Ok so I decided I am going to try something different for emails now, so that I can get to everyone easier I'm just going to send one big email to everyone and then reply to each of you individually.

It's been a really crazy week with Christmas down here in the bottom of the world.  We got to spend Christmas Eve with our ward mission leader and his family who are AWESOME.  We decided to bring some American Christmas with us so we decided to bring some sparkling cider, which did NOT taste the same as it does in the States, my companion was worried that it was real alcohol that night but don't worry, we figured out that it wasn't real alcohol.  Just imagine if two missionaries brought wine to a members house haha.

Christmas was great, we had district meeting in the morning, my companion was Santa and brought out all of the packages that just barely came in for everyone in the zone, which was pretty funny.  We got to talk to our families, which was really wierd but really made my Christmas.  I'm really grateful that we have the technology to be able to skype clear from down here in the bottom of the world.  It's been a different Christmas, being so far from home.  But I've really realized the true meaning of Christmas here more that at any other time in my life.  It's been great to be able to share that with everyone else here.  I've seen how much our Heavenly Father really loves his children and wants the best for them.

So as far as our investigators go, it's been a pretty slow week, everyone was gone for the holidays, but luckily we got to talk to him yesterday and he's been reading the Book of Mormon.  He told us about how he read the story about Jacob and Joseph being called as teachers because the people were wicked.  It surprised me how that's what stuck out to him but hey, as long as he's reading, I'm happy.  He's been eating up everything we teach him which makes me really excited.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I love you all! Have a happy new year!

Love, Elder Dower


We had a great time talking to Cameron on Christmas.  He is so happy and enjoying the work.

It has been a really good week this week.  It's been fun getting ready for Christmas, it's funny how concerned all of the members of our ward are for the missionaries.  Bishop assigned two families to have us over for the night of the 24th so we are going to be spending Christmas Eve with our ward mission leader and his family so I'm really excited.  We'll go to some other members on the 25th to call at about 5 or 6 here, so expect 2:00 your time.  I'll get on email and send one to Dad to make sure we're good.  I think I will need your email and username to call though so if you could send that that would be great.  We get about 45 minutes to call.

We have three main investigators right now, José, Roberto and Christian.  The greatest thing about them is that they all contacted us, not the other way around.  Yesterday we put José with baptismal date for the 18th of January, so I'm really hoping I stay here this next transfer because I really think it'll go through. Roberto and Christian are really good. Right now I think the main challenge with them will be getting them to attend sacrament meeting so we'll see how that goes next week.

I'm really excited to be able to open my presents finally, they've been sitting under the tree for like a month now and are driving me nuts!

So in Chile Christmas is a little different but not too much.  For them, instead of it being Christmas Eve and Christmas, it's one night, so the have parties with the family and everything the night of the 24th and "Viejito Pascuero" or Santa comes at midnight, then after that the kids open their presents.  They don't have to wait until 7:00 in the morning til their parents let them open their presents haha.

See you Wednesday!

Love, Elder Dower

Wow, I really can't believe it's Monday again already!  Even more I just realized that five months ago I left on my mission!  I really can't believe it's already been that long, next month I will be done with a fourth of my mission! It's crazy!

Well the bad news for this week is that Hector went back home up north, but he's going to be baptized there this weekend, which is really what matters.  But we still got an investigator in church.  We contacted Jose a really long time ago, he live on the Hermana's side of the ward but he actually started talking to us while we were on the way to visit the bishop.  I think they talked to him at some point this last week and invited him to church, but he called us and said he was at the church at like 9:00 sunday morning, so we hurried to get there haha.  We're going to continue teaching him because he lives alone and have an appointment with him Tuesday.  We also got contacted by two other people who seem really good.  Roberto really wants to know about the church, but is really busy finishing studies so he asked us for a Book of Mormon to read until we can come by again, and Christian knows our ward mission leader and wants to know about the church.  I'm really excited to keep going with them.

I meant to mention the move last week but forgot.  We're helping Bishop Abanto build the house so we should be finished in a few weeks I think.

I'll make sure to have everything figured out by next week to let you know what's up for Christmas.

Have a great week!

Love, Elder Dower

It's been a really good week.  We had our Christmas Zone Conference which was really good.  President Rappleye said "we are not baptizing because we do not have the Spirit..." Wow! smack to the face!  He's seriously one of the smartest people I've met, and a great leader.  So yea, we're focusing on keeping the Spirit.  Hermana Rappleye also spoke and talked to us about talking to everyone.  My favorite quote from that was "be NORMAL!"  because there are a lot of missionaries who are not normal when they talk to people and who wants to talk to some random white guy trying to speak spanish? Not many haha, but when we become their friends, then the want to listen more. It was a good conference, we sang Christmas carols (in English, the five latinos in our zone had no idea what was going on haha) and... I got my package!  I'll send a picture of my tree here in a sec.

We're finding more good people this week and I'm looking forward to the next week.  The biggest highlight is that we found a new person to teach.  He's from another city up north in the Concepcion mission and was being taught be the missionaries there, but moved down here in our sector.  Basically, he already knows everything and really wants to be baptized!  Hopefully he will be baptized the 21st, if he decides to stay down here longer.  I'm really excited to see what happens there.  Saturday night we got a call from these zone leaders from the concepcion mission about it.  They started yelling at my companion on the phone that we can't baptize him or whatever so after they called, Elder York just called President Rappleye, then President Rappleye called them and gave them a talk they won't forget haha, because number one, they aren't allowed to call outside of their mission and two, they were just mean, it was funny haha.

So I've started doing something, I've noticed that pretty much every day, something really funny/weird happens, so I'm keeping track of them, for example, Thursday, we talked to one lady outside of her house, in the end she tried to give Elder York a besito (which is like a little kiss on the cheek that everyone does down her but not the missionaries) but he had to evade it haha, also we knocked a door and talked to this old lady who was just chowing down on an apple haha. Friday I had an intercambio with Elder Jimenez, from Santiago.  We talked to an old man on the street and in the end he told Elder Jimenez that he speaks really good spanish...I laughed a ton walking away. Funny things happen as a white guy trying to talk to people about religion in Chile haha.

I can't believe Christmas is only in two weeks! I'm really excited for it and to see and talk to you all!

Have a great week, I love you!

Elder Dower

THESE ARE SOME SIMPLE QUESTIONS THAT WE ASKED CAM, WITH HIS SIMPLE ANSWERS.

What do you do each day?  lots of walking and lots of contacts,
On Pday? we do laundery, write, and buy food each pday and then whatever we want with the time leftove (within the rules of course)
Do you really have everything you need?  YES!!!
Is there something you would like to buy yourself for Christmas?  Maybe
What is it? I might get a portable DVD player that I can use to teach people, and I'm probably going to buy some hair clippers to use to cut my hair, I taught myself to do it when I used Elder Nuttall's
Do you still fit in your clothes, or are you gaining weight and need new clothes?  Yes I still fit!!! I've gained a little I think, but not that much haha .

I seriously can't believe another week has already gone by!  It's really been an uneventful week, when I look back on it I really can't think of anything really exciting.  We weren't able to get in with many of our main investigators because one is studying a ton lately because the school year here ends in a couple weeks and the other has been in the hospital... But the big highlight of the week was our "Thanksgiving"  which was really funny.  The only turkey we could find down here was sliced sandwich meat so we got a bunch of that and brought that to Ariel and Leslie's and we had turkey sandwhichs for Thanksgiving!  But the best part was that Leslie made and apple pie!  So I got to have turkey and apple pie for Thanksgiving, it was really cool.  We went around the table as we ate and had everyone tell about what they are grateful for.  They all said they were grateful for their family and to have the church in their lives the past year.  I really think they will be baptized.  I would love to be the one to do it, but if it doesn't work out, someone after me will do it.

I'm really looking forward to this week.  President Rappleye is coming down and we'll have zone conference which will be good.  I'm thinking I should get my package when they come down.

So I think we'll be able to do Skype in a member's house for Christmas.

Hope you have a great week!

Love, Elder Dower

Our Thanksgiving Meal

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