Elder Jared Moser has been called to serve in the Chile Santiago West Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He entered the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah on August 22, 2012.

We will use this blog to post his e-mails, letters, and photos from his mission, to record them for him and to share with his family and friends.

Feel free to make comments, but he will not have internet access and will not see the comments until he returns home.

For readability, some spelling, punctuation, and capitalization have been standardized.

Mailing Address

MAILING ADDRESS


Elder Jared H. Moser
Mission Chile Santiago Oeste
Casilla de Correos 149
Pajaritos 1921
Maipu, Chile

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

E-mail from member in Jared's area.

Estimado JIM y Familia
 
Somos una Familia del Barrio Rinconada donde su hijo esta Sirviendo la Misión

y le agradecemos por su Hijo el es ya un gran Misionero es muy trabajador y
muy querido en el barrio
Se que los hijos son el reflejo de la familia
El les ama mucho siempre nos habla de sus Hermanas y de sus Padres
 
no se preocupen su hijo esta muy bien cuidado y muy bien alimentado y su Español
cada día mejor
MUCHAS FELICIDADES
FAMILIA CELIS MORALES




Google Translate:

Dear Jim and Family

We are a family of Rinconada neighborhood where his son is serving Mission
and thank you for your Son is already a great missionary is hard working and
well-liked in the neighborhood
Is that children are a reflection of the family
The much loves always speaks of her sisters and their parents

do not worry your child is well cared for and very well fed and Spanish
better every day
 
CONGRATULATIONS
CELIS FAMILY MORALES

Monday, December 24, 2012

E-mail and photos


Hola!!  This week was a great super fast week!!  We had a big meeting with half of the mission for our Christmas thing and that was really good.  Each zone did a skit thing and sang a song and then we did a white elephant gift thing and ate, and President talked to us.  President King is an awesome and super nice guy.  I have learned tons from him since I have been here.  And then I had a meeting for new missionaries and that was really good - it was pretty much 6 hours of listening to President and it was awesome!  I learned a ton!  This week we also did a big car wash with the Priesthood and Young Men to help raise money for an EFY they are having here and that was lots of fun and they made quite a bit of money off of that.  It was great to help them out with that.  And then last night the Priesthood went around caroling to some families and that was a great experience.  Normally not very many people come to ward activities, but the last couple have been really good and had really good attendance and it was cool to see how much the ward was strengthened just by caroling at a few houses.  I thought that was awesome to see.  And today for p-day we did a big service project for some families that live along the railroad tracks.  Their houses are seriously smaller than our brown shed in our yard and had a lot more holes.  We made a bunch of turkeys and collected a bunch of presents and wrapped them and brought them around to some of the families.  They were sooooo happy to have some good food and presents for their kids.  I haven't seen someone look so happy in a long time!  It was a great experience.  I have some pictures I wanted to send of it, but it seems like only about a quarter of the computers send pictures here and today I did not get lucky enough!  Hopefully next week.  This week we had some pretty hard core rain - I think it was Wednesday and the streets pretty much turned into rivers!  It was a lot of fun.  I have never seen so much rain in one day before!  It was pouring literally all day long - got me excited for the winters here!  It is still super crazy it is Christmas eve today - does not feel like it at all!  Here in Chile they have their bigger dinner on Christmas eve and open all of their presents at midnight and then just pretty much sleep all day Christmas day.  So for dinner tonight we are going to one of the counselors in the bishopric's house for dinner and he is inviting a bunch of widows and inactives and stuff and we are gonna have a big thing so that should be lots of fun and a great teaching experience. This week we found a guy who is super ready for the gospel.  It was awesome to talk to him.  He said that he had been looking for the truth for years and that he knew that is why we were at his house.  We have had a couple great lessons with him and it is going great.  It is fun to see how excited he is about it!  Well my companion is heading off for California on Wednesday morning, so I will see who I get to spend the next couple of changes with, probably a Latin!  It will be way good for my Spanish!!  And for Skyping on Wednesday, I hope 2 in the afternoon is ok for you, I really don´t know how it is gonna work cause I don't have your Skype name or anything ......... send me an email with your Skype name before Wednesday so I can find it when I make a Skype account!  Anyways, have a great Christmas everyone!!!

Elder Moser




Saturday, December 22, 2012

E-mail and photos

December 17, 2012

Hola everyone!!  Well it was another great week in Chile!  Sorry this e-mail is gonna be kinda short cause I don't have a lot of time cause we went downtown today and that took quite a bit of time!  My comp had to buy some stuff to remember Chile!  But it was really fun and there should be some pictures.  There is this old castle thing in Santiago and we went and climbed up that and there is a pretty good view of everything from up there so that was pretty fun!  We went with a couple members of the ward and they were able to show us around everywhere, it was a really good day!  And we met some gringos up on top of the castle so that was fun to talk English to someone!  And they were Mormon, you always meet Mormons wherever you go!  Man, Santiago is such a huge city!  It is crazy how many people there are!  The houses and buildings just go on forever!  The members bought us a shoe shine in Santiago and that was a fun experience.  I think I liked the pictures better than the shoe shine itself!  But the guy did a super good job, he has been doing it for 35 years!!  And I took one picture of the kid from our ward that went with us and that juice that Chileans drink every day, that is a pretty good Chilean scene!  This week went by super fast.  We had some really good lessons and we are now teaching a flayte (Chilean gangster) and he is super cool, he is really interested in the gospel and I can definitely see him going somewhere with the gospel, so that will be fun to see what happens with him.  He really wants to change his life and stuff.  It is so awesome seeing how the gospel can change people for the better when they actually have a desire to change and allow it to change them.  It is kind of interesting, everybody we talk to says they would love to hear a message from God but hardly any of our contacts let us share anything with them.  It makes me wonder what it would take for them to actually listen to a message from God!  But contacting has been one of my favorite parts - it is really fun to go out and talk to all the people!!  One of the new initiatives of our mission is to do Noche de Cristos with the people here, and we read the Christmas story and share the new bible videos.  It has been a really good experience and I would encourage you all to watch the new bible videos of Christ!  They are super good!  It has been super fun doing all of those!  And about the suit dad, I will probably just buy one here that will probably be the easiest.  They really aren't that much, and don't worry about the money, they refunded a bunch of money from when I entered the country and had to pay on the church debit card, so I have plenty to buy a suit.  Well I hope that everything is going good for everyone!!  Have a great week!!
Elder Moser

Hey, I also got the highlighter!!!  Thanks a whole bunch for making that!!  I got it from the office on Tuesday, so I do not know which day it got to the office but it got there!  And I liked it tons!  Thanks!!  And I would just put Virgin Mary's on other packages - that is what seems to work the best!  I am not sure how well your missionary supplies sticker worked.  The postal workers don´t really speak English haha.. but the Virgin Mary works!  Thank you!!

I will send more pictures next week - I am out of time!! chao!







 

Monday, December 10, 2012

E-mail


Hello everyone!  It was another great and super hot week in Chile!  We supposedly had the hottest day of the year two days ago and it was definitely pretty stinkin hot!!  Looks like the Souths had a fun time with Danielles birthday!  People here are starting to decorate for Christmas here and I keep having to remind myself it is ok to put Santa Clause out when it is 90 degrees.  It just seems too weird for me!  Man that is awesome about Talon Stephens coming to the best mission!!  It will be good to have someone from my ward out here with me!  I am sure he will love it just as much as I am loving it! Thanks for sending the weather forecast again Dad.  Looks like it is gonna be another great week in Chile and cold week in Wyoming!  This week we had a couple really good lessons with some people especially with a part-member family who is waiting for a divorce to come through.  It is awesome to see the change that has come into their family as they have started to come to church.  They can see a huge change in their lives and are becoming very grateful for the gospel.  The gospel really does bless our lives so much and I think that I take it for granted sometimes but this made me really think about how awesome it is and how much better it makes my life!  And about the package system here, well I have heard it taking up to three months for some and for others like 20 days.  I still haven't gotten the packages yet but we did not get mail last week either because of changes.  But we will see tomorrow what comes, and I will tell you next week.  And you should definitely not just eat the jerky and send a picture!  I think I want to eat it this time!!  Just the address that President sent in the e-mail should be fine!  They recently changed it to the one he sent.  And about the suits.  I am not quite sure what to do about that... I could buy one for 30000 pesos or 60 bucks American which is a really good price so that might be the best option with how much shipping is.  So just tell me what you think about that.  And I am getting the "Dear Elders" from Mom every week!!  Thanks Mom!!  And don´t worry about the running around in the dark.  I got a pretty gnarly ingrown toenail that got infected.  It is fun enough to walk let alone run haha.... So I won't be doing too much running anytime soon!  Sorry I don't have any new pictures this week!  Next week my companion got permission to go to Santiago central so that should be pretty sweet and I will have to take some pictures of that.  I am pretty excited to head over there!  Should be lots of fun!  Well nothing else too exciting happened this week!  But I hope everyone has a great week!!  Thanks for the emails!

Elder Moser

Monday, December 3, 2012

E-mail and photos


Hello!  It was another great hot week in Chile!!  Thanks for sending those e-mail addresses Dad! and the pictures also, I really enjoyed them.  And you asked if the wind bothered me?  I always forget to answer that question because there really is never wind!  It says it on the forecast but there never is!  Try getting the forecast for Maipu, Chile instead.  There might be a difference but I am not sure..  This computer does send pictures so I will try get some of those sent also!!  There is one of me holding an XL ass.  Man those sure are good!  That is definitely my favorite food here.. Also there should be a picture of our Thanksgiving Dinner with Elder Tukuafu and Elder Sivik -  the biggest and the skinniest Elders in the Mission, haha..  It cracks me up when they are by each other.  Another one is us with another "Better than the Book of Mormon" cake.  We found out members are a lot more likely to give us a referral if we give them some of the best cake in the world, share a message, and wash their car for them, haha.  So far that has been working out pretty good for us!!  Right now we are teaching a couple of spouses of members and that is going pretty good.  They can both see how the gospel has changed their family's lives but they both just have a few problems with the church.   But I am sure after they learn more and understand more they will also join the church.  They are both super nice to us and will do anything for us, and it has been really fun getting to know them more.  We had a pretty good investigator but somehow she got the answer that the Book of Mormon is not true, but she still wants to come to church and stuff so we will see how it goes with her!  It is really cool to see the people when we explain something to them and it just makes so much sense to them.  That's what I love about teaching the gospel to these people, you can just see the light coming into their eyes as you explain things to them, it is really neat for me to see!  All the simple truths in this gospel are just awesome.  A lot of people are just so confused about religion and then when they hear something from us, it is almost hard to believe because it is not confusing for them!  It has been really good teaching the people here!!

Back this summer when me and Kade wanted something to do we would just say "let's go climb a mountain" and we would find a good mountain or something to climb, and well I was missing hiking in the mountains a little bit so the other day I told my comp "hey lets go climb a mountain on p-day."  So this morning we got up at 5 and decided to go climb a mountain!  It turned into quite the adventure!  We were going to catch a bus to the base of the hill mountain thing but buses don't go that early so we just decided to run, and that turned out to be about a five mile run or so, then we jogged around the base of a mountain till we found a bridge.  We kind of got lost on the way so we missed the sunrise but still got a great view, then we found the bridge and climbed to the top and then ran all the way back to the apartment.  So all in all we ran about 12 miles and climbed up a mountain.  Let's just say my legs are a little tired now, haha.. but it was really fun and we had a pretty decent view of Santiago.  It was a little smoggy so the pictures did not turn out great, but we had a pretty good view.  The mountain we climbed is to the right in the background of the one picture of me just standing there in my white shirt and tie. This week I was able to be on changes with two different Latinos on two different days!  It was a really good experience, but it would be hard to be companions with one for a long time right now, haha..  My comp leaves the day after Christmas so I will see then if I will be with one or not!  I made it through my first change as a missionary here in Chile!  The changes were today, but most people in my zone are staying here for a while longer!  President said that he is going to start leaving missionaries in one place a lot longer with the same companion, so that should be good!  I will probably be here for quite a while which is ok with me!  On Sunday we had an awesome meal, the picture of me standing by the grill with all the meat, it was pretty stinkin good!!  One of my favorites here!  There is also a couple pictures from the top of the hill and some of the orchards in the campo of Chile or the country of Chile I guess you would call it.  It is really pretty when you get out of the city!  Well I hope everyone has a great week!  And I hope you are doing alright grandpa!!
Elder Moser

Dad, so in the winter we wear our suits everyday.. and I know you told me to and I didn't but another pair of pants would really be great with my coat.  Would it be possible to get another pair from missionary mall?  Can you check into that?  That would be great.. at least one. .. and for Christmas, jerky would be great!!  That is really all I can think of! Thanks for everything!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 








Tuesday, November 27, 2012

E-mail

November 26, 2012

Hello!!  Looks like everyone had a great Thanksgiving!!  Thanks for all of the pictures dad!! Those pies look mighty good!!  And it looks like Tyson is enjoying his whip cream!  a lot!! That is what Blake said about Jordan, that is really cool!!  And that is awesome that Collin is coming here!  I know him a little bit so that will be fun.  He is lucky he gets to come to the best mission in the world haha..  This week was really good.  For Thanksgiving we had a zone dinner and it was the worst Thanksgiving dinner I have ever had! haha..  We had rice, papas fritas and fried onions and fried eggs, the Latins cooked for us haha.. it was a pretty interesting Thanksgiving dinner!!  Afterwords me and my comp went and ate some complatos and ass for our real dinner and that was a great Thanksgiving dinner!!  I was going to send some pictures, but the computer I happen to be on won't send them so I will next week!!  This week we did a lot of service for the members and they really loved it. Francisco, the one who is going on his mission soon was working in the local and a flayte came and put a gun to his head and took all the money that was in the local and so he was pretty shaken up about that all week, so we did a bunch of things for him and stuff.  He is great and always comes out with us so it was good to be able to serve him a lot this week and make him feel better.  This week was just another good solid week in Chile!  It has been a lot of fun here! and I feel like I have grown a lot spiritually for the month that I have been here.  It has been cool to see how much I have learned in this time..!!  Dad, thank you for grandpa's Patriarchal Blessing!  I still haven´t gotten the package, but we will see tomorrow! And dad can you send me the email address of all my sisters?? And also Kade Izatt too, if you could ask him that would be great!!

Well have a great week everyone!!

Elder Moser

Oh and a couple more things!!!  That is awesome that Susan Bednar called the house to tell you that she had talked to me!  That is crazy she remembered who I was and everything after an all night flight! haha   That is just really awesome that she would take the time to do that!  And this week I felt my first earthquake!  I was just sitting in a lesson bearing testimony and the ground started to shake!  I thought I was just that awesome until I realized it was an earthquake!  It was a pretty fun experience, wasn't too big, but big enough to feel it pretty good!  Well have a great week!!

Monday, November 19, 2012

E-mail


Hello everybody!  It was another great hot week in Chile this week!  I figured out why it feels so hot all the time here.  I guess over Santiago there is a lot of the ozone layer burnt away so the sun is just super intense here and it makes it feel hotter than it really is!  But it has been really nice.  I have been enjoying the nice weather a lot!  Today we went to a gym in a guys shed to work out and that was a really good experience because he had a baby just die and he was pretty sad about that and we gave him the talk from the last conference to listen to, so hopefully everything goes good there!  One thing that is really hard here in Chile is that it is super hard and expensive to get divorced and also expensive to get married too so people just don't get married and we have three investigators waiting for a divorce right now and they are all pretty solid so hopefully those can all go through pretty soon!!  There is one couple that is waiting and they have been coming to church for a long time but they are just waiting for a divorce and they are super strong in the gospel and have a really strong testimony so it will be exciting when they get their divorce finalized so they can get married and baptized!  They are both super excited to get baptized. Chileans don't have the best desserts in the world besides their ice cream, that is better than American ice cream.  But their cakes and everything else are pretty bland so we decided to make "Better than the Book of Mormon" cake for a couple families here and man they have loved the stuff!!  It is pretty funny watching their expression after eating something that good cause they just never had something that good before haha.  We have been trying to get to know and become friends with the members a lot more and it really has helped.  Already we have received lots of good references and we have been working with part member families also and that has been really good to work with them. The Spanish is still coming along!  Chileans are just super hard to understand!  I understand about 90 percent of what my comp says when he speaks Spanish but not quite there yet with the Chileans!!  Half of my sector is typical Chilean houses and apartments, pretty old and humble stuff and part is called the new side and it actually feels like I am in America when I am walking through there except for all the gates, but there should be a picture of the new side with this and I will try to take more pics of the old side this week.  Thanks for sending all the pictures again!!  Looks like everyone is having fun!!  Looks like Landon is gonna be playing pro hockey by the time I get back!  And happy birthday to Ryan!  Looks like he had a good one!  And ya, Elaina is in school this semester and will attend next semester as well.  She is supposed to go straight to the Peru MTC, so that should be fun!!  Wow, I kind of forgot about Thanksgiving!  It just does not feel like November weather!  Sounds like it will be fun with everyone home!!  Everybody here always loves looking at the pictures of our family and think it is crazy that I have 6 sisters!  They can't even comprehend it!  It is fun telling them about the fam.  Well I got to go but thanks for the email and all the pictures!  Have a great thanksgiving!!!!!  And eat a whole bunch of pie for me, maybe like two whole pies or something like that. They definitely do not have pie here in Chile!!  Have a great week!!

Elder Moser
 



 

Monday, November 12, 2012

E-mail

Hola everybody!! It was another great hot week in Chile!  Thanks for sending me the forecast and the pictures Dad!  The one of Mason made me laugh pretty good!  It was great!!  And the weather looks like it is gonna be pretty nice for the next while!  So, I got some pretty sweet news. After the missionary announcement, Elaina decided she wanted to go on a mission and she has been called to the Lima Peru West Mission!  And she leaves April 10!  I thought that was pretty awesome!!  That should be great for her!  Well the work here has been good!  President King is trying to get us to work with the members a lot more and stuff and so we have been doing that a lot more trying to get a lot more referrals than we were.  Something I learned yesterday that I thought was pretty crazy was that in my ward here there are 900 members and we only have about 100 that attend, and that is how it is all over Chile!  I thought that was a crazy number!  We are definitely trying to work with inactive members a lot here too and that is just as tough or tougher than getting investigators to come to church!  Our Bishop here is great and really tries to work hard with the missionaries so that has been really nice!  He definitely holds the ward together!  We have been trying to get some baptismal dates set with some of our investigators but it just quite isn't happening yet, but hopefully in the near future some of the ones that are almost ready will be ready!!  There should be some photos attached with this but I'm not sure if it worked - the computer is having some major difficulties so sorry if there is not any!  There should be one of me and my companion with Francisco, the local kid going on his mission soon.  We have splits this week and it should be interesting because my district leader is from Argentina and I can't understand a word he says! So that should be fun for a day haha.  We will see how that goes!!  Here in Chile there are always random old couches sitting everywhere so we are trying to take pictures on them whenever we see them so that is what some of the other pictures are!  And also our shower died this week and all the shower heads here are really junky so we just decided to be safe and make a shower with three shower heads just in case!!  I hope you enjoy the pics!  Sorry my letter is so short!  I ate up all my time trying to figure out the pictures!  But I hope everyone has a great week!
Elder Moser




Monday, November 5, 2012

E-mail

Hello!!  Thanks for sending those pictures Dad!  It was great to see what everyone was up to in the states for Halloween!  Looks like everyone had a bunch of fun!  And thanks for sending the forecast!  That is a great idea!  It is good to know since we can't check or anything.  And yep that looks like us on the picture from Google Earth you sent, I think!!  It is hard to tell because I never see a birds-eye view of anything!  Just a 5 foot 6 man's view, but that looks about right, everything looks the same though here in Chile so I might be wrong!  And the thing you described as a garage sale. That is a huge part of Chilean culture.  It is called the feria. Every weekend and a lot of other days during the week everyone sets up a little stand with food or whatever they want.  Most of it is just trash and they fill up the whole street and that goes most of the day and then at night they have a big crew that comes in and clean it all up for the next day.  It is such a big mess on the streets every day after it is over!  We as missionaries aren´t allowed to shop in it because Monday is one of the days they don´t have it.  And about the apartment, haha, ya the pictures I sent make it look pretty stinkin nice and it really isn´t bad at all!  Until you have to shower and sleep then it gets a little tricky!  They don´t have insulation so it  gets super hot or super cold depending on the weather, but it really hasn´t been bad at all yet!  It is a lot nicer than what a lot of the members are living in!  It is so weird when you said you got the snowblower out!  Here the flowers are just blossoming and it is getting hot, it is just weird to have my seasons backwards!  I tried to take more pictures this week but I forgot to bring my camera to the internet place so I will have to do that next week.  And about the tomatoes and avocados, well, the only explanation I have is the Lord blesses missionaries!  At the MTC I still got sick when I ate that kind of stuff but I prayed I would be able to eat that stuff because members have them for every meal and I haven't gotten sick from them yet and I eat it just about every day.  I try not to eat a lot but I eat a good amount and I'm fine!  Pretty awesome!! A lot of people get offended if you turn down food, so it definitely helps out a lot to not offend them!  I'm super thankful for it!  And I am glad the Church is true there in Bedford!  We had Stake conference here this week and the Church is true here too! President King came and talked and it was great to hear him!  I did get the Dear Elder last Tuesday so I think it takes a week and a day to get to me which is really good.  Well this week we taught a lot of lessons but right now everyone is kind of stagnant.  There are some that are looking pretty promising but it is a super slow process for them all which is good!  Just for an idea the average for us is about 30-35 lessons a week including member and investigator, and we do about 100 contacts a week.  Keeps us pretty busy, but it has been fun teaching lessons to everyone.  Elder Myers is a great companion, and he really knows his stuff and is a great teacher. He goes home the day after Christmas so it will be sad to see him go!  One thing I am thankful for in America is the hamburger meat!  We made hamburgers for lunch today with the member kid and in the ground beef from the store we found all sorts of things!  like string and plastic and stuff like that.  He just says it is normal and you have to pick through it before you can cook it, so I am thankful for clean ground beef back home!  Chilean people really don't look that much different from Americans.  There are some that I could not tell the difference from them and an American.  I thought that was interesting, the guys more so than the girls. The only thing we have to really worry about here in Chile is the flaytas. They are the gangsters down here. It is kind of funny because if people in America wore what the flaytas wore down here well I would mistake them for being a little on the femmy side, but I guess they will still take your money no matter what they are wearing! But missionaries usually don't have too much problem with them so it isn't too worrysome. It has really been a lot of fun down here and I am super glad that the Lord sent me here on my mission!  When are Mom and Megan going down to Columbia?? We taught a Columbian guy the other day and he was so much easier to understand then the Chileans!  It would be fun to go to Columbia!  I am sure they will have a great time there!  Well I hope everyone has a great week this week!  Thanks for all the prayers!
Elder Moser.
haha, oh ya, one more thing I wanted to ask you, Dad.  You had to wear your suit everyday in Florida????  How did you do that? haha, We were dying walking back from Stake conference yesterday and that was only for a half hour in the sun!  Crazy!  Couldn't imagine wearing it all the time!!

Monday, October 29, 2012

E-mail

October 29, 2012

Hello!!  My first full week in Chile was great!  Me and my companion went out and worked hard and found a bunch of new investigators and such!  When I came they had just had some baptisms and it was kind of slow in the sector, so we are trying to push it and get some more baptismal dates and get the sector going again!  We don´t have any dates set yet but hopefully in the next couple weeks we will!  We have several people that know it is true but Chileans are just great with coming up with excuses for things!! haha it is kind of funny talking to the people here because they will agree with you on anything but then they have a bunch of excuses of why they won't do it or listen to us and stuff, it is pretty funny to listen to!  But for the most part they are really nice and accepting and help me out a lot with my language!  The members have been a big help! There is one family that has a son, Francisco, that is going on his mission to Peru in January and we are really good friends with him and he helps us out with a lot of stuff all the time and the family own what is called a local, and it is like a little restaurant thingy connected to their house and they always make us come in and eat food when we walk by, which isn´t bad :)  The two best things to eat in Chile by far are completos and ass. haha, and yes that is what it is called!  Completos are hot dogs with tomatoes and guacamole and mayo on it and ass is thin pieces of beef fried in a pan put into a hot dog bun with tomatoes and gauc on top, and man it is good!!  That is all of the missionaries favorite food here and I now see why!  And we are in the best sector cause we get free ass and completos any time!  We really don´t do too much shopping here!  The members take pretty good care of us!  I have eaten a lot of rice and bread and chicken and stuff like that.  They never season anything so it is all pretty bland but hey its food! Dad, that picture you sent, I really have no idea where anything is haha.  I really couldn't tell you!  The ward we are in is called Rinconada.  On Google Earth go to the street Las Naciones with Rinconada and we live on the little street La Lechería in those apartment buildings, so see if that helps any!!  It looks like the girls had a great time on the trip! Those sound like some great speakers!! and snow?? that sounds pretty crazy!!  It has been pretty hot here the last couple of days!  It will be way weird having Christmas in the summer!  And sorry if my grammar is bad!  It is hard to keep Spanish and English grammar straight in my head sometimes now!  And the mail situation, every week at district meeting they bring the mail to us from the mission office, and so with like packages and everything, they just bring that all to us from the mission office, and we have district meetings on Tuesday so I wasn´t able to receive anything yet but we will see if the Dear Elder is there tomorrow. Dear Elder should work fine though, it has for other missionaries!  And thanks for making that scripture marker Dad!  It sounds pretty sweet!  I think I'm good with everything else!  Yesterday we had a pretty interesting experience, when we were walking down the street contacting, a lady came out of her house and asked if we could get rid of the demon that was in her mom.  So we went in to see what was going on and after talking with her for a while we decided to give her a blessing and before she wouldn't or couldn't talk and she just looked really angry and after the blessing she was just super happy and was talking and stuff.  I don't really know quite what was wrong with her, but I definitely know that Priesthood blessings have a lot of power!  It was just a really interesting situation!  And this week I officially got my first dog bite in Chile!  Lucky it couldn't bite too hard cause it tried to bit the thickest part of my calf so it couldn't bite down to hard before I smacked it with my Book of Mormon I was carrying at the time, haha.  Chile is great!  I really like it a lot!!  And my companion is great and I have been learning a whole bunch from him.  I tried to take some pictures but I didn't get too many taken but I will try to load them on here.  There's a couple of my apartment and then the one with the gaming machines, well that is the front door to the house of the kid that is going on his mission soon, I just thought it was pretty funny.  And then there is one of the huge Catholic church that is here, it doesn´t look that big in the picture, but it is huge!!  And the public bathrooms here, well they are not free, you have to pay, haha, that is one of the pictures also.. and one is my view looking out my back window of my apartment.

Photos

 Apartment

 View out back of Apartment

 Catholic Church

 Front of Francisco's home.

Pay bathroom?

Monday, October 22, 2012

E-mail

October 22, 2012

Hola!!  Man, I realized on Saturday that I do not speak Spanish one little bit!!  haha, or at least I can't understand Spanish one little bit!!  Chileans speak waaay fast and they have their own dialect. Definitely sounds a lot different from the Spanish they were speaking in the MTC!!  My Companion, Elders Myers is from San Diego and he is a great guy.  He will for sure be a real help to me for sure both with the Espanola and the gospel.  I have already learned a bunch!  We are in the Olimpia stake and that is also the name of our area and we are assigned to one ward here.  Yesterday it was fun going to church and meeting all the members.  There are about 80 or 100 in this ward which is about average.  The members and the investigators are really patient with my Spanish.  The only people that aren't are just people that don't want to listen to us, haha.  Every day except p-day we eat at a members house for lunch and wow they feed the missionaries a lot!!  The only times I have eaten since I've been here is just at the mission home once and then at members houses.  They give us plenty of food to go throughout the day! We just rotate through all the members for lunch each day and on Wednesday we eat with the same lady and that is who does our laundry.  We live in an apartment  - just me and my companion, and it is pretty nice for Chile.  Definitely not too nice for America, but pretty decent for Chile!!  Can't complain!!  We only have hot water in the mornings though because we have to light a gas furnace that heats the water, so after we take our showers no more hot water!  I'm in a suburb kind of thing of Santiago which is called Maipu, which is pretty big itself.  It is pretty dumpy everywhere and a lot of the members houses are pretty small and pretty trashy but they are all super happy!  It is awesome to see!  They are for the most part pretty humble and great people!  Just a couple things I have eaten so far here - well for all the meals I have had at members houses they have all had papa fritas every time (french fries).  They love those down here!  And then one day we had a huge plate of rice with 5 hotdogs on top!  Who eats five hot dogs in one meal!!  I guess I do now!  And then another one we had some chicken to go along with the papa fritas, it wasn't too bad!  The ward mission leader is super nice and he reminds me a lot like a Chilean version of Calvin!  It is kind of crazy!!  We just email at this little internet place down the street in a little shop..  Dad, I really don't know my address but you could go on the church locator and look for the Olimpia stake center and that is about the area where I live!  We are just a few blocks away from the church.  I forgot to bring my camera this time so I will have to wait until next Monday to send some pictures!  Sorry!  The day I got here, Friday, we were able to hear from Elder Bednar and that was amazing!  Oh ya, and David Archulleta also sang at it because it was his mission, Rancauga, and our mission combined for Elder Bednar and that was pretty cool!!  Elder Bednar spoke to us for 3 hours straight!  It was intense!  It was just a big question and answer thing.  That guy is awesome!  I really am not sure the best way to write - they say the mail is pretty safe here and stuff should come so you could just send regular mail or Dear Elders would probably work pretty good and emails are fine too.  If you just send regular mail look on the church site for the pouch mail and see how that works, that could be a pretty good option too!  I think it takes about two weeks for mail to get to the states from here and also two weeks to get down here and about a month or so for packages.  It has been kind of a rough couple of days because I have been so tired from the flight and I just don't seem like I can catch up on my sleep!! so hopefully I can get over that sometime soon!!  and hopefully I can start understanding because my companion goes home in eight or nine weeks and I will be leading the sector when he goes home which is crazy to think about, because I'm pretty lost everywhere we go and such.  It isn't too big, there is just a ton of little streets everywhere and it is pretty hard to keep track of where we are.  There are a ton of dogs everywhere!  It is crazy!  Everywhere!!!  They are for the most part scared of people though, but it seems like I always have dog poop on my shoe!  Well I hope everyone is doing well!!  Monday will be my p-day from now on.  Have a great week!  Oh and the pictures you sent of Carrie and Missy's families were great! Thanks!
Elder Moser

hah and oh ya, another fun fact about our mission is we go to bed at 11:30 and get up at 7:30!!
it is great!! :)

also the address to the mission home is :

Mission Chile Santiago Oeste
Casilla de Correos 149
Pajaritos 1921
Maipu, Chile

(Note - it looks to me like the best way to write to Elder Moser is to use Dear Elder.com , There is no charge and if you type your letter by midnight on Sundays, it will go out in the Church pouch mail on Monday.  If we all use e-mail, by the time he reads an e-mail from each of us, he won't have computer time to write back :)

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Elder Moser arrives in Chile

Letter from Jared

Hello Mom and Dad!  I'm here in Chile! I guess they will scan this and send it to you.  I made it here great. The flight was really long and didn't get much sleep!  So I'm pretty tired but it is all good.  We got to talk to Elder Bednar in the Santiago Airport so that was fun and we also saw Elder Oaks and talked to him.  We get to hear from Elder Bednar tonight so that should be good!  Hey, and I can't understand a thing when I hear a Chilean speak!  So hopefully that gets better soon!  But Chile is great!  A lot of it looks really poor so it should be fun teaching all those people!  I'm pretty excited!  We have just been at the mission home all day receiving instructions and such.  There are definitely a lot of dogs here so that should be interesting!  It sounds like all the people are really nice here and I'm excited to get out and meet some of them!  Hopefully I can speak to them a little bit!  I get to meet my companion tonight so that should be good!  I think they will send a picture of us with this.  Well I hope you guys are doing good!  Chile is great! 
Love, Elder Moser


 Sister King, Elder Myres, Elder Moser, President King

My Area



E-mail from President King:
20 October 2012

Dear Brother and Sister Moser,

Sister King and I were pleased to welcome your son, Elder Moser, to one of the finest missions in the world, the Chile Santiago West Mission.  He is well and happy, and we are impressed with his enthusiasm for the work.  After greeting him at the airport and a brief tour of the beautiful city of Santiago, we arrived at our mission home. I interviewed your son and gave him a priesthood blessing.  My Assistants and office missionaries then gave him a brief orientation to the mission.  We had a delicious lunch together, he met his new companion, and that afternoon he left the mission home and departed for his first area of labor.

Elder Moser has been assigned to work with Elder Myres, who will serve as his training companion.  Trainers are chosen for their competence, patience and dedication, and are selected after prayerful consideration.  With this letter we are including a photograph taken of your son and his new companion with Sister King and myself.

Please accept our deep appreciation for raising such a fine son.  We feel a genuine fellowship with you in supporting and providing him this opportunity to grow spiritually as he labors to bring souls unto Christ.  It is my prayer that the Lord will inspire us all to sustain him in this challenging assignment.  Please write him frequently, weekly if possible.  Express your love, support, and confidence in him.  You will witness miraculous changes in his life as he engages fully in the service of others.

Being parents ourselves, we understand your desire to occasionally send packages.  For your information, packages sent to your missionary through FedEx often require large duty fees which must be paid by the missionary.  Those sent through Global priority mail, marked missionary supplies and valued less than $100 usually arrive duty free and within 2 weeks.

If you have any questions or if we can assist you in any way, please do not hesitate to write.

Sincerely,

President Richard W. King
Chile Santiago West Mission