Yr. 2, Week 3: We Need to Make the Lord our First Priority.

Dear Famiy and Friends,

Wow, this week was a little strange in the fact that we had a tough week as far as lessons taught goes but at the end of the week I felt really good about it and very pumped up :) Before I get to some of the things that happened during the week, here's some thoughts from my sweet mother's email:

So the big fire in Chile is NOT in Santiago, but Valparaíso...like 2 1/2 hours away! So we are safe from it here but it is really tragic :S We're really sad for these people and also the people from Iquique (seriously like 1,000 kilometers away, we didn't feel anything) where the big earthquake was... So about missionary work online, honestly, that is the mission president's least concern, he's not that big into it. I doubt we'll be doing it during my time in the mission. When we are in people's homes, we always make it a point to say hello to everyone at the meal, or the lesson, or when we drop by a house. We always try to talk to the youth and help them out and stuff.

We had a really cool experience this week. We had been visiting the A. family for quite some time and Elder Kern and I were feeling that things just weren't going to work out with them. They weren't keeping their commitments, they skipped out on appointments, and left members hanging on visits as well. So, we stopped going by. This week we got a call from Hermana A. asking us why we didn't go by. We told her that we didn't think they wanted us to continue to pass by. She told us to pass by her house. So we did and we shared the story of Martha and Mary and why we need to make the Lord our first priority. We were a little forward with them but we were honest in that we said that we nor the Lord could make a difference in their lives UNLESS He was their first priority! They committed to going to church and we were really praying they would show up. Church started and they weren't in the chapel. The sacrament started and they still hadn't showed up! But the sacrament ended, and guess what...their family walked it :) YEAH!!!! Several members went up and said hi to them. They said they liked it and we were feeling really good about them!! :) It was truly a miracle!

Yesterday, in addition to the normal meetings at church, we had the Chapel Openhouse for the other ward. We still participated and invited a lot of people to it! Our investigator family went to it and really enjoyed it. Elder Kern and I had previously invited them to be baptized but they avoided the invitation; but after our presentation on baptism, they said they had A LOT of doubts and questions cleared up about why we are baptized and what it is that baptism does :) Hopefully that will mean significant progress soon!! Also in the openhouse, we did a presentation to a woman who has been inactive for 20 years. For some reason, the presentation took the angle of the gift of the holy ghost instead of baptism. She said she still remembers how she felt when she received the Holy Ghost. She said she wants to feel it again. Then a sister from the ward mentioned baptisms for the dead so I asked if she had ever been to the temple... She said no. I asked her if here grandparents or great-grandparents were members... She said no. Elder Kern and I invited her to come back to church after 20 years next week and to talk with the bishop about receiving a temple recommend to go to the temple and do baptisms and confirmations for her ancestors. She agreed :) We were so ecstatic :)

So this week we had a great correlation meeting with our ward mission leader, Hermano A.! We talked a lot about our investigator families and we are really excited to involve the ward with these people so that they go to church and enjoy the blessings of the restored gospel :) We are also going to be receiving two assistants to the WML, a guy who will head on his mission in one year and a recently returned missionary from Brazil. :) We're really, really excited!!!!! :)

Anyways, this was just a small portion of all the MARVELOUS things that happened this week :)

Love you all, take care!!!

Elder Bushman

"Gather the Saints, but do not flatter; invite, but do not urge, and by no means compel any one."
 - Brigham Young

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

Week 43: If we do Good Things we are Happy, but if we do Bad Things we are Sad

Dear Family and Friends,

Wow, what a week. With all things considered, it was a good week. Like all weeks there were hectic and down times but also with relaxing and happy times. The biggest downer of the week are all the people on vacation. It seems like February is the month in which EVERYONE leaves. Our church building feels so empty and our weekly results are quite low. The happiest thing this week was that we found some more new people and we had lots of spiritual experiences. :) 

So to answer some of the questions that I received this week, our families are doing good...they are on vacation but they seem to be doing well. We invited one family to church two weeks ago and they said they would come...didn't. We found out their oldest son was hospitalized the night before but went home Sunday evening. Anyways, that was understandable. They told us they would be at church no questions about it...didn't come again. Ugh! That was a bummer. The little boys have been a little sporadic.  C. didn't go yesterday but another cousin, M. went and he had a blast. We asked them what they learned and they said, "About the good stuff and the bad stuff." So I asked them what happens when we do good things and what happens if we do bad things. They replied, "If we do good things we are happy but if we do bad things we are sad." :D That was pretty cool! They were a little bored during testimony meeting (they are only 8 and 10 yrs. old) so they were looking through my gospel art book. They are good kids; we havn't shared anything with their families yet but we are trying. So there isn't really a way to beat the heat, we just try and stay comfortable with our fan. Nobody has air conditioning here and it is really rare to see a fan turned on in the homes so we are usually sweating during our lessons. They don't have swamp coolers either...AH! Dad would DIE! :S 

So one experience about following the Holy Ghost happened last night. We were walking and I had the impression to pass by an investigator family that Elder Frost and I had taught when I first entered the mission. It's been a good 6 months or more since I've seen them but I felt like we should go. We got there...nobody. But, I had an impression to write a note. So I did! We left the note and went home. As of now we haven't heard from them but I know by following the Holy Ghost we and this family will be blessed in some aspect. 

Another experience we had this week was a really spiritual lesson with an inactive member named F. He hasn't gone to church in many years and we've had struggles getting ahold of him this last few weeks. Yesterday we stopped by and he was home and invited us in. We sat down and he explained a little bit about why he was inactive, his story of finding the church, and how he feels right now. We helped him realize the difference in his life now and when he was participating actively in the church. We shared the scripture Mosiah 2:41; this is one of my favorite scriptures in the Book of Mormon. He told us that he believes that keeping the commandments is the only sure way to have happiness and he said that he just wants to return to our Heavenly Father's presense after this life. He has a disease (polio maybe) and is in a wheelchair. We talked about Christ's role as savior and sung the song, "I know that my redeemer lives." We invited him to come to church with us and he accepted. We gave him a new BofM because he lost his old one, and we left him with a priesthood blessing. It was really really spiritual and we could feel his sincerity in wanting to return to church. 

So we had a tender mercy the other day. We were going through the list of old investigators and while reviewing the list, a lady from the house of which we were standing in front of started to talk to us. We found out she is a less active member who recently moved from another community in Santiago. Here daughter (C.) was taking the lessons from other missionaries but when they moved, they lost contact. She told us we could visit her this week. We're excited to have another prepared investigator and a less-active that we can bring back to church. :) 

So the new missionary in our pension is Elder Osbon, from Michigan. He is a really cool kid and has really enjoyed his time with us so far. He has two changes less than me in the mission but he is a really nice kid and we all get along really well. I've been very fortunate to be with some many great people in the mission! 

Things are going well though, we are working hard and we aren't getting frustrated. We're doing the best job we can so far so hopefully that is good enough :)

That's all for this week folks...have a good one!!!

Love, 

Elder Bushman

“I am convinced that none of us can appreciate how deeply it wounds the loving heart of the Savior of the world when he finds that his people do not feel confident in his care or secure in his hands.”
~ Jeffrey R. Holland