AJ's email from 2/27/12

The sign he is holding says "1 año"

        alright, im officially half way done with the mission. in fact, in exactly one year from today, ill be getting home from chile. so weird to think. a year is a long time. but this next year is gonna fly by.

        so we started our new ward plan this week so that more members come out with us. each week is assigned to a part of the ward like i think that i explained last week. so this week was assigned to the young men and young women. and it turned out to work very well. we had 10 youth come out with us during the week and had a very successful week. so its making me even more excited for whats to come.

        tuesday we started with the young women. we had one of the leaders, hna. consuelo, with 2 girls, javiera and amy that came out. they are both 12. but we didnt have any plans all day really til about 8 that night. so we started by going to a house of a girl that lives across the street from hna consuelo cuz the girl is inactive. and when we got there, we figured out that its a house that we had gone to by ourselves before but it didnt work out well. but with consuelo, she let us in to talk a little. so i was impressed. and then what was even better is that when we got in, her boyfriend was there and isnt a member. so thats an instant way to find new people to teach. then after that we went to a few other houses of people that they knew, inactives and non members. and it was a lot better than trying to get into places alone cuz its a lot harder doing it that way.

        wednesday we went out with pablo, a 15 year old. we went to maria, our investigator that is like a member. its been kinda tough for her lately with her pareja not wanting to get married and her wanting so bad to get baptized. so we talked a lot about that with her. and she is just gonna have to be patient. i dont understand latin america sometimes and how people can be so against getting married. i understand how some dont want to cuz they are to young or cuz they are just starting together. but this couple has been together for a while now and she has told him that she doesnt want to be with anyone else. and there are others that i know here that have been together 20 years, have 3 kids, lived together all that time and still dont want to get married. how can it be so difficult and what do they think will change for the worse? at least its not this bad in the states....thank you america. but she just thanked us for always being there to talk to her cuz its a big help having someone to give her advice spiritually as well as physically. im glad that we can be that person for her. ive always liked helping people through problems.

Hma Aida and her daughter with AJ

          thursday was really good, but also a disaster depending on how you look at it. at church on sunday we had planned to go out with debora, the young womens president, and victoria and belen that are 16. and so that was ok. cuz the houses are small so its tougher to get in with more people but we are still alright with 5. then the night before, victoria told us that alison wanted to come out with us too. so we said alright thats fine. then on the way to the place that we were gonna meet at, we ran into debora walking there. and she was walking with her daughter, darinka, that was also gonna come out with us. so now we are thinking great what are we gonna do now. then we get to the place, and belen had brought one of her friends. so then we are there, thinking what in the world are we gonna do cuz there is no way that we are getting into a single house with all these people. so finally we decided to just go out and see if we could, and to be honest im kinda glad that no one answered the door so that we didnt have to see the peoples faces with 8 people wanting to come in. but it must have been a funny sight. 2 mormon missionaries walking around with a lady and 5 16 year old girls. must have been funny. the good thing was that the friend that belen brought, paulina, isnt a member. so hopefully we can start teaching her soon and get her baptized. cuz i dont know how many 16 year old girls would go out for 2 hours visiting people with the missionaries unless they liked the church a little. so we´ll see about that.

         friday was a little bit of a slow day. and it kinda sucked cuz no one came to the english class that we had this week. that was a little disappointing. but thats what happens when you are trying to establish something and make it work. hopefully we will have more people next week. so during that time i just went and practiced playing piano. im getting alright now if i do say so myself.

         the only other thing that i want to mention from this week was something that happened on saturday. cuz we have a home teaching assignment to help the elders quorem since there are more people to visit than they have to visit them. so we went to one of the families. and they live in a little community of about 5 houses. but they have a gate and everything to the community. but next to that there is a farm with a ditch next to it to water everything. and that day the ditch overflowed and made it impossible for us to get to the phone to let them know that we were there. so we had to find big rocks to put to walk on and get to the gate and the phone. it was so funny cuz elder vilar did it fine going in, but getting back to dry land was tougher and he fell in. then they came and opened the gate. and to get through the flood we had to be on our bikes going super slow. but it was really fun. (NO PICTURE OF ELDER VILAR IN THE DITCH? DARN!)

        but anyway that was my week. the weather here is starting to get cooler now. i had to wear a sweater at night one day this week cuz it was so cold. but there were other days this week that felt hotter than ever. its weird. but take care

THE OFFICIAL ONE YEAR BURNING OF THE SHIRT...

Please tell me they are trying to warm their buns...
...another motherly eye roll!!

Boys and fire...what can I say?

AJ email 02/20/2012...Hitting the year mark on THURSDAY!!

The very distinguished Talagante Zone.
Yes, that is AJ on the left...on his companion's back...cute.

alright another week down. and im officially hitting my year mark this week. i cant believe that ive been gone for so long now. its crazy. but im hoping to do something special thursday night cuz thats the day that i really hit a year and we will have our normal noche de hogar with hna aida and cynthia. so we will do something to celebrate a little.

        tuesday morning we went to see our investigator victor and see how he was doing after his car accident. and when i first saw him and then he told us the story, the first thing that i thought was that he is lucky that he didnt die. he has 28 stitches in his knee and his spine is swollen a little. and his brother is a lot worse. if victor wasnt such a big guy (about 6´ 250 lbs) i think the accident would have caused a lot more damage. what he told us is that him and his brother were on a motorcycle on a narrow street going to talagante. and they went into a big turn. and with big trees on both sides of the roads here, its hard to see around. and a car coming the other way drifted a little to far onto their side and they hit the side of the car and went flying. so he could have been hurt a lot worse. but then thursday we went to see him again and he was already doing a lot better. he looked better and could move around a little in his bed. but he still wont be able to walk on his own for a little while longer. the good thing about him being in bed so much now though is that its given him more time to read the book of mormon and think about what he needs to do to get baptized. and now he wants to do it more than ever. so thats a good thing.

       tuesday was kinda a weird day cuz of valentines day. we went to a members house during the day and "celebrated" a little with them. we ate a cake and talked a lot and it was fun. and then to finish the night we went to hna aida´s house. and hna aida gave elder vilar and i a little gift. and it was funny for me cuz elder vilar and i always joke around with her saying that we are going to hug her and other little stuff. so what she gave me was a little paper that said that i can have all the hugs that i want...in one year. so it would be really cool for me to be able to come back here after the mission. id really like to if i can.

      thursday we had a pretty good day. we taught several lessons and it was the first day in a little while where i felt like we were able to get into our scheduled appointments all day. but the best was the noche de hogar at the end of the night. cuz i had to give the lesson. and so i decided to give it on virtue. and i realized that i can be a lot better teacher than i think sometimes. and im thankful to have that ability cuz i know that there are a lot of other people who dont and can get pretty confusing while teaching. also thursday we had district meeting so i found out who is new in the zone. and our new district leader is elder mcbride who is from thatcher. so now we have 3 in our zone from arizona. me, elder mcbride, and elder parker who is from tucson. and its pretty cool to talk to each other about arizona stuff and feel at home a little lol

       friday we had lumch with hna aida. and she had one of her nephews over who lives in, go figure, apache junction. its crazy how small the world can get sometimes. but he has been living in the states for almost 15 years now. so it was really cool talking to him and to catch up a little on whats going on in arizona. he is visiting chile with some friends i guess. it was weird talking to him though. cuz his english isnt perfect, but his spanish is way different too. elder vilar and i were almost laughing at his spanish accent sometimes. cuz he is from chile, his wife is from argentina, and he has lived in arizona half his life. so his accent is a mix between chilean, argentinean, and mexican. it was really weird.

     then later that night there was a "stake dance" for the youth of the stake. and since we have the english class that night, we were in the church just before it started and then stayed for a little of the beginning while kids were showing up. what surprised me though is how different things can be between here and the states. normally stake dances are for kids between 14 and 18. but on friday night there were kids between 11 and 20. not exactly something that you can get away with in arizona. and the other thing was that with the whole stake there, there were only about 30 kids. im pretty sure that a lot more kids go to dances in arizona. at least it was that way the last time i went about 3 years ago

       saturday was pretty funny, cuz we got to hear from an evangelical "apostle". they had set a stage thing in one of the neighborhoods in our sector. and so then when we passed by them, we stopped and listened a little and it was really funny. im not gonna make fun of their church cuz you dont do that. but lets just say that they have a different way of doing things. at night we had a meeting with the ward leaders in the church. and just before that we met with the ward mission leader and he got pretty upset cuz he realized how little the ward has been helping us the last few weeks. cuz we dont have very many good investigators right now compared to how it should be. and so then in the meeting with the other leaders, he told them what needs to change and gave them a plan to do it. so now we are going to have the ward coming out with us a lot more often to see the difficulties that we are having so that they will give us more references. so im excited for that. hopefully it will help us have a little more success.

Are all 19-21 year olds this dignified?? ...I wonder!

        the only other thing that was cool from this week was yesterday before church started. every week before church starts elder vilar and i stand out front and shake peoples hands as they come in. and for the last 2 weeks as we have stood there, we have been able to see our breath. and thats definitely a first for me in the SUMMER. ive never been able to see my breath during the summer so its been cool. the pictures this week are from last weeks district meeting. that was our zone last change in our last week together. but anyway i hope that everyone is doing good. take care

Playing Catch Up...3 for 1 Deal!!

So sorry for those of you who follow AJ primarily on this blog. All I can say is busy, busy, busy. Anyway here are his email from 1/30/12, 2/06/12 and 2/13/12. Don't forget to scroll down to the pictures in the previous post.


JANUARY 30, 2012
this week was really up and down. we had 2 days where we basically didnt do anything because of meetings, and then 2 days where we did a ton of stuff. and because it got really hot towards the end of the week again, it made it miserable around 5 everyday but then around 9 it was so cold that i wanted to put a sweatshirt on. weird the weather here.

      tuesday we ran into something that i thought was really funny. we were riding our bikes through the middle of the sector going to an appointment, and when we got to one of the plaza areas where lots of people get together, there was a church congregation in the middle with a megaphone preaching there. so we went there and stopped and listened a little and it was hilarious. as soon as we stopped, the guy that was talking saw us and started saying stuff like "we dont come here preaching to you in white shirts and ties" (cuz they were in normal clothes) and other stuff like that. and the other people had flags that they were waving around and saying amen every now and then. then after the guy got done talking, he was walking around a little and so elder vilar called him over to talk a little. and elder vilar asked him why they have the flags and his answer was "i dont know. apparently it has some biblical meaning to it or something like that but i wouldnt know, i dont read the bible. i just come here and tell people things that ive heard before that i like". and when he said that i couldnt help but laugh. then elder vilar told him that we come wearing white shirts and ties to show some respect towards christ and he said something about that he wasnt talking about us, he was talking about others. it was rediculous.

       thursday we had a zone conference. and ours was in melipilla, in the same building that i started the mission in. and being there really brought back a ton of memories from being in that ward. thinking about all the people that i know there and all the good times and experiences that i had. it was weird being there though for missionary reasons and not on sunday or during a church activity. and it also made me realize something, that our church buildings are SO much bigger than the ones that we have here. cuz i remember thinking when i first got to chile that that building was kinda small and i felt like it should be bigger. but when we went there on thursday and i walked in, the first thing that came to my mind was "wow this building is HUGE!" so i cant even imagine what im gonna think when i get back from the mission and go to church that first sunday. i might go crazy. something else though that was weird for me was that i realized how fast the mission goes. cuz when i got to chile and lived with elder young in melipilla, he had just a little more than a year in the mission. and on thursday he gave his going home testimony that all the missionaries give the last zone conference before they go home. and he goes in march. thats crazy. i cant believe im almost to the year mark.

       friday was one of those busy days that we had this week. but the best part of the day was the fact that i started an english class at the church for anyone who wants to learn english. it was a little bit of a struggle getting started cuz ive never taught english before to anyone for any reason. so to start teaching a class to a bunch of latin people by myself will definitely be interesting. but it should be fun. and we are hoping that after a little while we can possibly get some non members to come and that will give us more people to teach.

     then sunday was basically a resting day. (go figure, in spanish its called the day of rest and its the first time during the mission that ive actually been able to rest) but it was cuz we had a big meeting with the whole stake and the ward council from each ward. and president king came and talked about some stuff to try and make everything better. because really its a district, not a stake. so president king has control over everything. but the district is making a push right now to become a stake in march. so the meeting was so that everyone learns more and the branches are better. but we left our house around 5 after sleeping some and then got back around 830 and went over to a members house cuz we didnt have any other plans. so it was a good day.

       with the pictures, there are a couple from our table during lunch at the zone conference. one with elder young. another with elder christensen who was in the office when i first got to chile and we have a pretty good relationship cuz we spent a whole day together one time while elder keogh was doing his visa stuff. 2 others are from one of the nights when we went to the house of hermana aida and cynthia (members in our ward). we have a family home evening with them every week and we are trying to work on the husband of hermana aida a little cuz he isnt a member. another is when we went to their house to do service. one is our drawing of the creation which is the lesson we taught this sunday for gospel principles. and the last is when elder vilar and i were playing jenga in the pension one day.

       anyway that was my week this week. i hope that everyone is doing well. take care

 FEBRUARY 6, 2012

hey everyone how is it going? good i hope. alright one quick thing that i forgot to mention from last week that president told us during the zone conference. basically he made an announcement that we all need to get our emergency bags ready because here in chile, we never known when we could have something big happen with all the earthquakes that there are here. and then he gave us a little statistic. since the year started, or in other words, the first of january, there have been over 350 earthquakes. over 30 of which have been able to be felt. and thats a lot more than normal. and with all that activity, its predicted that towards the end of february we could have a very big earthquake in the north of chile, on the same level as the one that they had here 2 years ago that was one of the strongest earthquakes in history. basically president just told us, get ready lol.

        this week was also kinda slow for us, also. i dont know whats up these last 2 weeks but it seems like with it being summer, everyone is gone. all the people we are teaching either went to the beach or are working overtime for the summer. so we havent had a lot to do. but what we started to do this week is work more with the members and ask them for names of people we could visit. and all the names they give us right now are just inactive members. i guess thats what happens when you have a list of 1100 members and only have about 100 coming to church. and really its fine for me if thats all i do in this sector is visit less active members. but still it kinda sucks.

        thursday we were in our house around 3 after we had lunch when an alarm sounded from the firehouse meaning that there was a fire close. and for the last couple weeks that has been something normal cuz there are lots of fires here during the summer because it doesnt rain at all and there is wind everyday. but with this fire it was bigger and much closer than normal. it was only about a mile away from our house and so from the second floor, we could see all the smoke and we had about 10 firetrucks go by our house. then the whole day there were ashes falling and it made it hard to breathe. and at night when i went to bed, i had to clean my bed cuz i had ashes all over my bed. pretty sure thats not great for my health but oh well.

        friday we had a family home evening but with the whole primary in the church. we were there to support the primary presidency more than for missionary purposes, although we did have a lady there that wasnt a member (that lady teaches english in northern chile too so it was cool talking to her) but it was a lot of fun. these 2 girls did a little dance thing, some of the parents shared scriptures, elder vilar did a ¨magic trick¨ with a boy in our retention, and there were a few other things. then after that, we had the english class. and im not gonna lie, with the lady there who teaches english, i was kinda nervous. dont ask me why i would be nervous teaching english if i speak it and pretty much everyone else there doesnt know much but i was. weird.

        then saturday morning we did some service for a lady in the ward that is redoing her house a little cuz she had termites. so we were there all morning with a couple guys from the ward. and it was a lot of fun. we took out a metal thing that she had outside that wasnt doing anything anyway so i dont know why she had it. and then we built a new support thing for her wall before they spray one more time.

       something crazy that just happened, and also the reason that this is getting to you a little later than normal, is that i was sitting there typing this email to send, when the power went out in the place that i was at. and then when the power came back, i couldnt turn on the computer for some reason. and then by that time, we had an appointment with someone in 10 min, so we had to go. so i wasnt able to finish. but now im at the house of a member using his computer so that i can finish this email. 

          today for pday we had a zone activity with the zone of melipilla. we played soccer on a full size field and it was fun playing on a field bigger than a basketball court. to be able to fully run for once. and to make it all better, we won 10-8. i had 3 goals and 2 assists and we controlled the entire game basically, even though they still scored 8 goals. but thats besides the point. the only thing that i thought was a little sad is that i was one of the best players on the field. and i think its sad cuz supposedly all latins do is play soccer. it made me realize that they all like to play baby so that they dont have to move much. but when they get on a big field, they get a little lazier.          

       anyway that was my week. the pictures here are a couple from the family home evening, a couple from service on saturday, and then a couple from soccer today. i hope that you all have a good week. take care

 FEBRUARY 13, 2012

well changes came and went this week. it seems so weird to me that the whole change has already gone by cuz it still feels like just yesterday that i got to el monte. but the good thing is that elder vilar and i are staying together another change here and so i am looking forward to another fun 6 weeks with him. especially cuz we had a pretty good week this week.

       wednesday this week we did divisions again. this time i was in cordillera with elder west from idaho. he is only in his second change but he impressed me with how well he can already speak spanish. it seems like missionaries are arriving being able to speak better and better every change. but we had a long day cuz everything fell through like it normally does on divisions. so we just walked around most of the day talking and doing some contacts. the worst part of that though is that im not used to walking anymore from the bikes so my legs hurt at the end of the day. and it made me think about how bad it will be when i leave el monte cuz that we be after 4 or 6 months of riding bikes. itll be like how i felt at the start of the mission lol but oh well

        thursday we spent like half the day with hna aida cuz we went over to her house to do service in the morning, then we had lunch with her, and then at night we had our normal noche de hogar with them that we always have now. but it was a really fun day. and something that is good is that we are starting to talk with her husband a little more. hna aida told us that we are the first missionaries in 12 years to get him to say something more than hola to us. so even though we might not be teaching him yet and be getting him ready to get baptized, im glad to know that we are having a little affect on him and that even if we dont ever get to teach him, maybe someday he will change his mind because of us and will listen to the missionaries and get baptized.

       then friday was another long day. in the morning we had to do our profound cleaning of the house. i hate cleaning so much. some things never change lol but i do always like how things look after cleaning and moving everything around a little. it just feels better. there was one thing worth mentioning though, and thats what is in the picture that i sent. we found that spider in the bath tub about halfway through cleaning. i asked a couple people here and they said that that spider is the famous rincon spider here. its super fast and is extremely poisionous. apparently it can kill someone in a couple days or something like that if they dont get a bite taken care of quickly. but its the first time that ive seen one so big. all the others that ive seen before were just little tiny ones so when this one showed up, it was crazy. but it was funny cuz after taking the picture, we used the ruler to try and cut its legs off and it was funny watching it race around in circles trying to get away. but i ended up cutting it in half with one of my attempts at cutting a leg off. so we just washed it down the drain. we are definitely gonna be on the look for others now though over the next couple days. after all that though, we didnt have much to do though cuz we took a youth out with us and everything fell through. so we basically spent the day setting appointments for other days.

       saturday we got a little scare from one of our investigators, victor. we called him during the day to see if he would be home at night to visit him, but someone else answered his phoneand told us that he had gotten in a car crash and was in the hospital but was doing alright. so we were really worried about him the rest of the day. finally sunday night we got a hold of him and he was doing a lot better but was still a little sore. but im glad that he didnt get seriously hurt.

       also saturday we helped a less active family move out of their house cuz they had some problems with the person that owns the house. so we spent a couple hours there. and we had a lot of fun with them and joked around a lot which i think was good for them cuz they dont get out a lot and they have been having a lot of hard times lately and needed to be happy for a little. and thats what elder vilar and i are best at, making people laugh and have fun. and it was also good cuz the daughter promised us that once their family gets out of this situation, that she will come to church. so hopefully that happens.

      sunday for us was just a day to look for names of less active people that the ward gave us. they gave us a list of the first 25 men on the ward list and asked us to figure out who is active, who isnt, and who doesnt live there anymore. basically we are just doing a cleaning of the ward list which kinda sucks cuz id rather do better stuff with our time but at least we can help a little. and maybe we can find some people to teach from passing by so many families that arent all full member families.

      the reason i liked this week so much was cuz we found several new people that we are gonna start teaching that either are pretty interested or can get baptized quickly with a little work. an example from yesterday is a girl that we talked to while we were looking for those names. it was a house that was on our list and the girl said that the person didnt live there and neither does she. but she wants us to come by her house sometime to talk cuz her and her pareja are really interested in coming to our church sometime. cuz she has a neighbor that got baptized in august named nicole that always invites her to come but they havent come yet cuz of a problem that they are having with a different member. but if she gets married i could see her getting baptized really quickly and that would be awesome. it showed me 2 things though. how important it is for members to mention things about the church to their friends and invite them to things. and it also showed me how important it is that we always show a good example to other people cuz you never know how you could affect the progress of someone else around you. but there are several other people like her that we found this week so im excited for it.

        anyway i hope that you all have a good week. take care

Playing Catch-up...pictures, pictures, pictures

Here are the pictures from AJ's last 3 email. Sorry, no cute captions or integration into the email this time. 

Okay, can't resist...my first thought was "WHAT?!" Then I settled into "Boys will be boys"
...followed by a motherly eye-roll.