April 25, 2011

So today is the last day of this 3rd cambio, 2nd with Gibbs. And guess what, I found out I am being transferred. Not terribly far, but I’m leaving Lebu, my 1st sector, crazy huh? I don’t know if you can tell but I’m trying to mess with you and hold off telling you where I’m going as long as I can because it’s funny. Well I can’t make it that long, here we go: I´m going to Lota.

The sector is called Lota Medio. The Zone Leaders are in Lota Bajo and we will be living with them, in an apartment so that should be fun. My companion is Elder Jackson, and I still have not had a Latino companion yet, hahaha, the only one in my district from the MTC, it’s a record. But the cool thing about Lota is that its only like 1-1.5 hours from Concepcion so I can go there any P-day I want to. So I can go to the office and get mail or packages that day, and I can chill in a huge city in Chile, and not just be stuck in small Lebu. I’m excited, especially because Gibbs told me that Jackson was his favorite companion and me and Gibbs have been having a blast so we should have a good time, me and Jackson. Plus the 2 Zone Leaders aren’t Latino either so I’m in another English house. Crazy!

So me and Gibbs found a frog this week and of course took some pictures with it, it became our pet for about 15minutes before we set it free in the back yard because we needed the pot to cook some food, hahahaha. Don’t worry I cleaned it after.



This week we pretty much said our goodbyes because I had a feeling I was leaving, so it was more of a visiting week, we talked to Stephanie a lot, but she didn’t go to church yesterday because her son got sick again. That was very very hard. She just needs to go one more time and she hasn’t. It’s tough to take because I have been working with her for 2 cambios. It’s just tough. I had to say goodbye to her as well and leave her unbaptized. But hey, I left a for sure for the next elder so he better be thankful. It’s just super sad because me and Gibbs wanted to baptize so bad together but hey that’s life, and life happens right?

I said goodbye to my favorite family too, that was very hard. Very few families actually stuck out and were nice and helpful and loving, but Jessica and her family did. Digna is Jessica´s mom, and Jessica´s daughter is Camila. They were so nice and fun and helpful. I loved going over there with Gibbs because they would always give us food when we didn’t eat anything that day. But yah I will miss them for sure, and I want to come down and visit sometime before I go home, all 18months in the future.

So Easter Sunday was yesterday and man did that make me miss home, because it was NOTHING like home. Starts off with church. So at home there are some great talks and songs about the season and all that right? Well, the missionaries spoke for this branch. I gave a 2 minute thank you and goodbye talk, and said in the most broken Spanish ever that all the blessings I have are because of the sacrifice we are celebrating today, type of thing. It was tough and very nerve wrecking as I’m sure you could guess. And the talks were to be on the missionary work, so nothing really about the day. Then we went home and saw that the other elders had lunch with a family and we didn’t. So we looked around the kitchen to see what we could make, and noticed we had nothing, so my Easter lunch consisted of Chile's version of ramin noodles. A little different than ham huh? We then went and said my goodbyes to families and were given some French fries and eggs at Jessica´s house. Which is an amazing combination just so you know egg over easy and some fresh homemade French fries. But yah that’s what I ate all day, interesting huh. It just didn’t feel like Easter, it was kind of sad; I missed the Easter back in the states.

But today I think we will just be hanging out with the Lebu Boyz because we are all being split up tomorrow. I’m going up to Lota and Steele is going all the way down to Temuco. Way far. And Gibbs is staying put, so yah. We might go to the beach one last time, although I have a beach in Lota so I’m not missing out. 

The weather this week was crazy. Its more bi-polar here than Utah, and you know how crazy that place is. It rained very hard every other day, and the other days it was sunny. When it rained it was something like 40degrees and when it was sunny it was something like 85degrees. So crazy. But yes those coats are amazing, everyone else gets wet but I don’t it’s awesome, it’s so great to be Oregon prepared. And I got some rain pants, don’t know if I told you that, but I did so no need to worry about that, because I got some. They are very blue though and its funny with the black jackets, but whatever, I’m dry. The timberland shoes work good for about 3-4 hours of rain, but any more and the water gets in. I know that will happen with any shoe, but just so you know. They are good if it’s not an all day rain. I might get some rain boots in Lota if it gets bad. But that is where I will be spending the winter, so yah, my first summer was Lebu and my first winter was Lota.

I also am almost out of money for the month so I might be taking some out of my account today for my trip up to Concepcion tomorrow.  But yah that’s an FYI.

That was my week. So Andrew, are you now doing spring term? That sounds... fun, hahaha burn out stinks so don’t let that happen, have lots of fun, por favor. oh and go to that water park in Provo I think its Thursdays that they have the last 2 hours of the park open for like 5$ and it’s so much fun, look into that, because that place is fun for the cheap days. 

Trevor, Prom, wow. Big bro. way to go. Don’t make my mistake and listen to your date about directions downtown, hahaha. (You know it was funny Alyssa and made our night )

But yah, thanks for everything, have a great day, and I will update you next week from Lota!

And then mother’s day is soon, can’t wait for that either!

Love you all

Elder Kyle Allen

April 18, 2011

Next Tuesday is transfers so I think that I am leaving Lebu, but I won’t know until this Saturday so I have no idea yet. A lot of things could happen as you all very well know, I could leave, I could stay, Gibbs could leave or stay, we could both leave or stay, and Lebu 2 could be closed completely.  So yah a lot of mystery this week.

Well, we visited Stephanie a lot a lot this week. She said every day we visited that she would go to church on Sunday, and followed all of the challenges that we left her. Like always, because she is amazing. But on Sunday morning we got a call from her, and she said that Simus (her son) was sick again and that she was taking him to the hospital. So we didn’t have her in church, and she still only has 2 assists so we can’t baptize her because she needs 3. So this combio me and Gibbs got beat, again. We can’t baptize her and count it for this combio so yah, we will be leaving a golden investigator for whoever is here next. We are very sad about this, but we aren’t going to rush to baptize her next Monday because that’s not in her best interests.  Anyway, so the baptism is off, but she will be baptized, no doubt about it, and she will be an amazing branch member. I’m excited for her to do that, eventually.

So last week was a lot of talking to Stephanie and we visited Jessica´s mom Digna and talked to her a lot. She is progressing because she is opening up to us and asking questions and goes to church every week with her daughter, but she won’t be a convert anytime soon because she is old and is a little hard headed. She doesn’t want to change anything. But yah, we´ve watched the Joseph Smith movie with her and I think she felt something, but I’m not sure.

But yah it was a really uneventful week full of nothing really exciting.

Today we went to the beach because the weather is going to start getting really bad. Fall is starting so the rain season is beginning, and I’m not going to lie, rain as a missionary is miserable. It soaks you to the core and no one is outside, and no one wants to go to church. Ugh, its brutal. But, everyone is envious of my amazing rain jackets, they all have ones made here in Chile and they aren’t repellent like mine, mine beads up and runs off, and their's kind of soak in. plus they look really dumb, it’s funny, like big blue gnomes.

But yes, we had a zone activity today and played football on the beach. Lebu vs. Cañete pretty much. It was fun, my ankle started acting up but I wanted to play so I played through it, probably not the best, I have a feeling tonight I will be paying for that choice. But we won, it was awesome. It was also way funny watching Latinos try to understand football American that is. We pretty much used them to run the kick returns and the running plays because they are very agile little people. But can’t catch or throw worth beans. Way funny.

Me and Gibbs also found these sand dunes in our sector that are tall and that we like to run and jump off. It’s so awesome, you get very high and then fall way fast and have to roll to not get hurt. Hahaha. Well Gibbs does it more than I do because I’m very protective of my ankle.

But yah, so we are going to have a calm week, and have some fun, the internet has been weird here so I’ll try to upload pictures if I can but if I don’t sorry. Chile is weird like that I guess.

Well I love you all, stay safe, let the newly called missionaries know that’s awesome from me, and seriously seriously SERIOUSLY enjoy the states. You very possibly could have a car, you will most likely always be in a ward not a branch, you will always have meals from members and if not, you have restaurants all around you can go to. And you get to speak English, yah learning a new language is nice and exciting, but I feel worthless as a comp at 6 months because I still struggle with it. Like Erik told me, sometimes, you just wish you could say what you really want to and you can’t. Anyway, congrats to them. But, they don’t get to say "ya po!" so ha! Stinks for them.

well I love you all, have a great week, stay safe, stay sweet, stay classy

love you all
Elder Kyle Allen

April 11, 2011




Elder Lundgreen and Elder Allen

 Well today we had a zone activity and went to a place that in English would be named eagle rock, I think. I don’t remember the name in Spanish either but I know I took a picture of the place so look there for where I went. The cool thing about it is that from the top you can see the mountains that separate Chile and Argentina on one side, and the ocean of Chile on the other. If it was a better day it would have been perfect for pictures, but we did the best with not being able to plan and see the weekly forecast and all.  But yah, that was so much fun, minus the whole putting 14 missionaries in a minivan and driving up a dirt and gravel road for about 2-3 hours. Ha-ha we stopped a few times because some people had to throw up, the funny thing, is that all the people that threw up were Latinos, weak huh?  But the view was amazing! I wish I had my SLR because point and shoot cameras just don’t do it justice, at all. It was an amazing view. We had lunch up there and had some fun.

Mountains between Argentina and Chile

So this week we got a call out of the blue from Patrick, who we haven’t heard from in weeks. He said he was in the hospital and wanted to see us. We went over and found out he has blockage in his colon and intestines and is in the hospital for 2 weeks. Poor kid, he is 16 years old. Anyway, we visited him of course and gave him a blessing, we will visit him again this week, but it was a nice shock to see him calling us.

We had interviews with President this week in Lebu and that was awesome. He is so amazing and really knows what he is saying. I don’t want him or sister Swenson to leave. Because Sister Swenson is one of the sweetest people I know, and has really helped me lately. But yah it was a fun interviews. The assistants had this contacting bingo game we played and it was so much fun. There were types of contacts we had to do written down and types of people we needed to contact, but they were things like, that have 5 kids, and stuff like that so we had to find out. Anyway, it was a really fun way to contact and we actually contacted a huge amount. Our whole zone did it, so Lebu1 (where everyone contacted) has so many references its ridiculous and we didn’t get any, sad day.

We also had to move our baptism of Stephanie back because she didn’t go to church Sunday. Her grandmother is a member of the church and she is not a good influence on her. She is inactive and wants Stephanie to investigate the church for 6months like she did before she got baptized. So dumb because Stephanie knows everything and believes it’s true. We want to see her baptized so bad because she is so amazing and we have worked with her so much these past two cambios. I really don’t want to leave with her not baptized, that would kill me.

So we are planning on going over to Stephanie’s house every day this week, make sure nothing happens to her or any other doubts are put into her mind by her grandmother, so we can baptize her on the 23rd, which is the last Saturday of this cambio. That’s our plan for this week, sounds awesome huh?  

We are also working with a mother of a member named Digna and she is one that doesn’t really want to change but goes to church every week with her daughter and is nice. We talk to her a lot and hope that one day it will just snap in her head. We are just building up the love for missionaries right now so they can help her in the future. But she does listen to us and ask questions so she isn’t like a dead investigator, just way way way slow and all.

Andrew, you are awesome and I love you, same with Trevor and mom dad and Tillie

Tell the ward I love them and miss being in a ward so much, ha-ha. Tell Nip I love him, and Mork and all those other guys. I miss the home ward so much, not going to lie; singing A capella in Spanish is not fun, because no one can play the piano here, ha-ha.

But yah, sorry I don’t know what else to say, hope you enjoy the pics, that was fun and all.

I love you all and miss you so much
Elder Kyle Allen

April 4, 2011

So last week’s letter was amazing, I know it won’t always be that cool. We went to Boca Lebu today with Cañete 2 which is actually now Elder Lundgreen from my MTC district. He was our first district leader in the MTC and now he is in my first zone in the field. Actually Elder Gibbs my comp is his district leader so he is in my district which is pretty sweet.



yep, im the cutest guy in chile, what now latinos

Elder Lundgreen and Elder Allen

Elder Gibbs

We had General Conference like the rest of the world this weekend which was amazing. I’m not going to lie this was the first time I was able to watch all the sessions without falling asleep during one of them, crazy huh! Yah that was my accomplishment. I was also able to take 10 pages (front and back) of notes this Conference (how I stayed awake for the whole thing). Holland’s talk was amazing as always like dad pointed out, always great to hear someone express the love I want to express for the most inspired man in the world. Oh yah and I was able to get a small class room in the building (luckily the stake center for the Lebu district is in Lebu so we didn’t have to travel anywhere) for the broadcast in English, which was the most amazing thing about the week. It’s so much easier to get what they say when you can actually understand, although that one talk about the to do and to be, I don’t think I will understand that until I get the Ensign (yah we get them dad) because it sounded like a Dr. Seuss talk when it was given, I was so lost.

Some sad news:
So this week Stephanie’s little boy got pneumonia and its super serious, they won’t let more than one person in the room at a time and his mom won’t leave his side, so we can’t go in and give him a blessing cause no one else can go in, and we can’t be separated from each other. So it’s tough, she missed all the GC sessions, and she really wanted to go. We moved her fecha back to the 16th this month because she needs one more church assistance. And if the boy gets worse he will be moved to the hospital in Concepcion, hopefully that won’t happen. so yah, could you all think of him tonight, I know you don’t know him but she is our golden investigator and we don’t want any other reasons for her to move out of Lebu because well, she has had the worst trials of her life in Lebu. I know the Lord will bless her like he has, but it is still scary and all.

Stephanie

But yah, I have some exciting news!
So every missionary has told me, forget about bacon, you won’t find it in Chile. No one eats bacon here. And I was distraught. I was hurt to say the least. The best meat in the world, none for 2 years, um way hard. Well I was looking around the quico (rich people) part of bigger (the grocery store) and I saw someone restocking. it was where I buy salami so I was curious if there was a new type, because in Chile when something is gone its very unlikely that the same thing will come back, there is no such thing as restocking like the states, anyway, and they were putting out something for 3mill (6 us $) and it was a pack of bacon, 5 strips. Smallest strips I’ve ever seen, but I was in heaven. I showed Gibbs and he was shocked and baffled! We both bought a pack and will be making breakfast sandwiches on French toast bread this week and I am thrilled to say the least. During GC I kept thinking of the amazing breakfast feast I was missing, I took all that amazing food for granted. I missed bacon, and French toast and all that, it’s not existent here.

I just want to point out that the church already has all of general conference on the website, we are going to try to download some of the talks in Spanish and show Stephanie this week because she missed out and I think it would be really great for her to see the prophet and listen to his words because you can already download the talks in Spanish. What an amazing organization we have!

Well I don’t know what else to throw in here, I loved conference, there were a lot of great talks and I actually can’t wait for the Ensign, yep it was a great weekend and I hear you all loved it to, and had fun with your visitors.

I love and miss you all so much!!!
Kyle

March 28, 2011

OK well it was normal until last Friday, just like every other week, no joke. I was getting tired of the same thing week after week and to be honest wanted a little bit of a change, was thinking that maybe I would be leaving Lebu but hey I got something else.

So you know Stephanie, our awesome golden investigator. Well as you know we haven’t talked to her in 2-3 weeks, well all of that changed and got crazy, we also found out why:

She took a job in Los Alamos and worked every day from 7am-10pm so we didn’t talk to her for a week because of that. That was tough on us and her.  The next week she was back in Lebu and talking to her dad, who has not been part of her life for like 17 years.  He has been kind of awful to her which is why she moved to Brazil with her mom and later Spain by herself.  Anyways, Stephanie and her father began to fight and it got really awful apparently (this is all according to her because we had no contact with her as you know). So she got so upset and flagged down the first collectivo she saw (those are like taxi cars that run on bus routes, all over Lebu) and asked the guy how much it would cost to take her to Concepción right then. He said 40 luca (about 80 US dollars) and she said OK and did it, just upped and left. (Just so you know, when we go to Concepción we take a bus, and those cost 3.7 luca [about 7.50 us dollars]) While in Concepción she turned off her phone for a week.  She then turned on her phone after that week while still in Concepción and got a call from her dad, he asked her to come back so they could work some things out. So she went back to Lebu to talk with her dad.  

That leads us to Wednesday of last week, so I’m going to start now from our eyes because the story is much better that way: We were at a missionary conference in Concepción on Wednesday and the assistants had an activity we had to do. They split the room in half and had half write down an investigator we were having problems with, or that had a doubt. We were on that half so my comp. My companion, Elder Gibbs wrote down Stephanie’s name, wrote down a quick background and her doubt about the Church.  We went into the gym and the other half of the room had blindfolds on. The activity was we had to go to a random blindfolded person and talk to them, find out their doubt, and commit them to baptism.  So me and Gibbs sat down with someone, and started doing just that.  As we were talking we realized that the person they were acting like sounded familiar and realized they were acting as Stephanie.  Out of all the people we pick our investigator (By the way,  the gym was filled with people, one third of the mission was there).  So we start talking and doing the activity kind of thinking it was weird. Gibbs then grabs his phone to see what time it was and how much more time was left in the activity, the screen comes on, and we see Stephanie is calling us. Now realize at this point it has been 2-3weeks since we have heard from her, and we are teaching a random elder that is acting as her at this exact moment. So we rush in excusing ourselves because we needed to take that call soooo bad. Stephanie says it’s been a while and she has missed our amazing lessons, can we stop by tomorrow?  We say of course.  That made our conference.

We go over the next day to her home and she tells us the collectivo Concepción story and it all makes sense to us.  We set a baptismal date for the 9th of April and leave, what a great  Thursday. Friday morning we get a call from her saying we are not allowed to go to that house anymore, and that she was being kicked out that day and needed to find a house to live in right away. (Long story about why she was kicked out of her home) We had a huge problem because if Stephanie didn’t find a house, she would have to move up to Concepción and live with her other grandma. So we had to find her a house to rent, that day, for 40 luca a month. There are 2 problems with that:
1) there are no houses in our sector for rent.
2) Most houses are rented for 80 luca a month in Lebu. She can only afford 40, that’s huge.

We start looking Friday, all day. We find nothing. So we call her to see how she is doing. We also decided to fast for her. We call her again later that night to see how she is doing, and she says she found a house and gives us the address. We go over and she tells us her story: she was walking all over looking for a house and asking everyone in the street. She asks this one guy and he stops and thinks, then says no sorry, and she continues on. She asks for about 3 hours more and she said she prayed the whole time, then she just got too tired to move and thought “well, God will provide. That’s what those missionaries keep saying.”  She started to walk back and she ran into that same guy on the way back and he asked if she had any luck. She said no and he told her she needed to come in and talk to his wife who explained they had a house that Stephanie could rent because they can’t use it at this time. They have to live in the husband’s father’s house because he is on his death bed and needs them. They show her the house, she of course says yes, but how much, and they say for you, 40 mil (mil is another word for luca) a month. We helped her move the little stuff she has yesterday and she was so happy and content with life. She knows God is blessing her because of her belief and willingness to listen to our message. We went on a walk with her and her little son (2-3years old) and some collectivo driver yelled to her, she went over and talked to him, then came back all happy. She explained that he remembered that she needed a job and heard that on Monday there would be an opening at some place in the plaza, and that if she went and applied Monday she would get the job.
And that is the story of Stephanie.  One more great thing,  she wants to go with us to all of General Conference.

Here is a picture of Elder Gibbs, her Grandmother, Stephanie, her son, and me. 

One more story about what happened last night with another. There is a member that we hang out with named Jessica. Her daughter is a member, but her mother and "husband" (not married but live together) aren’t. So we visited and gave them a lesson. They are an amazingly fun family and we love them. So were with them last night and the husband told us that he had a dream 2 nights in a row. And for some reason my companion Elder Gibbs had this feeling like he knew what the dream meant. He told the husband straight up and interpreted his dream, the husband said he felt like what Gibbs said was correct and true. The husband then said, ok when is this General Conference and he is going to go when he is up in Concepción working this weekend.

These are the missionary stories that you hear about and kind of doubt their reality, and never think you will have a moment like this.  But they are 100% true. It was a crazy week and my testimony of the power of what God can do for us has grown so much. It was crazy and amazing and scary at the same time. But it all worked out in a crazy way and we are all overjoyed that it did. Remember things like this do happen, it’s weird and crazy but they do!

I love you all so much and miss you very very much.

Missionaries from my zone in the MTC.  We got to see each other at the conference in Concepcion. 

Elder Kyle Allen