Jose C Paz II Pictures

 Elder Arrowchis

 The family we baptized and her friend on the right in the Nueva Pompeya branch

 The baptisms that we had this past weekend: a boy who´s family is returning to church, a mom and daughter whose other daughter was confirmed last week, the daughters of a family we have been teaching for awhile

The baptism I did, Bishop did the two sisters, and a recent convert did the mom and her daughter.

February 27, 2012 Time to Baptize!

Okay, time to baptize! So I don´t have a lot of time right now because I´ve had a ton of things to do, but hope you enjoy the pictures. SO yeah, this past week we worked like crazy! Elder Ramirez has a very concentrated style of working, especially when it comes to dealing with the other Elders. I´m learning a lot from him about counceling with the other missionaries to help them aument their faith in order to gain a vision of achieving more and setting higher goals while still being realistic. For instance, this last week we started counting how many times we´ve invited people to be baptized. This past week we achieved 8 and because of that urgency and boldness we had 5 baptisms where we only would of had two otherwise! It´s great and I am just super stressed and super excited to just start baptizing and confirming (because it all depends on a missionary´s mindset no mas). It´s a great energy that comes from repenting myself everyday and looking to help and serve others instead of staying content with the success that I am given. It has a lot to do with trying to retain the remission of my sins as explained in Mosiah 4. That is also relieving to know that I don´t have to worry about West Point right now, just keep exercising every morning and not letting myself go on the sweets and fatty foods. Could you also let me know if I need to reschedule that doctor appointment to finish the sheet for my eyes? Well, I sent pictures this week so I´ll leave off on the writing a bit.

About those who were baptized: The boy of 9 years we found because his family is inactive but started coming back to church and wanted to baptize him. The mom and her daughter we found through our recent convert, who is her daughter, and with that family they just came prepared. The older daughter showed up to church one Sunday, basically baptized herself, and then we started talking with her mom and younger daughter. The mom read everything and had been living all the commandments her whole life and the night before her baptism her daughter prayed with her to know if she should get baptized and she felt like she should. The other two girls are part of a family we´ve been teaching since I got here and they decided to get baptized this week too. We actually dropped them but the whole family came last Sunday and they accepted fechas. Now it´s just time for the Dad to act! Love you a ton and thank you so much for all your help with West Point and letters and stuff.

Con Amor,
Elder Arrowchis

February 20, 2012 Staying in Jose C Paz II

Faa, so yeah there have been some changes. I´m still in my area Jose C Paz II but my companion changed. Elder Bruce was called up to be an assistant to the president and my new companion is my other old zone leader, Elder Ramirez. He was my zone leader two transfers ago and now he´s here with me so we´re going to flood this zone with baptisms and converts. It´s great to have him because he´s Chileno (from Chile) so I´m going to help him learn English and he´s going to help me get back into Spanish speaking mode. If he´s the one to end me then hopefully I will get back home and not be able to speak English too well.

Anyway, so yeah Noelia´s confirmation went great and this week we are expecting at least two more baptisms. One is a 9 year old boy whose parents were inactive and his mom started coming back to church. It´s kinda bad but also funny, but at least here if a kid is 8 years old and not baptized the missionaries don´t really even talk to him, but as soon as he turns 9 they´re at the door! Ha ha ha, that´s because if one of their parents is a member and they get baptized at 8 they don´t count for the missionaries, actually we don´t even hold the keys for that baptism it´s a ward baptism. They other one is Noelia´s mom who is super prepared only she is a bit doubtful about following through. Other than that, I´m not sure the PT test is going to work out because it´s super hard finding time to do it, so just send in the "excuse". There are no running tracks around here, and none with pull up bars, only in Parque Chacabuco which is 3 hours away... So yeah, I still don´t know what to write about after two years, I´ll start taking more pictures this transfer, and I´ll tell you more about the baptisms. Here´s something you could write me about, have you had any experiences with praying and receiving an answer, or when were the times that you felt the Lord´s love for you most? Thank you and talk more next week.


Con Amor,
Elder Arrowchis

P.S. there´s an elder Hunt here who said his brother is near Salmon, I already wrote Jordan so we´ll see if they find him ha ha.

February 13, 2012 John 4

Well the good news is that we had a baptism this last week. A woman named Noelia showed up to church on her own a two weeks ago and said she wanted to be a part of the church, and she had no problems to stop her progression and was doing everything necessary to develope her faith to get baptized, so she was baptized on Sunday. Now we are teaching her mom and her younger sister and her sister is so cool that before I even finished explaining how to do a prayer she started praying, so I just stopped midsentance and listened. Another miracle is that a member from another stake in Capital showed up today, because she used to live here, and brought her brother and sister in law who were married recently to church and they want to learn more about the Gospel. We also had the highest sacrament meeting attendance this past week since I´ve been here which was cool. When I got here we only had around 70 but this past week it got up to 105.

Something that the mission president just shared with me today was John 4. It is when Jesus is talking with the Samaritan at the well and it´s interesting to note that when his disciples had gone to town, eleven of these spiritual studs, they only come back with food and Christ teaches them pointedly that they needed to be focused on finding another type of food. Then John continues to teach us the importance of finding investigators through the members as he shows how the people in town came to listen to Christ because of the woman at the well sharing her experience with them, and then they believed in Christ´s words and were converted. He was doing missionary work through his recent convert! Que tal.

Con amor,
Elder Arrowchis

February 6, 2012 No Electricity or Water

So yeah, here´s my week. We had all those capacitaciones [training] and pretty much worked every day from 6-9, so we tried not letting let get to us and accepting that excuse. I´m really learning a lot right now about not accepting excuses and making plans, ha ha my kids are going to hate me. The missionaries tell us that they don´t have any investigators to make plans, and so we tell them that´s an excuse and what´s their plan to baptize this weekend ha ha. Then if they still don´t know we invite them to pray because that´s really the only way they´ll find a plan in the first place. Also, two nights we had no electricity or water and it was about 90 degrees or more in the apartment with super high humidity. I wasn´t dry once that night, or asleep longer than 2 hours total, ha. I had to stand up during church because I was falling asleep but bad. This week I am going to practice throwing a basketball and take the test somewhere next Monday, so yeah. Other than that nothing great to report, no baptisms or amazing miracles that I can think of right now. Love you and let me know if there´s anything I can do for you.
Con Amor,
Elder Arrowchis