Bus Wreck!

Man that was awesome right? i don't know if it's just cuz i'm a missionary or what but  every single talk was so so good. i sure hope you were all staying awake and paying attention. guys did you go to preistood? it was so tight. k so i told everyone at home to be forward and straight with me so i guess i should be as well. also Hermana Martinez tells me that i should of told you guys about this. don't know why i didn't. it's really not that big of a deal. I guess i didnt want anyone to freak out so just know i'm protected and everythings fine :) yeah i'll try to explain it short. so remember the micros straight out of harry potter? yeah we got pushed off the road one day and hit a tree about two months ago. i was on a quick combio with Elder Corliss. everyone drives really close to eachother so when i saw this truck coming closer to us i was like "don't freak out this happens all the time" but nope he pushed us off the road. it was really fast. i don't know how but Corliss was shot to the front off the bus. he broke the seats in front of us. this one lady ended up in my lap. well i hit the left side of my face pretty good and bit through my lip. Corliss bonked his nose really good. everyone in the micro was fine in the end. it was amazing because the micro behind us had a sister from our ward and she saw the crash. she said the Spirit told her she knew someone in the crash and she had to go help. it was such a reliefe to see her run up to us and throw her jacket around me. because we were both bleeding we had to go in the ambulance. It was amazing to see how unselfish everyone was. everyone was checking on me making sure i was alright even though they were hurt too. i made alot of friends in the micro that day. i spent my whole p day in the hospital. that was lame. we finally got let go. oh and that Sister Muñoz staid by our side the whole day! I love that lady! anyway so the next few days I was throwing up so Demke asisted me to the hospitle once again. haha hope this isn't too much detail but it was just such an experiance. anyway after a CAT scan they saw a shadow in the back of my head and loaded me up into the ambulance again. Hermana Martinez met us at the next hospital. The doctors then took me to a brain surgen. he studied the image and to our reliefe it was something that i've had for my whole life our something. K so yeah is everyone breathing again? haha it really was a great experiance of love and laughter (at my spanish and jokes Demke would say to lighten the mood) he}s the shiz and handled the whold thing like a champ. but yeah haha that's my experiance. it was crazy. I spent that week in the Presidents house on close watch and ran to a few more specialists to get second opinions. but yeah i'm totally fine now and back to working with no side effects. this passed two months ago so no worries. :) love you all tons and hope you enjoyed this weeks story :)

Elder Valdez

Other Side of Heaven-ish

Sometimes I feel so other side of heavenish! instead of the elephant disease we have tiña. You see it the most with dogs. It´s a skin disease that your skin flakes or something like that. yeah never seen a human with it but dogs all the time. about 60% of the dogs here have it and it makes their hair fall out. Its really pathetic and creepy looking but we got all these I Am Legend dogs running all over the street. The way i found out the name of this disease was playing tag with some kids and instead of being "it" you have tiña. and you run around trying to give everyone else tiña. haha yup. what else. oh the apartment buildings next to us are finally getting taking down professionally. yeah everything´s so normal to me that i´m running out of things to say. haha as far as spiritual things are going. this week was fast and testimoney meeting. I´ve had a hard time feeling like i´m doing anything. I can´t speak the language and don´t know the scriptures that well so my converts i feel were just the previous missionaries investigatore. but this week Karen stood up and gave a beautiful testimoney and she thanked the missionaries that had helped her get married and then baptized. I felt so happy that i got to be a part of that. that i got to help with her conversion. Her husband and i are buds too and he was at church this week! We´re trying to re activate him. haha this probably doesn´t mean anything to you guys but o well haha. just know that i´m loving it and i know i´m making a difference. I love this gosple it´s just so dang perfect. Love you all and miss you guys tons.

Elder Valdez

18th of September

 I´ve never eaten so much meat in my entire life! The eighteenth is Independance day for Chile. They celebrate it in three days. so we ate a ton of food at a stake activity on the 17th. then the 18th is the big party. and now today is a big party as well. yesterday we were invited to three different Bar B Q´s! and when they barbq they don´t make anything else but meat. I´m serious! no potatoe chips, no mashed potatoes, no vegetables, not anything else but meat! they just bring you a plate with five different kinds of meat and a coke. I thought i was going to die. the very last bite clashed with everything trying to come back up but i forced it all down. haha sorry but that´s what happened. and today we have two more Bar b q´s to go to!!! I dont think i´ll make it! haha it´s crazy fun though. Elder Laurito and I are having such a blast. there´s still a language barrior but sometimes that just makes it twice as fun! He loves soccer and looks for every chance to play. we play with the rocks in the street while we walk. if you can get it through the other companions legs then that´s a goal. It keeps us entertained through the long walks. yesterday was so awesome. with the parties yes but also with church. It was ward conferance and the stake presidencie wanted to talk with the Señor comps. so with out a subject and our little spanish, Elder Wray and I had to teach the Gosple Principle class! Elder Wray´s a stud from West High SLC who now has three weeks in the mission. yup so not speaking much we forced our way through teaching the restauration to everyone. when we got to the First Vision the Spirit was there so strong. We´re not crazy! a Crazy person would leave his family at age 19 and go give up two years of his life for nothing. but we know its true. You guys at home watch all these teenage boys leave everything for two years cuz they know its true. they know they know. and you can make up all these pathetic excuses that we´re from utah and this is just what we do but if i didn´t have a testimoney of this i would be home so fast. this just isn´t worth it if you don´t have a testimoney. this is hard stuff but because i know this is true i keep going just like all these, our best friends, are doing. Love you all millions. miss you tons.

Elder Valdez

Bautizmo!

We had a baptism yesterday. it was so awesome. Karen and Javiera (her daughter) it was so amazing! Javiera almost didn´t at the last but it all turned out! It was so cool to watch Karen progress. She´s been meeting with the missionaries for five years! we finally got her to set some goals and accomplish them. she got married last week and now is a member! so great to watch people change their lives for this gosple. and then on the other hand some people just don´t get it. we had to drop one of my favorite families ever! I´ve been working with them for more then two months and they didn´t move at all! :( we gave a gorgeous lesson of the Restauracion and the Spirit was there a full. right after we got done testifying and all that stuff. they just turned on the tv and started going off about how they´ll read and go to church when God tells them too. ugh it was such a Spirit killer. This week we´re really going to focus on finding news and getting fechas for baptisms. One day it was just going so slow. but we kept on working we kept on knocking. we finally met this lady who  was an old investigador of the church. we got talking with her and Elder Laurito brought up work for the dead right off the back. it was crazy. but she loved it. she was so intrested that we put a fecha with her right then and there for the 24th of sep. it was so cool. diana is still having problems with getting permission from her dad to get baptized. so if we all prayed for her i think we could have an excellent month! Elder Laurito is perfect. we have so much fun together. and! A HUGE jump in the language. its so exciting! this might actually be posible! haha yeah so everythings going so great and i´m having a blast. a huge change from the first month.  Love you all tons! thanks for the letters. they´re starting to come now and it helps me get through the weeks.

Elder Valdez

Manly Scriptures

Demke and I checked up all the manliest scriptures we could find. my favorite is Job 40:7. I loved that whole chapture. anyway hope this tells you how much Demke and I get along. We´re just having a blast. the Napolean Dynamite fact of this week is that Demke missed his brother´s wedding cuz he was in the house playing X box! so they thought they´d have Napolean miss his brother´s wedding. Yeah these little facts will be useful someday but they´re way fun. Tomorrow is combios. Demke and Corliss are leaving me . Its read sad but i´m way excited for my new comp. his name is Elder Laurito and he was in my zone last combio. so we already love eachother and are buds. we´ve spent a few p day´s together already and make each other laugh. He´s from Uraguay and reminds me alot of Taylor Stephenson. So it should be a fun combio. we also have a few baptisms lind up right off the back. in fact i just got back from a wedding of my investigator! it was so cool! I can´t even imagine a wedding in the temple! yeah so she and her daughter are getting baptized this sunday! SKIYA! Everyone love your parents tons, they just want the best for you. but o my goodness they are so annoying sometimes!!!! We have four seperate investigators that want to be baptized but are under eighteen, and the parents just won´t let us baptize them. Ugh its so stressful. we´re so close but the parents just won´t alow it. All these guys want to be baptized because of their testimonies of the Book of Mormon. This book is so so important. please everyone back home eat this up. check up cross referances, figure out why that verse is there. there´s no way way way that this book isn´t straight from God. It is or it isn´t. If your having a hard time, or a doubt, just read the Book. and go back to basic that that Book is from God. I love this Book and I love the church. People are changing their lives down here for this gosple! It´s so so perfect in everyway! don´t take it for granted (is that how you spell it?) Love and miss you tons.

Elder Valdez

Tree Farms

Yeah so i found out that Chile makes alot of their money from selling wood. We went to a volcano today (no big deal) anyway yeah we drove for almost two hours through these tree farms!! they went on forever! I honestly tought they extended all the way around the world. you try to see the end but nope there wasn´t one. Yup we went to a volcano. it was so freakin cold at the begining. but then we hiked up far enough to wear the wind stopped. we couldn´t hike all the way to the top so we just hiked to a lake below it. it was so so cool!!! I got Mrs Dent a rock from a Chilean Volcano. pretty sick huh? across the lake and over some mountains was Argentina. so we were pretty close to the border but i just couldn´t see Argentina. really wanted to. anyway so after having the perfect day of hiking a volcano and playing in the snow (in the middle of Augost!) the sad part comes. i forgot a battery for my camera. so Elder Demke and I took a bunch of sweet sweet pics. but then when we were headed back he lost his camera!!! we have no proof that we were actually there :( we ran up the entire trail looking for it with no success. bummer. o well. our investigadors are doin well. The investigador with the experiance last week didn´t come :( but i´ll get on that. k so we taught this fifteen year old girl and we gave her the book of mormon and a pamphlet of the first lesson ( the Restauracion) yeah when we went back to teach it she taught us the first lesson!! it was so sick! we gave her the goal of getting baptized on the fourth! so we´ll see how that goes. she knows the book is true. the book of mormon is everything! it proves everything!

Elder Valdez