Our First Zone Conferences

August 4th - 10th, 2025

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! 

When Life Gives You Cold Water, Heat Up Some Rocks

July 28th - August 3rd, 2025

On Monday this week Monica started to not feel so well after eating some fruit. The next couple days were pretty rough and it ended up putting her out of commission on Wednesday completely. She’s doing much better now. Just part of the joy of getting used to living in a new place with a new diet. 

While she was resting on Monday, I met with Shane Littlefield - our Area Mission Specialist - on zoom to go over progress and key indicators for the mission. Our mission has historically been setting really high goals, and there is often a huge deficit between the goal and the actuals at the end of every month. For example, in the month of July, we had 53 baptisms across the mission, but the goal set at the start of the month was 156. The goals all seem to be way higher than what we actually achieve. So unintentionally, it seems we’ve created a culture of failure, or never reaching our goals and just accepting that. So this week on Tuesday, during our MLC (mission leadership council) we talked about how we can change that. I wanted to help them understand that we can still set goals that will stretch us, but that aren’t completely out of reach. 

In addition to goal setting, there have been other little things I’ve been receiving impressions about over the past month of being here that we should change or adjust to help us be more efficient as a mission. Some of these include; changing the day of the week our missionaries conduct their weekly-planning sessions in companions, which day/time they meet weekly with their districts, and also which day we hold our mission-wide weekly devotional over zoom. As I talked to our MLC group on Tuesday this week about these adjustments, I emphasized to them the importance of finding small and simple things that we can do to improve our efforts. We read the example of the Book of Mormon prophet, Alma teaching his sons this same principle in Alma chapter 37. I’m excited to see how these things will impact our efficiency and success! 

Back row (left to right): E. Bray, Munk, Gomez, Klein, Mason, Kulbacki, Harris, Sanchez, Presidente Miranda, Gibson, Rodrigues, Sachetti, Olsen, Medeiros, Call
Front row (left to right): H. Peña, Barrett, Holt, Hadley, Jepsen, Franco, Presidente y Hermana Bartholomew, Garn, Silva, DeVries, Cavalcante, Clegg

The majority of this week was spent finishing up individual interviews with each missionary on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I have now officially interviewed every single one, and while exhausting, It’s been a very special opportunity the last few weeks to hear about each of them - their lives, their families back home, their personal conversion experience, why they chose to serve a mission, etc. 

This week it rained for the first time since we’ve been here! We had a few days of it this week which was refreshing. Santiago is pretty similar to Salt Lake City with its winter smog, given that it is situated in a valley, so we really enjoyed seeing the mountains a little more clearly this week. 

View from one of the Elders' apartments.

Another first of this week was dealing with a situation where missionaries needed to be switched areas for varying reasons. Instead of waiting until the start of the next transfer, we felt like it would be best to just switch them right away - so we had what we call our first “emergency transfer.” No need to worry though, everyone is doing fine and we think the switch will be beneficial to both companionships. 

Saturday morning we went to the Santiago Temple with Elder & Sister Wright. They had asked if they could meet with us to talk about their assignments here in the mission, so we decided to go to the temple with them first, and then had lunch with them afterwards. Elder Wright worked for the church previously in their Self-Reliance program, and specifically helped the church develop a course on the topic of how to start a business. We’re hoping to have him use the knowledge and expertise he has to strengthen the members here and give them some new opportunities and avenues to improve their lives. 

Temple with the Wrights

We had a pleasant surprise running into 4 of our missionaries who were visiting the temple grounds with some people they are teaching. 

In the temple, a local member who was serving there was excited to meet us, and had even brought us a gift. Her name is Carly Morales, and she served a mission in Antofagasta, Chile, and has been home for a year or so. The gift she gave us was a painting of Jesus that she had painted after her mission. She told us that after her mission, she felt that she had developed a stronger testimony of and stronger relationships with Christ, and that helped her to paint him in a new way. She gave us each a copy - it was so thoughtful! 

Sunday we attended church at Barrio (ward) Santa Rosa. They had a baptism after church for Andrea today. When we arrived, the bishop told me that the hot water heater wasn’t working in the chapel, and though they had called earlier in the week to get it fixed and were told it was ready to go, when they showed up on Sunday the water was freezing. The Elders got creative and started boiling some pans of water in the kitchen at the church. They also found some big rocks from outside, washed them off, heated them in the church oven, and put them in the font to warm up the water. It ended up working quite well! They didn’t fill it up as high as normal because of the cold water, so when the poor Elder tried to baptize Andrea, she wasn’t fully submerged in the water and he had to try again 3 different times. Eventually she kneeled down and then it worked! 

Boiling water, and putting rocks in the oven to heat up the water in the baptismal font;

Today (August 3rd) was Monica’s mother’s birthday, and being the first birthday since she passed, it was a special day for her to feel close to her. Miriam, a sweet woman at church gave her a big hug, like they had been friends forever. She told Monica that she felt their souls have met before. She gave her some white butter toffee with nuts that smelled just like the kind her mom used to make. 

Tonight we attended one more baptism in Paine for Engervet. We had met him a few weeks ago when attending another baptism, so he was super excited to see us and was glad we remembered to come to his baptism this week. He’s from Venezuela and is such a kind, sweet man.

Enjoy a few other pictures from this week. We love the beautiful views here in Santiago!

Monica's new best friend at church. He didn't want to go back to his mom ♡

Zoom meetings from home = business on top, comfort on bottom!

One Month Down! (How Many To Go??)

July 21st - 27th, 2025

This week can best be described with one word - interviews! Tuesday - Friday this week I had the chance to start the process of individually interviewing every missionary in our mission. As a Mission President, I’m asked to do this once a transfer (every 6 weeks), with the purpose of checking in on each missionary and seeing what Monica and I can do to help them. The previous mission leaders (the Rosenlunds) planned these interviews for about 15 mins each, so I figured that would be enough for me, but let’s just say time got away from me many times and after spending 20, 25 or even 30 mins with some, at the end of each day I was running a good 2-3 hours behind schedule. We’ll figure out a better system for next time, but I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know each missionary one-on-one. I got through about half of them this week, so we'll finish up next week with the rest. We have an amazing group here in Chile Santiago South! 

That doesn’t mean that they come without their own challenges and struggles though. There’s a variety of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual challenges they are going through, but I’m grateful for the opportunity to meet with them to be aware of each one. This week, Monica was able to personally call all the new missionaries that arrived last week and chat with them and their companions to see how they are adjusting as well. There’s a few that are understandably homesick, but overall I think they can feel our love and concern for them as they are just starting out their missions. 

Friday evening my mission presidency counselors joined us for dinner with their families, and we had a lot of fun! The Miranda family has 2 daughters (and Hermana Miranda’s sister joined us too), and the Sandovals have 4 daughters - so we loved being surrounded by all these sweet girls. We fed them waffles, served with ice cream on top as my mother, Barbara, has taught us to do, and they loved them! Before they left, Monica asked them if they would sing the Primary song Gethsemane for us. It was one of her mother’s, LaVern’s, favorite songs - in fact when she passed away last October, it was one of the last songs she listened to in the hospital. Monica felt very close to her mom as they sang. It was tender seeing the youngest of the daughters who is 5 years old and imagining our oldest granddaughters, Jane and Lily being that same age (or almost) when we return home from serving in 3 years. Time is definitely going to fly! 

The Sandovals, The Bartholomews, & The Mirandas.

All the chicas 💜

Dinner with our chilean family :)

All squished into our elevator after dinner. 

Today (Sunday) for church, we were invited to attend the ward conference for a ward called Viluco - in a small countryside town called Maipo. The ward has been growing there for the last several years, and the church recently completed construction on a new church building that they are waiting to move into, so right now they still meet in a house they rent for Sunday services. They invited Monica and I to share a short message with them. They were very grateful that we would take the time to go visit this area and we really enjoyed being there. During the ward conference we met a guy named Samuel who is actually from Otavaol, Ecuador. He’s been living in Chile for a long time though. He used to live in a different part of Chile called Quinta Normal which is an area next to where I served at the start of my mission back in 1989. He said he recognized me from when I served here as a young man! Sadly I don’t remember him - I don’t remember much from the first part of my mission honestly, but it was a fun connection to make. 

Brent & Samuel

We enjoyed seeing the missionaries that serve in the Viluco ward during ward conference. 

This evening, we went to a baptism for a young man named Benjamin. Here’s a little bit of his story: He works at the local grocery store, Jumbo, and he has a coworker there that he noticed was always super upbeat and happy. At some point they started talking about religion and she told him she’s a member of our church. She invited him to attend sometime, and 3 weeks ago, he showed up on Sunday by himself. He found the missionaries at church and asked to be taught, and now 3 weeks later he got baptized. It was touching to hear him share his story and testimony at the end of the service today. He’s a very impressive young man, and he may even decide to serve a mission one day. 

Benjamin's baptism

Benjamin & Elder Bunker

The baptism was extra special today because it was two of our office missionaries’ last day in the mission - Elder Bunker and Elder Sheppard - and they were the ones who taught Benjamin along with Elder Miles and Berrett. So tonight we took them to the airport to send them off. Elder Bunker was supposed to leave last week, but he arranged with the previous mission leaders to stay an extra 10 days to train his replacement in the office. And Elder Sheppard was going to hit his 2 years at the end of August right in the middle of transfers, so he got to end just a couple weeks early. We are so grateful for all their help as we’ve been settling into our new roles here. 

Left to right: Monica, Brent, Elder Sheppard & Elder Bunker (returning home), Elder Miles & Elder Berrett (replacing them in the office).

Hard to believe it’s already been a month living down south. We’re excited to see what’s in store next! 

Beautiful view of the Andes from my morning walk.

Another week, another trip to the feria for produce!

 

Out with the Old, In with the New - Transfer Time!

July 14th - 20th, 2025

Today marks the end of week 3 in Chile and we couldn’t be happier - unless we had our granddaughters living here with us of course :)

This week was the official end of the 6-week transfer cycle, so we got to see everything come together. Monday we prepared things in the office to receive the new missionaries. Monica worked on organizing a supply closet that has extra clothes/supplies for incoming missionaries - Hermana Wright was a big help in this endeavor. 

Tuesday we went back and forth to the airport 3 different times to drop off our missionaries that are returning home. It started bright and early at 1:15am with Hermana Rivera, followed by a quick nap back home before dropping off Hermana De La Cruz at 6am. Tuesday evening we took the rest of the missionaries to the airport. With a few different flight times we ended up being at the airport from about 5-8pm sending them all off. 

During the sendoff, I was chatting with one of our departing missionaries, Elder Landon Allred, and then turned to go talk to another group. Shortly after, I turned and saw Elder Allred right near me again. I was confused, but eventually saw our Elder Allred again and realized that his identical twin brother, Elder Brandon Allred, was also at the airport on his way home from serving in another mission in Chile. It was fun to see these brothers reunited and heading home together. I actually have a fun connection to these brothers because their uncle, Darrin Allred is a surgeon from St. George that I had the chance to work with during my time at Ortho Development - small world! 

Elder Landon Allred (left) and his twin Elder Brandon Allred (right), both heading home from Chile.

Tuesday night we only got about 4 hours of sleep, and headed right back to the airport on Wednesday morning to greet our first new missionary arriving, Elder Shumway from the Peru MTC. The next group was coming from the Mexico MTC a little after, so we waited there and greeted 11 new hermanas. We then dropped them off at the mission office to get settled, and headed right back to the airport to pick up the last group of 3 missionaries that was coming from the Brazil MTC (2 hermanas and 1 elder). 

We got them all back to the office around 12 and had a little “reveal” meeting where each new missionary had the chance to introduce themselves, and then after they finished, we announced who their first trainer (first companion) was going to be. The trainers brought lots of fun energy that made the new missionaries feel very excited!

One unique experience I had when assigning these new missionaries to their trainers came last week when I had a strong feeling that Elder Ditto - one of my APs - should train this transfer. I was really hoping to keep him as an AP, knowing that he was heading into his last transfer of the mission, but I couldn’t shake the feeling, so I went ahead and added him to the list of trainers. Well, long story short, I ended up assigning him to train Elder Shumway and as I let Elder Ditto know before the new missionaries’ arrival, he told me how they grew up in the same ward (in fact - Elder Ditto’s dad is their bishop back home). They were very happy and surprised to be paired together to say the least!

Elder Ditto (left) & Elder Shumway (right)

After the meeting and feeding them, I had the chance to interview each of the new missionaries for 10-15mins each. We are so excited to get to know and work with these new missionaries. 

Then at 8pm, we went back to the airport to pick up one last new missionary who was coming from the DR - Hermana Sanchez. We took her trainer, Hermana Holt with us. Hermana Sanchez actually started her mission a year ago, but there was some issue with her visa in immigration when she arrived and they turned her away and sent her home. She’s been serving in the DR until her visa finally cleared and she got to come to her original assignment here in Chile. She’s already an amazing missionary and we’re so grateful we get to have her with us now! So in total we had 14 hermanas and 2 elders arrive this week.

Hermana Sanchez finally made it to Chile!

Thursday we went to the office to prep for our new missionary orientation happening the next day where all these new missionaries and their trainers would come together to learn about the mission, and to specifically review some health things - like what to do when you get a dog bite (since that is the most common thing the missionaries experience here).

That afternoon Monica had the chance to go to the “feria” which is similar to a farmers market, but on a much bigger scale - about 4-5 blocks long. They sell lots of fresh produce, clothes, etc. for a much better price than the supermarket, so we’re happy to have that option while we’re here!

View of the feria.

That evening I had a meeting with some local leaders of one of the stakes in the area - the stake presidency, other stake leaders and the missionaries that are serving in that area all attended. While I was at that meeting, Monica stayed home and had the chance to send out photos and emails to the parents of the new missionaries with the info about who their companion is and which area they are serving in. 

On Friday morning as we were heading to the office to do the new missionary orientation, we were reading through some of the replies from these parents of the new missionaries. Hermana Anderson’s family specifically, reached out to tell us an amazing connection she had with her grandpa - he served in Chile years ago when the mission was just the whole country of Chile. While he served, he had spent time in one part of Santiago called La Cisterna. Without knowing this background, I had assigned her to serve in that same area. So they were touched by the connection. She also had an uncle that served here in Santiago South, so she’s looking forward to making more connections to areas and people he served with while she’s here. 

The orientation went well overall! We enjoyed being with all our new comers and their trainers.

New missionaries (left to right): Hermana Frischknecht, H. Halls, H. Wistisen, H. Sloane, H. Pratt, H. Heap, Elder Silva, E. Shumway, H. Platt, H. Peterson, H. Woodruff, H. Andersen, H. Shurtleff, H. Zarpan, H. Kloverdanz, H. Sanchez, Hermana & Presidente Bartholomew

New missionary orientation meeting

All the new missionaries and their trainers. 

Lots of hermanas this transfer 💛

Saturday we had our P-day, and this week we decided to take it easy and finally catch up on some sleep. I also got my first haircut in Chile at a barbershop, and I’m happy to say it turned out well. While there I had some good conversations with the barbers - specifically with one who is a member of the church but hasn’t been to church for a while. We had a good chat and I invited him to go back. Who knows if he will or not, but we always encourage our missionaries to talk to everyone and invite them to come to church no matter their situation, so I was glad to put that into practice.

First haircut in Chile.

Today (Sunday) we went to church in Valencia Valea. After church, they had 5 baptisms in that ward. It was amazing to participate and be there to support them all! 

This week Monica drove the car alone for her first time! It was a short drive to the Killgores apartment (mission leaders over the Santiago West mission) to get her hair colored - before coming to Chile, Hermana Killgore and Monica made an agreement that they’ll color each other's hair for the next 3 years - so far it’s going great!

Hermana Killgore & Bartholomew's hair salon day. 

That’s all for now. We’re still tired, but it’s a good tired! Enjoy a few other pics from the week:

Quick visit to Elder Hoch (right) & Elder Christensen (left) on his birthday. 

First Sunday waffles for dinner here in Chile! 

Taste just like they do at home.

Watching the livestream of Elder Andrew Witt's homecoming back home in Draper, during our Sunday School class in Chile. The Witts have been our neighbors and friends for 25+ years.

Got our pictures added to the wall of all past mission leaders of the Chile Santiago South mission.

Still so surreal to have this calling!