Sean McAlister Called to Serve: New investigators!!!

Sounds like they had a very successful and busy week. Sean's companion Elder Cortez only has 4 weeks left in his mission, so that is why to went to the conference.

The new investigators sound like they are very interested, and the activity sounded fun.
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Sounds like you guys had a great week. Sounds like a lot happened this last week for you guys! All is well here and I am doing good and as happy as can be. The temple looks really cool and I would love to see it in person. Thank you guys a lot for setting up the UVU schedule and it looks good to me. Has Sabrina played a game yet? Brooke and Todd that's awesome that you guys are so close to getting the house Faltan poco! (little time) The fathers and son camp out, I have completely forgotten about that until now! Good times!!

This last week was pretty awesome and I am pretty happy with the work we did. We now have three people with fecha bautismal (baptismal date) and they are very humildes (humble) and willing to learn. Their names are Maria and Miguel which are mother and son, and we also found a guy named Manuel who received a testimony of the church, but the missionary's ended up getting sent to a different sector. So right now they are preparing to be baptized the 13 of June, which is the last Saturday before cambios, so we are really working with them. I have a really good feeling about them and I know they can progress! I hope that you guys can pray for them that they can progress!

Well on Wednesday we had a conference for all the old missionary's and their companions. So we ended up waking up at 5:20 in the morning, got ready, and we had to walk for about 40 minutes to get the bus station to travel to Concepcion. We got there and we had to take another bus to the office. The conference was really good and it was just to motivate the missionary's that are leaving. They showed us a lot of Olympic videos to give us motivation, and it worked, I was really pumped to work and I’m not dying yet. Then we got on the bus and headed back to our sector, and we got to see the new stadium that they have for the soccer tournament here in Chile. It was really cool!

Also, we had an activity with FamilySearch, it was very good and a ton of people came to the activity. I learned a lot and it was pretty cool, we even got to dress up and as old school people. It was fun. They had little activities for everyone! They ended up indexing a lot of people.

On Sunday, I ended up giving a talk and by far was one of the strongest talks I have given. Three of us ended up giving talks, it was very powerful and the chapel was full with the spirit. I ended talking about prayer and the santa cena (last super)! It was really fun.

I will start to send you guy’s voice recording things, but i will still write you guys at the same time. Really thanks for everything this last week and the letters. Can’t wait to hear from you next week. Love you a ton and I will write you guys next week. Stay safe and have a good week!

Love you guys!

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Spiritual thought time! From April Conference, L Whitney Clayton gave one of my favorite talks called "Choose to Believe". The quotes below are from that talk, I like how he says we believe, and that it is our own personal choice.

"Perceiving spiritual light is different from seeing physical light. Recognizing the Savior’s spiritual light begins with our willingness to believe. God requires that initially we at least desire to believe. “If ye will awake and arouse your faculties … and exercise a particle of faith,” the prophet Alma teaches, “yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of [the Savior’s] words.”

"Alma’s call for us to desire to believe and to “give place” in our hearts for the Savior’s words reminds us that belief and faith require our personal choice and action. We must “awake and arouse [our] faculties.” We ask before it is given unto us; we seek before we find; we knock before it is opened unto us. We are then given this promise: “For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.”

I love that last part about asking, seeking and knocking, all of them are action verbs. We need to take action in order to receive, find and have things opened. This is not a passive gospel, but something we need to be involved with and work in. But it all starts with each person choosing to believe.

That's it for this week. Enjoy a few pictures from Chillan sent today...