Problem is it was kind of a boring week. Thinking about just sending voice recordings let me know what you think about that.
Ok so the eventful things about this week was that we had just a normal zone training day that me and Elder Oxy Clean put on with the help with the hermana trainers and a district leader and that went well. We planned it really well ahead of time and kept it short and sweet so it was cool. The hermanas really killed it with a lesson on teaching the sabbath day holy (there's some sweet new Mormon messages out about that check em out). We planned together with our roommates a skit about how a missionary planning session is similar to the experience of the brother of Jared and the rocks and it was funny and different and I think we got our point across well too. President and Hna May surprised us and came too but I think they liked it all. It was cool and there was a really good spirit there too. We are improving a ton as a zone and we are going to have some baptisms soon here and pretty well spread across the zone. The funny thing was that Friday we had a zone conference put on by the mission office including president and hna may again but this time it was done together with the zones from Lebu and Coronel. It was really fun to see some old friends from those zones, especially Lebu. Elder Molina from Puren was there so it was great to see him. Pres May must have liked our skit becuase he asked us to do it again for the other two zones that Friday but I guess our zone just had to sit through it again. It was fun and really spiritual. It was all really focused on Christ and choosing the right because of being converted to Christ, not for glory or whatever dumb reason a missionary might have. We read and talked about Helaman chapter 5 which is a killer missionary scripture. Then we ate a super delicious lunch all together -- it was way fun. As far as our sector goes both companionships here in Lagonillas have kind of hit a total wall and we don't know why. It's really weird because we feel like we are working better and harder than before but we ended up with a kind of crappy week with very few lessons and new investigators and we are not sure why. I think it could be a lot of things but some of my ideas are the following: 1) The Lord is trying our patience 2) the Lord wants us to change how we work 3) it was just a bad week for no reason specifically. I kind of believe in reason 2 the most because honestly contacting so much this week was super lame. The whole thing made me and Elder Oxenfree think about how we find new people to teach in this mission and we talked about it a lot as we knocked tons and tons of empty doors. We studied the Preach My Gospel chapter about it too and we realized that our mission has a pretty dumb culture of thinking that door knocking is the only honorable way to find hahaah. The interesting thing is that PMG pretty much only mentions tracting like that as like a last resort side note. I think that in our mission it works just BARELY enough to be considered not a waste of time and I think thats the problem we have. Thinking about the biggest problems I and others have had in our mission about getting baptisms and edifying the church has been simply that we don't have anyone to teach and have a really hard time finding them. I think it's because we dont follow PMG very well on that. So after coming to that kind of awakening and eye opening conclusion as a house we put together a crazy good plan on how to get references from the awesome and numerous members here. It will be a few weeks before we see the results but we have faith that it will turn out. A big part of the plan is avoiding just showing up and asking these people we barely know to give us people to teach, but instead getting to know them and then serving them and THEN training them on how to do missionary work. The idea is that after all of that "buttering-up" (or "chaomullo" for all the Chileans out there) the members will want to work with us and trust us enough to allow us to teach their family and friends. I really hope it works. If it does we will implement it to the whole zone and if that works it might get extended out as a common practice in the whole misison. I would love that to be my legacy here. The end of door knocking. Honestly other than that, the week was just a lot of walking around. It wasn't that bad though mostly due to Elder Oxbirdie being like the best comp ever. He is so killer. He has really pushed me harder than i was already going. I love it. We are always on the same page. My only fear is that they will have to call a new AP in our mission this cambio almost for sure and I'm fairly certain it might be my comp which would be a total bummer. We had a great time this week. We did another asado today with the left over charcoal we had as well and it was awesome. Surprisingly cheap too. I think next week we are giong to try and do a Thanksgiving themed zone activity too so I'll let you know how that goes. Saturday we helped one sector here out because their ward mission leader had planned this caroling activity with the whole zone but the whole thing lacked a bit of organization and it was really crazy hot there. O well. It was fun to sing for a while. We did have a cool miracle on Sunday and this random couple we had never seen or heard of walked into sacrament meeting! Turns out the husband is a member but the wife no ($$$) so we will be teaching them hopefully this week. That was a nice tender mercy. Ok this week was good even though we didnt achieve much honestly. I love the mission on even the most boring days. Thinking about it me and Elder Oxbunny decided that we really really dont want to go home. Speaking of that everyone keeps reminding me how much time I've been here and everyone has been saying a different wrong and too big number so let's just clear it up now: tomorrow I iwill complete 16 months here meaning that I barely fininshed the two-thirds mark so I have TOOOOONNNNS of time left ok?!?! hahahah Ok i think this is kind of it. Love hearing from you all. Stay healthy and safe. I'll do better on pics this week but heres a recording of me and Elder Cheney singing a song in Spanish for this week. Love Elder Trevor Smith
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Elder Trevor SmithElder Trevor Smith is a Mormon missionary in the Chile Concepcion Sur mission, the same mission where his dad served. Although this is Trevor's own mission, he grew up hearing about the beautiful land of Chile and the loving people that inhabit it. These are the letters from his experience there. Archives
July 2017
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