Elder Jared H Moser: E-mail and Photos

Hola!! Shoot, I think you are right Dad, I really don't think I will recognize them when I get back!! Pretty crazy stuff! I am excited for the rain this week! I hope it actually gets here!! :) It will be the first time in a long time!! About the drivers license - you can just keep it there - I shouldn't need it for anything down here! And about the classes for BYUI, well, I am not sure. It depends on what day it is. I think that I will have to tell you beforehand exactly what I want and then I think you guys will have to do it there early one morning, but I will look into it today! Sounds like a pretty big project you guys had getting the tree out of Grandmas yard!! I bet it looks pretty different now!

Well it was another pretty good week down here in Santiago! The weather was super nice, perfect for going out and working! We took advantage of it too! We had one of the best weeks that I have had in a while - pretty fun stuff. We were able to put some more baptismal dates with some people, and we had a great turnout of investigators at church, so that was pretty sweet. We had some husbands come with wives that have never stepped foot in the chapel before, so that was pretty cool to see that! And we also got some good strong investigators now that are coming to church. The two strongest ones are Winston and Sylvia. I think I talked a little bit about them last time. Big miracles that we were able to see here. It was actually pretty cool cause the mission has a card that we pass out to the members that they put names of friends on that they want to invite to church. Turns out that one of the members had put Sylvia's name on the card and we did not even know it. When we called the Hermana to see if she could come to a lesson with a lady we had met and were teaching named Sylvia. She was a pretty happy lady when she saw that it was her friend Sylvia she had put on her card - pretty cool how it all turned out - looks like it is Sylvias time! The members did a great job of fellowshipping her this week too. So she is doing great, excited for her baptism and everything.

We also had two special mission conferences this week, one with our President and the other with the Area President, President Gonzalez. Turns out our mission was chosen for a new pilot program the church is starting. Our mission is one of four in the world that is doing it. We were chosen cause we have one of the greatest amounts of inactive members in the whole world, pretty sad stuff, haha. But anyway, I think the new thing we are doing will help a lot. The new program that we are doing is that the missionaries focus 100% on inactive members. In all the other missions in the world missionaries have key indicators that they have to report every week, like lessons with a member present, new investigators, contacts, referrals received and contacted, baptismal dates, lessons taught to less actives, and all of the normal numbers. Well starting this week we do not report any of that, and the only thing the missionaries are reporting are baptisms and less actives that attended church. Just those two, so it is gonna weed out a lot of the missionaries that just work to get numbers that is for sure, haha. It is gonna be quite interesting. The numbers have always been a big part of the mission so it is gonna be super weird to not be using them! Just working with less acitves, and baptizing, that is all they want from us. They just want us to be creative and teach a lot of people, and have the church attendance grow, haha. So it is gonna be an interesting change. The ward is supposed to be super involved though, so hopefully we can get them going. I am excited for the change though, it should be fun! We will still be teaching a lot of non members too, just by trying to find less actives we will be able to teach non members so it should be good and I am excited for it all! President Gonzalez said, well, it is coming down to the end of things, the Lord is putting together his last gathering down here in Chile and Argentina. We are definitely in the last days that is for sure, and the Lord is hastening his work!

I hope everyone is doing good up in the good ole United States! It was great to hear from you this week and see pictures of everyone! I am doing great down here and loving every day! I love you and miss you all!

Elder Moser