The Field is White!

This week we finally received our crate of belongings from home that we packed and shipped a few months before leaving. We had the things we’ve needed for the past 7 weeks in our suitcases we brought down, but now we have a few more things from home such as our family photos, books, Monica’s favorite throw pillows and blankets, clothing donations we collected for the missionaries, etc. It definitely helps our house feel more like home. 

On Tuesday Monica went with Hermana Bensfield (one of our senior missionaries) to get hair cuts from a member in one of the San Bernardo wards. While they were there, I stopped by a few district councils that were happening in the nearby chapel and enjoyed being with some missionaries.  

Monica's new peluquera!

In the evening, we went to Carolina Sandoval’s bday celebration (wife of my counselor Jaime) at their house. They have 4 daughters - ranging from 5 -14 years old. I sat and chatted with the parents, while the girls surrounded Monica and loved hanging out with her. Thursday night we were back at their house for their 3rd daughter, Tamara’s 9th b-day party. We’ve introduced our mission to our Bartholomew family tradition of singing Happy Birthday off-key on purpose. The Sandovals thought it was the best thing ever and jumped right in to participate with us. We also call each of our missionaries on their birthdays to sing to them and they’ve loved it too. It’s fun bringing a bit of our family back home to our mission family! We also stopped by a church building on our way home on Wednesday for the birthday celebration of Elder Gutierrez, one of our service missionaries which was great.

With the Sandovals on Carolina's birthday. 

Tamara's 9th birthday!

Birthday celebration for Elder Gutierrez (to the left of President)

Our power went out briefly on Thursday evening due to a strong rainstorm - that eventually left a light dusting of snow in Santiago too. It was beautiful to wake up to a familiar sight of snow, even if it was in August instead of December! 

First glimpse of snow in Santiago!

Making a snowman to show the nietas (granddaughters) 😁

On Friday we hosted our 6 elders who are going to finish their missions next week for a “Day of Honor.” It was a very spiritual and fun day filled with final interviews, lunch, games and a testimony meeting. It’s always rewarding to hear about the growth each missionary has experienced during their time in the mission field. 

Left to right: E. Iverson, E. Juad, E. Hawley, Presidente & Hermana Bartholomew, E. Nelson, E. Ditto, E. Hoch

Saturday morning I had an appointment to get my car serviced, and after dropping it off I walked home and took some photos of the snow capped Andes with the rare clear skies from all the rain and snow this week. Reflecting on this week, I sent a message to our missionaries encouraging them to keep working even when the days are hard (or just really wet). I included some of these photos and reminded them “the field is white already to harvest” - a common phrase from scripture to describe missionary work - meaning that there are people here in Santiago that are ready and waiting to hear the message of Jesus Christ and His restored gospel from the missionaries - they just need to be found! 

Saturday evening we went to the stake center in Los Aviadores to participate remotely in the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square concert that was held in Argentina celebrating 100 years of the Church in South America. In 1925, Elder Melvin J Ballard dedicated the lands of South America for the preaching of the gospel, and it was amazing to be here to celebrate 100 years later and see all the growth and progress of these dedicated followers of Jesus Christ. Before the broadcast started, local members showed off the decorated chapel with displays and dances. The theme of the concert was “Canciones de Esperanza” (Songs of Hope), and we loved hearing the Choir and seeing our dear friend from Draper, Vanessa Crowshaw play the violin in the orchestra. They had some special guest artists, including our good friend from our daughter Megan’s mission in Argentina - Julian Mansilla. He played the bandoneón and also helped arrange many of the numbers for the choir and orchestra to accompany other artists. Overall, it was a beautiful night full of culture and music. (Check out this link if you want to watch the recording)

Throughout the week I probably spent about 30-40 hours working on transfers when possible. Everything needed to be done by Sunday, so Saturday night we finished working on transfers really late - Monica went to bed at 2am, and I finally followed at 3:30am. While It’s a very long, time consuming process to consider the needs of each missionary and try to make the best assignments, I’ve found that I’m really enjoying this part of our calling. I’m constantly amazed at how God is directing us and helping us make these changes.

On Sunday we attended the Jose Miguel Carrera ward, and Monica enjoyed making friends with Elena, a sweet 90-year-old lady and convert of just 2 years. She and her daughter shared a blanket with Monica during sacrament meeting since it's often pretty chilly inside the church buildings during the winter. It's been fun to see how quickly Monica makes friends with the members here without speaking much of the language still. We truly all are brothers and sisters in Christ and can feel that shared love no matter the language we speak! 

We got a kick out of seeing them leave church in their motorized scooter.

We stayed after church for 3 baptisms. Then we headed to Paine to see Elder Dangl & Wilson’s ward where they had 8 people getting baptized! The bishop in their ward has only been a member for 4 years himself, and he and the other members do such an amazing job at rallying around the missionaries and all the people they teach and bring to church - it really is a group effort. We ended the day with one more baptism service in another area for Paula, so in total we got to see 12 people be baptized today! Sundays are quickly becoming our favorite day of the week as we get to go support our missionaries and their new friends that are choosing to follow their Savior and be baptized. The field truly was white today!

Pancakes on a Hill, Murals by the Sea, and a Happy Reunion

This was the first week we have had since arriving here that we didn’t have a lot on the schedule, so we finally got to catch up on some things. It was nice to rest and recover, get my voice back, etc. I’ve decided that in the mission, there’s really not going to be a way to be fully caught up on everything - something new will always pop up! 

On Monday, we were invited by Elder Gibson and Elder Rodriguez (zone leaders in the Los Aviadores zone) to join them for a preparation day sunrise hike. A few weeks ago they had hiked this same hill, called Cerro Negro, and had shared some pictures with us. I had joked with them and asked where our invitation was that day, so they told us the next time they went they’d invite us. We got up super early and picked them up for a chilly, beautiful hike. Another district of missionaries also joined us at the top. We were surprised when the missionaries started pulling things out of their backpacks to make a pancake breakfast on top of the hill! They had a frying pan, batter, butter, peanut butter, and a giant knife to spread the butter. They made a fire in the crack of a rock and the pancakes were surprisingly delicious. A very fun way to spend our Monday morning!

Hiking bright and early

Hiking with Elder Rodriguez and Elder Gibson

A chilly, beautiful sunrise!

Grilling pancakes in the rocks

We had a meeting at our home that afternoon with my mission presidency and Elder & Sister Wright (our MLS senior missionary couple). We talked about Elder Wright’s work for the church prior to the mission. He wrote the church’s course called “starting your own business” for their Self-Reliance program. As part of his work years ago in Mexico, they turned some chapels that weren’t being used into community centers where they could teach these courses and expand opportunities for the members of the community. So right now we’re talking to the area presidency about potentially doing that here in Chile too. 

On Tuesday, we went to the southern part of the mission and met up with the 4 sisters working in an area called Hospital. It’s a small countryside town with an even smaller town called Aculeo about 13 miles outside of it that they also work in. It’s quite expensive to visit out there cause they have to take a taxi, so they only go about once a week, but they have a lot of people out there that are interested in meeting with them there. So we drove out there together and discussed with the local leaders too about putting some missionaries out there to serve specifically in that area. Once we find a place for them to live, we’ll go ahead and do that, so hopefully within a few months things will be up and running there. 

Church building in Hospital

Our highlight on Wednesday was going to Buin in the evening. I had a stake mission council meeting with the local leaders there, so we decided to contact the sisters serving in that area and have Monica go out and teach with them while I was in my meeting. She had a wonderful time with Hermana James & Plecencia. Here’s a little story about her experience from her perspective: 

I was anxious and excited to meet up with the Hermanas to teach together. In Chile, when you want to knock on someone’s door, you just yell “ALO!” outside their gate until they hear you. Our first stop was to visit Carol and her 2 sons, but she was taking a while to answer, so we went to knock on a few other doors around her house in the meantime. I was shocked by how many dogs there were behind every gate and in the street. They were so loud and scary! Luckily we didn’t get bit, but I wouldn’t have been surprised with the number of phone calls I get every week from missionaries getting a dog bite. 

Carol has met with the missionaries a few times before and she hasn’t been able to decide if she wants to get baptized or not. Part of what’s holding her back is the decision she needs to make first to get married to the father of her sons or not. We encouraged her to take that decision seriously and take her time. We focused our discussion on prayer and how she can get guidance from Heavenly Father. She said a prayer on her own at the end of the lesson and it was long and beautiful and she even got emotional during it. Afterwards she said she does want to get baptized! That was her first time expressing real interest in taking the next step so the Hermanas were so excited. It was a beautiful meeting!

Teaching Carol (pink jacket) with Hermana Plasencia & Hermana James

For our next visit, we went to see a sweet 12 year old boy named Mateo. His mom joined the church probably 20 years ago, but she hasn’t forced her kids to go or to be baptized because she wanted it to be their choice. So Mateo started expressing his interest on his own and has been taught by the sisters for a while. They taught him about the restoration of the church and invited me to talk about Christ and His Atonement (with the help of Hermana Plasencia). A day before, the Hermanas had let me know that they wanted to invite Mateo to be baptized during the lesson today, and they asked me if I could be the one to extend the invitation to him in Spanish. I did my best to practice the Spanish ahead of time, but was grateful to have the sisters’ help and the Spirit to guide me. He said yes! He’ll be baptized next week on Aug 24th. As we left the house, the sisters jumped with joy and were so happy for me to have that experience with them. These missionaries are really my heroes! They are out there all day, every day teaching and helping people and it was special to be with them for one night. 

After our lesson with Mateo (center) and his brother & mom. 

Once we were done, we walked over to the church building for a short meeting and then sang happy bday to Hermana James, and a belated bday to Hermana Plasencia too. We love our missionaries! 

On Friday, Monica worked with the senior missionaries to organize all the extra/donated clothing from missionaries that have left for those that are still here to go through and take if they want or need anything. For me, Friday was spent mostly catching up on mission finances. I went through the system online to approve all the expenditures we’ve had recently, and that was fine, but for some archaic reason, we also have to physically print out each one, and physically sign them before submitting them for final approval. I kid you not, I probably signed my name about 500 times that day. We killed so many trees!

For our preparation day (p-day) on Saturday, we decided to travel to Valparaiso and Viña del Mar. We took Elder Barrett & Elder Miles from the office who also have Saturday p-day. They do so much for us on the administrative side of the mission to keep things going day to day, so we took the opportunity to take them along with us as a small token of gratitude for all they do. They were so excited! The drive there was gorgeous and the weather was nice. We arranged a walking tour of Valparaiso with a guide who took us around the city. Both of these cities are built right on the side of the hills, with beautiful colorful houses, lots of murals and street art, and so many funiculars to ride up and down the hillsides. They are main port towns with rocky shorelines, so we didn’t get to experience the sandy beaches of Chile yet, but we’re looking forward to doing that soon. We had lunch out there and then came back by early evening. It was a blast!

For church today (Sunday), we attended the Las Avenidas ward, in the San Miguel stake. We typically choose which wards to attend based on which ones will be having a baptisimal service after church that day. We always love supporting our missionaries and their new friends that are joining the church. 

When we pulled up into the parking lot of the church today, I was grabbing some stuff from the car and Monica was greeted briefly in the parking lot by a family that came in around the same time as us. During the sacrament meeting, we were invited to share our testimonies and I introduced us briefly, but didn’t share too many details. After the meeting, the mom of the family we saw in the parking lot before church came up to me and said “I had a companion on my mission with the last name Bartholomew,” so I asked where she had served. Turns out, she was in the Ecuador Guayaquil North mission and was companions with our oldest daughter, Jessica 11 years ago! Jessica had 2 companions from Chile during her mission, Hermana Latorre being one of them. We couldn’t believe the chances of meeting her here in our mission! She had to go chat with the bishop real quick, so I went to go tell Monica, and about 20 mins later we were able to video chat with Jessica and let these old mission companions reconnect. They are excited to be reunited in person when our kids come visit us here in Chile sometime in the next 3 years. 

Meeting Hermana Latorre & her family. 

Our oldest daughter Jessica and Hermana Latorre in Guayaquil Ecuador (August 2014).

We got to witness 2 other baptisms today, which is always a treat. First was the baptism of the sister of one of our service missionaries. Everyone else in his family is already a member, so she was the last to join and they are now working towards going to the temple together to be sealed. 

The last baptism of the day was for Aischell, in the ward where Elder Ditto and Elder Shumway are serving. As a recap, Elder Ditto was one of my APs for my first 2 weeks here, and I was planning on him just finishing out as AP (this was his last cambio - he goes home next week (August 26)).  But then I was impressed to have him train, and he ended up with his high school buddy – Elder Shumway. Anyway, when I called to tell him that he was going to train, I told him that I felt impressed that he needed to train, but that I’d let him pick one of three sectors where he could go. He chose this área called Parque Combarbalá, which is in a rougher neighborhood of the mission, and had a reputation as being a tough place to find and baptize. I was so impressed with his humility, and the fact that he didn’t choose a seemingly “easier” sector for his last 6 weeks. I’m not 100% sure how long it had been since they had baptisms in that ward, but he went in with Elder Shumway to an area where they didn't have much to go off and went to work. And now, 4 weeks later they had this baptism.  I’m convinced Elder Ditto and Elder Shumway were the ones the Lord needed to find, teach and baptize Aischell!

Aischell's baptism

After the baptism with Elder McBride, Elder Ibañez, Elder Ditto and Elder Shumway

This week, one of our missionaries, Hermana Barrett, received news of her grandmother’s passing. She is actually from Providence, Utah and lives in the same ward as my brother and sister-in-law, so we had connected with her family before coming to Chile. Her mom had messaged me on Saturday to let us know the news and she was able to chat with them that day too. We called and chatted with her afterwards, but felt like we should stop by to see how she was doing today as well. It was good for her to cry and share some memories of her grandma with us. It was a tender and sweet experience to be with her and her companion, Hermana Pratt, whose grandma also passed away unexpectedly earlier this year. It was comforting and helpful for them to strengthen each other during this time. There’s no way I could have known this would happen before assigning them to be companions this transfer. I’m so grateful for the quiet guidance of our Heavenly Father who knows us perfectly and can anticipate our needs and situation before we can. 

Grateful to be close in proximity to our missionaries and be able to visit them during hard times!

We ended the evening at the Los Alerces stake women's conference. All girls & women 8 years and older were invited to attend, and we had a great turnout with just over 130 people. Elder Bravo, an Area Seventy and his wife were there to speak, and many women from the stake were invited to share their testimonies specifically about the temple as part of the meeting, including Monica. She did a fantastic job! 

After the meeting, Hermana Sandoval (the mother of my second counselor, Jaime Sandoval) told me that Monica needs to be learning Spanish and that I should refuse to speak to her in English so she learns faster. She is such a sweet woman, but is also a spitfire, so she told me that she is always home on Thursdays and that I need to drop Monica off at her house on a Thursday so she can speak to her in Spanish all day and help her learn faster. So we’ll see how that goes! 

Our First Zone Conferences

This week was BUSY. I’m beginning to think I’ll be saying that about every week though… so maybe it was just normal! 

Monday & Tuesday we prepared for our first zone conferences. We have 6 zones in our mission, so we split them up into 3 groups of 2 zones each and held the conferences on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week. Zone Conferences are held once every 6 weeks - or once a transfer. Preparing for them this week reminded me of the “State of the Company” meetings I would have quarterly while working at Ortho Development, which were always stressful and busy to prepare. But now, I have to do them twice as often! In these meetings, we train and instruct the missionaries on a variety of things - I’ll outline our agenda below. 

Agenda for Zone Conference: 

We started at 10am by singing a hymn, saying a prayer and reciting our missionary purpose together. Monica spoke first with the help of a translator about our missionary purpose and the temple. She focused on how helping people go to the temple really is the end goal of missionary work. After baptism, recent converts can go to the temple to perform baptisms vicariously for individuals that have passed away without being baptized. After a year, they can then choose to make more covenants with God through the endowment and sealing ordinances (to read more about temple ordinances, click this link).  

Next, we watched a video from Sister Amy Wright’s address at our mission leader seminar from June (Sister Wright is a member of the Primary General Presidency). She taught similar things to Monica about inviting and helping others come closer to Christ through making covenants in the temple. We also clarified our temple attendance policy with the missionaries - They have permission to attend the temple once every 3 months. We are blessed to have the Santiago temple very close to us in our mission, but we noticed that many had not been taking advantage of the opportunity to go, so we emphasized the importance of attending the temple and how it will help them be a more effective missionary. 

Then, we invited 2 missionaries, one from each zone in attendance, who were recent converts to share their personal experience of joining the church. Some of them have been members for just over a year, and others for a little longer. They all shared powerful testimonies and experiences with us about how they came to know the church and believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Next, we transitioned with a short Kahoot quiz titled “How well do you know Preach My Gospel.” They had to answer 13 questions that came from the manual for missionary work, Preach My Gospel, and they got points for getting the right answer and being the quickest to answer. We learned quickly that missionaries love being entertained by these short, fun, and competitive quizzes!

Elder and Sister Wright, our senior couple assigned to a member-leader support (MLS) role here in the mission, took the next segment. Their primary responsibility in Chile is to work with the local church leaders to help people come back to church, but they also get the chance to go out and teach with the younger missionaries on occasion. Recently they have observed that as missionaries are teaching people about prayer, they often forget that we pray in a different way than other religions, so many may be nervous or unfamiliar with our prayers at the beginning. They discussed ways to simplify our teaching and gave the missionaries time to practice with each other. 

Then they got a snack break, where they had time to relax and mingle. We then took some group photos with each zone. 

Zone: San Miguel

Zone: Los Aviadores

Zone: San Bernardo

Zone: La Cisterna

Zone: Los Alerces

Zone: Buin

Next up, we talked about how to keep their apartments clean & well maintained. We have a Chilean couple here that oversees the repairs of our missionaries’ apartments - Hermana Paz, the wife, has a very big, fun personality and she gave an excellent presentation about how to take better care of their apartments. Previously they were told to deep clean their apartments once every 6 weeks, but we helped them understand that there are things they should do every day, every week and every month to keep a clean house.

Hermana Bartholomew & Hermana Paz

Our APs then taught about inviting people to attend our church meetings. One of the main things I’ve been trying to emphasize since arriving here is that we shouldn’t just ask people to come to church, but rather focus on how coming to church will allow them to worship Jesus Christ. The main reason we go to church is to partake of the sacrament and worship Christ together. So again, they had the opportunity to practice extending an invitation for someone to come to church with a greater emphasis on Christ. 

I was the last speaker of the day, and decided to focus my presentation on the culture of our mission. In our short time here, we’ve seen that the culture is good overall, but we can make it great and more powerful. We talked about 4 pillars or areas of focus that can help us strengthen and uplift our mission culture: 

1. Live our missionary purpose

2. Having faith to baptize

3. Expect miracles

4. Work with diligence

We ended with lunch catered by a group of members that own a catering company that specializes in southern, US style BBQ. It was delicious, and a big hit with the missionaries. 

I think this was easily my favorite week of the mission so far. Just being with all our missionaries and getting to learn and grow together is an opportunity we will always cherish. 

Elder & Sister Clark (center) celebrated their anniversary with us during zone conferences. All the love from the missionaries!

One quick funny story… on Wednesday during our zone conference, as the APs were teaching, I heard some commotion coming from outside the church building. As I walked down to see what was going on, through the window I saw a woman who had undressed completely and was making a lot of noise to try to get attention. I walked around the back to see what was going on, and by the time I got over there the caterers had already chatted with her and convinced her to put her clothes back on. She was high on drugs, and shared with us a little bit about her difficult life and background. We were able to give her some food and water, and call a friend to come pick her up. It was quite the shocking experience, but we tried to minister to her as the Savior would in that moment. 

This week we had the chance to go to dinner with Elder Joaquin Costa and his wife Renee from Argentina. He serves as the area president over the south america south area of the church which includes the countries of Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. They both speak fluent English, and were so incredibly kind. They gave us some great advice, and especially encouraged us to not stress about the language, so that was comforting to hear for both Monica and I. 

Dinner with Elder & Sister Costa

Friday evening, we had the chance to go to the temple again with 6 of our elders that will be finishing their mission this upcoming transfer (in about 2 weeks). It was great being with them and our amazing senior missionaries too.

Hermana Bensfield, Hermana & Elder Clark, Elder Iverson, E. Hoch, E. Ditto, Hermana & President Bartholomew, E. Nelson, E. Juad, E. Hawley, Hermana & Elder Wright

I was very worn out by the end of the week. Ever since we arrived in Chile we have been going non-stop with so many new things thrown our way each day. We’ve been so busy that most days, I don’t go to sleep until 1 or 2am, so I’ve been averaging about 4-5 hours of sleep per night. Well, as you can imagine, it all finally caught up to me and I was grateful to have Saturday to catch up on some much needed rest. We’ve been so blessed each day to have enough energy to get through what we’ve had on our plates, and we’re hoping as we continue to get into a rhythm here, things will feel more manageable. 

On Sunday we attended a ward conference in San Bernardo for the Portales 2 ward. There was a sweet 8 year old boy in that ward that led the music. His dream is to be the chorister for the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square someday. Seeing his joy over his assignment to help lead the music was infectious! 

Excited to see what next week brings!