the email

hola familia y amigos

This week was a ton of fun, but I wasn´t able to spend a lot of time in my area because we were in the office a lot preparing a musical number for a conference with elder Viñez from the seventy. 

on tuesday we received a call in the morning that my companion and I were supposed to rehearse a musical number with some of the sister missionaries in our mission, so we headed to the office. Elder Muñoz plays the violin and another hermana plays the piano. the other sister missionary and I sang nearer my god to thee. it was super fun.

we returned to our sector after that and had a lesson with Luis y Carolina. something that we do here in the mission is we reteach the lessons to converts right after they are baptized. we left the lesson and the spirit was really strong. 5 minutes later we were walking along and we heard a shout. it was Luis y Carolina and they were running after us yelling at us to stop. we stopped and when they reached us they handed us a bag of pansitos (little bread). in Chile the people are so loving that they will run to you just to hand you a bag of free bread. sometimes I don´t feel worthy of the love that I have recieved here from the members and from the people I am teaching. Im just a 20 year old gringo that can hardly speak spanish, but to the people here in Chile they see me as a true messenger of god. 

the following day we performed the musical number and the zone conference was awesome!!!! Elder Viñez was super great. we talked about the role of the atonement in our lives as missionaries. I have learned a lot here in the mission how important the atonement of Jesus Christ is. we don´t have to be perfect, we can commit mistakes and still find peace and hope through the atonement of Jesus Christ. I constantly have to repent every day in the mission because it is not possible to be happy and imperfect without Jesus Christ and his atonement to help me out. I am so glad that he loves me enough to take all of my burdens upon himself so that I can look to him in any moment and he will help me. Who does a thing such as that. who has that much love. HE has that much love and he wants us to be joyful in this life, and all we have to do is look to him.

a couple days ago we were walking in the street and Elder Muñoz knocked on a door. an old man answered it and told us immediatly that he felt like he had met us before. we told him that there had been lots of different missionaries that had walked the same streeets that we had, but he told us that he felt like he had known us before this life. we entered his house which was full of artwork and sculptures that he had done. Osvaldo, se llama, is an artist, and it was awesome to teach him about the plan of salvation so that he could know that we existed before we all came to the earth. we all lived with our heavenly father as spirits before we were born. Im excited to teach him again.

Thank you for all of your emails, prayers, and pictures. please keep them coming. 

Love.

Elder Williams