Monday, January 7, 2013
Elder Derek Keele- Jan. 7, 2013
Dear family,
Elder Keele
I am so
grateful for the guidance of the Spirit that we can receive in our
lives. D&C 67 is a great section! Somebody tried to tell me the
other day that the earth belongs to Satan. Well, scripture wins :D
I am so proud of Dallin. What a great leader!
Yes! I got
my package last Thursday!!! :D Thank you so much for the candy and
letters. And the long-awaited debit-card is here! haha.
Today
we went to San Pedro. It is an hour away from Calama, and a really
big tourist town. We went sandboarding! It was so much fun! And I
stayed up! haha. It was a ton of fun, and I think a lot easier than on
slippery snow. When I get back we`ll have to go to DI and get some cheap
snowboards and go to the dunes. It is sweet!
The fireworks last week were fun! There was a firework called
"Matasuegra" (mother-in-law killer). I was expecting like a screamer,
but it just exploded once in a huge BANG and it was super bright. Short
but strong. And kind of a cruel name. haha
Tomorrow we have interviews with President Bruce! And on Friday I think I get to visit Tocopilla. Hopefully haha.
Well I hope everyone is excited for school to start up again. :D
Have a wonderful week!
Love,
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Elder Derek Keele- Dec. 31, 2012
Dear Family, Happy Birthday yesterday Mom!!!
Elder Keele
We reached
our goals!!! The mission baptized and confirmed 1029 souls this year,
and for the month of December, our Zone baptized and confirmed 18 out of
our goal of 14! We were all so blessed this month. The missionaries just
all did their best to follow the Spirit, and many people decided to
come and follow Christ by the promptings of the Spirit. We are all so
excited and feel so blessed that we could help so many people. It was a
stressful week, full of fasting, running across town, and organizing
baptisms, but the Lord helped everything to work out. We all just love
the work and focus on our purpose as missionaries.
Sadly I wasn't able to go down to Tocopilla, but I was able to talk
to many of my friends over the phone on Saturday. They are all doing
well in Tocopilla and the missionaries there are taking care of them. :D
Tonight as New Year's tradition, there will be fireworks here and
the burning of giant piñatas :D The bishop invited us to watch them on
the top of his roof, which is 4 stories high, so we will have an amazing
view. We even get to stay out until 12:00 tonight rather than the usual
11:00. (It is neat how our schedule as missionaries in Chile
Antofagasta is very different than the norm. It is because of the
culture here. More effective ;)
Well, we are excited for a new year and a new month. 2013!
I hope you all have a fun new year's party playing games :D
Say hi to everyone at grandma's house for me!
Love,
Elder Derek Keele- Dec. 24, 2012
Dear family
I am so excited for tomorrow! Okay. I think I will be
skyping at 3 or 4 ish here, so 11 or 12ish there. I am excited to see
you all again!
Tell Grandma thank you so much! I hope you all enjoy Christmas Eve tonight!
I still haven't got the package yet. We got a bunch of stuff last
week from Antofagasta, but it wasn't there :( I'm sure it'll turn up some time
though haha. We are still fine money wise though. The only thing is I
wasn't able to send a Christmas package. I have the things to send
already, so I will just have to send them a little late.
It has been such an exciting time! I failed to mention last week
that I got transfered up here to Calama. So now I have been here for a
week. It is really good then and I am excited to work with the Bishop
and Ward Mission leader here to really help this ward. They are good
guys, and the ward needs some strengthening. And I am so excited to
work! The spirit does amazing things and I know the Lord just needs us to be
his tools to build and strengthen His kingdom.
We are looking good for the goal of 1000! There are 73 people that
should be confirmed on the 30th and we are only 43 away from the goal.
Hopefully we'll beat last year's too, which was 1,012 more or less.
The amazing thing about being transfered here to Calama, is that
Tocopilla is in our Zone. And because there is a boy and his mom that
asked that I baptize them, I am going to travel to Tocopilla this Friday
to do the baptism Saturday! I will get to see a lot of people again,
and I get to baptize on my birthday! What an amazing birthday present
that I will never forget! :D
We did something very interesting yesterday. Last week we found a
man and his family who are super faithful in their church. He used to be
a drug addict, but then Christ came into his life and, for a year, he and
his family have been completely dedicated to Him. The only problem is
that when we explained the first lesson, he had many doubts about
prophets, feeling like they make us unfocused on Christ. We tried our
best to explain, but he just wouldn't accept that there is a living
prophet today. And he even said that we need to repent and beware of
the devils lies. So we did what we felt to do. We left him the pamphlet
of the restauration and told him that all three of us (he, my companion
Elder Villarroel, and I) would read it and ask God that night if it
was true. Then we invited him to church. He agreed, but only if we went
to his church where the real truth is and where we would feel the spirit
like we had never felt it before. Well, we accepted.
I read that night, and just felt so good the whole time. Then we
went to church and he came. I felt the spirit so strongly yesterday in
church! Then as promised, we accompanied him to his last night at 7. I
must say I had the worst feeling I may have felt in the mission so far. I
felt nothing good. They sang rock songs and shouted and he even spoke
because he is preparing to be a pastor. He spoke many scriptures, but I
just couldn t feel anything. The difference of the two church meetings I
attended was amazing yesterday. My companion had the same experience.
It strengthened both of our tesimonies so much that we ARE in the true
church! Not becuase of words or scriptures even, just purely be the
spirit we felt in Sacrament meeting.
We plan on having a little lesson on what the spirit is with him
and how he needs to get past any strong doubts he has about prophets or
more scripture like the Book of Mormom, and just ask God.
Hopefully
we can teach him in a way that he won't be offended and hopefully he
will sincerely listen to us. I am 100% certain that he felt something
different as well. We just hope he will continue investigating and get
over the big doubts he has.
More exciting news! I don't know if I had told you about Ana and
Fernando and their family. Ana is 17 and Fernando is 14 and they also
have a sister and brother of 15 and 9. We found them from the cemetary
activity we did the Day of the Dead in Tocopilla! We had been working with them for a
while, but the only problem is it was hard to find and teach the mom.
She went in to work every night at 7pm and got home about 4am. And
Saturday nights she worked til 8 in the morning. So we didn't think we
would ever get her to church. But a couple weeks ago we helped them move
for two days straight! They had a surprise move and had to be moved out
in a week. So we helped a lot. Even though we could have been more
concerned about the amount of lessons we could have been teaching or
other things, we felt that they really needed our help. So the second
day, the mom took 30 minutes to listen to us. We taught her the first
message along with her husband, who hadn't shown much interest before.
It was so great! We all felt the spirit so strong! And the mom at the
end of the lesson told us that she realized the importance of the church
and why we missionaries had been visiting her kids. She told us she
needed to rest from her work and start going to church with her kids! It
was amazing! Well now I'm in Calama, but the missionaries in Tocopilla
(who are really good friends) have commited Fernando to be baptized this
Saturday, and the rest of the family to be baptized on the 5th of
January! I am so happy for them! And I will get to see them this weekend
too!
I got a letter from Rilee last week and she said she decided to
serve a mission! That is so awesome Rilee! I am guessing she wrote the
letter in October, so if Nathan knows any more info that would be
awesome to hear.
And Nathan would be putting in his papers in March right?
Elder
Hubler here is a stud. He is doing really well in the mission. He is
the Zone Leader of a Zone that used to have 0 to 3 baptisms a month. And
in the past few months they have had 5, then 7, now probably 9.
Well sorry for writing a ton, but I had to make up for last week.
It has been such an exciting few weeks and this weekend is going to be
so great as well!
I can't wait to talk to you all tomorrow!
And to meet Alex a little bit haha. And Marianna too :D Our
family is getting huge!
We'll only have 45 minutes max to talk, but you'll probably have lots of new gifts to play with anyway :D
I love you all!
And I am happy that the world didn't end yet! :)
Love,
Elder Keele
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