04-19-10

Sorry, this is going to be really short today. We are in Punta Arenas for zone conference and interviews. We had to take a three hour bus ride this morning and we are still feeling a little bus sick. My companion, Elder Sanford, threw up! We are going to be here in Punta Arenas until tomorrow night. Then we go back to ¨the hole.¨ It is nice to see other missionaries again, because it is a foreign experience for Elder Sanford and I.

This week went really great. Antonio is doing well. He is getting too busy with work, but he is still doing good. His mom is warming up a bit, she actually prayed about Joseph Smith the other day and said that she felt an answer. But then she says that she is never going to change from being Catholic! Crazy!

There is another Antonio, I can´t remember if I told you about him and his family, but they are amazing. We taught them the best two lessons this week, and they are reading the Book of Mormon as a family after lunch and really understand things so well. They are so cool to teach, and to think that the first time that we knocked his door he didn´t want to talk to us at all. And now they are all praying about the Book of Mormon. It is Antonio and his wife Elizabeth and their 25 year old daughter Karen. They are soo cool!

It is getting really cold here, we have to sleep in many clothes and we have a natural gas heater in the house that works pretty decently, but soon it will be getting so much colder and so much darker here. I guess there isn´t much sunlight in the winter down here. Oh no!

Más fotos

Brian served with this elder for a day on
an intercambio, when they exchanged companions.

Elder Sanford, I believe

Elder Brian Sheahan

Elder Sanford and Elder Sheahan getting pumped up to go out :)

04-12-10

I am doing fantastic. This week just flew by. At first, it was going really slow. We knocked doors and tried so hard at the beginning of the week with little success. But later in the week, we were able to teach more lessons.

One of our investigators is really progressing, and he is sooo cool. His name is Antonio, and he is 29. He comes from a Catholic family, but the family only goes to church once a year or so. Anyways, the first time we met with him he was just so ready to listen to the gospel. He really has been having a harder time in his life lately he says. This last week we taught him three times and we were able to teach him the restoration, watch the DVD of the restoration, and share with him the gospel of Jesus Christ. He is so amazing, because he is reading in the Book of Mormon and he and his mom came to church yesterday! He said that he really liked church. He says that he believes that the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. We have invited him to be baptized, but he said no. We are pretty sure he would have said yes if his mom hadn´t been there. Her name is Silvia. She is Catholic and doesn´t want to change. She listens every time, but says that she doesn´t want to change and never will. The hard thing is that she just doesn´t have a desire to change right now. Pray for them!

The other Antonio is good, but we haven´t been able to teach them this week, which is sad. He left town on business. We have an appointment with his family tomorrow. We did see his family in the street the other day and they were really happy and excited to see us. :)

So yesterday, we were knocking doors with a brother from the ward, Brother Santana. But anyways we knocked on this door and this little old lady opened up. She was about 4 feet tall, and probably about 80 years old. We asked her if we could share a message with her, and she beckoned us in and said, "Oh, you want to converse.". She led us to this little empty room and then shut the door. She was a little cuckoo, so we explained to her that we wanted to talk with her. And she was pretty crazy, and kinda of out of reality. I asked her how many kids she had, and she said that she couldn´t remember. And then she said, pointing at my companion and then at me, "You must be the son of the English, and (to me) you must be the son of the marine." It was pretty funny, she thought that we were her sons. Sadly she really couldn´t make much conversation, and so we gave her some free laminas of Jesus Christ and left real quick.

The Tender Mercies of the Lord

04-05-10

I hope that you all enjoyed Easter and General Conference. We stayed here to watch conference instead of traveling to Punta Arenas, which is three hours away. We weren´t able to see priesthood session because they don´t broadcast it live on the internet. And Sunday morning we only saw the last talk because of some technical difficulties with the internet. It finally got fixed, but we ended up having to move to another room where the internet was better. So what I saw of conference, I loved. I am really looking forward to the magazine though, so I can read what I didn´t get to hear.

What I loved is how most of conference was focused on how to protect and strengthen our families. It was sooo cool to hear all the prophet's and apostles talks. One talk that I really liked was about how we need to make good judgments and the steps that we need to take to do that.

Things with Elder Sanford and I are going great. We are working hard, and we have found some really cool people. We are hoping to invite them all to baptism this week.

One man that we found this last week is named Antonio. The first time we knocked on his door, he was pretty contentious and didn´t want to listen to us. But then we talked to him a bit about his family and then shared with him the thirty-second version of the restoration. He agreed to let us come by another day for 15 minutes.

So we went by the other day and we taught him and his wife, Elizabeth, about the restoration, and it was amazing. They understood so well and at the end, they said that they would read and pray about the Book of Mormon that night. We are going back to teach them tomorrow, so we will find out how it went. Antonio was really active in the Catholic church for the majority of his life, he even helped out with the youth program there. But then something happened with him not agreeing with a bad choice that a priest made, and they got in an argument and he stopped going to that church.

It was just such a good feeling to see someone excited to hear about the restoration and understand it all. Please keep Antonio and Elizabeth in your prayers.

Well, I hope that everything is amazing for all of you. It isn´t horribly cold here yet, but it is getting colder each week and it gets darker earlier and earlier. I think it will start getting pretty cold in a month or so. I don´t think that it gets that much colder than it does in Montana, the only thing is that I haven´t ever had to walk around all day during the winter before.

Love,
Elder Brian Sheahan (the no-named elder, because no one here wants to risk mispronouncing my name, or they don´t know how. I know how it is Scott.)

03-29-10

Torres de Paines

Sorry that I don´t have a ton of time to write today, but things are going really great. It is getting colder here, and in the winter it will be way cold. I am serving in a city that is three hours from Punta Arenas, it is called Puerto Natales, and because we are three hours away from the zone, we never go to zone or district meetings, so we are a little alone out here. There are about 22-25 thousand people who live here. Our sector is huge! It is surrounded by mountains and also the sea. It is really pretty. You should google the Torres de Paines. We are really close to these amazing mountains that have some great towers jetting out from them. They are really famous, so there are tons of tourists here. We are hoping that one preparation day, we can go see the torres of paines. We'll see.

My companion, Elder Sanford, is from Paul, Idaho, I think. Mom, the one from Uncle Neal's ward came with me in my group to Chile. Elder Sanford is great and we get along well. He is really funny, and is a great guy.

The only thing that is hard here is the amount of work to be done. We don't have any investigators right now and the branch here has over 500 less actives. The attendance at church yesterday was about 35.

One cool thing that happened this week is that we met a tourist here named James. He is 18 and from England. Right now he is traveling alone through South America, for about 4 months. So anyways we talked to him in the street on Saturday and invited him to church on Sunday, and he eagerly came. It turns out that he has a really good friend who's Mormon. He was actually meeting with the missionaries in England about 2 months ago before he left, and said that he went to church a few times there. And so he came to church with us before he had to leave to go to another city, but he was a really nice guy and he really enjoyed coming to church with us. He left after sacrament meeting to get ready to continue on in his trip. The cool thing is how we ran into him and got to talk to him, answer his questions, and invite him to church. It is interesting how the Lord puts people in our path.

03-22-10

1st of all, guess where I'm going?

To the bottom of the world, to a city called Punta Reinas. It is the city that is the furthest south in all of the world and in my mission. And I get to go there for winter! I heard it is cold! There are penguins there! I also heard that it is really pretty. I take a plane from a city called Puerto Montt on Wednesday. My sector is called Puerto Natales, and it is far away from the city to the east, so I will only be going to district/zone meetings on the days that I have intercambios. My new companion´s name is Elder Sanford. He has a cambio or two more than me in the mission and he is from Idaho. I am excited to meet him.

This week went by very quickly. Brenda is doing well. She came with us to the district conference that the branch went to by bus. That was cool, but she finally told us that she doesn't believe much in Jesus Christ. She is beginning to understand more about the church, but now she needs to understand why she needs Jesus Christ and gain faith in him. She is doing great other than that, but she waited a while to tell us that. We always go and teach her with members, so sometimes we think that maybe she likes the church just because of the social aspect, but we´ll find out more. We are going to teach her tomorrow.

Paola is doing not as well. She still doesn't want to come to church, but we are still meeting with her. She is putting the visits farther and farther apart. She understands sooo well, but the Lord will keep working with her heart. Hopefully she can come to church this week and then to general conference the next week. She is such a great person too, so keep her in your prayers.

I am excited for general conference. I think I will have to travel by bus or something to see it from my new sector.