Mama - I received the two shoes about a month ago, I've just forgotten to tell you. Thank you so much.
Two weeks ago, we did the following two activities:
On Friday we had a branch family home evening, and I presented the Priesthood bakery lesson. I think the cupcakes at the end were the most popular part of the lesson, but they seemed to enjoy it over all.
We made some sweet props to help in the lesson.
On Saturday we did a combined mutual and filmed the "I'm a Mormon" videos. They turned out fantastic. One of the senior missionary couples looked up a couple filming tips, and we made the videos look pretty dang professional.
We couldn't find anyone with a tripod, so we used two music stands to stabilize the cameras. We filmed the youth showing off some of their talents, and then they answered some questions about their life and relationship with God. I was really impressed with the responses of some of the youth. They may not appear very spiritually mature on the outside, but it's there. We even had a youth investigator show up for the activity, and he loved it too. (He got to show off his sweet skateboarding skills.) After the activity, we ate a couple apple pies that Elder Warner and I cooked.
This last week, we had the baptism of Carolina Vergara. It was a wonderful experience.
She is a golden convert. We invited her and the other recent converts to the Ward Missionary Trainings that we do every Sunday night. Last night, she did a practice lesson of the Restoration and the First Vision, and I think she taught it better than we do.
After the baptism on Thursday, the branch did their annual temple trip, which involves a 11 hour bus ride each way.
As missionaries, we had been preparing for this event for the last two months, so it was a great moment of fulfillment. There were six youth between the ages of 12-18 that were attending the temple for the first time, and we were able to help each one take at least one family name to the temple to perform that baptism. In total, the seven youth took 21 names to the temple. Those 21 names represent the culmination of three Family History Mutuals, and lot of hours of preparation and learning about family history on the part of the missionaries. Hopefully each of the youth were able to have a spiritual experience as they were baptized for their deceased ancestors.
I was feeling pretty good about all of the fruits we were able to see this last week, and then we got a call last night. Cambios! [Transfers!] On Wednesday, I'm leaving Rio Bueno to be a zone leader in another zone up north. Sister Ball is leaving Rio Bueno to be a Sister Trainer Leader in Coyhaique, and her companion will train a new missionary after only 3 months in Chile. It's like I live in a snowglobe, and the snowglobe was just turned upside down and shaken vigorously. So right now I don't whether I should smile or cry. Bueno. I should probably try to smile. I'm going to miss this branch a lot, and all of the people that we have visited. This has been my favorite four months of my mission so far.
-Elder Crotzer
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