Week 48: I'm Staying Again

Dear Family and Friends,

Well, today was changes and ... ... ... I'm staying again :) WITH my same companion! I'm going to remain with Elder Kern until April 21! This is my 8th change in my first sector and this is the MAX amount of time to be in your first sector so next change I'll be moving to a different sector; I just won't know which one until next change. Anyways, this also marks 5 changes with Elder Kern! :) We are excited because we will be together for General Conference again and be able to help a few more people hopefully get through the repentance process and partake of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Anyways, things are really good here. I'm grateful for another change in my first sector and we are looking for great things this change! Last week was a great week and I pray that it is the preview for our change! :D

So before I get to my letter I just gotta say that, no mom, I have not gotten the package yet. I'm not sure if it is still in CorreosChile or if it is in the mission office. No, I don't know. Hopefully on Wednesday I will get it :)

So as I said, this was a good week! We were able to have about 3 times the amount of lessons we had in the previous week and we really saw a lot of progress from people! We have several investigators who are on the point of progressing and breaking out but this week we only had one. A few months ago we were teaching a guy named F. He started to get busy with work so we hardly passed by at all for a long time. This last week though, all of the sudden, he has started showing a lot of interest and we were able to meet with him a bit. In the first lesson we told him that our goal is to help him repent and we explained how we repent and how it blesses us. We asked him what his goals were and we talked about how repentance makes those goals come to a reality. We've had several great lessons since then but the biggest success has been on his own. This week he has read through the first 5-6 chapters of the Book of Mormon, praying every day, constantly thinking about his goals and how he can follow Christ, and yesterday he went to church for all three hours. When we stopped by his house he said that he had just the BEST experience in church, that the members were so friendly and so happy to hear about his progress! He said he felt like a regular member!!! Yesterday we taught about the plan of salvation but showed the Mormon Message "A Secure Anchor!" We talked about how Christ is our companion and if we don't have him, we WILL fall. We talked about Christ's mission and how He will save us if we do our part, but only AFTER we do all we can do. At the end of the lesson he said that he doesn't want us to call him our friend anymore, but rather our brother. :D He is truly going through a great repentance process and if he continues down this path, he could be baptized and confirmed this change. :D We are taking him to the V's house tonight for a lesson!! Hopefully everything goes well!!!

So here are some answers to the questions for this week: we haven't been able to work with D. at all because he moved back to Peru and he won't be coming back! Elder Kern and I are both sad but from all accounts it seems like he is doing well! :D We usually have lunch with several different members but when the members can't do it, we cook. And if there is no man in the house of the member, we go and pick up lunch. We haven't had any church tours except for last week when we had the Capilla Abierta, or the Open House for the Church. It went really well and we got a lot of references from it so hopefully those can work out! 

 

About two weeks ago we had interviews with President Wright. It was a good interview and he talked about how as a mission we can get even better at being obedient and he challenged me to be exactly obedient. We are working on it! We have zone conference this weekend and I am going to be participating in a musical number with two other elders. :) Hopefully it goes well! We are blessed to have access to the Liahona in English and Spanish! We usually just use them for studying but we also give them to investigators or less active members. We have been able to use the Bible Videos a lot and they are really powerful! We showed them to a less-active member and talked about the mission of Christ. He got so emotional and committed to going to church with us :D The average person in our sector for a man is a middle aged man in construction work clothes (type thing) but for a woman it is a middle aged woman or young girl pushing a stroller with a baby in it. Lots of people here in our sector work in construction or different types of factories. The employment rate is high but the jobs don't pay a whole lot. Chile has a large middle class but the difference between the middle class and the high class is HUGE!!!! 

 

Most people take public transportation in our sector but there are still a lot of people with cars! Yes I get enough to eat but I'm still losing some weight! I weighed myself today and I weighed 69 kilos, one kilo less than like 3 weeks ago... I'm like 152 pounds and I came on the mission at like 155 I think!... We just finished an English fast that lasted 40 days. During that whole time we planned and only talked in Spanish. Now, we are just going to be talking Spanish when we are out in the street! This week, the trial I experienced was probably teaching the zone class with Elder Schwartz. His companion is leaving and on the day of zone class he had to be in a meeting so E' Schwartz called me up and asked me to help him teach the class. I was quite stressed and we were running around a lot but I was able to overcome it through lots of prayer and accepting the Lord's will...

Last night we had a crazy experience. We went to the house of a future investigator. The wife wasn't home (we were going to meet with her) but her husband was there so he let us in to talk for a second. I went to the bathroom real quick when we went in, but I could hear this man asking all sorts of in your face questions to my companion. I left the bathroom and he was asking us questions, basically trying to find fault in the doctrine and in the church. We shared the message of the Restoration for about 15 minutes and invited him to read the BofM and pray. He said that he would have to talk to his pastor. I told him that was fine but before making any decision he should pray to God for an answer and a confirmation of the truth of what he would read. We continued asking questions but we kept just trying to turn everything to the Restoration and how we need to gain of testimony of it. Throughout the whole lesson I felt as though the Spirit was guiding our words and actions and everything. We were only able to answer the questions and "not be confounded before men" because we were following the spirit and teaching simply. I'm not sure what will happen with the family but I know we testified with the spirit and that he felt it. We'll see but I'm glad we chose to testify in the conversation instead of intensify the conversation.

There were many other great experiences but these are the ones that stand out! Anyways, take care, love you all! Talk to ya'll next week :)

Love,
Elder Bushman

P.S. Here is a photo of a SICK dessert we made as a pension! Ice cream, a huge brownie, and a huge sliver of a big nobake cookie!!! :D TO DIE FOR!!! 

"A missionary's spiritual preparation will be strengthened by better family home evenings, by improved teaching in the Aaronic Priesthood and auxiliary organizations, by attendance at seminary and institute, by going to the temple to be baptized in behalf of the dead, by encouragement to read the Book of Mormon." - Gordon B. Hinckley