Sean McAlister Called to Serve: What time does church start?

Another week in the books for Elder McAlister and it sounds like work with the less actives is heating up, but still struggling to find new people to teach. They had a fun p-day with some soccer and basketball.
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Hey guys,

Hey everyone I am glad to hear that everyone is alive and doing well. This last week went by really fast and today I was excited to hear from you guys. I am happy to hear everyone has kept busy and I hope that you guys are loving the weather there. I am getting burnt everyday a little bit more. The sun is very strong here and it hurts my nose more than anything!

This week was really good, and we are doing better every day. We have been working a lot with the less actives and they are doing pretty good. We are actually working with about 34 menos activos at this moment and so we are looking for some good progress in our ward. I hope it all goes well this week with them. We are also really focused on the members also and we are treating them all like investigators. Our ward is one of the wards struggling a lot in our mission. We are starting Sacrament meeting about 10-20 minutes late. So there is a lot of work to do in our ward, but that is okay with me. Cambios are in two weeks and this last cambio was really fast! Time really does fly by in the mission and the days seem to get faster! That's why we have to work as hard as can for 2 years and there is no time to loose.

Investigators…we don’t have any! It’s been really hard to find and we are trying everything that we can! But nothing seems to work out for us! So I was really hoping that you guys could pray for us to keep on pushing though this tough spot and that we can starting finding more investigators to teach. That has been a weakness in our sector, and we have been searching and searching, but nothing is coming through. I know that God has someone prepared to hear, we just need to find him or her!

Well today we played some soccer and we had a bbq! It was really fun we got to choose our teams, and we played first to score wins and then the next team comes on. It was really good and of course my whole team was Americans, but we did end up winning some games and losing a lot more. We did play some basketball and it turned out to be really fun, feels like I haven't played forever. My first few shots were air balls but then i changed my game around. I really miss playing basketball so it was a really good activity!

Well me and Elder Ponce are doing really good! It’s a little funny because everything that he talks about is related to Peru! Like the prices of things, our slang words that they use over there, also about the food. So I have been learning a lot about Peru and I am becoming an expert on the things of Peru. He is progressing little by little and understanding a lot of things.

This last Tuesday I had a mini cambio with the zone leaders and it was okay. I worked with Elder Barrios and we had a lot of fun together. He is from Guatemala and we are now really good friends. He told me that he really didn’t like my sector because it is so big and you have to walk so much to get from one end to the other. So he wants us to find members that have bikes and are willing to lend them to us. It was a pretty crazy day with Elder Barrios and I have always seen the mini cambios are really good or really bad! But we had fun that day!

I thought that you guys would enjoy the picture of Elder Hollandsworth and I eating a watermelon like the Chileans do. They cut it in half and eat it with a spoon and it is amazing. The watermelon here is very good and has a lot of juice.

Thank you guys for the letters and all that you guys have done for me! I miss you guys and I really want you guys to know that I love you guys. I can’t wait to hear from you guys next week and to hear what’s going on with you guys! Love you guys tons!!!

Elder McAlister

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Spiritual thought time! This week I though we could look at Hope. In his October Conference talk,"The Hope of God's Light", President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said concerning hope:

"The very moment you begin to seek your Heavenly Father, in that moment, the hope of His light will begin to awaken, enliven, and ennoble your soul. The darkness may not dissipate all at once, but as surely as night always gives way to dawn, the light will come."

Elder James E. Faust in his October Conference talk,"Hope, an Anchor of the Soul", said

"Everybody in this life has their challenges and difficulties. That is part of our mortal test. The reason for some of these trials cannot be readily understood except on the basis of faith and hope because there is often a larger purpose which we do not always understand. Peace comes through hope."

And finally the Prophet Alma taught us the following:

"And see that ye have faith, hope, and charity, and then ye will always abound in good works."

If we have hope in our lives, we can overcome our trials, whatever they may be, and we will be doing good works. I think this is a great lesson for us all to always keep Hope in what ever we are doing.

Until next week be safe and enjoy these pictures from Chile....