Well it's been a crazy, interesting week.  Sorry I didn't get to send pictures last week, we had very little time to write last week. Well I'm now done with training and a real missionary!  Elder Nuttall left on Wednesday which was really wierd.  I didn't realize how used I had gotten to having him in the house haha.  Elder York is awesome, he is from Tooele and actually was Elder Holt, my MTC companion's trainer before he came down here.  We've had a fun time laughing at that.  We've had a pretty good week, Elder York did something awesome that I'd never thought of before.  We had two really good contacts the past couple days and had good conversations with them.  Elder York challenged them to baptism and put them with baptismal date right there! And they accepted!  It'll be interesting to follow up on that.  We weren't about to talk to Richard this week, he's been really busy with studies, but Ariel and Leslie went to church without us having to call them in the morning!

So wierdest/coolest thing about this week.  On Saturday we were about to help with a stake young men's activity when the bishop called us and said "Elders! there's a gringo from Utah at my house who doesn't speak spanish! Come help!" so we went to his house and sure enough, we met Dan Burton from Eagle Mountain, Utah. He's going to attempt to be the first man to bike to the south pole and is stuck here because his flight got delayed because of weather in antarctica. He found the bishop's house on the lds.org app on his iPhone. During this time of year there's a lot of tourists down here so all of the hotels are full.  The bishop was awesome and offered to let him stay at his house or a fe
w days.  We had a little family home evening with them last night which was really fun.

  We're going to do something for Thanksgiving, I wasn't actually sure what day it was, but we're actually going to visit Ariel and Leslie on Thursday which will be fun because they're always really curious about American stuff.  It's a lot warmer now than when I got here, it just depends on the day how warm.  The school year is actually almost over here, they have summer vacation in a few weeks.

I'm really looking forward to this week, it'll be fun. Hope you have a great week!

Love, Elder Dower

Elder Nuttal and me with the Penguins

Elder York and me with Dan Burton from Utah

First of all, sorry this is a little later than normal and I don't have a ton of time to write today because this P day has been WAY busy.  I had to do some stuff with my visa, then send one of my companion's suitcases to Puerto Montt, then buy food, and then...we went to the penguins!!!

So on Wednesday we have transfers and my companion is leaving and I get a new companion. My new companion will be Elder York, I have no clue who he is but it'll be interesting to have a new companion. I'll miss Elder Nuttall, we've had a lot of fun together.  It'll gonna be interesting, half of our zone is leaving so there will be a lot of new people this week.

We've had a pretty good week, I don't remember if I mentioned it before but we have a good new investigator who we've been teaching.  He's 20 years old and goes to the university here so we can only meet with him on saturdays, but he came to church yesterday!  It was funny, he couldn't find the chapel so he called us halfway through sacrament meeting and we had to run all the way to the end of our sector to find him in his house and bring him to the chapel and we only saw the last 20 minutes of the meeting.

To answer your question, there are 7 wards in our zone, I think, plus 2 branches. There's at least one companionship in each, some have two like ours, there's about 24 missionaries here. The zone is all of Punta Arenas plus two small towns, Porvenir and Puerto Natales. Our sector is right in the middle and we have centro, or the city part of Punta Arenas.

So in response to your question, so far I have two favorite foods here, empanadas and lentejas (I think that's how you spell it).  Chile is very different from America, there are dogs all over the streets, but they're so used to people that they usually don't bother you...usually ;)  All of the houses look a lot worse on the outside than the inside and almost everyone has a big flatscreen TV.  They're also very honest, our bishop's wife tells me that I'm gaining weight but I don't believe it... Hopefully no haha.

Well that's about it for this week, talk to ya next week!

Love, Elder Dower

Well as far as teaching goes this week hasn't been much better than the last few...but for whatever reason I feel way better about it.  We've been doing a lot of finding which I'm starting to like a lot better haha.  It's kind of fun to knock on a door and see who opens up, some people look at us and close the door right away, some listen for a little while, it's fun to see what happens.  We've found some nice people who said we could come back another time and share with them so I'm excited for that.  My companion and I have been talking a lot about our success as missionaries.  A thought came to my mind a quote from the movie Forever Strong, the coach says, "it doesn't matter who scores, it only matters that we score."  We're all on the same team and have different roles to play.  At the moment we are on the finding team to find the people who are prepared to hear the gospel.  Some people are on the teaching team and others on the baptizing team, but everyone has a part to play.

The weather this week was really weird. For a couple days we got groups of clouds going over so it would rain/snow for like 30 minutes and then be sun for 30 minutes and then switch again, it was very confusing to know whether to wear a coat or not haha.

Dad, what I learned from you during that time has made me who I am today.  I know that God is always there, even if sometimes he lets us struggle and perservere through trials, I know that they make us stronger and we learn more during the difficult times than any other time, so thank you for that.

Well this next week will be the last one of my training and we have transfers on the 20th so we'll see what happens, if we change or stay the same here.  I'm a little nervous because I know my next companion will be a native but I guess that's an experience that I'll need.  Guess we'll see!

Hope you have a great week!

Love, Elder Dower


Here are some pictures from my sector

Well here we are once again haha, well I guess you could say it's been another week of patience, we haven't been teaching much, just lots of walking and knocking on doors, but for some reason, I'm feeling good about this next week. We need to find more investigators and that is going to be our focus this week.  As I'm sitting here I'm starting to realize looking back that we haven't really put our whole energy into finding people, so that is what we are going to do this week.  It's been tough with Elder Nuttall being our district leader, we see all the numbers from the other two sectors in our district and how they have so much more that us, it's a little discouraging.  But, it's going to get better this week, I really feel it.

Halloween here was really fun, we had a stake activity which was a lot of fun.  We also helped out with an activity for another ward, they sent all of their youth out with the missionaries, so we had another companion for Saturday.  Poor kid got really tired walking the streets all day haha.

Don't worry, I do have a blanket haha, we have a ton in the house, it's just been a lot warmer lately so I'm good with just my sleeping bag.  We do our laundery for now in our landlord's house in front of us, hopefully we're going to get our own soon.  Normally, I don't cook a whole lot because I don't have time, in the morning I eat granola, and at night a sandwhich or something. And yes, I do have a closet for my clothes haha.

Well sorry the email's a little shorter this week, but hopefully more will happen this next week.  Hope you all have a great week!

Love, Elder Dower