Dear
Family,
We
got the transfers. My new companion is
from Harriman, UT. My new area is
Lorenzo Arenas Ward (I don’t know for sure if I spelled that right). It is in the downtown part of
Concepciòn. The mission office is in the
zone limits. I am going to be training
during his last 6 weeks of the 12 weeks training. It will be exciting to be in Concepciòn this
summer (winter for the northern half of the world) when they do the first
groundbreaking ceremony for the Concepciòn temple. They are expected to start construction in
the coming months.
I
really want you all to know that I know this church is true. I was preparing to leave the house yesterday,
and I couldn’t find my missionary plaque.
I looked, and looked, and looked.
I had no idea where it was. I
knelt down and prayed, asking for help in finding the plaque. I said amen, and immediately had the thought
come to my mind that I had left it on my rain jacket. It was raining pretty hard the other day, and
I forgot to take my plaque off the jacket.
God would not help missionaries of a false church. He helped me.
This church is true. I know that
if we can learn to apply the gospel into our lives, we can truly become the
people that God needs us to be. I know
that it is through the atonement of Jesus Christ, that we can all have the hope
of an eternal family. I know that this
Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the true
church.
I
love you guys, more than the number of snowflakes that cover Minnesota.
Sincerely,
Elder
Chad Withers
Dear
Family,
All
is well here in La Paz. We are going to
get a transfer call this morning to see what will happen, but we won’t receive
it until after we email......so I will let you know what happens for this
transfer next week. Thanks for the
birthday wishes! It’s crazy to think that
I will be 21......not sure how that happened.
It
was so hot this week. Oh you have no
idea.......it’s a kind of heat you can’t even explain. So hot and humid, that not even a fan can
relieve you. Our pension (apartment) has
turned into a giant pressure cooker....and I am jealous that Thomas can access
his roof. Ours is too high, but what he
said about the fans is right. They are
really just giant blow dryers.....they don’t actually blow cold air, they just
spin the hot air around. Summers without
air conditioners are a whole new kind of ball game. I am so grateful I only have one full summer
here. The Lord was very merciful at the
end of this week and sent a rain storm to clear everything out. Its starting to get hot and humid again, but
the cooler weekend was a blessing.
People here say though that this summer has been especially brutal, that
it’s not normally as hot or so hot for so many days in a row. There are normally more rain storms to keep
everything balanced and everyone sane.
Cool! I sure lucked out. At the beginning of the summer I thought
everyone was crazy for living in a place that was so hot all the time without
air conditioning, but learning that this is one of the worst in 50 years makes
this place much prettier and it’s easier to understand why people still live
here. On the plus side everything is green and beautiful which is awesome.
There
is one family who is especially incredible, the Obertello Family. They are carpenters by profession, and they
run the shop in the back of their house.
They have 14 kids and are all recent converts within the last 4
years. The teenage daughters were
baptized first, and over the years they have all been converted and
baptized. The kids were all converted
first and the parents very last. The mom
smoked before, and was supportive of her kids switching from Catholicism to
Mormonism, but she never made the change herself. And the dad is kind and humble, but in the
beginning was very opposed to his kids being baptized into the church. So about a year ago the parents were married,
she stopped smoking, and they got baptized.
They are recent converts with strong testimonies, but have a lot of
trouble getting to church on Sunday. We
had a Noche de Hogar (Family Home Evening) this last Friday with them and
talked a lot about overcoming challenges, and how when we have things to
overcome, they can often seem impossible, but if we go to the Lord in prayer,
they can still be hard but also become very possible to overcome. We talked about their struggle to get to the
chapel as a family and invited them to pray for strength. To pray for a solution to the problem and
trust in the answer, because it might be something they have never thought of
before. They live a 45 minute walk away
from the chapel, and have a few motorcycles, but not enough to take
everyone. And they can’t make several
trips because they don’t have enough money to pay for that much gas. So on
Sunday morning we anxiously waited to see them.
To see them show up at the chapel, and seeing them walk through the door
just melted my heart. Only the parents came
that day for some reason or another, but they are the ones who have the most
trouble coming, so seeing them there was like Christmas. We have Relief Society and Sunday School
first, and then Sacrament meeting. While
we were waiting for sacrament meeting to start we were sitting by them and I
started talking to them, and found out that their motorcycles were broken,
something happened to their car, and they were waiting for the colectivo (bus)
to stop by but it never did......so they started to walk. And they walked the whole way. They are kind of an older couple (I mean they
have raised 14 kids....they can be tired if they want to!) and they walked the
whole 45 minute distance. In reality it
was more like an hour to an hour and a half.....because 45 minutes is
missionary speed and they move a little slower.
We were so proud of them. There are a lot of sacrifices saints make here
to be faithful.....sacrifices that not all members have to make. But it is something the Lord has required of
them, and the idea to start walking as an answer to their prayer in getting
help to the chapel I am sure is not something they were super excited to follow
through with.....but they did it anyway.
They are such good people, and those 14 kids have excellent parents for
examples.
The
zone leaders had a training about 2 weeks ago...and they picked up mail but
forgot to give it to us. Almost
unforgivable! But it was kind of fun to
get mail in the middle of the month. I
had a few letters and Christmas cards.
Thank you to all!
My
favorite snack lately has been Oreos (they sell them here and it’s the best
thing ever!). And p day activities
usually are study, email, get groceries, lunch, and then go to Gridos and get a
half kilo of ice cream to share....take it to the chapel, turn on the ac (the
church is one of the few places that has ac!) put on shorts, and eat the ice
cream directly in front of the ac. It’s
the best ever......and then we spend the afternoon playing ping pong too.
I
am doing well and have so much to be grateful for. I love you more than all the banana trees
that grow here that I didn’t know were banana trees until a week ago!
Hermana
Withers
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