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

Wow I can't believe it's Monday again already!  To be honest, it was another challenging week, Elder Nuttall and I are trying to figure out what to do to better our sector but, it's been hard.  I've been thinking about it and I've realized that I've been looking for the magic idea that would fix everything, but I don't think there is one.  We just need to keep working and the success will slowly but surely come.  There have been times when I look back on the week and don't think that I've made much of a difference, but I realized that there have been a few little things that happened.  We were only able to find our baptismal goal once again (my compainion convienently just told me last week that we're not supposed to mention people by name for some reason so just forget that I did that haha) but we were able to visit our other eternal investigators who are usually harder to find and I feel like they are starting to progress more.  We're also starting to focus on helping a less active member, who has a son on a mission, to stop smoking and get active and get sealed with her son in the temple when he gets back.  And another less active family who hasn't come to church since they moved down here from Viña del Mar, we have a Noche de Hogar (family home evening) with them tonight.

We also had stake conference this week and our stake presidency also got reorganized haha.  Two Seventies and our Mission President came down and we had our Zone Conference with President Rappleye.  He shared a lot of really great stuff.  He talked about whenever we are feeling down or have a bad day, read D&C 122, which really helped me.  It talks about how everything that goes wrong in life is for our benefit.  I thought about Joseph Smith and how he probably felt a lot like I do sometimes when no one would listen to him, he probably felt like he was wasting him time, but like it says, no one besides Jesus Christ did more for mankind than him. During stake conference every talk was about member missionary work.  They told every family to have a family home evening and talk about who they are going to invite to listen to the missionaries and then do it.  What they are wanting now is for the members to invite, and the missionaries to teach.  Personally, I love that idea because we are having a really hard time finding right now.  We're really excited to work with that.

They actually do have Halloween down here, we're having a stake activity on the 31st for it, it'll be interesting to see how it is here.  I'm really good on everything down here, I've stayed dry when it rains fine, luckily it's starting to warm up more, today is really nice.

Have a great week!

Love, Elder Dower

Well this has definitely been a challenging week.  We had some great plans set for the week and basically they all fell through.  It was really frustrating to not be able to teach very much this week, but it ended pretty well. We weren't able to find our investigator with a baptismal date until Friday and he wasn't able to go to church this week, which means he has to attend three out of the next four Sundays to be baptized on his date, hopefully things will improve this week.  On Friday, we had an intercambio with our Zone Leaders and Elder Covington came to our sector with me.  I learned a lot from him, he is a really good teacher and reaching the end of his mission.  It's weird, it seems like every time we have an intercambio, we can actually do things because we were in a house teaching almost all of Friday.  We also had a really great experience this week.  On Tuesday, we contacted a girl while knocking doors and she said we could come back on Thursday when her dad would be home.  We went by on Thursday and he was just leaving and told us to come back Saturday.  When we went on Saturday night, her mom answered and invited us in.  We talked for a while and she told us that her daughter was in the hospital. At first she didn't really want to listen to our message, but by the end, she said that she felt a lot calmer after we taught the restoration.  I'm really looking forward to teaching them this week.

Even though it's been a tougher week, I've learned a lot and come a long ways.  I've learned a lot. I have a lot of work to do and every day I find a new weakness, but that is the beauty of the gospel, that we can continually improve on our weaknesses. It's amazing to think that I boarded a plane for Mexico three short months ago and I already have made so much progress. I really know that I am in the service of the Lord and He is helping me.  I will try to take some pictures this week to send, I keep forgetting.

So it's supposedly summer today, but all of a sudden it doesn't seem like it because it snowed yesterday!  The weather has been really weird the past couple days, we've had rain, sun, and snow all in one day within hours of each other.

Have a great week!

Elder Dower

This week has been really great!  We taught more lessons this week I think than we have in any other week I've been here and Victor has a baptismal date for the 23rd of November, which is really exciting!  We decided to put it out there a little further so we wouldn't scare him and so that he'll have more time to attend three sacrament meetings in a row.  It's really great to see a change in him, each time we teach him, he's more interested and participates more in the lesson.  Other than that, nothing else huge has happened.  I've noticed a huge improvement in my teaching and speaking spanish this week, it's really nice that I can actually joke around with people in spanish haha. Last night we visited with Hermano Luco and his wife.  He is working here, building a school for people who never finish high school and his wife, who lives in Santiago came down to visit him and leaves today to go back home.

So some really good news is that the temperature is warming up a lot, but the bad news is that the wind is starting.  Yesterday when we were walking around the wind was so strong at times we couldn't really move.  Also with the change in temperature a lot of people are getting sick, I've had a little cold the past couple days but today it's a lot better.  On Saturday I got to give a priesthood blessing to an 8 year old member, which was really great.

No, I haven't gotten the package yet, apparantly it takes a lot more time to get down here in Punta Arenas, but I would bet it's gotten to Osorno by now

Have a great week, Love ya!

Elder Dower