Families make the missionary VERY HAPPY!

Do you want the good news or bad news?? Read in the order you want...

BAD:

Well, the unfortunate news I have to share is that my kid, Elder Haws, chose to go home. It was a wild week filled with interviews with the mission president, phone calls home, and his stake president even called us directly on our cell phone, and it turned out that Elder Haws was just feeling overwhelmed by all the troubles of home and being away that the decision was made. The positive hope I have is that I insisted and gave him probably a thousand different reasons why he needed to come back out after his short time home and finish his mission. So for now I´m in a trio, but it looks like I´m going to receive a new comp who is a youth from another stake that is preparing to serve a mission so I´ll still kind of be a dad and he´ll have the chance to serve a mini-mission with the Maquina Mundell! ;)

GOOD: 

This week was a gold mine for finding awesome families! One family of 4, and another of 8!!!! The family of 4 was a real miracle because the dad has been inactive for the last 18 years after being baptized when he was 10 years old and so his wife and 2 daughters had no idea that he was even a member... But he is a truck driver and one of our most active, faithful members is a mechanic who repairs all the broken machinery and it just so happened that this dad remembered the face of the member and asked him, "Hey, Remember me?! I remember you... Are you still active in the Church of Jesus Christ?" The member was surprised for a moment, then answered "Of Course!", and invited this guy to receive the missionary lessons again. The next day we passed by with the same member and found this perfect little family just WAITING to receive the restored gospel in their lives! Then the next day they all went to church AND LOVED IT, and now it looks like they will all be baptized this 29th of March! 

That same Sunday after church we went out to re-contact some contacts that we had met a few days earlier and set up some visits but almost all fell through... ALMOST ALL, but not all. We found a family of 8 (but just 6 were there) waiting with the door wide open for us to come by at the time we had set up with the mom a few days earlier, having no idea how big her family was! We taught about the importance of Baptism and found out that none of the children had been baptized and the parents were baptized in other churches when they were babies. After explaining the importance of salvation and the commandment of baptism for the remission of sin, we invited all 6 of them to be baptized this April and every single one said YES!!!! 

I truly don´t think there is any greater happiness I get on the mission than teaching a complete family and inviting them to become an eternal family!

On top of these 2 big families, I´m also teaching a Mom of 30 and her 12 year old son; The husband of a recent convert; and whoever else will listen to me! Haha

There´s a lot of study time on the mission, so now on top of reading the Book of Mormon, I´ve also started studying the Bible and have seen a huge improvement in my teaching abilities as I´m more able to relate to people and their understanding.

OH. MY. HOT DOG! They´re called "Cumpletos" and are like a hot dog on steroids!

This whole training thing.... it´s harder than I thought

So I think I´m going to just ask you guys to read this one

I don´t think I knew just quite a training consisted of... Hahaha I kinda missed out on that part of my mission and now to be put back into a training environment I have no idea how to do it, and do it right/good. I wanted to be the coolest dad, but it´s been hard to establish a real strong relationship with my kid. I already knew this, but I´m not exactly the best at first impressions. So I´ve tried just setting an example of hard work and obedience -- hopefully the relationship will come with more time together since this is his first real time away from home. His name is Elder Haws, from Sandy, Utah and is part of the young generation of missionaries (18 years old). He came really prepared, speaks spanish very well for someone who only has a week in the mission field, but is experiencing a bit of trouble with home sickness, depression, sleep deprivation, and very strong thoughts of returning home. About a month and a half ago his mom told him that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and was going to need to start chemo therapy and he hasn´t been able to handle this tragic situation very well. It has troubled him deeply and pretty much every moment of the day he is just weighted down with so much sadness that I don´t know how to brighten up his day... I´ve shared my experiences and counsel but it doesn´t seem to have much effect, he told me that he is so bogged down by the whole dilema that it is hard for him to focus on the mission.

Today we had a very powerful interview together with President Martinez and after talking with him for a good long time, and calling his parents, it´s looking like he has set his mind on going home. The last thing I would ever want, and now I´m starting to find myself thinking of whether or not I´m doing a good job as a first companion to help him work through this hard time.

On a related note, I would really like it if you guys could pick out a few of your favorite conference talks of all time and send them to me to print out and read, in addition to any real powerhouse missionary talks/divocional talks that you can think of. As well as looking for another one that focuses on the Atonement, Trials, and Faith that I could share with mi hijo.

Thanks for the love and support, hope all is well back on the home front

Much love,

Elder Mundell

I´M PREGNANT!!!!! HAHA

Well, with this last cambio just ending the news has come in, and it looks like I´ll be a Dad in the next cambio and receive my first hijo! I´m going to be training a newbie missionary -- Woo Hoo! I´m hoping he´ll be a gringo so that I can still kind of fake it like I know what I´m doing and saying hahaha but pretty much it´s going to be my responsibility to teach him the ropes of how the mission works and set the example of obedience, diligence, and fun for the rest of his mission. 

   It´s been a great week! We had 2 more baptisms this week, found a bunch of new people to start teaching (including the families of both women we baptized), and we had a miracle man walk into church Sunday from out of nowhere saying he had never been baptized but had been investigating this church a while back and now knows it to be the true church of Jesus Christ and wants to be baptized! Really the only bad part was that I spent all last night in the bathroom throwing up...

My comp, Elder Miller is going to be bumped up to zone leader in this next cambio and is going to my old sector, VICTORIA!!! So I´m loading him up with a bunch of letters to give out to the members over there.

The rest of my week will be described in photos:

1)  We went to lunch last week and realized that our new branch president looks JUST LIKE Steve Carrel!!!! Haahahaha

2)  This is how I look like during district meetings...

3)  Found this little piece of home in the streets of Chile! Who´da thunk...???

4)  Our awesome investigator of gold who got baptized, Lorena

5)  Going to lunch in the country side, when this happened

6)  Other awesome lady who got baptized, Sandra

7)  This hole was HUUUUUUUUGE!!!!!!! And they´re my favorite pants...

8)  My old zone from this cambio

Love you guys!

Elder Mundell

OLÍMPICOS?!?!

I had no clue the Olympics had started?! I went over to Maria´s house (the abuelita convert) to watch a Mormon Message video with her, when I turned on the TV and saw Snowboarding!!! Sooo... I got super trunky and wanted to stay there and watch it, but I was on an exchange with one of the Assistants from the Mission Office and had to be on my best behavior haha.

This week was a little slower than normal... Even nothing really changed in the way that we had been working, other than the fact that out of the 7 days of the week 5 of them were with exchanges -- which was a pretty lame. I always give my companion a hard time about how much he doesn´t love me and wants this cambio to come to an end the fastest possible, but the truth is that I love the guy and we´ve seen a lot of really great things happen in our time together. I would say we compliment each other because I´m the stupid, good at joking around with the people and he´s the spiritual giant who has THE VISION TO BAPTIZE! So i´ve really enjoyed the chance to be able to learn from him, even though we have the same time in the mission. From the looks of it, Elder Miller´s going to be leaving the sector and I´ll be receiving a new companion next week. But before ending this cambio, we´ve got 2 more baptisms of our best investigators -- Sandra y Lorena. Now the hunt is on to find more people to teach once they´ve been baptized. BUT the best part of baptizing, comes from the lessons afterwards and their love for the missionaries and the gospel and how much they want to share what they´ve experienced with their family! Now the daughter of Lorena has a baptismal date in March! Oh yeah, and now we have one more house that we can use the bathroom when we´re super far from our house, without any shame!

I can´t really think of much more that´s been going on... I´ll make sure to be super nuts in this next week. Just so you can see how much my socializing skills have changed, I set the goal to talk to 200 people this week. That´s got to bring with it some stories! :D

Hasta next Sabado!

Su hijo/amigo/hermano

Elder CJ Mundell

BUH-BUH-BUH-BAPTISM!!!!!

Yup! You guessed it! We baptised our famous abuelita this week! Everyone has been talking about our 93 year old convert, how she magically showed up to church the Sunday before her baptism, and how right after she was baptised she just started cracking up in the baptismal font! I thought that I was happy when I was watching her walk down into the water, but turned out that she was even happier! Which is really great because I really don´t know how much of our Gringo Spanish she understood, but after teaching all the lessons with the photo book she always insisted on knowing when her baptism was. When we told her that it was at 5, she was like "In the morning?! Okay, I´ll be there at 4:30!" She is the funniest old lady too, every time she sees me she just starts laughing. And somehting good that came out of her baptism was that now we´re going to start teaching her grandaughter who has a FAMILY OF 5!!!!!!!!!!

Our entire house has been super sick this past week. The Hermana Misioneras in our district "cooked" us pizza that wasn´t very cooked at all, and gave us all... Let´s just say "stomach problems"... Hahaha

The worst one affected was my comp who was confined to bed all day yesterday (hence the photo).

Thats really about it! Lorena and Sandra are the next 2 to be baptized this 22nd and they´re both golden.

Enjoy the pictures!

Un Abrazo,

Elder Mundell