Helloooooo America!

This week was pretty cool.  So this week my comp and I killed some chickens!  We had a service project with one of the members who owns chickens.  We had to kill and prep five chickens!  It was awesome!  We snapped their necks and then we picked out all the feathers and gutted them.  It was super cool!  Then the next day we had lunch with him and ate them!  They were pretty good!  Overall, it was a ton of fun.

I also got a haircut!  At the bus station, they have a bunch of little haircut places.  We went to one and I just pointed to a picture of a normal haircut, but she pulls out the clippers and just goes crazy.  What she ended up giving me was what I call a “soccer boy” haircut.  Super short on the sides and longer on the top.  It looks pretty interesting, ha ha.  Overall, it isn’t horrible, it just looks kind of funny.  I threw some pictures in for you to see.

Things are going pretty good in the work.  Bernal and I have been really focusing this week on serving the members here.  Like we helped one member kill chickens and we’re helping another member fix up a new fence.  Things have been going slow with the progression of our investigators, so we figured that we could help the members and become closer to them, in the hopes that they could help us with missionary work.  Because, really, members are the best missionaries.  It’s something that I never really thought about until I got out here, but the desires of the branch or ward really determine the success of missionary work.  As missionaries, it’s something that I need to think about more and focus on.

Have a great week!

Elder Halverson

This week was pretty dope!  Elder Bernal and I are going crazy with work.  We have been contacting like crazy, and so far it’s been paying off.  We have met a lot of new people and we are very hopeful!  It’s a lot of work though.  Almost all day, we are just knocking doors and trying to talk to as many people as will listen to us.

Something else that we have been focusing on is working with members.  We know that if we strengthen our relationship with them that they will be more willing to come to lessons with us and give us referrals.  I never realized how key members are for missionary work.

I really like Elder Bernal.  He’s helping me to be more sincere with the investigators and the members.  It’s really helping me build a lot closer friendship with our branch, as well as with the people we teach.  He’s a great guy.

We also had a really cool experience this week.  We were contacting the other day and we passed by a viejo (old man) and he was just outside, so we started to talk to him.  As soon as we walked up to him, he just got super mad and yelled at us how much he hates Mormons and said we were evil and devils and stuff.  So we just said okay, bye, and continued contacting.  But every house we tried, he just said, “No hay nadie,” which means there’s no one there.

We were kind of annoyed, but we both got an impression that we should go back and talk to him, so we did.  And when we went back, he was walking into his house and then we just asked him two things — “What is your name?” and “How can we help you?”  Then he came back and told us his life story.  He told us about his bad experiences with missionaries before and about his health problems.  But we ended up giving him a Book of Mormon and he told us that we could come back whenever we want.

It was pretty powerful to me and helped me realize that we shouldn’t judge others, that we don’t know how others feel or what they go through.  I’ll admit, when he yelled at us, I just thought that he was just a crazy old man.  But when he told us his life, I grew to respect him, and even love and empathize with him.  It was humbling for me to recognize that he’s a child of God.  He has a family, and God and Jesus love him as much as they love everyone else.  I need to apply this all the time.  When we meet people that may seem bad or mean, we should love them anyway, and maybe when we do it, they will be able to recognize this love, this light of Christ.

Well, that’s about all.  Have a great week, ya’ll!

Love,

Elder Halverson

Hey everybody!

This week was pretty awesome.  It was my first week with my new comp, Elder Bernal.  He is so cool.  He’s from Mexico.  He’s kind of an old man in the mission, he has been out like 18 months.  It’s also cool because he knows perfect English.  We also got a new guy in the house, as well.  His name is Elder Cole.  He’s fresh right out of the MTC, and Elder Viola is training him.  He’s fun.  He’s from Utah.  His Spanish is pretty good, too.

As for the work this week, it has been pretty solid.  We did a ton of knocking on doors this past week.  For me, it is something that I’m not a huge fan of, but I’m learning to like it more and more.  It’s really an important part because we are stuck in a phase where we don’t have a ton of investigators that are progressing.  This really helps us find new people to teach.  We get a lot of rejections, lol, but I know that there is someone waiting for us who the Lord has prepared.  We just need to keep going and find them.  Elder Bernal has helped me come to love contacting a lot, which is good.

In Doñihue, there are a lot of murals on the walls there, and I saw a really good one.  I included it in the pictures.  It’s a Shakespeare quote.  It says, “Sabemos lo que somos, pero no lo que podemos llegar a ser.”  This means, “We know what we are, but not what we can become.”  This quote really is pretty cool for me.  We can look at the flaws that we have right now, and we can be sad.  But God knows who we can become.  So we need to put our faith and trust in him, and he will help us to be the people that we can come to be.

Well, that’s about it.  The only other thing I can think of is that our house is infested with rats, lol.  You can hear them crawling around all night in the attic.  ¡Gracias Chile!

Have a great week, guys.

Love,

McKay

Well, this past week was pretty great!

It was my last week of training!  This means that I’m getting a new companion tomorrow. My comp right now, Elder Llavilla, is heading to the zone north of us to be a zone leader. Elder Thomson, one of the guys in our house, is heading to the same zone, as well.  Elder Viola is going to be training, but we don’t know who he will get yet.  He will be brand new.

My new companion will be Elder Bernal.  He’s from Mexico and he’s been here for about 18 months.  From what I’ve heard, he’s a pretty good guy and a great missionary, so I’m excited. I am a little sad to see Llavilla go. He really has been a great comp. Overall I give a lot of my improvement to him, just for the help that he has given me.

It was also funny, so this past week I had my birthday on Saturday.  We didn’t really do much, but the next day at a lunch appointment, my companion blurted out, “Elder Halverson had his birthday yesterday!”  So then Hermano Willie (the dad of the family who was feeding us) just pulls a birthday cake with candles out of the fridge!  They didn’t plan it or anything, it was nuts, LOL!  They sang feliz cumpleaños and all that.

Apparently, one of the traditions of Chile is to take a bite of the cake with your mouth, so I did it.  But then I got my face shoved in the cake, ha ha.  Overall, it was a great birthday, and a great week.

I honestly cannot believe how fast all this is going. I can´t believe that I’m 19 and that I have four months on the mish. Its been a blast and I am learning a ton. The work is hard and its tough to stay positive sometimes, but I love it. Its such a privilege to be here. I am so glad and I know this is where I am supposed to be. I am learning a lot about the Book of Mormon. I really now know that it is true, and the blessings that it brings. There’s a ton that I love, but one of my favorite chapters right now is Moroni 7. Read it if you have a chance. Those attributes that are in there are something that I am striving to improve. But its all good.

¡Disfruten su semana! Con amor,

Elder Halverson