amazing how much their attitude has changed over these short 5 months. They have really started to trust us more and they are starting to see the importance of missionary work in their lives. I had to also leave some investigators that I got really attached to. Hopefully they will be baptized in the near future and will play a big role in helping the branch grow.

Well  I don't have a ton of time, because of changes and everything, but hopefully I will have lots of good stories for you next week!!

The Navas family feed Chase most Sunday's and they always played basketball with him on P-days.

For a Christmas service project the missionaries cleaned a cemetary.

They call this mountain the "Sleeping Indian Woman".  This mountain is always cloudy.

Chase taught the Chinchilla family who were a very nice and loving family.  The daughters attended Chases English class.  The family came to the Christmas devotional hoping to be able to say goodbye to Chase.

Not sure how I feel about this e-mail (mom)

This week has gone by super fast. And so has my computer time...

Highlight of the week. I have become really good friends with one of the biggest drug dealers in Cocori and he always likes it when we come over. His girlfriend is really anti mormon but has been reading the book of mormon like crazy and every time we go over she has a page of questions for us to answer. This week his son had his 5th birthday and he wanted us to come over. We went and it was a huge party with all of the roughest from the neighborhood and a bunch of little 5 and 6 year olds. haha it was so strange! But hopefully good things come from all of this.

Also... there is a rumor that President is taking me out this change (one week) and is sending me to the Zona Sur. It's suuuper hot there and is about 9 hours away from San Jose... it's not a for sure thing, but if I get sent out there its going to be crazy!!

Sorry for no long stories... I ran out of time. But watch the Christmas video for this year if you have time! And accept the challenge to serve every day in December until Christmas!!

https://www.mormon.org/

Love you!

Zone Conference

Dental experience in Costa Rica amongst other things

Still sick... but this week I bought some cough syrup that supposedly is pretty good... we will see!

This week has been a week filled with strange experiences... Here are a couple:

1. One of my fillings fell out. I decided to go to a local clinic to see what they would do to fix it. The dentist said, well it'll take about 15 minutes of your time and 40 bucks. 15 minutes seemed like a very short amount of time to replace a filling, but I said okay... and she sat me down and said, would you like anestesia? I thought about it for a little bit and decided, well that's usually the worst part, so I opted to go all natural. I'm pretty sure that was a good decision on my part... the drilling didn't hurt too bad and there was no swelling afterwards! I think American dentists should give the option too!

2. I think I told you about the family that we were teaching that said that we were angles sent by God to help her out of her drug addiction.. right? Well she smoked crack this week... and went into a deep depression. It'll be interesting to see how this one plays out.

3. Speaking of drugs... a recent converts daughter is a huge druggie that lives in the street and always walks around drunk. Well this week she over dosed really bad and came to her moms house and passed out and started having a seizure. The police came and she called us and had us give her a blessing. It was pretty nuts. I wish I could say that stuff like that hasn't happened to me a lot on the mission, but for some reason crazy things like that just seem to be normal here.

4. I had to come up to San Jose to get a package out of customs... and it is freeezing here! I forgot just how hot my area was. I can't wait to get back to the humid air! Also, Costa Rica changed their rules and if you send candy in a package it gets stuck in customs... so just don't write candy or food on the package labels... just missionary supplies (suministros misionales) and other stuff like that, because it's hard traveling 3 and a half hours to go to the city.

That's about all I have time for... since I'm in the city I dont have my camera with me... sorry for not sending pictures for such a long time!

Love you lots!

A mission farwell, and a future baptism

Well this week I have been sick with a really annoying cold... it's not too bad, but it's really been hard to focus. It seems like every time I have to take the trip up to San Jose I always get sick afterwards. In between Perez and San Jose there is a hill called "Cerro de la muerte" or death hill. It's called that because its so cold there that when the people were building the freeway through there lots of people froze to death. Whenever you go to San Jose the bus stops on the hill for 30 minutes and I think the big temperature change always messes me up.

This week I have been focusing a lot on a cool video that I watched talking about the importance of adapting to the changes that the Lord gives us. Here is the link if you'd like to check it out:

https://www.lds.org/blog/seeing-green?cid=HP_TH_3-11-2016_dOCS_fBLOG_xLIDyL2-3_

In life and in the mission sometimes the Lord throws some curveballs at you. Just when you think that everything is going in the right direction and everything is cool, Boom, something happens. I have had to learn to adapt to the changes that He gives me and move forward with what I have. It really doesn't matter what others think or say about me, as long as I know that my Heavenly Father is proud of what I'm doing!

In other news, this week one of the youth from our branch left to go to his mission in Peru! I got to talk at his farewell party about my mission and what I thought about it. It was pretty fun! And then later that night he baptized his cousin that we have been teaching.

Also, the Phillipino lady that we have been teaching...? Last week I put a baptism date for this month and she said that she would talk to her boyfriend about it. Well, she went to the baptism this week and said that she talked to her family about her own baptism. She said that she wants to get baptized!! BUT her future in laws say that they want to be there when she gets baptized.. so she will get baptized in a couple of months when she goes to the States. It's a bittersweet feeling haha she's going to get baptized which is awesome, but I was really looking forward to having an English baptism here in Costa Rica. haha

Mission Correlation Meeting

The sun is closer to Costa Rica than the United States!

This week we have received a lot of help from the ward in regards to missionary work. For example, we are supposed to have something called correlation every week where we meet with the ward mission leader and talk about how our investigators are doing.. well the last one we had was about 3 months ago. But this week we had one! And not just that, lots of the presidencies from the branch also came as well as a couple of youth that want to start helping us out and go on divisions with us! We got to discuss the needs of our investigators and they all seemed really willing and excited to help!

Wow... after rereading that I realized how sad the things that get a missionary exciteded are. haha Pura Vida

One thing that we have started doing (which I have now done in every one of my areas) is play soccer with the young men and other leaders from the ward once a week at night. Every church here has a basketball/ soccer court outside so it is a great opportunity to bring non members to church and see that we are normal. We have been able to see a little bit of success from that and I think it will keep getting better and better.

Today we woke up nice and early to play basketball with a couple of members and then we went to the church to play soccer with some other people right after. I am so burnt and exhausted it is not even funny. I don't know how, but I swear that the sun is closer to the world here in Costa Rica than it is in the United States, because when the clouds uncover the sun it hurts you. 

Anyways, tomorrow is Zone Conference so that means that tonight I get to enjoy a 3 and a half hour bus ride through the mountains. yay.

Thanks for all your prayers!

Teaching in the dangerous neighborhoods bring rewards

Another fast week filled with interesting experiences.

I have time for one story so here we go.

In my area there is this one area called Cocorí. It is kind of famous here in Perez because it holds the reputation of being the dangerous neighborhood. But... it is the best neighborhood for missionaries because the people that live there are a lot more humble than everybody else here.

When we were contacting in Cocori one of the members told us that there was a house that used to accept missionaries a couple of years ago. So with nothing to lose, we decided to contact the house. we met a 19 year old girl named Melissa who at first said," I am Catholic and I have no interest in changing..." like most people say here. But then we just started talking to her. After about 10 minutes of just talking she asked, "well, what do you guys teach?" And we started teaching a little bit about the plan of salvation. She then opened up and told us that her mom was a huge drug addict and was living in the street and eating out of garbage cans and a bunch of other stuff and Melissa was getting fed up of taking care of her mom. We said that we would help her with her situation and would stop by later to talk to her mom. Well we tried passing by 3 times, but the mom hid from us every time. Finally we caught the mom by surprise and she said, " Finally you guys got me!!" She then said that she has been praying to god that he would send angles to help her break her addiction. She then said that she felt really guilty because every time after she prayed we stopped by and she hid from us! So we started teaching her too and dropped off a pamphlet of the plan of salvation. Two days later we stopped by and she had read half of it and had a lot of questions and really liked it!

It just goes to show that we can be answers to peoples prayers without even knowing it. She also taught me that even when we beg for help from above, sometimes we reject the help that he gives us, because we know that it will require a lot of work on our part. But, it will always be worth the work  in the end

Good things are happening in the Branch!

This area is getting better and better week by week. It has been a really rough road (emotionally, physically, mentally) but it's so worth it all.

I would like to start off by saying, give references to the missionaries. Please. Every missionary will greatly appreciate it. A huge majority of missionary success comes from references from the members.

One member this week gave us a lot of references of old investigators that used to listen to the missionaries. We contacted the wife of one of the old families and she said that she had been waiting for the missionaries to come back to her house! She opened up and said that she really wanted to change. We taught a little bit about Jesus and put a basptismal date for her and she happily accepted it. But she wanted her boyfriend more than anything to accept our lessons because in the past he hadn't. We showed up a couple of days later to teach her again and her husband yelled through the door that she wasn't home. He definitely seemed like he did not want anything to do with us so we left. After missionarying for a couple of hours we passed back by the house and we saw the husband walking back home. He turned to us and said, "hey I'm really sorry that you guys passed by and my wife wasn't there... my mom always taught me that if we say we are going to do something, or be somewhere, we need to do it. I feel really embarrased and am very sorry." I then asked if we could  talk to him instead and after thinking about it for a little bit he said yes!

We sat down with him in the house and starting asking questions about his beliefs. He started really opening up and started telling us how he felt really far away from God and how he really wants to change for his family. We started talking about how he could start all over by being baptized and then I challenged him to be baptized the same day as his wife. Right as I put the date he said, That's my birthday!! What a great birthday present!! hahaha it worked out great! Some might call it luck.. I call it being in tune with the spirit haha The family has lots of problems and they will have to get married, but they can do it!!

Also we brought a family to church this Sunday and the members freaked out! haha they said ¨wow the missionaries finally have good investigators! That hasn't happened in forever!¨ Then they started offering to help us.

Sorry for no pics this week. I left my camera in the house.