July 11, 2011

I forwarded the pictures of the whole mission with President and Sister Swenson, hope you all enjoy, and all of us with white ties was to show we all baptized while they were our president, I think?

I find out Saturday July 16^th  if I leave Lota on Tuesday July 19^th or if I stay with Elder Nelson another combio, I love Lota and it would be tough to leave.  

I hear you all have a hectic few weeks soon, vacation time it is! Oh and dad you can’t do the minute to win it card throw because we all know that I am so much better then you at it, ha-ha. Oh and I have been keeping up my skills with pass along cards so a rematch would be useless, ha-ha

This week we found out that a recent convert of Jackson, my last comp, is not allowed to go to church anymore and her mom is trying to strike her from the records so that she is no longer a member of the church. We aren’t allowed to visit and neither are the members. It’s really tough for us because she is one of the strongest members I’ve ever seen, even stronger then some of the members all their lives. So yah pray for her, her name is Gissela (the G is an H sound in English).

I’m talking with Elder Brimhall right now and we both agree that we miss taco bell and 7/11 slurpies. Sad moments for us, but yah that’s what we do when we have gringos in the same cyber writing home. Ha-ha

So this week was a little tough because we only had 1person in church, and that was tough because we had a lot of people saying that they would, so yah we will need to find out what happened with them. Betsabé was way too busy for us to visit her and we are having some problems with her so we are trying again with her. but last night we were contacting and this guy was on the corner of the street and invited us to take once with him (it's like a snack at night time, not at 11pm Andrew, ha-ha)

Oh, I deposited the money for the scripture cases that’s why there is a huge chunk out of my bank account, thanks for that, I’ve been so lazy and not doing it but finally did.  I got a receipt in my wallet so that way I should always have proof. It didn’t say the name I put it into on the receipt so that is kind of sketchy but missionaries all over Chile do this so I have faith that it will work.  It was just weird doing it, I had to get help from a banker here and the whole time she was like ”freaking gringos...." ha-ha it was really funny cause I understood her!

So it’s really really cold here now, I’m wearing a scarf now, and it’s very fashionable, I must say, ha-ha. it’s something I will totally wear back home because my neck is crazy warm now and I never realized how much that helped, so yes get all the jokes out, I am using a scarf, and I enjoy it very very much.

I am trying to get the guys here in Lota to make a shirt with me, but it is a bit expensive so I don’t know, I want to design one but we need to do a lot to get the price down. If I can get it down enough so that it is reasonable I so want to but it’s tough you know? Oh money, why are you the life blood of the world?

bueno, este parte es mas para Andrew porque él necesita saber que puedo hablar en español, entiendo muchas mas que puedo hablar, pero puedo hacerlo. es tan dificil a veses pero estoy tratando porque necestito, ovio. espero que este fue correcto, espero, jajaja.

Yah that’s some Spanish for you, hope it all worked out and was right, ask Andrew to translate, he will get what I’m trying to say better then Google translate will, I’m guessing because gringos understand gringo Spanish much better

I hope all of you are doing ok and enjoying yourselves, stay busy and safe, and keep up the un in your vacationing.

Trevor, don’t get too tan! you don’t want to look like a fake person from southern California, you are an Oregonian, wear that pale with pride.

Love you all, I’ll write more next week like always, stay safe

Elder Kyle Allen

July 10, 2011

This is a note from Kyle's Mission President who just left.

El verles todos vestidos en blanco fue uno de los momentos mas maravillosos en nuestra vida...es fácil imaginar a todos nosotros en el otro lado del velo para la Gran Reunión! Les amamos tanto y oramos por ustedes cada día.

Presidente y Hermana Swenson

P.S. El regalo hermoso de las fotos de los bautismos estará un tesoro en nuestra familia para siempre. Muchísimas Gracias.

To see all of you dressed in White was one of the most wonderful moments in our lives. . . it's easy to imagine all of us on the other side of the veil at the Great Reunion!  We love you all and pray for you every day. 

President and Sister Swenson

PS The beautiful gift of the baptism photos will be a treasure in our family forever.  Thank you very much.

June 2011 Concepcion South Mission. 

July 4, 2011

Well we did celebrate the day, actually. It was a p-day so we had a huge BBQ on the beach and set off boat flairs for fireworks. We had 3 zones all together, it was pretty much amazing! and it was so fun, I ran and played flag football (with ugly ties as flags) and my ankle held up, but hurts so bad now, so I’m going to take it easy for a little bit. So that was an awesome day for America! oh and Chile is playing Mexico in the American cup today, Argentina tied with Bolivia, they are supposed to win it all, and Brazil tied as well so Chile has a really really good chance of getting a good seed in the pulls. So yah that’s what’s going on here today and contacts are IMPOSSIBLE during the American cup because everyone is glued to the TV watching soccer.

So Betsabé is our awesome investigator, we told her to pray to God and really think hard and act like you are asking your very close friend if this church is true, and she got an answer. Her biggest doubt was that she didn’t want to change religions, because she has a religion, but now she knows she needs to because it’s correct. It was awesome!!! She has a fecha for next Saturday; she needs to go to church one more time. Thank you church for putting "pray to God and he WILL answer you" as one of your biggest selling points.

We have a zone compasitation tomorrow so we will be meeting the new President for the first time tomorrow, so kind of scary and kind of cool at the same time right? Yah I think so at least I’ll finally be able to tell you all what he is like.

Other than that there really hasn’t been anything new. We did a lot of contacting in the rain which really stinks, man how did you do that Andrew?

I’m still trying to obtain a DVD of all the Mormon messages because they help soooo much with investigators, no joke.

Oh we had 2 other cool investigators, if you remember Bryan and Jaime, they have not been in Lota for 2 weeks, but they went to church in the 2 cities they were in, so that was super awesome!!! Hopefully they come home soon because they are great.

I hear your 4th of July is not going to be as cool, I’m so sorry, it will still be better than mine, even though mine was pretty amazing. we sang the national anthem with all the gringos that were there, the Chileans tried to sing the "Vamos Chile" song but we just destroyed them and made them feel bad because we circled them and there were like 5 Chileans and like 30 gringos, it was so awesome. I just felt like I was in the 7th inning stretch. Speaking of which how are the braves doing? How is Chipper?

Quick question, did any of you play contacting games? Or what is a fun way to make contacts more fun. I’m bored of them, and I want them to be a little more fun when we are pushing for the numbers. But yah do you have any suggestions or like any fun things you did or games or anything you heard others do?

Trevor how was the high adventure and what did you do?? I’m very curious because I heard you were doing a last minute change, so whatever could you have done? And Trevor, what’s this about 100 people following you on Twitter? You be crazy my friend.

I don’t know what else to say, ha-ha.  I hope your week is good and I can’t wait until next week already, ha-ha I love writing home, I don’t think I will ever change that. I hear other missionaries say that they get bored and leave after like 30minutes and I don’t think that will ever happen to me, I love getting the emails from mom too much.

OK so at moms request, the details about my clothing: whelp they are doing ok, things are not as white as when they were first purchased but hey that is supposed to happen. I wear those spare pairs of pants all the time because we don’t need to wear suits to work. Only one of the pairs has a hole in it because I was bit again by a dog so that put a hole in the back of my pants, and that wasn’t really fun and it hurt, obviously. I was bleeding, man not fun. Crazy dogs in Chile. But yah, the jackets are amazing, the rain one works amazingly because it actually deflects the rain and the other black one is so warm. I am regretting now not bringing a sweater because everyone has one. But I’m ok, I love winter, I don’t want to go back to the summer here, sweating stinks literally and figuratively. so that is a problem but hey, that’s why I entered in the summer so I only have to go through it one more time, and I have this winter and the next one, wow, I’m down to just one more things, weird........ but yah, that is pretty much everything, if you want to know more, ask more questions, but I feel like I have been pretty good judging by the fact that I haven’t gotten any questions besides how is your new president in a while, ha-ha

Know I love you all very much!!!

Elder Kyle Allen