Hola familia,

Thank you for the pictures, its great to see the family. I miss you all so much. I´m glad to hear the blessing for Ben went well and you had a good trip. I hope Telly and Bryce are doing ok with everything they are trying to do and aren´t getting too overwhelmed. I wish them the best of luck with all that they´re doing.

This last week we had our zone conference, and it was good. They´re a lot better when I can understand more of what everyone is saying haha. I still don´t catch everything of course, but it causes me to focus on the Spirit more and try to listen to what its trying to tell me during those conferences. So hopefully I catch what I´m supposed to. Other than the zone conference, our week was a little lame. I don´t know if we´re doing something wrong or what, but we can´t find new investigators to teach, we´re having a hard time finding our less actives to teach. And then Giordana didn´t come to church yesterday which was a bummer. She came with us to a baptism in another ward Friday, and that was good, but I dunno why she didn´t come to church. Its frustrating, because during our lessons with her and everything like that she shows such desire and the spirit is strong and she told us that the big reason why she believes all of this is because of how she felt the first time she came to the church. So I dunno. We have a lesson planned with her tonight though, hopefully she comes. With Johann, its difficult. Cause he´s so quiet, and I don´t know if he really is believing in any of this or just doing it because his uncle or grandma or what, he´s only 13. Obviously someone at that age can make that decision, but I don´t want to baptize someone just because they are pressured into it then 2 years later have them leave the church, that’s why there are a million inactives in Chile in the first place.

We did have a less active girl come to church yesterday though, she was baptized in April and hadn´t been to church since. But we got her to come yesterday with her nonmember mom, but they left right after. But I got the primary president to talk to her and tell her how much the primary misses her and everything so hopefully that will help her. The girl is 9, her dad is inactive, and mom is not a member, and they´re not married. And her dad is just lazy, he´s nice enough and everything, but lazy.

BUT, we keep working, cause there´s nothing else to do, right? We had a chance to visit with the patriarch here, who you might remember has terminal cancer, but it was great talking with someone so wise in the gospel. It was very uplifting for me and edifying. He talked about President Kimball and the ¨Do it¨slogan and how we need to be more like that. And I agree, with me as well, but there are so many inactives that want to return to church and all of that, and they tell us they´re ¨trying¨ but they just don´t feel ready yet. They just need to do it. Needless to say, I´m a little frustrated with the work right now, mostly because I don´t know what else to do. Other times I was frustrated because I felt maybe we were doing something wrong, or we had improvements to make, but the last 4 weeks we have worked our butts off, and its just really hard to see any results of our work right now, which as you could see is a little frustrating. Ugh, sorry, I didn´t mean to complain so much. I´m still going strong and happy with what we´re doing. The Lord is helping us keep going and I know that its not for nothing.

Oh mom and dad, I wanted to talk to you about coming and picking me up in Chile. First of all, I think a lot of it will depend on if its allowed by my mission president at the time, who I´m pretty sure will be different than president Urra, but, I´d love to show you Chile and everything, but I´d want to do it not as a missionary, and if you come and pick me up, I´ll have to be a missionary that whole time unless the Mission president is allowed to release me, or you happen to be the stake president dad. I think it could work out fine, but the other thing is, well, from Antofagasta, its 10 hours north to arica, and 10 hours south from Antofagasta to the southernmost city of our mission, so it would be very long traveling by bus, but cheap. I believe there are planes that could work but I don´t really know. But, if you happen to have lots and lots of money dad, maybe I could go home and then we could come back or something, I dunno. But i was just throwing that in there. Also, I´ve been recording on a tape for you and will probably be sending it next week. Hopefully you like it. Its hard to talk into that thing for very long haha.

Anyway, got to run, Love you all and miss you all. Love Luke