Sean McAlister Called to Serve: Safe from the earthquakes and tsunami warnings

An exciting week for Elder McAlister with tsunami warnings, rats and General Conference. Sounds like he made it through with no problems, which is great to hear as a parent. Who knew his pictures of the tsunami signs last week would be followed so quickly by actual earthquakes and tsunami warnings in Chile.

So sorry to hear of the loss of lives and damage from the earthquakes, and at the same time so thanks for Elder McAlister's safety.

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Hey everyone,

Hey everyone I hoped you guys liked General Conference as much as me. It was great to hear from the prophet, the apostles and everyone one else. Oh and I am jealous that you guys got to go to the Conference Center!

This last week was a little crazy I’m not going to lie. First off, the earthquake that happened was pretty crazy. Our leaders ended up calling us and told us that we need to go to the house of a member and wait for more information. They told us that we could watch the news on the tsunami. There were tsunami warnings all along the coast of Chile. During that time was a little scary because we were just waiting for a tsunami to hit us. Our leaders called us and we got to go back to our houses around 11:30 at night and sleep. As you heard nothing happened to us here, which is great. They have been warning us that we should be having another earthquake here in Concepcion soon which should be big! It was perfect timing for the tsunami pictures that I sent you guys though, I was thinking about that when watching the news (HaHa).

We found another rat in our house and we tried to kill it fast, which we did. But at the same time we shut all the power off in our house for about 1 hour, and maybe more, but we went to sleep before it came back on. We killed the rat in a mouse trap, but we had to throw super-hot water to get it out from behind our counter. The thing was we have electric wires behind our counters that we know about now (HaHa). We killed and saved some electricity! So it was a win, win situation!!

I can tell you guys that nothing is better than being a missionary and listening to General Conference, I absolutely love it. I really liked all the sessions, and I loved the Olympic talk. I really made so much sense and I loved the stories in it. I love how we are in our 4 minute run right now and everything we do can help our time be faster or slower. I liked how 1/10 of a second can change our 4 minute run and we can fall short. We have every day where we can strengthen our run and get world records and gold medals (Celestial kingdom), now is the time! I really liked the Air Force One story in Priesthood session from Dieter F. Uchtdorf. When President Uchtdorf reaches for the throttle and then he hears President Monson say "Dieter don't even think about it." I really liked General Conference this year and I can’t wait for the Liahona to come out. I did miss the family and chilling in the house playing bingo (eating free candy from parents in other words) and having the good breakfast on Sunday morning. Priesthood was awesome, but still a little different without dad, and right after Priesthood was done I was craving Chinese food.

We had President come to our house yesterday after conference, and he hit his head hard on our fence that is super low. That was pretty scary, I thought it was my fault that I didn't warn him to duck down. He is doing okay now I think (HaHa)!

I love you guys and have a great week. I can’t wait to hear from you guys next week and we will try to have more of a calm week this week (HaHa).Love you guys and ustedes son bacanes.

Love you guys!

Elder McAlister

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The following are some highlights for her, from General Conference, which Sean’s mom shared with him:

“Conference was wonderful to listen to. I love the spirit that comes from our dear prophet and his apostles. They are great examples of love and service. I thought it was cool how conference this year fell on April 6, the accurate day of birth of Jesus Christ and the day that the church was organized. Pretty cool! I liked Elder Bednar's story of the man with the new truck, with the firewood load that gave him tire traction in the snow storm. He compared it to what our earthly load consists of and it giving us spiritual traction to press forward in Jesus Christ and return to Heavenly Father. And then taking the yoke of our Savior up us, "For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." The Atonement enables us to do good beyond our natural capacity and gives us great strength through faithful, obedient, conscientious effort. I also loved Gary E Stevenson-Bishopric and how he talked about our lives compared to the Olympics. Olympic athletes train and work hard for their 4 minutes Olympic run trying to win a medal by doing their best. We trained and worked hard in the preexistence to come to earth life so we could do our 4 minute brief time here on earth and gain our reward in heaven. "This life is the time to prepare to meet God". L. Tom Perry shared that we "should always be prepared to receive the gentle tug of the spirit" and then be prepared to listen to it. I loved Jeffrey R. Holland and his example of missionaries standing as the Savior did amidst persecution. It reminded me of you being spit upon and standing as a witness of Jesus Christ, Jesus suffering already for what you were going through. I think our family will work on Russell M. Ballard's talk about being consistent, persistent and the following up. Using the principle of follow up and making it an action by actually doing it in praying for to be led to one person that we can share the gospel with. In turn we will be given an outpouring of atoning grace if we invite others to come unto Christ. We just need to have love, trust and faith.”

Hope you all had a chance to see or hear conference. Until next week enjoy a few more pictures from Chile!