Elder Boyer...Chile Concepcion South Mission: Week 3.... 2 months DOWN!!!

" Invite all people to come unto Christ"

I cant believe that today marks 2 months since I started my mission. Time is seriously flying by. I didn't think the mission would go by this fast. Honestly it feels like just yesterday I said goodbye to everyone. I am loving the mission more and more each day. The more I learn the language the more I love it. This week has been a super good week. My confidence in Spanish has really grown. Weeks previous, I was super timid to speak to people, because I knew I sucked. Now, I realize that if you speak, the people respect you more and help you with what you are trying to say. This week I tried to talk to everyone. I felt so much love and appreciation for everyone I talked to. I was so happy. I am now actually able to understand and talk with people. It still is super broken Spanish, but I can get by. It is amazing how fast it is coming. So a little about my area. I am in an area called Yumbel. It is a little town, with not that many members. I think we have 10 members in the whole city. Actually take that back... I think we have only 5. The other 5 are the Bishops family, and they drive an hour to come to church from another city. There are no priesthood holders, so they had to call a bishop in another city. It is super weird going to church and only having like 15 people there. Yesterday in church, I gave a talk. I was super nervous, because I didn't know how my Spanish was going to be, but when I got up there all my nerves went away. I started speaking with the spirit. I spoke probably the best Spanish I have ever spoken. It was super cool. Everyone came up to me and said, I thought you couldn't speak Spanish... haha... I told them I couldn't. haha. But ya, our area is super crazy. In Yumbel it is like a business to have a church, so I swear everyone has their own church. They are all either Evangelical or Catholic. They have meetings in their houses. It makes it super hard for missionary work though. A lot of people reject us because they say they already have a church.

Elder Boyer and Elder Cardoso

Elder Cardoso and I keep praying for people to teach. Most of our time is spend contacting people. I hope we can start to have people accept our message. Actually, a cool story: So we were on a cambio (splits), so I was with Elder Dominguez.. but we were contacting a bunch of people. The last house of the night we stopped at this house. Out walked this teenage girl. We asked her if we could come in and teach her mom. She said yes, so we went in. They were by far the best family I have seen since being there. They were so prepared, and loving. They had 8 people in the family. 16, 12, 9, 7, 4, 2. They were so loving. We taught them about the first lesson, and how we have a God who loves us and the blessings that come. We taught about the Book of Mormon, and we asked if they would read it. They were so excited:) They said YES!!! They were super excited to learn more about Christ and his teachings. During the lesson, I was showing the little kids pictures of Christ, and my family. It was so awesome to see the happiness that we were sharing with them.

I hope that we can continue to teach this family and bring them the happiness that this gospel brings. It made me so excited to do missionary work. When you have success like that, it gets you so excited to go out and do more work.

I am learning so much here... I love it!! I have learned so much about the Gospel. I never really liked reading before, but now I love reading talks, and books that teach of Christ. I read some great talks this week if any of you want to read them: (click on links)

"Feed My Sheep" by Elder Jeffery R Holland,

"Character of Christ" by Elder David A. Bednar

"Power of Prayer" by Richard G. Scott

They were talks given at the MTC so they are directed to missionaries, but I think everyone can benefit from them. I advise all of you to read them. They have all made me want to become a better person, and missionary. I hope you can get the chance to read them, they will change your life. I love all of you and hope all of you are doing great. Have a great week!!!

Sounds like all of you had a great week!!! I love and think about you all of the time.

Love, Elder Boyer