Wednesday, June 10, 2015

The Adventures of Getting your Visa - December 8, 2014

Tuesday all of the newbies met up at the office early in the morning to go on an adventure to get our visas. The adventure started out ok as I got to my first appointment in time and then we headed to the PDI which is like the FBI of Chile to get registered in their systems and what not. We took a number and I was number 506 and they were on number 150. So we knew we were in for a long wait. It was kind of cool though cause we met some missionaries from the Santiago South mission and one of them Elder Cheney knew a sister that finished her mission here in Renca. He and I got to talking and it was just really cool to get some advice from him and it was just a confidence booster for me. He was a really cool guy. Heavenly Father definitely puts people in our path to give us a little extra boost when we need it. So we were waiting outside and we heard that it was number 480 so we waited like 5 minutes and started to walk in and it was number 515... I don`t know how it jumped 35 numbers in such a short time when it took hours and hours to get through the people before that. I was like are you kidding me what are we gonna do... Some other missionaries had later numbers and they were good to go but for us they had stopped handing out numbers. I was like dang it I`m gonna have to come back and wait forever again how did this happen? But then I remembered Elder Farnsworth found another number in the 600`s in the street and put it on top of the vending machine. So I ran over there and IT WAS STILL THERE. So boo ya the numbers flew by and I got really really lucky and got to do my stuff that day. But there was still one last step we didn`t get to that day and Elder Prince and Elder Bullock (who has to renew his) didn`t get the stuff done at the PDI. So Thursday morning we got to the PDI again a little bit earlier since we didn`t have to do the first steps but we still drew numbers for Elder Prince and Elder Bullock in the 300`s. BUT then we saw Ricardo Contreras from the ward and we went over to talk to him and this lady that he works with. They help people who are moving to Chile to get their visa stuff done and THEY HAD DRAWN EXTRA NUMBERS. It was on number 50 and they gave us numbers 67 and 68. BOO YA! So we got in and out of their in about 30 minutes and passed our 300 numbers to the sister missionaries that were coming in as we were exiting so hopefully that helped them out a bit. We got to the last step got in some sort of express line and finished in like an hour. It was pretty much a day of miracles and I was stoked to be done with all of that nonsense. I kind of struggled with my finger prints but hey we all have struggles. I hope that story made sense...

Yesterday we FINALLY found this guy Dante and his girlfriend Maiyra that we had found a couple weeks back and failed to find the following weeks. Maiyra had actually done the reading we asked her to do and was wondering when we were gonna come back! We had a super awesome lesson about the restoration and when we gave the account of the first vision Maiyra was just like wow and kind of got the chills but I know she felt more than that. They really seem to enjoy having us over and they listen really well and participate a lot in the lessons so I`m excited to teach them more. It felt so so so good to get back to teaching new investigators. 

On the sadder side of things. Guillermo plays his guitar in the bus system here in Santiago and he fell in the bus the other day and he has been in quite a bit of pain. We tried to visit a few times but his mom wants us to wait for him to recover a bit. Please keep him in your prayers. He`s in pretty rough shape it seems with his back. 

I hope you all had a great Fast Sunday. I`d really just like to bear my testimony to all of you about the power of fasting. Fasting absolutely increases our ability to focus on those things that we are fasting for and it increases the power of our prayers. I truly am able to have a special experience every single fast sunday. I truly just feel at peace and I find myself able to express my thoughts more clearly and more sincerely to my Heavenly Father. I know that he hears and answers every single one of our prayers and that our ability to see those answers and understand what we need to do is increased as we fast. Love you all lots and I hope you have an absolutely great week. 

Elder Shell

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