August 25th - 31st, 2025
This week we had transfers - another great group of missionaries left to go home and another new group arrived this week! We sent out the transfer news on Monday so they’d all knew who’d be staying or leaving their current areas. Monday and Tuesday we made a few trips to the airport to drop off the 6 elders who were heading home.
Wednesday was our big transfer day with all the current missionaries going to their new areas, and our new missionaries arriving at the airport. We received 21 new missionaries - with 20 of them coming from the Mexico MTC (all native to the US), and then 1 sister from Colombia came from the Brazil MTC. It was a hectic day at the airport since there were also 27 missionaries arriving for the Chile Concepcion mission, so even though we had memorized the pictures and names of those arriving to our mission, we had to sort through lots of name tags to find our missionaries.
Our first transfers in the mission (6 weeks ago) were a little crazy and disorganized, in part because we were new so we really didn’t know what we were doing yet. This time around we made more detailed plans ahead of time to help things run a bit smoother. Instead of having our new missionaries and their trainers all just waiting around at the church building with not much to do while I interviewed each new missionary, this time we provided a bit more structure so everyone had something to keep them busy and focused during what can feel like a long, crazy day. First, I asked my APs (Elders Sanchez, Harris and Bray) to provide training for all the trainers. Then, we kept the new missionaries rotating through 4 different activities including and interview with me, and then meeting with our senior missionaries to do the following; get an ATM and bus card, fill out a questionnaire, and review some fundamental teaching skills.
At 1pm we had our trainer reveal meeting where each new missionary introduced themselves and then we would tell them who their trainer would be. The energy in the room was palpable and it was fun to see their reactions and emotions as they are just getting started here in Chile. After lunch we sent them on their way to their areas to jump right in and get to work! We’ll get to see them again early next week for an orientation day to check in and see how things are going. We’re excited to get to know this new group. It’s interesting that even after just meeting them, I can get a sense pretty early on which missionaries will likely be leaders in our mission later on. This is a high caliber group with strong testimonies, and I’m so impressed by how prepared they are to serve at this time.
On Thursday we actually went to a baptism service for a man named Brando in La Cisterna. Due to his work schedule, he couldn’t be baptized on a Sunday afternoon as is customary here, so the missionaries helped make it happen on Thursday.
That evening we went to the airport, but this time for us to go on a short trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Area Presidency from the South America South Area (composed of the missions in Chile, Argentina, Paraguay & Uruguay) invited us and all the other new mission leaders from the area to come have a training at the area offices in Buenos Aires. It was great to be reunited with our dear friends we had made at the MTC back in June. After checking into our hotel, we went out to dinner at an authentic Argentine asado restaurant. We ate a lot of meat to say the least! Friday morning we got started early and had training all day from Elder Costa, Elder Walker and Elder Gavaret from the Area Presidency. That evening we took the short 1.5 hour flight back to Santiago, so it was a short, but enjoyable trip. We really enjoyed the spectacular view from the plane flying over the Andes.
Saturday we used as a catch up day, running errands and preparing for our new missionary orientation day next week. On Sunday we attended a few baptisms; first for a sweet 9-year old Camila, and later for Mateo, Gerolin, Yanera & Clara. Mateo is the young man that Monica visited with the missionaries a few weeks ago, and she was the one who invited him to be baptized, so it was great to accompany him on this day!
Sometimes it feels like we’ve been here for 2 years already - but just over 2 months is a great accomplishment too ;)
