How is everyone? Thank you for the emails this week with the couple pictures, they were great. Its wonderful to read about everything going on at home. I’m super excited to hear about Bryce and Shantel getting their temple recommends. If there’s one thing you learn while reading the Book of Mormon, or one thing you should learn anyway, its that if you keep the commandments of God you will prosper in the land. It says that at least an average of once a chapter doesn’t it? Haha. Really though that is incredible news. I hope to hear from Telly all about it when she gets the chance. I’m glad it only took you guys 2 weeks to figure out my boanerges reference, haha. Its one of the most exciting things I’ve found in the scriptures! Actually I found it more in Jesus the Christ, but still, its pretty exciting.
So about the package mom, I’m pretty sure your just send it to the mission office place in Antofagasta, then they get it to me from there. I don’t have the address with me, but you can call brittany or something because its my return address to her letters. Its something like this:
Elder Skene
Sucre 220, oficina
Edificio bulnes
Antofagasta, Region II
Chile
And that should do it. I don’t really know other than that, so good luck haha. Everybody else here seems to get their packages all right. We´ve been doing emails between us friends out here, like steve garrett patrick and colt summers, with Matt park, and its been fun. Garrett is ZL, and Colt summers is in honduras, where evidentally the country is in uprising or somethinhg and they almost get arrested a lot. I´m thankful its stable here and I don’t have to worry about anything like that. I haven´t been getting emails from Jessica Myler, but thats ok, its hard with only having an hour of email time to do all that I want to, so thats ok. I have a question though, are you keeping all my emails? I hope so, I think they’d be nice to have for when I get done and put them in a journal or something. I realized that after I erased a bunch I’ve received, and am now debating what if I should forward my emails from you guys to my bulldogballer email to keep them, but I’ll figure it out later haha.
Lets see, I have 4 things I wrote down that I wanted to tell everyone about this week. 1st, about Tuesday. We had our normal interviews with President Urra, and that was a blessing for me. Because I was struggling with how to recognize the spirit and things like that, and was able to sit down and talk with him about it. He read 1 Samuel 3 with me, and then a quote from President Hinckley that you can find in Preach my Gospel, around page 100... in spanish... but its in chapter 4 and just in the text. Its a really good quote, it says something like, every good desire we have, or every thought or impulse we have that might end up being for somebody’s good, is the Spirit.It was a lot better than that obviously, I’m just paraphrasing, but I really liked it and it gave me a lot of encouragement and inspiration. So this last week has been really good, even if it was hard still. Also I’m trying to think about it like this, its missionary WORK, the only way I´m going to get stuff done is if I just keep working, if I do that everything else will fall into place and I don’t need to worry so much. I think I´ve been worrying to much. I´ve decided I´m just going to work work work, be happy about it, and if rough patches come, just pray for strength and keep going. And its been working this week.
2nd thing, I had my first taste of ¨bible bashing¨this week, also on Tue, before our interviews. We were knocking doors and we happened to come in contact with a Jehovah´s Witness, I know a little about their religion but not much, but the lady pulled out her bible to start explaining stuff to us and then my comp did the same and I was just wanting to bear my testimony then get out of there because it was obvious to me that she was not going to be listening to anything we had to share, so why waste the time? I know that sounds rough, but if the ¨field is white ready to harvest¨then we need to find those people that are ready. That doesn´t mean I don´t try to share with every single person, just that I don´t think we need to waste 15 min of our time trying to argue with someone, and that is exactly what my companion did. It was a little frustrating, but I learned from it how bad it is. The spirit is not there at all. I think my companion felt the same, he has a strong testimony, and he just kind of got suckered into it. But if there´s a next time I´m going to try to get us out of there a little sooner cause its just lame.
3rd thing, I´m pretty sure every single person in Chile is sick, seriously. Every house we knocked or went to this week, members or whatever, somebody there has a cold or the flu. And there are people with the swine flu as well. I heard from someone that Chile is the most infected country with the swine flu, is that true? Anyway, we´re being really careful and trying not to get sick, we use lots of hand sanitizer so hopefully that does it.
4th thing, we were knocking doors Friday and found an entire family to teach! A mom and 4 kids, 16-5. They are catholic but don´t ever really go to church, and wanted to come to church with us Sunday but all of them were sick with the flu I guess, but they didn´t tell us that til we left haha. But it was the first time I´ve actually gone into a house to teach a family that was like this. They were so incredibly nice and just might be Golden, but we´re not sure yet. But if so, wow. It was the spirit too, like... I dunno, I didn´t hear a voice or anything, but we had an appt that morning but he wasn´t there and we weren´t sure what we were going to do really, and I looked up at this apt complex we always walk by and said, hey, there´s lots of people there, lets go knocking. So we did, and the 4th door we knocked was this family! I know it was the spirit that directed us there, so that was really cool. I know I still have tons to learn with the spirit but I also feel like i´ve gained a bigger testimony of it (ether 12:6)
Also we have found 2 boys to teach that are younger brothers of a recent convert who really wants his brothers to join the church, but they are busy and hard to find, but really sincere, and I think will probably be baptized in the next couple months.
This cambio ends aug 2 or 3, so I dunno if I´ll still be here in Arica or if I´ll get shipped of somewhere else then. I obviously am accustomed to it here in arica. The weather is nice, its warmer, but not really scorching whenever we´re working. The nights are nice, even almost chilly because there´s always a breeze here.
Well, I´m at that point where I dunno what else to write, so I guess I´ll end this letter. If you have any questions let me know. I love you all! Luke
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