Week Sixty-Two: December 26th, 2011

Because we got to talk to Nick yesterday he didn't send much of a letter today but we were happy to get a few pictures though.

Dear Mom,
Because it is so hot here, (It's in the 90's and with all the humidity it's not too fun) we got together as a district and we had a water balloon fight and then we went to a member's house in Elder Smith's sector and had lunch. It was awesome!
Well it sounds like Melissa had a good birthday and everyone had a good christmas.
I really love you guys and it was good to see you.
Thanks for everything.
Love, Elder Holton
P- Day Waterfight!

WATCH OUT!!

Christmas Skype:12-25-11

It was the highlight of our Christmas to be able to Skype Nick on Christmas day. It is so great to not only talk to him but to see him too. He just seemed so happy and he truly had a glow about him. They celebrate Christmas in Chile on Christmas Eve so after their appointments they went back to their apartment and opened presants. We sent a package to Nick and one to his companion before Thanksgiving and his companion Elder Sauceda got his package the week before Nick. I was really worried but then Nick did get his package in time after all. He said that he had a fun time reading all the letters that everyone had sent that I included in the package. On Christmas day it was just like any other day. Then they went to one of the members houses and were able to use a tablet to Skype us. We were also able to see his companion on Skype. He told us that they are getting 20 new missionaries to his mission next week and so they will be splitting areas and most likely he will be transfered to a new area.

Week Sixty-One: December 19th, 2011

Dear Family,
This week was a good week. Not a whole lot has happen. But as a stake we had a stake activity going on all week. They sent us many different nativity scenes from different countries and invited every body to come and see them and take pictures. We have been sharing many Books of Mormon with the Members and inviting them to write their testimony on the inside and pray about someone they could give it to for the Christmas season. It's been going good.Well I look forward to talking to and seeing you guys on Christmas. We were thinking between 12 and 2. We are given permission to use the computers of the members but only one can do it at a time. So I'll probably let him go first at 12 and he would finish around 12:45 (we only have 45 minutes) and then I could get on.

Well I hope you guys have a great week.
Love,
Elder Holton

Week Sixty: December 12th, 2011

Dear Family,Well It was good to hear from you today. This past week we did see some miracles which were very welcomed. Haha It was a very good week. Well We have been giving out Books of Mormon to the members for them to right their testimonies in and then to think of someone to gift it to. It's been going good. We are going to continue to give them out and now we are going to start to go back for them. We also did an activity this week. We as a district got together and came to our sector and sang christmas songs to the less active members. Well it went great. After we had a ward activity on Friday where 3 of the less active families attended. We also had 3 investigatores go to the activity. It was great. This week Elder Smith and Elder Izelo had a baptism in their ward and we were able to bring an investigator to the baptism. So we have been seeing some Milagritos (small miracles). It is really weird to be here and to see everyone putting up their Christmas trees and lights and everything. Yeah the Chileans put up a lot of lights and all that jazz. The thing I heard that they do that is different is they open all their presents at Midnight on Christmas Eve. As a mission were are going to have a almost all day devotional on the 23rd. Well I hope you guys all have a great week and remember the Christmas Spirit.

Love,
Elder Holton

Week Fifty-Nine: December 5th, 2011

Dear Family,
Well We had a very good week. Well one of the miracles we had this week is we went to go teach a less active family with one of our ward missionaries Hno Valdivia (who had an accident over a year ago). Well the appointment fell through so we went to another less active family. They also weren't available and as we were walking back to Hno Valdivia's car there was a mother with her son in the street. The son is arround 30 years old but appeared to be handicap. Well Hno Valdivia recognized him from the hospital when he was there a year ago. Hno Valdivia was able to convince them to let us share something with them. It was incredible. We also had another miracle this week. Well we have an investigator who isn't really progressing really well and we've been thinking about leaving her for a time. Well the other day we had the idea to take one of our recent converts (Why we hadn't thought of that idea before I don't know). They seemed about the same age. Well We went over and it just so happens that they are friends from school. We have a Noche de Hogar (Family Home Evening) planned tonight. So that should be great. Well we have been working with our members really hard. Sharing Books of Mormon with them to share with others. There have even been a few who have asked for 2 haha. I have been studying a lot about faith from the Lectures on Faith. It is just amazing how excited I get just reading about it and learning about and trying to find new ways to show my faith and to exercise greater faith.

So the other day we went to a recently reactivated family. We recently heard from a different source that their son is going to be a father but is not married. We decided to go to talk about PMG and if they decided to say something about their son then we would talk about it but we weren't going to bring it up. Well We shared our lesson and at the end they did bring it up. The son wasn't there. I decided to share my experience. I shared about how hard it was but how I knew I was doing the right thing. I especially wanted to share how important my parents were to me as I had to go through the repentance process and how much he is going to need then. They were grateful and then the Mom did something very interesting. Now you need to understand I didn't share my experiences as if I was lecturing or just telling a story. I explained my feelings as if I was talking to my best friends trying to show more and more love. Well as I did that, the Mom turned to me and expressed that they too felt close to me as I felt to them. She explained that the first time we met she felt she knew me already. Then she explained that We were the reason they went back to church (I personally don't think so). President King keeps encouraging me to share my personal experiences. Just this week he said:
"Thanks for all you are doing to find new people to teach. Speak from your heart - tell them your personal story of why you are here - and you will get to their hearts.
You do have the most important message inthe world, that can bless their lives.
They too have to come to a knowledge of the truth.
Alma 23:6 And as sure as the Lord liveth, so sure as many as believed, or as many as were brought to the knowledge of the truth, through the preaching of Ammon and his brethren, according to the spirit of revelation and of prophecy, and the power of God working miracles in them—yea, I say unto you, as the Lord liveth, as many of the Lamanites as believed in their preaching, and were converted unto the Lord, never did fall away.
This truth is the doctrine of Christ and his plan for their salvation. The Most Important Thing.
Love,Pres. King
So Elder Sauceda received a package from someone in the states and a letter from someone in the states. He was very surprised and kept bugging me that I was in on it. Which I'm not. I don't know anyone from Colorado or Virginia. It wasn't from any of his past companion's families because I'm his second companion and his other comp was from Paraguay. The package had a bunch of presents with a letter. I told him he could open the letter but the presents have to wait. and the other letter he opened. They are from young women like junior in high school age. He is so confused because they are addressed to him. haha. My gut tells me that President King had something to do with it.

Well I got to go!

Love,
Elder Holton

Week Fifty-Eight: November 28th, 2011

Dear Family,
Sounds like Thanksgiving went well. Sometimes a more tranquilo Thanksgiving is just more fun. I would like the talking to people part. I love talking to people. Things are going good over here.
Well another week has gone by. This week with Francesca we had an awesome Noche de Hogar (Family Home Evening) with an awesome family from our ward. We watched the Testaments and then talked about the Book of Mormon. She told us that she knows that the Book of Mormon is true. Well after that we tried to get in with her and everytime she was busy. Well Friday we went by and her brother answered the door and told us that Francesca and Her mom got in a fight and she moved out to live with the god family of her daughter outside the mission. That was a little bit of a shock. Well we have some other investgators we are working on and we are working on refilling our investigators pool. We are actually planning on going to sing in the fleemarkets and to the less active families. So it was really an uneventful week but we're working hard. Hope you have a great week.
Love,
Elder Holton

Week Fifty-Seven:November 21st, 2011

Dear Family,
Well this week has also been a harder week. All of our appointments have fallen through but like 2.Things are going slow but we're not getting down. We just keep working hard. But we have hope. This week we have planned a Family Home Evening with Francesca and a family in the ward and it should be awesome. We decided to put more faith in the iniciatives and put another baptismal date with her. We asked her when she would like to be baptized recognizing that she has to go to church three times. So She said the 17th of December. Well now she has to go these next few weeks. We did have one awesome lesson with Francesca and a Hermana from our ward. It was incredible to watch this sister just connect to her on a whole other level. This week I think we are going to focus on doing more contacts and finding more news. It was an idea Elder Smith had and I like it. Well something awesome that happened this last week is we had 90 people in the chapel and it wasn't a special Sunday. They were all normal members. The new Bishopric is doing great and working hard. We had Ward Council this last week. Elder Sauceda and I are doing great. I love the Elder. I hit 13 months this past week. It is really weird. Time is really flying!
Well we found out for changes this week that we are staying the same so that will be good.
For P-day we are going to Pizza Hunt for the all you can eat buffet.
They don't do anything here for Thanksgiving so we will just have a regular day!

Well I hope you all have a great week.
Love,
Elder Holton

Thank you everyone who sent letters for Nick's Christmas package if you still want to write to him
you can mail it directly to him.

Elder Holton
Chile Santiago Oeste Mision
Casilla 149
Avenida Pajaritos 1921
Maipu', CHILE

Week Fifty-Six: November 14th, 2011

Family and Friends,
Just a reminder I need the letters for Nick's Christmas package by this Friday November 18th. You can either mail them to me or send me an email or drop them by our house and I will include them in his package. Call me if you have any Questions. Thank you!
801-942-3467 home
801-455-4987 cell

Kendra Holton
3193 Granite Woods Lane
Sandy, UT 84092

atholton@msn.com

Dear Family,
This has been a good week. We have some good investigators but they are just struggling to progress. They all just have a hard time getting to the chapel. For the most part they are reading and everything but they are just not getting to the chapel and for that they are not progressing. We had an excellent lesson this week with Ricardo and Aurelia. We took and MAC and shared the first lesson. It went really well. We are going to start doing more contacting and get this Preach My Gospel Program going with our members. This week we also had a change of Bishopric. So we are going to pass by with our Ward Mission Leader to meet with the new Bishop to get him up to speed and what we are working on. We had divisions this week and we had a great time with Elder Izelo from Mexico. We also got to do a service project this past week taking wall paper off at a house getting it ready to paint. Today we had a district activity where we made pizza for Elder Mackie and Elder Gonzales's birthdays. It was fun!
Well I hope you guys have a great week.

Love,

Elder Holton

Santiago!

Week Fifty-Five: November 8th, 2011

Dear Family and Friends I am getting a package together to send to Nick for Christmas and I think what he would like most of all would be to hear from all of you so I am collecting notes and letters to include in his Christmas package so it would be great if you could either email or mail me one ASAP!
atholton@msn.com
or
Kendra Holton
3193 Granite Woods Lane
Sandy, UT 84092

Dear Family,
This week has been a good week. We have been working hard on our investigators and are starting to work on finding new ones. Francesca is doing good. We finally were able to bring some members with us to visit her. We have been working on that for awhile and everytime we brought someone she wouldn't be there. So we finally were able to visit her with a member. We are really working on getting to teach her and we really want to do a Noche de Hogar (Family Home Evening) with her and another family in the ward to help her feel more comfortable. We also are teaching Franco. He is a youth of 14 years and he is part of an inactive family and for whatever reason he didn't get baptized. He is way cool. He knows all the doctrine and everything. It's just a matter of getting him to go to church. He is really cool. So we are going to see what we can do to get him to church. We also found out some really cool news this past week. This Sunday we had a special class in church we gave. We had a joint Priesthood and Relief Society meeting and we gave the lesson with our ward mission leader. We first focused on the importance of Missionary work, second we tied it into home teaching and how they are really the same thing. Then we tied in that Preach My Gospel is written to meet the needs of the missionaries and that if the members and the missionaries are in the same work they have the same needs and thus they need to start utilizing PMG. Then we finished it off by sharing about the Atonement and that the more of a testimony we have about the Atonement the more we are going to want to share it with others. It was awesome. I think that Preach My Gospel is a powerful tool for just being a member. I encourage all of you at home to go and get one and to use it. I promise you find answers to questions that you didn't know you had. Well Another exciting event that happened is on Saturday we got to go and listen to Elder Steven E. Snow from the Presidency of the Seventy. It was an awesome talk. Also another exciting event is we were able to go to the Zoo today and for that they allowed us to have Pday today because the zoo isn't open on Mondays. It was way fun. Well I hope you guys have a great week.
Love,
Elder Holton
Our District at the Zoo!!

Ths is our whole Zone at the Zoo!!

You can see our reflection in the glass!!

Week Fifty-Four: October 31st, 2011

This is the email from last week that somehow didn't get sent so we got it this week!
10-31-11
Dear Family,
We had a good week this week. We have been working hard and contacting all the names from the cosechon that we did a week ago in our sector. We have a few appointments set with them and hopefully we can get some more investigators. We have been teaching Francesca and we have been really trying to teach the importance of the Book of Mormon and Baptism. She is doing really good. She just needs to go to church. We have been working on having a Noche de Hogar (family home evening) with some other members so that she can feel more welcome. We also have been working on Erik and Paola. They are doing good but it is super hard to find them and then to teach them. Something exciting that did happen yesterday is three less active families we have been working with finally went to church yesterday. That was awesome. We also have a lot of new plans with reactivating the ward and helping our members realize the joy in missionary work. We also got to have a meeting with Elder Zeballos this week from the Presiencia area de Chile. He came to do a mission tour and I guess it was a big deal. Our zone was asked to form a choir and Elder Silva asked me and Elder Smith to sing a duet. We sang "Divina Luz" or "Lead Kindly Light". Elder Smith sang the first part, then I sand the second part. The Hermanas sang the next part and then we all sang the last verse. It sounded pretty good for having only one day to practice. It was awesome! I'll send some pictures!That happened at zone meeting and then Elder Smith and I had divisions. We were able to teach a little girl that wants to be baptized. The lesson was really good and the mom listened and was so excited to go to church and support her. After that we went to comfort a hermana who's sister had just passed away. We gave her a comfort blessing and she has been calling to thank us ever since.
Well I hope you guys have a great week!
Love,
Elder Holton

"Today we threw a really cool birthday party as a district for Hermana Moya. We got together and made german pancakes, french toast, coffee cake, and a weird fried banana thing that tastes like french fries. We decorated a room and had a really good time. Hermana Moya loved it and I could tell that she was really grateful. We have such an awesome district with a lot of unity. While we were there, the office was having a little lunch party, so we grabbed a picture with President King and his family in their Halloween costumes. haha It was a fun morning."

German Pancakes or we call them MONSTERS in my family!!

Happy Birthday Hermana Moya!!

Our District with President King, his wife and their daughter!

Don't you love their costumes! Milk Duds, Tootsie Roll and Elephant!

Our District having fun making breakfast together!

Week Fifty-Three October 24th, 2011 HUMP DAY

Dear Family,Things are going good here. Well It has been a year from yesterday but if you count you guys coming and picking me up that adds another week and by the time we get home it will be almost november haha. Mom told me Regional Stake Conference was really good. It is funny how you learn the same lesson from 2 different sides of the spectrum. Elder Sauceda is doing awesome. I've been trying to allow him to take lead more in the sector. Mom mentioned that she saw pictures of me on Elder Smith's blog. He is my district leader and went to Jordan High School and we actually know some of the same people. I loved the last package you sent last. Actually I think it would be awesome if you could send him a package. I think that is a great idea. I don't know what you would put in it but I think he would love it. Well I hope everything is going great. The weather down here has been a little colder but not terrible. It's good. We are loving it. Well I hope you guys a good week. Love,Elder Holton



PS
The Mission President's Wife took a video of the missionaries singing "I'll go where you want me to go, " at the 50 Year Celebration. You can watch her video shown on the left of this post!!

She also wrote her thougts about the experience and this is what she said:
"We had a wonderful opportunity to participate in a celebration of 50 years of the mission in Chile. Last Saturday. we started off with a fireside with the Area Presidency, along with a wonderful youth choir. Last night was the cultural celebration and story through dance , music and dramatizations. There were over 3000 youth that participated in the event. Many have practiced every Saturday for the last 3 months. They showed us dances from several Latin America Countries. It was a wonderful evening ending with the introduction of the missionaries who had served in Chile, those who are now serving, and the future generation of missionaries in Chile. Missionaries from the Chile Santiago North, East, West Missions and some from the Rancagua Mission participated. They sang “I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go” to the audience. It was quite a site to see over 500 missionaries singing! Hopefully, in 50 years, many of our missionaries can participate in a similar event. As you look through the pictures take a good look at the beautiful Andes Mountains in the background. Our mission includes the stadium we are in and into the Andes Mountains.
One of the sweet experiences is the number of missionaries who had brothers or sisters or cousins serving in a nearby mission. They had a chance to get together with each other during the practice and evening event."

Week Fifty-Two: October 17th, 2011

Dear Family,
This week has been a crazy week. So now I'm with my new companion, Elder Sauceda from Honduras.
He has 3 months out in the field and is way cool. He has 7 siblings.
He is number 5 and he and all the younger siblings are members with his Mom. His older siblings aren't members.
He has 6 brothers and 1 sister. The sister is younger then him and is a member. He was baptized when he was 12.
He is the first to go on a mission in his family. His parents are divorced and his dad lives in New York.

I'm doing really good. We played soccer today but I decided not to because both my big toe nails are turning blue from playing soccer!
I think I'm going to lose them both. They don't hurt though so that's good.
Just to clear up a few thing from my last letter. A Carnet is a chilean ID card you have to have if you are going to live here for more than 6 months.
They are only good for a year. A capacitation is just missionary training. We have special capacitations every change. Totally normal.
Well we had something cool this past week we had the Celebration of Missionaries being in Chile for 50 years. It was way fun.
We got to go to a Stadium outside of our mission and participate with 4 other missions. It was way fun. And we got to sing "I'll go where you want me to go"!
The Area Presidency was there and everything. I also got to see some of the Elders I met in the MTC. I am sending some pictures!

The halfway mark is this Sunday.
Well I'm sorry but this week this letter is a little short. I hope you guys have a awesome week.
Love,
Elder Holton

Me and my new companion Elder Sauceda

Fifty Years of Missionaries in Chile! It was a Celebration!!

The Area Authority came!!

Elders I met in the MTC! This is me with Elder Fearnley!

Another Elder from the MTC!

Me and Elder Beck!

Week Fifty-One: October 10th, 2011

OUR ZONE!! (if you click on the picture above 2 times you can see it bigger!)

Dear Family,
This week has been a good week. Good things and bad things have been happening.
Well first off we had a devotional on Saturday for the 50th anniversary in Chile. It was awesome.
I loved a talk given by President Corbridge. He gave a talk about the most important thing or Eternal Life.
I think it is so important that the members understand the most important thing.
With their help the work will go a lot smoother. We also got a lot of good news that we are working on.
So that is the good news.

The bad news is that Angela left us or rather her husband is no longer allowing us to come teach her.
Honestly I have never met her husband and she has only mentioned him a couple times.
We have passed by a couple times but she wasn't home.
I remember when we would teach her that she would keep talking about this tranquility that she would feel when we came over and taught.
I really have faith though she knew these things are true and saw the importance of them.
It's just her husband. Well other than that things are going good.
So we received the news for cambios. Elder Crane is going. I will get my new companion tomorrow.
Well I hope you guys have a great week.

Love,
Elder Holton

Week Fifty: October 3rd, 2011

Dear Family,
Well this was quite an eventful week. We had our normal District meeting on Tuesday, a special capacitation on Thursday (This is a training to help missionaries), on friday we had to go downtown so Elder Crane could take out his carnet, which is a special permit we have to have to be in Chile (I did that last change), and General Conference. General Conference was awesome. We got to see all of it. My favorite talk I think is Elder Holland's talk on missionary work. He can bash when he wants to. I loved it! haha!
I feel that there is a few things that we can do better with teaching the Restoration. So this week we had a chance to go by and visit Angela a couple times. Both times we went she had so many questions. It was awesome. She says that everytime we come by she just can feel this tranquility and then we leave and all these doubts come and distract her, and then we come back and resolve all the doubts. We keep telling her that reading the Book of Mormon will help solve her doubts. She acts as though she is planning on being baptized. She just says she wants to be prepared. She is so awesome though. We are going to pass by and visit her hopefully this week.
We had an awesome time watching general Conference.
It was just a spectacular Conference. We're doing good here.
Working hard doing what we can. Well I hope you all have a great week.


Love,
Elder Holton

I have a new address:

Elder Nicholas Holton
Mision Chile Santiago Oeste
Casilla 149
Avenida Pajaritos 1921
Maipu' Chile

All of these pictures are from my last sector and I forgot to send them! Sorry!

Nibaldo and his family

Week Forty-Nine: September 26th, 2011

Dear Family,
This week we had a good week. We had one miracle with a less active family named Martinez. We have been working on them for a while but the dad just has the weirdest doubt. He believes the Book of Mormon is true and the Church is the church of God. He just doesn't believe in the way it came about. He doesn't believe in Joseph Smith or the Restoration. Which doesn't really make sense. How can you believe in the Book of Mormon without believing in Joseph Smith. So we've been working on that doubt the past few weeks. Now this week something happened. We went over to their house to go teach and their son came out (He has been meeting with us and is a really good kid) and said that his dad wasn't home and that we would have to reschedule. So we were just like "hey if it is ok can we just meet with you?" Just to see how he was doing and to make sure he doesn't have any doubts. So we got in and asked if he has any questions about the gospel. He said that he wanted to know more about the commandments. So we just went through them. He knew most of them. Well just as we started the Word of Wisdom the Dad came home and just sat down and joined in the conversation. He basically gave a description of the Word of Wisdom. After He explained that he has a problem with tabacco and that is the biggest reason he doesn't go to church. He also explained that he knows it is wrong and has tried and tried to stop but he can't and he doesn't know what to do. We explained that in times of old when Jesus would give people blessings he always explained that it depended upon their faith. We then asked him if he had faith enough to be healed. He said yes. So we gave him a blessing. It was a very emotional lesson but it was really good. We also had Angela come to church. That was so awesome to see the ward just embrace her. She is awesome. So this past week we had the power go out one night at like 8:30 pm so we went home because the cell phones weren't working. It was really funny because the lights turned back on at 10:00 pm when were are supposed to be in the house. So that was kinda dumb but nothing bad happened. Well I hope you guys have a good week and I'll talk to you later.

Love,
Elder Holton

Week Forty-Eight:September 19th, 2011

Dear Family,
Things have been going good.Well we haven't had a chance to see any of our main investigators this week. So that is kinda lame right? That is awesome to hear about the Utes. That is quite a blowout. That's awesome. Now I won't have to worry about getting any crap from anyone for another year haha.Yeah the weather has been warming up here. This area is so completely different from the area I came from. The needs in this area are completely different. But we are working hard.The meals are a little smaller but it's all good.Thanks for the package. They always make my month haha.


Well I hope you have a good week.

Love,
Elder Holton

Week Forty-Seven: September 12th, 2011

Dear Family,
Things are going great. My companion Elder Crane is from Calgary. We have been having a great time with the other two Elders that live in the same apartment with us.We have been really working hard. This week we have set a few baptismal dates. We have set one with Gabriel, Erik, and Angela. Gabriel is awesome. It is so cool to see how much he understands and loves the gospel. His only problem is smoking. He knows it's wrong and wants to stop but he smokes a lot. We have promised many blessings and have explained that as he strives to break this addiction he will have the power to overcome it through Jesus Christ. We will find out how he has been doing tomorrow. Erik is awesome. I have only taught him once but he is awesome. We are just working on seeing him more often. Angela is awesome also but as with Erik it is hard to find her and talk to her. But she is awesome also.

It is really hard to get a hold of people in this sector. We haven't had a chance to meet with Rodrigo again. You asked is we have had any service opportunities and we have been looking but no body will let us. We receive new initiciatives every month and this month we got some harder ones. One of those has been to invite to be baptized on the first lesson. We've been trying to follow with the new initiatives and it has been going well. It hasn't been easy but we have been doing all that we can. Well I hope you have a good week.

Love,
Elder Holton

Chile Santiago West Mission
Correos Casilla 149
Pajaritos 1229
Maipu', Chile

Also its free to send me a letter on dearelder.com

I would love to hear from everyone!

Week Forty-Six: September 5th, 2011

Dear Family,
I have been transferred to Maipú. So now I am pretty close to the mission office. I'm in one of the richest sectors in the mission. I'm sending a link of a map of the area. I love my new area. My new companion is Elder Crane and he is awesome and I'm way excited to work with him. He is an excellent Elder from Canada and only has 4 1/2 months in the mission. We have been having a blast. Well as far as the sector has been going I still haven't met most of our investigator pool but I have been working on getting the sector down. We did have an awesome lesson yesterday with what appeared to be just a recent contact. We talked with this guy named Rodrigo and his wife. They were awesome. They kept espressing their desire for La Vida Eterna. So as we went through lesson one we just put ephasis on La Vida Eterna. It was just an awesome lesson. Rodrigo kept saying that we really know our scriptures because everytime they had a question we had an answer with the scriptures. I personally think it was just the spirit. Rodrigo also said that it is funny because with other churches they would run out of things to talk about and get bored but with us they could talk for hours. Well I hope you guys are doing good and will talk to you later.
Love, Elder Holton

PS: This is a map of our sector:
http://maps.google.cl/maps?saddr=Alfredo+Silva+Carvallo&daddr=-33.5303195,-70.7986163+to:Valle+de+Los+Reyes+to:Valle+de+Los+Reyes+to:-33.5247539,-70.7870191+to:Tres+Poniente+to:Tres+Poniente+to:Pdte+Gabriel+Gonz%C3%A1lez+Videla+to:Cerro+Blanco+to:Francisco+Pizarro&hl=es&ie=UTF8&sll=-33.532917,-70.784569&sspn=0.009605,0.013154&geocode=FaZVAP4dUufH-w%3BFTFeAP4d6LLH-yml82hCQ91iljGwDCxeFQAx3A%3BFaBeAP4dCrLH-w%3BFcxyAP4d2LPH-w%3BFe9zAP4dNeDH-ykTckaGON1iljF8K2ywz7LWDQ%3BFc50AP4dov7H-w%3BFYBZAP4d5g_I-w%3BFQBNAP4dn-nH-w%3BFThRAP4dzuHH-w%3BFZZUAP4dSOfH-w&vpsrc=0&mra=mi&mrsp=9&sz=16&via=1,4&z=16

Week Forty-Five: August 29th, 2011

Dear Family,
This week has been a good week. We had a lot of success yesterday at the chapel. So with all of our investigators. First is Iris. She is really progressing. It is just taking that step between getting married or getting seperated. She knows that she has to do one of them and it is hard to choose. She has such a testimony about the gospel and the book of Mormon and the church. We taught a lesson about temples and she absolutely loved it. Yesterday in the Gospel Principles class we had some other investigators (Daniel, Daniel's Mom, and Waldo) and during the entire class she was bearing testimony of everything and helping the others understand more. Next is Daniel. Well he has been having a hard time but this past week he had to go to the hospital for something and we saw him a day later and offered a blessing. Well he came to church Sunday with his Mom which was awesome. They participated in the class and it was awesome. So hopefully Daniel is turning arround. Waldo is a reference from the ward and he is awesome. We have only had a chance to teach him in the class but he had some awesome questions and was just way interested. With Matias it has been difficult. When we would go over and try to teach him he would have a hard time focusing and paying attention. So I don't know what is going to happen to him. Well it has been a pretty good week. I got a phone call last night that I have changes this week which means I'm being transfered. I have to confess I am a little sad. Well I hope you all have an awesome week.


Love,
Elder Holton


Me, Elder Crist, Elder Myers and Elder Lowry Today at Pizza Hut!

Week Forty-Four: August 22nd, 2011

Dear Family,

This has been a very good week. We have had some very excellent progress with Iris and with Matias. So first to start off with Iris. Last Sunday in the Gospel Principles class we were talking about the Book of Mormon and about the challenge we left with Iris. Well there is a Sister in our ward who we eat lunch with. Every time we go she tells us about her testimony of the Book of Mormon. She has found that with any trial in her life if she makes a promise to the Lord that she will read the entire Book of Mormon then the trial will be resolved. She has told us about the many trials and times that she has tested this promise and how it has worked every time she has tried it. Well I told Iris about this sister and her experience and then challenged Iris to do the same. Well we met with Iris later on Tuesday and we sat down to get started and she turned to me and said “You know Elder Holton. The Promise is true.” I honestly didn’t know what she was talking about. She expounded to say that the promise is true and that she has found a job and somewhere to study in just the two days that we didn’t see her. Honestly she is so ready for the waters of baptism. They just need to get married. Now with Matias, This week actually we were able to set a date with him. He is just so loving the gospel. We asked him to pray to know that baptism is right and he said that he didn’t need to pray. He just knows it is right. He also came up to us asking us for ideas to invite his Mom to talk to us. She has already told us before that she wants nothing to do with us but that she loves have us over teaching her son. We gave him a few ideas. Lately I have been working really hard on memorizing references for the lesson. We have to memorize 3 references for every principle and there are 8 principles in lesson 1 and 8 in lesson 2. My brain is starting to hurt. I'm almost done with lesson 2. It is very interesting to see as I memorize it is like a high and I want to memorize more. This past week me and Elder Lowry have seriously gotten into Insence. We have a burner and everything. It is so cool. I will send some pictures. It is starting to warm up here. We still get some random cold days though which really stinks. So I talked to President King and he said that I am staying with this sector for another change to finish Elder Lowry's training. Cool right?

Well I hope you all are having a blast.

Love,
Elder Holton
p.s. I would love to hear from everyone.

Our Insence and burner stuff.

The outside of our apartment.

Our apartment.

My clothes.

My desk.

Our kitchen.

More pictures of the outside of our apartment.