As if I am prepared...

I am trying to keep a positive outlook on the fact that my little boy has grown up and become a man! His birthday is on the 30th and it will be the only one in 20 years that we have not celebrated with him. I hope we get to see him next year for his birthday! That will be awesome. I wonder, kind of, if they will let him come home early(ish) so he can get a start on school. Oh well, I am still glad he is such a great man. He seems to have his proiorities right and knows how to make his life the best it can be and that makes me happy! Happy Birthday Son!!

Oh, and the pictures scare me a little. Why does Elder Myres never have a shirt on? Why is he dancing in a flaming circle? I am a little nervous for the answer to be honest!!

Well. Believe it or not, I actually did wait on the gifts. I was going to but my companion shamlessly (he does very few things with shame) guilted me out of it. So I didn't. We'll see probably tonight, however, for he also guilted me into making the cake tonight because he's going and my... new guy... will not have any idea what he's doing, and will probably not want to hear about that while he's barely even keeping himself walking straight.

On that note, Elder Myres is going away. I'm not super happy about that, but these things do happen. Not only that, but I'm training a new missionary... as if I was prepared. Sometimes I think God has a sense of humor.

You'll have to forgive me, I'm a little distracted. I'm putting together a birthday set of CDs for myself. It's complex when you can't go on the internet to convert the formats. You have to be really creative.

We are finally starting to get something done here. Now that Elder Myres is gone - a little tough luck for him. He's actually been made senior companion. He's a change younger than when I was made it, and I was (President King admitted it to me) pretty much young for it too. We'll see what happens out there, right? Elder Myres is certainly good, no problems there.

I honestly would have liked to have been with him another change. It'll be fun though. Hopefully the greenie Elder Lowry gets a white guy so we can still have fun... I mean... so we can... have more unity... whatever. You know why.

I look forward to seeing what you ended up getting me... no, I'm not really that materialistic. Thanks for only forgetting to write me once this whole year!

Love (no, but seriously),
Elder A Conrad Crist

Whatever happens, The Lord is in it

Nearly at Alex's 20th birthday! That seems strange and depressing that I cannot be there to celebrate with him. But so it is... I think I will be used to things finally and he will get to come home. What is that all about? I know he has more to learn and understand. He is definitely one of the smartest people I know and I wonder why he is not having huge success? I thought he had progressed pretty far and done a lot of hard things but now he feels like he is the problem because his personal numbers go down. Is it his way of doing things? Does he forget the little things and consider them too minute to do? I am going to have to get the answers from him somehow. I wish I could speak to him on the phone. Would that make it better or worse for him or me? Hmmmm. So here I sit and wonder.





That would be O Magnum Mysterium by Mortensen. It´s a really complex-sounding choir song.

Someone please (this is a getting things done 5 minutes or less item - you have to do it before you continue) tell Kelsey that she sent me like 2/3 of the songs, converted wrong, but cut off. Sorry... I know I could help if I was there. (Note: Everyone is going to love me when they go on their missions. I will be the missionary music dealer.)

I´ve been thinking about what President Ostergar said when he set me apart. Do you remember what was said? I honestly don´t remember anything. I find that something similar happens when I give blessings (or confirmations, which I have done). I absolutely don´t remember.

I´ve been thinking a lot about God´s plan. Not in the really big sense of the resurrection and all that, but more of a "Our Life On Earth" kind of thing. (A missionary might recognize point four of the second lesson.) I was just thinking about something as simple as prayer. What about a blessing that does something?

For those of you who ask yourselves, "Okay, Elder Crist seemed pretty okay with the gospel his whole life - why does he always talk about all these things he had to investigate to get a testimony?" Truth is, I had a very long, very complete, and very heavy struggle to get far enough past my intellectual tendencies to where I could actually have faith. The lectures of faith (what little I´ve read about them" have changed everything for me, and would have made it easier. I do see the purpose of God in doing it - but anyway -

This week was awful. We taught five lessons and did forty-five contacts. That´s nothing. That´s almost like we worked two days and smoked for the next five.

The week made me think a lot about faith. President King came out with an initiative called "Our Commitment with the Lord" about how one must really give everything to have enough faith to do anything close to save himself. We worked, and nothing went for us. We had enough lessons written down when the week started to get our goals. And we ended up with some 33 percent. I know the numbers don´t matter... kind of... but it was just so tremendously bad - it´s like you studied a whole week and walk out with a D- on a test. So what am I supposed to think? That I´m really just awesome and it´s all a distraction? It can´t just be that.

As you know, I´m a district leader, so I collect numbers. The Sisters are doing extremely well, and the other Elders are doing better each week. We have fallen every week. They say in Argentina "tengo la boca seca," or "I´m getting a dry mouth" - meaning "It´s starting to look like I´m the problem."

On the other side, we had a really fun district activity. We all went to a member of the other Elders´ sector. He´s an RM who went to Argentina and learned English, so we watched Emma´s Story (which is a very good companion movie to the Joseph Smith movie, by the way) in English. We ordered pizza and drank mate (that cup is one I got here)(in the pictures). Mate (mah-tay) is kind of an herbal tea, but you fill up the whole cup and use a special metal straw to drink it. It´s kind of a backwards tea. It´s definitely stuck to me. It´s an easy internet buy at home, so I´m confident I´ll do it forever. It´s extremely good. I don´t like tea at all, even. I´ll talk about this in an audio next week to help you get it more. The whole district is gringoes, so we had a fun, fun time.

You are probably wondering about the incense. The other two found a shop near our house and are getting really into it. It´s pretty good - it doesn´t hold a candle (or an incense stick, if you will) to mate, though. Mate is just really, really good. I got a special wood cup (in a metal cover/foundation (it´s the barrely looking one) from Nibaldo, that member we went to today (he´s an expert and sometimes goes over there to find good mate cups). The wood makes it twice as good. You´ll have to try it sometime.

That was all the interesting things that happened. We got rolled like doobs. Then we had a fun PDay. The weather has been suit-coat all week, and in perhaps two or four more I´m going to bring out the short sleeves for the rest of the year until next April. Cool. I´d just like it to stay where it is now for a while. It´s extremely nice right now, if a little cold at night.

I did get the birthday things - or at least what I think is them. Someone from the office told me that I have more stuff in the office that I´ll get next Wednesday.

Amazingly, I´ve actually kept from opening everything except the pictures, because they were half-opened already. I don´t know if that´s what you wanted me to do, but it´ll probably make it cooler when I do open them.

Riley wrote me again. He sounds like he´s done with the MTC - same thing that happened to me in the seventh week. It was time to go. Then my first week it was time to go - - back. We´ll see how it goes.

I echo the best part of the Joseph Smith Movie, and the Emma Smith Story too - "Whatever happens - the Lord is in it."

Así sea.

Love and stuff,
Elder A Conrad Crist

I wonder if many people know about letting themselves go and just doing what you are inspired to do? I LOVE that Alex is getting a first hand knowledge of that. It will serve him his whole life through and he will always be able to recenter himself on that and make his life an inspired one through his choices. Good job son of mine! You are learning exactly what you should be learning! Letters like this make it all worth it. A double-happiness thing!



I just wrote Riley using my weird acquired Chilean ghetto accent. I guess we´ll see if he gets anything. He wrote me pretty good.

Oh, and also I asked President King about writing some friends, because my companion said I could. Turns out it wasn´t actually that way, so I am going to have to inform those I would have liked to have written to that I will not be able to do such. Flip, Kip. I got excited there.

This week we just slogged it out all day and things just didn´t go anywhere. We set three times with the same lady and she wasn´t there all three times. We did also a ton of contacts and had no success. We could barely move Sunday night in terms of being depressed, if you will.

But like these things happen, we usually win a little too. We went to a super old investigator who´s not seen the missionaries in over six months. He came from simply not believing in God to being ready to baptism in a pretty eventful year. In the end, unfortunately, he didn´t want to just get married. He wanted to get all his debts figured out and stuff - something I guess I get. It seems, though, that these things will take a while.

It hurt to see him stuck, with his 5-year-old son, and his wife, who´s inactive, in that place. One can only progress so far without the Holy Ghost. So I went in to teach him having no idea what I could say that others haven´t said.

We read Alma 34 to start off, talking about not putting off repentence. As we finished it, talking about mercy and justice, I started thinking of that all-powerful D&C 82:10 - the first scripture I memorized in Spanish -

porque yo, el Señor, estoy obligado cuando hacéis lo que os digo - pero cuando no hacéis lo que os digo, ninguna promesa tenéis.

or, in other words, something like

I, the Lord, am bound when you do what I say - but when you do not what I say, you have no promise.

After I read that, I used that classic tool of mine - silence. Using something I had once heard Dad talk about, I said something like, "I´m not one to tell you how to live your life - and you won´t offend me by saying you won´t - but I think this says if you comply with the Lord He´ll give you what you need - and more."

I can´t tell you they commited to change anything - but I felt something shift in the both of them. Let me tell you, if we even hurried them up I don´t really care about an otherwise lame week. I love this guy - he´s so like me. Just in a more complicated situation. He wasn´t give the gift of faith like some are - he found it all by himself - like me. He found it himself. He just needs to trust God. Well, so do I, right?

I´m making a lot of progress on that front. I read a talk called The Fourth Missionary that talks about four kinds of people. The first is outrageously disobedient and gets sent home. The second is disobedient but is hypocritical enough to stay on the mission. The third is obedient, but allows himself to fight with what he knows is right - so even though he helps others, his personal development doesn´t go very fast, because he doesn´t let himself be run by He who knows - rather he forces himself into the rules without letting himself be improved. The Fourth doesn´t fight against God´s will. He just does it and trusts that God knows better than he what he wants, and will form him accordingly.

That said, that´s what I´ve been trying to do this last while. It seems like it would be harder. What´s interesting, though, is that it isn´t harder. I feel like I have much lower blood pressure, as it is said, when I let myself go as such. The question is singular - what does God want me to do? And there´s no more than that. And he´ll never lead you wrongly.

I used to think that a lot of what God did was actually imposed sacrifice - if you will, you actually will do less cool things and it will be counted by God for your benefit. Wrong. Absolutely na´ que ver, po! Not even right. God knows you exactly right, and has the benefit of seeing all people in all their lives at once - so he knows what you need to do to have the best possible time, and to enjoy your life the most. It isn´t misery here in exchange for happiness after this life. It´s kind of a double-happiness deal.

I was once morbidly afraid that the career that I wanted would keep me from having a family. But here´s the thing, though - God knows what I want, and since they´re both reasonable, and in the plan, I´ll get them both. Not only that, it´ll be better than I think is possible now. (1 Cor 2:9)

Thanks for that piano recording - someone should probably make an album of those. I had half a cyber café listening to it after a while.

Love,
Elder A Conrad Crist




Someone tell Kelsey I can´t use the file format she gave me "Each Life" in - mp3 please - the computers here are not terribly new nor Apple.

Please email me songs anyone. I would like to make a CD here but it won´t be worth it until I have a few. I just noticed a band called The Lower LIghts that´s also good. You are still looking for Josh Wright and Josh Groban too, right? EMail them.

And so it is...again

I LOVE my son! I love that he is trying so hard to be what God wants him to be. I love that he has worked very hard and accomplished so much. I love that he has a fantastic sense of humor and I love that he is my son. I am so proud of him and I cannot wait until I can see his handsome face again in person. I find I miss him more and more! What a great gift he is to me.



Don´t worry about resending anything; I keep everything archived; I have 25600 MB, using 461. Thinking about it, I have no idea why they would put so much. Whatever. Google stuff.

Do you think you could email me songs? I think they could fit; I send you things that are as big as songs all the time. That would be really dope. If you find any of those ones I want, I think through a few emails you could send them to me. That would be really dope.

This week we worked really, really hard. We changed up our contacting approach to not ask if they would like to talk at all, and instead just start teaching the stuff we´re here to teach immediately. People that would like to instant-reject us can´t in time to not hear anything - and what they find is that they´re actually interested, or that we´re interest-ing. It´s very not-me to be pushy, but I´m starting to find out how to do it.

I remember when I started the mission and I could only understand the gist of what people said. Other missionaries would teach about The Plan, or The Gospel, or The Restoration in what ever way going by a need they saw in a person, and I just knew how to chuck the first three sentences of the first pamphlet, essentially.

Now, ironically, I´m finding myself where I always wanted to be. Not in a pushy way like I´ve seen it done, but rather in a softer, more intelligent way. Like I wanted from the beginning.

We had some really heavy progress this week with my new favorite investigators, Esmeralda and Rodolfo. In our second lesson, in which we taught The Gospel (Lesson 3), we started with faith, then repentence, etc. When we got to baptism and the gift of the holy ghost, the mom looked up suddenly. She said, "When you said "Holy Ghost," I got this warm, joyous feeling. What is it?"

As you might imagine, that lesson went pretty good after that. She commited to be baptized without a date. In the second lesson. Winner.

I´m getting way sick of my suits now. It appears that in not too long we´ll be moving back to shirts. Today was actually hot. We played soccer and there was a fair amount of sweat involved. I´m actually discovering I enjoy arquero - goalkeeper - mostly because I can use my hands. I´m still a "defender" personality, so it works. I have no ball control, but I can at least hit the ball away with my foot usually.

I actually got fatter in Melipilla. I have lost half of it since I got here because I´ve been working out hard with Elder Myres. I´d never thought of all the different ways you can use big five-liter bottles as weights, even though it may be awkward and fall occasionally. I kind of got stalled out on the pushups when I got sick, but I´m getting there anyway.

Yesterday was lame, though. We were going around looking for people and it began to rain. It rained all day, and we went to a bunch of people who just weren´t home. I address this in the audio. Then we finally went into a mercy member visit. It was one of those days that only survivable because the next day´s P-day, if you know what I mean.

Spanish isn´t a problem at all anymore. I frequently have conversations with missionaries and later cannot remember if the conversation was English or Spanish. I´m just starting to be comforable enough that I never freak out, even in front of people in Sacrament Meeting. It´s nice. It´s terrifying when a member asks something and you answer bad or don´t understand, because gradually they start to lose trust in you. When they talk to you like another ward member, that´s when you know they trust you with references. Not like I didn´t try hard enough or wait long enough, though. Those were some dark months in Melipilla, being a minority with a companion who doesn´t like you... but that´s over.

Like I said, it´s a pension of four. Which means they burned some natty old clothes because there were enough to make it worth it. The dynamic is okay, except Elder Holton and my companion are frequently at odds. I don´t know why, really. It seems like something out of the ordinary happens and they just happend to take whatever thing as offensive or "too much" or whatever. I´m also kind of worried, or was, that the other missionaries paint monkey, which is to say, waste time too much. I went on divisions with Elder Holton, and we didn´t paint any monkey, but I am the leader; he wouldn´t just do it in front of me, I´d think. We did a normal day, except for the protests they´re having here - they actually forced us indoors at 9. I felt a little uneasy, but some members told us to go straight home. We trusted them. I felt kind of lame, but that´s better than fighting rioters or something.

And so it is.

There´s always this super-uncomfortable part at the end of lessons where everyone just says stuff like, "So it is, Elder," and "Right. Okay." We´re now there. Did you notice?

Right. Okay.

Love
Elder A Conrad Crist

Can someone please email me Josh Groban, O Magnum Mysterium, my all state and honor choir CDs? If it takes you more than 30 minutes, I´ll take you out to lunch when I get back. Maybe you have to send like 5 emails - it´s okay. Please do it.

Thanks in advance (right?).

Can someone find a sung version of hymn 293 each life that touches ours for good that´s not the lame hymn cd one?

Permananced

Alex sounds like he is adjusting to his new area quite well. And to be living with three other white guys from the Western States also sounds like a blast. Alex is liking the new Leader position he has and makes it sound pretty fun actually. I love that he is having so many contacts and success in this are as well. It is what makes the mission fun and memorable. Please write to him! You can use his email but he will have to write to you as he can. It may take a few weeks for him to actually get back to you. But, he will answer! He may even have to send you a snail mail response! That definitely will take some time.


I'm afriad I don't have any audio whatsoever. Blast.

I did enjoy your audios, of course. There's something different about it.

The Mission just approved Lectures on Faith. What's the best way to get that here? A summarized part of it changed my whole idea of God, so I would really like to have it.

This week we worked really hard. The numbers from this sector have always been less than amazing, so we picked two - teaching inactives and doing straight cold contacts. In terms of contacts we managed 72 in the week - which I think is the most I've ever done.

We had a real miracle working Friday. We went in to teach Kevin, a 20-year-or-so-old, who doesn't go to church because he's lost the "spark" of going, or rather, he is just bored of it.

Naturally, we started to explain to him Permaneced - the Chile-wide program of reactivation. Basically it's a summary of sin, the atonement, and what one must do to be forgiven.

While we taught, his cousin, with whom he lives, came in and started to listen off-handedly. We invited her to sit down, and she listened with interest. We mentioned the Spirit as part of the reason we must stay in the Church, and she asked what it was, or rather, what was the gift of the Holy Ghost. We began a sort of Restoration summary to help her understand what about it was new that we presented to the world. As we about reached the point of the Book of Mormon, the cousin's husband came home from work. He asked if we were religious teachers. We said we were, of course. He told us to continue. After we explained the Book of Mormon, he asked, "So why are there so many churches? I thought Jesus only had one."

It reminded me of what the Book of Mormon has recorded about Aaron when he realized the King would believe what he would say next - we rejoiced inwardly, and made a loop around the Terrenal Ministry of the Savior and back, and commited them to read and pray. The Spirit was in the lesson, testifying, which was the most important part. We return Tuesday, tomorrow. Somewhat exciting, I'd say. We walked out and did a "ooooooooo, fetch - that's a baptism or two"

The weather is starting to be warmy again. There was a crazy rainstorm I didn't have an umbrella for, which made me duly wet, but for the most part things are getting better. I started wearing the KGB gloves more, and now I don't know why I didn't more often. Not only does the floppy part make your fingertips warmer than singles, but also if a robber comes or a big dog wants to eat your scriptures, "Ju ken barry dem." (You can bury them.)

The rainstorm whacked our attendance - only 28 people came of some 40 who usually come. They're by and large of the 55+ sort of age, so they rarely come if it's uncomfortable outside.

My new area is in the middle of "The Toilet Tank", which is a satelite city from Santiago. Where I am now is very developed - certainly bigger than Salt Lake alone. My sector is on the edges, and is a perfect rectangle made up of about 30 minutes by 15 minutes of street.

Sorry for the distraction... I'm ordering the Joseph Smith Movie.

My sector is perhaps a fifth the size of Silva Chavez. Well, that is, of the part of the city we had, not counting any of the Washington County-sized campo parts.

Elder Myres, in addition to being a gringo, is pretty cool. It's been very nice to not be distracted by fighting with a companion all day about obedience stuff or playing soccer by himself in the back yard while we're supposed to be studying. The closest person to him you know is Riley, by far. He's a really heavy athelete, coming from soccer and wrestling. I've learned a bunch of fitness stuff from him, like how good creatine is, and how to get good chest muscles. We try ... try to keep from talking about worldy stuff like the Halo books or (If Jake hasn't read those, he needs to) the coolness of the effects in the Star Trek movie, or Tron, which he saw before coming to the mission, but it happens from time to time.

Our two investigators that we do have are kind of stale. The missionaries really buddied up to them to the point of keeping them from progressing. Our first lesson came of a little heavy. I just put it down normally, but she took it really hard. She wants God's help to get her husband guy to marry her, but she isn't keeping the Word of Wisdom or going to the classes at Church. We have to start pushing a little, which will hurt, but is the only way to progress.

As for being a District Leader, you have three main things to do:
Do classes weekly
Do divisions (Elders only)
Be awesome
Call nightlyish to get reports and numbers
I have a pretty fun time teaching, as I feel like the missionaries I teach are better than I am, especially to the Sisters. I actually got a few group laughs last time, at least.

I thought everything was going well, but then after the zone leaders (If I were a sergeant, with my "squad," They would be the lieutenants) asked me for the "District Pouch", which is our mail. I had no idea I even had it in the pension - d'oh. The sister missionary walked up with stuff to send. I started to explain but she just said, "No pouch?" Oh man.

Alex's time ran out on this email and he had to send a second. He does seem very distracted as well!.

Okay, so it was devestating. Not to mention the email cut off to make it better in terms of suspense. She was really good natured about it, though.

What? No blessing? Are you kidding me?

Yay medical things...

I lost my momentum.

By the way, I never memorized the Articles. Weak. Good job though. I did just finish a thing of memorize 24 scriptures, and now I'm going to do 40 something. I'm also memorizing a lot of scriptures - in spanish though. It's going to be weak in english - translated in the mind.

I'm out.

Love,
Elder A Conrad Crist

Lectures on Faith please

MP3 CDs
Look at the passed emails