Sean McAlister Called to Serve: The burning of the white shirt...

The Chiguayante district is doing great, and working hard. Elder Bravo and McAlister have found a new family to teach. P-day sounds like a lot of fun playing soccer. Hard to believe he has been gone 15 months the end of this week.

Each week his English and sentence structure is getting a little worse and requires more fixing, but thats a good sign of his Spanish language skills improving.

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McAlister Family,

Hey I am glad to hear from you guys and I hope that mom had a really good birthday. I am sorry last week we had a meeting with our President and I had no time to write. I want mom to know that I love her and that she is the best mom in the world. I hope you had a good birthday! Dad where is your new office now? And what happened this week with sports, everyone lost! Sad week in sports! Brooke so now when does Todd know if he has a job or does he keep on taking tests? Have you guys gone to a Thunder game yet? Jessica I hope all is going well for you and Derek, and that church that you went to sounds like a normal church in Chile! Sabrina you are a funny kid and I miss you! Looks like you had fun playing volleyball! I think that it’s funny that you guys ran into Makenzie at the Brick Oven.

Well this last week was very hard, but I worked as hard as I could. My district has been doing really good and we brought people all the people with a date for baptism to church. So we have been working really well as a district. As in Elder Bravo things are still up in the air. So it’s kind of hard! But I am learning from this experience and I am finding a lot of weaknesses that I have as a person. This next Monday we have cambios and we will find out whats going to happen here in Chiguayante.

This week we have been really working with the Gasparini family and with a new family that we found Josefina and Karen. They are doing really good and we will find out if they are going to progress in this gospel. Just to let you guys know Mirta moved and has left our sector so we are not teaching her anymore. What we really need to do is find and that is something that we are not having that much success with. Please pray for us that we can start to find in our sector and that we can find people that are ready to hear the message of the restoration.

I ended up burning my shirt this week, after so much time of waiting and it was awesome. I felt like I was going to burn my hand off because the shirt lights up really fast and it was crazy. We did a video and we took pictures of it. But the pictures are on the camera of Elder Hoopes and he is not with us today so I guess I will send them next week to you guys. My shirt that I was wearing at the time smells so bad now and also my hands did also. I am coming up on 16 months I believe! Crazy!

We played some soccer today on a grass field and it was awesome. We played against the zone of Penco and we ended up in a tie. It was really fun and I scored our last goal to keep us up in the lead until the end of the game. I really like playing soccer now!

For Christmas I could really use a new pair of black pants that are long and slim look, because my pants are dying. It never hurts to have some more socks either. In this moment I am doing okay so I would love some chocolate from the states and I can’t think of anything else.

Thank you guys for everything and I hope that you have a great and safe week. I am happy to hear that everyone is okay and I love you guys a ton. I can’t wait to talk to you on Christmas soon. Crazy! I miss you and I love you guys!

Elder McAlister

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This is the spiritual thought I shared with Sean this week. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf (one of my favorite speakers), in his October 2014 talk "Living the Gospel Joyful" was talking about obedience and the commandments. He said:

"If you truly believe the great mission of our Heavenly Father is to exalt and glorify His children and that He knows best how to do it—doesn’t it make sense to embrace and follow His commandments, even the ones that appear difficult? Should we not cherish the light posts He has given that guide us through the darkness and the trials of mortality? They mark the way back to our heavenly home! By choosing Heavenly Father’s path, you lay a divine foundation for your personal progress … that will bless you throughout your life."

I like this perspective. The gospel is not an easy thing to live, but if you have made the decision to follow the Savior, we need to follow him all the way, and not just think we can pick and choose what we want to follow because it easy, or not follow because it is hard. The commandments are there for a reason, and they outline the path we need to take to return to our Heavenly Father, and most importantly with our families.

Until next week enjoy some pictures from Chile…