Conference Week Letter

October 5, 2009

I got my camera cable!!! and I have updated my gmail account, so hopefully, it should be working up to speed now.

Today was the first day of the new change. Every six weeks, we have what is called a change, where we have a chance of being switched around a little bit and recieve new companions sometimes. However, things are going to stay relatively the same for me. Elder Stephenson is still going to be my companion and Im still going to be laboring in the El Parque sector. I am so glad to again be working with some of the most amazing members in all of Chile. They are so nice and loving, I am never worried when we bring investigators to the church because I know that they will welcome them with open arms.
However, I am going to be moving pensions from the "rat hole", to somewhere else, of which I am still not sure where that is yet, but I am anxiously waiting with anticipation.
As far as everything else goes, I had the opportunity to go to the stake center to listen to general conference. I was so excited! I cant believe I would roll out of bed and complain that I had to sit and listen to conference for a few minutes. haha, Wow, I sure have changed since then. I abosorbed everything like a sponge and enjoyed every minute I took like 9 pages of copious notes. It was pretty cool to look back and see all the pages. I flip through them with pride now.
As a side note to all the naysayers and doubting thomases out there (mom and dad), you will be elated to know that I have not become one of the most anal retentive missionaries in my zone. I take notes on everything and color code them accordingly so I can refer to them quickly whenever I need to. Also, I created a budget plan for the expenses I get each month. Elder Stephenson informed me I was probably the only missionary in Chile Santiago East that kept a recorded budget for longer than a week. Its very weird, what the mission is doing to me. I am slowly becoming more and more what I hope the Lord wants me to be.
Of one thing I am sure, that the Lord has great things in store for me, but it is up to me whether or not I want to rise to the challenge. I have decided that in life, we all start two lives. One is who we are and the other is who we have the potential to be. As we go along the couse of life, we falter and make mistakes. If we choose to get back on the path, we can become better than we were the day before. I just hope I dont ever look down the road and see who I could be 5 miles ahead. Who I am can be who I can be, but it is my choice, and mine alone.
Dad, it might just be Elder Ballard´s talk in the Priesthood session that made me think of you and want to write this, but I wanted to say how grateful I am to be your son. I have always looked up to you and tried to emulate the decisons you hvae made. I see the way you treat mom, and hope that I can someday be as kind and loving with my wife as you are with mom. Seeing the circumstances here have really opened my eyes. The lady that I told you about a while ago with the sign about loving all she had; well we stopped by again and noticed that her drunk husband was sprawled out in the other room asleep, while she was dealing with her 4 and 2 year old boys, both of whom were running around without pants or underwear. I almost cried looking into her eyes and seeing her pain. Both her sister and mother commited suicide when she was very young and her father wants nothing to do with her. She is left very alone with no one besides the Savior to wrap his arms around her and tell her that everything is going to be alright. Dad, I just wanted you to know that not only are you the best example of the person I want to become, or one of the best friends I have ever had, but that you are my hero.
Im sorry I dont really have much else to write about. Hopefully the pictures will work. If so, I will upload all of them onto my Walgreens account and post some of the pictures of my old pension to this email. Also, I do have a small request. The President told us that we can listen to any music that invites the spirit, and the CD´s that I have listened to countless time now are becoming scratched and skip a lot. So if you could just send me my ipod and the cable for the computer, I would greatly appreciate it. No, dont delete all the music and put a few church hymns on there. You can add more church music if you like, but I am fully capable of deleting all my spiritually detracting songs. I hope you have enough trust in me, haha! But yeah, if someone has already claimed it as their own, thats okay, but it would be awesome to be able to put some more church music that Elder Stephenson is constantly finding on my ipod. Just the ipod and computer cable with it. nothing else. Speakers here cost like 3 mil (6 dollars), so dont worry.
If you have any questions, let me know. I still dont know how fast mail travels here. I heard its about 2 to 3 weeks. Just make sure to cover the package with Virgin Mary stockers so the Chilean mail doesnt open it and I find it in the marketplace a few days after and am forced to buy it back.
Con Amor,
Elder Westover