Week 61 - ME FUI! Also, I'm a mom, Executive Secretary, Sunday school teacher, etc...

October 27, 2014

ME FUI! also I'm a mom, executive secretary, Sunday school teacher, etc...

Hey guys it's been a pretty crazy week! If you know Spanish or could tell from all of the crazy callings I'm obviously not in Kanas or Puerto Montt anymore... I got a call last Monday night telling me that I was going to be a mom in Fresia and actually become the daughter-in-law of Elder Solomon, even if I'm already his nephew (fist bump if you can figure that out, mi familia misional es bien complicado). 

So I went to Fresia, a tiny little pueblito about and hour and a half north of Puerto Montt to be Elder Roy's second companion (or his mom) who is the son of Elder Warburton, the son of Elder Solomon who is my uncle (elder Wise's brother) ....fun stuff! So I couldn't really do much to say goodbye because well, I only had Tuesday.

Tuesday morning I woke up at about 6 and got started on making a chorillana, which is a giant mess of fries, cheese, grilled onions, steak, and chorizo, so that I could hide Elder Souza's Moroni letter in it. I'll send a picture of it, poor guy almost died after we took the picture, priceless! So I had my last district meeting and it went really well.  We ended up doing the math and finding out that over 530,000 of the 583,359 members in Chile according to the statistics of Southern Chile were inactive. We then talked about working with menos activos and pf families because every baptism every missionary in the room had was from a pf family... fun stuff. Well we stuffed ourselves on the food, as a zone took photos, and then we wrote in each other's red books. We went to lunch with the Bahamondez family and told them the news and took pictures, because no one was going to be home later that day. Afterwards we went and tried to visit every family I knew in the ward and we actually got a lot more taught than I would have thought. Passed by Carlos (soon to be missionary) and gave him a tie with all of the hilarious "tie Quotes" my mom sent me once. He was really nice and gave me one of his awesome skinny ties. We had once with Jonathan and then met up with Marcello before going home to pack at 10, really sad day.

Wednesday was a bit of a shocker. We went to the bus station with all of my bags and met up with Elder Roy. We said goodbye to everyone and then headed on to a mini bus to Fresia. The trip was a bit shocking to say the least.  It was a very beautiful ride but on the way Elder Roy told me about Fresia. We're a branch of 14-20 people and he told me that I was probably going to be the branch president the way things were going, I was more than a little scared!  We got home and changed out of our suits to have lunch with papito, the current branch president.  I had met him before the last time I went to Fresia for a service project (by the way I'm back in the zone Puerto Varas!) Things were going all right, the food was amazing but I was told that the morale is really down and that he wants to call it quits as branch president.  Luckily we had a consejo de rama and everything has changed completely! He told everyone that he really wants to stick to it and be branch president as long as he could.  Let's just say I was really excited! Papito is amazing, he passed through Fresia a couple of years ago as the bishop of Colon and decided that they really needed some leadership so he moved here to be branch president, and quit his job at the Oilla in Puerto Varas as pastry chef (best restaurant in Puerto Varas). He is really cool person.

Sorry guys I don't know what happened but my time is up, I'll have to write later but I just want you to know that I love it here and I'm really excited to be in the country again!

Redneck for life,

Elder Washburn

Elder Souza's Moroni letter

I made ribs for Johnathan and his family

Week 60 - The Baptism

October 20, 2014

The Baptism went pretty good.  Everything ended up falling… the talks, the musical number, the prayers, etc. but it was still just an amazing experience! I really can’t explain enough how everything went wrong but to see an inactive family return to church and cry as they hear the testimony of their son was absolutely amazing, I really can't describe it! The confirmation was a bit different though, Marcelo slept in and so he ended up coming in the door about 15 minutes late. Luckily he made it in time for the sacrament and they were able to "squeeze in" his confirmation before the primary program... a bit of a close call but it all went well and the bishop gave an awesome blessing. I also got a letter from Grandma Layton.  I couldn't read most of it but it was very thoughtful and sweet and you could absolutely tell that it was her writing it.

Elder Washburn

Week 58 - Where did my time go?

October 6, 2014

Hey! Sorry I don't know what I've been doing with my time but I really don't have time to write a full letter. I did write a real letter while waiting for conference to start so I'll have to get that sent out pretty soon. Not too much happened this week to be honest.

Monday we didn't do anything. I cleaned the house, the other guys took naps, we went out to buy groceries, came back, and went out to teach a menos activa.

Tuesday I had my district meeting it wasn't as amazing as I would have liked but we had a pretty good practice, we went to the Bahamondez's to eat lunch like every Tuesday and then went out to work. We ended up bumping into Jose and teaching both him and his Aunt Gloria. He was really receptive again and we ended up changing his fecha bautismal.  He's a good kid, we really tried to focus on him this week and we passed by the house every day. He's starting to read and pray on his own now. We then had an awesome cita with Marcelo. We finished teaching the commandments and he understood and was willing to comply with everything.

Wednesday we passed by Jose and some menos activos. We read and had a great lesson. Later we chopped all of Jonathan's wood and introduced him to his new home teachers. We had our correlation meeting in the chapel and that took the rest of the day.

Thursday we had interviews with the President and had weekly planning, everything went great.  After interviews we went to the house and then passed by Sebastian and checked on Antonia Barria, who we had given a blessing to earlier. She was pretty happy and doing fine.

Friday I don't remember....

Saturday and Sunday we had conference!

And that was the week. Love you and congrats on the anniversary!

Elder Washburn

Week 57 - It's Raining Buckets!

September 29, 2014

Hey guys!

How's it going?  It was a bit of a crazy week, it rained every single day! Actually it hasn't stopped since last Tuesday so I guess we're going for our second week in a row. Hopefully we can beat Noah's record in the coming weeks! Other than that it was a really good week. We had quite a few lessons with members and we're still eating the leftovers from the 18 of September parties, lots of empanadas!

Monday we wrote, shopped, chilled out in the house for a couple of hours and then got my haircut before going out. Other than that not too much happened except the zone leaders calling to tell me that we were going to do divisions on Tuesday. 

Tuesday we had district meeting, it actually went pretty good, by far one of my best compared to my first couple of weeks. We mostly talked about the conference we had with Elder Viña and what we learned from it followed by some practices, the normal stuff I guess. After that we went to the familia Bahamondez to eat and we had some really good pasta. We then went to the house and waited for the zone leaders to call us. We split up and I went with Elder Gomez (third time in a row, no sé) and started to work. We first went to the familia Maldonados house to pick up Carlitos to take him to a couple of citas (appointments) we had set up. Afterwards we took him back and we contacted and visited members’ houses until 8 when we all met up at the church and went to a cita with Marcelo. It was amazing! He understood and was willing to follow all of the commandments and is really excited for his baptism this 18 of October. 

Wednesday we taught J. I really don't know what happened, he has lost a ton of animo (spirit) and really isn't interested right now.  He told us he would come to church, but he really didn't seem too excited about it. We then walked around and taught a few menos activos and pf families in the area.

Thursday was pretty cool.  After weekly planning we headed down to the Bahamondez house to give Sebastian a blessing, he had chicken pox and really couldn't move at all. We blessed him that he would be healed and better by Friday. After that we went to hermana Suzanna's house to teach her grandaughter a bit.

Friday we passed by the Bahamondez house and what do you know? Sebastian was his normal annoying self again, running all over the place, priesthood's real, nuff said!

Saturday was really crazy we ended up have 3 lessons with members and none of them were set up either.  Our members just randomly had awesome investigators sitting in their houses that they wanted us to teach and another investigator just walked into our noche de hogar (FHE), cool stuff!

Sunday was a bit crazy, it rained buckets and because of that no one showed up to church! J wasn't feeling up to it, but on the other hand Marcelo, who had his birthday party and went to bed at 7am came and so did his grandfather Patricio, a menos activo (less active) who only has half a foot, walked by himself all the way to church. Amazing day!

Sorry guys I'm a bit short on time and details but I just want to tell you that I love you all and want you to have a great week wherever you are!

Elder Washburn

Week 56 - Visit From Elder Viña del 70

September 22, 2014

Hey guys, how's it going?

I'll try and write a quick letter but the truth of the matter is nothing happened this week! Monday was a bit crazy, in the morning I got a call from the zone leaders telling me that I needed to call my district because we were going to have a zone meeting... on pday. So I called everyone up and we headed down to the chapel. Well we get there and they tell us that we will be housing all of the missionaries from Chiloe for the zone conference so we need to meet up at the bus terminal to collect them and help them write and do all of their pday stuff. So we did our shopping and then went to the mall to meet up with the zone leaders and everyone else and I find out that my buddy Elder Borup and his son are going to stay with us for the night! So we meet up at the mall, grabbed some KFC, wrote emails and came home. Afterwards we did divisions with the elders. Elder Karvfordt is still in training so we had a trio and we went to an awesome noche de hogar with the Bahamondez family and did a lot of contacting. Came home and hunted dogs with the new lazer pointer it was a blast!

Noche de Hogar with Familila Bahamondez

Tuesday we all woke up early and got dressed so we could get to the stake center on time. The meeting with Elder Viña del 70 was amazing and I learned a lot!  Afterwards we got a special leadership meeting with all of the district leaders of the area and it was really cool, I picked up a lot.

Puerto Varas Zone/ Pres Ibanez and Alerce Districts

Wednesday we didn't work, we spent the whole day prepping for the ward activity. It was great and we had a lot of fun, but we didn't teach.

Because of the 18 de Septiembre (Chile's Independence Day) the next few days were filled with empanadas and juice (socializing) we spent all of our time with the members because we weren't allowed to leave with out fixed citas (appointments). Kinda killed me but the food was amazing!

Me and Jonathan

Me and Emanuel

Sunday we had church and went by ALL of our investigators to set up citas so we could teach them and it was a really productive day.

Well thats about it. Love you all!

Elder Washburn