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