Sean McAlister Called to Serve: Pancakes and Eggs

Great to hear from Elder McAlister today. He’s learning a lot from his new responsibilities as a District Leader, and this will be a great experience for him to have the additional responsibility to serve the missionaries in his District as well as those in his assigned area.

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Hey everyone,

I’m glad to everyone is okay and doing well. It’s awesome to hear that dad is making good progress and keep on working hard dad! Your leg looks pretty crazy. Mom thanks for the update on the ward and that's awesome that Erik is going to Brazil! Brooke I like your new puppy and she is very cute and I hope Todd is doing well in the academy and the house looks great. Jessica you need to write me some cool stories (HaHa), no but I love reading your emails and how your life going. I hope Derek is doing well in school also. Sabrina you look like you are getting so tall and you look so much older than what I can remember (HaHa).

Well, being a District Leader is a lot different than I thought and lot more stressful (HaHa). They just throw you into the position of District Leader and they don’t really tell you what you need to do. So that makes it a little bit harder. Also, I have one of the most crazy zone leaders in our zone and he loves to tare people down and he’s just about numbers. I felt like he tore my head off last Sunday when I told him the status of my district. Part of my district is new to their sector and the others ones are doing pretty good. I had a district class in the last week and I taught how to find new investigators to teach. The class was pretty good and I was happy with it. I did accidentally end the class about ten minutes early, but I thought it went good. Maybe Derek, Todd, Or Dad have some good tips for me! They would be appreciated!!!

We worked really hard this last week but we didn't have much success. We worked with finding news investigators this week and we wanted to find more less actives. We are still working with Bastian, but he will not be baptized this week because he still needs a lot of help and he now doesn't have very much support. We are working with Yamil still and he is a great old man. But he doesn't want to get married. Other than them, we didn't really have much progress with the other investigators and I hope to have more success this week.

This last week we decided to change things up a little bit. So we went out and bought some eggs and we made some Omelets. Now every morning we are making omelets and pan cakes, which are really cheap, but so good. I feel a little spoiled every morning when I get to eat, but the pancake mix cost less than a dollar and the eggs are super cheap too, so I am super happy. It took me about a year to change from cereal (HaHa).

I feel like I have been learning a ton in my mission and there is a lot more to learn. I have been studying chapter 6 in Preach My Gospel and it has really been helping me change. This chapter is really meant to help us follow Jesus Christ and it has been a great blessing in my life and I feel like I am changing as a person. It’s amazing and I hope that you guys could study chapter 6 in Preach My Gospel, because as members and missionary's we need to strive to be like Jesus and this is our guide for us.

Yesterday we had an activity planed, and it went really good. We had all the members search for less active members that live in our sector and it was amazing the success we had. The bad thing about this activity was on Saturday Elder Hoopes called me and said that the list was not ready for the ward and we had to do it ourselves. So we printed out a list of all the members in the sector of Chiguayante. We had to cut each member out and glue it on another paper with a glue stick (HaHa). We spent a lot of time to get this list done. We didn't finish and we had a ton more to do. So on Sunday we woke up at 5 in the morning and finished up the lists and got a presentation ready for the ward. We did end finishing it and the activity went really well. But it was crazy.

Also, I finally made my cookies from my birthday (HaHa). They we amazing and tasted so good.

Thank you for the letters and I love to hear what’s going on. I hope that you guys are doing great and have a good week. Please be safe and keep on being a cool family. Can’t wait to hear from you next week.

Love you guys!!!

Elder McAlister

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Here is the spiritual thought I shared with Sean this week. In his April Conference talk "Love—the Essence of the Gospel, "Thomas S. Monson said:

"Love is the very essence of the gospel, and Jesus Christ is our Exemplar. His life was a legacy of love. The sick He healed; the downtrodden He lifted; the sinner He saved. At the end the angry mob took His life. And yet there rings from Golgotha’s hill the words: 'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do'—a crowning expression in mortality of compassion and love."

Sometimes I just take for granted the example of Jesus Christ’s life. If we ever need to know how we should be living our lives and how we should be taking care of our fellow brothers and sisters, he gives us example after example to follow. As funny as it sounds, but the bumper sticker "WWJD" has it right, "What

Would Jesus Do?" We follow that advice, and we would all be doing the right.

Everyone have a great week, an fun labor day, and enjoy these pictures Sean sent today...