Building a Powerful Mission, One Week at a Time

September 8th - 14th, 2025

Oftentimes at the end of the week we have to look back through our photos of the week to remember what we even did - the days all blur together!

Monday we prepared for our new missionary orientation the next day. We had 21 new missionaries arrive last week, and we loved getting the chance to see them again this week and help them start to adjust to life here in Chile. Previously we held this orientation 2 days after the missionaries arrived, but we realized the new missionaries in our past groups were pretty exhausted and didn’t get as much out of it as we wanted. Switching it to week 2 felt much more effective. Our main focus of the day was on the 4 pillars of a powerful mission: living our missionary purpose, having the faith to baptize, expecting miracles, and working with diligence.

Tuesday evening we went to the airport to drop off one missionary, Elder Hoch, who stayed an extra couple weeks. Then we waited there at the airport to pick up Shane Littlefield who is our Area Mission Specialist. He is employed by the church to provide training and insights to mission leaders in our area, and more specifically he helps us monitor performance metrics. Shane served as a mission president in Mexico 20 years ago, so we definitely appreciate his expertise and were looking forward to his visit. His niece is also serving in our mission, so it was fun for him to connect with her.

Goodbye, Elder Hoch

Brother Littlefield & his niece, Hermana Clegg

On Wednesday Brother Littlefield conducted focus groups with some of our missionaries and put together a report that we reviewed with him and then brought to our MLC group on Thursday. He put together 4 key things to focus on to increase the output of our goals. One thing we specifically talked about was how to help people we are teaching to want to come worship with us in church on Sundays.

Brother Littlefield with our MLC group

Saturday is our preparation day, and I finally had the time and energy to work out for the first time since arriving in Chile. I even felt sore the next day, which was a great feeling to have again. Hopefully I’ll be able to get into a regular workout routine soon. We had some random missionary needs come up throughout the day, including sending one of our missionaries, Elder Rhoton, home to get his torn labrum taken care of.

We spent the rest of the day preparing remarks for our first stake conference in La Cisterna on Sunday. They asked us to take 10 mins total, so I translated for Monica while she introduced our family and shared her testimony and then I filled the remainder of the time. They had a choir of children sing during the meeting which was beautiful. On Sunday I also had the opportunity to set apart my first and second counselors - President Sandoval & President Miranda. Their families joined us and we had lunch together afterwards. That evening we went to a baptism back in La Cisterna and ended the day with our Sunday night devotional over zoom with our missionaries.