Another Week passed in the Blink of an Eye


Hey there everyone!

Once again the week has gone by and I can't even remember what the heck has happened.  All I know is that I feel good about it haha.

This week was really fun.  We did two exchanges this week in the zone.  On Tuesday Elder Wood came to our sector and we had a really good day.  We went out with our bishop to visit some members.  We've seen a ton of progress with our bishop.  Most of my mission we haven't had a great relationship with the bishop or branch president, but we've realized how important that is and have really improved our work with him as well as our ward mission leader.  Thursday I went with Elder Germann who is a newer missionary from Texas.  We had a really good day, I just hated feeling like the wise old man in the mission giving advice to a newer missionary haha.

Saturday was really fun. Our ward had its annual "Watermelon Festival."  Everyone had to bring a decorated watermelon and they gave out prizes for the best decorated, biggest and best tasting watermelon.  My companion and I decided to help our recent convert, Francisco with his.  We were on the hunt for the biggest watermelon available all week.  Finally we found one and decorated it as a shark! It ended up really cool.  And we won the prize for the biggest watermelon! Fransisco was super happy, even though he could hardly hold the watermelon up haha.

Our Awesome Watermelon Shark

Yesterday we had a great Sunday, even though it didn't start out so great.  In the morning we had ward council which started out great, until the members started arguing and contending with each other.  This has been something that we've struggled with in the ward, and it really impedes us from being able to work together as a ward. After the meetings we had our weekly meeting with the bishop and talked about it.  It was great.  He took everything we had to say so humbly and I'm really excited to see what happens.  We've just really lacked love here in this sector.  We feel like we're doing all the right things, but we don't really love the people we are working with and they don't feel our love, and that's why they don't come back. It made me think a lot about the motivation behind all the things that we do.  I feel like a lot of times we who have been members our whole lives are just so used to doing all the things that we do that we forget about the reasons that we do them.  If we have the love for God and our brothers and sisters here on earth, not only are we going to do all the things required of us, but we are going to do them from the heart, and we will be blessed so much more for them.

Thanks everyone for your support and love, you are all the best!

Love,
Elder Cameron Dower

Hey Everyone!

Hope you've all had a fantastic week. I sure have. Things are going great here in Valdivia.  Every weeks has ups and downs but by the end of the week I usually just think it was a good week without really remembering specifics haha.

To start off this week we had a missionary in our zone have to go to Santiago for a few days to do things for his visa, so we had a trio from monday to wednesday with Elder Kvarfordt from St George Utah. It was fun to have the trio but it's alway a bit awkward to do things with three when you are used to having two.  Monday night we had a ward family home evening so Monday we decided to make some rice krispy treats to bring and everyone was amazed by our creation.  At least five people have asked us for the recipe haha.  It was great because a couple of investigators and less active members attended as well.

Tuesday we got a young man from the ward to accompany us so we could do divisions.  It was cool because I've been able to do very few divisions on my mission but we were able to get three lessons with member that day, which is probably more than I've ever gotten in one day in my mission.

Wednesday we decided to go work in Elder Kvarfordt's sector for a little while because it had been abandoned the past two days.  We were able to find a few inactive members through El Rescate (I love it).

Thursday we had the Biggs, a senior missionary couple in the mission who are awesome, come do house inspections in the zone (yes, mom, our house passed!) and we got to accompany them to some of the rest of the zone.

Friday we had a cool miracle that we were able to teach the father of an investigator family that we were working with when I got here, but we haven't been able to teach in quite a while.  He is super prepared and we are planning on putting him and his family with baptismal date this week.

Saturday was a little slow. The members of our ward had a ward trip that we weren't able to go on so we were left alone without most of our members and investigators home.  We were able to do some secret service for some of them by going by and cutting their grass.  Notice how I said "cutting their grass" and not "mowing their lawn,"  yea lawn mowers are really rare here so we got to cut the grass with scissors.

Yesterday we had a cool surprise when our investigator Felipe showed up to church (the son of that family I talked about earlier) he finally finished with his work he's been doing so we're going to be able to go by more this week. The bishop asked me to give a talk about 30 minutes before sacrament meeting started.  I thought I was gonna get through my mission without having to do that but nope.

So that's the week this week.  Hope you all have a great week this week, I love you all!

Elder Cameron Dower


Cameron's Mom received a special surprise this week with the following email.  She is so proud of her boy.

Dear Sister Dower,
     My husband and I are senior missionaries serving in the Chile Osorno mission.  We inspect missionary apartments as part of our assignment.  Last week we inspected Elder Dower's apartment and it was SO CLEAN!!!  Elder Dower asked me to email you and let you know about it.  I'm not sure if it was because he was (rightfully) so proud or if he didn't think you would believe it.  At any rate, he got an A from us in the inspection department.  Hope all is well with you and yours.  We are enjoying your son.  He is a super young man and a great missionary.  Love, Dennis and Jean Biggs

HAPPY FEBRUARY

Hi everyone!

Once again the week has flown by and I can`t believe it's already over (yes, I realize I say that just about every week, but it's true!).  We've had a really great week which ended with a great Sunday yesterday.

We've been struggling fo a little while to get our investigators to church.  We've found some great people lately but for whatever reason, they just haven't been abe to make it to church. Finally, this week we were able to teach two of them, confirm their baptismal date for the end of the month, and commit them to church, and they came! What was the difference this week? The members! One of the investigators, Victoria, is the girlfriend of a less active member we were able to find a while ago, she is really interested and loves to learn about the church.  On Saturday we met as a ward to go visit people and we sent our ward mission leader along with his wife, the relief society president to go visit them. And they came! The other investigator with date, Alan, is th brother of a member in our ward.  We've been teaching him in the house of his brother. This week we brought a different member to the lesson with us as well and he invitied Alan to chuch. And he came! We're really excited about them.

Other fantastic experience from yesterday, with it being the first sunday of the month, we had fast and testimony meeting. To our surprise, our recent convert, Francisco, who is 12 years old got up to give his testimony.  It was one of the greatest testimonies I've ever heard! It's so great to see his progress and to have been able to be here for it.

Things are going great and I'm loving life here. Thanks everyone for your love and support. I love you all!

Elder Cameron Dower