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

Sunday, September 22, 2013

E-mail and Photos

Hola!  Everything is going great here in Maipu!  It was a pretty good week this week, pretty crazy though!  This week would be like the 4th of July in the States.  The 18th of September is the Chilean Independence Day, so we had a huge Stake party on Wednesday.  It was pretty sweet, there was tons of Chilean food and we played a bunch of games and watched a bunch of people do dances and stuff  like that.  They take the 18th as a huge deal here - it is pretty sweet!  The Chilean people definitely have a lot of love for their country!!  I have some pictures that I will try to upload so you will be able to see some of the stuff that goes on here.  The whole Stake here kinda just looked like the Bedford Ward though, haha..  Pretty small for a stake!!.  We had twice as many members there for the party than we did at Stake Conference three days before, haha.  Everyone down here likes to say that they are a member when the parties start and they bring out all the food!  But it was good to see everyone out and having fun.  It was kinda weird though because I really don't know anyone here yet cause we never get out to our sector, but I was able to meet some more ward members at the party, so that was good.  This week we also had the son of our mission president stay with us and work with us all week.  He is a fifteen year old kid named James.  It was pretty fun with him - he is a really cool kid, and already a great missionary!  He is gonna be on a mission for 5 years in a row.  That is a long time!!  He is gonna be a champ after all of that!!  Me and my comp took him out to the coast to go look at a bunch of new houses we are going to rent.  We had a pretty good day out there, and found some pretty nice houses to get.  It is kinda  weird - most missionaries measure their success by how many baptisms they get or lessons they are teaching, but right now me and my comp measure it by how many houses we are looking at and renting, haha.  We are going up 15 companionships in two weeks so it has been crazy trying to get everything ready for that.  But we are doing good.  We just about have all the houses we need now, but then it all starts again getting ready for the next change  - it just never stops!!  But I still have seen a lot of miracles here in the office, even though we are not out in the field working cool stuff still happens a lot and the Lord blesses us a lot.  I had a pretty cool experience happen to me a couple weeks ago.  Back in my first sector in Rinconada, we contacted this girl that was about 20 years old.  She really did not even seem very interested at the time or anything.  Just thought it was another contact we did that would not go anywhere.  She did not even live in our sector, but she did give us her address though so we passed it to the office of the mission so they could send out the reference. By the next day I had forgotten about it, and it never came across my mind again until I walked into church for the first time in my ward here in Maipu.  I saw this girl that I thought I recognized from somewhere, but couldn't remember where.  Anyways, it was fast and testimony meeting that day and she got up to bear her testimony.  She told of her experience of getting baptized a couple months before and how grateful she was the missionaries had stopped and talked to her outside the grocery store and had sent other missionaries to her house.  When she said that it clicked, and I realized that I was the missionary that had stopped and talked to her outside the store.  After the meeting I went and talked to her and she remembered me and was so thankful for just talking to her that day.  That was a pretty sweet experience!  Before I always thought contacting was a big waste a lot of times cause we could talk to hundreds of people and only see one or maybe even less of those hundred people accept our message and maybe get baptized.  I didn't really realize how much just talking to someone about the gospel for a couple minutes could help them change their lives a ton.  That experience helped me realize the importance of talking to everyone.  Even though I might not be teaching any lessons right now I have definitely been talking to a lot of people about the gospel and stuff.  We do talk to a lot of people everyday working in the office so it has been a good opportunity to talk to everyone about my mission and about the Church and stuff.  Lots of people just have the wrong idea about the whole thing, and just a little 5 minute conversation can help a ton! 
Sounds like you two had a pretty good week this week in all your travels!!  Pretty crazy story about the buffalo and stuff!!  That would be pretty sketchy especially there in Yellowstone!  There definitely are a lot of critters there!  But I am glad you guys got out alright!!
Today I think we are actually going to be able to get a little hike in!!  We are heading over to the Andes mountains to go to some snow with the assistants cause they are from Mexico and have never seen snow before, haha.  So that should be pretty fun!  Last week for p-day was pretty sweet too!  We went golfing!!!  Never thought I would do that on the mission!  It was actually pretty relaxing, and a great p-day activity!  Found out I am not a half bad golfer compared to Chileans, haha.  I don't think they get out to golf very much :)  Anyway, I am gonna try to get those pictures up and then we are gonna head off to the mountains.  I will try to get some sweet pics for ya!
Have a great week everyone!

Elder Moser











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