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.