Sean McAlister Called to Serve: Have to find a new house this week

Sounds like Elder Coronado and Elder McAlister are starting to turn things around in Hualpen, and are seeing success for their efforts. New areas can be hard to get going, and sometimes it takes time and trying a lot of different things to get the work moving.

I hope they can keep things moving and help the investigators make progress in their learning of the Gospel.

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Hey Everyone,

Glad that my pictures finally made it home, I was getting a worried about it! Sounds like the Olympics are a little harder for the USA this year and how’s Chile doing in the Olympics? Sounds like everyone is doing well, is it still cold in Utah, because it’s starting to get cold here in the night.

This week was much better than any of the weeks before, and I can tell you guys why. We have been working and working and we just finally got our first investigator in church this week. This sector is really hard to work with because everyone is super busy or not motivated. It has taken this barrio about 8 months to get an investigator to go to church. Now we are pushing for a baptism, but we haven't been able to go inside the house because we need the parents to be in the house. She is about 10 years old and the parents are less actives, so were going to try to reactivate the parents and baptize the daughter. Also I know numbers don't really matter that much, but we have had a hard time with finding people and lessons with members. This week we did really well with that and we’re looking to improve more and more this week!

We did a division this week and I got to work with the ward mission leader that just got back from his mission 2 months ago. Now we are really good friends and we are always joking. But when he was working with me (I thought I was going to kill him) He was a zone leader and he was bien duro con mío! I learned a lot from him and now my contacting and confidence is much better because of him. When I was working with him a drunk guy came up to me and said where are you from Russia, United States or Canada. So I told him I was from the United States and he starts yelling and telling me that he is Russian and how he killed Bush!!! I was a little confused because I couldn't understand him that well because he’s drunk. So he starts yelling “I killed your president George Bush” and I was like what are you talking about, our president now is Obama! Then he got super mad, so we walk really fast away from him and he followed us and yelled some words that are bad in Spanish and some bad words in English and I learned that he really hates gringos and a little crazy!

This week we have to find a new house because we are getting more missionary's in our barrio, which is awesome, but this week we have to find a house which is the part I don't really like! Our house is in the perfect area, we have our mom of the sector that washes our clothes who is next door to us and the church is really close to us also. So we will be searching for a house this week and it’s going to be really hard to find one in our sector!!! I really like the house that we are in now it’s really a relaxed area and we have members that are really close. We live in a shed/house of an old couple who are really nice and love to talk, which is bad at times because they can talk forever. Also I think I´m the bad luck charm for the mission house, because every sector I move into we always end up changing the house (HaHa)!

We are starting to do much better in Hualpen and we are working much more with members and things are starting to look up. We are pushing for 2 baptism this next month of March and the names for them are Natalia and Sebastian. So please pray for them that they can progress and go to church and except a date for baptism, because they are doing really good right now and we want to have some success here in Hualpen. I am grateful for all that you guys have done for me and the examples you guys are for me. I have really learned a lot and now looking back before my mission I feel really dumb at times. I wish I could have done more things to help you guys and spent more time with you guys, I really am learning so many things in such little time. Thanks for your guy’s emails and I hope to hear from you guys next week!

Love you guys!!!

Elder McAlister

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Spiritual thought shared with Sean this week came from M. Russell Ballard on missionary work for all members. He said:

"When members view the work of salvation as their responsibility alone, it can be intimidating. When they view it as an invitation to follow the Lord in bringing souls unto Him to be taught by the full-time elders and sisters, it is inspiring, invigorating, and uplifting.”

I told Sean that’s what they need to help the members understand that he and his companion can teach and the member only need to share their friendship and testimonies. It still can be hard and intimidating for members to do that work, but it helps when they know they can have help sharing the Gospel.

Enjoy this weeks picture...